Why Go to the Theater?

IF EVERYTHING is made nowadays to be easily portable—a summer cottage, a garage, a factory. "Why not a folding theater?" asked Stuart Walker—and straightway invented one.

Utilizing every inch of space, like a city apartment, this "knock-down" theater folds together, or rolls up, or unscrews, and packs away into ten boxes; so it is well named the Portmanteau.

What comes out when, like a magician, Mr. Walker unpacks it?

Everything you need for a wonderful performance—curtains of blue velvet, scenery for a dozen plays, costumes with gay colors and clever lines, remarkable lighting effects attachable to any electric light fixtures, and the stage itself, made out of the boxes.

Yet ten cases are sufficient; for the key-note of the Portmanteau is simplicity. The audience, once given the cue, will supply the setting, says Mr. Walker. One play is in a kitchen, but there are only four things to label it. The Japanese play has a bunch of wistaria and two swords for its properties.

Where do they open the Portmanteau? Wherever you ask! In a few months Mr. Walker has unpacked it in nearly thirty towns. Sometimes it's in a private house, for twenty guests. Then out of doors, in Madison Square, a theater party for every one, on Christmas night. Then for the delight of two thousand children in Brooklyn; and in Pittsburgh, sandwiched in between regular performances, they gave a special one for crippled and orphan children.

In a settlement gymnasium, in colleges, in hotel ball-rooms, at country clubs, and in theaters, the Portmanteau has given its fanciful plays "for young folk from seven to seventy." For youth, the spirit of youth, is characteristic of everything about it. The players and the director-playwright are young folks. The theater itself is soon to have its first birthday.

And the plays are, for the most part, short, two or three in an evening: gay little plays, full of imagination and joyousness. Some of this spirit the audience catches, and soon finds itself in the game—indeed, a part of it. Instead of being separated from the stage by glaring footlights, they are directly connected with it by three steps.

From listeners to players the distance must be very little; for often an actor sits with the guests till his cue comes, and talks going up the aisle. And the "someone-in-the-audience" who asks questions is promptly imitated by the eager voices of children all over the house.

One of Stuart Walker's fundamental ideas for the Portmanteau is that it must pay its way. If it can not give an adequate return to playwrights, actors, and designers, as well as to the directors, something is radically wrong. Not "backers," but the public, must support it. More than any other, such a theater must have the people with it.

A Business You Can Start with $200

I HAVE been a worker in original designs since last October. Are you a needlewoman? I was, and I learned that my designs were valuable. I turned a certain inborn originality of mind into designs, and acquired a nice little business all my own, with work that could be done in my own chimney-corner.

First I bought a five-cent needle and a ten-cent ball of thread, and copied the best design I could borrow. I copied everything good that I could find, and by so doing learned many stitches.

If I wished to open a shop I should find a little corner in some store where I could give lessons and have a good window display. I should then visit a fancy-work supply house and buy a good stock of threads and needles and books of designs, and a few attractive articles, most of which any clever woman could make.

I should arrange my window with as artistic a touch as possible, displaying my handsomest designs with frequent changes. I should encourage women who liked needlework to bring me their work to sell on commission. Many foreign-born women are experts with the needle.

At first I should buy very carefully, always remembering that large profits come from a frequent turning of stock—buying, selling, and reinvesting.

I should study the needs of my neighborhood, testing with small orders to the wholesaler. I should attract children by a few lovable dolls daintily clothed in dresses of my own fashioning. I should design a few children's dresses, so that mothers would be interested while the children admired my dolls. I should buy some materials and teach my customers to make ribbon bows and neckwear free if they bought my materials.

Fifty dollars would be ample for a beginning, and with two hundred dollars one hundred and fifty could be reserved for rent and fixtures.

I should advertise, about the first of October, "Christmas Goods and How to Make Them, Telephone Maywood, 1064 M."

A woman who loves the needle and its products, likes to meet and talk with other women, and has some aptitude in teaching and some business training, should make a success in fancy-work.

In Appreciation of Mothers

A LADY asks me whether I am in favor of suffrage.

My answer is that I am in favor of mothers.

Having been a voter for a number of years, and something of a student of politics, I am under no illusions about the ballot.

It is a very clumsy weapon. Politics accomplishes a minimum of progress with a maximum of expense and noise. There are many other avenues of influence more quiet, more pleasant, and far more effective.

But if the mothers of America believe that the ballot will help them to widen their influence; if suffrage will extend the atmosphere of the home into politics instead of extending the atmosphere of politics into the home; if the ballot will help women to make the working conditions of girls better, enable them to lead happier, bigger lives, and found finer homes—then I am for suffrage now and forever.

It's an interesting thing to remember that the whole process of evolution has been devoted to one single accomplishment—the development of a mother.

Nature began with the protozoa, the simplest form of life: then she made the worms: then the mollusks: then the amphibia: then the reptiles: then the birds: and last of all, what?

The mammalia, as science calls them—the mothers.

Having made the mothers, Nature has never made anything since. She considered her task complete.

All up through the various stages of life she had struggled gradually toward motherhood.

In the lower stages there is no motherhood, because there is no infancy. With the ephemeridae the moment of birth is also the moment of death: they are born, live, and die all in a single instant. Not much chance for motherhood there.

The land-crab marches down from her mountain home to the seashore once a year, lays her eggs in the sand, and marches up again. (There are Feminists, by the way, who contend that the land-crab has the right idea,—that motherhood ought to be only an incident, in the woman's life, as it is in the land-crab's life.)

Even with the higher animals the young are dependent on the mother for only a few days or weeks or months. They come quickly to self-reliance: they are ready almost immediately to feed themselves.

For man alone Nature reserved infancy. And infancy created motherhood.

For years the child is dependent upon its mother absolutely. It is weak, helpless, unable to feed itself, unable to walk, an easy victim to a single hour's neglect.

Out of its helplessness, unselfishness was born into woman's heart; out of its pain grew sympathy; out of its long years of weakness came patience and self-sacrificing devotion.

Women, bending over the cradles of their young, learned these virtues first: little by little, they have passed them on to men. And the world's progress is measured by the slow record of their growth in the world—the growth of a patience and unselfishness and devotion and love.

Unless each new generation of women gathered these golden virtues all over again at the cradles of their young, the world would soon forget.

The weakness of infancy is the source of all social progress. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

We men in business get to thinking of ourselves as important in the scheme of things: but we aren't. Harriman dies, and the trains on his railroads stop for five minutes and then rush on again. We men can be killed by millions, and the ranks close up and move forward. The world can not be permanently damaged, so long as it has its mothers.

"What does France need most?" they asked Napoleon. "Mothers," was his reply.

"All that I am I owe to my mother," Lincoln said a hundred times.

And what was true of Lincoln is true in large degree of every other good man in the world.

Fortunate are those men who know it.

THE GIRL WHO WAS A CHRISTMAS TREE

By GEORGE WESTON

Illustrations by E. L. Crompton

THIS is a story of a girl who dressed herself up as a Christmas tree. Her name, moreover, was Martha Meekness Mears. And, so that you may understand two matters so strange, I must get me back to the beginning of things and tell my story properly.

If you have ever been through our part of Connecticut,—which isn't many miles to the north of New London,—you have probably noticed a small old-fashioned house standing next door but one to a church, a house marked by two peculiarities. On the front lawn is a fountain—a cast-iron frog almost as large as a boy, and perpetually holding an umbrella over himself: a frog with its eyes upturned and its mouth wide open, as if eternally uttering an eternally silent "Jug-a-rum! Jug-a-rum!" And, hung ingeniously under the frog's umbrella, in such a position as always to be shielded from the elements, is a sign:

This is the house where my heroine was born; and, so that you may better understand the frog and the sign, I must tell you further about the father of Martha Meekness Mears.

Martha's father had been a minister, and because it was a family custom with the Mearses to give their children two such names, he was better known as Matthew Strongheart Mears. As a matter of fact, however, he had been one of the meekest of men, especially after he married Sarah Jane Tilley.

It wasn't long, for instance, after his marriage before he was turning his salary over to Sarah Jane as soon as he received it, an arrangement that went into effect immediately after his purchase of the cast-iron frog.

For another thing, the dominie had the secret habit of writing poetry, to say nothing of a great passion for playing the clarinet: two accomplishments that were constantly being interrupted by his good wife Sarah Jane. Indeed, I think it was these interruptions that finally led him to his doom—and Sarah Jane to hers. For when Martha was four years old her father pledged himself to the Lord to go to the South Sea Islands, ostensibly to labor among the heathen, but in reality, I think, to write a book of poems that was in his mind and to play his clarinet in peace.

After a stormy interview, Sarah Jane pledged herself to the Lord to go with him, ostensibly also to labor among the heathen, but in reality, I think, just to be contrary. They were only to be gone a year; so they closed their house and left little Martha with Sarah Jane's brother Ben: he whose sign later appeared underneath the frog's umbrella. And that was

Their disappearance is talked about to this day in eastern Connecticut. Some say their ship went down; others say they were eaten by cannibals. Whatever their fate, in due course of time the Probate Court expressed itself convinced that Mr. and Mrs. Mears had perished somewhere in the South Sea Islands. Martha, of course, came in for all her parents' property, and Uncle Ben was appointed as her guardian.

From her mother Martha inherited $1900 in the Norwich Savings Society; Frog Cottage, valued at $2000; and furniture inventoried at $500.

From her father she inherited nothing at all except two legacies that are never mentioned in a will nor listed in an inventory: The first was the sense of beauty.

And the second was the gift of imagination.

BEN TILLEY, justice of the peace, was one of those characters who are born of bleak hillsides and stony fields; and these not only showed in his features, but had affected him internally as well. Yes, a hard man was Ben Tilley—with a hard eye, a hard voice, a hard mouth, and a heart that was hardest of all. He was a bachelor. His sister Lydia kept house for him and did most of the sewing for Turnerville besides. Ben's idea of heaven was to fine an offender "one dollar and costs," adding in an indescribable tone: "The costs are $18.65—got it with you?"

JUST as I should like you to consider the Judge as a product of environment, so too I wish you would think of his sister Lydia, the village dressmaker, as being partly the victim of circumstances over which she had no control. When Martha first went to live with them Lydia was over forty, and the seal of spinster-hood was stamping itself upon her.

When I tell you that Aunt Lydia was growing sour and sharp, doing her sewing in a shrewish manner and developing a tongue like a hornet,—when I also tell you that she wore black gloves at her housework, had a flat chest, a flat coiffure, a flat back, and a flat voice,—I don't want you to blame Aunt Lydia altogether, but please put a little of your censure upon the Prince who had never come.

SUCH was the couple who brought up Martha. She went to school, and then to high school, and was one of those serious, thin-faced girls who have the knack of blossoming into beauties when they get to be about eighteen.

In the day-time, as soon as she was big enough to wear an apron, Martha did most of the housework; and when she grew older she helped Aunt Lydia with the sewing; and, because the gifts that her father had left her simply had to break out somewhere, it wasn't long before she developed a downright talent for needlework.

Now I want to tell you what Martha looked like when she reached her twentieth year,—the time my story opens,—and I also want to tell you what tricks she did in the evening when her uncle and aunt had retired for the night and thought she was fast asleep.

In appearance Martha was neither short and plump, nor tall and queenly. She was just about right, carrying herself shyly, as if she were half proud and half afraid of those glowing young curves that the fulfilment of time had brought upon her. Her beauty, in short, was the beauty of youth; and, though she had a pair of dreamy eyes, she showed in all her movements and in all her expressions that she was eager for life and in love with life, and could hardly hold her soul in patience to see what life was presently going to bring her.

Martha had a rich aunt in New London, and once a month Aunt Becky sent Martha her old magazines, thus not only making room for the new ones, but also giving Aunt Becky a pleasant feeling of patronage over her poor little niece. Occasionally there was a French stylebook among these magazines, for Aunt Becky had two marriageable daughters who needed all the adventitious aids to beauty that they could find; and nearly always there was a fashionable periodical or two which told what was happening in Newport, or Aiken, or Hastings, or whatever the place might be.

And now I will relate what Martha did with her evenings.

AS soon as she got to her room, she noiselessly locked the door, pulled down the blinds, and then on the top shelf of her wardrobe she groped till she found a red silk cover which she had made for her lamp. Next, from under her mattress she drew the last month's magazines which Aunt Becky had sent her. And finally, slipping off her shoes and herself into a kimono, she curled herself up in her easiest chair, and after she had read a

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Such were her evenings; but in the day-time, when under the supervision of Aunt Lydia, there was precious little romance in Martha's life. Take the one subject of Martha's clothes, for an example. Such ugly shades Aunt Lydia always selected, such graceless, puritanical styles, and such mean little hats. And yet it was in revolt at these ugly costumes that one day, when Martha was looking through a French fashion book that Aunt Becky had sent her, she conceived such a wonderful idea that the moment she thought about it a great flush came surging up in her cheeks, and she looked around in guilty quickness to make sure that Aunt Lydia wasn't watching.

ALL that week, as she worked, Martha's eyes were inward turned. A number of times she started to speak to Aunt Lydia, and at last she began: "Oh, Aunt Lydia—"

"Mph?

"I wonder how I could get some money!"

Silence like a blow from Aunt Lydia, and a sharp glance at Martha.

"Wasn't—wasn't there any money left for me when—when they went away?" desperately continued Martha, driven on by her inspiration.

"Ate up long ago!"

"But isn't this house—?"

"Ate up too!" snapped Aunt Lydia.

And then, her patience at an end, she suddenly boiled over into the most acidulous indignation.

The idea!" she cried. "Cross-questioning me like this! Why don't you ask your Uncle Ben? Such dirty ways!"

Martha didn't say anything, knowing how much good it would do to ask Uncle Ben anything; but Aunt Lydia must have said something to him about it, because the next day he called Martha into his office.

Uncle Ben was sitting at the desk that had once belonged to Martha's father, and above the desk a tinted enlargement of the Rev. Mr. Mears seemed to be watching the proceedings with a benevolent eye, as if entirely satisfied with the two legacies that he had left his daughter.

"Martha," began Uncle Ben, looking very shrewd, "I've been making up our account, and I thought you'd like to see it."

Whereupon he handed her what was probably his life's masterpiece:

"I don't intend to press you for that balance just now," said Uncle Ben, with his shrewd look, "though it'll be a nice little sum by the time you're twenty-one. But if you work hard at your sewing, and do all you can to please Aunt Liddy, I guess we'll be able to make some friendly arrangement for the balance due. Same time," said he, suddenly speaking in a stern, judicial tone, "that ain't what I started to show ye. You can see from this statement that if anybody in this house has money coming to 'em, 'tain't you! It's me!"

Now, if Martha had been as old or as wise as you and I are, she might have said a few things to her Uncle Benny—and much good it would have done her! But Martha was young and (as the saying goes) bashful, and, knowing her Uncle Ben as well as she did, she had never indulged herself in any false hopes concerning him. So back to the sewing-room she went and began stitching away at a linen dress that they were making for Amy Dorrance, who had been in Martha's graduation class.

THAT day Aunt Lydia had gone to Norwich to buy some linings, and while she was still away Amy came to have her dress fitted. When this solemn rite was over, Amy began to chatter.

"Now you won't forget to have it ready on Thursday, will you, Martha?" she said, "because George Dawley is going to take me to the Windham County Fair. Have you ever been?"

