Of Course There Is a Santa Claus

Dear Editor: Do you really think there is a Santa Claus? My mother says there is. A girl in the seventh grade told me there isn't any Santa Claus. Do you really think there is any Santa Claus? MARION THAYER (age seven).

DO I think there is a Santa Claus?

Why, Marion, I know it.

I have had four times as many Christmases as you, and every single Christmas Santa Claus has remembered me. Do you think I would be ungrateful to him now by pretending to believe any stories that any girl in the seventh grade might tell?

Of course I have never seen Santa Claus. I don't want to see him. It would take all the fun away from Christmas if I ever did.

But just because I never saw him—what does that signify?

I never saw electricity. But I can turn a button and the light goes on, and I know electricity is there, even if I don't see it.

I know that girl in the seventh grade, or at least I know her kind. And I don't like her, Marion. I advise you to keep away from her.

She will meet you some day, when you are engaged to be married. And you will tell her that your boy is the most wonderful boy in the world, and that you know you are going to be happy for ever and ever.

And she will pull a long face and answer: "Don't be too sure. You'll fell different after you have been married a few years."

But you won't feel different, Marion. It's only folks that don't believe in Santa Claus that feel different. You and I—we'll just go on feeling the same happy way as long as we live.

And some time you'll meet that girl who has lost her faith in Santa Claus, and you'll find that a terrible thing has happened to her. She has lost her faith in women and in men.

It seems impossible, doesn't it?

You and I know that women are pure and clean and sweet, just like your mother—all except witches, of course, and bad fairies.

And men are strong and handsome and noble, like your father—all except pirates and robbers that live on desert islands.

We love women and men, you and I, because we know how good they are, and how kind, in spite of the troubles they have.

But some of the girls who don't believe in Santa Claus grow up and don't believe in men and women, either.

And sometimes—sometimes those girls grow up and don't even believe in angels and in God.

I don't see how they dare to go to bed in the dark.

You and I, when we go, we know that angels are right there all night, just watching all the time we sleep.

It must be terrible not to believe in angels. I hate to think of it, don't you?

You mother is right, Marion, and don't you ever doubt it. And I'm right. And that girl in the seventh grade is wrong.

The best things in your whole like—love, and faith, and friendship, and trust, and God—are things you never see.

But they're the only things worth believing in. Life doesn't mean very mush when they begin to disappear.

You and I won't let them begin to disappear. Not one of them. Not even good old Santa Claus.

I hang up my stocking every year, Marion. All sensible people do. It's only the foolish ones, who say "seeing's believing," that don't.

And they're awfully foolish, Marion. I wouldn't give anything for the things I can see in life compared with the things that I never can see.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

DOES IT PAY A BUSINESS MAN TO MARRY?

By JAMES H. COLLINS

Illustration by James Montgomery Flagg

THE foreman of a gang of bricklayers was pushing along work on a skyscraper wall. His eye caught a woman watching the job from the sidewalk. She seemed to be much interested. To get a closer view, she picked her way among mortar beds and lumber piles, and then took out pad and pencil and began to write something. The foreman sauntered over, curious.

"Will you tell me what you are looking at, ma'am?" he asked respectfully.

"I'm just making a sketch of that bond," was her reply. "It's a dandy for good looks and simplicity, and my husband will be glad to have it for his book on brickwork. He's writing a chapter on pattern bonds, with the first collection made in years."

"Jim," said the foreman, when she was gone, "I've been doin' brickwork thirty years. And that's the first time ever I heard of a woman knowin' anything about brick bonds."

The book came out. This bond went into it, along with others sketched by the author's wife. Right in your own town you may be able to see the influence of that book. For a pattern bond is just a checkerboard arrangement of bricks in two colors; and since this book appeared architects everywhere have been using them to add a little inexpensive beauty to blank walls.

Is it worth while for a business man to have a wife?

That depends largely on the wife.

If she can be a good pal, entering into his business interests, it will be very much worth while. If she will not take the trouble to follow him in these matters, perhaps business will eventually become his first wife and she will take second place.

In a recent book on the philosophy of life, human interests are divided into four things—Work, Play, Love, Worship.

Work is masculine—the man's big interest. Many men get through life pretty much on work alone. Love and play are more feminine, and give the woman two interests by which to hold a man. If she can keep him absorbed in one or both, work may not be so formidable a competitor. But it will be better for her, and for her husband too, if she can stand squarely on work and share that too.

Seeing Through His Wife's Eyes

GENERALLY speaking, women have a dread of business. It seems so technical, dry, incomprehensible.

But actually it is not so. For business comes down to human service in the end, and all of its products and problems wind up with people. The woman's understanding and liking of people will give her many a clue to her husband's business affairs, and enable her to share and help.

She may be able to help just by looking at a situation through a woman's eyes.

A typewriter salesman found difficulty in developing territory for a new writing machine, because each sale had to be made twice. First he would go to the business man, demonstrate the technical points, and pave the way for a sale. But then he had to sell the machine to the girls who were to operate it; and here he got along badly. The office man could be won by mechanical demonstration; but not the girls. They disliked learning a new machine, preferred the ones they were used to, and met his arguments with a woman's "because."

He talked this over with his wife. She looked at his serious, logical face, remembered how it had been hard for him to drop reason even when he was making love to her, and rumpled his hair.

"You mustn't reason with women," said she. "Women feel. Instead of all this explanation, just try a little praise and encouragement. Compliment them on their cleverness, assure them they can learn anything if they set themselves to it, get them on your side of the sale, and do it first!"

That advice, faithfully followed, was better than a sales manual. In a year his machine was strongly established, and women were helping him make sales because—he was such a nice man!

What Is "Woman's Intuition"?

WOMAN'S intuition often helps a business man. But it must be the real thing, not snap prejudice, which is frequently mistaken for instinctive insight into people, and which merely closes the mind.

A New York merchandise man wanted to get into business for himself, and was enthusiastic over a partnership proposal made to him by an importer. They met to discuss details over a dinner. The merchandise man's wife went along. While her husband was intent on the project she weighed the man, and, when they were alone, advised against having anything to do with him. There was some prejudice in her decision because of the importer's manner toward her. But that did not count so much, she was

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sure, as the yellow streak she saw in his nature.

"You are the best judge of his proposition," she said; "but nothing good or lasting can be built with that man, because he's not square."

Her husband followed her advice, and within less than a year it developed that she was right: for that importer exploited another partner for the sake of his connections and savings, and both went to prison.

Women Lend Enthusiasm

EVEN a little old-fashioned womanly sympathy from the wife who is a genuine comrade is necessary to a business man at times. Business men are supposed to be cool and calculating. But they get into tight corners oftener than one would suspect, get knocked down temperamentally, and have worries that obsess and keep them awake nights. Plans go wrong, subordinates fall short of expectations, competitors press in, details go awry. There are times when a business man is only part of himself, and can hardly see beyond the end of his nose. Then he needs somebody to check worry, rekindle hope and enthusiasm, look off into the distance and away into the future, and help him be the whole of himself again. That is a woman's job.

Any wife can readily enter into her husband's business interests if she will take the trouble. And it is not much trouble. Nothing in the way of technicalities need balk her. Half the time she might give to the preparation of themes to be read before a woman's club, if spent reading the trade journals and technical books pertaining to her husband's work, will give her a good grasp of what he is doing and thinking about every day.

Business is always based on the needs of human beings, and it is always going somewhere. Perfectly stunning problems and controversies arise in every trade and profession, far more interesting than politics, and often more interesting than a murder trial, because so directly involved with one's own bread and butter. These affairs can all be followed in the printed matter about a given line of business, and there is nothing in a woman's mentality that prevents her understanding them, because thousands of women already understand them as workers.

It is a curious fact about the knottier technical points that the technical man himself, who would talk or write abstrusely to another technical chap, will clear them up in every-day terms in explaining them to a child. If an interested woman takes pains to catch enough of the drift of a man's work through reading, so that she can ask intelligent questions, she will lay the foundation for a comradeship of work, and soon have sound knowledge.

An air-brake specialist wrote: "The time elapsing from the instant the valve mechanism on a car responds to the impulses transmitted to it through the brake-pipe, until the beginning of pressure development in the brake cylinder, delays the starting of effective braking correspondingly on each car."

"John, what does that mean?" asked his wife.

"It means that if you want to stop a subway train quicker and more smoothly than it was ever stopped before," replied John, "the brakes on each car must be applied at the same instant. It also means that if we can't do it the capacity of the subway will not be increased, and our company will lose a big contract."

How One Woman Helped

THE wife of a department-store buyer picked up some dry-goods journals thrown away by her husband. They contained advance fashion notes that interested her, and these led her into other dry-goods subjects. Costs of selling, delivering, and exchanging goods, matters with which she was familiar as an individual shopper, here ran into massed totals that made serious business problems. Some of the problems fell right in her own husband's department, for he had the piece goods, and these were being hurt by ready-to-wear garments.

One day she read an article on the influence of paper patterns in selling piece goods and trimmings. It told of a buyer in another city who had built up these lines by placing the paper patterns near the entrance of the store. Every pattern sold led to the sale of about five dollars' worth of dress materials. That city was her home town, and she knew the buyer. On her vacation a month later she investigated his methods. When she got home, she went about among the dressmakers, learning comparative costs of ready-made and tailored gowns.

By and by she had enough first-hand information to discuss the subject with her husband, and through her suggestion he persuaded the store proprietor to let him conduct a special sale of piece goods and paper patterns in combination, with estimated costs of making up gowns, and the backing of the dressmakers. This sale was so successful that it led to a rearrangement of that buyer's department, with paper patterns under his control, and near a door. Within a year he was able to make such a good showing that he got a better position with a big city store.

Business is just work.

Work is as human as play or love, and in most people's lives a good deal more constant. If a woman assumes that business is wholly removed from plain, every-day interests of people, and therefore will not venture to get close to her husband's business affairs, it might not pay to marry her, or a man might be sorry if he did. But if she will take the trouble to form a comradeship of work, applying her natural intelligence to the job, and adding her peculiarly feminine faculties to business matters, she will strengthen her husband and herself.

Ships that Commit Suicide

By GEORGE F. WORTS

WHEN you stand on Brooklyn Bridge, New York, watching a deeply laden freighter being snaked down to sea behind a consort of tugs, you picture her warping into Havre or Rio Janeiro or Liverpool a few brief weeks later. The captain wishes he could share your optimism. One ship in every two hundred that start on a long journey is either never reported, or she is salvaged under trying circumstances. This record does not take into account the hazard of war.

All sailors do not die at their posts, but so many of them do that if your son sets his heart on a seafaring career, try to persuade him to become an aviator instead. Even on the Great Lakes, which are held in contempt by salt-water sailors, more than three thousand accidents have happened in the last ten years of record.

Modern science has helped tremendously in making the sea safe; but it has added danger in almost the same ratio by devising highly dangerous cargoes. Columbus had a small boat, but he did not carry hand grenades. Magellan circumnavigated the globe with ships that would hardly pass inspection for river duty now; but he did not have to carry unslaked lime. Marquette dared the treacherous waters of Lake Huron in a canoe, but he was not carrying metallic sodium.

Under the jurisdiction of the Government Steamship Service, 232 ship accidents were investigated in 1914, including fires at sea, foundering, boiler explosions, collisions, and miscellaneous casualties.

It was a snarling sea that wound up the career of the steamer Guillemot, of London. A few nights before Christmas in 1911, she was snoring down the Bay of Biscay, laden as a good ship never should be laden. Below decks a cargo was stowed to her hatch covers. On the forward deck, 90 barrels of tallow and 123 drums of oil were lashed. In the midst of the tallow and oil a spare propeller wheel was cleated down. The men who attended to its cleating were quite sure it could not be shaken loose. Perhaps they were longshoremen.

While the Guillemot waged battle with the Bay of Biscay, the propeller wheel broke loose from its fastening and started off on a little voyage of its own. As the Malays would say, it ran amuck. It heaved across the deck as the bows plunged, and smashed a barrel of tallow. As the bows reared upward the wheel was tossed as if it were a pebble, and hurled against a cask of oil. The oil and tallow spilled over the planking, and the deck became so slippery that the wheel skidded and slid as if on ball bearings, cracking open one barrel after another of the greasy fluids.

The crew was ordered to capture the runaway wheel. They answered heroically enough; but, one by one, they went down, slipping and sprawling upon the oily deck. By this time the devastating wheel had done serious harm to the vessel herself. Hatch covers were cracked, and the bows, dipping like a submarine under the overload of cargo, shipped masses of green water, which cascaded into the hold.

When the pumps were manned, the valves were helplessly clogged with tallow, and the Guillemot went to the bottom, a tribute to careless commerce or, let us say, an unfortunate specimen of modern sea romance.

The foundering of the Guillemot typifies, as clearly as any wreck of modern times, the hazards of seafaring under the rules that Neptune has laid down for the steamer. Reefs, doldrums, and gales have less terror for the "sea mechanic" than an unlashed spare propeller.

Great Lake freighters often get into unique difficulties—difficulties that can be laid at the feet of the god of commerce. In the sheltered waters of Lake Michigan more than three thousand accidents occurred to ships between the years 1901 and 1910. Lake freighters are long and thin. Often they break in half, due to stress of waves and badly distributed cargo.

Yet Great Lake freighters are not wrecked by breaking in half nearly so often as they are wrecked by a shifting cargo. The cargo holds are huge iron tanks. In a heavy sea "slippery cargoes," such as flaxseed, often shift to port or starboard as the vessel veers in changing her course, and a slow capsizing, a rush to the life-boats, are the usual consequences.

Consider also the lime-carriers of Rockland, Maine. These ships are manned by the hardiest seafarers to be found on any coast. When a lime boat springs a leak, or when a few gallons of bilge water finds its way into the treacherous cargo, she goes up in smoke. Unslaked lime starts a fire that nothing can quench. Metallic sodium is another cargo not very popular with the men who go down to the sea in ships.

The Marie Celeste gave us one of the it perpetual mysteries of the sea which read something after this fashion:

She was found deserted with all sails set, making seaway in a zigzag manner, with her wheel unlashed. Meat, freshly cut, reposed alongside the skillet in the galley. The log had disappeared. No records were left. No trace of the crew was ever found.

The latest and most plausible explanation of the abandoned Marie Celeste came from the lips of an old Scots captain who, when I met him, owned and ran a little tramp schooner among the South Pacific islands. The Marie Celeste, declared he, was laden with casks of alcohol, which leaked, and the fumes, spurting through the hatch seams, resembled live flames, which frightened the crew away.

The old-fashioned dangers of the sea still exist in some parts of the world. Not without reason did Lloyds, before the war, charge the highest sea-insurance rates for ships that took the inland passage to Skagway, Alaska. The inland, or island passage, is alive with submerged pinnacle rocks. Until recently the charting of each pinnacle meant the loss of a ship; for in no other way could a pinnacle be discovered.

The State of California left the Gambier Bay cannery dock in calm water, and four minutes later struck a pinnacles and foundered. This dangerous channel is now being charted, and the most treacherous pinnacles dynamited.

Gales and desert islands and pinnacle rocks will continue to play some part in the romance of the sea. But it seems probable that the adventuresome tales told by the mariner of the future will be based more and more upon such incidents as the runaway propeller wheel and the cargo of sodium; because from such commercialized materials as these is the real story of the sea now being written.

A Match for Myrtie

By CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND

THE row with ma started like this: She says to me, "That dirty pipe don't match this here Victoria, and I hain't goin' to be made no laughin'-stock. What d'you s'pose the coachman thinks, eh? Say. Him up there in his livery, a-lookin' like he worked for a duke, and you settin' back here in the mauve upholstered seat a-smokin' a dirty corn-cob."

"Ma," says I, "I smoked corn-cobs long before ever I rode in one of these here carriages. I kin git along without ridin', but I can't git along without smokin'."

"Then," says she, "smoke a cigar—or cigarettes."

That made me mad. I hain't been so mad since the day I licked Dennis Cassidy for calling me a cabby—me that was as good a teamster as ever handled the lines in the whole upper chunk of the State of Michigan. A cabby he calls me; and right there I got down off my load of packing-boxes and fixed him so's he couldn't say cabby again for ten days without strainin' it through a bandage put on at the hospital.

Cigarettes, says ma. Me, Jake Cooper, fifty-nine year old, to be made such a proposal to by his own lawful wedded wife! Cigarettes!

"Maybe," says I, "you perfer them with gold ends and blue initials onto 'em."

"The nicest folks smokes that kind," says she.

"The nicest folks I know in this town," says I, "is Kamper, that runs the lager beer saloon half a mile from here, and Hagan, the cop. Outside of them I can't say as I know many."

Which was God's own truth, too. Me, I'm the Jake Cooper that went huntin' deer one day, a decent truckman, and come back ten days afterwards with so much money it cost me all my friends, and balled ma all up with society notions, and threatened my corn-cob, and barred me from eatin' in my shirt-sleeves, and left me so doggone lonesome I buy these here monologue records for the phonograph and talk back to 'em, pertendin' I got company. That's me.

If I had it to do ag'in, stumblin' onto that copper mine, I'd walk over it soft-footed as a pussy; and if anybody tried to pry out of me that I'd discovered it, I'd give him the maulin' of his life. You bet! And here it was endin' up with ma suggestin' cigarettes.

TWO million, and then some, was the money they paid me. Straight off ma wasn't satisfied with no cottage with a mortgage on it. Says she, we got our daughter to think of, and we got to git out of here. So she sets herself to thinkin', and picks out the town where we live, and picks out the swellest street in the town, and the swellest lot on the street, and hires a young man to build her a lunatic asylum onto it. That's what it is. 'Tain't no home. It's made out of this here marble with streaks into it that looks like castile soap—and I got to live there.

Then she gits her a butler and servants (she calls 'em), and other servants to be servants to the servants, and automobiles, and then this here Victoria. She says automobiles is common and noo-voo Ritchey. If they're that, I don't blame her; for I hain't never known a Ritchey that amounted to a darn. Four Ritchey brothers I licked in one rough-house in Calumet of a summer's evenin'. Four. And me scarcely scratched. And what does the Victoria lead to? Why, to this here cigarette suggestion!

"Ma," says I, "you've went perty far and perty sudden, and I hain't said no word. Two year I've stood by and sat by, gittin' lonesomer every day, while you've blowed money right and left, up and down, and sideways and wideways for marble lunatic asylums and open-faced hacks, and sendin' Myrtie off to one of them schools so's she couldn't associate with none but millionaires' daughters and git so eddicated she was ashamed if the cuff of her old dad's red flannel shirt stuck down an inch past his coat-sleeve.

