Too Many Men Still Believe in Perpetual Motion

SOME day, go into the Patent Office in Washington and look at the applications that have been made for patents on perpetual-motion machines.

You will see some very ingenious devices.

For instance, a machine to be run by the power of gravity—iron balls dropping down a chute and turning a wheel.

The inventor of that machine provided for everything. He even added a brake to stop the machine, in case it should run so fast as to become unmanageable.

He forgot only one thing—that it requires just as much energy to lift the balls up against gravity as they develop by falling down.

In England, between 1617 and 1903, more than six hundred separate applications for patents were made on perpetual-motion machines.

Every single year new applications are made.

They stand—this unending procession of applications—they stand as a magnificent monument to the unchangeableness of human nature.

A testimony to man's unquenchable belief that somehow, somewhere, it is possible in this world to get something for nothing.

It is a mistake to gather all these perpetual-motion machines together in Washington, D. C.

One of them should be set up at the busiest corner of every American city. And twelve should be distributed along Wall Street, New York.

Every man who goes downtown to business in the morning should pass a perpetual-motion machine and be reminded of its lesson.

There is one great law that runs through all life. Many men have discovered it: Emerson named it the Law of Compensation.

Everywhere that law is operative. In physics, action and reaction are equal. In electricity, if the north end of a magnet attracts, the south end repels.

If, as Emerson points out, a government is bad, the governor’s life becomes unsafe. If taxes are too high, they yield no revenue; if laws are too severe, juries will not convict; if they are too lenient, private vengeance steps in the metes out justice.

Compensation—everywhere.

When I started in business I used to be somewhat worried by the good fortune of the wicked. I saw fellows who worked one half as hard as I and got twice as much money.

I saw other fellows lift themselves into the good graces of the boss on the golden wings of gold and funny stories.

But I have seen the Law of Compensation get in too much deadly work ever to concern myself any more about anybody else's success.

I have seen good fellows who thought they were perfectly secure because they called the boss by his first name, be fired by the same boss, who called them by their first names when he did it.

And I have seen men grow very rich—and I know that there are many ways in which the Law of Compensation can work when a man has the ambition to become very rich.

It can make him pay in health. It can turn his home into a counting-room. It can make his children snobs and hypocrites. It can destroy his joy in simple things.

Another gentleman discovered the Law of Compensation even before Emerson. He stated it in this form:

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a moan soweth, that shall he also reap.

There are many seeming exceptions to this law; but the longer I live the more sure I am that if most of the exceptions were analyzed they would be found not to be exceptions at all.

There is no such thing as perpetual motion. No man ever for very long gets more than he deserves, without paying for it something equally as valuable as he gets.

"Nothing can work me damage except myself," said St. Bernard. "The harm that I sustain I carry about in me, and never am a real sufferer by my own fault."

"And"—he might have added—"never a real gainer for very long, except by my own hard work."

Bruce Barton, Editor

WHO IS RASPUTIN?

By LUCIAN SWIFT KIRTLAND

I MISSED having dinner with Rasputin by one day. Every intricate detail had at last been arranged. Although reported to be visiting friends in Siberia, Rasputin had come to Petrograd, and was to have been motored in a closed car to a private apartment for the dinner. Since the attempt on his life, last spring, in one of the exclusive eating places of fashion, he now never appears in a restaurant.

For six weeks I had manœuvered, reaching for this wire and then for that, until finally I knew that I had the right one—for in Russia every one can be reached by some wire. The point was, to find the man whom Rasputin could not deny, and then to find the man who could bring pressure on that man. Fortuitously, I found that third man, and then I knew that I was well on my way to Rasputin. And then, with the last detail completed, I was called away twenty-four hours too soon. By the space of that one day I missed meeting the most interesting character in Russia—the great, towering monk, Gregory Rasputin, who from behind the throne of Muscovy for the past decade has held in the mercy of his power the dictation of the weal of the Empire.

It is neither necessary nor discreet to say who my acquaintance was, nor who it was that knew Rasputin. Emphatically it is necessary to omit telling the intrigue of the pressure that was brought to bear. But the man who knows Rasputin is perhaps the only man who has ever really known the monk intimately, and who has ever been his confidant. He promised to tell me, as a prelude to the dinner, the secret of just who Rasputin is, and to reveal the mystery of how he arose to his power.

To get to my informant's house I was led from the sunshine of the broad, roughly cobbled street into a court-yard, and there we found a door leading to a long flight of dark stairs. We climbed until just under the roof, and pressed a bell. Steps came and a door was unlocked. We slipped in quickly, as if there were furtive eyes watching. Where the trail of Rasputin reaches there is always clandestine slyness. The man himself came to the door. He pushed open a door and led us through some rooms until we came to an inside office, a musty place crowded with heavy, rich furnishings.

Above the desk hung a picture of Rasputin. Our host reached up his hands to each side of the frame and looked into the eyes.

"The eyes are of fire," he said, "living fire!"

Most men hate Rasputin, but many obey his commands, as do almost all women.

"Look at those lips," he continued—"the thin lips of a master. No; you see, they are not thick, stupid, sensual lips. And now look at his eyes. Look deeply, and maybe you will understand something of the man."

He sat down at the desk and talked across it toward me.

"How could a moujik," he began, "an ignorant peasant born in the heart of Siberia—how do you suppose that such a man could rise in proud Russia to be a power greater even than the throne? I tell you again: it was his fire, his sensuous bursting passion of life. He can dissipate the ennui of a jaded court and not be drained. He has wits, but so have thousands. His presence rekindles dead ashes. They are subjugated by his power.

"Yes, Rasputin was a moujik, a peasant. Everybody knows that; but they know little more. They think he is young. He is not. He was born fifty-two years ago, born in the province of Tobolsk, in a little village. He lived in a house of one room, where they all slept in reeking sheepskins on the stove in winter, and in new-cut hay above the cattle in the summer. Was that a beginning for sleeping between silken sheets in a palace?

"Rasputin was big and strong, but he didn't like to work. He liked to talk and he liked to quarrel, and he stirred up his inspiration for talking and quarreling at the vodka shop. Are thinking heads to he found in such a village to match one's wits against? There was nobody to answer his questions. And, in his high spirits, he rebelled and wrangled and made trouble. Everybody for miles about learned who Rasputin was, including such local noblesse as is mustered in such a faraway province. At first he amused these yokel aristocrats by his boisterous revelries and strange moods, but they couldn't manage him. They wanted him to be a buffoon, but he was too much their master. He made a mockery of his superiors, and victims of the women. When the village grew too narrow a field for his adventures, he wandered away as a pilgrim.

"Rasputin had never had a day of schooling, and he had the direst ignorance of anything that he might find in the outside world, except what his priest had told him of big cities with great churches, and of monasteries and convents and holy places. It was the beginning of an education to make his way from village to village, trying the mettle and temper of strangers with his questions and high spirits. You can picture him when he reached Moscow, tramping around and around the great churches and palaces with open mouth and staring eyes.

"He saw that men had done bigger things in the world than he had ever dreamed of. He decided that reading and writing must have had something to do with this power. A Rasputin does not have to look long in this world for teachers. He has had many. Amidst various hot-blooded adventures he found time to watch fair fingers point out the letters of the alphabet.

"Rasputin's development seems always to have advanced by jumps. Moscow received him uncouth, uneducated, and untamed. He had had only the most shadowy ideas of the power and organization and the dogma of the great Russian Church. Something in the refinement of the city and the art of the wonderful churches began to smooth away the outside of his uncouthness. The paradox of it all was that Moscow was now a disappointment to his new moods. Incredible—yes; but this central Siberian moujik was demanding something from the great Moscow churches that they could not give. Rasputin told his friends that the church lacked passion. Their answer was that the materialism and commercialism of a great city had engulfed the church—that he should go to Kief if he wished to find holiness uncontaminated.

"Again he picked up his pilgrim staff. At Kief he found another great city; but the atmosphere was narrow and bigoted. For a time he thought that this bigotry meant life. But a man of Rasputin's keen senses can not long be fooled by the specious, and he was soon angered by the corruption that he found. Possibly—who can deny?—this hot-blooded, intemperate, riotous, desirous wanderer was honestly seeking some unfaltering purity of religion as a salvation outside himself against the raging fires within, the very fires which later were to carry him to the pinnacle of power and might.

"He heard of Holy Mount Athos, and again he took up his wanderings. Again he found pettiness. Pilgrims were going to Jerusalem. He joined them. I said that Rasputin was impressionable. Now came the second great evolution in his life. It came from the sea. To this child of the steppes, the expanse, the colors, the storms, the peace, the majesty, the power, and the mystery affected him as something new and revolutionary from God's hand. The effect upon his life was tremendous. He ceased being a simple moujik upon a quest, he himself not half knowing what he wished to find. He had been struck with the conviction, the revelation, that if he could feel this inspiration of the sea, which others could not feel until his words and his fire discovered the treasures for them, he must then be possessed of powers which they did not

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have. And he did possess those powers.

"The squabbling of the rival churches of Jerusalem irritated him. He burned to preach, and eagerly he turned back to Russia, and became one of the many moujik priests⁸those unordained, unconsecrated itinerants outside the church, who wander over Russia.

"It was nine years since Czar Nicholas II had come to the throne, and nine years since he had married the Princess Alix of Hesse. Four beautiful daughters were born to their beautiful mother, but there was no son. The Emperor's disappointment needed a victim, and he listened to the 'League of the Three Marys,' those three women of the court who so bitterly opposed the Empress.

"The Czar and the Czarina were now seldom together. However, at the canonization of St. Seraphim at the monastery of Sarov, the Emperor and the Empress attended the ceremonies together. Their carriage moved between packed lines of cheering subjects.

"Suddenly from the thickest of the crowd came a loud, clear, commanding voice:

"'Thou, too, shalt bear a son!'

"The Empress half rose from her seat and looked at the man. She insisted that they find out who was the speaker of those words. After the ceremony they brought Rasputin to her. She told him that when she had heard his voice she had had the thrill that she was listening to a holy revelation.

"Rasputin maintained a certain poise. When the Empress said that he must come to St. Petersburg, he replied yes; but the fact that it took him so long to fulfill his promise is proof that he then expected little.

"On the thirtieth of July, 1904, a son was born, and was christened the Grand Duke Alexis.

"Rasputin's wanderings at length carried him to the grim northern capital. He knocked, as it were, at the palace door, to find that he had not been forgotten. He had from the beginnning a place in the palace.

"The child, never well, became dangerously ill. The court physicians gave up all hope. Again the voice of Rasputin rang out: 'The child shall live!' For three days, without moving from beside the bed, Rasputin exorcised in prayer, and the heir lived. The superstition grew, which has become the legend firmly believed by the parents, that the life of the monk and the life of the boy are magically connected.

"The Empress, and through her the Emperor, began to consult Rasputin. The Empress had fallen completely under the domination of Rasputin's fire, his vivacity, his hypnotic power. Every request that he might make was granted; but he asked little of importance. Nevertheless, there were wise heads at court who began to realize to what end this power might lead. Rasputin assumed the innocence that he has always worn as a cloak. He followed his subtle and always victorious campaign with the Czar—he constantly praised his enemies.

"The hour of the climax came on a boresome evening of the innermost court circle in the palace. The desultory conversation turned upon the religious dances of the Khlysty, that strange sect whose members, in their fierce struggle to trample down the flesh, do not restrain it, but, wrestling with the infinite problem of sin and salvation, give concession to the flesh as an element of ecstasy.

"Suddenly Rasputin leaped to the middle of the room. 'I have danced the dance of the Khlysty,' he said.

"There was a portentous calm.

"Rasputin began dancing, at first slowly. Whether he danced the dance of the Khlysty or not, I do not know; but it was a dance of ecstasy and wild emotionalism. Then came the hurricane. The enemies of Rasputin, or, more precisely, the enemies of the Empress, arose and stood together. They declared themselves against what they called the immorality of what they had seen. They declared that the hour had come for banishment. It had; but Rasputin remained. Certain ladies of the court never came to court again.

"In the fire of the dance Rasputin had felt his power. The sequel confirmed it. He was now supreme. But, strangely enough, he did not seem desirous to use his power. In those days, if any one could gain his interest, he would successfully advance that person's cause; but his requests were for such favors as bishoprics and similar gifts for friends. More and more, however, he grew into taking a hand in the direction of the major affairs of the State. And then, about six years ago, he abruptly threw down all his power, declaring that he was going to retire into holy seclusion in Siberia. Who but us Slavs could ever understand the secret? It was the flaming again of that frenzied quest for salvation from sin.

"For two years he was gone. Of those years no one knows. Hell and heaven were pitted against each other in his breast in a terrific struggle for mastery. And then, suddenly, he returned to court. He must have made the bargain with hell. He demanded back again the power that he had so contemptuously relinquished. But he was markedly changed in his ambitions. Every move was cloyed with mercenary design. He was drunk in his craving for power.

"Who in Russia does not know the tales of the Rasputin of these hectic years? But the outside world of Europe and America—what has there been in your experience that could give you the imagination to believe such unutterable scandals?

"In the regime just before the war, Rasputin loosely organized a group of satellites, a strange clique of visionaries, thieves, and sensualists. No project, good or bad, legitimate or illegitimate, could be launched without his consent. Every one who wished to gain the hearing of the Czar had to work through this monk.

"What was the price they had to pay? You can answer by your own imagination. Sometimes a woman who could please Rasputin had to be pleased, and different women have acted as intermediaries. Yes, there were indeed heavy prices paid. Perhaps you have heard of Madame G—/— and her two daughters. Her attempt to assassinate Rasputin was almost successful.

"These attempts at assassination are now so frequent that even Rasputin is afraid. Nobody knows how many plots there have been, secrets that have leaked, notably that of the plot that sought to use Heliodorus, the mad monk of Tzaritsyn. He was once Rasputin's friend, but turned against him and raised his voice in denunciation to the court. He received for his effort a cell in a monastic prison. Finally released, Heliodorus fled to Scandinavia. And then the enemies of Rasputin, thinking that the exiled monk would be ripe for any conspiracy, sent an agent to him with 60,000 rubles with which to hire assassins to bring about Rasputin's murder. They mistook their man. Heliodorus sent a letter to the Empress; but before it was delivered one of the conspirators betrayed the plot.

"Rasputin sympathizes with the so-called pro-German party of Russia. This party looks forward to a friendship after the war in a common hatred of Great Britain. Some say that the Emperor's taking himself and his heir to the army headquarters was to escape the insidious pressure of this party. Rasputin remains by the side of the Empress. He does not dare go to the Czar's headquarters, but the Empress may. At least, there have been certain astonishing coincidences that have followed her visits.

"For instance, M. Serge Sazonov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, heard that his enemies were attempting to undermine his power. He went to the Emperor, and then returned to Petrograd so confident that his liberalism was firmly seated in the saddle that he took a vacation from his post. The Empress visited Mogilov. All Russia—including M. Sazonov—was startled to learn a few days later that M. Sazonov had resigned and that M. Steurmer, of the reactionary party, had succeeded to the portfolio.

"Who can say what will be the limits to Rasputin's subtle scheming in the negotiations following peace?"

The Bravest Man I Met in Five Armies

By WILLIAM GUNN SHEPHERD

BLOW up Brooklyn Bridge and fill the East River with a network of the wreckage. Convert the buildings in lower New York into granite forts, and put big guns in position on their roofs to cover New York Bay. Now keep your eye on the bay.

There's a little steel boat of the enemy coming toward our shore. It is only 150 feet long and 30 feet wide. One of our shells, well aimed, will sink it. The men on the boat are under orders to pass under our forts, to go through the wreckage of the bridge, to dodge the mines we have sunk in the river, and to lend the assistance of their guns to the enemy infantry that is fighting our forces farther upstream.

Now, fire! We have missed it? Fire again! The boat comes on. We have knocked one hole in its deck, blown off part of its stack, and filled the water around it with the lily-shaped splashes of our shells. But it does not stop.

Now it is as near to our guns as it will ever get. We see a shell pass into its hull, but it does not sink. It moves into the wreckage of the bridge, and passes through it safely.

To-morrow another boat comes. This time we sink it. From day to day come other monitors, always singly. They glide into the bay, and, with all the odds against them, try the same old dash for the mouth of the East River. Some we sink; but there are always a few men who reach the shore safely.

Suppose we knew that the same man was always in charge of these boats? That to this one man the enemy had given the duty of taking these monitors under the noses of our forts into our own home waters? We Americans would probably make a hero of him by the time he had made his second attempt, and when he got his third boat through we would blow him up with regret.