"No," said Martha, biting off a piece of thread and trying to look nonchalant. "What's it like?"

"Oh, its lovely! There's bands, and races, and cattle, and turkeys, and pumpkins, and needlework—"

"Needlework?" asked Martha, pricking up her ears. "What do they have needlework for?"

"Why, they give prizes, of course! Say, Martha, why don't you do a piece of embroidery and send it in for a prize?"

A red spot came jumping out on each of Martha's cheek-bones.

"Do they really give prizes?" she said. "For embroidery? What sort?"

"Oh, all kinds! Center-pieces—and doilies—and bedspreads—"

"Bedspreads?" muttered Martha, her work slipping to the floor; and then, in a cry from the heart: "Oh, Amy! Come and look at mine!"

They ran upstairs together, and a minute later they were both staring at a wonderful, poetical bedspread which Martha had made in her last year at high school. She had worked it in Valenciennes lace. When you first glanced at it, it appeared to be a conventional design; but when you looked a little longer, you saw a ship on the waves sailing away from a light-house that guarded a rock-bound shore. And—a thing which is true of all real works of art—the more you studied it the more you saw. There were sea-gulls, for instance, and palm trees, and a crescent moon, and dolphins. And underneath the lace and net was a foundation of sea-green silk.

"Do you—do you like it?" asked Martha in a faltering voice.

"Oh, Martha!" cried Amy. "I never saw anything like it! Never! I'm sure it would take a prize!"

"Listen!" whispered Martha, "If Aunt Lydia knew, she wouldn't let me. But if you want to help—"

At that they began whispering together, and when Amy went away she carried the bedspread with her, carefully folded in tissue paper, and Martha put another coverlet on her bed, and nobody any the wiser.

Whereupon he handed her what was carried the bedspread with her, carefully probably his life’s masterpiece: folded in tissue paper, and Martha put another coverlet on her bed, and nobody any the wiser.

The next week but one, when Martha went to Young People's prayer meeting, she found Amy sitting in her pew. Nothing happened till they knelt down, and then Amy passed over an envelope.

Martha interrupted her prayers long enough to take a solemn peep at the contents. There were two cards in the envelop. One was inscribed, "To M. Mears, for Best Bedspread," and the other: "To M. Mears, for Best Needlework of Any Description." And, casting an inquisitive but still pious eye into the envelop to see what made it feel so heavy, Martha saw five ten dollar gold pieces lying warmly side by side. At that, she went straight back to her prayers again, and when they arose to sing a hymn, her cheeks and her eyes were radiant.

ON Christmas Eve that year, Martha was in a great state of excitement; and if Uncle Ben and Aunt Lydia hadn't both been so engrossed with their own affairs they would probably have noticed it. Aunt Lydia had received through the mail that day the first Christmas present that had been sent her in twenty years—a pair of black silk stockings with a card attached: "From an Old Admirer." And Aunt Lydia hardly knew whether to burn them in public, or to say nothing and saw wood.

And as for Uncle Ben, Uncle Ben was thinking of the court cases that the Christmas tidal wave would be sure to bring to his judicial shores in the morning.

"Well," he said, rousing himself as the clock struck eight, "Guess we'd better go to bed and save light. Busy day to-morrow."

Aunt Lydia grimly nodded, still thinking about those stockings, and anxious to have another good look at the package to see if she could find a clue there. She and Uncle Ben both slept downstairs,—an old Connecticut custom that is hard to kill,—and when they finally picked up their lamps and bade Martha an austere good night, I wish you could have seen Miss Martha Meekness Mears dance upstairs.

She locked the door, pulled down the curtains, lighted the lamp, and then—

FIRST she flew to the package which she had secretly brought home from the post-office that morning. "Snip!" went the scissors, and "Oo-oo-oo-oh!" said Martha.

The first item she took from the package was a pair of light blue silk stockings. The second was a pair of blue suede shoes to match. Next came a box of scented talcum powder, a little of which she straightway dusted on her nose and then held her head back to sniff it in rapturous approval.

These preliminaries over, Martha went and listened at the door. Then, tiptoeing to the bureau, she unlocked the bottom drawer and brought out four of the most wonderful things.

The first was an opera cloak, lined with embroidered blue silk.

The second was an embroidered bag to match.

The third was a scarf of white silk net, embroidered by hand to match.

And the fourth was a dress of blue silk, embroidered in the same beautiful pale colors as the other things, covered with white silk net and with a low-cut bodice.

"There!" thought Martha, silently clapping her hands. "Everything just in time for Christmas!"

Her hands flew to the back of her skirt.

"And now—!"

Whereupon (as an old-fashioned novelist would say) we will draw a veil for half an hour. But at the end of that time I wish to say that you would never have found a more stunning picture than Martha Meekness Mears—no, not if you had searched the courts of Europe in their palmiest nights.

"If it only didn't show such an awful lot of neck!" blushed Martha. "Still, that's what the scarf's for I guess, and it isn't as if anybody will ever see me in it."

And, drawing the scarf around her shoulders, she walked backward and forward in front of the mirror, one of the proudest, happiest little struts that the State of Connecticut has ever seen, especially when she donned her opera cloak and, with her head held high, stepped into an imaginary limousine and drawled to an imaginary chauffeur: "To Mrs. Vanderbilt's—er—James!"

YES, it was a heavenly evening for Martha—a heavenly glimpse into the promised land. And the beauty of it was, it looked out upon a heavenly succession of similar evenings. In the day-time she would still be a meek little seamstress, wearing her hair flat on her head, and a big blue pinafore hiding her shabby dress. But in the evening, when Uncle Ben and Aunt Lydia had gone to sleep, our Martha had it in mind to blossom out every night as a dashing young divinity in a dress a duchess would have envied, embroidering a little, reading a little, posing a little, and feeling her soul expand in the contemplation of those beautiful effects of color and form that she herself had achieved.

"And to think I've got it done in time for Christmas!" she beamed, stepping out of her imaginary limousine. "Isn't it funny! I feel like a Christmas tree that's all trimmed up!"

But joys so acute can never last long.

"I wonder how the stockings look," she thought. "I'm glad I sent Aunt Lydia that black pair. I wonder how she looks in hers."

She lifted her dress and tried to get the effect, but found she was too near the mirror to obtain the proper angle.

"I know!" she thought. "I'll get up on the bed and look from there."

So up on the bed popped Martha, and was just moving to where she could get a good look in the mirror when one of the slats of the bed fell out, with a noise like a broadside of sixteen-inch guns. She quickly moved her feet, and another slat fell out with a greater noise than the first. And, before Martha's heart had quite stopped quaking, she heard Aunt Lydia at the door of her bedroom, and Uncle Benny lumbering behind her up the stairs.

"What's the matter?" demanded Aunt Lydia. "Open this door!"

"It's all right, Aunty! Don't bother! It was only a slat!"

"Sounded like the house falling down," said Uncle Ben.

"Open this door, I say!" repeated Aunt Lydia in an ominous voice. She rattled the latch and pushed at the same time.

It was an old-fashioned house and the doors didn't fit as well as they might, so when Aunt Lydia's efforts reached a certain point, the door flew open, and—oh, what at picture it made! On one side was Aunt Lydia in her night-gown, her hair in crimps, an old petticoat flung over her shoulders.

Uncle Benny was also in his robe de nuit, supplemented by a pair of trousers which he held with one hand while he grasped a lamp in the other. And on the other side of the picture was poor Martha, dressed like the lilies, and scarlet with embarrassment, trying to muffle her shoulders with her scarf.

"What have you got on?" almost squealed Aunt Lydia.

"I—I made it myself," said poor Martha, swallowing hard. "It's—it's only to wear nights when I come to bed."

"You—you hussy!

THAT was how it started. I sha'n't go into details, because I hate a scene as much as anybody. But toward the end of the colloquy, when Uncle Ben began to chime in, Martha's embarrassment suddenly turned into indignation.

"You go out of my room!" she cried—"you wicked man!"

"What?" cried Ben Tilley, towering as impressively as any man can tower who is holding up his trousers with one hand. "Me wicked? Do I hear the devil correcting sin? You good-for-nothing madam! You call me wicked again and I’ll slap your face!"

At that a flash of her mother suddenly showed itself in Martha.

"You are a wicked man!" she cried, stepping forward. "And you're a mean old thief, and you've stolen my money! And you dare to slap my face!"

Every man is a fool when he loses his temper, some worse than others; and Uncle Ben slapped Martha's face with a slap that might have been heard all over the house.

"There!" said he. "You asked for it and you got it, and now I hope you're satisfied!"

Martha made no answer. Instead she ran to the corner and pulled a trunk into the middle of the room. Running then to her wardrobe, she came back with two shabby dresses and a pair of curled-up shoes.

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Aunt Lydia, slapping down the lid of the trunk and sitting on it. "You won't take anything out of this house till you pay what you owe!"

"Won't I?" cried Martha, tugging at the trunk.

"No!" cried Uncle Ben, flattening his hand and gallantly advancing again. "You won't!"

Martha snatched up her opera cloak and that embroidered bag which I have

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"You didn't buy these, and you won't have them!" she gasped.

And before they knew what she was doing, she pattered down the stairs in those wonderful shoes, and almost simultaneously the front door shut behind her.

Uncle Ben and Aunt Lydia stared at each other in that immortal pantomime that indicates "Now, what do you think of that!"

"Did you hear what she called me?" demanded Uncle Ben, breaking the silence at last.

"I should say I did! The good-for-nothing hussy!"

Uncle Ben seized his lamp and started down the stairs.

"I'm going out after her," said he. "I'm not going to have her running around to the neighbors saying things like that and nobody there to contradict her!"

He dressed himself; and if you could have seen Turnerville's justice of the peace putting his boots on, you would have seen at once that Uncle Ben was mad clear through.

"Don't see how you're going to find her," said Aunt Lydia—"the head start she's got!"

"Huh!" he snorted. "Lots of people up yet! She can't go far, togged up like that, without somebody seeing her!"

MEANWHILE down the street ran Martha in that wonderful dress and cloak—straight past the frog, which stood there in the moonlight with its mouth wide open as if in utter amazement—straight past the church, and the grange, and Tillinghast's store. It was her first idea to go to Amy Dorrance's and stay there for the night; but when she saw lights at nearly all the windows and a party evidently being held, she drew up short.

"How everybody will talk about it to-morrow!" she thought. "Especially when they hear about this dress! Oh, if it only wasn't cut so terribly low! What things Uncle Ben and Aunt Lydia will say! If I only knew somebody out of town! I've got three dollars in the bag."

Her mind turned to Aunt Becky in New London—Aunt Becky, who had caused all the trouble by sending her the magazine that had given her the idea for that wonderful dress.

"I know what I'll do!" she thought: "I'll go down to Aunt Becky's. Even if she doesn't want me, she can't send me back to-night, and perhaps I'll be able to find something to do."

So down to the station she hurried, and just caught the trolley; and when she reached New London at half past ten she had her first ride in a motor-car. "I hope they haven't all gone to bed," she thought, as the car turned into Pequot Avenue.

But, almost before the taxicab stopped, Martha knew she was in for something worse than that. Aunt Becky's house was lit from top to bottom, and the unmistakable sound of violin and harp came trembling over the lawn.

"I won't go in now," she thought, cautiously opening the gate. "It would only upset Aunt Becky and the girls. It isn't very cold to-night, and I'll sit on the porch till everybody's gone."

IT was a large veranda, and, because the fall had been a mild one, it still had more furniture on it than many a house has in it. Martha tiptoed around till she found a wicker chair in a sheltered corner, and there she settled herself, drawing her wonderful cloak closely around her.

To the left was the Sound, rippling in the moonlight. To the right, all the more romantic because dimly seen through a curtain, was the promised land, the dancers swaying in and out of sight to the tune of the Silene Waltz, than which no music can move the heart more deeply on a moonlit night.

One might have thought that, with scenes like those to the right and left, Martha would have looked and listened in content. But she didn't. Whether it was the music or the moonlight that started her, I don't know; but all at once she suddenly drew a handkerchief from that wonderful bag and gently began to weep—first because she was lonely, and second because she was homeless, and third (for which the young have wept since time immemorial) because she was an orphan and had no mother to comfort her.

Lllp—lllp—lllp, said the ripples to the shore.

Whee-ee-ee, whee-ee-ee, said the violin to the harp.

Snf—snf—snf, sobbed Martha to herself.

THE symphony was at its height when a young man walked slowly up the path from the avenue, advancing with those laggard steps mentioned by Mr. Shakespeare when he describes the urchin going to school. He reached the veranda

For as long as five seconds he stood there as if frozen into his pose, and then he heard it again.

"For the love of Mike!" he thought, his ennui at life forgotten, "who is it?" And, walking carefully around the veranda, it didn't take him long to find Martha.

"What's the matter?" he asked, bending over and speaking in his gentlest voice.

"N-nothing," sobbed Martha.

"Anything I can do to help you?"

"N-n-no."

"Oh, come now; you shouldn't cry!"

Bit by bit he was becoming conscious of that wonderful costume; and he felt a most absurd inclination to pat her back.

"It—it's Christmas, you know!"

Whereupon Martha gave voice to a particularly eloquent sob.

"Now look here," he said, drawing a chair and sitting opposite. "I'm sure somebody's said something or done something. You might just as well tell me what it is. And if it's a man, do you know what I'll do? I'll go and take him by the neck and shake the life out of him!"

And then, obedient (I suppose) to some grand old prehistoric instinct, Martha looked at him for the first time—looked at him with the eye of appraisement as if unconsciously comparing him with that muscular face-slapper of a Ben Tilley. It was at that moment that Uncle Ben turned into Pequot Avenue, having discovered that Martha had taken the trolley to New London.

"There," said the young man, noticing her appraising look. "I knew there was somebody!" And, making a threatening gesture at the house, he continued: "Tell me who it is, and I'll go and fetch him out!"

"Oh, he's not in there!" half laughed Martha, her tears forgotten in a mixed feeling of pride and amusement.

"I believe he is!" And, smiling back at her, he exclaimed: "I believe you're going to take his part now!"

"No; really, I'm not. Honestly, my aunt doesn't even know I'm here."

"Mrs. Mears your aunt?"

"Yes."

"Here for a long visit?"

"I—I don't know." And, such a maneuver coming natural to every daughter of Eve, she turned the cross-examination by asking a question herself: "Why?"

"You really want to know?" he earnestly inquired.

Now, that far, I think, he had been playing; but just then he looked deeply into Martha's eyes, and she looked into his.

In a little panic, Martha made sure that her cloak and scarf were in place; but when she bent forward to pull her cloak more closely around her, her little panic grew into a big one, for there at the gate was the grim figure of Uncle Ben.

"Hello!" whispered the young man, inspiration striking him. "Is he the one?'

Martha breathlessly nodded, her lips nearly refusing to speak as she thought of the scene that Uncle Ben would be sure to bring down upon her head.

"Don't—don't let him!" she gasped.

The next moment the young man had vaulted over the veranda rail, and Martha saw him approaching the rugged figure of Uncle Ben. What they said she couldn't hear; but when her champion caught Uncle Ben a most prodigious blow on the end of his beak and sent him reversing madly into a lilac bush, I wish to say that Martha (whose father had been a minister and whose middle name was Meekness) suddenly found herself dancing up and down in wicked glee and crying, "Hit him again!"