"And you've laid in enough clothes and hats to stock a shop—which I hain't no objection to if they was sich as Sairy Cooper ought to be seen in, but hain't. Next," says I, "you'll be wearin' tights and goin' in bathin' on the beach. It makes me sick," says I, "that's what. But I hain't said no word—not till now. But, ma, when you come at me with cigarettes, then you're crowdin' the mourners off'n the bench. I don't smoke no cigarettes. See? And I don't quit smokin', and I don't quit smokin' this here i-dentical

corn-cob pipe when and where and how and as often as I doggone want to."

And, just to show her, I pulled it out of my pocket then and there, and filled it.

"Furthermore," says I, "shirt-sleeves goes. This evenin' I set onto our front porch with my feet up and my coat off. This here," says I, "is a strike, or a revolution, or somethin', and don't you forgit it."

WELL, ma she knows me perty well, so she didn't say much more, but jest sniffled some, and muttered about what must them be thinkin' that was witnessin' the horrid spectacle, and how was she ever goin' to git Myrtie married off to some duke or king or judge or mayor or somethin' fancy and startlin' when recorded in the paper.

"Ma," says I, "when it comes to marryin' off Myrtie, her pa is goin' to be present with his ears standin' erect. Don't worrit none about her. If she's as perty as she was when I seen her last, dum near a year ago, there'll be young fellers a-fightin' on our doorstep every night."

"Pa," says she, "you're impossible."

"Maybe," says I, "I be; but, if I be, then you kin lay your last dollar the impossible 's happened for once."

And that ended the row.

It kind of set me to thinkin' though, what with ma so eager to git Myrtie married, and with Myrtie gittin' taught so much there wouldn't be no room left for them valuable statistics contained in the cook-book, and likewise her gettin' around to an age where girls is beginnin' to take sly looks at every boy they meet up with, and wonder how he'd do. Yes, I says to myself, Jake, you sure got to draw about five cards in this here game, and slip an ace up your sleeve if it kin be done convenient.

But there wasn't anythin' to be done till Myrtie got done collectin' millionaire manners and eddication, which was due to happen in three-four weeks. That is, there wasn't much to do. But I done what I could, lookin' over a few boys I'd seen around. There was Dinny Hagan, already a sergeant on the force, though his father never got past walkin' a beat. And there was young Schwartz, that I got acquainted with through the neat and ready way he licked a bigger man that says to him one Englishman was as good as three Dutch. There was Ham Perry, though I held it ag'in' him that he drove a motor-truck and not horses. And there was a couple of others. But I didn't make no pick. I just says to myself that I'll let Myrtie look 'em over and grab off the one that suits her, pervidin' also he suits me. And there the thing rested.

MYRTIE she come home at last, and ma and me and the coachman and the Victoria went to meet her. I sort of figgered we ought to take along the butler and a couple of footmen to make up a regular party. We could 'a' done it as well as not—there was room. But ma wouldn't have it. She wouldn't even let me take along the chauffeur, who was a decent sort of young fellow and good-looking.

But you'd have thought I'd done a murder, the way ma looked and talked.

"But," says I, "young folks likes young folks. I'll bet Myrtie 'u'd be glad to have Jim along. She could git acquainted on the way home, and we could have him set right down to dinner with us, and it 'u'd be real sociable like."

"Jake," says ma, "it hain't ever goin' to be possible for me to make nothin' of you. Don't you know chauffeurs hain't in our class no more? Why," says she, "I'm surprised you hain't bringin' a motorman home to dinner some day."

"'Twouldn't be the first motorman you ever et with," says I, "and I mind the day you wisht I'd git a job handlin' a controllin' lever."

"Them days is past," says she.

"Yes," says I; "and now I don't git to eat with nobody. Them I used to know hain't good enough, and them that's good enough don't have nothin' to do with me. Where do I git off, I'd like to know?"

"With your money," says she, "you kin know whoever you want to."

"Fine," says I. "I been livin' in this lunatic asylum nigh onto a year, and nobody's crossed the threshold that wasn't sellin' somethin' or beggin'. Ma," says I, "I've knowed a story about a Dutchman and an Englishman and an Irishman for seven months, and I hain't had a soul to tell it to. What kind of a life is that, anyhow?"

"Come on," says she, "or Myrtie's train'll be in."

So off we goes to the depot, settin' up in that there soup-dish on wheels, with my coat on and a flower in my buttonhole. I dunno when I was so ashamed of myself.

WHEN Myrtie got off the train, lookin' eddicated and dressed up like the folks that lived near us but wasn't neighbors, I was afraid for a minute, and didn't know what to do. But she smiled down off'n the car-step at me, and I seen she wasn't ashamed of me; so I jest up and grabbed her in my arms like I used to, and smacked her square on the lips, and she smacked back.

Ma says, "Jake!" horrified like. But Myrtie she give me another kiss, and patted my back, and then kissed her ma. My gosh, but she was perty, and that classy you wouldn't believe it. Honest, she didn't look no more like she was a ex-truck-driver's daughter than the Queen of Sheeby. She wasn't so awful tall, but she had a sort of dignified look to her, and her eyes was as brown as ever and bright, and her cheeks was as red, and she stepped as dainty as ever a thoroughbred horse I see at any fair.

When we got into the Victoria, she sort of pushed one of her hands into one of mine and squeezed it and says: "My, it's good to see you again, dad. Why didn't you ever come to see me at school?"

"Your ma wouldn't let me," says I.

"Why?" says she.

"She was afraid," says I, "that I'd act wrong, somehow—maybe smoke my corn-cob or somethin', and make you ashamed before all them millionaires' daughters."

"But I wanted you to come," says she, "and the girls were all crazy to see you.

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I told them everything about you I could remember. Why," says she, "I was proud of you, dad."

"G'wan," says I, sort of husky, and not thinkin' of anythin' else that sounded good to say.

"Myrtie," says her ma, "you didn't tell them girls your pa used to be a truck-driver! "

"Of course," says Myrtie; "and I told them about his discovering the copper mine, and everything." She squeezed my hand again and says: "I'd like to know what there is to be ashamed of about that?"

"I dunno," says I; "but your ma's got me feelin' as if truck-drivin' was some sort of a crime, like stealin' a pair of twins off'n somebody's front porch."

"Myrtie," says ma, "you're as bad as him."

"She don't smoke no corn-cob pipe," says I, and then changed the subject. "Your ma's set strong on marryin' you to royalty, or anyhow to an alderman or a millionaire," says I. "That's what ails her. She's scairt I'll butt in and spoil your chances."

MYRTIE she looks at me sort of frightened, and her cheeks was first red and then pale. She made a quick little noise like the start of a sob, and her hand that was in mine grabbed a-hold hard.

"I—" she says, and stopped. Then she laughed a little and says: "Why, dad, I don't want to marry anybody like that."

"You don't, eh?" says her ma, sharp like. "Who do you want to marry, I'd like to be told? A waiter, maybe?"

"Are you in such a hurry to get rid of me?" says Myrtie. "I'd like to stay home with you and dad for a while, if you'll let me."

"You bet we will," says I, and scowled at her ma as fierce as I could. I couldn't see no sense to worryin' Myrtie on her first day home, before she'd even got to the house and seen the butler and them folks. "You can visit with your ma and me as long as you want to; and then, if you want to play around with young folks, I'll drag in some young fellows I got my eye on. But don't you worry a mite about marryin'. I won't have it."

"I'm crazy to see the new house," says she. "The last time I saw it there wasn't anything but walls."

"We got more'n walls now." says I. "We got floors I dassen't walk on without takin' off my shoes, and hand-made paintin's on the walls, and church winders. If there was a bar in the cellar we'd be a reg'lar hotel. We got every thin' that ain't in a home. The worst of it is, I can't git them butlers and footmen and sich to set down and talk to me."

"The idee!" says ma.

"I'll talk to you, dad," says Myrtie.

Which she done. For a month Myrtie and me spent most of our time together, either settin' in the Dago garden where there was a puddle with flowers a-growin' in it, or ridin' in an automobile or somethin'. And, no matter where I was, she never made a kick what I done. I almost got reconciled to bein' rich.

BUT a month for a young girl with nobody to talk to but her old dad, with no young folks there exceptin' chauffeurs and sich, that ma said didn't belong to our lodge, and she'll begin to git lonesome. I could see her begin to look kind of uneasy, and right off I knowed she was feelin' the need of some of this here society her ma was always talkin' about.

So, one day, I hikes off to the station to see if Dinny Hagan was there, and he was, lookin' fine and big in a new uniform.

"Dinny," says I, "be you on duty tonight?"

"No," says he.

"Are your engagements and opportunities," says I, usin' choice language that ma would be proud of, "sich as to permit you minglin' in society?"

"They are," says he.

"Then," says I, "you're goin' to call on a young lady," I says, "which is lonesome," says I, "on account of her daddy bein' a millionaire and nobody to play with. She's a girl," says I, "that any cop might darn well be proud to go walkin' out with, even if he was a lieutenant or even a cap'n. I know," says I, "'cause she's my daughter."

"Has she seen me?" says he, sort of throwin' out his chest.

"She's been spared that so far," says I, thinkin' to take him down a peg. I wasn't goin' to have any young spriggins thinkin' my girl was runnin' after him. "This is my own notion," says I. "You'll come at eight o'clock, which is a stylish hour," says I.

I didn't say anythin' to Myrtle or ma; but along toward eight I hung around the front end of the asylum, keepin' my eye peeled for Dinny. Perty soon he comes along and stops at the gate, doubtful like. Then he comes through and heads around to the back door.

"Hey, Dinny," says I from the window, "you hain't callin' on the cook." And I wriggled my finger at him. He blushed, and felt of his collar, and come in.

"Set," says I, leadin' him into one of them hand-painted rooms and motionin' towards a chair. "Put your feet up and be comfortable."

Then I went to the stairs and hollered up:

"Myrtie, there's a young feller to call on you."

It seems like that wasn't the way to do it. I should have had one of them boys in uniform I was payin' wages to prance up the stairs with a card on an ash-tray. Ma she told me so pointed.

In a minute Myrtle came to the stairs soft, and looked over and motioned to me. I knowed what she wanted. It was information. So I give it to her.

"It's Dinny Hagan, the cop," says I. "Come on down."

She come, and I pushed her into that room where Dinny was settin' on the edge of his chair like he was afraid somebody was goin' to stick a pin up through the bottom of it.

"Dinny," says I, "this is her—Myrtie. Myrtie, this here big lummux in the uniform is Dinny. He hain't much for looks," says I, "but he's got a punch in both hands and his chances on the force is good. I fetched him to play with you. Nothin' serious," says I, "unless you say the word. See? Though," says I, "from what I've seen of Dinny, I wouldn't object to him none as a son-in-law."

Myrtie blushed a little, and sort of shot a look at me out of the corner of her eye, so I was scairt maybe I'd done somethin' she didn't like. But I guess I was mistook, for she walked over to Dinny and stuck out her hand and says:

"I'm always glad to know any friends of dad's. He neglected to mention your last name, didn't he?"

"Oh," says he, "Dinny's all right. I hain't used to bein' called Mister Hagan. Jest call me Dinny, Miss."

"Now," says I, "I'm goin' down in the cellar clost to the ash-hole and smoke. Remember, Myrtie," says I, "my intentions is only to give you pleasure. Nothin' serious intended."

And with that I went out and left them.

Next mornin' before Myrtie was up I sneaked around to the station to see how it come out. Dinny was there.

"Well?" says I.

"Mr. Cooper," says he, serious as a judge givin' thirty days and costs, "you're buttin' into somethin' that you hain't able to manage. Not meanin' no disrespect, neither. For me," says he, "I'm obliged to you for takin' me to see your daughter—who," he says, "is as fine a lady as I ever seen; and in the line of duty," says he, "I've seen sev'ral. You can tell 'em," says he, "by their bein' kind and considerin' the feelin's even of a cop," he says, "and by their treatin' you like you was a human bein' instead of a stuffed uniform. Your daughter's like that," says he, "and she done her best to make me feel like I hadn't waked up in the middle of a dance-hall in my underclothes. Yes, sir; she talked to me about things I could give an answer to, and never let on she thought she was better'n me, or that I was different to them she's used to minglin' with."

"Hum," says I.

"But," says he, "I knowed I wasn't no more fitted to make a call on her than a donkey is to recite a poem," he says. "Not that she made me feel it. But," says he, "she's a lady—a real one; and me—I'm a cop, with the manners and the eddication of a cop. Them two kinds can like each other, and I kin look up to admire her; but as for bein' on a familiar footin', Mr. Cooper, it hain't able to be done."

"Hum," says I ag'in. "Maybe I balled it up, but I don't see how. You kin be friends with me, can't you, Dinny?"

"Sure," says he.

"Then why not with my daughter?" says I.

"Because," says he, "she's moved on to where you nor me can't follow."

"Damn that copper mine," says I. "I wisht I was up on the seat of my truck ag'in. . . . D'you think that risin' young pug Ham Perry 'u'd do better'n you?"

"Worse," says Dinny. "His neck's rougher'n mine. It's a feller with this here now culture and refinement you got to be lookin' out for. Not no dude," says he, "but one of them real fellers, like maybe the Commissioner. See?"

"I don't know none," says I.

"Then," he says, "you better keep out of it and tend to your own business."

"I won't have her marryin' no dub in a white shirt with perfume onto him that says 'bawth' when he means 'bath,' and that wouldn't know enough to put up his dukes if somebody slapped his face. No, sir," says I; "there's other generations to think about, and the feller that puts me in the way of bein' a granddad has got to contribute somethin' besides the address of a swell tailor. Good mornin', Dinny," says I.

WHEN I got home I says to Myrtie, "How'd it come off?"

"We had a very pleasant evening, dad," she says. "It was good of you to try to—to keep me from being—lonesome."

Not a word out of her, you see, about Dinny not bein' fit, and that. Wouldn't hurt her old dad's feelin's. Not her.

That very afternoon ma come to me all excited like, puffin' and flushin', and her eyes flashin' like they do when she's follerin' the war-path.

"Jake Cooper," says she, "Myrtie gits letters."

"Huh," says I. "Do tell."

"Two or three a week," ma says, like she was announcin' the butler had stole the grand pianny and was goin' to set fire to the winder curtains.

"The more she gits," says I, "the more she has to read, and the less time she's got to be lonesome in."

"They're from a man," says ma, utterin' the word like she would say smallpox.

I sort of pricked up my ears.

"Man?" says I. "Same man—all of 'em?"

"Yes," says she.

"Maybe," says I, "it's one of them furrin dukes or lords that she might have got acquainted with off to school."

Ma sort of brightened up at that, and says what made me think so. But I told her I wasn't thinkin'—only talkin'.

"If it was," says I, "or if I thought it was, I'd chuck off my coat and roll up my sleeves, and that there duke and me would have an argument."

"I don't believe it's no duke," she says. "Myrtie 'u'd 'a' mentioned seen' one."

"I'll find out," says I. And when ma started to follow me up, I says: "Not you—me. This here's goin' to be done pleasant and sociable. There hain't goin' to be no rough-house like you're apt to raise. I," says I, "kin handle this here delicate situation."

I DIDN'T want to frighten Myrtie none, or make her think I was mad about it; so I opened up gentle like.

"Who in hell," says I, "is the feller you're gittin' all the mail from?"

"Why," says she, puttin' her hand quick to her throat, "he's a young man I met at school. He's a Yale man."

"Works in a lock factory?" says I, growin' hopeful.

"Yale College," says she.

"Oh," says I. "One of them college boys, eh? Considerable eddicated up, and all that?"

She didn't say anythin'.

"How'd you meet him?" says I.

"My room-mate's brother brought him over."

"Swell dresser?" says I.

"He always dressed very nicely, and acted very nicely, too."

"Tell me," says I, fearin' the worst, "did he play this here college game where they wear white panties and hit a leetle rubber ball acrost a fish-net?"

"He's captain of the Yale team," says she.

"My Gawd!" says I.

"And he's captain of the football team, too," says she.

"Have a heart," says I. "Is he of noble blood?" I says.

"I don't know anything about his family," she says.

"But," says I, "he didn't hold out on his name, did he? You know that, eh?"

"It's Peter," says she—and then got all confused and fidgety and says, "I mean Peter Vance."

"Myrtie," says I, "be you engaged to

---

marry this here feller that plays the game with white panties?"

"No," said she; "if I had been I'd have told you."

"Hasn't he asked you?" says I.

"No," says she.

"Then," says I, "it hain't as bad as your ma and me feared. But," says I, "we don't like him, and we hain't goin' to have it. No, sir. Your ma won't have him because he hain't got noble blood in his veins, and I won't have him 'cause he's one of these here simperin' dudes that plays that fish-net game and that there other game you mentioned. When you marry," says I, "it'll be a reg'lar feller that kin take you to a dance and lick anybody he thinks dances with you too many times. That's the kind the Cooper girls marries," says I.

She sort of smiled, but it was a pale smile.

"I think Peter could manage," says she.

"To be sure," says I. "Prob'ly if he got all het up he'd take one of them rubber balls he plays with and mangle the other feller all up by bouncin' it off'n his head." I says this as sarcastic as I knowed how.

"You don't know Peter," she says, as proud as could be. "Wait till you see him."

"Wait till I do," says I, with meanin'.

"It won't be long," says she.

"He's comin' here?" says I.

"His football team plays our State University here next Saturday."

"Huh!" says I. "What does he do besides play them games?"

"Waits on table," says she.

"What?" says I.

"Waits on table in one of the college eating clubs."

"A waiter!" says I. "And here a cop hain't good enough for you. Say, maybe I hain't got this right, but I figgered a cop was a lot nearer to the class of a duke than a waiter."

"Oh, daddy," says she, "you don't understand!"

"There," says I, "you made a darned accurate reemark."

And, because I was gettin' hot under the collar to think of this here dude waiter with the white pants makin' love to my girl, I up and slammed out of the room before I said somethin' I'd be glad of while I was sayin' it, but sorry for in the mornin.'

I TOLD ma. "A waiter!" says she. "It'll kill me."

"It might be worse," says I, strivin' to console her. "A waiter ought to know how to eat proper, havin' advantage of bein' able to watch the best folks at their meals."

My eatin' was a sore spot with ma, her havin' read a book named "The Etiquette of the Table," which she lived up to painful.

"And," says I, "bein' a waiter, he's used to wearin' one of them dress suits you're so set on."