The bravest man I met in five different armies on both sides in the Great War performed a duty like the one I have described. Put Belgrade in the place of New York, a stretch of the Danube in place of New York Bay, the mouth of the Save River in place of the mouth of the East River; cut down the geographical scale by one half, so that the rivers are narrower and the little monitors must pass closer to the guns; and you will have the setting in which Olaf Wolff, lieutenant in the Austrian navy, half Norwegian and half Austrian, thirty-eight years old, bachelor, manœuvered five monitors, lost two of them, saw one hundred and thirty men blown to bits, and was under fire for sixty consecutive days.

I talked to Lieutenant Wolff on the deck of one of his monitors, one autumn day when the golden sunshine had turned the muddy Danube into the "beautiful blue" river that we sing and dance about.

What Is a Brave Man?

HIS job was "getting him." His blue eyes were steady in their gaze, but his hands shook and the muscles of his face twitched as he spoke. He was a man who had been scared a thousand times. The brave man, I've learned in war, is not the man who does not feel fear, but the man who sticks to his job in spite of fear.

"They called me out of the navy and brought me inland to do this river work," he explained. "I know lots of fellows in the American navy. Do you know Steve Rowan, of Admiral Fletcher's staff? Come on down and have a drink.

"Can't have daylight in my cabin," he said, down in his quarters. "That porthole was hit by a shell, and the steel cover was jammed so we can't get it out."

Up on deck again, he showed me the wounds on the boat.

"I've taken two monitors under the Belgrade forts," he said simply, "but I had to turn back with this one. Come here and I'll show you why."

He led me to a small turret set on the floor of the deck. Its sides were steel three inches thick.

"I was in here when a shell hit it and mashed the steel around the door-jamb so that the door was jammed into place. I couldn't get out, so I had to give my orders through a peek-hole. They brought the boat back here"—a sixty-mile trip—"and sawed me out."

Down in the boiler-room, which was also the kitchen, the machine-shop, and the eating-room for the crew, he showed me where, on the same day, while he was locked in the turret, a shell had entered and exploded, killing twenty-three of his men.

"I've taken two monitors into the Save in five tries," said he. "Somebody is killed every trip. Every crew is made up of picked volunteers; but not many of them go a second time. This boat would have got through, I think, if I hadn't been sealed in the turret. But we're going to make another try to-morrow."

He lit a cigarette, with apparent nervous effort, and then went on:

"After a monitor gets into the Save, I leave it there and return to Peterwardein by land, to get another. It's bad business in the Save for the monitor-men. The Serbian guns are hidden in the mountains where we can't see them; but the Serbians can see us every minute. Sometimes the Serbians are shooting at us from both sides."

The Finish a Navy Man Wants

AND what was Olaf Wolff's finish? I am not sure. But eighteen months later, after I had shifted from the Austrian to the Ally side, I heard a British sailor-man telling stories at Salonica. He had been on the Save, and in the course of his yarns he said:

"One day one of those little Austrian monitors got stuck in the mud right under our noses. It carried a commander's flag.

"'We've got a mine planted under that thing, I think,' said our mine expert.

He looked at his map and found out he was right. He went into the button-house, picked out the right button, said, 'Here goes!' and pushed it. The little boat went up with an awful bang, and came down in a thousand pieces."

Before stopping to think I said:

"I'll bet you got Olaf Wolff that time."

"Who is Olaf Wolff?" he asked.

I told about Olaf Wolff, while a dozen British navy men listened.

"A darned good navy man, I call him," said the story-teller. "If he was on that boat he got just the kind of finish that a navy man wants—sudden and easy."

RIFLES AND PEARLS

By WILLIAM HAMILTON OSBORNE

Illustrations by Frederic Dorr Steele

LAST night, all night long, in his secluded study in his home, Green Gables, sat Richard Swords, perhaps the most powerful magnate in three States. He was busy—woefully busy.

Occasionally he switched off his study lights and stepped to the window, and drew aside the window hangings and lifted the window shades. The moon was shining bright without. And in the moonlight here and there he caught the glint of a gun-barrel—of a skulking figure hiding in the shrubbery. Fifteen Pinkertons were guarding Green Gables and its owner, Richard Swords.

In another apartment on another floor of Swords' spacious mansion, a pretty woman, clad in clinging negligée, poised a necklace in her hand—a necklace of perfectly matched pearls. She regarded it disdainfully for an instant, and then flung it full tilt against the beveled mirror of her dressing-table. So violent was her action that the silken cord of the necklace parted, and the pearls scattered themselves across the table and the floor. She left them there, and flung herself, face downward, on her couch.

IT is said that the two-pound-a-week clerk, the London article, possesses a virtue that is distinctly lacking in the make-up of his counterpart across the ocean. He plods steadily and happily all day—stopping awhile perchance for tea—walks home, removes his boots, lights his pipe and cocks his feet upon the mantelpiece. He is through. He is happy. He is content.

Dicky Swords, in his brawnier American way, was such a man. He had the fatal gift of satisfaction with his job and with the world in general. He liked the Tri-State Coal Company, and the Tri-State Coal Company liked him. He did what he was told, and did it easily—and they paid him fairly for it. He had a roll-top desk in front of him, and a typewriting machine beside him—and ever and anon he swung about in his swivel chair and took dictation from himself.

And he wasn't looking for anybody else's job. He was content.

At the present moment Dicky Swords' strong fingers were playing over the keys of his machine. He was dictating to himself—digging out a good strong follow-up epistle to a big customer or two.

A woman touched him on the arm. Dicky swung about and regarded her, if not with surprise, at least with genuine pleasure. He drew out a silver watch.

"Godfrey!" he exclaimed, "but this day has flown. Come in, Ingénue. Sit down."

Her name was Genevieve, but he called her Ingénue—getting it right, too, and speaking through his nose. And she liked it. But she took stock of Dicky Swords' appearance, and she frowned.

"Dicky," she wailed, "why can't you dress like a Christian? Do you know it's only ten degrees outside? I nearly froze to death. And can't you ever get along without a pipe?"

Dicky puffed in silence, his eyes twinkling with delight. He smiled broadly.

"If I only had a bull pup, I'd die happy," he returned. "A pipe, a bull pup—and thou. Eh, Ingénue?"' He drew forth a diminutive envelop. "Supper for two at Martini's," he went on, beaming, "and afterwards this,"—he tossed her the envelop,—"aisle seats, row E, in a show that'll put your eye out. And we won't be home till morning—which nobody can deny."

He rose to his feet and caught her by the arm. She drew a quick breath, half in her surprise at his movement and half in sheer admiration of the man. She was tall, this girl, and rangy, and pretty—a decidedly attractive animal. And she had a dark and keen and pleasing eye, and a well rounded figure. As for the man—he was a full head taller, and he stood beside her, spare, lean, and magnificent—not an ounce of extra flesh.

"Come on, Ingénue," he said; "we'll go."

She glanced in alarm at his bared forearms and his shirt.

"Just as you are?" she queried.

"Not out—not yet," he returned. "Come on, we'll beard the lion in his den—we'll go see prexy-boy. We'll tackle old Gawtry. I want him to see you looking at your best. He'd rather look at a pretty girl than eat. Which isn't saying much, for he can't eat." Dicky pounded himself on the ribs. "Gosh, I'm hungry."

They swung through three sets of intervening doors—and stepped into Gawtry's private office. Genevieve gasped at the luxury and richness of the suite as she entered. In silent awe she compared it with Dicky's little coop without.

Dicky hurried her along. In another instant they confronted a weazened little figure sitting at a flat-topped desk of dull mahogany.

"Chief," said Dicky airily, "this is Ingénue—you've heard me speak of her. Ingénue, this is Joel K. Gawtry—of national fame—the president of the Tri-State Coal Company. Chief, I call him. He's our meal ticket, little one."

The girl shuddered at this flippancy—it deserved instant discharge, it seemed to her, if not decapitation. But Gawtry, smiling for the first time that week, merely rose politely to his feet and trotted nimbly round the corners of the desk and seized the girl's hand in his own.

"Ingénue?" he repeated, shaking his head. "I'm sure I never heard of Ingénue—and I'm positive I've never seen her."

He turned to Swords.

"Who," he queried, "who is Ingénue, young sir?"

Dicky drew away so that he might admire her the better.

"She's a bride of three winters, chief," he replied, "and she's the pride of my heart. If I had a bull pup, now, I'd be—She's Mrs. Richard Swords—my wife."

"Your—wife," gasped Gawtry. "You don't say you're—you're married."

"Two years ago to-day," returned Swords. "Don't you remember—you added twenty dollars per to my salary—so that I might endow Ingénue with that much more worldly goods."

"And the set of flat silver," added Genevieve to Gawtry, speaking as one speaks of her most cherished possession. "You—you must remember that—from—from the bill you had to pay."

THE little chief ignored the reference to his elaborate wedding gift; he pressed his hand against his waistcoat.

"Ding it," he said, "I forgot to take my tablets. Excuse me just a minute, please."

He sidled around to his desk drawer, and slipped two white disks into his mouth.

"Yes, yes," he proceeded; "go on—go on."

He sized them up—first one and then the other, and then both together. No detail of their appearance, individual or collective, escaped his eye.

"Go on. What do we pay you now—Swords? What do we pay you now?"

"Twenty-six hundred a year," said Dicky proudly.

The chief wagged his head.

"Too much," he said, grinning. "You don't earn it, Swords, you don't earn it."

Dicky nodded soberly—winking at Ingénue.

"Not more than two or three times over. Too true."

He started off with Ingénue—she murmuring a farewell. But the chief caught them—each by an arm.

"Wait a bit," he said. "What are you going to do with her—where are you going now?"

"Anniversary—supper at Martini's—and aisle seats E—a show that'll put your eye out, chief. Take it from me."

"Now, look here," exclaimed the old chief, suddenly and energetically. "I've got to do things when I think of 'em and when I'm in the mood. Look here. I want Emily—I want Mrs. Gawtry to see you two—just as you are. I don't see how you do it—on fifty dollars a week; and she won't see how, either. I want to show her how handsome and pretty and healthy and kind and wise and happy—"

"Happy?" echoed Genevieve, with just a shade of interrogation in her tone.

"And—well dressed," added Gawtry.

Genevieve glanced at her husband.

"You don't call him well dressed, Mr. Gawtry!" she exclaimed.

"He doesn't have to be, my dear," returned the chief.

A shade of annoyance crossed Dicky's face.

"Why, I'll tell you, chief—" he began.

But Gawtry interrupted him.

"Now, Swords," he said, "I know what you think. You think I'm trying to patronize you. But you're away off. You don't know what's in my mind this minute. You don't know what I wouldn't give to—"

Dicky held up his hand.

"It isn't that, Mr. Gawtry," he said; "but—we've got it all fixed for a little tête-à-tête—you know, as Tommy, our doorkeep, says, she and me—her and I—"

"To-morrow night—to-morrow night," cried Gawtry. "I'll call up and get the tickets fixed for you. But—to-night, while I'm in the mood, come home to dinner with Emily and me. I want to show you to Emily. Come. You know her, Swords, and she likes you."

Swords, frowning, looked at his young wife. She nodded energetically.

"Of course we'll go—I wouldn't miss it for all the world," she cried.

Gawtry glanced at her gratefully; for in her tones was the ring of sincerity. Gawtry was pleased.

"But," said Genevieve, "what about Mrs. Gawtry? She won't be expecting us—and—and—it isn't her invitation—"

"Don't worry," said Gawtry, seizing his desk telephone. "She'll soon expect us—and be glad to. She won't make any fuss. Every night, worse luck, is alike to us."

While he telephoned, Swords and his young wife sauntered to the window.

"Hang him," he whispered. "The old stiff has spoiled our little game—he's gummed us for to-night."

"It's worth three Martinis and three shows," returned Genevieve, with decision. "It's one chance in a thousand. He—he's a multimillionaire."

GAWTRY hustled them into his big limousine, and bustled in after them. Half a block farther on, he seized the speaking-tube.

"What am I thinking of?" he cried, struggling with the door, which his footman immediately opened. "You can ride—I've got to walk. Doctor's orders. That's the life I live. Mapes,"—this to the chauffeur,—"drive them around by way of Fairview. That'll get us all home about the same time. So long."

He trotted off on foot through the blustering cold, with the footman at his heels.

Genevieve Swords sank back into a corner of the soft, warm, luxurious equipage, uttering deep sighs of pleasure. Swords, his eyes glowing, looked at her for one brief instant. Then he drew down the forward curtain, hiding the chauffeur, caught her in his arms and kissed her on the lips, the face, the neck.

"You're the best ever," he murmured.

---

"Do you remember two years ago tonight?"

She struggled to free herself. "Dick," she cried in alarm, "people will see!"

"Let them see," he returned. "Ah, girl," he sighed, "I've got all I want—I've got you. I can even do without a bull pup. Gee, I hope the old man's got some good cigars to-night."

Genevieve glanced into the little mirror and straightened her hat. She was silent for along while.

"What's the trouble, dear?" he asked.

She sighed. "I was just thinking—wondering—at the difference in men," she returned. "I was thinking of Mr. Gawtry. Think what a man he must be to have made millions. Think of the push, the energy, the tireless energy. Think—to own a car—like this."

"Ah," returned Swords contentedly. "He's welcome to it all—just so long as I've got Ingénue. That's me."

AT dinner that evening—a meal that required the presence of three liveried servants—Mrs. Gawtry cried out in alarm, staring at her husband.

"Joel," she exclaimed, "what are you doing?"

Joel masticated joyously.

"Doing?" he replied. "I'm eating meat. Hang it, this is my dinner party, and I'm going to eat. E-a-t, eat. And I don't care whether school keeps or not. Look at Dicky Swords feeding his face here. Ain't I a man, like him?"

"Have it your own way," returned his wife; "you know what will happen."

Shortly after dinner, it happened. It happened while Dick Swords was smoking his second cigar, and while the chief was dry-smoking his first. Gawtry uttered a sharp exclamation of pain, put his hand to his side, and then—white-faced and loose-lipped—keeled over into Dicky's arms. Dicky laid him on a lounge, and a servant called the magnate's wife, and then telephoned for a doctor.

Half an hour later Gawtry, weak, but comfortable and lackadaisical under the influence of a hypodermic, still lay upon the lounge. He was quite game.

"I won't go to bed—I won't," he insisted. "This is my dinner party, and I'm going to enjoy it. Hanged if I ain't."

He called for Genevieve.

"Now, my dear," he said, "you sit on that chair there, where I can look at you. You're worth looking at, my dear. And you don't have to look at me. You can look into the fire—or at that Corot up there on the wall. Well, well, a bride of two years! You picked a good man, my dear. Dick is four-square; that's what I call him—four-square. He's a lucky lad, Dick Swords."

Notwithstanding the chief's injunction, Genevieve did look at him. She had already looked at everything the room contained. But this energetic, ambitious man upon the lounge, this man with a brain too big for his body—he was the author and finisher of it all. He was worth more money than the King of England. What was the difference in men? Why couldn't she have picked— But, no, she shut that thought firmly from her mind. Dick Swords was hers for keeps.

"I don't know," she returned longingly, in answer to Gawtry's eulogy. "I sometimes think that Dick lacks what you call—ambition. He doesn't—push. He doesn't—get along. He's not—like you."

"You're right, he's not," said Gawtry. "He can eat meat like a house afire. Where is he—where's Dick Swords? I suppose he's in the music-room, flirting with Emily. Oh, she likes him; Emily likes Dick Swords. They're thick as two peas together when she comes into the office. First thing she does is to make for Dick Swords' cubby-hole. Sometimes, when she's good, he lets her run his typewriting machine. I suppose they're in there, somewhere, flirting now."

Had Gawtry but known it, he was somewhere near the truth. His wife was flirting—Dick Swords was not. Gawtry was an old man at fifty-five—his wife was young at forty. Gawtry had married late in life—comparatively speaking—and she had married early. Gawtry's wife had all the wifely virtues. But beneath it all her girlish heart still beat.

At the sound of her husband's voice, she stopped her piano-playing, and rose, and placed a hand tremulously upon the arm of her companion.

"You're a fine chap, Richard Swords," she said genuinely; "I like you."

Side by side, they strolled into the other room. Dick Swords left her side, advanced stealthily upon Genevieve, and caught her in his arms before she was aware of it. She screamed feebly and struggled mightily. But Dick held her in his brawny grasp and kissed her.

Gawtry struggled to his feet in alarm.

"Here, you," he cried to Swords. "What do you mean by such conduct, you young—meat-eater?"

"What can you expect, chief?" explained young Swords. "We were married two years ago to-night. We—we haven't got over it, that's all."

Genevieve's hostess placed an arm about her shoulders.

"My dear," she whispered, "it's the loveliest thing that ever happened. If only the world were all like that!"