Fortunately, the musicians inside were playing the Tokio One-Step; so nobody but the two gladiators heard her. I think Ben Tilley must have said something, because Martha's champion sent him back again into the lilac bush with renewed emphasis, and then (perhaps for a change) through a privet hedge. And when Mr. Ben Tilley picked himself up on the other side of that hedge and nimbly started for the gate, Martha's champion chased him and gave him two of the most passionate kicks, in strict time to the music, thus: "I want to go—(kick) to Tokio—(kick) —"

AFTER that a certain young man went back to Martha, no longer frowning with ennui, but enthusiastic toward the future. And after Martha had briefly told him about Uncle Ben and the wonderful dress, and after she had staunched a cut on his knuckles and readjusted his tie, and after he had told her not to worry about Aunt Becky sending her back, and after one thing and another (but particularly after another), he too was eager for life and in love with life, and could hardly hold his soul in patience to see what life was presently going to bring him.

"Come on in!" he said at last, suddenly rising and holding out his hands to help her up. "I'll show you whether or not I've got a pull with your aunt!"

She slowly arose, her hands in his, trimmed up (as she herself said) like a Christmas tree. And as he drew her nearer and nearer to him, the lights began to glow upon the Christmas tree, coming in one by one; and the snow sparkled, and the ornaments glistened, and the gifts peeped out, including the two great gifts of beauty and imagination. And when he gave the Christmas tree an extra pull just as it reached the perpendicular, it seemed to rest for a moment in his arms, and I could nearly swear that one of those little white angels appeared on top, playing a silver horn, even as Martha's father used to play the clarinet so many years before.

In silence they walked around to the front of the veranda; and as he put his hand on the door-knob to let Martha into the promised land, he gently but scornfully laughed at himself.

"What a fool I used to be!" he said.

"Why?" asked Martha, looking as if she didn't believe it.

"Living all these years," said he, "and never believing in Santa Claus before!"

The First American Billionaire

By BURTON J. HENDRICK

ABOUT twenty-five years ago an American magazine published an article on the "coming billionaire" that aroused the widest public attention. At that time the richest American, according to popular repute, was John Jacob Astor, whose fortune was usually placed at $150,000,000. The writer of this magazine article, however, Mr. Thomas G. Shearman, believed that those accumulations, when placed side by side with those that might be expected in the not far distant future, would appear almost insignificant.

"Is not the billionaire coming?" he asked. "When will he come? What effect will his coming have upon society?" Then, answering his own questions, Mr. Shearman declared that, economic conditions in the United States remaining essentially the same, the first billionaire might be expected within forty years. Within sixty years from the time of writing, he added, several billionaires might be regarded as reasonably due.

As Mr. Shearman wrote this in 1890, his prophecy would have given us our first billionaire in 1930 and his following train in 1950. He pictured all kinds of social and economic horrors following in the billionaire's wake. "The billionaire will bring an army of paupers!" he exclaimed. All kinds of hardships and corrupting political influences were foreseen. His arrival would "possibly include the destruction of republican government."

A short time ago the Ford Motor Company announced net earnings of $60,000,000 for the preceding fiscal year. Mr. Henry Ford, who was quietly working in a machinist's shop when Mr. Shearman published his famous article, owns the lion's share in this organization. Precisely what his holdings are is not public property; in all probability, however, they are at least 75 per cent. On this basis Mr. Ford's income last year, from the automobile industry alone, was $45,000,000. What his income consists of from other sources I do not know; that it should reach $5,000,000 is not a wild idea. But $45,000,000 represents four and one half per cent. on a billion dollars, and $50,000,000 represents five per cent. That is to say, Mr. Ford's fortune, based upon its demonstrated earning capacity, is already a billion dollars. So Mr. Ford is our first American billionaire.

The first American billionaire has arrived fifteen years ahead of Mr. Shearman's calculated time. The first American billionaire—the first billionaire in history—is a comparatively young man, only fifty-three; at the present rate of progress we can only faintly imagine what his wealth will amount to if he lives as long, for example, as Commodore Vanderbilt, who died at eighty-three.

Henry Ford's Colossal Achievement

THE colossal size of Henry Ford's income illustrates, as nothing else can illustrate, the amazing economic progress the United States has made in a hundred years. Beside this achievement in piling up wealth, the similar performances of his predecessors, even Rockefeller and Carnegie, seem almost insignificant. The first John Jacob Astor died in 1848, leaving a fortune of $20,000,000. The nation had never witnessed anything like this before. This fortune represented the labor of sixty-five years in the fur trade, the China trade, and the unearned increment of New York real estate. It made

In 1855 Mr. Moses Y. Beach published a volume dealing with the rich men of New York, who were, of course, the rich men of the United States. William B. Astor, with a fortune estimated at $6,000,000, led the list. A man who had $500,000 had a fortune large enough to justify including his name in this illustrious list. A man who possessed an even million was evidently a man of mark. The names of some of these illustrious men, and the sources of their accumulations, have a particular interest now.

William H. Aspinwall, who stands next to Astor with $4,000,000, had made his money "in trade." Peter Cooper, who is credited with $1,000,000, had heaped up his hoard by the manufacture of isinglass and glue. John Haggerty, another millionaire, was an auctioneer. Peter Goelet, who is also credited with a million, is described as "a rich old bachelor who finds more joy in bondmen's seals than Caesar with a senate at his heels."

The biography of Peter Harmony, a man with $2,000,000, has a ring that Americans always like. "He came to this country as a cabin-boy, and engaged hugely in the shipping business." Jonathan Hunt, another millionaire, had a similarly obscure beginning, but a rather unhappy ending. "He started as an apple boy in Troy, and became president of a bank in Mobile. His success drove him mad, and he committed suicide by jumping off a ferry-boat in 1843." George Law "engaged in building the railroad across Panama," and had a fortune of $1,000,000 for his pains. Cornelius Vanderbilt, famous boatman and afterward distinguished in railroads, had accumulated only $1,500,000 when this pamphlet was published. Stephen Whitney had got together $5,000,000 by "fortunate speculations in cotton." Moses Taylor, a shipping merchant, had $1,000,000. James Lenox had $3,000,000, "inherited from his father," while Peter Lorillard had scraped together $2,000,000 in tobacco.

Such were the great men in America five years before the breaking out of the Civil War, and such were the sources of their accumulations. The next important date in the history of American millionairedom is 1877, when Cornelius Vanderbilt died, leaving a fortune of $100,000,000. The amazing fact about Vanderbilt's fortune is that it represents, for the larger part, the accumulations of the last ten years of his life. In 1855, when he was sixty-one years old, the Commodore, as we have seen, was popularly regarded as worth only $1,500,000. By the time the Civil War ended this had increased $10,000,000. Up to that time, apparently, money-making, even in a new country like the United States, was a comparatively laborious process. The rich men were great merchants, great shippers, great bankers, great manufacturers, men enengaged in practically the same occupations that had accounted for most of the great fortunes since the days of Sidon and Tyre. But new factors had entered the economic situation—forces of progress that were to give opportunities for fortune-making unknown in the world's history before. Above all others stood the railroad.

Vanderbilt, at the conclusion of the Civil War, sold all his steamboats, obtaining practically all the $10,000,000 that made possible his real career. No man ever engaged in a more daring gamble; his experience demonstrates again that, in this country at least, it is the man who ventures everything who wins. The Commodore purchased railroads, many of which had made no money for years. In this huge speculation the Commodore won—hence the $100,000,000 left his heirs.

Swollen Fortunes of the '90's

AND now American fortunes began to increase rapidly. New names jumped almost every day into the millionaire cclass. Take the year 1890 as the next sign-post of swollen fortunes. An industrious researcher in that year got together seventy names representing combined resources of $2,700,000,000. The average was $37,500,000 per man. The greatest fortune that the world had ever known, the $200,000,000 left by William Henry Vanderbilt in 1885, had suffered by subdivision among his many children, so that John Jacob Astor, with $150,000,000, now led all the rest. There were now five Americans who had $100,000,000 each: Cornelius Vanderbilt, grandson of the Commodore, William K. Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, Leland Stanford, and John D. Rockefeller. The estate of John I. Blair

These fortunes, so enormous compared with those of the previous generation, were regarded as constituting a great national problem. Already they had begun to exercise their influence upon politics. That distinction between the "masses" and the "classes," which was to form the substance of Bryan's oratory in the campaign of 1896, had already begun to influence popular thinking. Wall Street, which had hitherto only vaguely appeared as a portent, now began to figure as the great bugaboo of the Middle West.

How the Old Fortunes Were Made

UNTIL the appearance of Henry Ford—and this fact should give great comfort to those who still fear these personal accumulations——practically all the colossal American fortunes were the products either of speculation or of some particular form of special privilege. Until Standard Oil made its appearance, railroads and real estate furnished the basis for the largest American estates. Both were eminently speculative in character.

John Jacob Astor heaped up only a comparatively trifling amount in trade; his accumulations represented the greatest and most fortunate real estate speculations in history. His only genius consisted in an amazing foresight: he detected the future greatness of New York long before any one else foresaw its splendid destiny. He gambled all his earnings in the fur trade in the future of this town. And he won splendidly. All he did was to purchase vacant, unproductive land, patiently wait for the rise, and then realize by letting it out on long-term lease. Young Vincent Astor, the present head of the family, could go into a Rip Van Winkle trance, wake up at the end of twenty years, and find himself infinitely richer than when he went to sleep. The growth in the city's population and wealth would have worked the miracle.

The land fortunes thus represent the toll-takers of American prosperity. The railroad fortunes are primarily the results of speculation. This was conspicuously the case with the Vanderbilts and the Goulds. Commodore Vanderbilt's $100,000,000 was largely the product of watered stock.

Many writers have pictured this bluff old genius as a pioneer empire-builder, as a man who found a string of disconnected railroads extending from New York to Chicago and linked them into a splendid trunk system. But the New York Central Railroad, extending from Albany to Buffalo and composed of about thirteen independent lines, was linked together in 1853, fifteen years before Commodore Vanderbilt had anything to do with the road. In 1869 Vanderbilt got possession of this completed line and also of the Hudson River Line, which extended from New York to Albany, and combined these two properties. His personal earnings from this transaction were about $80,000,000—a huge speculative transaction that in itself represents the larger part of his fortune.

His son, William Henry Vanderbilt, was one of the biggest speculators Wall Street has ever known. In seven years he doubled his father's fortune; he did this by managing his railroads not with an exclusive eye to shippers and the traveling public, but to the price of their stocks. Hence the decay in the properties—and hence the elimination of the Vanderbilt family from control.

The Gould fortune, of course, represented speculation in a much grosser form. Jay Gould occupied the unenviable position in our

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His successors have lacked his speculative genius—and have woefully failed to qualify as railroad managers, with the result that they, like the Vanderbilts, have lost control of their inheritance. There is not a Gould to-day whose total fortune is as large as Henry Ford's earnings in a single year.

His Income Twice as Big as Rockefeller's

THE Rockefellers, of course, are enormously rich, though even John D.'s income probably is not half that of Henry Ford. Here we have a fortune based upon control of a large industrial necessity. Railroad rebates, in connection with the great organizing and constructive genius of its founders, made it possible. It stands upon a much higher plane than the speculative accumulations already described; for its possessors, after all, are primarily business men.

But the Henry Ford fortune, already larger than any of its predecessors, represents a product of an entirely different kind.

Mr. Shearman anticipated that the first billionaire would bring a million paupers in his train and that his political power might end the American republic. But Mr. Ford is already famous, among other things, for his successful attempts to improve the condition of workingmen. His 48,000 men get higher wages, have better working conditions, and live in better houses than any similar class of workingmen in the world. The tendency of the Ford fortune seems to be, not to increase pauperism, but to diminish it on an enormous scale.

Neither is Mr. Ford attempting to undermine the republic, unless his campaign against preparedness and in favor of peace can be interpreted as having that tendency. At any rate, the first billionaire—or the first man with the income of a billionaire—is hardly the destructive ogre with which the prophets twenty-five years ago tortured their imaginations.

Nor is Mr. Ford's fortune in any sense the product of Wall Street. With that part of the country he has steadily refused to have anything to do. Wall Street has made many advances, all of which he has repelled.

Mr. Ford and Wall Street

SEVERAL years ago, when he was already looming as the great motor-maker, certain captains of industry approached him with the usual plan of campaign—a combination, a trust, huge stock issues, and the rest. The suggestion was made that Mr. Ford might occasionally stand in need of cash: in which case the Wall Street coffers stood at his disposal.

In a short time Mr. Ford sent a request for a moderate sum—say $500,000. The money came, and with it a request: wouldn't Mr. Ford like to talk over that combination now? Mr. Ford replied that he was not so disposed, but that he would like to borrow another half million. In a few months he requested another loan. It was made, and at the same time Mr. Ford was invited to discuss combinations. Still he declined—again asking another loan.

But the financial magnates had grown weary. They not only declined to advance additional money, but said that, when the money already advanced came due, they would have to insist on payment. By return mail came a check for the full amount, and a note.

"I have ten million dollars in the bank"—Mr. Ford's reply was in just about these words—"and have no need to negotiate loans. I have merely done this because I really wanted to learn on what basis Wall Street did business. I now know."

So here we have a monstrous fortune heaped up independently of Wall Street. It has not depended upon railroad rebates, upon monopolizing its market, upon grinding the life out of its employees, upon exacting Shylock prices from the consuming public, or upon stock speculation. It represents legitimate business in the same sense that the honest grocery represents legitimate business. Mr. Ford has had only one occupation: he has purchased raw materials, put them through his factories, and turned out a highly useful article. He has succeeded simply because he has devised business and manufacturing methods that are far better than those of his competitors.

The greatest fortune the world has ever known is apparently without the slightest taint.

The Lady from Montana

By RHETA CHILDE DORR

IN the winter of 1914, when the federal suffrage amendment was being debated in Congress, Senator Bryan of Florida, who led the opposition in the upper house, made an extended speech in which he pointed out all kinds of terrible things the suffragists had up their sleeves.

"Once give women the ballot," he warned, "and you will find them making still further demands. They will aspire to office, and who knows but that they will even try to get into Congress itself?"

Senator Shafroth of Colorado then took the floor.

"Would the Senator from Florida seriously object to seeing women in Congress?" he demanded.

Whereupon Senator Bryan fervently declared that he hoped he would not live to see such a horrific sight—or words to that effect.

"Well, all I can say is that, unless the Senator from Florida expects to die young," retorted Senator Shafroth, "he is extremely likely to see exactly that."

Unless something happens before December, 1917, to remove Senator Bryan of Florida from his earthly labors, he will line up in the corridor, with all the other Congressmen and as many Washingtonians as can get in, to see the lady from Montana on the way to take her seat in the House of Representatives.

How She Looks

EVERYBODY wants to know what the first Congresswoman looks like, what kind of a woman she is, how she got elected, and what she is likely to do in Congress.

Jeannette Rankin is first of all a nice girl, and looks it. Without resembling the girl on the magazine cover or the wax model in a shop window, the lady from Montana is attractive of face and figure. She is about five inches over five feet, and is as slender and straight as a young pine tree. Her abundant hair was reddish brown until a year or two ago, when it turned into a silver aureole around her fresh young face. Jeannette is young, not for a society bud, but for a woman who does things. She is about thirty-five.