Later, when I'd cooled off so's you could touch me without scorchin' a finger, I hunted Myrtie up to ask some more answers about this football captain.

"Myrtie," says I, "supposin' this Peter was to ask you to marry him—how would you look on such a proposition?"

"But he hasn't asked me," she says.

"Do you want him to?" says I.

She looks at me a minute sort of pitiful, and then busts out cryin'.

"Y-yes," says she.

"Thank Gawd," says I, "I discovered this before it got too late. I'll buy you a new automobile, or a couple of feet of diamonds strung on a string, or somethin'. Won't that do as well?"

Would you believe me, that didn't cheer her up a bit, and I felt meaner 'n all git out. Myrtie's been a good daughter to me, puttin' up with my corn-cob and shirt-sleeves and eatin' with my knife and sich, and I wished it was possible for me to give in and let her have this table-waitin' dude. But then I thinks of the Coopers that had gone before and of them that was yet to come, and I hardened up my heart.

"Myrtie," says I, "your old dad he thinks a heap of you, and he wouldn't do nothin' to make you cry; but here's a matter where I got to act for your good. Once, when my dad give me a wallopin', he says to me, says he: `The day'll come, Jake, when you'll thank me for this.' Jest then, settin' down bein' painful to a degree, I didn't b'lieve him. But later I come to it," says I. "And," I says, "it'll be the same with you."

"It—it isn't fair," says she. "You never saw him."

"It'll be best for him," says I, "if I never do."

"He'll come to call when his team gets to town," says she.

"Warn him," says I, "to wear a thick plank in the seat of them white pants of his'n," says I, "if he does."

THE rest of the week Myrtie went around lookin' like somebody had et her canary bird, and at meals she jest pecked at her food with one hand while she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief in the other. I told her jokes, but she didn't get any cheerfuller. I bought one of them vaudyville monologue books and got her in a corner and read the dum thing from cover to cover right at her, but she never got higher 'n a sick smile. Then, all of a sudden, she growed calmer and more resigned like, not to say sprightly.

This here sprightliness come of a Saturday mornin', and I was mighty tickled.

"Daddy," she says to me, comin' and settin' onto my lap, "I want to go somewhere this afternoon. Will you go with me?"

"You bet," says I. "Where is it?"

"I sha'n't tell you," says she. "It's a surprise."

"Good," says I. "If there's one thing I like better 'n another, it's bein' surprised. Do we take any footmen or butlers with us?"

"No," says she; "we go on the street car."

"Have you told this here to your ma?" says I, knowin' she looks on street cars as low and depraved.

"No," says she, "and mother'll never find out. This is her afternoon to have the hair-dresser come."

Hair-dresser! To sich depths are we dragged by money.

Right after dinner we sneaked out and got onto a car. It was the first one I'd rode on in the daylight in a year, and I come clost to shakin' hands with the conductor. Myrtie she took charge of things and said when we was to get off and all that. Before long the car got all crowded up, and I asked her what was the excitement at this time of day. She didn't say anythin'.

After about half an hour we got off into the dumdest jam I ever saw exceptin' on election night. There was more'n a million folks all crushin' along toward big gates in a high fence like around a ball park. But this wasn't no ball park. I know both of them, you bet.

"Looks like we was goin' to have company," says I.

"There'll be thirty thousand people here," she says.

"Where's here?" says I. But, gettin' no reply, I stuck to her and we plowed along.

Myrtie gave the fellow at the gate tickets, and in we went. After we'd walked along under concrete grand-stands for ten minutes we come up for air, and I seen we was in for some kind of a outdoor exhibition. The stands was already perty full, mostly of young folks wavin' flags and wearin' ribbons on theirselves; and I noticed Myrtie was wearin' some blue ribbon herself. A usher led us to where we was to set.

Then a lot of young fellers begins to yell, and I looks around for the cops; but, though cops was present, none of 'em paid no attention.

"Say," says I, "hain't I gone it blind long enough? Where be we?"

"At the football game," says Myrtie.

I jest looked at her a spell, and then says: "Myrtie, hain't you kind of played it low down on your old dad? What if somebody was to see me here? Eh?" I looked around. "Where's the game?" says I. "I don't see none."

"They haven't started yet," says she.

"Well," says I, "I'll pull up my collar and shove down my hat and stick, though I'm doggone ashamed of myself. Football! How do they play it? With them fish-nets is it, or with mallets? Is there any ladies into it?"

"Wait and see!" says she.

"I'd rather have it broke to me gradual," says I. "I s'pose these here young men, that hain't ashamed to play sich a game before all these folks, does fancy work when to home, eh? And has their nails looked after by a young woman? Gosh!" says I.

But Myrtie she never said a word, only kept lookin' and lookin' down on the field.

"Is this here Peter feller—the white pants captain—calc'latin' to take part in this riot?" says I.

"Yes," says she.

"I hope," says I, "he don't slip down or nothin' and git a grass stain on his pants. Say, Myrtie, honest Injun now, if one of these here boys was used rough, d'you s'pose he'd tell his ma or his pa?"

She kept right on sayin' nothin'.

AFTER a while everybody stood up and hollered, and I craned my neck to see why. A flock of fellers in some kind of short pants come runnin' on the field. I sized 'em up suspicious.

"Well," says I, "there's one redeemin' feature: them costumes hain't sweet and

perty. If they'd 'a' wore bows in their hair I guess I'd 'a' had to go home sick to my stummick."

Then come another bust of yellin', and now Myrtie got up and begun wavin' a blue flag like she was crazy.

"Set down," says I, feelin' conspicuous. "My gosh, Myrtie, what ails you?"

"It's our team," says she.

"Oh," says I. "Where did we git one?"

"It's Yale," she says.

I looked them over, too. There wasn't a hair ribbon in the bunch, and their costumes didn't look a mite pertier 'n the others.

"Is he there?" says I.

"Yes," says she, breathless. "That's him standin' next the man with the white sweater."

I seen him plain. He stuck up some above the rest, and he had yaller hair that curled. My Gawd, yes—curled! Then I knowed the worst. I shut my eyes.

BANDS was now playin' and folks yellin'; but perty soon everythin' stopped and got still, and I opened my eyes to see what got the cops to doin' their duty at last. But they wasn't. Them two bunches of boys in short pants was out on the field, half of 'em standin' in line, and the other half scattered around promiscus.

"Lively game," says I. "Do they play it with their eyes?"

Then this Peter walked back a bit, and took a run just as a feller blowed a whistle, and took a kick at a ball. It wasn't no round ball. Likely it got squashed somehow, for it was shaped like a lemon.

"They ought to git 'em a new ball," says I.

But just then one of them other fellers caught the ball and started to run, and the lined-up fellers started to run at 'em. And then this Peter he butted a feller and knocked him endways and dived right into the middle of the feller that had the ball. Yes, sir; he jest slammed into him like he wanted to butt through him, and grabbed him around the laigs, and others come a-buttin' in, and there was the dumdest snarl of arms and laigs you ever see.

"Say," says I, "what's the idee? What did that Peter start a fight for?"

"He didn't," says Myrtie. "That's football. They're playin'. He just made a fine tackle."

"Hum," says I, consid'able shook up mental.

Well, sir, them boys got up and put their heads together. and yelled somethin', and a feller grabbed the ball and started to run. One of his side shoved his shoulder into one of the others; but another dodged past and took a flyin' jump onto that ball man. Down they went and all piled up. And so it kept on.

After a while the side this Peter was captain of got the ball, and right off they gave it to Peter. He put it ag'in' his stummick, and got his head down somewheres round his knees, and slammed right into the middle of the mess. In a second what d'you s'pose happened? Why, doggone it, if he didn't come a-rollin' and a-scramblin' out on the other side, and kept on goin' till twelve or seventeen fellers jumped on his face.

"Oo-ooh!" says Myrtie.

Well, by this time I don't mind sayin' I was gettin' int'rested. After a while somebody dropped their ball and it went rollin' on the grass, and somebody grabbed it and everybody started to chase him, Peter joinin' in the hunt. This feller with the ball

Continued on page 23

The Sport of Kings

By ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

Illustrations by A. I. Keller

SALE KERNAN, of Kernan's Farm, son of a famous Kentucky horse-owner, after his father's death becomes trainer for Sam Benton of the Beaumont track, New York. Seeing some crookedness at the track, he indiscreetly talks to a newspaper man, and is barred from the turf by the stewards. The same day he sails for Juarez, Mexico. On board he finds his assistant, Jerry Kenney, a warm-hearted Irishman, who refuses to stay behind. Before dinner, Jerry takes Kernan down between-decks to see Vivandière, a racing mare with a bad record, which is being taken to Grantham, Florida. They find a frightened deck-hand trying to feed Vivandière. Exasperated at Kernan's and Jerry's smiles, the man throws the pail of oats at the mare. Kernan jumps for the man. But suddenly he sees the mare's owner, Roberta Leland, a few steps away. He sends the man away, and then enters Vivandière's stall. The girl cries out that it is dangerous; but the mare responds to Kernan's caresses, and Kernan explains that what the mare needs more than anything else is kindness. He tells Miss Leland he has been barred from the turf in the North and is on his way to Juarez. At dinner he is introduced to her chaperon, Mrs. Clarke. But, the voyage being rough, he does not see the ladies again. Then, one night, the captain orders everybody to stand by to leave the ship, which is sinking. Kernan finds Miss Leland, and he and Jerry get her and Mrs. Clarke to the rail. They are about to be lowered in a boat, when the sound of a horse's terror-stricken cry comes to them. Kernan jumps for the deck again and makes his way toward Vivandière's stall.

I AM not trying to make a hero of myself; I am not trying to attribute to myself any high motives for my deed. For I did not love Vivandière then; later—now—well, I think that I'd do in cold blood what I did because of a girl's sigh that morning on the Christina. I hope so, anyway. But why I risked my life then, for a horse that was nothing to me, because of a girl I barely knew and would probably never know any better—

I think that my unhappiness had much to do with it. To do something that would gain me favor in some one's eyes—I really can't explain it. I only know that the Kernans have always acted upon impulse and rarely counted the cost beforehand. And, needless to state, I did none of this self-analyzing as I rushed toward the makeshift stall where Vivandière, teeth bared, her throat emitting that almost human shriek of terror, strained at her halter.

She knew me. The scream became a whimpering whinny; her velvet eyes rolled; and her teeth were no longer bared. It was as if, reaching across the gulf that separates man from his animal servants, she spoke to me and called me friend, and told me that she knew I had come to play a friend's part.

Well, I had. But a glance around made me almost despair of playing the part through to the finish. For Vivandière could never climb the stairs I had descended. I stroked her and spoke to her soothingly. "Don't you worry, old girl," I said to her. "If you don't go clear, I won't."

And I believe I meant it; and that she understood me. For when I left her she did not scream, although still tied in her stall. For, of course, I did not dare release her yet. Panic might come to her at being penned between-decks. She might go mad, and dash herself to pieces on the Christina's iron plates. Before I untied her I must find a way of escape—if the raging sea might be termed that. Still, that sea was better than the Christina.

A jet of water spurted through the Christina's side and soaked me. I saw that the steel sliding doors that closed the port gangway were slightly ajar, shaken open by the tremendous waves that pounded her. An ax was lying on the floor, and also a bar of steel—dropped, perhaps, by some one fleeing from the engine-room. It would be easy to pry those doors wide apart; and in my excitement I had started to do so, when I realized that this was the port side, the side that faced the rush of the storm. I ceased my just begun labors. To spring into the sea from that side meant to be lifted by the first wave and dashed to death against the Christina's iron sides. I crossed the slanting deck.

DIRECTLY opposite was another gangway. I tried to figure how far below the saloon deck the waves had seemed to be. I placed my ear to the ship's side. But I could not learn whether or not the starboard side of the Christina's slanting between-decks was below sea-level. The roar of the wind, the groaning of the stricken ship, the pounding of the waves, were too much for my unsailorlike ear to tell. But I knew that the deck could not be much below the surface of the water—a few feet at the most. And—there was nothing else to do. I remember that as I walked—ran, rather—back to Vivandière's stall, I thanked God that the mare was not down in the hold. For then rescue would have been absolutely impossible. As it was—

I untied her, whispering—I really cried loudly, but the roar of the storm made my words a whisper—speaking soothingly to her. She suffered me to lead her to the starboard side, and there I tied her once more. Then I picked up my ax and crashed it into a wooden bolt that pinned the doors shut, and which had been wedged by the lurching ship so that I could not slide it back. Then I picked up my iron lever and threw my weight against the jammed doors. They gave.

Terrifying the waters had been when viewed from the vantage of the saloon deck; but now—the waves, of course, not nearly so violent in the Christina's lee as seaward, yet fearful enough to make me draw back—now, viewed from a point but a scant foot above their highest reach, I could feel myself grow faint. They almost hypnotized me; it was difficult to raise my eyes above their close, seething level. But I did, and the sight that met my eyes did much to bring back my waning courage. For I could see all six of the Christina's boats. Hurled high, dipped low, they yet made steady progress shoreward. The wind and waves were with them, and they shot from crest of huge roller to trough, to rise again and repeat the process. And the tideless gulf had no currents here to offset their shoreward progress. Well manned, the nearest seemed close to the booming surf that pounded on the white beach.

IT was fancy, but in the nearest of the boats I thought I could see a white face strained toward me. Fancy, yes, but—my blood grew warmer. The choky sensation of fear left me. I was quite calm as I turned back and unfastened the mare.

I led her to the edge of the deck. She drew back, and that scream of terror that had made me leap from the life-boat to the davit burst from her throat. She would have turned, but I clung to her, shouting into her ear. I felt the sweat burst through her skin and she shivered. But the scream ceased; she turned her eyes to me. And I knew I had her!

Rope was coiled by the bulwark—tough cordage that would not yield to my jackknife. I cut it with my ax. I made a running noose at one end, and lifted the mare's right fore foot and slipped it through the noose. I drew the noose away up, tight. I passed the rope across her shoulders and tied it around the other fore leg, right where it joined her body. A heavy strand of rope thus went across her back. Again I spoke to her, soothing her, stroking her. My arm about her neck, my mouth at her ear, I petted her.

A giant wave hurled itself against the port side. I heard the Christina's plates groan. A shudder ran her whole length. I felt the deck take on a deeper slant. The waves were now practically level with her starboard side. I swung astride the mare. I felt her muscles bunch and a quiver run through her body. I leaned forward, stroking her nose. I ran the end of my belt through the rope that circled the mare and buckled it securely about me. Another wave crashed against the port side. The deck slanted still more.

Vivandière was almost on her haunches. I looked through the open gangway. No man that lived could ever make the shore, were he twenty times a Captain Webb!

Even a horse—but she was my only chance! As another wave' struck the port side, I drove my heels into the mare. She hesitated only a second. I saw a wave reach its fullness and sweep away from the Christina's open gangway. The mare's body stiffened; we were in the sea!

I can not remember, in detail, much that happened thereafter. I know that we went under; that Vivandière rose high on a crest; that she turned her course—when we came above we were facing down the coast, parallel with the stranded Christina—toward the line of distant surf.

From then on is but a tangled memory of striving to keep my seat on her back; of being tossed and pounded and overwhelmed in tons of water; of being swept from her back; of losing my grip on her halter; of clutching at her mane with both hands; of feeling my belt cut into the flesh above my hips; of being glad for its knifelike pain, because it meant that the leather held; of striving to regain her back; of failing; of feeling her fore foot, as it pushed back through the water, cutting and laming my leg; of a twisting wave lifting us high, then passing from under us while we seemed to fall into a trough into which we sank; of being swept beneath the mare; of realizing that my belt had slipped from the middle of the rope that crossed her back; of cursing myself because I had not foreseen such slipping and knotted it in place; of strangling, gasping—

MY eyes opened within six inches of a fine-shell beach—coquina, I later learned. I saw little shell-fish uptilting themselves on end, burrowing into the shell sand, disappearing. I could feel that I was sprawling across something, that my feet and hands dropped on the beach, while my hips were elevated, and whatever I rested on pressed most uncomfortably into the pit of my stomach. From a distance, it seemed, I heard voices:

"Glory be, he's wigglin' his ar-rms! There's a poonch in thim yet."

It was Jerry, and I tried to get up. But my head fell forward again. Now I could see feet within a few inches of my eyes. I was afraid that they would step on my hands. I tried to reach out and push them away. Then black nausea, agony, dimness, and weakness of body overwhelmed me. I lost consciousness again.

When I awoke the nausea was gone; the dimness had left my brain; I was feeble, but I could think. I was staring up into a heaven in which the sun shone with grateful warmth. I stretched myself, only vaguely wondering, as yet, what had happened and how I came to be there. My hand touched soft, warm flesh. I turned my head, and saw a lace sleeve, bedraggled but dry; higher still, and saw brown curls; and above their clinging tendrils I saw the face of Miss Leland, her eyes filled with dewy tears.

She was seated beside me, and at first did not notice that I lifted my head. But the pressure of my palm against her arm, as I forced myself painfully upright, made her turn and look at me. Her lips trembled, and I felt mightily embarrassed. I wanted to say something to fend off the tears; and I asked the very question that precipitated them:

"How's the mare? She safe?"

I was sitting bolt-upright now, a little dizzy; but, as my complaining stomach told me, half starved. And a half starved man is a well man—provided that food isn't too far off. And as I avoided her tear-wet eyes I saw a great fire blazing on the beach, and around it were gathered crew and passengers. Also I saw many people whose dress told me that they were neither passengers nor hands. They were Floridians, and already we were being offered food. I could smell coffee in the air, and I sniffed hungrily. I turned my eyes back to the girl.

"The mare's safe, isn't she, Miss Leland?"

"Yes," she said shakily. "She—she brought you ashore and—oh, my God! For an hour I suffered. I thought that you—"

"But I'm here, Miss Leland," I said. "So's the mare; both of us alive; so please don't cry. Not that I blame you; you've been through enough, but—here comes Jerry—with coffee! Now there's something to think about, Miss Leland! Coffee!"

JERRY was upon us.

"Well, Misther Sale, did ye be afther enj'yin' ye'er bath? Would a little coffee and sandwiches go well on ye'er stomach? God knows it ought to be impty enough afther all—"

"Jerry!" I cried.

I cast a glance at the girl, but even her woe was not able to withstand her sense of humor. I saw a smile curl the corners of her mouth. Jerry saw it, too.

"Well," said he impudently, "sure a laugh is betther nor a tear, anny day in the week and' four times on Sundays! Drink! No one can grieve wid hot coffee inside them. 'Tis again' nature! Drink!"