Genevieve shook her gown and hair into shape. She did not answer. But she glanced about her—and her eyes filled with longing.

"If only the world were all like this," she whispered to herself.

WHEN they reached their little two and a half story house late that night, Dick lifted his wife out of the car and carried her across the intervening space of sidewalk. He deposited her on her feet upon the door-mat. He unlocked the door. They stepped into the dimly lighted hallway. Genevieve shivered. The house, with its banked furnace fire, was like a refrigerator compared with the warm interior of that big limousine. However, she had no time to comment upon the cold. Once more Dick swept her off her feet, switched out the hall light, and stumbled, with her in his arms, up the stairway, depositing her, short of breath and panting, in their room.

"Alone at last!" he cried joyously. "Gee, what a frost, that dinner. How do those people get along—how do they live?"

Hours later he was wakened by the striking of a clock—or by something else. He waited—the clock struck four. Then he felt a movement at his side. Genevieve, her dressing gown clutched tightly about her, was sitting up in bed, her arms clasped about her knees.

"What's up?" he murmured sleepily. He put his arm about her and drew himself to a sitting posture.

She nestled against him.

"Dicky," she cried, "it's kept me awake the whole night long—I'm so excited, I can't sleep. For we can do it. I know we can. I know you've got it in you. You're twice the man—ten times the man he is—and I know you've got it in you—"

"What?" queried Swords.

She drew her knees still closer to her breast, and drew a long breath.

"I know you've got it in you—to get rich. I know!" she answered with conviction.

"Gee!" he whistled. "That'd be great. Then I could have a bull pup too."

"Don't joke," she pleaded. "I know what I'm talking about. You're blind, Dick, blind. Don't you see the opportunity? Why, Gawtry likes you. He watched you all the evening. He'll do anything for you."

"Don't you believe it," returned her young husband. "Gawtry likes me because I'm one of the few in the Tri-State who are not looking for anything. He likes me because I've no ax to grind."

"They all like you," said his wife.

"Same reason," said Swords; "I'm not waiting for any of 'em to die. But they don't like Gawtry, though. So success don't come by liking. It's some other quality that I haven't got that makes the millions."

"Blind—blind," repeated Genevieve. "Think what chances you're missing. Why, with your personality, you can make yourself absolutely necessary to the Tri-State—so that they can't get along without you. You can be Gawtry's right-hand man. With your personality, you can be anything you want."

THAT'S the way it began—mental suggestion. And by the constant application of mental suggestion it was continued. Constant dropping will wear away a stone. Day in and day out, Genevieve Swords preached her gospel—ambition, energy. Swords listened—but he no longer called her Ingénue. He loved her better than his life; but he was worried. He had fallen short of her expectations. It was his to make good, to satisfy her longing. He tried—tried hard.

In the midst of it his immediate superior died. By an automatic process Swords stepped into the dead man's shoes—and, as if by magic, his salary jumped to thirty-seven hundred dollars. This strange thing stirred him to his very depths. It filled him with pleasurable excitement.

"Now I can get me a two-hundred-dollar bull pup," he said to Genevieve. "And you can have anything you like."

He found his new job easier than his old one. Besides, it lifted him into the companionship of men who were really doing things in Tri-State Coal. His opinion was sought, and listened to. He discovered that he possessed good judgment—found that he was regarded as "new blood."

And yet, he was content. Genevieve, like the newspaper editors, viewed this condition "with alarm." She filled his mind with vague warnings, forebodings—and, singularly enough, one of them suddenly was justified.

Chambers, the man below him, coveted his place—Swords' new position—and almost got it too. It was Genevieve who found it out,—she knew the wives of most of the office force,—and she warned Dick just in the nick of time. Swords went to Gawtry, and Genevieve to Gawtry's wife. Genevieve saved the day, and Dick held his job by the skin of his teeth.

His fighting blood was up.

"Hang these fellows!" he exclaimed to his wife. "They think nothing but of getting a man's hide. I'll show 'em. Two can play at that game. Watch out."

Now, although these words emanated from the lips of Richard Swords, they were, in fact, the thoughts of Genevieve. She had dinned this lesson into Dick's head so long and so loudly that he had learned it by rote; he had adopted her slogan as his own.

"I'll show 'em," he repeated.

He knew what this threat entailed. It meant work—all day and most of the night.

"I'll make myself so necessary to Tri-State," he growled, "that they can't get along without Dick Swords. Watch out."

He started in in earnest. He no longer smoked a pipe. He sold his bull pup—at a profit, too. Dick was coming on. And he brought home work nights, in his calfskin portfolio; he even kept long-distance operators busy from his home until late at night. Genevieve made social plans. He brushed them all aside. She bought theater tickets.

"Not to-night," he kept repeating. "No time now. Next week—next month, maybe. Take somebody else. Take Gawtry and his wife. They'll go. They like you—they like your pepper and your spice. And you can talk me up to them. Give me a year at Gawtry, and Gawtry'll need me more than anything he needs in life. Watch out."

She didn't go. At midnight she brought up a tray to him.

"You didn't eat anything at dinner," she reminded him; "you'll try just a bit of this?"

He looked at the tempting food and sniffed the air. Then he turned away.

"Honest," he said, "I can't eat it. I don't feel like it—and I've got to dig through this work to-night and get to bed. I want to be fresh to-morrow. I've got a 'young blood' scheme to put up to Gawtry—and he'll fall for it, or I'm very much mistaken. Watch out and see him fall."

Gawtry fell for it. Dick Swords' scheme was so new and startling, and yet so sound, that Gawtry adopted it the instant that he heard it. And he fell for something else. Within a week Dick Swords became Gawtry's right-hand man.

Genevieve was exultant. Dick's name crept into the newspapers. He was sought after by the bank men, by the business men. The man who had the ear of Gawtry was a man to be reckoned with.

"Now," said Genevieve, "we can—entertain."

"You bet," said Swords; "we not only can—we'll have to."

They moved into an imposing house in Gawtry's section of the city, and began to entertain.

"Of course," said Swords, "we've got to make this count. We've got to invite the people that'll do us good. You'll have to consult with me about that."

"Oh, of course," said Genevieve faintly.

However, Dick's first suggestion was superb. They would give a dinner party to the Gawtrys. Gawtry had suggested it himself. Genevieve thought this a little strange, but Dick explained.

"There are a bunch of coal men—two or three—that Gawtry wants to round up. He can't come out in the open. I know 'em all. We'll have 'em to the dinner—with their wives. They'll come."

"I don't know them," faltered Genevieve.

"It'll be fixed," said Dick. "You'll know 'em shortly. And we'll have 'em all. Gawtry's no fool; he knows."

They had the dinner. There was a quart of buttermilk for Gawtry—and champagne for the rest. Swords didn't drink—they thought he did. He didn't smoke—he merely chewed on the end of a cigar. After the women had withdrawn, the men sat for five solid hours in the smoking-room, in conference. At the end of that time Swords had "induced" Gawtry to enter into a scheme of mutual advantage.

AT two o'clock in the morning Dick Swords sank into a chair in his wife's bedroom.

"Godfrey!" he exclaimed. "We put one over on 'em. We? I did it. When the Tri-State Coal thinks it can get along without Dick Swords, it's got another think."

He started suddenly.

"Godfrey!" he repeated. "Why didn't you remind me? Do you know what last night was? Our wedding anniversary! And I 'most forgot."

He drew out a check-book and wrote out a five-thousand-dollar check. He handed it to Genevieve, and bent over and kissed her on the lips.

"Buy anything—a bull pup if you like," he said affectionately. He yawned noisily. "I'm tired," he said. "I could sleep a week. Good night."

He started off.

"Dick," she called softly after him.

He came back and placed a hand on each of her shoulders. He kissed her again and looked into her eyes.

"Ingénue," he said gently, "you were right about me. And what I am I owe to you. And I'm going to pay you back. I'm going to make you the richest woman in three States. See if I don't."

Two months later Gawtry died of acute gastritis. He had committed an unpardonable crime—he had taken solid food into his system once too often.

Swords put on black, and Tri-State Coal went into mourning. And Dick Swords talked to his wife behind closed doors.

"Genevieve," he said, "I want to tell you something. I've known it for a long, long while. Gawtry's widow likes me—she's always liked me. She's often told me so."

Genevieve rose to her feet; but Swords waved her back.

"Nothing to be alarmed at, my dear," he said. "Gawtry's widow has no charms for me. And Gawtry's widow is immaculate."

"She's a handsome woman," cried Genevieve.

"Virtuous to the limit," repeated Swords. "But she likes me—she likes to have me with her. And," he added, lowering his voice, "I've got to work her

---

liking for me to the limit. I need it in my business. I need it to make you the richest woman in three States. And I've got to work it out with her—alone. You watch."

Genevieve watched. Swords understood his business. And at arm's length—never once presuming upon her friendship—he soothed and comforted Gawtry's widow. She repulsed her own attorneys. She listened only to the voice of Richard Swords. And with marvelous result.

For at the next regular meeting of the board a strange thing happened. Richard Swords was elected president of Tri-State Coal by the votes of a majority of the directors—and the majority of the board of directors was controlled by Gawtry's widow's majority of Tri-State stock.

"Ingénue," Swords said to his wife that evening, "I've just come from making platonic and funereal love to the Widow Gawtry. You were right. You told me years ago that she was my trump card—she's proved that to-day. Now watch."

Genevieve watched. Within six months

the big combine was formed—the Interstate & Tri-State. And, by way of compliment to the man whose brain had conceived the mighty project, Richard Swords was made president of this gigantic coalition.

TWO months later Genevieve Swords, chairman of the Contemporary Club's committee for investigating the condition of the city's poor, stepped from her machine on a side street in the very center of the city's deepest poverty. As she left her car, a small boy passed her—a very ragged little boy—lugging a dilapidated wooden bucket. She had alighted in front of a candy store. The boy stopped at this store, and a woman came out. The boy produced some coins and lifted the lid of a small coal bin. The woman looked at the coins and looked at the pail.

"G'wan," she said. "Don't you read the papers? You can't get no pail o' coal for them few cents. Don't you know that coal's gone up a dollar a ton? G'wan!"

Genevieve hadn't known it—hadn't read it. But she went home and found the mention of it in the morning paper. And the evening papers devoted front space to it, and editorially denounced the rise in price in no uncertain terms. Sprinkled throughout the news story and the editorial comment was the name of Richard Swords.

That evening at dinner she asked some questions—but Swords cut his answers short. It was something that she couldn't understand, he said—law of supply and demand. The rise in price was needed and was just.

The papers disagreed with him. Mrs. Swords' Contemporary Club disagreed. Finally the people disagreed.

A cold snap intervened—and the whole East groaned. It shivered with the cold, and whined and whimpered under the arbitrary rise in price. From whimpering it fell to snarling; its wail of sufering rose to a shrill shriek of anger.

In some towns there were even riots—riots quickly quelled by the police. In her home city the Contemporary Club—the woman's organization, fifteen hundred strong—was the self-appointed guardian of the poor. It was an efficient body, and Mrs. Swords had helped to make it so. The Contemporary Club said frankly that it wanted to know. Delicately it put the matter up to Mrs. Swords—would she coöperate? They had the right to know about the advance in the price of coal.

Mrs. Swords was game.

"I want to know, myself," she smiled. "I'm sure it's all right. I'm sure Mr. Swords has done nothing without reason. But—I'm with you. I want to know."

IT was late upon a wintry afternoon that five women—Mrs. Swords' committee—swept into the private office of Richard Swords himself. They had no difficulty getting there, for Genevieve herself had headed the flying wedge—open sesame enough.

SWORDS was at his desk—in that luxurious suite where Genevieve had met Gawtry. He sprang to his feet.

"Genevieve," he exclaimed, "you—you ought not to come here. There's a reason. Did no one warn you?"

"No one knew we were coming," said Genevieve. "Warn us—of what?"

Swords held up his hand. A doorkeeper entered the room.

"They're coming up the street," said the doorkeeper. "What shall we do?"

Swords nodded—paled slightly.

"We'll carry out the program," he returned. "I'll do as I promised. I'll see them here."

He pointed to one of his private suite of rooms.

"Ladies," he said, "it's too late for you to leave the place. But if you'll step in that room until I am disengaged, I'll guarantee your safety—if you'll shut the door behind you."

Genevieve's companions did as they were bid. Genevieve lingered.

"What does it mean, Dick?" she asked.

"It means," he answered calmly, "that this town has gone crazy mad. A delegation of citizens has asked to meet me face to face to discuss this rise in prices—and I'm going to call their bluff. You watch and see. Or, no," he added hastily. "Don't watch. Keep that door shut until I send for you."

Genevieve followed her companions into the other room. As she did so, she noticed that a chair standing by her husband's desk—an empty chair—moved mysteriously, without apparent cause. She wondered.

In the ensuing ten minutes Genevieve grew curious. It was evident that her husband had been visited by a committee of some fifteen men—they sounded more like fifty. Disobeying his injunctions, she opened the heavy mahogany door to the space of an inch, and stealthily looked on.

She heard Richard's strident tones—measured and even belligerent—bellowing out defiance. She heard the citizens' murmur of protest. She heard a snarl from the rear rank of the little nucleus. And then it happened.

A man who leaned against Swords' big mahogany desk suddenly whipped out a bandana handkerchief and wiped his brow. It was a signal. In another instant the citizens' committee, to a man, drew forth guns—and, with a wild yell, surged across the big mahogany desk. One man even had his hand upon the lapel of Swords' coat, and was immediately knocked down for his presumption. It was Dick who knocked him down. And then, from behind set screens, from behind bookcases, superfluous desks, huge chairs, there leaped forth—hitherto unseen—a squad of special officers.

Without hesitation and without mercy, they clubbed the citizens' committee into submission, relieved them of their weapons, and thrust them violently out of the room like so many sheep.

When it was all over, Richard Swords strode to the door behind which, quivering with fear, stood Genevieve and her companions. He opened it wide.

"Ladies," he said, "this place is unsafe, and you are unsafe until you reach your homes. We have no time or opportunity to talk. These were wild animals—rabid and unreasoning—not men. I'll send you home under safe escort—but it's best to go at once."

After her club companions had departed in their machines—each machine with two special officers annexed—Genevieve rode home with Swords. Their car was heavily guarded, and Swords was hooted as he rode.

"It's nothing," he explained to Genevieve. "It'll all blow over in a day or two. They'll listen to reason. Those desperadoes came to get me—they were out for wool, but they went back shorn. I knew it was a game. But I was ready for them." He chuckled. "I have to laugh," he said, "when I think of the first time you stood in that room—with Gawtry looking us over. I was getting fifty dollars a week, and now I'm worth—"

The car swung into their grounds at Green Gables.

Swords peered out.

"That's good," he said; "the Pinkertons are here. Nothing can happen to us now."

GENEVIEVE retired early. She was wholly unnerved. She slept. She woke, refreshed. She was still young, and strong and healthy, still a live young woman. Waking, for the instant she forgot where she was.

Years before, on waking in the dark, it had been her wont to stretch out her hand, to make sure that Dick was there at her side. Unconsciously she did it now.

And then she remembered that she was at Green Gables—not in a two and a half story house on a side street downtown. And then she remembered something else. She switched on her light, drew on a dressing gown, and crept to Richard's bedroom. She knocked softly.

"Dick, let me in," she cried. "Dick—let me in."

There was no answer. She turned the knob and groped her way to his bed. The bed was still made up—it had been unoccupied. Through another door she stepped out into the hall. There was a light in the study. With her face warm and flushed from sleeping, she felt her way softly along the hall, and stole into the study.

Dick was there. He was busy—woefully busy. Figuring—always figuring. He sensed a presence in the room, and started up in alarm. Then he smiled and held out his hands to her.

"Startled me," he said. "Thought you were some more anarchists after my hide."

"Dick—Dick," she cried, her voice full of wild longing, "Dick—do you know what day it is? Our wedding anniversary—"

The magnate winked and held up his hand in banter.

"Aha!" he cried. "You thought you'd caught me napping, didn't you? Not a bit of it. 'Dyou think I'd forget? Look here."

From his inside pocket he drew forth a long leather case and handed it to her.

She opened it, listlessly.

It contained a matched pearl necklace worth the ransom of a king.

She kissed him, thanked him—and then caught him around the neck, beseeching him to leave his work—to forget everything but that day, that seemed now so long ago—

His eyes glowed—glittered. He shook his head.

"I've got three hours' work ahead of me," he said. "I've got to work this thing out to-night." He glanced at her admiringly. "There's not another neck, nor another necklace, like yours—not within three States," he said.

Then he sank back at his desk and plunged into his work again.