Her chief characteristic, or at least her dominant one, is energy—physical, mental, and spiritual. She radiates life. She is tireless, fearless, and full of faith in herself and in her convictions. No other kind of woman could possibly have been elected to Congress, even in a suffrage State.

Worked for Woman Suffrage

MISS RANKIN got around to running for Congress after she had done a number of other things. She graduated from the University of Montana, and in her student days made herself so popular that she laid the lines of future prominence right there. A few years in the East, working as field secretary for the National Suffrage Association, and graduating from the New York School of Philanthropy, gave her training in organization work and taught her scientific sociology.

She took both of these acquisitions back to Montana in 1910, and organized the State for a suffrage campaign. Before the campaign was over and won, in 1912, practically every man in the State knew Jeannette Rankin personally. She used to go into the dance-halls in the mining districts, stand up on a chair and make a speech, and then get down and dance with the miners. She can dance, too.

Well, the suffrage cause won out; and this fall, looking around for a Rankin-size job, she announced her candidacy for Congressman at large on the Republican ticket. An extremely popular Helena man named Farr was also a candidate, and every one expected him to run first in the primaries. The women hoped that Miss Rankin would come out second, which would give her a place on the ballot.

She came out first, running a thousand or more votes ahead of Mr. Farr, who was second, the others being distanced. Then the campaign began.

Montana was in the Democratic ranks from the first, but there was never much doubt of Miss Rankin's election. Everywhere you heard women say: "I shall vote for Wilson, I think. But I know I'm going to vote for Jeannette." And they did; and so did the men. She worked hard and ceaselessly for her own election, backed by a young lawyer brother, who managed his sister's campaign, and did a thorough job of it.

Will the Congressmen Welcome Her?

MISS RANKIN went to the State on a platform of a dry Montana, a federal suffrage amendment, federal laws for the protection of working women, and more and better laws concerning children. This answers the question. What will she do when she gets there? She will turn her flaming energy and her fine gift of speech into a crusade for woman suffrage and all kinds of federal social legislation.

Nothing has been finer than the attitude of the more intelligent Congressmen toward the lady from Montana. Scores of them have written and telegraphed her before and since her election.

"I shall certainly be glad to hear that I shall have the pleasure of greeting you as a member of the 65th Congress," wrote conservative old Senator Gallinger of New Hampshire.

"It will be fine to welcome her," Senator Harding of Ohio wrote to Mr. Rankin.

"I know of no one more competent acceptably to fill a seat in the National House of Representatives"—this from Senator Warren of Wyoming.

Others who have written enthusiastically are Senators Works of California, Smoot of Utah, Shafroth of Colorado, Poindexter of Washington, Clapp of Minnesota, Dixon of Montana; and Congressmen Miller of Minnesota, Helgesen of North Dakota, and many others.

Even Uncle Joe Cannon, never an ardent feminist, said: "I'll be glad to see her in Congress. I'd be glad to see her almost anywhere."

TO THE READERS OF EVERY WEEK

IN an address to the men and women of Boston on August 25, 1902, I said: "The first requisite of good citizenship is that the man shall do the homely, every-day, humdrum duties well. A man is not a good citizen—I do not care how lofty his thoughts are about citizenship in the abstract if, in the concrete, his actions do not bear them out; and it does not make much difference how high his aspirations for mankind at large may be: if he does not behave well in his own family those aspirations do not bear visible fruits. He must be a good bread-winner, he must take care of his wife and his children, he must be a neighbor whom his neighbors can trust, he must act squarely in his business relations—he must do all those every-day, ordinary duties first, or he is not a good citizen. But he must do more. In this country of ours the average citizen must devote a good deal of thought and time to the affairs of the State as a whole, or those affairs will go backward; he must devote that thought and that time steadily, intelligently."

What I thus said is, of course, exactly as true to-day; and I say it now to the men and women of America as a whole.

The Sport of Kings

By ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

Illustration by A. I. Keller

THE Spanish moss that hung from the branches of the arching trees overhead brushed my face as the mare spurned the shell road beneath her dainty hoofs, but I hardly felt it. I knew only that my wild ride was but part of a fearful nightmare, a nightmare in which Roberta Leland was in some terrible peril.

A blur ahead of me resolved into a group of horsemen. The nightmare through which I rode slowly dissolved, and I threw Vivandière back on her haunches as I stopped before them.

"Have you seen him?" somebody asked.

I saw that they were all armed with rifles, or with revolvers stuck in their belts.

I shook my head.

"Miss Leland!" I gasped. "She hasn't returned from town. I'm afraid—"

They closed about me. "Sure?" asked one. "I saw her ridin' aout o' Stephanie 'bout two houehs gone."

"Then she started home," I said, "and—"

"Could she have passed—on the road—without bein' seen?" asked the leader.

"I've been by the track," I said. "I—or some one else—would surely have noticed her."

"Then, somewheah between town and her place, she turned off," said the leader. "And we are only a mile out o' town now, and there ain't any road, or any path in the jungle a hawss could get through, so—it's beyond heah somewheah. Yo' passed the spot, seh, on yo' way down heah. Yo' say it's two houehs sinct yo' saw her, Wilkens," he said to the man who had first spoken. "Are yo' suah?"

"It wa'n't no longeh ago," said the man.

"And Higgins busted away from the turpentine camp about three houehs ago," said the sheriff musingly. "That's 'way oveh yander."

He jerked his thumb in the direction of the impassable jungle that lay on our left as we faced back toward Miss Leland's plantation.

"They took the' time at the camp to infawm us, and—in an hour, breakin' through the swamps, he'd 'a' made this road. 'Pears like to me—"

"It appears to me," I raged, "that we're wasting time. Let's start along and—"

"If it's two hours sinct he come up with her, a few minutes gettin' things straight ain't wasted," said the sheriff.

"He's got her hawss, that's certain. He wouldn't attempt to ride through the jungle: he'd take a path. The only path between heah and Miss Leland's place—and she ain't passed that, yo' say—is about ha'f a mile beyond heah. If he's ridin', that's the way he went! Come on."

WITH a clatter of hoofs, we shot back in the direction whence I had come. And within a hundred yards Jerry had wheeled his horse about and was galloping along at my side.

It took only a couple of minutes for us to reach the path; but in that time the sheriff said something that measurably allayed my fear. Buck Higgins, the escaped negro, was not known as a vicious man. Some minor offense, petty larceny or the like, had caused him to be sentenced to jail for six months. From the jail he had been farmed out, as was then the Florida habit, to work on a turpentine farm until the expiration of his sentence. And he had become more or less of a trusty. To-day he had been sent out of the camp limits on an errand, and not until he was an hour late in returning did the guards grow suspicious. It was now three hours later. But there was nothing in the man's record to indicate that Miss Leland, aside from being robbed of her horse, would be in danger at his hands. So the sheriff said.

But why hadn't she returned? It was this unanswerable question that made the sheriff, for all his soothing words, twirl the cylinder of his revolver. As for myself—I remember that I prayed a little—when I was not cursing!

It seemed hours before we drew up at the path that I now remembered skirted the edge of Miss Leland's estate, and ended, some miles beyond, at a creek that flowed into the Gulf forty miles away. I would have dashed into its jungle-girted length at once; but the sheriff singled ont a dozen of his men.

"You men dismount and beat the jungle," he ordered. "The rest of us will go down this path."

The men chosen dismounted without a word.

"You don't think your man's in there, do you?" I asked, angry at any delay, yet not daring to go ahead by myself, for fear of going hopelessly astray.

"Not Higgins," said the sheriff meaningly. And my blood chilled, then grew hot with a fierce, wild rage.

"Now," said the sheriff. "Straight down this path. There's hoof-marks in it—fresh ones. Come along!"

HE swung his horse forward; but in the first ten yards Vivandière was by, and at breakneck speed I went down the winding, grass-grown path that led to—what?

I was breathing heavily as Vivandière turned a corner and stopped short, almost on the banks of the creek. There, leaning against the base of a live-oak, watching the lazy flow of the creek, while Jimmy, her horse, nibbled at the tough grass, sat Miss Leland. She looked up and waved her hand. Then her hand stiffened and remained poised as she noted Vivandière's heaving sides and my white face.

"Why—what's wrong?" she asked. "They don't—no one knows that—"

I swung from the saddle, and as I stood on the ground my knees almost gave beneath me, from the reaction of my nerves.

"You're safe!" I managed to gasp.

"Why, yes," she said. "Did you know that—"

The pounding of a horse's hoof's cut short her cryptic question. Jerry was leading the sheriff by a neck, and was on the ground before the girl while the officer was still reining in his mount. Despite his Irish blood, I have not often seen Jerry give way to emotion. I saw him now. For he went to the girl and lifted her hand and kissed it.

"God bless ye, alannah! I thought ye was—"

He couldn't finish, choking. The girl's eyes were very tender as they rested a moment on his bent and grizzled head. Then she looked up at the sheriff.

"What's the matter, Mr. Boynton?"

HE had dismounted now, and he scratched his head.

"A niggeh busted away from the turpentine camp, Miss Leland, ma'am," he said, "and yo' been gone so long from yo' house—and him havin' come this away, we figgered, we thought—"

"You thought I'd seen him?" she asked.

"We thought he might have come upon yo' on the road and wanted yo' hawss, and—we was quite fussed about yo', Miss Leland, ma'am."

Other mounted men came down the path and drew rein, with shouts of relief at sight of the girl. She flushed, and included us all in the thanks, prettily and gratefully couched, to which she gave voice.

"But I was only off for a quiet ride," she added. "And it was so pleasant down here by the creek—"

"Then yo' didn't see the niggeh at all?" asked Boynton.

"Why, you aren't even sure he came this way, are you?" she countered.

Boynton looked at me with a grin.

"It was this gentleman got us worked up," he said.

"And Mrs. Clarke got me worked up," I said. "We'd better be getting back to the house, Miss Leland. I'm afraid Mrs. Clarke—"

I shook my head and gave her my hand. She leaped into the saddle; I mounted Vivandière.

"Luella will be having a scare," said Miss Leland self-reproachfully.

WE made quite a cavalcade along the path, and by the time we reached the main road riders sent ahead had called the men on foot from their hunt of the jungle.

"Were they looking for me there?" asked Miss Leland, with a slight shudder.

"Well, ma'am, they was just lookin'," said Sheriff Boynton.

She whitened; and when we left the posse, now convinced that the fleeing negro had not crossed the shell road that led to Stephanie, but was hidden somewhere in the jungle on the turpentine camp side, the girl once more thanked the men in a voice that trembled and with lips that were pale. Then we cantered along the road toward her plantation.

"I'll be afther goin' ahead, ma'am," said Jerry, "to sort of break the good news to Mrs. Clarke, so she'll be havin' no excuse for faintin' whin ye get there."

And he clapped his horse with his horny hand and galloped ahead of us. For half a mile we rode in silence. I was looking straight ahead, unable to meet her eyes—for two reasons. One was that I feared she would read in my eyes the love that must have been in them from the moment fear left them at sight of her by the live-oak tree on the bank of the creek. The other was—well, if I looked at her I'd have to ask her what she had meant by her broken utterance when I came upon her.

"I suppose," she said, "that it is a criminal offense to help an escaping convict."

"People have gone to jail for such things," I said grimly.

Now that I knew from her own lips what I had suspected, I was in no mood to make light of the matter. She had been in danger.

"But no one knows," she said.

"I do," I said. "I suspected it from the moment I saw you. Why?

"He was all torn," she said, "and bleeding from the bushes he'd worked through. And he ran out to me as I came down the road, and fell on his knees, and asked me for the love of God to help him get away! He showed me raw wounds on his shoulders—wounds where the whip had fallen! They—they beat men in those camps!"

I nodded. I'd heard of the abuses to which prisoners were subjected in the Florida pine woods—abuses that have since been stopped.

"He told me what he was imprisoned for," went on the girl. "Stealing—stealing ten dollars! And they sent him to the camps—for six months! He said that he'd been a trusty; but even then, despite his good conduct, they beat him, and the first chance he got—he took! Poor, wretched, frightened black man! He said they'd half kill him if they caught him. He wanted me to give him a job and let him hide in the stables. But I was afraid he would be found if I did that, so—I gave him what money I had, and guided him down to the creek, where there was an old flat-bottomed skiff. With that he could throw off pursuit and make his way to the coast. There'll not be much of a chase, anyway. If they don't find him in a day or so they'll not bother with him. And they won't find him. And I'm glad—glad! They beat him!"

THAT was enough for her: enough to justify her, in her own mind, for violating the law.

"You did just right, Miss Leland," I said, "and we'll forget all about it right now. Only, next time, as soon as you've shipped your fugitive off, come back to the house."

For some reason, she colored deeply.

"I—I was just thinking—thinking all by myself," she said.

"That's often the way people think," I said dryly. "And another thing: it may be all right to help negroes escape, but—don't leave the main road hereafter!'

She looked at me and understood. From inside her shirtwaist she drew a small revolver.

"I had my hand on the gun—all the time," she said.

Then, with a toss of her head, she threw care behind her. She urged her horse forward. We turned up the road that led past the track. From my cottage old Mammy Jane waved a flat hand.

"Gawd save yo', Miss Bertie, honey," she called. "Don't yo' be keerless an' brash, honey! Yo' go out alone again, and Mammy gwine treat yo' like when yo' uster steal jam!"

I saw the girl blush as she kissed a hand to the old colored woman. Then we swept by the track, where the stable-boys smiled broadly at their mistress, and so up the handsome drive that led to the main entrance of the mansion.

Jerry came out on the veranda as we drew rein. As we dismounted he said: "I'm afraid, ma'am, the stor-rm ain't abated, though I've thried to pour ile on the throubled waters."

Jerry was right. Behind him came Mrs. Clarke. The storm had not abated; it broke upon us with a vigor that could hardly have been greater.

"Roberta Leland! How can you? When I'm sick! When I'm nervous! Oh, I should think you'd be ashamed! I should think you'd despise yourself for being so wicked! I'm half dead with fright and worry, and—"

I didn't hear any more. If I'd stayed I'd have had to gag her, and that would never have done. Gently and on tiptoe, with Jerry following, I led Vivandière away. It was not until we'd delivered our horses to the stable-boys that a word was said. Then Jerry spoke.

"The lucky dawg," he said. "The lucky dawg!"

"Who?" I asked.

Page 9

"Mrs. Clarke's husband; he's dead," said Jerry.

I was up, had given Vivandière and the other horses a morning gallop, and was finishing my second plateful of Mammy Jane's waffles, when a boy came down from the big house with word that Miss Leland wished to see me. I pushed back my chair, and under Mammy Jane's reproachful eye—there were two waffles left upon my plate—left the cottage. Miss Leland received me in the big, sunny breakfast-room. Mrs. Clarke was there too.

"Coffee?" asked Miss Leland.

I took a cup for the pleasure of watching her pour it. A colored maid set it down on the table, and I drew up a chair.

"We are going North to-day," said Miss Leland.

THE spoon with which I was stirring the sugar dropped from my hand, tilted over the cup's rim, and clattered into the saucer. I dropped my eyes to it, and kept them downcast a second. Then I looked up.

"Isn't this rather sudden?" I asked.

"It is," she answered. "But Mrs. Clarke is upset and—"

"Who wouldn't be?" sniffed Mrs. Clarke. "I pictured you out there in the awful jungle—"

"There, there, Luella," said Miss Leland. "It's all over now, and you're going to New York."