Into our out-thrust hands he shoved cups of steaming coffee. Though it almost scalded, I drank mine down without removing the rim of the cup from my lips. Miss Leland did almost as well.

We looked at each other. She put forth her hand. And now she spoke without tremor of voice, but with a frankness that was boyish and sincere.

"Mr. Kernan," she said, "you are a very gallant gentleman, and from the bottom of my heart I thank you."

My fingers closed over her hand. Her grip was firm, alive, electric. It warmed me as much as the coffee had done.

"There," said the irrepressible Jerry. "Wasn't it worth it?"

I felt myself blush, and I looked angrily at Jerry. Miss Leland withdrew her hand swiftly. Jerry forestalled my rebuke.

"Sure, I meant nawthin'," he said. "Nawthin', only—ain't the thanks of a lady worth hell itself? Should a lady weep because a gintleman risks his life for her pleasure? Sure, it's for his own pleasure he risks it. And why should the lady weep, that he has pleased himsilf? I'll be gittin' more coffee."

And he went hastily off toward the great fire, over which, as I could now see through the throng about it, was a great pot.

"Your friend Mr. Kenney is a very fine gentleman, Mr. Kernan," said the girl.

"The only thing bothering Jerry," said I, "is that he didn't rescue the mare. Jerry would die for a woman and ask nothing but the privilege of so doing."

She looked curiously at me.

"It—it seems that Jerry's friend would do as much."

But I did not care for this. She was at a disadvantage. I had saved her horse,—or the horse had saved me,—and her gratitude, welcome as it was, irked me.

---

It embarrassed me. For I feared that there were yet unshed tears that might be called into action.

"Where are we, anyway?" I asked. I stared out to sea. There, disintegrating, lifted and dropped, smashed and pounded by waves that, though lesser, still were tremendous, was the Christina. I looked inland and saw the roofs of houses.

"Near Boca Grande," she answered. "Telegrams have been sent to Tampa, and from Arcadia a special train has already started for us. We'll be in Tampa to-night. That is, the majority of the passengers and the crew will be. But my winter home is at Stephanie, and Mr. Kenney said—he thought—"

Incautiously, as she spoke, I had risen to my feet. As I put my weight on them, a savage pain shot through my right calf. I sat hastily down again.

Miss Leland looked at me with concern.

"Are you faint?"

I pulled up my trouser leg, and she cried out at sight of a cut which, owing doubtless to the action of the salt water, had not bled enough to be noticed by those who had pumped me free of water. It was really more of a bruise than a cut; but I, with some experience in dealing with stable-boys injured by the hoofs of horses, needed but a glance to know that I had sustained more than a flesh wound—that, while the bone was not broken, it had been badly bruised. Vivandière must have slashed me with her hoof while we fought the seas.

"Does it hurt?" she asked anxiously.

"A bit," I said; "but it isn't that so much as—"

The ubiquitous Jerry was with us again with more coffee. He almost dropped the cups as he saw my leg.

"Now what—" he began.

"It means that it'll be some time before I'll be able to do more than hobble, Jerry," I said gloomily. "It means that I'll be in bed—or in a chair—for three or four weeks; and—Jerry, why did you attach yourself to a luckless wretch like myself?" I tried to smile. "I'll not be able to go to work at Juarez, and—"

"Don't worry about it, Misther Sale," said Jerry. "Sure, I've hired both of us to Miss Leland here."

I stared from him to the girl.

"What's the joke?" I inquired.

"No joke," she said. "You are a trainer; if you could—if you would—I've only one horse, but—"

"That one's Vivandière," snorted Jerry. "Of course he will! His father med me promise to look afther him. He needs lookin' afther now, while he's hur-rted, and—he'll take the job."

SHE looked a question at me. My heart bounded. To be near her; to see her every day; to continue an acquaintance with her that was already prejudiced on her part to more than acquaintance; to a gratitude that would mean friendship if I were worthy; to—

"Certainly I will, if Miss Leland really wants me," I said. "I—I'd dearly love to be near—Vivandière."

She blushed; perhaps it was at the rather daring pause before I mentioned the mare's name. Then she frowned slightly, and I remembered that I was barred from the turf, was to be her employee, and that for me to assume any familiarity at all would be to presume upon the service I had rendered her, and to do that would be to augur myself less of a gentleman than, modestly, I tried to be.

I felt thousands of miles away from her; the closeness that her tears had engendered had vanished: not because of that slight frown, which disappeared from her forehead almost before it came, but because of my own feelings. I had done her a service that she might think gave me a slight claim upon her. I would show her that it did not.

"Here's the Captain," said Jerry. "Poor man. And a brave one, too. Sure, 'twas him that rushed into the surf and grabbed the mare's head whiles I—"

He stopped, blushing.

"So it was you saved me, eh?" I said.

"Mr. Kenney risked his life getting you ashore with Vivandière," said Miss Leland.

I smiled at Jerry. Words weren't needed between us two.

Then the Captain came to us.

He wasn't half so downcast as I expected him to be. Later on I learned that several of the passengers, grateful at their escape from what had seemed to them certain death, had already got up a paper praising Captain Sanderson for his coolness and courage; and as not a life had been lost and the loss of the Christina had been due to engine trouble and not to her navigation, the Captain had little fear of demotion. He smiled at me.

"How's the drowned man?"

"Pretty well, Captain," I answered. "I want to thank you."

He waved my thanks aside.

"Able to travel?"

"Mr. Kernan and his friend are not going to Tampa," said Miss Leland. "I've engaged them to look after my race stable. We'll go as far as Burnham with you, but we'll change there for Stephanie."

The Captain looked a bit surprised, but said nothing. What he might have said I never knew, for at that minute Mrs. Clarke—not making a very brave show, what with having lost a few puffs and having her clothing somewhat spoiled by salt water—joined us. In fact, she joined us as Miss Leland was finishing her speech to Captain Sanderson.

"What on earth are you saying, Roberta?" Mrs. Clarke gasped, "You've engaged this man to—"

"To look after my horses, Luella," said Miss Leland crisply. "I've engaged him."

HER round chin thrust forward a trifle, and evidently she was prepared to do battle with her chaperon. But Mrs. Clarke merely sniffed disdainfully.

"They tell us the train will be here in half an hour, Captain."

"Or less," said the Captain. "So—you ladies will please get ready."

Miss Leland laughed merrily. She shook out the wrinkled skirt that clung to her slim figure.

"There isn't much preparation needed, Captain."

"Yes," he assented; "it's the first time I ever knew ladies to be willing to go on a journey without packing."

And, with a somewhat rueful smile, he walked off.

"Poor man," said Miss Leland.

"Poor us!" snapped Mrs. Clarke. "Think of it! Not a single dress; not even an extra pair of shoes; not—"

"Our lives are saved; let us thank God for that much, Luella," said the girl quietly.

Mrs. Clarke flushed and became stiffly silent. But I could feel her disapproving eyes upon me, and I repented of the bargain so hastily entered into.

"Miss Leland," I said quietly, "through

---

a mistaken sense of obligation you've engaged me. I—I want to release you from the bargain. Your friend Mrs. Clarke—"

"I run my own stable," she answered quietly. "And what you say reminds me that we haven't arranged any terms."

"You'd expected to pick some one up down here in Florida," I said.

She nodded.

"Whatever you had intended to pay any one else," I said.

She looked at the storm-tossed ocean.

"No, that wouldn't do," she said. "You're Sale Kernan."

"But out of employment."

I didn't want much. It was enough to be near her. She went on as if she had not heard me:

"I think that a percentage of Vivandière's—of the stable's winnings would be fair. Fifty per cent.," she added.

"The stable? But I thought Vivandière was your only horse."

"The only horse that amounts to anything; and even she— Before father—" She paused a moment and bit her lip. "Father used to say that he hoped the day would never come when the Leland colors were not represented on the turf. Since he—went away—I've done the best I could."

"I'm going to get some more Coffee, Roberta," said Mrs. Clarke icily, and walked disdainfully away. Miss Leland sat down on the beach and rested her chin on her palm.

"But racing was somewhat of a business with father," she said. "He made money out of his stable, and by buying and selling. I soon found that I'd lose all I had if I did that. So—I sold most of the string. I kept two or three, and I've been racing them at the smaller meetings. And last winter I raced at Grantham down here. We have wintered here since my mother died—eight years ago. They've not earned their keep, but—it's what father would have liked—to know that his colors were to be seen on the track, and so I've done it."

It was a queer place for confidences. I think the girl realized it. Her voice became suddenly crisp:

"You think Vivandière can win purses?"

"She can clean up at Grantham right now—I mean in January," I said. "After that she'll be able, if I know her, to show the best of them up North what a race mare really is."

"Then—two hundred a month for you and fifty per cent. of the purses she wins—down here and up North."

"That's kind of you," I said; "but, of course, up North—" I shook my head. "Grantham is an outlaw track. It's not governed by the racing authorities. I can train for you down here, but up North—"

"It is several months before next spring," she said. "It is not impossible that your suspension may be lifted by then. At least, I was so informed."

"Who informed you?" I asked amazedly.

"Your friend Mr. Kenney is a most interesting gentleman," she smiled.

"Optimistic," I said, frowning at Jerry. "I'm afraid that—well, as you say, next spring is months away. In the meantime—we'll see what Vivandière can do this winter. At least, Miss Leland, I'll have her in a mood that will enable some one else to look after her, if that some one uses ordinary gentleness and patience."

FAR off a whistle blew. A hundred heads turned toward the railroad track. There was a bustle on the beach.

"I'll see you on the train," said Miss Leland. "I must go to Mrs. Clarke."

She left us. I turned to Jerry.

"Give me your arm, you garrulous old man," said I.

He helped me to my feet. Then he surprised me.

"Honest, Misther Sale, I niver tould her that you might be reinstated nixt spring."

"Then who did?" I asked.

"Did ye know," he said, with a grin, "that the young lady sint a tiligram from Charleston? And that she got an answer before the boat sailed?"

"No," said I; "what of it?"

"I just been thinkin' she might have found that out thin. I niver thought of it at the time, but—supposin' she'd wired some one that knows the ropes up North—she might have got such an answer."

"But why should she have wired New York about me? Jerry, you old liar, did you see the address on her telegram?"

"The steward that sint it happened to show it to me," he answered sheepishly. "'Twas addressed to ould Sam Benton, sor. I didn't be afther tellin' ye, for I didn't think it fair ye sh'u'd know the lady's int'rest in ye until—"

"You simple-minded, doddering old idiot!" I snapped. "Why, any one would think that—that— And she said you told her," I added dazedly.

"She said I was a most inthrestin' gintleman,", corrected Jerry. "More power to her bright eyes and intilligent ears!"

"But why should she have evaded—"

"'Tis not Jerry Kenney that'll be afther gossipin' about a lady, sor," said Jerry. "Sure, I'll be no Cupid for ye, sor."

"Jerry, you may go to hell," said I.

He grinned. We started toward the train, which had drawn up a hundred yards from the beach. I remember, vaguely, a man with firm fingers touching my hurt leg; remember hearing him say that I'd have to keep quiet for a fortnight and would be lame for a month; remember him insisting that I drink something; remember, hazily, being lifted into an automobile after our train stopped; cool sheets, blankness.

When I woke it was day, and Jerry was placing a breakfast tray on a table in the center of a well furnished room.

A HORSEMAN is a pretty hard proposition—physically, of course, I mean. In a week I was able to get around with the aid of a cane, and then I insisted on moving from Miss Leland's house to a little cottage down by the half-mile exercise track that her father had built. For it was awkward, living at the mansion. Miss Leland treated me as a welcome guest, but her chaperon—I was dust beneath her feet. She didn't approve of me at all; didn't approve of Miss Leland's hiring me in the first place, and was most open in her disapproval of my living under the same roof with her and her charge. I think Mrs. Clarke thought a trainer was a servant.

As for myself—in those seven days in which I was confined to bed or couch I mulled the situation over pretty thoroughly. What if Miss Leland had wired Sam Benton from Charleston about me? She might even then have been considering offering me a place as her trainer and wanted to make sure of my character. Any interest deeper than that—well, I was a presumptuous fool; that's all! And if I didn't want my fingers burned I'd better get out of reach of the fire.

She came in to see me several times a day while I was confined to my room, and was as kind as could be. But Mrs. Clarke was always with her, and that woman's attitude was quite the opposite to Miss Leland's. Mrs. Clarke had a way of making one feel out of place. She made me feel, more by her manner than by anything she said, that I was taking advantage of a young girl's kindness in even thinking of remaining as a guest while I was an employee. That alone wouldn't have made me leave and start housekeeping in the cottage with Jerry, but there was the hopelessness of it all. This girl was rich; I was—"poor" puts it mildly. So, though she protested, I made the excuse that when I trained horses I wanted to live, almost, with them, and—I went down to the cottage.

Of course, I saw Miss Leland every day—several times a day; but I wasn't under the same roof with her, and I could master—I thought—my rising feelings better. And, living down there, with an old mammy to look after Jerry and myself, close to the exercise track and stables, apart from the social life of my employer— Well, I'd taken the place to be near her; and now I tried to keep myself away from her.

Why, realizing as I did the utter hopelessness of my love—it had come to that—for her, I didn't take my departure and go to Juarez, as I'd first intended, is something that can be understood only by those who, like myself, have loved a person unattainable. I was sane enough to realize that I couldn't live in the same house with her without telling her, sooner or later, my feelings. I wasn't sane enough to realize that seeing her merely in a business way only added fuel to my hopeless flame.

BUT there was, after all, something besides Miss Leland to keep me at Stephanie. That was the mare. Unhurt by her salty passage from the Christina to the Florida beach, the mare took to training like a duck to water. I'd been out and around, with my cane, only two days when I knew that I'd not spoken idly when I told Miss Leland that next year Vivandière would show them up North what a race mare really was!

All she needed was the right kind of handling. And we gave her that. I gave the negro stable-boys the strictest orders about her. I promised a beating that hadn't been equaled since Simon Legree went out of business to the person that mishandled the mare. Inside of a week Vivandière knew that not only Jerry and myself would treat her well, but that others would; and no longer did she show her teeth or lash out with hind feet when some one approached her stall. Sometimes, seeing how gentle she had become, I wished I had hold of Peter Cranston. It made me wish that, in place of paying so much attention to breeding racers, some attention were given to breeding owners. Simply because his father had left him a few millions, Peter Cranston had gone into racing, just as he'd gone into playing billiards or bought Steel Common for a rise. He hadn't realized that an owner should be bred to his owning, just the same as his horses to racing. An experienced owner would never have let Vivandière be ruined for racing, in the first place. He'd have known that his trainers were careless, incompetent, that his stable-hands were worthless brutes. And then, after silently cursing Peter Cranston for an incompetent fool, I'd rejoice in his incompetence—for I had Vivandière!

And as October passed away, and the action of the mare improved; as her endurance grew greater; as once in a while, I'd let her sprint a furlong—I used to wonder how big a tap the Grantham bookies would stand. I used to wonder what sort of odds they'd give on her. As for Jerry, he vowed that he was going down on her, line, hook, and sinker, when she made her first start. And Miss Leland shared our enthusiasm.

Only Mrs. Clarke threw cold water on our enthusiasm. She would sniff as I descanted on the mare's points and as Miss Leland agreed with me. But I grew not to mind her, though I wondered at her evident enmity. For her dislike really amounted to that. And at times I pitied the woman, as I'd hear her complain of the dulness of Stephanie.

FOR Stephanie was dull. A little Florida town about forty miles from the coast, its only industry was the shipping of turpentine. In January a resort hotel would open five miles from the town and three miles from Miss Leland's big place; but Mrs. Clarke was evidently used to plenty of society, and January was a long way off. Horseback-riding, fishing in the river, and that sort of thing did not appeal to Mrs. Clarke. I used to wonder why the lady had consented to chaperon Miss Leland down here, in a place so remote from the gaiety she loved. But it was none of my business, and my pity was tempered by my resentment toward her.

So it was that one afternoon, as she came down to the track where Tom Leland had trained his youngsters in the winter, I bowed very coldly to her, wondering if her flushed face had anything to do with her contemptuous feeling toward me.

I'd just been sending Miss Leland's horses around the track, saving Vivandière for my employer's arrival. And, as she was not with her chaperon, and as it was getting dark, I told Jerry not to wait, but to send the mare around. Of course, most of our training was done in the early morning, but each afternoon I let the horses go through a sprint or a long jog just to please their owner.

"Isn't Miss Leland down here?" asked Mrs. Clarke.

I shook my head.

"I haven't seen her to-day, Mrs. Clarke. Why," I went on with sudden alarm, "isn't she at the house?"

"Would I be down here asking for her if she were?" she snapped. "No; she hasn't been home since luncheon. She said she was going into Stephanie for some things, and that she'd be right back. But I thought that possibly she had stopped to talk with you—about her horses."

There was the least bit of a sneer in her voice, which I ignored.

"She's probably visiting some one in the town," said I.

"Who?" asked Mrs. Clarke.

"Isn't there some one? Some lady that—"

"In this desolate—hole?" She sneered, openly now. "Of course not! She—she's probably lost."

"That's absurd," I said. "A blind man couldn't stray from the road between here and Stephanie. She'll probably be here soon."

"And you'll stand here doing nothing," she snapped, "while, for all we know, she's been thrown from her horse and—"

"Did she ride?" I asked quickly.

"Aren't you the head stableman?" she asked. "Surely you should know if your mistress rode or not."

EVEN in her alarm—and I could see that she was alarmed—she could not forbear her fling at me, though never before this had she been quite so outspoken. I felt myself flush; but it was no time to get angry.

"Jerry," I snapped, "what horse did she take?"

Jerry snapped his fingers to the boy who was cantering by on Vivandière. He stopped the mare.

"What horse did Miss Leland ride today?" asked Jerry.

"Jimmy," he answered, naming a good-natured saddle-horse that didn't have life in him to do more than jog along.

I turned to Mrs. Clarke with a smile.

"Jimmy never threw any one in his life," I said. "She's all right; you'll find—"

From the church tower in Stephanie came the tolling of a bell. Mechanically I took out my watch, to compare it with the time. My watch said quarter past four, and I pursed my lips as the bell sounded for the fourth time. Evidently I was fast. Then it struck again—again. I looked at Jerry. Blankly he returned my stare. The boy on Vivandière spoke as the bell tolled for the tenth time.

"Somepin' wrong at de turpemtime camp, boss, Ah reckon."