And it was then that Mrs. Richard Swords stole back into her boudoir, and violently flung against the plate-glass mirror of her dressing-table the finest matched pearl necklace in three States.

The Triflers

By FREDERICK ORIN BARTLETT

Illustration by Frederick Orin Bartlett

MARJORY did not have time to count a full hundred heart-beats before she heard a light rap at the door. For the fraction of a second she swayed in the fear that, taking the stairs three at a time, Monte might have ventured to her very room. But it would be with no such gentle tap that he would announce himself.

"Yes?" she called.

"A card for madame," came the voice of the garçon.

Her knees still weak, she crossed the room and took the card.

"Madame is in?" queried the boy.

"You will ask Monsieur Covington to wait, and I will be down in a few moments," she replied to the boy.

She called to Marie.

"I have a caller," she announced nervously. "You must make me look as young as possible."

Even if she had grown old inside, there was no reason why she should reveal her secret.

"I am glad," nodded Marie. "Madame should put on a white gown and wear a ribbon in her hair."

"A ribbon!" exclaimed madame. "That would look absurd."

"You shall see."

She was too weak to protest. She was glad enough to sit down and give herself up utterly to Marie.

"Only we must not keep him waiting too long," she said. "Monsieur Covington does not like to be kept waiting."

"It is he?" exclaimed Marie.

"It—it is quite a surprise." Madame blushed.

She folded her hands in her lap and dosed her eyes while Marie did her hair and adjusted the ribbon. Then Marie slipped a white gown over her head.

"There," concluded the maid, with satisfaction. "Madame looks as young as the day she was married."

BUT the color that made her look young vanished the moment Marjory started down the stairs alone to meet Monte. Several times she paused to catch her breath; several times she was upon the point of turning back. Then she saw him coming up to meet her. She felt her hand in his.

"Jove!" he was saying, "but it's good to see you again."

"But I don't understand why you are here," she managed to gasp.

"To see you," he answered promptly.

"If that is all, then you should not have come," she declared.

She led the way into the lower reception-room. She did not care to go again into the sun parlor. They had the room to themselves. She sat down and motioned him to a chair at a little distance. He paid no attention to her implied request. With his feet planted firmly, his arms folded, he stood before her while she tried to find some way of avoiding his gaze.

"Peter Noyes has gone," he began.

"Yes," she nodded. "You heard about his eyes?"

"He wrote me."

She looked up swiftly.

"Peter wrote you?" she trembled.

"He told me he had recovered his sight. He told me he was going."

What else had he told? Dizzily she waited.

"He said he was going home—out of your life."

He paused a moment; as if, expecting her to make some reply. There was nothing she could say.

"It wasn't what I expected," he went on.

What else had Peter told him?

"Wasn't there any other way?" he asked.

"I didn't send him home. He—he chose to go," she said.

"Because it wasn't any use for him to remain?"

"I told him the truth," she nodded.

"And he took it like a man!" exclaimed Monte enthusiastically. "I'd like to show you his letter, only I don't know as it would be quite fair to him."

"I don't want to see it," she cut in. "I—I know I shouldn't."

What else besides his going had Peter told Monte?

"It was his letter that brought me back," he said.

She held her breath. She had warned Peter that if he as much as hinted at anything she had confessed to him, she would lie to Monte. So she should—but God forbid that this added humiliation be brought upon her.

"You see, when I went I expected that he would be left to care for you. With him and his sister here, I knew you wouldn't be alone. I thought they'd stay, or if they went—you'd go with them."

"But why shouldn't I be alone?" she gathered strength to ask.

"Because," he answered quickly, "it isn't good for you. It isn't good for any one. Besides, it isn't right. When we were married I made certain promises, and those hold good until we're unmarried."

"Monte!" she cried.

"As long as Peter was around, that was one thing; now that he's gone—"

"It throws me back on your hands," she interrupted, in an attempt to assert herself. "Please to sit down. You're making your old mistake of trying to be serious. There's not the slightest reason in the world why you should have bothered about me like this."

She ventured to look at him again. His brows were drawn together in a puzzled frown. Dear Monte—it was cruel of her to confuse him like this, when he was trying to see straight.

"It—it isn't any bother," he stammered.

"I should think it was a good deal," she answered, feeling for a moment that she had the upper hand. "Where did you come from to here?"

"Paris."

"You didn't go on to England at all?"

"No."

"Then you didn't get back to your schedule. If you had done that you wouldn't have had any time left to—to think about other things."

"I didn't get beyond the Normandie," he answered. "My schedule stopped short right there."

HE was still standing before her. Apparently he intended to remain. So she rose and crossed to another chair. He followed.

"You should have gone on," she insisted.

"I had my old room—next to yours," he said.

"That was rather sentimental of you, Monte, wasn't it?" she asked lightly.

"I went there as a man goes home," he answered softly.

Her lips became suddenly dumb.

"Then I had a long letter from Peter; the first one."

"He has written you before?"

"He wrote me that he loved you and was going to marry you. That was before he had learned the truth."

"About you?"

"And about you. When he wrote again he said you had told him everything."

So she had; more, far more than she should. What of that had he told Monte?

"How did it happen?" he asked.

"I—I don't know," she faltered. "He guessed a little, and then I had to tell him the rest."

Monte's mouth hardened.

"That shouldn't have been left for you to do. I should have told him myself."

"Now that it's all over—can't we forget it, Monte, with all the rest?"

He bent a little toward her.

"Have you forgotten all the rest?"

"At least, I'm trying," she gasped.

"I wonder if you have found it as hard as I even to try?"

Steady—she must hold herself steady. His words were afire. With her eyes on the ground, she felt his eyes searching her face.

"Whether it is hard or not makes no difference," she answered.

"It's just that which makes all the difference in the world," he contradicted. "I wanted to be honest with myself and with you. So I went away, willing to forget if that were the honest way. But, from the moment I took the train here at Nice, I've done nothing but remember. I've remembered every single minute of the time since I met you in Paris. The present has been made up of nothing but the past. Passing hours were nothing but echoes of past hours.

"I've remembered everything—even things away back that I thought I had forgotten. I dug up even those glimpses I had had of you at Chic's house when you were only a school-girl. And I didn't do it on purpose, Marjory. I'd been glad not to do it, because at the time it hurt to remember them. I thought I'd given you over to Peter. I thought he was going to take you away from me. So I'd been glad enough to forget, if it had been possible."

SHE sprang to her feet.

"What are you saying, Monte?" she trembled.

With his head erect and his eyes shining, he was telling her what her heart hungered to hear. That was what he was doing. Only she must not listen.

"I'm telling you that to forget was not possible," he repeated hotly. "I'm telling you that I shall never try again. I've come back to get you and keep you this time."

He held out his arms to her. She shrank back.

"You're making it so hard," she quavered.

"Come to me," he said gently. "That's the easy way. I love you, Marjory. Don't you understand? I love you with all my heart and soul, and I want you to begin life with me now in earnest. Come, little woman."

He reached her hands and tried to draw her toward him. She resisted with all her strength.

"You mustn't," she gasped. "You mustn't!"

"It's you who're making it hard now, wife o' mine," he whispered.

Yes, she was making it hard. But she must make it still harder. He had come back to her because she was alone; moved temporarily by a feeling of sentimental responsibility. That was all. He was sincere enough for the moment, but she must not confuse this with any deeper passion. He had made a mistake in returning to the Normandie. Doubtless he had felt lonesome there. It was only natural that he should exaggerate that, for the time being, into something more.

Then Peter's two letters had come. If Peter had not told him anything he shouldn't, he had probably told him a great deal more than he should. Monte, big-hearted and good, had, as a consequence of all these things, imagined himself in love. This delusion might last a week or two; and then, when he came to himself again, the rude awakening would follow. He would see her then merely as a trifler. Worse than that, he might see himself as merely a trifler.

"It's you who are making it hard now," he repeated.

She had succeeded in freeing herself, leaving him before her as amazed and hurt as a spurned child.

"You're forcing me to run away from you—to run away as I did from the others," she said.

He staggered before the blow.

"Not that!" he cried hoarsely.

"I'm going home," she ran on. "I'm going back to my little farm, where I started."

"You're running away—from me?"

"I must go, right off."

She looked around as if for Marie. It was as if she were about to start that second.

"Where is Marie?" she asked dully.

She made for the door.

"Marjory," he called after her. "Don't do that! There is no need of that."

"Marie!" she called as she reached the door. "Marie!"

Frantically she ran up the stairs.

WAR!

A summer sky, warm and fragrant, suddenly became dour and overcast. Within a day thunder rolled and lightning flashed. In a few hours men began to gather in uniform, bearing rifles. They posted themselves about the gates of stations. They increased in numbers until they were everywhere. Trumpets sounded, drums rolled. The very air was tense.

War!

People massed in groups. The individual no longer counted. Store-keepers, bankers, dandies, chauffeurs, postmen, gardeners, hotel proprietors became merely Frenchmen. They dropped the clothes that distinguished their caste, and became merely men in uniform.

Foreign visitors no longer counted as individuals. They ran about in panic-stricken groups like vagrant dogs. Those in uniform looked on indifferently, or gave sharp orders turning them back from this road or that, this gate or that. A chauffeur in uniform might turn back his millionaire foreign master.

Credit money no longer counted. Banks refused to give out gold, and the shopkeepers and hotel proprietors refused to accept anything but gold. No one knew what might happen, and refused to risk. A man might brandish a letter of credit for ten thousand francs and be refused a glass of wine. A man with a thousand francs in gold was in a better position than a millionaire with only paper.

Monte discovered this when he hurried to his bankers. With half a million dollars and more to his credit at home, he was not allowed a single louis d'or. Somewhat bewildered, he stood on the steps and counted the gold he happened to have in his pockets. It amounted to some fifty dollars. To all intents and purposes, that embraced his entire capital. His fortune temporarily had been swept away.

If that was true of his own, it must be equally true of Marjory's. She was no wealthier now than the sum total of the gold she happened to have in her possession. The thought came to him at first as a shock. What was she going to do? She was upon the point of leaving, and her plans must have been suddenly checked. She was, in effect, a prisoner here.

Then some emotion—some feeling indistinctly connected with the grandfather who had crossed the plains in '49—swept over him. It was a primitive exultation. It made him conscious of the muscles in his back and legs. It made him throw back his head and square his shoulders. A moment before, with railroads and steamships at her command, with a hundred men standing ready to do her bidding in response to the magic of her check-book, she had been as much mistress of her little world as any ancient queen. Now, overnight, this had been changed.

THE blood rushed to Monte's head. He must get to her at once. She would need him now—if only for a little while. He must carry her home. She could not go without him.

He started down the steps of the bank, two at a time, and almost ran against her.

---

She was on her way to the bank as he had been, in search of gold. Her eyes greeted him with the welcome her lips would not.

"You see!" be exclaimed, with a quick laugh. "When you need me I come."

She was dressed in the very traveling costume she had worn when they left Paris together. She was wearing, too, the same hat. It might have been yesterday.

"They refused my check at d'Angleterre," she explained nervously. "They say they must have gold."

"Have you any?" he asked.

"One louis d'or."

"And I have ten," he informed her. She did not understand why he should be so exultant over this fact.

"I have come here to get enough to pay my bill and buy my ticket. I am leaving this morning."

"They won't give you any," he explained. "Besides, they won't carry you on the train unless you put on a uniform."

"Monte!"

"It's a fact."

"Then—what am I to do?"

She looked quite helpless—deliciously helpless.

He laughed joyously.

"You are bankrupt," he said. "So am I. We have only fifty-five dollars between us. But that is something. Also there is the machine. That will take us over the Italian frontier and to Genoa. I ought to be able to sell it there for something. Come on."

"Where?" she asked.

"We must get the car as soon as possible. I have a notion that with every passing hour it is going to be more difficult to get out."

"But I'm not going with you, Monte. It's—it's impossible!"

"It's the only way, little woman."

He gave her no time to argue about it, but took her arm and hurried her to the garage. It was necessary to walk. Taxis were as if they had never been. They passed groups of soldiers who turned to look at Marjory. She was very glad she was not alone.

AT the door of the garage stood a soldier in uniform. As Monte attempted to pass, he was brought to a halt.

"It is not permitted to pass," explained the guard.

"But I want to get my car."

"I'm afraid monsieur has no car."

"Eh?"

"They have all been taken for la patrie."

"You mean my machine has been confiscated?"

"Borrowed, perhaps. After the victory—"

The guard shrugged his shoulders. Monte shrugged his own shoulders. Then he laughed.

"After all," he said, "that is little enough to do for France. Inform the authorities they are welcome."

He saluted the guard, who returned the salute. Again he took Marjory's arm, and turned toward the hotel.

"There is nothing to do but to walk," he declared.

"Where?"

She could not understand his mood. It was as if this were a holiday instead of a very serious plight.

"Over the border. It is only some twenty-five miles. We can do it easily in two days; but even if it takes three—"

Even if it took a hundred, what did it matter, with her by his side? And by his side she must remain until her credit was restored. With only one louis d'or in her pocket, she was merely a woman, with all the limitations of her sex. She could not take to the open road alone. She did not have the physical strength that dictated the law for vagabonds.

Dumbly she followed his pace until they reached the hotel. The place was in confusion and the proprietor at his wits' end. In the midst of it, Monte was the only one apparently unmoved.

"Pack one small hand-bag," he ordered. "You must leave your trunks here."

"Yes, Monte," she submitted.

"I'll run back to the Roses, and meet you here in a half hour. Will you be ready?"

"Yes. Marie will come with us, of course."

He shook his head.

"She must wait here until she can get to Paris. Find out if she has any cash."

"I want her to come with me," she pleaded.

"I doubt if she will want to come. Anyway, our fifty-five dollars won't stretch to her. We—we can't afford a maid."

She flushed at his use of "we." Nevertheless, what he said was true enough. That sum was a mere pittance. Fate had her in a tight grip.

"Be sure to bring your passport," he reminded her. "It is ten-thirty. I'll be here at eleven."

Hurrying back to his room, he took what he could crowd into his pockets: his safety razor and tooth-brush, a few handkerchiefs and a change of socks. One did not need much on the open road. He carried his sweater—the old crimson sweater with the black H—more for her than for himself. The rest of his things he threw into his trunk and left in the care of the hotel.

She was waiting for him when he returned to d'Angleterre.

"You were right about Marie," she acknowledged. "She has two brothers in the army. She has money enough for her fare to Paris, and is going as soon as possible."

"In the meanwhile she is safe enough here. So, en avant!"

He took her bag, and they stepped out into the sunshine.

IT was the Cornice road he followed—the broad white road that skirts the sea at the foot of the Alpes Maritimes. As far as Monte Carlo, he had walked it alone many the time. But he had never walked it with her, so it was a new road. It was a new world too, and as far as he was concerned there was no war. The blue sky overhead gave no hint of war; neither did the Mediterranean; neither did the trees full of singing birds; neither did the grasses and flowers: and these things, with the woman at his side, comprised, for the moment, his whole world. It was the world as originally created for man and woman. All that he was leaving behind—banks and hotels and taxis and servants and railroads—had nothing to do with the primal idea of creation. They were all extraneous. The heavens, the earth, the waters beneath the earth, man and woman created He them. That was all. That was enough.

Once or twice, alone in his camp in the Adirondacks, Monte had sensed this fact. With a bit of food to eat, a bit of tobacco to smoke in his old brier, a bit of ground to lie down upon at night, he had marveled that men found so many other things necessary to their comfort. But, after a week or two of that, he had always grown restless, and hurried back to New York and his club and his man servants. In turn he grew restless there, and hurried on to the still finer luxuries of the German liners and the Continent.

That was because he was lonesome—because she had not been with him. It was because—how clearly he saw it now!—he had never been complete by himself alone. He had been satisfying only half of himself. The other half he had tried to quiet with man-made things, with the artificial products of civilization.

He had thought to allay that deep, undefined hunger in him with travel and sports and the attentions of hirelings. It had been easy at first; but, keen as nimble wits had been to keep pace with his desires with an ever-increasing variety of luxuries, he had exhausted them all within a decade and been left unsatisfied.

To-day it was as if with each intake of breath the sweet air reached for the first time the most remote corners of his lungs.

---

He had never before had air enough. The sunshine reached to the marrow of his bones. Muscles that had lagged became vibrant. He could hardly keep his feet upon the ground. He would have liked to run; to keep on running mile after mile. He wondered when he would tire. He had a feeling that he could never tire. His back and arm muscles ached for action. He would have enjoyed a rough-and-tumble fight with some impudent fellow vagabond of the road.