"By rail," said Mrs. Clarke with emphasis.

Miss Leland smiled faintly. I grinned openly: I did not like Mrs. Clarke. The girl turned to me.

"I'd intended to go back just before Thanksgiving," she said, "and remain North until after Christmas. I usually do that."

I nodded. I'd heard some such talk of her custom.

"But now," she resumed, "Mrs. Clarke isn't feeling well, and my little ride of yesterday has aggravated her illness—"

"Indeed it has!" exclaimed Mrs. Clarke. "You'll never know—"

"I'm trying to understand, Luella," said Miss Leland—a bit wearily, I thought. "Anyway, we're going!" And Clarke looked, I thought, triumphantly at me. As for myself, I tried to avoid looking uncomfortable.

"So, of course, I'Il leave everything in your hands, Mr. Kernan," said the girl. "The Grantham meeting opens January first; I'll hope to be at Grantham by then—a little later, at any rate. All expenses, of course, you may draw upon me for. I—I hope that Vivandière will live up to our hopes."

I rose.

"I hope so too, Miss Leland," I said. "I believe she will."

I stood a moment awkwardly. Then she gave me her hand. I bowed above it, and stepped away from her. Mrs. Clarke and I exchanged frigid bows, and then—I was out of the house and walking down toward our cottage. Jerry met me in the doorway.

"Well, what's wrong?" he asked, noting, I imagine, my gloomy countenance.

"That Clarke woman," I said savagely, "has persuaded Miss Leland to go North at once—to-day. Took yesterday's affair as her excuse: horrible country, savage negroes—you can guess it. Hysteria, reproaches—all the rest of it."

"I know," said Jerry. "Still—maybe the young lady was wantin' to go herself."

"Shouldn't wonder," said I bitterly. "Florida is no place until after Christmas. Then she'll have her friends down, and—"

"And maybe it ain't her friends she's missin' so much," said Jerry. "The lady don't strike me as one of them social butterflies. Any girl that'll run a stable is pretty livel-headed. Maybe she ain't missin' th' intertainmints in New York. Maybe she'd be glad of the rist down here until her friends come down to visit her.

"Then why doesn't she stay?" I asked.

"Sure, maybe the gir-rl, God bless her, is thryin' to git a chance to find her mind," said Jerry. "Ye see, Misther Sale, if she gets away from ye she'll have a chance to get the right proportions of things. Just at prisent ye're the only man in sight. Ye've done her a favor: risked ye'er life for her, and—away from ye, she'll know."

"Jerry," I said, "I suppose I wear my heart on my sleeve, don't I?"

"Well, its pinned on th' outside of ye'er vest," he grinned.

"Well, hers isn't," I snapped. "She doesn't care for me—couldn't—and—let's not talk about it any more! Our business is training horses. Let's stick to it!—

"Right," agreed Jerry.

MISS LELAND left on the afternoon train. She waved to me from her carriage as she and her chaperon were driven by. Mrs. Clarke didn't even look at me. Next day I was hard at work preparing the little string for its campaign on the Grantham track.

November passed; I began to see possibilities in the other horses. They'd never do up North, but at Grantham they might help pay the stable's bills. I began to study the list of owners who were to race at this Florida meeting. I was glad to notice that some fairly prominent names in race circles had entered horses.

In December I received a letter from Miss Leland—the first one. It merely answered one of mine, a business one, and told me to move the string to Grantham whenever I thought best. In the middle of December I shipped three horses besides Vivandière to the track on the West Coast. I took along a couple of hands and two exercise boys, one of whom I thought might develop into a fair jockey. Jerry, of course, went with me.

I acquired a small stable near the track, and settled down to active business, preparing my own horses and studying the lay of the land. It promised better sport than I'd expected. The agitation against the New York tracks was reaching its climax. The Governor of New York was supposed to be in favor of closing the tracks in that State. There really wasn't much danger that he'd do so, but lots of owners were thinking the feed bill proposition over very carefully. Some decent nags had been shipped to Grantham. No big purses there, but expenses. And expenses were very welcome in view of a possible raceless year in New York. I soon learned that my three platers stood very little chance of doing more than break even on their expenses. But Vivandière—the purses weren't so much, but the books!

In late December I received a letter from Sam Benton, scolding me for not having written to him, telling me that he'd met Miss Leland and so learned where I was, and that he was busy trying to have me reinstated. But the stewards were granite: an apology or nothing! Further, now that the racing season was long over, Sam despaired of his detective agency getting the goods on Classon, Connors, or O'Toole. His advice was for me to take back my unproved statements—as the stewards considered them—sometime in the winter and join his stable in the spring. In conclusion, he reminded me that a telegram would bring me any amount in his ability to lend.

Then, on the last day of December, I received a telegram from Miss Leland saying that she and a party of friends would be in Grantham on the second of January, and that she hoped Vivandière would be running that day. The only thing on the card that at all suited

Page 10

On the morning of January second I was at the train to meet Miss Leland. I thought it a simple courtesy that could not offend. I expected her to be accompanied only by Mrs. Clarke. Instead, quite a party descended from the train. She introduced me to all of them. There was Mrs. Clarke's daughter, a simpering miss named Mabelle; three young men, one of whom, Carteret Dane, was Mrs. Clarke's nephew, and, I speedily learned by his manner, a suitor for Miss Leland's hand—indeed, a favored suitor: for, in the grand-stand that afternoon, I heard him talking with Miss Leland about a cruise they were shortly to take on his power-boat.

Vivandière lost. Five furlongs was too little for her. She ran a good race, but—she didn't win. Young Dane turned to me as the numbers went up.

"Rather bad judgment that, eh? Starting her in a sprint?"

"I did it to oblige Miss Leland," I said shortly.

"And she'll win next time, won't she, Mr. Kernan?" asked Miss Leland.

"I expect her to," I replied.

"And we'll all bet on her," said the girl. "And—I'll not ask you to enter her again—to oblige me."

"Thanks," I said dryly.

Then I left them to look after the mare. I did not see her again, for that night the party continued on its way to Stephanie, to remain there a week or more. And when they returned—well, Dane was with her all the time; he had the inside track, and I—I gave up. For her manner was changed. Not that she wasn't kind and all that. But the little friendliness, the camaraderie, was all gone. She was cool, a bit aloof, a trifle distant. I began to look for an excuse to leave her employment; for the presence of Dane proved conclusively to me that I'd aspired too high, that I was a presumptuous fool.

Though we stopped at the same hotel when the party returned from Stephanie, I saw little of Miss Leland. And I began to think too much about her; in the wrong way, magnifying everything she said; making a slight appear where none had been intended; imagining a snub where none had been, and—all in all—acting like a jealous fool. When, in the evenings, I'd see her dancing at the hotel with Dane, or with Tennant or Mathews, his two friends, I'd go to my room and gloom half the night away, refusing even the companionship of my faithful Jerry.

"Ye'er afther lettin' th' other felly make all the runnin'," he said to me more than once.

"Hang it, Jerry," I'd answer. "He has money; I haven't. He's aided by his aunt, and—oh, the devil, Jerry!"

AND then, a week after their return from Stephanie, Vivandière was entered in a race. At the track, that morning, I read a letter from Sam Benton. It was full of cheery gossip, but one important thing it had in it. Carteret Dane, he told me, was related to Classon. At least, his aunt, Mrs. Clarke, was a cousin of the Jockey Club steward and financier.

I tore up the letter grimly. I looked around at the shabby track buildings. I looked over toward the betting-ring, where, in a few hours, would be gathered the worst bunch of crooks that ever grouped beneath a betting-shed. Why not get out of it? For if Dane was related, ever so distantly, to Classon, what sort of black eye must he and his aunt be giving me to Miss Leland? I wasn't imagining it. She was cool, distant, aloof. And I—

And I took a trolley into Grantham for my luncheon. I noticed that two men, on a seat ahead of me, were indulging in much whispered conversation. I paid no attention to them, being too much occupied with my own gloomy thoughts, until the car stopped near the center of the town. Then I noticed, as one of them descended from the car, that he was "Smiler" Smith, a New York bookmaker known for the size of his operations, and whom I had not hitherto seen in Grantham. As he said good-by from the street, his erstwhile companion turned his face toward him, so that I got a side view of his face. It was Dane!

No definite suspicion was in my mind; yet I could not but think it strange that the wealthy young New Yorker was on intimate terms with a notorious "bookie." Moved by impulse, and certain that neither had noticed me, I jumped from the car as it started ahead, and followed Smith. He went straight to the railroad station, and I heard him buy a ticket for New York and claim a section previously reserved for him on the afternoon train. Considerably mystified, yet really without reason, I walked to the hotel, had my luncheon, and, still puzzled, a little later returned to the track. But before I did so I looked at the hotel register. "Smiler" Smith had arrived in Grantham, according to the book, at eleven the night before. And he was leaving within eighteen hours.

There'd been several strange occurrences in the two weeks of racing. Several horses had run queerly—so queerly that I had not hesitated to speak my opinion. And now "Smiler" Smith took a forty-eight hours' journey down here for the privilege of staying less than a day. I wondered what was in the wind. Then, for the moment, I forgot about it, as I conferred with Jerry about the mare.

ONE last look I gave her, standing there, smooth as satin, soft as silk: from the honest eyes of her to her dainty feet, a lady and a thoroughbred. But those brown eyes could flash fire; that satin skin hid muscles of steel; the silken softness couldn't conceal the hard fighting nerves. Trained to the minute now, facing a distance that suited her, as sure as my name was Sale Kernan—a horse!

I made my way through the crowd that thronged the paddock, and under the long, sideless shed that housed the betting-ring. A couple of touts saw me from the dingy bar, ran out, and intercepted me.

"Got a little word for us, Kernan?" one of them asked.

I have no use for this sort of cattle; they and their kind have blacked the eye of racing.

"Vivandière is in the next race," I said. "That ought to be enough, isn't it?"

"But just a wise word," begged the other. "Is she meant?"

This tout never dreamed he was insulting me. And I didn't lower myself to the level of every Tom, Dick, and Harry by explaining to them that every Kernan-trained horse is meant to win, every time he starts. Life is too short. So I just brushed by and took a squint at the first board I passed. My eyebrows went up. Good reason!

For Vivandière was fourth choice in a field of seven! She was quoted at five to one, while Queen Molly and Cresswell were equal odds-on favorites, at four to five. Bay King was second choice, at five to two. I thought some exiled hop fiend from the Long Island tracks must have had a relapse and chalked up those odds; but a glance at the next board made me dismiss that idea. The figures were the same. I couldn't understand it.

Queen Molly and Cresswell were all right: they were legitimate favorites on their past performances and present condition. Bay King's odds were O. K., too. But Vivandière! If the bookies had known what I knew about by mare they'd have come close to marking her off their slates. For if ever a horse had a race all won, if ever race was in—before it started—this one, with Vivandière entered, was it! Of course the bookies, and the public too, knew something about her. They knew her pedigree; knew that, if blood means anything, the mare should have been a top-notcher, barring her unfortunate disposition, which had vanished beneath my handling of her. They also knew that she was carrying four pounds less than in her last race, when she'd finished outside the money by a nose; also they knew that the distance of this race, a furlong beyond the mile, was more suited to a horse with her ancestry. Two to one would have been normal odds, considering what all the world knew. But five to one!

I stood back, away from the stools, and watched a few minutes. And I saw a dozen bettors back away from two book-makers, each, according to the sing-song voice of the bookmaker as he cried their bets to the clerk, with a piece of change on Vivandière. The public wasn't misled by the scornful odds. The public knew enough to realize that at five to one Vivandière was a tempting bet. But the bookies! Where did they get off to price the mare that way? I went down the line to Ikey Blatz's book.

FUNNY, too, when you stop to think of it. Just because, a year or two before I'd trimmed a couple of Long Island City roughs who were trying to take Ikey's roll away from him, and because Ikey had been fervent in his protestations of friendship ever since, and had almost fallen on my neck when he met me down here a Grantham, now, when I thought I had sure thing, I played it with Ikey. Friendship is a queer thing. But Ikey'd been sore if I'd "patronized" another book.

"Some of that nice fat Vivandière stuff," I said to him.

"Show?" said Ikey, with a grin of welcome.

"Win," said I. "Just write me a ticket for eighteen hundred, and here's the bank roll."

I handed him three hundred dollars as I spoke, and it was the bank-roll—entire.

Ikey waved his fat hands.

"You don't need that much to make it look good."

"Huh? I don't get you," I told him. "Make what look good? My faith in the mare?"

He looked at me with an odd expression on his fat face.

"Sure, that's it; why not a ten-spot, and—"

"Well," I blurted out, "what are you running? A charity kindergarten for sap-head bettors?"

Ikey couldn't flush; at least, you'd never detect it on that sallow, greasy face of his. But he perspired a bit, and his grin was feeble.

"Sure not; but—Kernan, you're my frient, und I don'd vant a frient of mine to lose all he's got."

The idea of any one—and a bookmaker at that—advising me how to bet on a horse I'd trained!

"There are other books," I told him coldly; "only, knowing you and none of the others—"

I turned away.

"Gif me your money," said Ikey, with a shrug of his fat shoulders—a shrug that seemed to say that he might as well take it as any one else.

I got my ticket, calling for eighteen hundred if Vivandière won. Then I grinned. Ikey was a good little skate, at that. I crooked my finger and he bent over from his high stool.

"Let me tell you something, Ikey," I whispered. "Just erase those odds. I notice the public's eating 'em up. I know every horse in the race, and I want to tell you—Vivandière in a walk! That's all!"

Ikey perspired a bit more freely. He took off his derby and mopped his bald head.

"Sure, Mr. Kernan, dot's righd; you trained der horse."

And, as I turned away, I saw the figures on Vivandière being changed to seven to one! I saw the public rushing to it. I smiled; for once, the bookies were going to get theirs.

Then I climbed into the rickety grand-stand. If possible, I always watch my entries from the grand-stand; I don't know why; I think it's because racing, though a business, is a sport to me, and I want to be away from the business atmosphere of the stables and up with the spectators, to whom a race is a race an not the culmination of—sometimes—years of patient and painstaking effort. From away up at the top I watched the seven horses charge at the barrier.

Two attempts, and it lifted. They were off! I glued my glasses to the mare. Fourth, and on the outside! A little ahead of her, and nearer the rail, were Queen Molly and Cresswell. Out in front was Sunshine. But that didn't worry me. Sunshine was a flash runner; he'd be back in the ruck at three quarters. I looked for Bay King; he was fifth. Those three—Queen Molly, Cresswell, and Bay King—were the ones I had to watch. The two in back of King I didn't bother with at all. Outclassed, they wouldn't fit unless all the others dropped dead. I watched my boy, the little exercise boy I brought from Stephanie, on Vivandière.

A nice ride! He'd profited by the two starts others of my string had made thus far in the meeting, and in which they hadn't even been placed, but due to no fault of the boy's riding. High up, well forward, he was easing her along just as I'd taught him. He hadn't lost his head because Sunshine was hitting the dirt out front. I could see that he kept glancing to the left, and I knew that his eyes were on Cresswell and Queen Molly.

The two favorites were waiting for Sunshine to come back; then they'd hit their stride, and then—my little lady, Vivandière, wouldn't bother about where she stood until after the third turn. It was the fourth turn—and the home stretch—that would count with her.