"What do you mean?" I demanded.

"Some dem fool niggehs musta busted loose," he said. "Dat's de warnin' bell dey always rings when de prisonehs breaks away."

Mrs. Clarke shrieked.

"I knew it; I knew it! Those convicts have broken loose, and she's somewhere—"

"For God's sake, madam," I said savagely, "don't talk! Jerry, climb aboard one of those horses and—come with me!"

I grunted the last words, for I was swinging the exercise boy out of Vivandière's saddle as I spoke, and taking his place upon her back. Jerry was quick of wit and equally quick of action. As I pounded down the path that led from the track to the live-oak bordered avenue that led to Stephanie, I glanced over my shoulder. Jerry was already mounting one of the horses. Mrs. Clarke was hiding her face in her hands. The negro stable-hands were running aimlessly around, yelling to one another.

I turned the mare into the road and let her go.

To be continued next week

LIFE WITHOUT CHAIRS

PEOPLE WHO LIVE ON ILL WINDS

---

THEY WOKE UP TO FIND THEMSELVES FAMOUS

Maggie

By CLARE PEELER

Illustrations by Denman Fink

ASCUTNEY MOUNTAIN dreamed in the summer morning sun.

"Dolly!" Mrs. Sherwin said to her pretty mare, as they two jogged along the wide clayey road toward the mountain,—glorious hill views sweeping right and left,—"Dolly! You are the worst spoiled horse in Vermont. And I must hurry, or that Reed woman will be snapped up to work for somebody else to-morrow. Please, Dolly!"

Dolly pricked up her ears at the gentle voice, and, with an air of cheerful obedience, altered her pace from five to six miles an hour. But the little village of Brownsville lay only two miles from the Sherwin summer home, and presently the old-fashioned wooden houses, a church spire conventionally in their center, came into view against the green slopes of Ascutney towering above.

Mrs. Sherwin drew up her buggy at the first of eight or ten rickety cottages clustered together at the right of the road around a sort of muddy common. Half a dozen dirty children, playing in the center, stopped their game of tag to stare at the "city lady."

A thin, trim, middle-aged woman came out at her call of "Oh, Mrs. Reed!" and approached the buggy's side, smoothing back as she did so grayish hair, already neatly arranged, from a pair of keen New England blue eyes.

"Good mornin'!" she said cheerfully, in response to Mrs. Sherwin. "Now, I guess you've come huntin' Mrs. Reed, ain't you? Well, she's gone over 'Scutney way—'bout a four-mile piece—to pick in the Brownses' raspberry patch. But she ain't goin' to be there but an hour or so longer—if you c'n wait. She's been there sence seven."

"I'm afraid that would be too long to wait," Mrs. Sherwin said a little helplessly.

The sharp-eyed woman looked sympathetic ; then, apparently, she had an inspiration.

"Here, Bobby!" she hailed the largest of the playing children. "You get on your bicycle an' pelt down the 'Scutney road to the Brownses', an'— What did you want with Mis' Reed, Mis' Sherwin? Washin'? You ask Mis' Reed if she c'n wash at the Sherwin place to-morrow. Hurry back, now!"

THE sharp-eyed woman seemed to carry a certain amount of influence in the Common, as the colony was called. Bobby left on the minute, and Mrs. Sherwin heaved a sigh of relief. Exertion was not her strong point, any more than it was Dolly's.

"That's so good of you, Mrs. Adams," she said. "I have some friends staying with me, and I really ought to hurry back to them. Besides, it's so hot driving to-day, and so nice here in the shade."

The sharp-eyed Mrs. Adams sat down on her unpainted steps and fanned herself with her apron as if the heat were a new idea. Evidently she considered it her province to entertain the visitor until Bobby's return.

"My, how I like white shoes!" she said suddenly. "Where'd you git 'em?"

"In Boston," Mrs. Sherwin said, smiling at her.

"I ain't never be'n to Boston," her hostess said reflectively. "But you see a lot of the styles goin' past here—an' some pretty crazy ones, too. You'll have to excuse me for mentionin' it, Mis' Sherwin, but some o' them there friends o' yours do dress funny."

Mrs. Sherwin smiled again.

"Have you lived here long, Mrs. Adams?" she asked.

"Long enough," the other woman said calmly. "I guess about thirty years or so."

"And always here?" Mrs. Sherwin asked.

"Always here," was the rejoinder. "But that's nothin'. Lots o' Boston folks ain't never be'n to Brownsville. Besides, it ain't so dull as it looks."

Mrs. Sherwin's eyes roved to the great green sides of Ascutney to the left, seemingly just across the road, but really three miles away.

"I don't mean the mountain," the sharp-eyed woman went on. "Though 'tis sightly. I meant, things happen everywhere. There was the time that Smith woman—Maggie—f'r instance—She ever work for you?"

"Tell me what she looked like," Mrs. Sherwin said diplomatically, her mind on other things.

"She was that kind of thin but shapely woman that had black hair an' brown eyes—big ones—an' always kind o' mooched along softly. Don't you remember her? She used to wear something red generally somewheres, an' she washed pretty well; but it was her cookin' the city folks liked so. She had some Eye-talian or French or both blood, an' they said she cooked kind o' foreign style."

"Indeed I do remember her!" Mrs. Sherwin said, growing interested. "Surely. She helped me out once when I had a big dinner-party, and I liked her so much. She had such polite ways and such a pretty, soft voice."

"She cert'nly had," her hostess agreed heartily. "An' the way she kept that house of hers an' the baby was a wonder, when you think of that dirty fellow Jim Smith comin' in an' out an' upsettin' everything, an' drunk most o' the time. My, she was a worker!"

"But where has she gone?" Mrs. Sherwin asked. "I don't believe I've seen her for two summers."

"She was in prison one of them," the sharp-eyed woman said laconically. "I thought you knew."

"Oh, not really!" Mrs. Sherwin exclaimed. "That nice woman? Why, what did she go to prison for?"

Mrs. Adams hesitated.

"Well, I'll tell you about it, Mis' Sherwin," she said. "But you don't want to get thinkin' that just because folks are poor they ain't got good principles. Besides, she was awful tempted, Maggie was."

"What happened?" Mrs. Sherwin asked gently.

"IT was this way," her hostess began, settling herself comfortably on her step. "Maggie got started cookin' meals for other people here on the Common, she needin' money badly on account of Smith's wastin' his wages drinkin' an' the baby havin' to have medicine every once in a while. It was a sickly little thing. Presently Maggie was keepin' a sort of a restaurant. You know, Mis' Sherwin, all the men workin' on the new Town Hall buildin' live on the Common or around here, an' Maggie's cookin' was a godsend to them. One day there comes along a workman from Montreal, huntin' a place to board at, an' the Smiths had a room in their house—it was this one next door to me—empty at the time. He took it."

Mrs. Sherwin nodded gravely. She thought she saw the story's end.

"He was mighty good-lookin', Mis' Sherwin, with blue eyes an' dark hair,—he was a kind o' mixture of English an' French,—an' he was cert'nly a good boarder. He used to help Maggie do the dishes, an' red up his own room, an' he was real polite to her. Fact was, we called him the Beau, he had such fine manners, an' we couldn't make out that Frenchy other name of his, anyhow. She knew some of his foreign talk, though, an' they used to speak it a lot together.

"Well, Smith had always be'n an awful mean man to live with, an' of course the other man's bein' so sympathetic didn't make her husband look any better to Maggie. As far as I could make her out, she was a lovin' little thing by nature; but Smith'd married her because she had a little bit of money an' was such a fine cook. After she found that out, she got hard to him, only caring for the baby, an' he hated her for it. One day Smith came home drunker than usual, hit his wife, an' knocked the baby out of the cradle. The poor little thing's head hit in falling—an' a few weeks later it died."

Mrs. Sherwin's eyes were blazing.

"Oh, the horrible brute!" she breathed. "Didn't they arrest him for it?"

"Laws are awful funny things, Mis' Sherwin," the sharp-eyed woman said. "I suppose if the baby'd been killed right off, so to speak, it would've been different. But the baby seemed to come all right, an' when it died later the doctor said it was some kind of a thing with a long name that didn't sound like being hit an' didn't have anything to do with it. An' then Maggie'd begged us all not to tell anything, she was so afraid Smith would kill her if he got into any trouble. But, just the same, every woman in the Common knew what that man had done.

"SMITH was kind of sobered by it all, too. I suspect he was afraid's death he'd have to suffer for it, so he went around pretty careful for a while. But the Beau! When he come home, the day the baby died, an' saw Maggie just sittin' in a corner, perfectly still, not hearin' a word a body said to her, he just seemed to go mad—one o' them quiet white mads, you know, that make a man so ugly.

"The minister came an' read the service over the little thing. Then the Beau an' Maggie they took the tiny box an' they went up this road to the cemetery there (you pass it every time you come to Brownsville), an' they put it into the ground together, the sexton lookin' on. Maggie wouldn't let anybody else touch it. Then they came back together. She wasn't cryin' then, though I heard tell she broke down an' cried an' screamed like everything at the grave, an' the Beau doin' his best to comfort her. He said, when they got to the house: 'You go to your room, Margareeta.' Then he goes up to Smith, sittin' half asleep on the porch, an' he says: 'Now, you beast, you caneel [whatever that is], you come out on the Common. Maybe there ain't law for you, but there's justice."

Mrs. Sherwin shivered.

"I'm not goin' to tell you a single thing you wouldn't like to hear," the sharp-eyed woman said gently. "Rich folks don't even need to see some things we have to stand right along. I'll just tell only this. The Beau gave Smith such a beatin' before the hull settlement—the other men just lookin' on—that Smith he packed up an' left town that night. I guess he just couldn't stand our seeing him for a while."

"And then?" Mrs. Sherwin said eagerly.

Again the sharp-eyed woman hesitated.

"Well, then we all had our suspicions what happened," she said slowly; "but nobody seemin'ly saw anything. We're not a bad set around here, Mis' Sherwin. We're just dog-poor, an' some of us don't keep things as neat's we might, because that ain't so easy either when you got to go out workin' all day. There's some

---

God-fearin' New England blood in us, though, an' that bein' the case it was curious our lookin' the other way, 's you might say."

"You were sorry for the poor woman," Mrs. Sherwin suggested.

"Of course we were. I told you that. But women, as a general thing, don't like other women's bein' happy against rules. An' Maggie bloomed out so after Smith left. Even though she mourned for the baby off an' on, she was awful happy-lookin'—an' the Beau he was too. They didn't seem to know hardly anybody else was alive. He went on living in the house, an' she went on with the work, an' when she remembered to think about people at all she seemed to want to do everything kind she could for them—which may have helped her with us: that, an' the Beau's bein' so very handy with his fists. Howsomever, the hull thing only lasted about six months."

"What ended it?" Mrs. Sherwin asked.

"Smith came back one night. An' he brought the sheriff of the county with him."

"What could he do?" demanded Mrs. Sherwin.

The sharp-eyed Mrs. Adams looked at her pityingly.

"He could arrest Maggie an' the Beau on suspicion of breakin' a statute of the State of Vermont," she said. "An' he did—then an' there. An' the Beau bein' a Canadian, they could take him there for trial. My, how that woman looked!"

She paused, recalling the scene.

"I can see her now, standin' on the porch glarin' at Smith. The sheriff had her by one arm, and he held his lantern in his other hand. It was the only light there was, an' it shone on a lot of us standin' around, waked up by the commotion, and more or less anxious to know what was goin' on. The sheriff's two men each had hold of the Beau; an' it was just as well, because Smith was standin' in the background, laughin' at the two of them. She had her fist clenched an' she was swearin' awful—or I guess it was swearin'—in some tongue or other. Her big eyes were blazin' out of her face, an' her dark hair was all tumbled. All of a sudden she stopped—an' laughed the funniest you ever heard.

"'Never mind,' she says in English. 'I've been happy for six months of my life, anyhow, an' God himself can't take that from me, much less any of you! What do I care what you accuse me of? I'll go with you, an' glad to.' An' off she went to prison, laughin'."

THE green outline of Ascutney, soft in the golden light, was blurred to Mrs. Sherwin's eyes—they were so full of tears.

"Poor thing!" she said.

"Yes," agreed the sharp-eyed woman. "Well, Maggie went one way an' the Beau another, an' Smith he came back to his own house to live—alone."

"Wait a minute!" Mrs. Sherwin said almost breathlessly. "I remember now. There was more to the story—a great deal more. She was the woman in that case of supposed murder—I read a little about it in the winter. Of course; I know now. But I never heard how it ended—or what became of her."

Mrs. Adams' face was very grave.

"No more did anybody else," she said. "I never saw her again after that night. You know which one, if you remember the story."

"The night she disappeared?" Mrs. Sherwin said.

The sharp-eyed woman nodded.

"Why did Smith come back here to live, in the first place?" Mrs. Sherwin questioned. "He must have known it was unwise."

"It was his home—what he had. An', the boss bein' short of men, he'd got his job back on the new Town Hall. They always said of Smith he worked better drunk than most men sober, an' I must say he drunk harder'n ever, as if to prove it. The other men wouldn't have anything to do with him because he'd be'n beaten up by the Beau. So he didn't get much society, 's you might say. An' one day, when he was a little drunker than usual, he got in the way of the big derrick that was swingin' a beam down. The beam just flattened him out—straight."

"IT didn't kill him, though," Mrs. Sherwin said, remembering."

"Would 'a' be'n much better for him if it had," the sharp-eyed woman said. "He was paralyzed from the waist down, the doctor said, an' they wouldn't have him at the hospital after a while. Said he was as cured as he ever would be, an' he'd have to go to his own home or come on the town. By that time some of us felt a little sorrier for him, an' we agreed to have him come back to his own house for a while, anyhow,—he begged something pitiful an' he had a little money saved up to pay for his keep,—an' we took turns lookin' after him, us women. Well, Mis' Sherwin, I want to tell you! We hadn't been over-fond of Smith well, but Smith sick was the worst I ever had to deal with. The doctor'd ordered his drink stopped, an' that made a devil out of him. Just when we were decidin' he'd have to go to some institution somewheres—we couldn't stand his yellin' an' swearin' an' complainin' of every blessed thing we were doin' for him,—with all our own work, mind you,—just then Maggie come back."

The sharp-eyed woman drew a long breath at the thought.

"It was my turn to look after him, that evening. I jumped about ten feet when I saw her standin' in the doorway. She had a plain black dress on, with white collar and cuffs; her face was all white—from bein' in prison, I suppose; an' her eyes were bigger than ever. I'm ashamed to say it,—she bein' probably a sinner,—but I just hugged her. 'Oh,' I said, 'you poor thing, what did you come back for? Things are terrible here.'

"Smith heard something, an' he yelled from the inside room to know what all the noise was about. So I whispered to her right quick what had happened, an' I said, 'Go on off again before he sees you. You don't have to stay with him. It'll kill you. He's worse than he ever was.' Think of me drawin' a wife away from her plain duty like that! But that woman always did make people do things they didn't expect to.

"There was something queer about her from that first minute, different from anything she'd ever be'n. She just smiled a little and said, 'I shall stay here, Mrs. Adams.' Then she went an' stood in the doorway of the next room. Smith stopped yelling when he saw her. He was in his chair, of course,—he had to be lifted in an' out,—an' an uglier sight to come home to you couldn't imagine. Unshaved, his face all haggard, his eyes like a devil's—he just stared at her. 'Oh, you've come back, have you?' he said. She only nodded for answer.

"'Well, it was just in time,' he said. 'My money was about used up, an' you can earn enough for the two of us an' take care of me. Do you hear—you—' An' then he said a few things you wouldn't care about hearin'.

"'I hear you,' she said.

"'An' you'll do it, too,' he snarls. 'I'll show you how. I've got the use of my hands, if not of my feet.'

"Just to prove which, he picked up a plate from the table near him an' threw it straight at her head. It only just missed hitting her.

"Well, she certainly was a changed woman, Mis' Sherwin. She never even said a word; just went quietly around the room, tidyin' up, an' he sat watchin' her.

"'Do you want I should stay?' I whispered to her.

"No,' she said, 'thank you. Good night.' An' I went home, glad to get away.

"AFTER that I didn't see much of her for a while—I ain't, as a rule, got much time for visitin'. But from what I did see, an' what I heard tell, he led her a terrible life from that night on. He'd nothin' to do or think of but new ways of tormentin' her."

"I should have thought he might have had some fear of him, all things considered," Mrs. Sherwin said. "Or even of her."

The sharp-eyed woman nodded acquiescence.

"If I'd been as dependent on anybody as he had to be on her, I'd a' thought twice before I drove them desperate," she said. "But he didn't seem to see that, an' she never changed from her purpose, or whatever it was that was back of her, from the first day she came home. She worked from morning until night. She tended him without a word in answer to all his taunting an' his swearin', an' always with that white face an' her eyes lookin' at you as if she was somewheres else.

"The rest of us didn't know what to make of her, an' she was pretty generally let alone. But I'd always liked her, an' I never was one to hold back if I could be of any use. So one night, when I saw her sittin' on her door-step, lookin' over at 'Scutney, I went over an' sat down alongside of her. She gave me a sort of a little white smile.

"'Look a' here, Maggie,' I said to her. 'What are you doin' all this for, anyhow?'

She got whiter than ever, an' she sort of gasped:

"'What do you mean?'

"'Why do you stay on here?' I said outright; an' she stared at me. 'It's killin' you. Any one can see it. Let Smith pay somebody to look after him, an' you go live somewhere else. You can earn more money if you do, an' send it to him, if you want."

"At the word killing she smiled that little white smile again.

"'I will stay,' she said. And not another word.

"So I went on talkin' along the same line, an' she sat lookin' off at 'Scutney without a word.

"PRESENTLY Smith let out a yell for her,—it's the only way you can describe it, Mis' Sherwin,—an' she got right up an' went in to him. I sat there, wonderin'.

---

"When she came back an' sat down again, I asked her outright:

"'Where's the Beau now?'

"She got very red.

"'I—don't—know,' she said, separatin' her words just like that. 'Still in Canada, I think.'

"'H'm!' I said. 'I guess I'll go on home now.'

"An' I left.

"I WISH now I'd done different. But I just leave it to you, Mis' Sherwin—how in mercy's sake was I to know?"

"It certainly was a strange case," Mrs. Sherwin commented. "And you were there at the very end too, if I remember, weren't you?"

"Oh, my, I guess I was!" the sharp-eyed woman said. "I'll never forget it as long's I live.