MARJORY walked by his side in silence. That was all he asked—simply that she should be there at his left, dependent upon him. Here was the nub of the matter. Always before she had been able to leave him if she wished. She had married him upon that condition. There had never been a moment, until now, when he had not been conscious of the fact that he was in no way necessary to her. The protection against Teddy and the others was merely a convenience. He had been able to save her from annoyance, that was all. At any time on that ride from Paris she could have left him and gone on her way quite safely. At Nice, that was just what she had done. It was to save her from the annoyance of himself that he had finally gone away.

Had he been really needed that would have been impossible. But he knew she could get along without him as she did. Then when Peter had gone it was more because he needed her than because she needed him that he had returned. Down deep in his heart he knew that, whatever he may have pretended. She was safe enough from everything except possible annoyance. With plenty of gold at her command, there was nothing he could buy for her that she could not buy for herself.

Now she had no gold—except one louis d'or. He was almost jealous of that single piece. He would have been glad if she lost it. If he had seen it drop from her bag, he would have let it lie where it fell.

She was merely a woman now. The muscles in her arms and legs were not strong. Because of that she could not leave his side, nor order him to leave. She must look to him to fight for her if fighting were necessary. She must look to him to put his strong arm about her and help her if she grew weary. She must look to him to provide her with food and shelter for the night. Physically she was like a child out here on the open road. But he was a man.

He was a man because he had something to protect. He was a man because he was responsible for some one besides himself. It was this that the other half of him had been craving all these years. It was this that completed him.

Yet his attitude toward her, in this respect, was strangely impersonal. He was looking for no reward. He did not consider that he was placing her in any way under an obligation to him. His joy in doing for her was not based upon any idea of furthering his own interests. He was utterly unselfish.

His love for her was another matter entirely. Whether she were with him or not, that would have remained the same. He loved her with all there was in him, and that was more or less distinct from any attitude she might assume. It was a separate, definite, concrete fact, no longer open to argument—no longer to be affected by any of the petty accidents of circumstance. Not even she had now any control over it. It was within her power to satisfy it or not; but that was all. She could not destroy it. If she left it unfulfilled, then he must endure that, as Peter had.

Peter was not sorry that he loved her, and Peter—why, Peter did not have the opportunity to sense more than the first faint beginnings of the word love. Peter had not had those weeks in Paris in which to get to know her; he had not had that wonderful ride through sunny France with Marjory by his side; and Peter had had nothing approaching such a day as this.

Monte turned to look at her. They had passed through Villefranche, and were now taking the up grade. The exercise had flushed her cheeks, giving her back the color she had lacked in the last few weeks. Her eyes were upon the ground, as if she did not dare raise them. Her face always seemed younger when one did not see the eyes. Asleep, she could not have looked over twenty. He marveled at how delicately feminine her forehead and nose were. And the lips—he could not look very long at her lips. Warm and full of curves, they tugged at his heart. They roused desire. Yet, had it been his blessed privilege to touch them with his own, he would have been very gentle about it. A man must needs always be gentle with her, he thought.

That was why he must not utter the phrases that burned within. It would only frighten her, and he must see that she was never frightened again. To himself he might say as much as he pleased, because she could not hear. He could repeat to himself over and over again, as he did now, I love you—I love you—I love you."

ALOUD, however, he said only:

"Are you tired?"

She started even at that.

"No, Monte," she answered.

"We can rest any time you wish. We have all the time in the world ahead of us."

"Have we?"

"Days and weeks and months," he replied.

It was the old Monte she heard—the easy, care-free Monte. It made her feel easier.

"We should cross the border by to-morrow night, shouldn't we?" she asked.

"We could, if it were necessary," he admitted.

She quickened her pace unconsciously. "I think we should get there as soon as possible."

"That," he said, "would be like hurrying through Eden."

She ventured to glance up at him. With his lean, strong face to the sun, his lithe body swinging rhythmically to his stride, he looked like an Indian chieftain. So he would have stalked through virgin forests. So, under different conditions, she might have been following his lead. But conditions were as they were. That is what she must keep in mind. He was here merely to escort her safely to Italy and to the steamer in which she was soon to sail for home. He was being decent to her, as under the same conditions he would be to any woman. He could scarcely do less. She was forced upon him.

That he apparently took pleasure in the episode was natural enough. It was just the sort of experience he enjoyed. It was another pleasant excursion like the motor trip from Paris, with a touch of adventure added to give it spice. Possibly in his present mood there was also a trace of romance. Monte had his romantic side, based upon his quick sympathies. A maiden in distress was enough to rouse this. That was what happened yesterday when he had told her of his love. He had been sincere enough for the moment, and no doubt believed everything he said. He had not given himself quite time enough to get back to his schedule. With that in good running order he would laugh at his present folly.

For she must remember that Monte had not as yet touched either the heights or the depths of love. It was in him to do that, but she must see to it that he did not. That was her task. Love as he saw it now was merely a pleasant garden in May. It was a gypsy jaunt along the open road where it was pleasant enough to have her with him as he whistled along. A day or a week or a month or two of that was well enough, as he had said. Only she—she could not last that long. To-day and to-morrow at the utmost was as much as she could endure, with every minute a struggle to whip back her emotions. Were it safe, she would try to keep it up for his sake. If without danger she could keep him happy this way, not allowing him to go any further, she would try. With her lips set, she stumbled along the Cornice road by his side.

At five that evening they had made half their journey and stopped at a wayside inn—the inn of L'Agneau Dansant. On a squeaking sign before the ancient stone structure, which looked as if it must have been there in the days of post-chaises, a frolicsome lamb danced upon his hind legs, smiling to all who paused there an invitation to join him in this innocent pastime.

"That fellow has the proper spirit," Monte declared. "Shall we place ourselves in his care?"

"I'm afraid I can't go any farther," Marjory answered wearily.

Monsieur Soucin came out, looking to be in anything but the mood of the gay lamb before his door.

"Two rooms, a little supper, and some breakfast," explained Monte. "But we must strike a bargain. We have very little gold and a long way to go."

"I have but a single louis d'or," put in madame.

"Monsieur! Madame!" interrupted Soucin. "I am sorry, but I can not accommodate you at any price. In the next village a regiment of soldiers have arrived. I have had word that I must receive here ten officers. They come at seven."

"But look here—madame is very tired," frowned Monte.

"I am sorry," answered Soucin.

"Doubtless the next village in that case is without accommodations also," said Monte. "We will strike no bargain. Name your price up to ten louis d'or; for madame must rest."

Soucin shook his head.

"I am giving up my own room. I must sleep in the kitchen—if I sleep at all."

Marjory had sunk down on a bench by the door. Monte stared up the road and down the road. There was no other house in sight.

"You could not find a bed for madame even for ten louis d'or?"

"Not for a thousand, m'sieur. If there are no beds, there are no beds."

Yet there was room enough thereabouts. Behind the inn an olive orchard extended up a gentle incline to a stone wall. Over this the sun was descending in a blaze of glory.

"The orchard behind the house is yours?" Monte asked.

"Yes, m'sieur."

"Then," said Monte, "if you will spare us a few blankets, madame and I will sleep there."

"Upon the ground?"

"Upon the blankets," smiled Monte.

"Ah, m'sieur is from America!" exclaimed Soucin, as if that explained everything.

"Truly."

"And it is so the Indians sleep, I have read."

"You have read well. But we must have supper before the officers arrive. You can spare some bread and cheese?"

"I will do that."

"Then make it ready some coffee?"

"Yes, m'sieur."

Monte returned to madame.

"I have engaged two rooms in the olive orchard," he announced.

THE situation was absurd, but what could be done about it? France was at war, and there would be many who would sleep upon the ground who had never slept there before. Many, too, in the ground. Still, the situation was absurd—that Marjory, with all her thousands of dollars, should be forced to sleep out of doors. It gave her a startling sense of helplessness. She had been before in crowded places, but the securing of accommodations was merely a matter of increasing the size of her check. But here, even if one had a thousand louis d'or, that would have made no difference. Officers of the army of France were not to be disturbed by the tinkle of gold. With a single gold piece, moreover, one could not even make a tinkle.

She went into the inn to make herself tidy before supper; but she hurried back to Monte as quickly as possible. Out of sight of him she felt as lost as a child in a forest. She had nothing to lean upon now but him. Without him here she would scarcely have had even identity. Her name, except as signed, to a check, meant nothing. To have announced herself as Miss Marjory Stockton, or even as Madame Covington, would have left the soldiers of France merely smiling. To her sex they might have paid some deference, but to her sex alone. She was not anything except as she was attached to Monte—as a woman under the protection of her man.

This did not humble her. Her first clean, unguarded emotion was one of pride. Had it been her privilege to let herself go, she would have taken her place near him with her eyes afire—with her head held as proudly as any queen.

If she could only let herself go! As she came into the smoky old tavern room and he stepped forward to meet her, she swayed a little. He looked so big and wholesome and eager with his arms outstretched! They were alone here. It would have been so easy just to close her eyes and let her head rest against his shoulder—so easy and restful. He would have kissed her hair, and the ache would all have gone from her body and heart. He would draw her close and hold her tight—yes, for a day or two or a month or two. Then he would remember that week in which she had trifled with him, and he would hate her.

She pulled herself together.

"Is supper ready?"

It was such an inane remark! He turned aside like a boy who has been snubbed.

Monsieur Soucin had provided bread and cheese, a salad, and coffee. It was enough. She had no appetite. She took much more satisfaction in watching Monte and in pouring his coffee.

"Soucin lent a mattress, which I have arranged just the other side of the wall. That is your room. With plenty of blankets you should be comfortable enough there," he said.

"And you?" she inquired.

"I am on this side of the wall," he replied gravely.

MONSIEUR SOUCIN was hovering about nervously. He wished to have everything cleared away before the officers arrived, and they would be here now in half an hour. He was solicitous about madame.

"It is a great pity that madame should sleep out of doors," he said. "It makes my heart ache. But, with monsieur to guard her, at least madame will be safe."

"You have done as well as you could," Monte reassured him. "We shall probably rise early and be on our way before the soldiers, so—"

Monte slipped into his hand a gold piece. It was too much from one point of view, and yet from another it was little enough. Soucin had unwittingly made an arrangement for which Monte could not pay in money.

"And my share?" inquired Marjory.

"One louis d'or," answered Monte blushingly.

She fumbled in her bag and brought it out—the last she had. And Monte, in his reckless joy, handed that over also to Soucin. The man was too bewildered to do more than bow as he might before a prince and princess.

Monte led her up the incline through the heavy-leaved olive trees to her couch against the wall. It had been made up as neatly as in any hotel, with plenty of blankets and a pillow for her head.

"If you wish to sleep at once," he said, "I'll go back to my side of the wall."

She hesitated. The wall was man-high and so thick that once he was behind it she would feel terribly alone.

"Or, better still," he suggested, "you lie down and let me sit and smoke here. I'll be quiet."

It was a temptation she would have resisted had she not been so tired physically. As it was, half numbed with fatigue, she removed her hat and lay down between the blankets.

To be concluded next week

WAR WIDOWS

WHAT ROCKEFELLER MIGHT DO WITH A DAY'S INCOME

---

PEOPLE WHO CAN'T BE LATE

Torchy Takes a Running Jump

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Hazel Roberts

COURSE, it don't sound natural. A merry sunrise party is an event that ain't often listed on the cards, unless it's a continuous session from the evenin' before. But this wasn't a case of a bunch of night-bloomin' gladiolas who'd lasted through. Hardly. Although Auntie does have something of a look like the parties you see lined up at Yorkville Court, charged with havin' been rude to taxi drivers; and Mr. Ellins might have been passin' the night on a bakery gratin' with a sportin' extra for a blanket.

We was a long, long ways from either taxis or traffic cops, though. We was on Nunca Secos Key, with the Gulf of Mexico murmurin' gentle behind us, and out in front a big red sun was blazin' through the black pines that edge the west coast of Florida. Five of us, includin' Vee and Captain Rupert Killam and me: and each in our own peculiar way was registerin' the Pollyanna-Mrs. Wiggs stuff.

Why not? For one thing, it's about as handsome a December mornin' as you could dream of—the air soft and mild, with a clean, salty smell to it that sort of gives you a romantic hunch every sniff you pump in.

But the big reason for this early-mornin' joy-fest of ours— Well, there's the pirate treasure, almost enough to load a pushcart with.

You know how you feel when you pluck a stray quarter from the L stairs, or maybe retrieve a dollar bill that's been playin' hide-and-seek in the gutter? Multiply that by the thrill you'd get if you'd had your salary raised and been offered par for a block of industrials that had been wished on you at ten a share, all in the same day. Then you'll have a vague idea of how chirky we was at 5.30 A. M. as we stood around in front of that mound we'd torn open, gawpin' first at the heap of loot and then at each other.

SIMPLE way to pass the time, eh? But, somehow, we couldn't seem to take it in that we'd actually done the trick. I know I couldn't. I've always kidded myself along, too, that I was something of a speed artist when it came to framin' up a situation.

I expect we all hand ourselves little floral offerin's like that. But when we get up against anything really new—that is, some sensation we ain't happened to meet before—we find we ain't such hair-trigger propositions, after all. We catches ourselves doin' the open-face act, while the little stranger idea stands tappin' patient on the wood.

Course, treasure-huntin' was just what had lured us so far from home. For nearly three weeks, now, that had been the big notion. But cruisin' around in a yacht lookin' for pirate gold as sort of a freaky lark is one thing, while actually diggin' it out and seein' it heaped before you on the sand is another.

Maybe Captain Killam was expectin' to carry the game this far. He's just cocky enough for that. But it's plain to see that Auntie and Mr. Ellins had been playin' a long shot just for the sport of holdin' a ticket and watchin' the wheel turn.

As for me and Vee, we'd pooh-poohed the idea consistent from the very start, and had only been let in along towards the last because we'd happened to be useful. I don't know that we was any more staggered, though, than the rest of 'em. One sure sign that Old Hickory and Auntie was excited was the fact that they'd begun callin' each other by their given names.

"Cornelia," says he, "we've done it. We have achieved adventure."

"In spite of our gray hairs—eh, Matthew?" says she.

"In spite of everything," says Old Hickory. "True, we haven't been shipwrecked, or endured hardship, or spilled any gore. But we have outfaced a lot of ridicule. If the whiskered old sinners who hid away this stuff had met as much they might have given up piracy in disgust. Who knows?"

WITH that Mr. Ellins snips the end from a fat black cigar, jams his hands in his pockets, and spreads his feet wide apart.

He's costumed in a flannel outing shirt open at the neck, and a pair of khaki trousers stuffed into hip rubber boots with the tops turned down. Also his grizzly hair is tousled and his face is well smeared up with soot or something. Honest, if he'd had a patch over one eye and gold rings in his ears he could have qualified as a bold, bad buccaneer himself. Only there's an amiable cut-up twinkle under them shaggy brows of his, such as I'd never seen there before.

"Killam," says he, "why don't you chortle?"

"I—I beg pardon?" says Rupert.

He's sittin' on a log, busy rollin' a cigarette, and in place of his usual solemn air he looks satisfied and happy. That's as much as he can seem to loosen up.

"Great pickled persimmons, man!" snorts Old Hickory. "Let's be human. Come, we're all tickled to death, aren't we? Let's make a noise about it, then. Torchy, can't you start something appropriate?"

"Sure!" says I. "How about doin' a war-dance? Yuh-huh! Yuh-huh! Got in step, Vee. Now we're off. Yuh-huh! Yuh-huh!"

"Fine!" says Old Hickory, droppin' in behind Vee and roarin' out the Sagawa patter like a steam siren. "Yuh-huh! Yuh-huh! Come, Captain. Fall in, Cornelia. Yuh-huh! Yuh-huh!"

Would you believe it? Well, Auntie does. I never thought it was in the old girl. But say, there she is, her gray hair streamin' down over her shoulders, her skirts grabbed up on either side, and lettin' out the yelps easy and joyous. Even Rupert has to grin and join in.

Round and round that treasure heap we prances, like so many East Side kids round a May-pole in Central Park, with the yuh-huhs comin' faster and louder, until finally Auntie slumps on the sand and uncorks the only real genuine laughs I've ever known her to be guilty of. No wonder Vee stops and rushes over to her.

"Why, Auntie!" says Vee. "What's the matter?"

"Matter?" says Auntie, breathin' hard, and chucklin' in between. "Why, my dear child, I haven't done anything so absurd as this since—since I was forty, and—and it has done me a world of good, I'm sure."

What do you know about that? Admits she carried on as late as forty! And here I'd supposed she was born scowlin', about the time tabasco sauce was invented.

Well, once more I got to revise my ideas about her. Maybe she ain't any frostier underneath than the rest of us.