AT the quarter I dropped my glasses and looked at the row of boxes at the base of the grand-stand fronting the track. In the third one my eyes found the party I was looking for—three women, three men. And two of the women and two of the men were standing, waving parasols and programs. The other couple were seated toward the rear of the box. They were chatting—I could tell that by their manner—with seeming unconcern, as if between the acts at a theater. They were watching the race, but they weren't getting heated about it. The real nerve—both of them. I had to admit it, though I had no use for Dane. It was his presence, and the feeling that I'd be an interloper, that had kept me from their box.

Yes, I had to admit that he looked a match for the girl, although I knew that the pallor of his face, that silly women called "interesting," was the result of dissipation. Yet he was handsome, and I couldn't blame Miss Leland for liking him. I looked at her animated face.

I'll take my oath that a gamer sportswoman—well, she sat there watching her own horse run, and was the calmest woman at the track. I turned my glasses back on the race.

The leader was just at the half. I made out the jockey's colors: it was Bay King. Queen Molly, taking things easy, was second; Vivandière had moved up to third; and Cresswell was hanging on a neck behind. Sunshine had blown up already and was a bad fifth, while the other two starters were in the ruck. I watched my mare. She was moving along, free as the air, smooth as an electric engine.

They reached the third turn; Vivandière was a bit closer; Cresswell was back a length now. A murmur came from the crowd; it rose to a roar: "Come on, you Vivandière!"

I switched my glasses down to the fence near the betting-ring. The bookies and their clerks and markers were hanging over it. I easily picked out Ikey Blatz's face. There was a grin on it a mile wide. Grinning! With nobody knew how much on his books to Vivandière! I turned the glasses a bit beyond him. Samuels, the most excitable layer at the track, was looking at the race, calm as if betting didn't exist. Beyond him was Markham, and he was calm. Yet here was my little mare coming like a house afire, almost turning into the stretch, right at Queen Molly's shoulder, and four thousand people yelling their heads off for Vivandière.

For the tempting odds had lured

(Continued on page 15)

Lucky Strikes

Photographs from Emil E. Hurja

Mothers

Page 13

What's Your Hobby?

(Continued from page 10)

them, and they had gone down, line, hook, and sinker, on my mare. I was dazed. There must be thousands on the mare.

I ground my glasses against the bridge of my nose. They were around the last turn—they straightened out. Vivandière was by Queen Molly at Bay King's shoulder; she had the rail!

"Oh, you Vivandière! Oh, you baby!"

Two furlongs to go! One little bit of a quarter of a mile and out in front!

Out in front! With the blood of the Waters family in her veins! The blood of the racers who had made turf history, and behind that blood, the blood of Lexington—the blood of Lexington, greatest four-miler of his or any other day! Speed of the Waters, heart of Lexington! And out in front, with over a mile behind her, a furlong to go, and—no horse that lived could catch Vivandière now!

I dropped my glasses to my side and laughed aloud. And then my laugh died away. I whipped the glasses to my eyes once more. For I couldn't believe it! It couldn't be so! And yet, two hundred yards from home, a clear length in the lead, Vivandière's jockey was using the whip. The whip! On the proudest-stepping horse that ever spurned the track. The whip! I heard a gasp from the crowd. I heard some one shriek, in the silence of a second: "Lost his head, the fool!"

Then I heard myself groan. For the blue-blooded lady whose turf career had been interrupted by the whip resented it now as savagely as ever before. She lost her stride; she went suddenly wild with rage; she stopped; she crashed against the fence. Queen Molly flashed under the wire, a winner.

I understood now—everything: Ikey Blatz's unwillingness to take my bet; the question of the touts; the false odds. The dirty dogs! An outlaw track! Outlaw was right! They'd fixed my jock, reached him! They'd lured the form players away from Cresswell, Bay King, and Queen Molly by the ridiculous price at which they'd held Vivandière. The public money had gone down on my mare. And an almost unplayed favorite had won!

To be continued next week

The Kid

By RUTH SAPINSKY

Illustrations by C. D. Williams

WHEN One Hundred and Twenty-four came out of jail there was nobody to meet him. He told himself grimly that he hadn't expected anybody—he wasn't a novice at this business, to need a delegation of friends around every time he was locked up or let out.

But, all the same, it took the bloom off his freedom to find, when he reached his lodging-house, that his girl Nell and his good friends, the Cazique and Charlie Hook, had flown.

He put on his cowboy suit, the one he usually wore when he was selling snake oil for the Cazique, and went over to the little park across the way for a sight of faces and a sound of voices.

But a summer storm had wet the benches and driven the people off. He smoked four cigarettes to remind himself that he was free, and swore aloud just to hear the sound of his own voice.

It was a relief when, at midnight, a messenger boy came whistling down the path, paused before a bush of sweet syringa, and broke off a well laden branch.

"Cut it, kid," called the man on the bench, as the boy's eager hand went out for another branch. "Don't you know it's against the law to take the flowers? I'll have yez pinched."

The boy turned suddenly.

"Who are you?" he asked, his hand gone quickly to his hip pocket.

The cowboy person laughed aloud at the bravado of the boy's tone and gesture.

"Nobody," he answered good-naturedly, which was approximately true. "I was just trying you out."

The night messenger sank into a seat.

"I thought it was that guard again," he said, as he shook the rain-drops out of his white blossoms. "I've had a run-in with that guy over the flowers almost every night this summer. But he's made himself more scarcer since I've let it be known I'd reported to the night manager I had some dangerous calls to make and he give me a gun."

The man on the bench regarded the boy narrowly in the dim light. He was fourteen at most, with the rosy freshness of the country still in his cheeks contrasting strangely with the hard little look of worldly wisdom dawning in his eyes.

"So you got a gun, kid." There was no surprise in the exclamation. Fifteen years ago—or was it a hundred?—he, Sanders, had been in this child's place—the licensed errand boy of the night, with a pistol in his pocket and the pride of a man in his face.

The boy paused in the act of adjusting a sprig of flowers in his cap.

"Sure I got a gun." He tossed his head proudly. "This ain't no child's business I'm in, y' know."

"Ain't it?"

"You bet it ain't. Most States has got laws making this a man's job. But this State don't care. Anyway, they need me here, because I'm a wise one, spite of me tender years. Say, you a stranger in town?"

The man on the bench twisted an unsmoked cigarette back and forth between his long, nervous fingers.

"What if I am?"

"Oh, nothing! I was just going to offer to show you this little Connecticut burg, that's all."

The cowboy person leaned back on his bench, much relieved.

"So that's it, kid. You want to show me the town, do you? What'll you give me this time of night—the library and the churches, maybe?

"Sure," said the messenger, with a nudge; and even in the flickering light his companion caught his broad wink.

They laughed.

"Come on, then—I know some swell places."

But Sanders shook his head.

"I guess not to-night, kid," he said. "I just come from a quiet place, and I ain't up to this gay city life yet a while."

The boy looked at his companion in surprise. Then he turned to the decoration of his cap in a polite endeavor to hide his thoughts.

"Say, how you like them flowers in my lid?" He held the cap off at arm's length.

"They remind me of the country," said Sanders.

"Me, too. We got some growing in our yard at home—a great big bush, twice the size of that one over yonder. My ma calls 'em mock-orange blossoms, because she says they're like what brides wear. Gee! I'm glad I stole these."

SANDERS chuckled sympathetically. He liked this boy.

"What's your name, kid?" he asked.

"Rush." The boy did not volunteer a surname—he came from a stratum of society where surnames were not much used.

"How'd you come to go into the work, kid—the night part of it, I mean?"

There was more than the passing interest of a park-bench acquaintance in the question.

"The night work? That's simple." Rush clapped his cap on his head at the approved tilt, and settled back importantly. "First of all, there's a better chance to pick up telegraphy than there is in the day, if you must know the insides of my business. Then, you ought to see the size of the tips I get for buying my calls drinks when the saloons are supposed to be closed, and getting 'em food from the swell restaurants and chop suey from the Chinaman's when they're hungry. Money's flowing like water in [this?] boom town, you know."

"Is it, kid? I wish it'd come my way."

"Oh, there's plenty here that's down on their luck, too, for all the prosperity. And China ain't going out of the dope business yet a while. Say, you want to see the latest style way of putting up hop? I got some here for a half-crazy call of mine that's sunk his fortune trying to get out a new kind of machine gun."

He put his hand in his pocket and drew out half a dozen innocent-looking little Chinese nuts.

Sanders shuddered at the sight.

"Kid, that's a hell of a work for you to be in!" he exclaimed, in a voice that trembled. "Why don't you get out of it, boy? It'll put you clean on the bum in less than three months, if you don't."

THE little messenger edged away in alarm.

"What's up?" he asked. His foot was on the path, ready for flight.

"Nothing, kid, nothing. Don't be scary. They ain't no call to light out. Only, for God's sake, boy, chuck this job. It'll break you sure, if you don't."

He had hold of the boy's arm, looking at him with imploring eyes.

"Chuck it! What you giving me, Mister?"

Rush shook off the man's hand.

"Maybe this ain't no Sunday school work I'm doing, but who are you to tell me to quit?" He glanced askance at his dubious companion. "Besides," he continued proudly, "I'm going to learn telegraphy, I told you. That's a honorable enough profession, ain't it?"

"It'll break you, kid, it'll break you. Chuck it before it does," interrupted the man excitedly. "I knew a kid once started out with ideas just like yourn; only there was a girl in his thoughts—a yellow-haired, brown-eyed girl he'd went to school with that he was going to save from a train wreck or something like that, and marry when he'd become a operator. But there in town they put him to work at night, when honest business shuts up shop and the devil's office hours begin. It was against the law, but he was smarter and cheaper than the down-and-out men they could get. He stood up under it for a while; then, when he was just at the age when he could have begun to make something of hisself and maybe in a few years marry the girl, he got to drinking and gambling. They put him in jail, and when he come out he had a chance to go straight. But he couldn't—it had a hold on him, that life; he couldn't shake it off."

The boy looked at his companion with a precocious little smile.

"So that's your story," he said. "Gee, it ain't a very pretty one!" Then he drew himself up with all of the superiority of fourteen. "Well, I guess there's some guys would go to the dogs anyway, even if they was working for a Sunday school."

He gathered his flowers together as if he had wasted quite enough time on this sniveling derelict, and rose to go.

"Wait a minute, Rush—just a minute; I want to tell you something else about that little kid. I ain't talked to no one about him for fifteen years."

The man clutched pleadingly at the messenger's coat.

But his long, nervous fingers only caught the empty air—the boy had flown.

[?] an hour, two hours, the occupant on the bench sat staring down the dim path where the sweet syringa stood out, white and heavily fragrant, and the poplars rose straight and tall and sent a few rain-drops pattering down on his head whenever a breeze shook them. And always down that path, framed between bush and trees, he saw a figure, forgotten these many years, looking at him with clear, unflinching eyes and steady lips and that in his face which meant to conquer the universe. Then slowly, as he looked, the boy's ruddy cheeks grew sallow, and his mouth drooped weakly at the corners, and into his eyes there stole the restless, shifting glance of one who has lived too long beneath the surface of the world.

"Hell," said the man to himself, "you was never like that kid; you had the devil in you to start with."

But he knew that he was lying to himself. A sudden impulse, so benevolent that he felt ashamed of it, came over him to reach out and save the boy Rush from a fate like his. It would be a simple matter to find him.

But he fought the impulse as another man might have fought the impulse to evil. And at last he won out.

"It ain't none of my affair," he told himself. "Let them big-wigs up at Hartford pass a few laws to make this night work a man's job. And let 'em see that their officers enforce 'em. That'll save Rush and plenty like him."

HE rose from the bench, and, with a furtive glance around to make sure that nobody was following him, he slouched out of the little park.

At his lodging-house he found a letter from Nell:

This letter from the faithful Nell put new heart into him, and the next morning he started out with the "Rattlesnake Oil for Suffering Society" which the Cazique had concocted in a moment of inspiration.

Page 16

The unguent went well. "Society" in that part of the world seemed to be more suffering and more gullible than any he had ever met, and by the end of the day it had purchased about fifty dollars' worth.

There was, then, no need for him, after he had earned this unexpected sum, to go farther along the hot road in order to make the low-roofed house midway up the hill. But he was tired and thirsty, and the next local back to the city did not leave for another hour.

A LITTLE girl swinging on the gate that separated the yard from the road fled precipitately at his approach, and produced as if by magic a yellow-haired, brown-eyed woman, [?] to the door with a baby on her arm.

"Lady, I'm sent here by your neighbors down the road to bring you the medical discovery of the age." He whipped off his cowboy hat and began on his usual formula. "Cazique Cachow's Rattlesnake Oil, for rheumatism, lumbago, earache, corns, lame back, neuralgia—neural—"

He hesitated and stopped abruptly, as he became conscious that the woman was paying no attention to his catalogue of diseases, but that her eyes were fastened on his face with the warm glow in them that comes only for good friends.

"Lucky," she cried. "Why, Lucky!"

He looked at her in astonishment. It was the nickname given him in his school days; but he had almost forgotten it.

"Why—why, where'd you get that?"

He had no recollection of this tall, tired-looking woman.

"Don't you remember me, Lucky—me you used to make the boats for in the spring and get the red apples for in the summer and send the heart valentines to—me, Lorna Doone Matthews?

She put her baby down and brushed her little girl aside in order to stand more clearly away from the present.

"You—Lorna Matthews!"

He looked from her to her rosy-cheeked daughter as if searching in the child and the woman for the fourteen-year-old girl who had been the first heroine of his boy dreams. And suddenly he found her—found her in the fresh radiance of the child and the sweetly gentle eyes of the woman.

"Why, of course; I know you now, Lorna. You are her, ain't you? And gee! what a memory for faces you got, to remember me spite of the years and the way I must of changed! Because I have changed—ain't I, Lorna"?"

He asked the question fearfully, like a man wasted with illness and afraid of the effect on his friends.

Her frank brown eyes searched his face.

"Well, you—you don't exactly look like the President of the Unitcd States. I thought once you was going to be that, Lucky," she said, with the smile that had remained bashful in spite of the years. "And somehow you—you seem older than you ought to be at thirty. But I guess the cowboy life's pretty hard on a fellow," she added in quick apology.

"Pretty hard," he replied.

And he looked so care-worn and tired as he said it that she invited him in immediately, and made him sit at the table while she hurried out into the kitchen and got him some cookies and cold milk.

He followed her with eager eyes while she put a shining tumbler and a red-and-white fringed napkin before him, and he wondered how he could ever have forgotten how pretty she was, with her face as gently beautiful as some woodland flower, and her yellow hair that lay about it in soft, sunny tendrils.

"This is some sweet little home you got. Lorna." It was poor and very tiny, but it breathed a revivifying wholesomeness and peace that put it as far away from the lodging-houses he had lived in as she was far away from the women he had known. "And—and that's some cute little family." His glance went from the girl to her little brother.

"It ain't my whole family," the woman answered with a pleased smile. "I got [?] tall as me and smart—you was always the smartest boy in school and at your games, Lucky, and my boy Fred's just like that. I used to tell my husband he reminded me of another boy I knew when I was young."

"So you thought of me sometimes, Lorna."