"It was about two weeks after that. Around that time Smith had begun seemingly to get a lot better in health. Some little power of moving came back to his lower limbs, an' the doctor begun to say he might get back their use altogether. He said it was one of the curiousest cases he'd ever known, an' he watched Smith very careful, comin' there nearly every day.

"Meantime she went around, whiter an' queerer an' harder-workin' than ever. Maybe I was a fool to bother about what wa'n't my concern, but I laid awake nights sometimes, wonderin' how it would all end an' what her ways meant. I hated to think bad of her.

"One o' those nights, about twelve or some earlier, I heard a noise from the Smiths' house, as if somebody'd opened the side window downstairs very soft. We go to bed with the chickens around our way, an' I sat up an' listened. Then I got out of bed, slipped on something, an' looked out, an' was sure, pitch-dark as it was, I saw a figure climb in that window.

"I listened. A few minutes later I thought I heard a little low cry—not loud at all, but stoppin' short, as 'if it was choked off.

"That scared me, an' I never stopped to think. I just popped out my own front door an' in Smith's. Nobody locks doors here, you know—we ain't got anything to lose.

"Everything was death-still an' dark, except a little crack of light under the door of the front room. I opened it, and the next thing was the strangest ever happened to me. For all in the same second I saw what had been an' what was comin', an' then it was all over.

"By the open window of the front room stood the Beau, his arms around the woman. She had both hands against his chest, pushin' him back an' sayin':

"'No, no! I will not go with you! I can not! I dare not!'

"Their two faces were almost touching—his all drawn an' white, an' hers white an' with that queer set look. The Beau's back was to the bedroom door. Creepin' totterin' up back of him was Smith, his fist raised, a knife in it. Just as I opened my mouth to call out, Smith struck at him."

"And the woman?"

"She saw Smith the second before he hit, an' she pulled the Beau to one side. Smith struck so hard, the force of the blow took him all the way to the floor. And he didn't get up.

"Maggie ran an' tried to raise him. But he was too heavy, an' she knelt there shaking all over, we just standin' starin' at her.

"'He's fainted!' she whispered. 'Oh, Beau, go—go quick, before—'

"But the Beau was kneeling by her, his face nearly as ghastly as Smith's. Only Smith's was all drawn sideways and twisted, an' his breathing had stopped.

"'He's dead—he's dead,' he said, his teeth chattering.

"I just had one thought. I ran to her an' caught tight hold of her.

"'Don't cry out!' I whispered. Don't bring any one in!' But she didn't. She pushed me away very gently as she knelt by him.

"She listened and listened for his breathing. There wa'n't any. Then she leaned over an' closed his eyes—those terrible, wicked, staring, angry eyes of his. An' then she crossed herself an' said some words of a prayer very fast. Then she stood up.

"'God has interfered,' she said. 'I knew he would—I knew he would!

"'See you,' she said to me. 'When I was in prison, a priest came to me. He told me things I never knew—how I had sinned—why I must suffer. So then I came back here to work out my penance.'

"'God forgive me!' I said. 'Once I thought you'd come back to do him hurt, or help the Beau do it.'

"'I could not tell you, or any one,' she said. 'The priest forbade it—and who would have believed a lost thing like me? But I worked and prayed and suffered—and at last I knew God had forgiven—'

"Then she broke off suddenly. The Beau had hold of her by this time.

"'But now what shall we do?' she said piteously. 'We did no wrong—I had refused to go with him to-night—'

"'I was a brute to ask you,' he put in. 'But I loved you so, and they told me he made your life hell!'

"'I know,' she said. 'But if they come and find you here, or if—Mrs. Adams, they won't take me for murder—say they won't!'

"In one minute she'd changed from a sort of wonder-woman into almost a frightened child, sobbin' in the Beau's arms.

"'I can't bear any more! I can't!' she moaned. 'And I'm afraid!'

I won't leave you,' he said. 'Never again. If they arrest you, they'll take me too.'

"DID you ever see before you, like in a moving-picture, just what you've got to do, Mis' Sherwin? Well, that was the way it was with me.

"'Why should anybody take either of you?' I said. 'I'm witness you never touched him, but—'

"I looked at the clock. It was only a little after twelve.

"'Beau, you get over to the station at Dernville quick,' I said, 'an' take the 12.40 local down to Claremont Junction.'

"He stared at me.

"'And leave Margareeta?' he began.

"'Leave nothin'!' I said. 'You buy two tickets there, an' get on the Canadian Express. It'll come through here at three, an' it stops to take on water. She'll get on it—I'll see to that. And after that it'll be your job to take care of her.'

"'I will take her straight to the priest's as soon as we reach Montreal,' he said, his eyes shining. 'But if anything happened to—'

"'Not a thing will, if you do what I tell you,' I said. 'But first'—an' I looked at Smith's body.

"He understood me, an' he went an' lifted up his old enemy and carried him to the bedroom an' put him back into his bed. Then he went.

"As soon as he'd gone, I blew out the little candlelight, an' I whispered to Maggie:

"'Now we'll get your things together in the dark.'

"She had braced up wonderful at the thought of gettin' away, an' we worked quick. There wasn't much to pack up, goodness knows. Luckily she had a little money handy she'd just earned. We waited together until half past two. I think she half dozed, half prayed. I did.

"Once she whispered to me:

"'Do you think I am a coward to do this? I could not face more trouble. But they will see he was not murdered—and surely my duty here is done?'

'"Of course it is!' I said, putting a big face on it.

"She wouldn't let me go to the station with her. At her door she kissed me—an' slipped out into the dark. I've never laid eyes on her since."

FOR a minute silence fell between the two women. Somewhere in the warm stillness a bee droned. Then—

"Wasn't there a great deal of excitement next day, when the neighbors found Mr. Smith dead and his wife gone?" Mrs. Sherwin asked. "I think it was wonderful of you to face all that trouble just to spare her."

"I'd always thought a heap of Maggie," Mrs. Adams said slowly. "She never thought much about me, but—well, you see, she had the looks I never had—an' the love I never could win—an' the child I never bore—an', I don't know, I sort of always admired her.

"Yes, there was a big hue an' cry next day. Most of the women were sure Maggie had murdered her husband, and there was a reporter for a Boston paper hangin' around over to Windsor, an' he thought he had a big thing. That's how you come to read about it, I guess. Between you an' me, I thought I'd probably have to go on the witness-stand an' tell my story, an' Maggie maybe have to be brought back to prove it.

"But that blessed doctor of Smith's saved me."

She chuckled softly at the remembrance.

"He was one of them bright young things just out of college, an' what he didn't know wa'n't to be known. I guess he thought he was a detective an' a story-writer an' a doctor all rolled into one. He certainly had always had a lot of sympathy for Maggie ever since her baby died. He was a good-hearted boy.

"Anyhow, he 'took command of things,' 's he put it, the minute he got to the house for his daily visit next mornin' an' found things so stirred up. It didn't take him hardly five minutes to 'formulate his theory,' lookin' wise.

"'Now, my idea about this thing, Mrs. Adams,' he finished up,—most of the neighborhood listenin' an' fearfully impressed, even the reporter,—'is simply this:

"'Mrs. Smith had finally revolted against her husband's outrageous treatment,—I can personally assure you she had every cause to,—and she had not only notified him of her intention to leave him, but had actually done so. Smith's anger at her and at his inability to detain her, naturally, in his debilitated state, brought on the brain condition which I have described to you at some length' (indeed he had), 'and death was the result. What, as a practical woman, do you think of my theory?'

"'I think it is wonderful,' I said. "'Are you goin' to tell it at the inquest, doctor?'

"'Most assuredly I am,' he said. 'And, I take it, it will have some effect.'

"OF course, when he knew all that, it wa'n't necessary for me to start any new excitement by mentionin' that the Beau had been in Brownsville, so says I:

"'Doctor, I do admire to hear you.'

"So did the coroner, an' after they'd had an autopsy to make sure, the case was dropped. An' Maggie—I guess she got to Canada all right."

Mrs. Sherwin's face lit up. She leaned forward.

"Now, I wonder if I didn't see her once last summer when we were motoring through the outskirts of Montreal?" she said eagerly. "We stopped at a little cottage to ask our way, and the woman the chauffeur spoke to looked so like Mrs. Smith. Only, she seemed so very much younger-looking than I remembered her—and she had a dear little baby sleeping on her porch. Oh, I hope it was she!"

"My, I do too," said the sharp-eyed woman. "For she mayn't have been always right in all she done, Mis' Sherwin, but she had a hard time of it, an' what she done wrong she surely paid for. I do hope she's happy—somewheres. Well, here comes Bobby."

And in the hot noon sun Ascutney Mountain dreamed on.

An Idea Worth $1

LAST winter I discovered a "side line" that proved more remunerative than I dared hope for.

I noticed one day that a door in a friend's house always squeaked when opened. So I said, "Charlie, what's the matter with your oil-can?" "Well," he replied, "it's empty."

The next day I procured four oil cans, and had each filled with different kind of lubricating oil, from very thin to moderately thick. Then I painted a small banner on which was inscribed

THE OIL-CAN MAN

and my wife sewed it across the front of my khaki shirt.

Then the printer got out some cards like this:

THE OIL-CAN MAN
Will oil everything in your house
that squeaks or might squeak,
for only 35 cents.
Let him do it now.

Well, the way the housekeepers took to the idea utterly surprised me, and in the first four days I took in $19.25. Here and had each filled with a different kind are some of the things that I oiled: hinges of doors, vacuum cleaners, the ice-cream freezer, clothes-wringer, lawn-mower, meat-chopper, faucets, carpet-sweeper, baby-carriage, phonograph, sewing-machine, clothes-washer, hammock-hangers and piano pedals.

C. W. C., Rochester, N. Y.

How I Got My Raise

WHILE I was saleslady in the children's department of a dry-goods store in a city of 15,000 population, the idea came to me to secure a list of the names and addresses of all my customers.

To get these names and addresses was a diplomatic task, and I handled it in the following way: When a customer came in I gave her a fashion booklet of children's dresses.

This never failed to create interest, and so when I offered to have others sent her from time to time it was an easy matter to secure her name and address.

To this list, which I always dated, I added the names and ages of her children as I learned them by waiting upon her. Whenever she came in afterward it was the matter of but a moment to steal a glance at my list under the counter, and then be able to talk to her intelligently about her children and show her just what she was looking for without the need of much explanation on her part.

A further development of my plan was to turn a copy of my list of names and addresses over to my employer, with the suggestion that when a new lot of dresses came in, notice be sent to all of my customers.

This brought a very visible increase in my sales, and, it is needless to say, my salary was materially increased.

E. H. R., Ann Arbor, Mich.

"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

WILL MRS. LEEDS BE THE KAISER'S COUSIN?

IF it were not for the stupid regulations that burden royal families, lovely Mrs. Leeds would marry handsome Prince Christophoros, and they would "live happy ever after."

King Constantine of Greece would be her brother-in-law, and she would become cousin to King George and Queen Victoria of Spain. She would be a niece of Queen Alexandra and a near relative of the German Emperor.

But Mrs. Leeds was born in an American flat, and there was no royal coat-of-arms on her cradle. The Prince is trying now to make his royal relatives forget this petty fact.

For Mrs. Leeds is going to be a regular bride, with the God-bless-you-my-children of all the Prince's folks, or not at all. And they've been engaged three years now.

To be sure, Mrs. Leeds's husband William was tin-plate king of America. And she has more costly gowns and more marvelous crowns than most queens. But the English royal family, in particular, can not forgive the fact of her birth. Queen Mary told the Prince so.

"Mrs. Leeds's position in England is a curious one," says London Tit-Bits. "As an American widow with an immense fortune, she is much sought after now. She has had many suitors of royal birth.

"But what a difference there would be in her position if she became the morganatic wife of the Greek prince! Royal doors would be closed to her, and many titled dames would be forbidden by society to put her name on their visiting lists. Is it any wonder that she wants official sanction that she will be accepted as 'one of the family'?"

"One thing is certain: the Kaiser will not cherish any cousinly feelings toward the American bride."

THE LARGEST FLESH-EATER THAT EVER LIVED

IF Tyrannosaurus Rex were living now, his doctor would advise him to cut down on his meat diet. For he was the largest flesh-eater of prehistoric times, and could dine off mastodons and other extinct proboscidean quadrupeds of the family Elephantidae without a sign of indigestion.

Two skeletons of the tyrant lizard were found, one quite recently, in the Montana Bad Lands by Mr. Barnum Brown, an American paleontologist. Their excavation and successful mounting in the American Museum of Natural History is, says the London Sphere, a triumph in prehistoric discoveries.

Tyrannosaurus Rex was a gigantic cross between a crocodile, a lizard, and a bird. It was a powerful flesh-eating creature, capable of destroying any of the other animals living in its time. It was active and swift. The bones now on display in the museum are hollow, and the hind limbs are like those of a bird.

The first specimen, says the Sphere, was found embedded in a flinty blue sandstone, as hard as granite, near the head of Hell Creek Cañon. Each bone was found to be incased separately, and so firmly cemented that it was necessary to blast with dynamite and carry the cuts nearly down to the bone layer. Each bone was taken out separately. As the bones were scattered and the hill was a steep one, the work was tremendous.

Not contented with the specimen he unearthed, Mr. Brown kept on prospecting until, on Big Dry Creek, in the Montana Bad Lands, he found a more complete skeleton. This is the one that has just been mounted in the museum. It is one of the last of its race, and, from its size and build, must have been king of the whole Tyrannosaurus tribe. According to Mr. Brown, larger herb-eating dinosaurs have been found in America and East Africa; but the flesh-eaters living at that time were a third smaller than his discovery.

HOW IT FEELS TO BE SHOT

JOHN GALLISHAW was working with half a dozen companions to clear a trench when a Turkish sniper got him. In his book, Trenching at Gallipoli (Century Company), he tells how it feels to be shot.

"Just then," he says, "I felt a dull thud in my left shoulder-blade, and a sharp pain in the region of my heart. At first I thought that in running for cover one of the men had thrown a pick-ax that hit me. Until I felt the blood trickling down my back like warm water, it did not occur to me that I had been hit. Then came a drowsy, languid sensation, the most enjoyable and pleasant I have ever experienced. It seemed to me that my backbone became like pulp, and I closed up like a concertina. Gradually I felt my knees give way under me; then my head dropped over on my chest, and down I went.

"Connecting the pain in my chest with the blow in my back, I decided that the bullet had gone through my shoulder, through my left lung, and out through my heart, and I concluded I was done for."

Gallishaw began to feel as if he were some one else, and talked to himself quite as if his spirit had already left his body. He tried to call out that he was hit, but his words seemed only an echo.

Then Art Pratt, his friend, came up to him, with three other men, and he heard Art say: "We must get him out of this."

"No woman could have been more gentle or tender than those men in carrying me back to the trench," Gallishaw goes on. "Although bullets were pattering around, they walked at a snail's pace, lest the least hurried movement might jar me and add to my pain."

When they reached a safe place, they stopped to examine the wound, and a crowd gathered around to see how badly he was hurt.

"I became quite angry at this," he says, "and I asked them if they thought it was a nickel show. This caused them all to laugh so heartily that even I joined in. This was when I felt almost certain that I was dying."

THIS WAY FOR SHAWLS

THE Vale of Kashmir, where China, India, and Afghanistan meet, is swung among the peaks of the Himalayas like a hanging garden. It has been part of the British Empire for many years, paying little other tribute than Kashmir shawls, which have become the inevitable birthday present of Queen Mary and other ladies de Guelf.

In Travel Gertrude Springer describes a houseboat journey through the valley:

"The approach to Srinagar gives the impression of a ruin overgrown with flowers. The tumble-down houses are roofed with gardens. The whole city has a crown of blossoms, over which hover numberless bright butterflies. House-boats line the river-banks, and by them go a stream of swift shikaras, large barges laden with produce, and great galleys of wealthy nobles, with rich awnings, and rowed by no less than twenty men in brilliant costumes."

Though the people are among the handsomest and most intelligent in India, strange to say, they are ridiculous cowards.

Brandish a small stick, and they will scatter, howling. Giving up the lower floor of their houses to cattle, in winter they chink up every crack, leaving holes through the floor, so that the breath of the animals will keep the family warm.

TELL YOUR CHILDREN BEAR STORIES

FAIRY tales at bed-time, even the dreadfully scary kind, are just the thing for youngsters—so says a bachelor in the Unpopular Review.

Does Shakespeare bore you? Do Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, leave you cold? Ah, that is because you had scientific parents, who sat for hours on the lowest stair, holding each other's trembling hands, while you howled yourself blue "learning to go to sleep by yourself."

"I am told," says this authority, "that this method strengthens the child's lungs and teaches him independence of character." No doubt.

"But what, oh what in the name of childhood becomes of the romance of sleep?" he asks. "What will little Henry ever know of the Land of Nod, and of the fairies and giants who people it? What of the gracious land of wonderwander, which is as measureless as his own imagination, and whose only boundaries are his mother's arms?

"Are there, I wonder, still parents who fear that these stories will give children a false conception of life? Do they apprehend that their offspring will wish to don glass slippers or end by marrying a frog? Does it seem safer to put into the hands of children books which set forth useful facts about the five continents, and narrate the habits of poor boys who become famous? What will develop that instinctive love of the things of the imagination which are the very life-breath of literature? I know a man who was reared on such useful books. He is to-day a professor of some eminence, a conspicuously industrious and admirable man. He knows more about the turtle skull than any man in America. I was once present with him at a recital of the greatest living mistress of the bel canto, and he discoursed to me between the numbers on the formation of the vocal organs. He had never read any fairy tales as a boy. The Nature whom he worshiped had closed the eyes of his soul."

The precious thing, this writer maintains, which children bring us is the passion to create the world anew. On a fare of useful books only, a child's imagination may die of inanition.

---

WHAT AN ENGLISHMAN THOUGHT OF NEW YORK

THE English visitor to America naturally misses the appreciative spirit of English shop-girls. James Walker voices such a need in an account of his trip to New York for the Manchester Guardian.

"The young women," he says, "appear to be well paid and well treated, but not very well satisfied. A shop assistant never smiles. 'Please' and ' Thank you' are almost unknown in the stores."

All the Americans on board his ship were anxious to be the first to show him the New York sky-line and to know what he thought of America before he had set foot on it. They even followed him to his hotel next morning to learn what he thought of their country. As to the sky-line, he dismissed it with the word "interesting." As to New York, it was impressive, but the English visitor kept expecting it to be torn down as soon as the exhibition was over. Further experiences in New York led him to the following conclusions:

It is a town of untidy streets and tidy inhabitants.