"Allow me, Cornelia, to present you with the palm," says Mr. Ellins, handin' her a palmetto leaf. "As a war dancer you betray evidence of previous proficiency. Doesn't she, Torchy?"

"I'll bet she could have had Mrs. Sittin' Bull crowded into the back drop," says I, grinnin'.

And Auntie returns the grin.

YOU might know it would be Rupert who'd break the spell.

"I am wondering," says he, "just how we are going to get all this treasure on board the yacht without the crew knowing all about it."

"Why wonder?" says Old Hickory. "Leave it to Torchy."

"Ah, say!" I protests.

"No alibis," insists Mr. Ellins, slappin' me encouragin' on the shoulder. "Strategy is what we want from you, young man. Plenty of it under that brilliant hair of yours. We'll give you three minutes."

And of course, havin' it batted up to me that way by the big boss, and with Vee gazin' at me expectant, I had to produce.

"You'll stand for any little tale I tell 'em, eh?" I asks.

"Absolutely," says he.

So we gets to work with the dozen or more canvas sacks that Rupert has been foxy enough to bring along. In the bottom we puts a shovelful of sand; then we dumps in the gold pieces and jewels promiscuous, with more sand on top, not fillin' any sack more'n a third full. That made 'em easy to handle, and when they was tossed into the launch there was no suspicious jingle or anything like that.

Half an hour later we was chuggin' away from the little natural jack-pot that we'd opened so successful, headed for the Agnes. And, believe me, the old yacht looks mighty homey and invitin', lyin' there in the calm of the mornin' with all her awnin's spread and a trickle of blue smoke driftin' up from the forward galley.

"Any orders?" asks Mr. Ellins, as we starts to run alongside.

"I got a few words to say to them early-bird sailors that's house-cleanin' the decks," says I. "I'm goin' to ask you to stay in the boat, Mr. Ellins, and look worried. The rest can go aboard. Captain Killam might rout out the chef and get action on an early breakfast."

"Ay, ay, Captain Torchy," says Old Hickory. "Here we are, with a smiling reception committee to greet us, as usual."

THERE was five in the scrubbin' squad, includin' the second mate, a pie-faced Swede by the name of Nelse; and, while they seems mighty busy with pails and mops and brass-polishers, I notice they all manages to drift over to our side of the yacht. You couldn't exactly accuse them of wearin' grins, but they did look as though something amusin' had occurred recent. Which shows we was still doin' duty as human jokes. But that's just what I makes my play on.

As soon as I can dash up the landin' steps, I beckons the second mate to follow me aft.

"Call your bunch, back here, too," says I, "so there'll be no bonehead plays made."

Then, when I gets 'em together, I tips Nelse the knowin' wink.

"You ain't supposed to know a thing about what's been goin' on to-night, eh?" I asks.

Nelse, he shrugs his shoulders.

"Aye yust know about work," says he, lyin' free and easy.

"That's a swell motto to pin on the wall," says I. "But listen, Nelse, while I put a case to you. Suppose, now, you'd been tipped off that if you dug under a certain bush in a certain back yard you'd find—well, something worth luggin' away? Ah, never mind shakin' your head! This is only supposin'. And we'll say the neighbors were wise; they'd watched you go out with your spade and lantern. And after you'd near broke your back diggin' you found you'd been buffaloed. Are you followin' me?"

Who says a Swede is all solid maple from the neck up? Nelse's buttermilk blue eyes flickers with almost human intelligence. Some of the men smother a snicker.

"Well," I goes on, "we'll say you was sensitive about it. In order to duck their frivolous remarks when you came

---

sneakin' back, maybe you'd be deceitful enough to bluff it through. You might lug something home in the bag, even if it was only some loose real estate. I don't say you would, mind you. You got such an honest, cash-register face. But there are shifty parties who could do that and never bat an eye. I ain't mentionin' any names."

I didn't need to. To a man, they glances over the rail at Mr. Ellins.

"Then that's all," says I. "Only you got to lay off with them merry expressions when you lug those sacks aboard. Handle 'em careful and reverent, and stow 'em in the main cabin where you're told. If you do it well I expect there'll be more or less in it for all of you. Now, then, got your cues, have you?"

They salutes respectful.

"Then get busy with the stevedore stuff," says I.

SAY, if they'd been coached by a stage manager they couldn't have done better. Course, I did catch 'em passin' the wink to each other as two of 'em marches across the deck holdin' a sack tender between 'em; but that was when they knew nobody but me could see. While they was down where Old Hickory had his eye on 'em, they was as solemn as pall-bearers. But I'll bet it wasn't many minutes after they got to their own quarters before the hearty haw-haws was turned loose in four different languages.

Meanwhile Auntie and Mr. Ellins has been lookin' on without gettin' the plot of the piece.

"I must say," Auntie comes out with, "that I see no very subtle strategy about that performance. Those men must have suspected. What did they think they were carrying on board so carefully?"

"Sand," says I.

"Huh!" grunts Old Hickory.

"You said you'd stand for it," says I. "And all you owe 'em is about two apiece for helpin' you save your face."

"My face, eh?" says Old Hickory.

"Some one had to be the goat," says I.

"Why, to be sure," cuts in Auntie, beamin' good-natured again. "And I think Torchy managed it very cleverly."

"Thanks, Mrs. Hemmingway," says I. "Maybe you'll do as much for me sometime, eh?"

"Why—er—certainly I will," says Auntie, catchin' her breath a little.

I had just sense enough to let it ride at that, for you can't push a thing too far before breakfast. But I didn't mean to let this grand little idea of mine grow cold. It struck me that, if ever I was goin' to call for a show-down from Auntie, this was the day.

So, when I finally turned in for a fore-noon nap, I was busier plottin' out just how it ought to be done than I was at makin' up lost sleep. I ain't one of them that can romp around all night, though, and then do the fretful toss on the hay for very long after I've hit the pillow. First thing I knew, I was pryin' my eyes open to find that it's almost 1.30 P. M., and with the sun beatin' straight down on the deck overhead I don't need to turn on any steam heat in the state-room.

A good souse in a tubful of salty Gulf water wakes me up all over, and when I've dolled myself in a fresh Palm Beach suit and a soft-collared shirt I'm feelin' like Winnin' Willie.

AS it happens, Vee and I has the luncheon table to ourselves that day, neither Auntie nor Mr. Ellins havin' shown up, and the others bein' all through. And somehow Vee always does have that look of—well, as though she'd just blown in from the rose garden. You know, kind of clean and crisp and—and honeysuckley. Maybe it's that pinky-white complexion of hers, or the simple way she dresses. Anyway, she looks good enough to eat. Don't do to tell 'em so, though.

"Good morning, Torchy," says she, chirky and sweet.

"Wrong on two counts, young lady," says I, ticklin' her ear playful as I passes.

"Really?" says she, delayin' her attack on a grapefruit. "Just how?"

"It's afternoon, for one item," says I. "And say, why not ditch that juvenile hail? Torchy, Torchy! Seems to me I ought to be mistered to-day. Some one ought to do it, anyway."

"Why to-day any more than yesterday?" asks Vee.

I waits until the dinin'-room steward has faded, and then I remarks haughty: "Maybe it ain't come to you that I'm a near-plute now."

"Pooh!" says Vee. "You're not a bit richer than I am."

"Boy, page the auditin' committee!" says I. "How strong do you tally up?"

"I'm sure I don't know," says she. "Neither do you, Mister Torchy."

"Oh, yes, I do," says I. "I've got just the same as you."

Vee runs out the tip of her tongue at me.

"That's the sort of disposition," says she, "which goes with red hair."

"Towhead yourself!" says I. "What kind of a scramble has the cook got on the eggs to-day?"

"You'd better order soft-boiled," says Vee. "I'll open them for you."

"Will you?" says I. "Just this once, or does that stand?"

"This—this is so abrupt!" says Vee, snickerin'.

"You tell it well," says I. "Just as though I hadn't been doin' my best to dodge the net! But what chance has a man got when he's cornered at breakfast and she offers to— Ouch!"

Vee springs one of them boardin'-school tricks of hers, shootin' a teaspoonful of water accurate across the table.

"Rough-houser!" says I, moppin' my eye with the napkin. "If your Auntie can't train you, maybe she'll let me try."

"Oh, no doubt she would," says Vee.

"I might ask her," I suggests.

"I'd love to be around when you did," says she, rollin' her eyes impish.

"Meanin' I wouldn't dare, eh?" says I.

Vee only dabbles her pink finger-ends in the little glass bowl, and chuckles like she was rememberin' something funny.

"Suppose I did and got away with it?" I asks.

Vee gives me a quizzin' glance from them gray eyes, one of the kind that sort of warms me up under my vest.

I couldn't decorate you with the Victoria Cross," says she.

"But would you take a chance on the results?" I asks.

"One of the silly things I've learned from you," says Vee, lowerin' her eyelids fetchin', "is to—to take a chance."

"Vee!" says I, startin' to dash around the table.

"Hush!" says she, wavin' me back. "Here come your eggs."

Say, what went on durin' the rest of the day I couldn't tell. I expect it was a good deal the same kind of an afternoon we'd been havin' right along, but to me it was three X double A with the band playin'. I was light in the head and I had springs in my heels. Everything and everybody looked good to me.

I jollied Old Hickory into lettin' me tip the sailors that had lugged the sacks aboard, and I threw in some of his best cigars just by way of relievin' my feelin's. Whenever I passed Captain Rupert Killam T hammered him on the back folksy and told him he sure was some discoverer. I even let Mrs. Mumford feed me an earful about how the late dear Mr. Mumford always remembered to send home a bunch of roses on their weddin' anniversary. Rather than revisit the scene himself, I suppose.

But when it come to playin' opposite Auntie—say, I was right there with the Percy-boy stuff: givin' her a hand up the stairs when she came on deck, leadin' her to a chair on the shady side, and hintin' how she looked mighty chipper after an all-night session such as we'd had. Talk about smooth stuff! I had the inside of a banana peel lookin' like a nutmeg-grater.

Auntie falls for it, too. She has me whisper in her ear just where the treasure is stowed and how complete we'd thrown the crew off the trail. I works up that sketch of my talk with the Swede second mate until I had her shoulders shakin'.

"What a boy you are!" says she, gaspy.

"Don't overlook the fact that I'll be votin' next year," says I.

"How absurd!" says Auntie.

"We do grow up, yon know," says I. "It's a habit we have. And now, how about a glass of that iced pineapple the steward fixes so well? Sure! Lemme fetch a couple.;

The climax was when she got me to holdin' a skein of yarn for her. As Old Hickory strolls by and sees me with my hands stuck out, I thought he was goin' to swallow his cigar.

STILL, I couldn't get just the right cue. Not that I'd mapped out anything definite. I only knew I had something special and particular to say to Auntie, but I couldn't spring it unless I got the proper hunch. So the afternoon petered out, and the sun dropped into the Gulf, and folks begun disappearin' to dress for dinner.

The word had been passed that this was to be a special event to-night, so it's full white flannels for the men and evenin' gowns for the ladies. You see, we hadn't told the outsiders a word. In fact, they didn't even know we'd been away from the yacht durin' the night.

It's a swell feed the steward puts on, too, considerin' where we was. Nothin' dry about it, either; for, while Mr. Ellins ain't a great hand to overdo irrigation, he's no guide to the great desert. There was silver ice-buckets on the floor, and J. Dudley Simms lost a side bet to Professor Leonidas Barr on namin' the vintage. He was five years too young.

Not until coffee had been served did Old Hickory give any hint that this was to be a reg'lar celebration, with post-prandial doin's. Then he proceeds to chase out all the help, lockin' the doors behind 'em. Next he has me pull the shades over the cabin windows.

"Friends," says he, "you all know what it was that we came down here for. It sounded foolish in New York, I acknowledge. Even in these surroundings, our enterprise may have appealed to some of you as a bit fantastic. But—Torchy, will you and Captain Killam bring those sacks?"

Did we have 'em goggle-eyed? Say, when we dumped peck after peck of treasure and sand in the middle of the dinner-table, and they got to pawin' over those weird old gold pieces and them samples of antique jewelry, it was a knockout.

"My word!" gasps J. Dudley. "You must feel like successful bank robbers."

"Wonderful!" says Professor Barr, breathin' excited through his whiskers. "Why, some of these doubloons must have been coined during the reign of—"

"Cornelia," breaks in Mrs. Mumford. "will you look at that old brooch. It's exquisite!"

"Then it is yours, as a souvenir of the trip," says Auntie—just like that.

NEXT, Dudley and the Professor was asked to pick out a trinket. After which Mr. Ellins suggests that they divide the loot into five equal piles, and that we draw numbers to see who gets which. Rupert wasn't strong for this free and casual way of splittin' the gate receipts, but he gives in.

And when we each has our heap in front of us, with the sand scraped into the middle of the cloth, Old Hickory has the glasses filled once more, and starts up that pirate song of his:

"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest—
Yo-ho-ho! and a bottle of rum."

Right in the middle of the festivities, too, I takes my runnin' jump. Pickin' out a quaint old ring from my collection, I slips around beside Auntie and snuggles up confidential.

"Well, Torchy," says she, "what is it?"

"It's a big favor," says I. "See this? I want you to let me ask Vee to wear this for—for keeps. Can I?"

"You—you mean—" she begins.

"Uh-huh!" says I. "Until sometime I can fit one on—well, one that the best man hands me. Come on, Auntie. Have a heart!"

"You ridiculous boy!" says she. "If you must, though—"

Say, I wasn't lookin' for that next move of hers. Think of it—Auntie! And she lands one right on my cheek, too. Every one sees it. And, while I'm pinkin' up like a cranberry tart, Old Hickory sings out gleeful:

"Tut, tut, Cornelia! What is this all about?"

"I suppose," says Auntie, "that we must drink a toast to these youngsters of ours. That is, if Verona insists on being so foolish."

"How about it, Vee?" I whispers, capturin' her left hand. "Do we let 'em drink?"

"Silly!" says she. "The other finger."

IT'S a bit public, I admit. Might as well hired a hall. But they all seem to enjoy handin' us the jolly. Mr. Ellins makes a reg'lar speech, tellin' how fond he is of both of us and how this event pleases him more'n findin' the buried treasure. He winds up by askin' if everybody ain't about ready to start back for New York. The vote is unanimous.

"Why not to-night?" asks J. Dudley.

"To-night, it shall be, " says Old Hickory.

"Say, Mr. Ellins," I breaks out just then, "lemme pass the word on that, will you?"

And, when I gets the nod, I breezes out on deck and up to the Captain's state-room.

"Cap," says I, "welcome words from the boss."

"Sailing orders?" he asks.

"Yep!" says I. "You're to tie her loose from Florida as quick as you know how, and head her straight for the wet end of Broadway. Get me? Broadway! Say, but don't that listen good?"

WHAT SCIENCE IS DOING

To Roll This Old World Along

PORTABLE DAYLIGHT FOR THE MOVIES

THESE moving picture folks are so resourceful that it almost takes one's breath away at times. And the queerest part about their business is that they do just as many interesting things in back of the camera as in front of it. One of the most thrilling things we ever saw took place down at Sheepshead Bay one afternoon when the Vitagraph Company was blowing up a yacht for a picture.

The man who set off the dynamite was in a rowboat, and he pulled away a few hundred feet, for safety's sake, before he pressed the electric fuse. But the dynamite didn't explode. The camera-men were on a tug, cranking away for dear life, and using up dollars' and dollars' worth of expensive film; but the explosion lingered.

The man in the rowboat had to decide in a hurry, and his decision was to climb aboard with all that high explosive and reset the fuse. It might go off any minute, and everybody held their breath, with their fingers crossed—and hoped. Hardly any scene in that picture was as tense as that moment of real danger. But his head bobbed up from the hatchway in a minute, and he got away safely.

The latest development of behind-the-scenes magic on the part of the Vitagraph Company is a swift inclosed truck which brings daylight to the players who are out "on location" after dark. The truck contains a powerful gasolene engine and dynamo that could generate enough electricity to light three city blocks. Part of its equipment is a "battery" of mighty arcs, which are turned on the scene, flooding it with the best of light. The van is lined with metal, for fire-proofing, and the floor is a thick mat of rubber, so that none of the electricians can be injured by a current shock. The light is clear and steady, for the gas-engine revolves at tremendous speed. Employees of the studio built this car all by themselves, and they believe there is nothing like it in the world.

FRIENDS—MEET KATY GERBER

SPEAKING of gold mines, if you should ever happen to be wandering through the green meadows of Nebraska, drop in and say hello to Katy Gerber for us. Never heard of Katy Gerber? Katy Gerber, who earns, with her small family, more in a year than the average doctor, lawyer, or merchant?