He moved his chair back from the table and regarded her with suddenly steadied eyes.

"You ain't the kind it's easy to forget, Luck." And she colored as if at an unintentional confession, and all of her youth came back with the blush.

"Now tell me about your family, Lucky," she changed the subject abruptly—"your wife and children."

"I ain't got none, Lorna."

"They dead?"

She looked at him quickly—she had caught a strange note in his voice.

"No," he laughed grimly; "I never had none."

"That's a pity," she said; and all of the sympathy that she had lavished on him in his minor school-boy troubles, but deepened now, welled to her face. "It's hard to lose 'em—but it's worse, I guess, if they've never been."

"You ain't lost nobody, Lorna?"

Her eyes were on the distant hills, and there was a mist in them that made him realize that his school-girl sweetheart had known her tragedies, too.

"My man, Lucky," she told him. "Not dead—but he's in the State asylum over there. They say he might never get well."

She drew her little girl impulsively to her, and a deep shadow darkened her face and of a sudden made it seem old.

THE man was awkwardly silent before her suffering. He glanced furtively toward Lorna. Her arms were still around the little girl's shoulders, but the shadow had gone from her face as if she had driven it off by sheer force of will, and there was that in her eyes now which dozens of prison chaplains he know would have given worlds to have been able to put into their sermons. It was a look that got to his heart and made him want to drop down on his knees before her and pour out the whole story of his sins and offer to begin life anew. Only—with her—with her.

"It must be the devil for you to try to run this place alone, Lorna."

"It is hard, Lucky," she answered. "And things have been harder and lonesomer than ever since Freddie went off to town last spring to try to make some money during his vacation."

He pulled his chair toward her, his long, nervous fingers reaching out across the table-cloth.

"Lorna woman, how—how'd you like to have me stay here and help run the farm?"

"Here, Lucky!"

"Well, not exactly here in the house, but around—around somewhere."

"But ain't you got your own work, Lucky?" She glanced toward his heavy leather bag.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"That's only temporary. And I want to get on a farm."

"I couldn't afford to pay you, Lucky."

"I wouldn't expect nothing from you, Lorna," he reassured her, with a self-conscious little laugh. "I could earn enough selling things in market to pay my own expenses, and all over that would be for you—for you and the kids."

She glanced nervously toward her little daughter. The child was regarding the strange man with solemn eyes.

"Run away, Betty," she said involuntarily.

Then she leaned forward, her cheeks flushed.

"Why, it'll be wonderful, having you around here, Lucky!" she exclaimed. "It'll be just like old school days, with you living only a little ways down the road again and me coming to you for everything. The fifteen years haven't made a bit of difference, have they?"

"No, Lorna girl." His resolution to pour out the story of those years to this unworldly child-womam suddenly vanished into thin air. "And we won't have no folks around, like we did then, to bother us and tease us. It'll just be you and me, you and me."

She glanced hastily toward him. His eyes, those fearless gray eyes she had never forgotten, were resting on her now with the straightforward smile of the Lucky of old; but there were ugly lines in his forehead and cheeks, and an expression around his mouth that she could not quite understand,

"It'll be wonderful if you stay, Lucky," she said, not quite so simply as before. "I ain't had no friends since I been married. My husband was twelve years older than me, and we never made up much with folks. And it ain't only for myself I want you"—she seemed to be thinking aloud. "If you help me work the farm and we can earn some money, that'll mean a new life for the children, won't it? Why, we can send for Freddie."

Freddie! He had forgotten the boy.

"We"ll get to that later on, Lorna." He laughed at her artlessness. "The boy's all right there in town, ain't he?"

"I don't know," she answered uneasily. "Sometimes I worry about him, Lucky. Something's come into his letters lately: something—I don't know what."

"What's his work, Lorna?"

His long, nervous fingers were making impatient little ridges on the tablecloths.

"He's a messenger boy," she said—"a day messenger. But he's doing so well, about a month ago they wanted to put him on in the night."

"The night, Lorna!" The man straightened suddenly from his slouching position.

"Yes; but I told him no when he wrote and asked me about it. It's hard enough trusting my boy to the dangers of the city, much less trusting him to the dangers of the night; because, for all his manliness, he's that innocent, Lucky—innocent as a girl."

"And he minds you, Lorna—minds you like a daughter?"

"Ye-es," she answered uncertainly. "Only sometimes I'm afraid—the pay's much better in the night and there's a better chance for advancing. And he's that ambitious, Lucky—why, he's got so much hustle and go that up in town the other boys have nicknamed him Rush."

"Rush!"

She was removing the glasses and napkin from the table, and setting a big bowl of wild phlox there, so she missed the sudden pallor that came into the man's cheeks.

"Rush—it's a funny name, ain't it?"

"Yes." He went abruptly to the window to hide his agitation.

SO that was Lorna's son, that boy trembling on the brink of things, whom he had been so mysteriously impelled to save last night for the sake of the man he might have been.

He looked toward Lorna. She was bending over the flowers, pressing the stems deep into the bowl, so that not one would miss the water; and as she worked she hummed a song, her face alight with happiness. That light did not burn for her child—it burned for him, Lucky, her childhood friend, whom she admired and trusted—loved perhaps—the friend who had come back to her through the years, to bring her material comfort and sweet companionship and all the things that life had taken from them both.

Only, there was her boy! What if Rush should come home some day, home to his deluded mother, with her lover's evil story.

Bah! he was trembling like a woman. And there wasn't the ghost of a possibility. There were dozens of messengers in the service with the name of Rush. Besides, Lorna's son might have obeyed her and remained in the day work, after all.

But, even as he told himself this over and over again, he caught a familiar fragrance, and looking out of the window saw the great bush of sweet syringa that indubitably linked that little boy of last night with the woman here. Mock-orange blossoms, Rush had said his mother called the flowers. They flaunted their purity in the man's face now, and made of his bold plan to win this gentle woman, and through her blot out the years, a mad, unachievable dream.

He felt a gentle touch on his arm. It was Lorna, looking up soberly into his face.

"You"re hurt, Lucky," she said softly, "and I don't blame you. I've been selfish, talking about Fred when it's you should have had my thoughts. Come"—she

Page 17

"I can't stay, Lorna—not to-night." His voice was almost gruff.

"Not stay, Lucky!"

She looked at him in disappointment, her mouth trembling at the corners.

"I got to get rid of my medicine first," he said. "It ain't the kind I better be selling to amy more of your neighbors, Lorna—not unless you got a grudge against 'em."

He laughed grimly.

"But you'll be back, Lucky."

SHE was clinging to him now, looking at him, not with the innocence with which she had welcomed his first plan to stay, but with the eyes of a lonely woman, helplessly pleading.

"I'll try, Lorna." His cold fingers closed over her warm ones. "But if things happen so—so that I can't get back, good-by."

He raised her hand to his lips and covered it with kisses.

"Good-by, little woman; it's been a good half hour."

He put his hands on her cheeks and looked deep into her eyes with a fearless smile in his own that made him resemble the Lucky of old more than ever. Then, with a last kiss on her hair, he turned and was gone.

It was after midnight when he reached the branch telegraph office that supplied the vice district with its messengers, and inquired for Rush. The boy was not there, the night operator—a wizened-faced man with tobacco-stained lips—told him. But he gave him Rush's address—he wanted somebody to look the boy up, anyway, and send him back to the service.

AN hour later Lucky found Lorna's son asleep on the door-step of the tumble-down lodging-house whither the address took him.

"The kid come in only a little while ago, tipsy—tipsy like a real man," an unshaved little vegetable peddler, already getting ready for his day's work, laughingly explained to Sanders. "Three times I see him like that the last ten days. You can't budge him, Mister—he discouraged Lucky's efforts to awaken the boy. "He curse like a sailor if you get him up—and, anyway, he sleep like a log till morning."

The day was well advanced before Lucky succeeded in rousing the boy. The child sat up stupidly and stared at the cowboy, pale-checked, hollow-eyed.

"That you again?" he said irritably, when he had made sure he wasn't dreaming. "I thought I'd got rid of you for good, two nights ago."

"I seen your mother yesterday, Fred," said the man quietly. "She wants you home."

"Fred—my mother—home! You mean you went and blabbed, you blaggard."

The boy's cheeks were livid with rage.

"No, kid, I never told. It ain't the kind of thing we men tell to each other's women-folks, if we're gentlemen. But I happened on her yesterday by accident. She's lonesome, kid; she wants you."

The boy hesitated.

"I can't leave my job," he said stubbornly.

"You won't get it back." Lucky's tone was positive. "I saw your boss last might. He says he's done with you. Three times the last ten days this thing has happened."

He glanced accusingly at Rush's mud-spattered uniform and torn shirt and soiled blue tie. The boy's pale cheeks went a shade whiter.

"Not take me back—I been afraid of that. Gee! I'm up against it, then."

"Not up against it, Rush. There's your mother, boy."

"I'm ashamed to go home."

ALL of the bravado had gone out of the child's manner; he looked sick and tired as he spoke.

"Ashamed to go home! That's silly, kid. We'll fix you up all right. And here's something you can take to your mother to square things with her."

He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a roll of bills, his earnings of the day before.

The boy's eyes glistened greedily at the sight.

"You mean it, Mister!" he exclaimed. "Gee, I'll be a hero when I show up home with that." He held out his hands eagerly.

Lucky laughed.

"Not so fast, kid. I got to see you safe on the train first."

HALF an hour later they were at the station, watching the local for the little village where Rush lived puff in.

"You needn't tell Lorna—I mean your mother—I give you the wad, kid. It's your summer's earnings, savvy?"

"Sure; that's a good idea."

"And you come home of your own accord, because you was tired of the city. Understand?"

"All right, Mister. But can't I even tell her about the guy that took such a shine to me?"

"No, kid; you better forget me altogether. Good-by."

"Good-by, Mister. And good luck to you."

"Same to you, Rush."

And he waved Lorna's boy out of sight. Then he turned on his heel and made his way back to his lodging-house, where he found a cheering letter from his girl Nell and a railway ticket that would take him to her.

Working the Railroads

By E. M. SULLIVAN

TWO farmers were discussing the best breeds of horses. They waxed eloquent over their respective favorites and the high prices they would bring. A third farmer spoke up: "You're both wrong about crossing horses. Do as I do. Cross your horses with railroad engines. I get four hundred dollars apiece for my horses from the railroad company by doing that."

This is indicative of the general feeling regarding suits against railroads for damages to property or personal injuries. Many people believe that the easiest way to pull down a snug little pile of money is to drag a railroad into court for some grievance, either real or imagined. Few railroads are so fortunate as to escape paying out from two to three per cent. of their gross revenues through their claim departments every year. In one year the Boston & Maine Railroad paid out more than $800,000 for claims. The records of the law department of another railroad show that at the end of one year cases were pending against the road to the amount of $19,000,000.

A reading of the records of these claims will almost convince one that mechanical transportation is one of the greatest inflictions ever visited on the world. People sue the railroads for running trains too fast and for running them too slow; because the cars are so hot they can't sleep at night, and because the depots are so cold they catch cold waiting for trains. They sue the roads for running trains at night with head-lights extinguished, and they sue because the head-lights are so bright that they can't follow the road with their automobiles after dark.

A Convict Sued for "Injury to Feelings"

A CONVICT was injured recently on a county farm in a Southern State by a cave-in at the gravel-pit. He was put into a baggage-car to be taken to the hospital. When he ordered the porter to make a fire in the stove to keep him warm, the porter got peevish and "bawled him out," saying that it was a pity his neck wasn't broken instead of his leg. Now the railroad is the defendant in a fifteen-hundred-dollar suit for injury to the convict's feelings, and the convict enjoys a free ride to court every session, while the lawyers have it continued to the next term.

Well defended as the railroads are by able lawyers, they do not always come out on top in many of the curious cases brought against them.

A woman, in a hurry to join her lover, jumped on a train while it was in motion, and was dragged along the platform. Her face was bruised and disfigured, and when the man saw her he refused to marry her. The woman brought a claim against the railroad, and the jury decided that the corporation was to blame and found in the woman's favor.

A woman living about half a mile from a railroad track suffered from hay fever. Finally she decided that it was caused by the dust raised by passing trains, and brought a claim against the railroad. The jury awarded her a handsome sum for her hay fever.

Professional Accident Frauds

THE settlement of claims against a railroad constitutes one of the most difficult tasks with which a railroad mamager has to contend. A railroad claim department must be of high efficiency. Claims of all kinds are now classified and dealt with according to a prearranged schedule. Those that are worthy are paid on a higher scale than that required by any liability law in existence. The railroads have learned the costliness of court proceedings, and prefer to play safe by being generous.

The head of the claim department is usually the general solicitor. Under him are a few assistants and a large corps of agents, whose work it is to prepare exhaustive histories of cases in preparation for final settlement. The requirements for this position are many and varied. In addition to tact and self-restraint, a shrewd knowledge of human nature is indispensable. A claim agent should also possess a knowledge of the world, and a good grounding in law, medicine and surgery, and real estate values. And in many cases, particularly on the big roads, he must possess the qualities of a Sherlock Holmes in order to protect the company's money-box.

Railroads are constantly the targets for the operations of professional frauds— men and women who make a living by meeting with "accidents." Some of these frauds have beaten the railroads as many as fifty times, receiving payment for claims ranging from fifty to five thousand dollars. After every big wreck there is an influx of false claims.

Two trains were scheduled to leave the Lackawanna station in Hobokem at 8.15 P.M. One was on the Boonton Division, the other on the Morris and Essex Division. The latter started out a few seconds ahead of the Boonton train, and the towerman mistakenly threw it over on the Boonton tracks. As there was a curve too sharp to be compatible with the speed of the train, it was wrecked, but not badly.

The papers said the next morning that the 8.15 train on the Boonton Division had been wrecked and some of the passengers shaken up. A month later a man turned up at the claim office of the Lackawanna, and said he had been badly injured that night.

He had his story down pat. He frequently went up the Boonton line, he said, to visit his aged mother, and this was one of the visits. Oh, yes, he knew the conductor, old Jack Doe; had ridden with him a hundred times. The lawyer listened a while, and then broke in: "You saw in the papers that the 8.15 had been wrecked on the Boonton Division, which was quite true. But the train that was wrecked didn't belong on the Boonton Division, and wouldn't have been there if the towerman hadn't thrown it there. And old Jack Doe wasn't the conductor that was in the wreck, because he was on the Boonton train. The train that was wrecked wasn't bound for any town near where you say your mother lived. Hereafter, before trying to swindle a railroad, make a personal investigation. Now beat it."

He Slipped for a Living

THE head of the claim department of a large Eastern railroad once told me that the professional fraud seldom begins his career of working the railroads deliberately.

"Most of the professionals," he said, "are from the ranks of working-people. They have suffered honest-to-goodness accidents and been paid for their injuries. The trouble is that they have been well paid. The claimants have tasted corporation blood, and the day soon comes when it is as easy as winking to simulate injury."

Take, for instance, the ease of a cigar-maker whom we shall call Smoke. Smoke, returning from work one evening, fell from the car-steps to the station platform and twisted his ankle. He received a check for two hundred dollars from the railroad.

That two hundred dollars was too much for Smoke. When the money was gone, he adopted the plan of slipping for a living.