Business offices are furnished with a view to providing the most effective background for the stenographer.

The famous electric sky signs are both hideous and insane.

Salesmanship in America is an exercise in hypnotism.

In spite of the outcry against daring costumes of bathers, women wear more clothes on the beaches than they do on the streets.

Soft-shelled crab is a great delicacy; broiled lobster is first-rate.

Five o'clock tea is unknown. This great deprivation makes the afternoon seem long and oppressive.

FIREMEN'S RISKS

ONLY small boys appreciate that a fireman is a hero. To most people his life seems a pleasant routine of cribbage games and fire drills. Not at all, says Charles T. Hill in Fighting a Fire (Century Company). Different risks of a fireman take place so regularly that they can be tabulated into long lists.

The deadly back-draft, for instance: "Firemen find the second floor in flames. They drag up more hose to make the final dash, when something falls in the rear. There is a renewed draft, and a wall of flames moves toward them. The only chance of escape is to hurl themselves downstairs, or to fall flat, in hope that it will roll over them."

The danger of explosion lurks in every city fire. "The men pry open a door or an iron shutter to get at the fire. If the combustion going on within has generated gas, the moment the air gets to it this mixture will ignite and explode."

Firemen are ordered not to be foolhardy; but, regarding a fire as their natural enemy, they are so eager "to get a belt at it with the pipe," or to beat some other company into position and win "first water," that their lives are as dangerous and uncomfortable as any this side of the trenches.

BEING CLEAN IN A RAILWAY CAR

A RAILWAY car is a house on wheels with a constant flux of inhabitants. If it is unsanitary, dusty, and badly ventilated, the passengers are in more danger from disease germs than from head-on collisions. To prevent the spread of germs, says Dr. Thomas R. Crowder, both passengers and railroad companies must help.

The railroads have neither the time nor the authority to discriminate between a sick man and a well man asking for mileage at the ticket window. Besides, often the carrier of disease germs may look well and strong, while all the time his mild sore throat is diphtheria, or his trifling rash scarlet fever. Therefore it is up to the passengers to do their part.

The common cup, the common towel, and the common brush and comb, once the most direct route of germs from one person to another, are almost extinct. Some day they may be highly valued exhibits in a Chamber of Horrors. But there are still regulations for the railroads to enforce.

"Lavatories with plenty of water, with smooth surfaces for scouring, should be conveniently placed in each car. There should be a special basin for brushing the teeth (using the wash basin for this is to make a cuspidor of it). Each car should have plenty of pure drinking water that has not been contaminated by dirty ice put in by dirty hands. Day-coaches should have cans for garbage and refuse.

"On the dining-car, the cooks and waiters should have medical examinations every half year, and those found infected with tuberculosis, typhoid, etc., should be dismissed until complete recovery has taken place. They should have a manicure all around before going into service. Drinking glasses and eating utensils should be passed through boiling water before being served to any one."

As for car-cleaning, fumigation that does not remove the dust is not enough. For the carpets and plush a vacuum cleaner with at least one horse-power and fifty feet of hose is necessary. An air blast will take the dust out of the corners. Carpets and plush are better than bare floors and smooth surfaces, because they hold the flying dust until it is sucked into the vacuum.

In ventilation, the most important thing is to keep the car at the right temperature. If 70° F. is maintained, with thin streams of fresh air entering at the top and through the door-sashes, not even those rich old ladies who employ a traveling companion to carry the smelling salts will complain.

"CALM YOURSELF"

YOU don't fret because you're tired; you're tired because you fret, says Dr. George L. Walton in Calm Yourself (Houghton, Mifflin Company).

You think you are angry because your worst enemy called you a liar. As a matter of fact, you are angry because you can't stand being called such a name. If, says Dr. Walton, you would practise your canstandability instead of your can'tstandability, you'd enjoy being called names just to see how cool you could be. For you are sure during the day to come in contact with people who are ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious. If you prepare to meet their abuse of you with pity for their peculiarities instead of resentment, you are doing no more than a sailor who stands ready to put down the helm in a squall.

"Nervous prostration would be rare," says the neurologist, "if we were so constituted that we could leave out needless fear and fret, avoid swearing or even feeling like swearing, if we could argue without acrimony, could stifle our aversions, could resist the temptation to play the martyr.

"For the cure of nervousness (which is often only another name for faulty habit of mind) change of scene is often advised. But one can sit tight wherever he is and materially modify his character, if he be sufficiently broad-minded to recognize his own shortcomings as well as those of his neighbor.

"Be fretless," says Dr. Walton; "be fussless; be tired and good-natured instead of tired and cross; remember that any one can stand what he likes, but only a philosopher can stand what he doesn't like; don't suffer ten deaths a week through fear, when you have to die only once; and, above all, get busy!"

THE MAN WHO EATS CHOCOLATES

DR. LOUIS E. BISCH, medical psychologist in the New York police department, says chocolate is an intoxicant. His theory, according to the New York Herald, is that carbohydrates in chocolate oxidize quickly in the process of digestion and form a certain amount of alcohol. In a milder degree, chocolate, if eaten in sufficiently large quantities, will bring on a state of intoxication analogous to that brought on by whisky.

Candy-eating, like curiosity, is a vice that men seek to fasten on women. The proprietor of one of New York's largest candy stores, however, has gone so far as to say that he believes men eat just as much candy as women, but are less frank about it.

"Nevertheless," says the Herald, "he insisted that he could usually spot the masculine candy-eater as the man who came into the store rather sheepishly and in a subdued whisper bought a small bag of candy, insisting that it was for his wife, mother, or sister. And, just as the man who drinks alone is the worst drunkard of them all, so the man who eats candy in secret is the worst candy drunk."

For a short time this will be good news to thirsty souls in dry States. But presently there will be debates on "Chocolate and the Labor Problem." Men will be exhorted never to give a young girl her first bite. Mothers will say, "I'd rather my boy would eat it at home with his father than at a chocolate café." Women will admit: "I don't object to eating it in private, but I never eat it in public, because I think it is a bad example for young men." Ministers will preach from the revised version: "Look not upon the drop when it is brown—creams are a mocker, caramels are raging."

Maybe there will be a fine for saying, "Oh, fudge!"

NO BISQUE DOLLS THIS CHRISTMAS

THERE will be precious few German toys in America's stocking Christmas morning. The last playthings from Germany reached us last February.

For half a century and more Germany has decked America's Christmas trees. But now manufacturers are turning out bullets and bayonets in the place of silver balls and tinsel. Living soldiers are marching out of the toy factories instead of the little tin braves of former years. But there will be toys a-plenty, just the same. America is making her own playthings, says the Chicago News. Everything that used to come from Germany is being duplicated here; everything except that inscrutable bisque doll. She is Germany's secret, and America's mystery.

But little Mary can get along very well without the bisque doll when there are so many styles of infants to choose from. There will be those clever character dolls such as were originated in Germany, but are now imitated here. Kathe Kruse made the first one, modeling it after the likeness of her own child. This doll is stuffed with cotton and covered by a heavy material, while its head is made of a plaster that is Mme. Kruse's own invention.

WHAT SCIENCE IS DOING

To Roll This Old World Along

MAKING RAIN AT $500 AN INCH

INTO a rainless, cloudless Kansas, with a temperature of 102º in the shade, there came, one September afternoon in 1893, a quiet, mysterious stranger who called himself "Melbourne." He offered to bring rain to the parched community for the modest sum of $500. Not a drop of rain had fallen since May; crops were ruined; and the drought extended far into Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, and even into the Texas Panhandle.

Melbourne, who had adopted the name of his native city for personal reasons, was solving a drought in southern Ohio when the call came from Kansas; and, realizing the greater opportunity for his efforts, he packed up his rain apparatus and went West. After a careful study of atmospheric conditions and of the topography of the surrounding land, he signed a contract guaranteeing to produce rainfall of not less than one inch, for $500. Before he could get his rain-making machine into action, a great storm broke over Goodland, for which thousands ignorantly gave him credit.

Finally the Australian was ready. Throngs from every part of western Kansas were on hand to witness the exhibition. No one was allowed within the mysterious laboratory. The weather continued hot and dry, and his audience began to manifest doubts. But on the third morning a heavy cloud-bank crept over the sky, and a gentle rain fell.

That night, while the rain wizard was away eating his dinner, a dozen men broke into the laboratory and carried off the secret of rain-making. Later he was given a special car by the Rock Island Railroad, and while conducting experiments his laboratory was again rifled. By that time the secret had been given enough publicity, so that scores of amateur rain-makers were practising in different parts of the country. Wild tales of rain-making were telegraphed to the press of the nation, and the most impossible feats recorded.

Melbourne disappeared from Goodland; but enough had been learned by his imitators to enable them to step out boldly in his footsteps. The principle of his apparatus was simple and plausible. He generated hydrogen gas, which floated to the higher air strata, became cooled, united with the proper amount of oxygen, and fell as rain.

About this time Julius H. Stewart, chemist, preacher, and editor of the Goodland Republic and News, became interested. He is still interested and, at the age of seventy years, is actively engaged in experiments with which he hopes to solve the water problem of the semi-arid West.

In the summer of 1894 another pitiless drought came to Goodland. "Parson" Stewart, with the company he had organized, was offered $500 by a rich farmer to produce one inch of rainfall before July 27. The offer was made on July 24. That gave Stewart and his aides exactly three days in which to assemble their apparatus and bring down the rain. They hastened to Kansas City, bought large supplies of zinc, copper, and sulphuric acid, and constructed a powerful battery of electric cells.

The weather was sultry. Fleecy clouds hung low on the horizon, and two dark "thunder-heads" were skidding into the distance more than fifty miles away. The apparatus was set to work. The crowd laughed good-naturedly when Stewart declared that he intended "to pull that thunder-head right up the Neosho River and spill it out." Then lightning flashed, a gale rose, and the monster clouds swept as if guided up the river; and in less than half an hour one half inch of rain drenched the doubting assembly.

When all the world laughed at the rain-makers and their "science" fell into bad repute, Stewart turned his efforts back to his newspaper and his congregation. But he firmly believes in his ability to make rain—when atmospheric conditions are favorable.

DETECTING THE "SOUTH-PAW"

ARE you left-handed? Or, as they say in the baseball kingdom, are you a south-paw? If you have a left-handed child, don't be too insistent in demanding a transformation to right-handedness. The change may result in mental debility. Nature allows 417 out of every 10,000 of us to be born left-handers. It is best to let nature take her own course. To be on the safe side, let the brachiometer decide for you.

Professor W. Franklin Jones, of the University of South Dakota, has been carrying on some interesting and illuminating tests in order to find out something

about this puzzling business of left-handedness. He learned that 77 per cent. of left-handers are compelled to use their right arms instead. Some unusual formation of the brain-cells causes left-handedness, and he warns parents not to risk tampering with that formation.

The brachiometer measures the bones and muscles in the right and left sides of the body. If a young child has larger bones and muscles in the left side than in the right, it is naturally left-handed.

Professor Jones has discovered that children develop greater use in one of their arms when they are not naturally left- or right-handed. The correct side should be discovered and the proper arm trained. Natural right- or left-handedness and acquired right- or left-handedness can he detected on the brachiometer.

HE BLAMES THE BUMBLE-BEE

THE imagination of Jules Verne was the dryest of common sense compared with the fertile soul of a busy inventor in Detroit. William A. Sharpe looked at a bumble-bee, and presto!—the aëro-motor.

The aëro-motor can—at least, its enthusiastic inventor believes it can—outdo the performance of any vehicle in the world, with the exception of the submarine.

It can speed along a road after the manner of the automobile. By the mere pressure of a button, or the twisting of a lever, or something, it will soar into the air, aëroplane fashion. Give it the chance, and it will scoot over the water in the approved style of the hydro-aëroplane. But those manœvers only begin to tap its possibilities. If there is ice or snow on the ground, runners can be attached, and it will break all the world's records for speed—150 miles an hour.

The aëro-motor derives the power for any of its ventures from four fly-wheels, to each of which is attached a giant fan, or propeller, of four blades. The four wheels operate separately, and have a lifting force of 800 pounds apiece.

Whether or not the aëro-motor has ever been successful enough to carry out the imagined schemes of its genius, our informant politely neglects to state. For ourselves, we would much prefer running the British blockade in the Deutschland, as far as safety is concerned, to tackling the air, sea, ice, snow, and land in a reckless aëro-motor.

The inventor pursued the hapless bumble-bee through dozens of clover fields before the aëro-motor crystallized in his brain.

SEEING WITH EARS

TO say that a man has invented an apparatus by means of which a blind man can hear printed letters is a strange assertion; but it is not nearly so strange as the apparatus. That marvelous new chemical, selenium, is responsible. One of the peculiarities of selenium is that the amount of electric current that can flow through it is influenced by the intensity of the light in which it is placed. It registers these fluctuations in a phenomenal way, as Dr. F. C. Brown, of the University of Iowa, who is the inventor of the apparatus, has discovered.

The selenium "eye" of the apparatus is moved over a sheet of paper containing printed letters. Electric current is sent through the selenium and, in turn, a delicate ear receiver which is clamped to the ears of the blind man. Various letters make various sounds in the receiver, according

to their shape, and the tone produced by each letter is slightly different. It requires time, of course, for a blind man to learn the sounds produced by different printed letters; but the inventor believes that, with practice, a blind man will learn to read with greater facility than by the raised-letter method.

The blind throughout the country are expressing much interest in Dr. Brown's "phonopticon," as it is called, and it is expected that the device will find its way into all of the blind institutions in the world.

WILL YOU HAVE SOME BARNACLE SOUP?

NOW that potatoes, bread, butter, and all such things have joined the aviation corps, our alert scientists are turning their energies to substitutes. Professor Trevor Kincaid, of the University of Washington, has discovered, for example, that the shells that cling to the sides of sea-going vessels will cause the eyebrows of the seasoned epicure to arch. As a matter of fact, the barnacles on a vessel are not particularly delicious; but one of the barnacle tribe which inhabits the northern Pacific coast can be made into a soup, that is far more succulent than oyster stew.

It is the largest barnacle known, and can be harvested by the shipload in the San Juan Islands, according to Professor Kincaid. Students at the marine station at Friday Harbor claim that the eagle barnacle, as this giant species is called, is more delicious than crab or shrimp. Its nutritive value is higher than that of the oyster.

The eagle barnacle lives on small forms of marine life, and is preferable to the crab, for the crab is a scavenger. Its shell often measures ten by seven inches, and the meat often weighs nearly a pound.

Checking Up on Larsen

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by F. Vaux Wilson

IT just goes to show that you can't lump 'em. People, I mean. Now, take taxi-drivers. I can't say why, but I never could see one without glancin' at his hair and wonderin' how long since he got out of the pen. That is, I never could until I got to know Virgil.

It was one forenoon a spell ago, when things was a little slack at the Physical Culture Studio and I was sittin' here at the roll-top with my heels up, when in blows this gooseb'ry-eyed party in the cap and leggins.

He sizes me up careful for a minute and then asks: "Professor McCabe's place, isn't it?"

"If you mistrust the sign on the door," says I, "I'll relieve your mind. It is. What then?"

I thought I saw his upper lip twitch sort of resentful, but outside of that his race never changes. He takes time to let my remarks sink in, and then announces solemn: "Mr. Mayo is downstairs."

"Is he?" says I. "Why don't he come up, then? He's due."

The party in the leggins shuffles his feet a bit and stares at the ceilin'.

"He—he's in the car," says he. "I don't think he knows he's here."

"Oh!" says I. "It's that way, is it?"

I expect I gave a chuckle, too. For the humorous jag is Robert Cutting Mayo's specialty. Ask any one in the lobster-palace zone about Bobbie Brut, and see if they don't grin. Ten to one, too, they'll proceed to tell you some of his most comic doin's, and how many quarts of inspiration he had to go on.

Yes, he's a reg'lar of mine. Not that I got many like him, or play the Studio for any alcoholic ward. But, somehow, Bobbie Brut belongs—friend of Pinckney's and all that.

"Clean spiffed, is he?" I asks.

WHAT does this here chauffeur gent do but stiffen up kind of haughty.

"If you mean to ask is Mr. Mayo intoxicated," says he, "I don't believe I care to say."

He had me gaspin' a bit there.

"Oh, you don't, eh?" says I. "Well, well! Say, who the blazes are you, anyway?"

"I'm Mr. Mayo's chauffeur," says he.

"Think of that!" says I. "And here I had you sized up as his private secretary. Kind of a chauffeur de luxe, I expect. What does Mr. Mayo call you when he hails you by name?"

"Mostly he calls me Sport or old Glue Face," says he, growlin' it out sort of sulky; "but my right name is Larsen—Virgil Larsen."

"Very pretty, too," says I. "Where'd he pick you from, Virgil?"

"I was driving a taxi," says he.

"What line?" says I.

"Independent," says Virgil.

"Oh, a pirate?" I goes on. "Where was your stand?"

"Times Square," says he.

"Huh!" says I. "Then you must have done a lot of joy cruisin' in your time."

He nods stiff, without enthusiasm.

"I've only been in the city about a year," says he.

Somehow he'd got me curious, so I goes on with the pumpin' process.

"Where do you hail from, then?" says I.

"Twig, Minnesota," says he.

"Good comedy," says I, "but what's the joke?"

He insists, though, that Twig is the name of a place. Seems he'd been brought up on a farm.

"It was too lonesome," says Virgil, "so I came away."

"Couldn't you find any Olga to hook up with?" I asks.

He pinks up and shakes his head.

"I didn't try," says he. "With women around you can't improve your mind."

Now, I leave it to you, wouldn't talk like that from an ex-taxi-driver get you dizzy? It does me.

"What do you mean, now—improve your mind?" says I.

"I want to know things," says Virgil, "all kinds of things—like the boss mechanic in the garage where I worked at St. Paul. He could tell you 'most anything you wanted to know—like how far it is to the moon, how many angle-worms a robin eats in a day, the population of China. He read books and magazines all the time. That's the way you get to be somebody."

"Maybe you'll work up to be some kind of professor, eh?" I suggests. "Where do you do most of your readin', in the machine?"

"Some there," says he, "but more at the. Y. M. C. A., where I have a room. They have all the scientific magazines there."

"Say," says I, "with them tastes you must have a hot time drivin' for Bobbie Brut."

Virgil blinks them gooseb'ry eyes of his once or twice and remarks careless:

"I'm not responsible for what Mr. Mayo does with his time, so long as I make the most of my own."