Perhaps you don't follow the

agricultural journals as faithfully and enthusiastically as we do, then. Katy is a cow—a cow with a conscience. Her market value, if she were for sale, would be $10,000. But she is not for sale: she belongs to the University of Nebraska.

It was not until Katy had been in the herd for three years, and records were kept, that some one discovered what a really valuable animal Katy was. Now she is breaking records regularly, and the university is deriving a fat income by selling her children and grandchildren. For the fourteen years of her life up to July first, her financial record, including milk and children sold, shows a clear profit of $26,885.70. This profit, which is net, includes the cost of food for Katy and all of her descendants, which, in round numbers, has amounted to $4000.

If no records had been kept, Katy might still be chewing her cud, unheralded and unknown.

BREAD KEPT FRESH FOR TWO MONTHS

FRENCH prisoners in Germany, reduced to the unsavory "war bread" that the English blockade has forced upon Germany,—bread containing a large percentage of potato-flour,—bewailed their diet in letters home. Fond wives and sweethearts hastened to send loaves by parcel post; but, unfortunately, it was so often delayed as to be as hard as a rock when it reached the hungry soldier.

Thereupon a Parisian baker appeared with a simple process for preserving the freshness of bread for two months.

Inspected and approved by the Bureau for Prevention of Frauds, this process has now been adopted with great success in France, two bakeries in Paris alone having turned out some forty thousand loaves thus protected. The inventor, M. Fleurent, describes the process as follows: The dough is made up as usual, and the loaves are put to rise in straight-sided pans. The loaf should preferably not weigh more than two and one fifth pounds, and its surface should lie smooth when put into the oven. It is allowed to remain a little longer than usual, to insure complete sterilization. When taken out it is wrapped, while still warm, in two separate sheets of paper, with the closing folds on opposite sides of the package, and then securely tied. When the temperature of the oven has fallen to 120º-130º C. (216º-234º F.), the doubly wrapped loaves are replaced and allowed to remain for fifteen or twenty minutes longer. They are then ready to be stored or shipped, and will retain their freshness for two months.

The sort of wrapping paper employed seems not to matter, provided it is strong and of close texture. Generally a light yellow paper, made of a mixture of chemical cellulose and wood-pulp, is used. When the package is finally withdrawn from the oven, it has a very agreeable odor, due to the formation of a caramel from certain elements of the paper. Probably, too, this formation of caramel is accompanied by the production of traces of formaldehyde, which would assist in the perfect sterilization of the package, to which its "keeping" qualities are due.

CARRIER BEES

A FRENCH inventor has hatched the ingenious idea of utilizing honey-bees for carriers instead of pigeons. Bees have a highly developed homing instinct, or "sense of orientation," and their size makes them easier to transport, as well as less easy to see or to hit. Of course, their range of flight is not so great as is the bird's. However, it is sufficient; for, while the bee ordinarily ranges only about two miles from the hive, it is in the air for several hours each day.

Instead of carrying a letter, however, the message is photographed directly upon the membranous wing of the insect, which is rendered capable of receiving impressions by the ordinary sensitizing solution familiar to photographers.

The bee is first rendered unconscious by tobacco stroke, and the sensitizing solution is applied by a very delicate brush in a dark room. The message to be photographed is written or printed in clear black letters on a white ground, and is reduced to microscopic dimensions before being photographed. After the wing has received the impression, it is developed, fixed, and dried, like any other photograph. The bee is then allowed to recover from its forced intoxication and thrown into the air for its return journey.

If the day is dry and sunny, it will rise and fly off in the direction of its hive. Once there, it is ruthlessly destroyed. The wings are cut off, and the minute photographs they bear enlarged and thrown on a screen in order to be easily read.

LENGTHEN YOUR SHIP, SIR?

IF you own a ship, or several, there is no need to tell you how high freight rates have jumped since the beginning of war in Europe. These rates have resulted in a wholesale dumping upon the Seven Seas of all manner of craft. Decrepit old schooners have been exhumed

from nameless creeks, patched up, and set to carrying ammunitions at rates that often have paid off the entire cost, initial and reconstructive, in a single voyage.

The more freight a ship will carry, the fatter profits, quite naturally, will she pay to her owner. Consequently, not only have old schooners and brigantines found their way back to the sea in neat new rigging, but tramp freighters, to make room for more cargo, have been rent asunder, a few feet added to their length, riveted together, and sent snoring around the world with fatter cargoes—and fatter dividends. It is not at all new—this business of tearing a ship in half, adding a few feet to her, sewing her together, and setting her afloat again. In fact, in Brooklyn there is a ship-doctor named Todd who makes a specialty of lengthening tramps. Consider the ease of the George E. Warren. Her owners wanted to enter her in the oil trade, and she needed a little lengthening. Within thirty-two quick, clamorous hours after the George E. Warren had gone into dry-dock, she was gaping open—split in halves amidships. The two halves were drawn apart a distance of fifty-two feet. The ensuing twelve days were spent in riveting in new plates, stringers, girders, and tanks—the crew remaining aboard.

SIMPLIFIED COOKING

THE fair housewife who formerly burned her pretty pink complexion by bending over a coal or wood fire can now—even without a maid—enjoy her good looks as long as she desires, to the extent, of course, that the cook stove is concerned.

The electric cook stove makes work so light and so clean that she need not forgo even the daintiest of silk shirt-waists or afternoon-tea aprons. By the mere touch

of an electric switch, she soon has heat a-plenty for cooking.

Nor need her beauty sleep be interrupted; for, by an ingenious arrangement, she sets the electric switches the night before, and when she arises her breakfast is just exactly ready—no more, no less. Roasts, etc., for other meals, she prepares in the same way. She puts the roast in the oven, adjusts a thermometer, and when the roast is done the electric current is automatically turned off. The oven contains fireless cooking principles, so that much current is saved in this way.

"I HAVE NO TIME TO READ"

All Right—We'll Do Your Reading for You. $300 Worth of New Books and Magazines Are Read for These Pages Every Week

THE YOUNG WIFE OF VINCENT ASTOR

"SHE is young. She has the poise, the assurance, and the tact that come with birth and breeding raather than education and experience," writes F. Cunliffe-Owen in the New York Sun.

More than that, Vincent Astor, the twenty-five-year-old heir of multimillion, is her husband; and when she says, "Home, Rollo," to her chauffeur, he drives to a gray French château with richly sculptured doors and cornices at No. 820 Fifth Avenue.

She married Vincent, not because he was the greatest prize in the marriage market, but because they have known and cared for each other from childhood. Besides, her own parents were quite rich enough to satisfy any whim or caprice she may have entertained. "Every luxury money could buy, including christening, was lavished on her," as Lady Bracknell would say.

So far, so good. You would like to be Mrs. Astor. But every sunset has its cloudy side. The eyes of fashionable people are on her. Can she assume the undisputed leadership of New York society as Vincent's grandmother did—Mrs. William Astor, known and feared in those days as "Aunt Carrie?"

The ball-room at No. 820 was the seat of Aunt Carrie's power and the threshold of society. When a young lady with Dutch ancestors and financial backing entered the room, it meant that she had entered society by the front door. "There, Aunt Carrie gave her last great January ball—her swan-song—and, failing in health soon after, she had to lay down the sceptor which no woman has held since."

It has been argued that New York is too big: that society is divided into too many cliques to be led by one woman. "But all of these, though they may not admit it, are waiting to take their cue from the gratin" (French for "the whole cheese").

Evidently, it's up to Mrs. Vincent Astor.

THE DANGERS OF GETTING MARRIED IN JAPAN

WHEN a Japanese girl wakes up to find a keg of fish on her door-step, she knows that her troubles have begun. The village men have discovered that she loves a man in a neighboring hamlet, and demand retribution for their own slighted charms. The girl must carry the keg to the shrine of the tutelary deity, and beat a drum, which calls the villagers together. They feast on the fish, the girl's lover footing the bill.

In another province, the bride herself performs the ceremony, says the Japan Magazine. It's almost as simple as an American contract marriage. She walks bravely up to the groom and announces: "My dearest, I have at last come to you, the only one in all the world I can rely upon." The guests clap their hands, and chorus, "That's right, that's right!" and the ceremony is over. No one gets more thrills than the groom, for it's the first time he has ever heard his wife's voice.

The question of wedding gifts is much simpler in Japan than in America. Instead of being showered with pickle-forks and soup-ladles, the bride and groom present gifts to their guests.

After the ceremony, the villagers, uninvited, visit the couple. They bring a small sum of money and a wooden box. When they leave, the money is returned to them, doubled, and the box is filled with wedding cake.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN BUSINESS

DO you want to eat your cake as a business woman and have it as a coquettish woman? Do you want your employer to give you the same pay he gives the men in the office, but do you also want him to rise whenever you come into the room, or interrupt a conference with the president to open the door for you? Eleanor Gilbert, in The Ambitious Woman in Business (Funk & Wagnalls Company) discourages the possibility:

"'She tried to parlorize my office,' was the explanation given by a business man for dismissing a capable assistant. 'She was offended if the men failed to pick up the papers she dropped. She wore slinky, chiffony things, so that she looked helpless when a man was around and he just yeared to do something for her. The joke of it was that she demanded the same sum as the men clerks in the department!'"

If a girl wants business equality in business, she usually gets it, thinks Miss Gilbert. If she wants social privilege in business, she doesn't get it, or she gets it along with undesirable attentions; and no women is kissed twice against her will.

It all depends. If your ambition in business is success, forget that you are a woman. If your ambition in business is matrimony, keep on wearing dancing pumps to work, keep on looking helpless.

THEY NEVER CALLED HIM BILL

THE Kaiser never had a nickname. He has always been the Emperor, or just plain Wilhelm. Which goes to prove that the English royal family never did love him or they would have called him Billy. They affectionately dub the Czar "Nicky"; the Queen of Norway answers to the name of "Harry," and her husband is the "Smiler."

The Kaiser's mother in the home circle was known as "Vicky." But Billy—ach, himmel!—never.

The Duke of Connaught and the late Duke of Saxe-Coburg, his uncles, once had a charming experience with the four-year-old Wilhelm, says London Answers. They had the enfant terrible between them at the wedding of his Uncle Edward, and were vainly trying to keep him subdued. Finally one of the uncles administered several smart raps on the head of the royal kid. Whereupon the chastised infant slid to the floor during prayer, and bit his kilted uncles on their bare knees.

CONFESSIONS OF A PATRIOTIC ENGLISHWOMAN

"NOW is the time for all good maids and true to take in hand the mowing machine and garner the crops, in place of the brave men at the front," said the British government.

City women swelled with patriotism and trooped out to the country. They would save the nation. How the tender-feet enjoyed this rural service is described by Ellen Walshe in Blackwood's Magazine.

The patriots were called at 3 o'clock on a foggy morning. In the drizzly dawn at 4.30 they reached the field of action, which happened to be a strawberry patch. They attacked the berries vigorously. At 7.30 A. M. they were ordered to barracks for rations of meat and vegetables. Some of the patriots thought they couldn't eat vegetables so early in the morning, but they found they could. They marched back to the berry patch, where many sustained serious injuries to their finger-nails. In the afternoon a charge was ordered on the raspberries. This attack was even more difficult.

Taps at 7.10 P. M., reveillé at 3.10 next morning. Some of the patriots were too stiff to arise. One soldier fell out at noon with sunstroke.

At the end of the week the patriots had not earned enough pay for their food and the farmer gave them the sack. He said the regular pickers could easily finish.

"This was the great blow," said the author, "as we could never have gone through with it unless we had imagined that we were badly needed, and we had hoped to help with the harvest. It seemed so absurd that we should be no more use, after the many impassioned appeals in the newspapers to the educated women to go on the land."

The farmer soothed them by promising them a good character for their next job. He said they had struck it out better than he had expected, and that he really hadn't wanted them at all, but he had been so bothered by government officials to try them that he had consented.

HAS YOUR BABY HIGH BROWS?

WHENEVER a young lady unfurled a long black eyebrow in our direction, to us it revealed nothing more than that she was a fascinating young lady. "But the eyebrow," maintains a paragraph in Tit-Bits, "is more than a feature no handsome person does without. It reveals character."

If your eyebrows are straight, you have orderly habits: put your shoes on shoe trees, and so forth. Besides that, you are honest and sincere.

Arched brows mean you have exquisite taste in the arrangement of colors, and a wonderful ability to match ribbons.

If your brows meet in the middle of the nose and rise obliquely, you are elusive and undependable. You break your engagements, and then make too many excuses.

Look out for the person whose eyebrows

bend down in the center toward the eyes. He can neither forgive nor forget, and has insomnia until he has revenged himself on your whole family.

Thick brows mean a violent temper. And those haughty-looking people who loll so becomingly in limousines, their eyebrows exaggeratedly arched and high in the forehead—at last we know they have dull and unemotional dispositions.

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WHY WE DIE YOUNGER THAN OUR ANCESTORS

MEN die younger than they used to, announces Dr. Mortimer Megret in the Boston Herald. Although child hygiene has cut down the death of children about 24 per cent., men in general are not living to the ripe old grandfatherhood they did formerly.

Lack of exercise, with over-eating, especially of meat, are the causes. A strong person with a fine appetite, who sits at his desk abusing the use of tobacco all day, and then takes his exercise in the form of a cocktail, is bound to get atrophied muscles and a bad heart.

"It is between the ages of thirty-two and thirty-five that a man should take special care of himself, studying his constitution and regulating his food, exercise, and pleasures. Examining many men of this age, we found that 20 were too stout; 25 had too high blood pressure; 92 showed heart affection; and 50 per cent. of the whole number did not know they needed medical advice and treatment.

"If you wish to grow old eventually but not now, observe these rules," says Dr. Megret. "Eat lightly of light food—no meat in the evening. Live in ventilated rooms. Take a daily bath and fifteen minutes' exercise every morning. On your fiftieth birthday begin to cut down on the

amount of food you eat; and remember a hale male of eighty, with his mind bent on enjoying two more decades, should eat about as much as a five-year-old child."

DO SOLDIERS LIKE WOMEN DOCTORS BEST?

A LONE man in a crowd of women is, under normal conditions, a most pitiful object. The horror of being "the only man there" pursues the timid male from his sophomore days to the night when he piteously tells his wife to send him to the electric chair, but not to the woman's club reception. There are only two places where a man gladly surrenders to women in the mass: the harem and the hospital.

So complete is his subjugation in the latter instance—possibly because he is too sick to be normal—that he doesn't want the moral support of other men. The Illustrated London News tells how men wounded in France ask to be sent to the great military hospital in London, officered entirely by women doctors. Like the woman-manned palace in Tennyson's "Princess" or the Martha Washington Hotel in New York, all the work in this feministic paradise is done by girls, and the only male employee who dares show his face is the door porter. When a reporter recently expressed his surprise at the arrangement, a wounded but stalwart Highlander demanded indignantly: "And what for should we want a man here?"

Only forty years ago men medical students in Edinburgh were congratulated by the Lancet as being "manly in the best sense" because they refused to enter the wards with women students. As a consequence of their overcoming this prejudice in Scotland, says the London News, "the capable band of doctors and ambulance workers who went to Serbia was composed almost entirely of Scotchwomen. They were stopped on the way by a wireless telegram begging them to go to Malta, where a large body of our own wounded from the Dardanelles was in urgent need of surgical and medical aid, and the work they did there was enthusiastically praised by the Governor."

After the Scotchwomen had demonstrated their medical fitness at the front, women medical students were admitted last July for the first time in the Charing Cross Hospital School of London.

WHAT NEW YORK PAYS IN HAT CHECKS

DO you want a calling by which you will make a fortune? Well, if you are too fat to be an undertaker, and too thin to be a railroad president, get the hat-checking stand in a large hotel.

"A gentleman with a $3 hat, a timid disposition, and a bent for statistics is authority for the statement that in one short season he paid $9.20 tribute to regain possession of his modest tile," says Richard Spillane in Commerce and Finance.

"More money is paid in one month in New York in tips to hat-check pirates, waiters, hotel porters, bell-boys, chauffeurs, and the various other branches of the Order of the Itching Palm than King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella got when they pawned the jewels of Spain to finance the trip of Christopher Columbus across the Atlantic. All of which would indicate that, while Jesse James' methods were direct, he lacked finesse."

SHOOTING LIONS IN AFRICA

ONE night J. B. Thornhill pitched camp in a jungle of South Africa, where he had been building a bridge. A drizzly rain was falling, and the night was pitch-dark. In his book, Adventures in Africa (E. P. Dutton & Company), he recounts this adventure:

"About half-past three in the morning, when the camp-fire was burning low, I heard a shriek of 'God!' coming from the boys' camp. I could distinguish one boy saying, 'A beast has seized a person.' I knew what the word 'beast' meant, for natives do not use the word lion, lest evil befall them.