"I see," says I. "But there's just one thing I ain't quite clear on, Virgil. If Mr. Mayo's in the state you don't care to mention, what was your grand little idea in cartin' him here?"

"His orders are," says Larsen, "not to let him forget Tuesdays and Fridays at ten-thirty. And this is Friday, isn't it?"

"How cute of you!" says I. "That's what comes of readin' up so much, I expect. It's a wonder, though, you could pry him loose from the feathers."

"If you mean get him out of bed," says Virgil, "I didn't need to. He hasn't been in it."

"What!" says I. "Been out all night, has he? Since when?"

"We started for dinner about seven-thirty night before last," says Virgil.

"Some party!" says I. "Where you been meanderin' for thirty-six hours or so?"

"Many places," says Virgil. "Clover Blossom Inn, the White Horse, Costigan's. The last was 'way up beyond White Plains: Maison—Maison—"

"Maison Rouge," says I. "And, after all that, you bring him here!"

"I didn't think Mr. Mayo would want to go to his club in evening clothes at this time of day," says he.

"Something in that, too," says I; "and, while I ain't strong for inspectin' hangovers, maybe I'd better take a look at Bobbie."

INSIDE of half an hour, what with the rubbin' down he got from Swifty Joe and the black coffee I've sent out for, young Mr. Mayo is almost back to normal—that is, barrin' the squirrel chase still goin' on in his loft. He sits there in the gym, costumed mainly in wrinkled dress trousers and a puzzled look, holdin' his chin in his hands.

One of these beefy, short-necked, heavy-jawed young gents, Bobbie is, with a merry set of blue eyes and a hair-trigger smile that's about as winnin' as they bloom. He looks up at me and springs it now.

"Am I coming or going, Shorty?" says he.

"Check!" says I. "For a guess, though, I should say you'd been."

"But just why am I here?" he insists.

"Brilliant thought of Virgil's," says I.

"Ah!" says Bobbie, seemin' to discover his chauffeur for the first time. "Due to the noble Larsen, eh? Then it must be right. For Larsen, Shorty, never miscues. Do you, now, old Glue Face?"

"If I couldn't trust my memory with simple orders," says Virgil, "what would be the use of loading it with improving facts?"

"Hear that, Shorty?" says Mayo. "But he's too modest. Most wonderful mind in captivity. Tell him now, Larsen, how many tons of iron ore are shipped annually from Duluth."

"Forty millions," says Virgil prompt.

"And that about the number of people who cross the East River every day," goes on Bobbie Brut.

"Taking the daily average," says Larsen, "in a single year they would more than equal the entire population of Europe."

"There!" says Bobbie. "That's what you achieve by living at the Y. M. C. A. and reading popular science stuff. Reads it all the time; don't you, Larsen?"

"I try to improve my mind," says Virgil.

"So you do," says Mayo. "Now let's have the effects of alcohol on the human system."

"It hardens the membranous tissues, reduces the disease-resisting qualities of the red corpuscles, and numbs the delicate nervous system controlling all muscular action," repeats Virgil, like he was readin' it out of a book.

"Huh!" says I. "Pity you didn't turn on that record before you started out night before last."

"Wha-a-at!" gasps Bobbie. "You don't mean to say that this is day after tomorrow?"

"It's Friday on the calendar," says I, "so your party must have begun about Wednesday night."

"Oh, I say!" he groans. "How—where— Look here, Larsen, what the deuce became of Ferdy? You know, the tall, serious-faced chap with the eye-glasses?"

"Him? Let's see," says Virgil, beginnin' to count off on his fingers. "He came out of the White Horse with you, and Costigan's, but when you left that Maison place—no, he wasn't along; only the Russian dancers."

"Eh?" says Bobbie, starin' at him. "What Russian dancers? I know none."

"You introduced them to me," says Virgil, "although I don't care to meet that kind of people, and said so at the time. Then one of the ladies wanted to ride standing up on the hood, you know. I helped you put her in the limousine. We dropped them at their hotel early this morning."

"Perhaps we did," says Bobbie. "It doesn't matter. But Ferdy! Say, Shorty, this is awful. Call up the Maison Rouge, won't you, and see if he's still there?"

"Any special Ferdy you had in mind?" says I.

"Why, Ferdy de Witt," says he.

"Oh!" says I. "The one who's goin' to marry that Bishop's daughter?"

"It's to be to-night," says Bobbie. "That—that's what I was giving the dinner for, you see. But do call up the Maison Rouge, Shorty."

SO I gets busy with the long distance, and after havin' the road-house people make a thorough canvass of their leftovers they report that there ain't anybody of Ferdy's description around the place. Next I gets his man on the wire at his rooms; but he says Ferdy ain't been seen there since Wednesday night, and his new dress clothes all laid out and everything.

"Looks like you'd mislaid a bridegroom," says I.

Bobbie Brut groans.

"I've got to find him, then," says he. "You see, Ferdy didn't want to go at all—wanted to rush right home after the dinner; and I wouldn't let him. I remember that much. Rather a quiet stick, Ferdy; but, this being his last free night, I thought he ought to—well, see a few of the bright spots. Every one goes to the White Horse, and Costigan's. I hadn't quite planned on the Maison Rouge. I wonder how we happened to get there? And those Russian dancers!" Bobbie shrugs his shoulders. Then he adds: "I say! They might know what became of Ferdy."

"It's a chance," says I.

He couldn't follow up the clue, though, until Virgil had been sent for some

---

daylight clothes. While he waits he puts in his time, first stewin' about Ferdy, and then switchin' to Larsen, tellin' me what a wonder he was.

"Yes, I know," says I, "Virgil's been admittin' some of that stuff to me himself. Can he drive a car, though?"

"Like a fiend," says Bobbie. "But only when I give him the word. You see, he has such steady nerves—doesn't drink or smoke or anything like that. And his being such an abstainer, and so religious—well, it sort of strikes a balance between us, doesn't it? It evens things up. Besides, helping him fill his brain with improving facts is almost an occupation in itself. You should hear the questions he asks me! What is asphalt paving? Are my shirt-studs real pearl and where do they come from? If people who have been divorced meet again, say at a party, would they speak? Things like that."

WHEN Larsen comes back with the kit-bag he announces offhand:

"Lot of telegrams for you at your club, Mr. Mayo. And the exchange operator says you've been called by 'phone every half hour since—"

"Yes, yes, I suppose so," breaks in Bobbie. "The Bishop, probably, and Ferdy's folks. Didn't tell any one where I was, did you, Larsen?"

Virgil shakes his head. He don't put any frills into his chauffin'; no salutes or "sir" stuff. And instead of chasin' hack to his car he stands there watchin' Bobbie dress with sort of a half stupid, half interested look on his dull face. I couldn't help wonderin' what was goin' on behind them gooseb'ry eyes. In a minute more I had a clue.

"What if a man who was going to be married shouldn't get there on time?" asks Virgil.

"Eh?" says Mr. Mayo, strugglin' with a stiff buttonhole. "Why, in this particular case the deuce would be to pay. It would be all off with Ferdy."

"Oh!" says Virgil; and just a suspicion of a smile flickers around his mouth corners. Then he turns wooden again.

"But Ferdy's got to be found," says Bobbie Brut, throwin' the rest of his clothes on energetic. "Come along, Shorty, and join the hunt. We'll try those Russian dancers first."

"G'wan!" says I. "I can't talk Russian."

"No more can they, I suspect," says Bobbie. "But if ever I needed advice and counsel it's now. And my head's none too clear. Please."

So I has to trail along while Virgil drives us to an upper Broadway hotel.

"Let's see," says Bobbie, as we rolls up to the entrance; "what are their names, Larsen?"

Virgil hangs his head.

"I—I forget," says he.

"What?" says Bobbie. "With that sure-fire memory of yours? Nonsense!"

"You didn't say them very plain," protests Virgil.

"Perhaps I didn't," admits Bobbie. "But you surely remember what they looked like. Come in and describe them to the clerk for me."

Virgil makes no move to leave the wheel, though.

"It—it was kind of dark," says he. "I don't think I'd know them again."

"Rot!" says Bobbie. "You've got to go. Come along."

"No," says Virgil, settin' his chin stubborn.

"Oh, I say!" groans Bobbie. "Shorty, you talk to him."

Which I proceeds to do.

"What's the idea?" says I. "Why the mulish streak all so sudden?"

"I'm not going to help find Ferdy, that's all," says he. "He's a decent young fellow, and he wouldn't have been in this condition if it hadn't been for—for—"

"Well, for what?" I demands.

"For this silly wedding," he growls sullen.

"Oh, ho!" says I. "Now we're gettin' some light. Maybe you had something to do with his disappearin'? Come, did you?"

Virgil, he just stares woodenly into the wind-shield.

"SOME chauffeur you've got there, Mayo," says I. "Does reformin' and woman-hatin' on the side."

"Larsen," says Bobbie Brut, as stern as he knows how, "do I understand that you have Ferdy hidden somewhere?"

"What if I have?" growls Virgil.

"Oh, nothing much," says I. "It's only a case of kidnappin'. You won't get more'n ten or fifteen years for it."

"In—in jail?" he asks husky.

"Sing Sing," says I. "You'll be a great addition to the Welfare League."

"I—I don't want to go to jail," whimpers Virgil.

"Then roll us to where you've got Ferdy in cold storage," says I, "and mighty quick."

"Ye-e-es, sir," says he draggy.

Where do you think he took us? To his Y. M. C. A. branch, where he has a room. On the way down he explains how he'd sent Ferdy back with a taxi- driver friend who was leavin' the Maison Rouge light.

"And he's probably in there now, sleeping his head off," says Bobbie Brut, "with his wedding at seven-thirty this evening! Think of that!"

I follows him in his dash up the steps, and gets to the desk just as he's interviewin' the young gent in charge.

"The gentleman in forty-seven?" says the clerk. "The one in evening clothes? Why, he left about ten minutes ago in a cab. He seemed to be in a great hurry."

"He was," says Bobbie. "Much obliged."

"Anyway," says I, "Ferdy's been provided with a first-class alibi to submit at the Bishop's."

"What?" asks Bobbie.

"Overslept at the Y. M. C. A., didn't he?" says I.

"By George!" says Bobbie. "I must phone him to use that. And if it hadn't been for Larsen's taking him there—well, I don't know what he could have said."

"The noble Larsen!" says I. "Mean to say he don't get his release for this fool play?"

"He gets his salary raised," says Bobbie. "And if I can keep him long enough, Shorty, I'll bet you ten to one that I shall begin to show signs of mental development and moral uplift myself. I feel it setting in."

"If he works any reform on you," says I, "I shall know that the open season for miracles is on."

AS he drops me at the Studio I indulged in a final bit of repartee with Virgil.

"Goin' to keep right on improvin' that mind of yours, are you?" I asks.

"Yes," says he.

"Look out, Virgil," says I. "Next thing you know, you'll be a highbrow."

"What's that?" says he.

"A party that's educated beyond his intellect," says I. "But go to it. You got as much right to overstuff your nut as the next one, I guess."

Say, though, I'm through tryin' to lump chauffeurs as all one class. Virgil cured me of that. He had me buffaloed there for a while, too. I couldn't dope him out. But I got it now. His trouble is an overgrown ego complicated with bone in the head. At that, I don't know but he's a good runnin' mate for Bobbie Brut.

Why Go Far from Home for Investments?

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

So many different stocks are offered on the market that I am bewildered and do not know how to judge them. Will you give me some rule by which to separate the good from the bad propositions?

TO answer this question completely would require a series of articles stretching from the North to the South Pole. This ambitious undertaking might as well be delayed for a while, but there is one sensible and obvious course to pursue. Often a safe, reliable, and sufficiently profitable investment lies directly at hand is overlooked.

I refer to the growing practice of large, strong corporations offering their stock at favorable prices to their own employees, and in certain cases to their own customers. There always seems to be some strange attraction about far-away opportunities. People neglect the immediate opening—the one that lies right at hand. The result is often loss and disappointment.

In almost every instance where strong, well established corporations have offered their stock to employees in recent years, the profits have been large in addition to regular dividends. The most remarkable case of this kind has been that of the Du Pont Powder Company, employees of which have become positively right from ownership of a few shares. Naturally, this is a war-time exception to ordinary rules, but it will be found that workers who bought stock in the United States Steel Corporation, Republic Iron & Steel Company, United States Rubber Company, American Telephone & Telegraph Company, Pullman Company, Mackay Companies (Postal Telegraph and Commercial Cable), Sears, Roebuck & Company, Eastman Kodak, National Biscuit, and many other similar concerns, have no regrets.

In some cases stock has been offered to employees at below the market price, in other cases at about the market price, in other cases at about the market price, and in still others above the prevailing quotation. Usually the number of shares offered to any one employee has been limited. But if an employee of the United States Steel Corporation took only one share of preferred stock each time it was offered he would now have a profit of [?] .23. This includes dividends, in- [?] se in price, and bonuses which are [?] to those who hold on for a certain number of years.

But even where there is no bonus or profit-sharing feature. I seriously urge upon young men and women to go slow in buying stock in some other company in preference to the concern for which they work.

A much more widespread opportunity along similar lines is that afforded by several of the great public-utility companies in the West. They have offered their preferred stock not only to employees, but to customers. There has been no reduction in price, but in most cases the stock has been offered on a partial-payment plan. In one instance many customers have purchased only one share of preferred stock, paying $5 a month down.

A much more widespread opportunity along similar lines is that afforded by several of the great public-utility companies in the West. The have offered their preferred stock not only to employees, but to customers. There has been no reduction in price, but in most cases the stock has been offered on a partial-payment plan. In one instance many customers have purchased only one share of preferred stock, paying $5 a month down.

Foremost in this line have been several of the Byllesby companies, the Northern States Power Company, which operates in Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and Illinois, and the San Diego Consolidated Gas & Electric Company.

The first-named company in a year's time has induced more than twelve hundred of its customers to buy preferred stock, either for cash or for $5 a month. As the stock pays 7 per cent., buyers are sure of a liberal return on their money, and are, in fact, getting part of the profits accruing from their own consumption of electricity, gas, and transportation.

Other companies that have followed similar plan have been the Pacific Gas & Electric, which covers practically the entire State of California; the Utah Power & Light Company in Salt Lake City; and the Consolidated Gas & Electric Company in Baltimore. The Pacific Gas & Electric Company sold a large amount of its 6 per cent. preferred stock to its customers at $82.50 a share something more than a year ago, and this stock is now quoted at $90 a share.

Such a method of selling stock not only makes friends for the company of the very people that it most needs, namely, its customers, but it provides the investor with a security in a stable enterprise which is under his own personal observation, and in which he has some local pride and interest. Don't go too far away, reader, when you invest money, and don't overlook the obvious.

Free Booklets that You May Have for the Asking

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

Write Slattery & Co., 40 Exchange Place, New York, for current issue of their fortnightly publication, Investment Opportunities, which describes many sound and attractive investments. Ask for 33-E, including booklet explaining the Twenty-Payment Plan.

The popularity of a partial-payment plan by which you can "buy as few shares as you wish" of stocks or bonds, and "pay when you are able," is steadily growing. Write Sheldon-Morgan & Co., members of the New York Stock Exchange, 42 Broadway, New York, for Booklet L-2, entitled the "Partial-Payment Plan."

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

The Odd Lot Review, a weekly financial paper for small and large investors, sums in terse, readable form, financial developments from week to week. It can be read in fifteen minutes, and is edited with a view to keeping the business man in touch with investment opportunities. Sample copies will be sent on request to 61 Broadway, New York City.

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

Every one interested in securities should have a copy of "The Investor's Guide." It discusses all classes of bonds thoroughly and intelligently, and is adapted to the purposes of hte large or small investor, E. F. Combs & Co., 122 Broadway, New York City, will send you a copy on request.

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

"A Long Look Ahead" is the title of a circular that analyzes present market predictions as to the course the stock market will take in the future, which has been issued by John Muir & Co., members of the New York Stock Exchange, 61 Broadway, New York City. Copy of this circular, C-33, will be sent on request.

Investors desiring to acquire $100 bonds of the best known issues, and of a class that are legal for investment by Trustees and Savings Banks, should send for the special list E that has been prepared by Merrill, Lynch & Co., members of the New York Stock Exchange, 7 Wall Street, New York City.

A new circular, showing how to obtain a dividend every month through the Odd Lot method, has been issued by Hartshorne & Picabia, member of the New York Stock Exchange, 7 Wall Street, New York City. Ask for circular O-14. The firm also offers special treatments in the way of advice to small investors.

Have you read Mr. Atwood's financial booklet, "Making Your Money Work for You"? It is written especially for our readers, and if you will write him, inclosing four cents in stamps, at 95 Madison Avenue, New York, he will send you a copy.

We Like This Man

HE never went beyond his A B C's in Italian. They say he makes [?] cross for his name in [?] glish. But A. Paladini, [?] Kind" of hte Pacific [?] t, says: "I not much book-smart, but know [?] ty other thing, you [?]

Paladini is now seventy- [?] He came from Italy [?] ew York and then [?] the Horn to San Francisco in 1867. Hav- [?] made a "little bit [?] y," he bought a [?] stall in Washington [?] et. He has since [?] in the fish busi- [?] "Hard at first," [?] says. "By little, [?] by little, beter! [?] can, I take wife— [?] ome every- [?] children we got—four boy, t'ree girl. Girl all go Notre Dame College—boy all in fish business. All I got theirs when I dead—I boss now, you bet!"

Paladini goes to bed at seven and rises at three every morning except Friday, when he gets up at midnight Thursday, when he gets up at midnight Thursday. "Man who works can't food round. Forty-five year never take vacation; eat for four men; sleep like rock. Eleven year now in Clay Street—build own market—nobody he can send me away. Six streamer I got now—strong—like tug-boat."

"A Paladini" makes a yearly average of half a million gross. His market reaches coastwise from Seattle to San Diego and extends eastward into Utah, Nevada, Texas, Colorado, and parts of other States. All Paladini has is clear of encumbrance. HE could clean up at a million "What I got I got!" he says.

Paladini's rule in San Francisco is almost paternal. "At least fifty per cent. of the city's fish-dealers, his son says, "got their education from dad."

Some one told him that he was called the "Fish King of San Francisco."

Paladini would have no traffickings with such nonsense. "Do I look a king?" he inquired scornfully, sticking his thumbs in his gunny-sack apron. "Me—I can make fish food for man: king, he make man food for vulture."