"I ran to the boys' msesas, and called them to get grass torches, their spears, and follow me. Not one boy moved. I set every msesa on fire with the boys in-side. They bolted out like rabbits. With twenty boys behind me carrying grass torches and spears, I followed the tortuous trail of the dragged body. I heard something clear in the bushes. I rushed on, and came upon a bit of leg bitten off below the knee. Suddenly there was a 'Urrghh' half a dozen yards from us. Every boy bolted but one. I walked up to within three yards of the lion, and satisfied myself that the lad was dead, so that I did not risk a charge."

George Grey, a famous hunter, met a tragic death from a lion a short time later.

"I think he was the bravest man I ever met," says Mr. Thornhill. "I doubt if ever there was a man in the world who could be as calm as he was under all circumstances. The story of his death is typical of the man.

"Grey had jumped off his pony, and was awaiting the onslaught of the lion. Twenty yards off, Grey fired, hitting the lion in the shoulder. Five yards off he got in another shot, breaking a couple of the lion's teeth. The lion threw Grey on the ground, and began to worry him just as a dog worries a rat."

The rest of the party was arriving helter-skelter, and the lion made for his new foes. They fired, wounding him, and then he returned to his victim.

"Finally, when the wounded beast was almost dead, one man managed to place a shot in the lion's head, and rescue Grey. Grey's wounds were many. He was perfectly calm and collected, quietly instructing his friends how to handle his lacerated body. He died three days later."

CLEAN YOUR HOUSE IN A GYM SUIT

IF you will think of your morning housework as gymnastics "to build and beautify," the phrase "household drudge" will go out of common usage. To create the illusion, all you have to do is to give up the conventional house-cleaning costume—i. e., the oldest, clumsiest, most unbecoming skirt you possess—and wear a gymnasium suit. This is one of the 1000 Shorter Ways Around the House (G. P. Putnam's Sons) described by Mae Savell Crey.

Regarding the old skirt, she says:

"It is constantly in the way if one must climb up for dusting pictures or cleaning windows. It gathers dust and grime, and no skirt worn constantly for housework looks tidy long. Nothing will so quickly cause a woman who does her own work to become nervous, irritable, exhausted."

In a gymnasium suit, on the other hand, you can do the work in less time. You can move rapidly without upsetting your pail of water. You can get the full benefit of that oldest and best exercise, housework.

"The suit can be made from five yards of fifty-cent serge, and two such suits will last, with good, hard wear, for a couple of years. They are easy to wash and iron.

"A light cotton union suit is all that is necessary for wearing under the suit. It is easy to get out of this costume into the tub when the work is finished, and the wearer is refreshed and brightened for having made a complete change in dress."

Of course, there is the problem of startling the grocer and butcher by appearing

at the door in bloomers; but the writer suggests that an outer skirt be kept conveniently near to slip on when the doorbell rings.

"A much neater appearance will be made than to go to the door wearing a heavy skirt bearing spots from cooking."

THESE HENS DRINK CHAMPAGNE

THERE is a flock of aristocratic chickens in Maine that can't eat their morning corn without an eye-opener, and that toss off a dry Martini every night before dinner. Their life is a grand, continual jag from one day to another, with seldom a chance to sober up between sprees.

But these strutting inebriates have a sober purpose in life. They are all hand-picked chickens, invited to be guests for life at the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station.

Raymond Pearl, who supervises the orgies, wants to find out just what will happen to the great-grandchildren of a drunken cock, says the Boston Transcript.

That characteristic's acquired during one's lifetime are not passed on to future generations is now generally accepted by scientists. So separate and different are the somatic or body cells from the reproductive or germ cells that one may do all manner of queer things to the former without having any effect on the latter.

Unquestionably, the absorption of much alcohol will break down the somatic cells. It has been credibly calculated that every cocktail costs the drinker twenty minutes of life. But, unless you absorb so much poison into the whole soma that the other cells can not possibly escape being permeated by the toxins, your evil habits will not be handed down to your children.

At least, this is the opinion of Mr. Pearl, who is trying to prove his contention by rearing perfectly sober chicks from habitually intoxicated parents.

She Saw Eliza Cross the Ice

MRS. MEEKY B. COFFIN of Cincinnati declares that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" isn't all just story. It was two years after Mrs. Coffin's marriage in 1852 that she saw the poor slave girl come across the frozen Ohio River.

"It was a cold winter and the river was choked with ice," she says. "We, my husband and I, were living with my father-in-law. I remember the late afternoon when the strange woman was brought to the house with a baby. She was crying and nearly frozen. She was hidden somewhere in the house, and I did not see her again. Several days later I heard my father-in-law telling the story of her escape over the ice in the river.

"As I was not exactly in sympathy with the practice of helping the slaves to escape front their masters, I wasn't informed very often as to what was being done along this line by my father-in-law, who was the head of the organization to aid them. But I remember Eliza very distinctly, because she and her baby were crying when they entered the house with two men. After she was safe on her way to Canada, I was told of her crossing the ice with her baby."

NO more will we have to cuss the janitor for neglecting to tend the furnace or to turn on the heat. No more will we send a hot protest to the man in overalls who has left a can of garbage for three warm days under our apartment window. The time is here when we can go to sleep in peace and quiet; for Mike, the janitor, is going to college to learn "scientific janiting"!

This long-felt want has now been met by the Oregon Agricultural College at Corvallis. This institution has just recently added to its curriculum a course for janitors that will equip them with a thorough knowledge of all the things essential to the well being of a building.

The course offered by this college is especially adapted to meet the need of the ambitious janitor, and it will go a long way toward eliminating the discomforts of an apartment-house, usually due entirely to ignorance on the part of the janitor.

A janitor should be a sort of Board of Health, a sociologist, and an expert housekeeper combined, when he has completed this series of lectures offered by the Oregon Agricultural College:

Who Stole My Car?

By ERNEST A. STEPHENS

WHO stole my car?" was the cry set up by an excited fat person who came rushing out of an office building in Broadway, New York, in the neighborhood where the lights are bright-est. "I left my Highbridge at the curb three minutes ago while I ran in to see Smith on the first floor, and now it's gone!"

Three minutes is a short time to leave a car unattended in a bustling city, but it is plenty of time for a motor-wise thief to be half a mile away with it. And the fat man's experience is but one of a hundred thousand similar shocks administered to the automobile public; in the last year.

Motor thieves are the latest class of criminals that the police authorities of the country have to contend with regularly in their line of duty; and the lucrative hauls, mounting well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, are in most cases the result of carelessness on the part of the owner of the automobile. So profitable has the car-stealing practice become that the thieves have organized themselves into bands, as disclosed by police records, with ramifications so far-reaching as to be startling. Rarely does a car stolen in New York or other large cities find a purchaser in the same city, the general practice being to drive the machine out of the State or to some distant city, where the routine of dismantling and disguising it is followed at leisure.

A large percentage of car thefts can be laid directly to the carelessness of the motorist himself. It is no uncommon thing to see a car standing for hours unattended—sometimes the engine purring away in sweet content at an unexpected treat of gasolene—while the owner pays a social call. It can almost be taken for granted that if this lengthy call is repeated often enough, the car will some day mysteriously disappear. But a motor thief does not measure his time of activity by hours. There have been any number of cases where a man has left his ear just long enough to step into a store to buy a cigar, and has come out to find his machine among the missing.

With the high annual production marks now being established by automobile manufacturers, who turn out machines identical in appearance, the finding of a stolen

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car has become more difficult, the only clue to identification in most cases being n the engine number, which the smart thief promptly obliterates, replacing it with a fictitious one. This similarity in appearance has on more than one occasion also been the cause of motorists accidentally driving off with cars that upon more careful inspection proved to belong to some one else. But it has made motor-thieving easier, as is indicated by an insurance company's report, which records that one out of every ten cars of a popular make turned out of the factory has been stolen at one time or another.

There are a number of methods by which a motor-car owner can make sure that his car will not fall into the hands of thieves. The most effective and general one, of course, is the use of the various types of special automobile locks that are now on the market. These locks can be attached to the ignition system, causing a short circuit; or they can be placed on the gasolene feed-pipe, the spark and throttle levers on the steering wheel, or on the gear-shift levers.

One veteran motorist has a car of the vintage of 1912 which has a carburetor equipped with a spray nozzle which also has a cock for the complete shutting off of the gasolene supply. By turning off this cock and disconnecting his batteries, which are located under the rear seats, he "fixes" his machine so that any one unfamiliar with it would take some time to place it in running condition.

Our Motor Service Department

Let us help to solve your problems. Write fully, and remember that you incur neither expense nor obligation. Mark your letter "Automobile Editor."

I have a lot of car trouble, and am told it is caused by the differential. What is the differential, how does it operate, and is it necessary?

C. N. P.

The differential is a combination of gears included in the transmission system of an automobile, which permits driving effort to be equally transmitted to each of the two traction wheels even when they are rotating at different speeds, as in rounding corners. Briefly described, it consists of two master gears, one of which is secured to each of the adjacent ends of the divided axle shaft, and between these is a series of pinions, carried on studs fixed in a rotating housing. These pinions mesh simultaneously with both the master gears. The driven gear, which receives the driving effort of the engine, is fixed in the housing already referred to. The differential acts as an equalizing gear, compensating for traction wheels rotating at different speeds, and accordingly it may be looked upon as a necessity.

Which is the best way of driving a speedometer, from the front wheel or from the transmission?

C. K.

Probably the better way is to gear it to the transmission, where it is practically protected from dust and dirt. When the drive is taken from the front wheel, the gears are more or less exposed and trouble may be expected. A few makes are free from this trouble, as they are of the inclosed type.

My car, a 1912 model which has been well cared for, is using a great quantity of lubricating oil. Would fitting new piston rings help?

ALPHONSE.

It depends upon the amount of wear. If the cylinders are in fairly good shape, new piston rings might effect the desired saving; but possibly it may be necessary to rebore the cylinders and fit larger pistons. Before adopting either of these methods you might try using a heavier lubricant than that which you now employ. A worn engine will often give better results with a thicker oil than that which proved most suitable when it was relatively new and the reciprocating parts worked to closer limits.

Cutting Down the Cost of Coal

WITH a large family living in a large house not very well built, and consequently hard to keep warm in cold weather, my annual coal bill has been large. In fact, though I burn soft coal, the fuel bill has not been less than $100 for several years.

A little investigation showed me that there was a wide discrepancy between the price at the mine and the price I paid, even after making allowance for the freight and a very liberal profit to the dealer. When I tried to buy at the mine, I found that the mine owners simply refused to quote me a price.

After diligent searching, however, I found a coal company willing to sell to me at mine prices plus the freight. Their profit arose from the fact that they bought at the mine by the long ton of 2240 pounds, and sold to me by the short ton of 2000 pounds; as it was a cash deal and they had no work in handling the coal, this allowed a liberal profit for bringing consumer and producer together. The local dealer quoted me a cash price of $5.50 a ton. The price at the mine was $1.85 a ton, the freight $1.22 a ton, and a local teamster was willing to deliver the coal for 50 cents a ton, making the total $3.57 a ton, or a saving of $1.93 over the dealer's price.

Accordingly I ordered a small carload. I used 22 tons myself, saving $42.46. In addition I sold the other 9 tons to a neighbor at $5 a ton, he paying the teamster. This deal netted me $17.37, making the total saving on fuel in one year $59.83.

This year the neighbor and I ordered a 15-ton carload of coal; and, as we bought

in June, we got the June price of $1.70 a ton.

I recommend this plan to all who are tired of supporting the coal dealer; the only trouble is to find a coal company that will sell by this plan, but this can be done by diligent inquiry. A club of two or more can easily take care of a carload of coal.

They Love Us—They Love Us Not

At Last Three Is Company

Dear Editor:

I am inclosing a dollar, so you can send EVERY WEEK to my best girl. You, she, and I have the same ideas. In case you publish this, don't put her name in, because then I wouldn't have any girl!

J. O. S., North Emporia, Va.

A Woman of Spirit

Dear Editor:

Your editorial on boys being put in overalls in a sand-pile interested me very much. I have a lad one year old, and that is where he is this minute. When you get around to it, write another editorial about little boys. But, no matter what it is about, granddaddy and I will enjoy it, as many of our neighbors say they do too. However, I am the only one with spirit enough to write and say so.

A DEVOTED READER, Ypsilanti, Mich.

Kind Words

Dear Editor:

I hereby hasten to inclose check to cover my subscription for the coming year to your most interesting publication. Would be lost without it. It is the honestest, coziest, most readable little magazine that ever existed. May its publishers meet with nothing but continued and unqualified success.

E. G. S., Sheldon, Ill.

Kansan Will Call for Queen

Dear Editor:

I saw your article in EVERY WEEK about Queen Emily McCoy of Pitcairn Island in the South Seas. Was it truth? Is she looking for an escort? I would really like to make such a trip. If it is real fact, advise how I may communicate with her Highness. If an interview is possible, I will come to New York.

W. B., Colby, Kan.

Rebuked

Dear Editor:

In regard to your statement that a certain woman owed her success to having "been on time for 365 mornings during the first year of her new job," do department-stores in New York keep open Sundays and holidays? We hadn't heard.

J. H. B., Philadelphia.

Absolutely

Dear Editor:

It pains me to write to you in complaint, but the last copy I received had four pages missing—7, 8, 13, and 14. Now, I don't want to appear like a kicker, but you know yourself that, when one is reading a very interesting story, to miss part of it is discouraging, not to say disheartening, at the least.

I hope you will not be offended at this, but will look with tolerance on a young man who tries to get the most out of life with the means which he has.

J. R. J., Gibson City, Ill.

While There's Life There's Soup

Dear Editor:

Please allow me to state that your heart-to-heart talks with your readers are splendid. You must be a noble man. You will enjoy everlasting popularity, and I, as one of the public of this great nation, demand that you hold your present position until you can no longer bite a crust.

W. F. J., Greenfield, Mich.

She Is Right, Mr. G.

Dear Editor:

Please send your "Eating for Health and Efficiency." It is for my husband, who will not take time to play or eat right. I read him your editorial, but he says he must do it to take care of the seven of us. We are poor and do need all he can make; but the children and I would much rather miss a meal, or a dozen, if only he would come home looking happy. I have talked to him so many times about going on a little trip. If he keeps on he will have to give up long before his time; but I can not make him see it.

Mrs. J. G., Detroit, Mich.

At-a-Lady

Dear Editor:

I can not put in words the pleasure my family have in reading your magazine. I wish you could see us Sunday nights. Papa gets his pipe, my boy lies on the lounge, and I read the magazine to them from cover to cover. Nothing but sickness ever spoils our Sunday evening. This is the first time I ever dared write an editor.

Mrs. H., Methuen, Mass.

We'll Do Another on Walking

Dear Editor:

I have an every-day, ordinary-girl exterior that I am obliged to live down to; but inside I am a most wildly exciting mixture of artist, writer, adventuress, nature lover, dreamer, and scholar. All this apropos of your editorial on the joys of caravaning. 1 would love to gallivant off 'cross country; but what if you have only $10? It makes me cross for a New York editor to sit up and say how simple it would be. There—I feel better. Grouch out of my system.

E. W. P.

Shall We Do This?—

Dear Editor:

I enjoy your magazine very much, especially the special items on how people have made good in their various occupations; but it's a shame to waste two whole pages on pictures. Wouldn't it be a good idea to use that space for a sequel to that great story, "The Wall Street Girl"?

F. R. D., Brockton, Mass.

—Or This?

Dear Editor:

Your picture pages are the best thing in your magazine. Why not have a couple more? Cut down on the stories, if necessary. Every one I have talked to says the same thing.

K. B. R., Ireland, Minn.

Not Unless We Give Up Eating

Dear Editor:

Your magazine is simply fine, and I wish some of the splendid things you say could be put in electric lights and strung all over New York. Hoping you will be able to keep it free from ads, I remain,

Mrs. H. C. A., Westfield, N. J.

Some One Who Cared

Dear Editor:

I took your magazine, and liked it so well that there are now fourteen people taking it in the laundry where I am employed. Only you should have poetry. I am sending a little poem written and composed by myself.

A. W., Rochester, N.Y.

Space permits us to quote only a few bits from Miss W's poem, "Some One Who Cared":

Let us remember, when things go wrong again,
Not to spite it on loved ones and cause them pain. . . .
There may come a time when you'll lose that dear one;
Then, try as you may, you can not atone.
For the one with whom joys and sorrows you've shared
Is the one whom you'll miss—the Some One Who Cared.