He would take a train and ride a few miles into the country. Then, when there were witnesses handy, he would slip on the car-steps while alighting. When they picked him up he would be found to have a twisted ankle, for Smoke had learned that his ankle would consent, with very little pain, to be twisted at pleasure.

He grew ambitious as time went on, and decided that a twisted ankle was not sufficient for his income. So he adopted internal injuries as a side, but more remunerative, issue. By loosening a tooth, and keeping it always loose, he was able to spit blood. He kept a file with which he would carefully file his sides and back, thereby making wounds to show to the doctors.

The Last Time

WHEN, appearing as a passenger of importance, he stumbled over a valise and struck his side against the seat-arm in his fall, he would have himself sent to the best hotel or sanatorium in the neighborhood, and await the coming of the claim agent.

On one occasion the claim agent did not turn up quickly. Smoke, who was posing as a retired business man, sent word to the road that he wanted a quick settlement. Why a retired business man should insist on a settlement when he did not know the extent of his injuries puzzled the railroad, so the lawyers looked up some old cases like Smoke's. He had been rather crafty, never using the same name twice or giving the same history of himself; but it was noted in one record that the ring-finger of the victim's left hand was atrophied. Smoke was found to have a similar deformity, and he was arrested.

"I HAVE NO TIME TO READ"

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WILL THE BLOND RACE DISAPPEAR?

"IF you are a blond, you belong to the best people in the world, but it's all over with you! Your forebears committed the mistake of intermixing with inferior brunettes, and as a result the great qualities of the blond race, which gave the world the highest type of culture, have been sadly undermined. The complete triumph of the brunette is foreshadowed, especially in the United States."

This is the gloomy future ahead of blonds, according to Madison Grant in The Passing of a Great Race (Charles Scribner's Sons). The yellow and red heads were doomed anyway, but the European war has hastened their eventual extermination. For, says Mr. Grant, it is the Nordic blond element that tends to make the greatest sacrifices in war.

From earliest times, the Nordics invariably came as conquerors into the countries of brunettes, only to allow the brunettes to conquer them eventually by assimilation.

Blonds were born to be aristocrats and rulers. And when certain brutal necessities forced them from time to time to wield the ax and follow the plow, they simply could not endure the strain. So the blue-eyed Nordic giant of the North died, and left the field to his inferior, the native brunette.

Mr. Grant doesn't leave a molecule of hope for American blonds, either. What with the immigrants and the negroes, and the loss of the best breeding stocks in the Civil War, fair hair hasn't a chance of surviving another century.

CONSULT YOUR CHILD'S TASTE

THE frieze of elephants and dwarfs on the nursery wall that delighted your son at three will not interest your budding football hero of ten. Nor will the frieze of pink-and-white fairies please the small girl who prefers dogs to dolls.

"In order to reach the mind of the small child at all, it is necessary for his surroundings to speak his language," says Hazel Adler in The New Interior (Century Company). "That means they should be sturdy and simple, elementary and straightforward. In order to attract his interest, they must be virile and striking; and, in order to hold it, they must satisfy his practical needs and desires. There is nothing more tiresome to the average child of six or seven than a succession of inane nursery decorations."

A university professor had his children make their frieze themselves, under his direction. Each one of the four walls represented one of the four great civilizations of olden times—Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman. Each wall gave its maker's idea of the architecture, costumes, and modes of living of the people he portrayed.

Another father and his son made a frieze of old and new styles of ships, which they pasted on paper half blue and half tawny-gold, to represent the sea and sky.

SHAW NEVER GETS TIRED

It doesn't take any more energy to break a bucking bronco than to spend a day with Bernard Shaw. Shaw is indefatigable. He never gets tired. When he's not talking, he is writing or reading or amusing himself. He walks with the swing and stride of a man in a training camp. He eats simple meals of fruit and vegetables, while his guests feast on wines and meats flavored with Shaw witticisms and Shaw criticisms.

This is the picture Gerald Cumberland draws of him in the Chicago Tribune. But these impressions were received twelve years ago, when Cumberland, as a stripling author of nineteen, went to consult Shaw about a biography he hoped to write of Shaw and George Moore.

Shaw was arranging a camera in the front garden of his country house in Guilford when the young author came upon him. Shaw insisted on taking one

"Full view, three quarter face, profile; leaning forward, looking up at the sky; smiling, frowning—all these and many more he took. I protested weakly, feeling acutely miserable."

Shaw was not impressed with the idea of having only half the proposed book devoted to himself. "George Moore," he said over and over again, "is quite big enough to have a whole book to himself."

Cumberland confided to Shaw his ambition to make vast sums of money in order to give it to the poor.

"I strongly recommend you to become a stock-broker," said Shaw. "You evidently believe that doing good means giving money. I can not apologize for calling you an ass. Embrace your destiny and become a philanthropist; it is not a bad life for people who are built that way."

SHOULD A FATHER SELL HIS DAUGHTER?

DOES your father-in-law make trouble for you if you beat your wife? Then you should live in South Africa, where they still have men's rights. By the ilobolo custom, your wife is sold to you, and marriage is placed on a purely economic basis. Two Zulu girls debated the question at a mission in South Africa. This is the argument of the negative speaker, as reported in the World Outlook:

"Ilobolo is the most safe way from quarrels with your wife and family-in-law. Lobolo so that you can go and get her from her people if she goes back through your hitting her. Because you will find that, when the parents have eaten your lobolo gift, they will have to give her back to you. Then you will have the chance of giving her a walloping at home." The horrors of marrying a man who did not buy his wife she draws thus:

"Then you find a girl as soon as she has a row with this husband which she was given to, perhaps the fault is on her, as we know. Faults are mostly on girls in these cases. Then she cries night and day as if the husband had cut her with a knife. When poor husband comes from work he asks what the reason is, and she says she is going home. So she goes and tells a lot of lies. Then here comes the poor husband and finds the girl's people ready with sticks and stones, and he begins to tremble. They say, 'You won't get her. You did not even give a penny for her.' So the poor man must go back."

A FIRST COMMUNION IN THE WAR ZONE

ANY one who has lived in France has seen the little girl communicants, radiantly white from their new shoes to their crowning white veils, and surrounded by a group of proud relations. Of course there are little boy communicants too, in broad white collars and with knots of white ribbon; but they are less noticeable and less proud.

In one village where the guns of Verdun could be heard in the lulls of the service, writes E. V. Lucas in the Sphere, the good cure has drawn up a new form of vow for these children.

"His church he had seen reduced to ruins and most of his parish destroyed by the Huns. Coming to each child in the ceremony with the same ecstasy that an enthusiastic collector might approach the choicest porcelain with, he asked the following questions, and they answered in clear, tremulous voices:

Q. What is the road to heaven?

A. That which the Church shows me. If I follow it, while gaining happiness for myself, I shall increase the glory of my family and the honor of my country.

Q. Does the Church command you to obey the legitimate laws of your country?

A. Yes; and I must be ready to give my blood for my country.

Q. On whom do you count to assist you?

A. Here on earth, on my parents and my instructors. Above, on God, on the holy St. Peter, and the blessed Joan of Arc.

Q. Who are your enemies?

A. The enemies of France and those who attack the Church.

Q. What is your ambition?

A. To see France victorious and united with the Church, and to see her take her place soon at the head of the nations.

WHAT THE WAR DOES TO THE WEATHER

EVERY time you puff your cigarette, you liberate 4,000,000,000,000 nuclei per cubic centimeter of smoke. Factory chimneys and steamboat funnels do the same thing. Each of these nuclei may form the foundation of a rain-drop. But they don't all do it. If they did, we would never have a sunny day, and Europe would have been drowned long ago.

But there does seem to be some connection between storms and the roar and smoke of battlefields. For, ever since the war began, the rainfall in the battle zones, and even in districts far removed, has been abnormal. Perhaps the cannonading is so much like thunder that showers just naturally follow. J. B. W. Gardiner, who has studied the weather for many years, doesn't take much stock in the theory.

Every rain-drop, he explains in the Atlantic Monthly, is built around a nucleus, or center of condensation, and if ever there is artificial rain it will be through the increasing number of nuclei.

"Sometimes Nature conducts a rain-making experiment in very dramatic fashion, as when a volcano blows its head off. When Mont Pelée was in eruption, there was produced the heavy rolling clouds, the lightning, the wind-rush, and the down-pour. Even at a distance eruptions cause rain." But this, he says, does not prove the theory, for atmospheric conditions vary so largely. "For example, during one of the recent eruptions of Asama Yama, pressure disturbances were recorded on all the barographs in Japan; but the daily noon gun fired close to the Observatory in Tokio never affects the instruments. The idea that concussion alone produces rain, then, may be dismissed, as there is no removal or transportation of either water-vapor or nuclei by these compressional waves."

Page 19

THE NURSERY LIFE OF ANIMALS

FOUR-FOOTED mothers do not believe in the modern system of turning over their children to a specialist. They don't even give them up to a kindergarten, but themselves attend to all their needs, material and intellectual.

The duties of a carnivorous mother, such as a lion, are different from those of ruminant mother, like the giraffe. Both are described by P. Chalmers Mitchell in Childhood of Animals (Frederick A. Stokes Company).

The lioness bathes all her helpless babies with her tongue, and carries them about by the skin of the neck. If she leaves them, they scream, not from hunger, but from cold and loneliness; and instead of letting them cry, as up-to-date humans do, she hurries back with a low, crooning sound. Before she weans them, she lets them scrape the bones she brings home, so they gradually get a taste for their future food. Then she teaches them the A B C's of stalking by showing them how to seize and worry her tail. As soon as they are strong enough she takes them out on foraging expeditions. Sometimes the father goes with

Giraffes must teach their babies the art of defense. The ruminants are wanderers. They have to travel long distances to find water and the great bulks of vegetation they need. Instead of chewing their food as they crop it, they have to fill their paunches with a great load of vegetation, so they can run to a more sheltered spot, to lie down and chew the cud. The mother giraffe must always be on the lookout for stalking enemies. She can not prepare a nursery for her young, which are born one at a time, for twins or triplets are as rare among giraffes as among humans. The baby giraffe comes clothed with hair, eyes open, senses alert. It is able to stand in twenty minutes, in three weeks to nibble grass, and in four months to chew the cud. Then the mother's work is over, and the little giraffe must protect himself against his carnivorous foes.

AN OFFICE-BOY WHO BECAME A KNIGHT

THE late Sir William Van Horne built the Canadian Pacific Railroad and was knighted for it. His success was due, not to personal talents, he used to say, but to decades of fourteen- and sixeen-hour working-days. His maxims, which sound strangely like unpleasant advice, have been published in Cornhill.

"Sleep is a habit, and it is a rather bad habit, like eating." Sir William could go without sleep, under pressure of work, for several nights in succession.

"We are all born lazy. Industry leads to facility, and everything becomes easy.

"Any one can be an artist who will just go ahead and paint a picture every day.

"The best thing a boy can do is to collect—collect anything, I don't care what it is. Then you will find he begins to notice, and from noticing he begins to classify and arrange. Interest develops, and wherever he goes he is keenly interested in things that are related to his collection.

"I think things should always be done quickly, without taking much time or making many preparations.

"Work! I never work. I have never worked since I was ten years old and split logs. I have only enjoyed!" And there is the key to Sir William's millions. Unhappily for us, compared to bookkeeping splitting logs is a cinch!

A CITY OF PEARLS AND THIRST

KUWEIT, a city of squalor and plague, lies at the head of the Persian Gulf, between the desert and the deep sea. It is only because the sea is so deep, and the harbor is large enough to float the British navy, that Kuweit has any place in the sun. Although the British and the Germans covet it, Sheikh Mubarak, with his body-guard, his palace of imported bricks, his plush furniture, and his automobile, is its only earthly sovereign. In Travel Edwin Calverley describes the city:

"The ship anchors a mile from shore. Native boats approach, their sails curiously cut and their masts leaning forward. Agile Arabs in flowing gowns climb up the side.

"As you approach the town you notice the whole sea-front is lined with boats, nearly a thousand in number, and they all belong to the pearling fleet. So your first observation explains why the Arabs, who never would have planned the Bagdad Railway, live just at that place. Kuweit is a pearling center."

The town, four miles long and one story high, has none of the towering minarets of Turkish cities. The streets are crooked, and so narrow that a pedestrian must press against the wall to let a donkey with its huge load pass. One of the lanes is called "Dead Cat Alley," but not by the Arabs. Such things do not bother them.

A dusty, sun-baked place, there are no trees or grass. "Is there no water at all?" you ask finally. Then you learn that each house has its well, but the water is bitter and only fit for washing purposes. Drinking water is brought in native boats from a river a hundred miles up the Gulf; and often, when there is a storm at sea, for a whole week the town goes dry, without quotation marks.

The scarcity of water explains the low sky-line of the town. No water, no fuel, no baked bricks, and consequently no high minarets.

Here is a picture of the downtown district:

"An auctioneer passes, carrying Bedouin cloaks, silver anklets, and decorated daggers. A street crier comes, along singing the praises of Allah. You notice he has a rough, round mark on his forehead the size of a quarter, and you are told it is made by touching the earth in prayer. Patched and unkempt dervishes will come up to you, begging. 'God is generous!' they say, meaning you should be; and you generally answer, 'God will supply you,' meaning you will not."

WHISTLER'S QUARRELS

ARE you a raven-haired young man with one cherished white lock over your brow, a record of always being late at your office, a dismissal for inefficiency from college, an empty purse, a good opinion of yourself, a habit of exquisite cleanliness, and a passion for art? Then you may be a genius. Whistler was. And, according to the stories of him in J. Walker McSpadden's Famous Painters of America (Dodd, Mead & Company), he was something like that.

Whistler was usually in a fight, but the most sensational one he ever had was with Ruskin. The critic, who was at that time an Oxford professor, happened to see on exhibit Whistler's nocturne, "The Falling Rocket." Ruskin saw only the intense black of the sky with its vivid splotch of gold, but did not see the delicate technique behind it. He was filled with indignation, and wrote an article on the subject in which he called Whistler an ill educated, conceited coxcomb, who had the Cockney impudence to ask 200 guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

Whistler, sad but furious, brought suit for libel. He was awarded one farthing, which he wore on his watch-chain. But the costs, which amounted to $2000, Ruskin would have had to pay if his friends had not subscribed the amount.

Whistler's next famous fight was with his friend Leyland, who had bought one of his most brilliant pictures. Whistler suggested that the room where the picture was to hang be decorated in keeping with the picture. Leyland agreed, and Whistler set to work upon the famous peacock room. Every inch of the walls, and even the inside of the shutters, was covered with a wonderful design in blue and gold. Whistler had not stated his price; so, when his friend named a sum, Whistler

On one of the most conspicuous panels he painted two peacocks rampant, which at first glance seemed innocent enough. But when the room was thrown open for inspection, other artists saw in one peacock a likeness to Leyland, clutching a gold piece in his talons; while the opposite bird wore the white forelock of Whistler. This, of course, ended the friendship between Leyland and Whistler; and the architect who had built the house was so grieved that he lost his mind.

HOW TO LIVE WITH YOUR WIFE

YOU marry your wife under the impression that she is as sensible as a man. She marries you under the impression that you are as intelligent as a woman. About the time you discover that cells for reasoning have been left out of her brain, she discovers that cells for understanding have been omitted from yours. It is a blow; but you both hope, by patient teaching, to lead each other into the light; and both are astonished to find that their mate is ungrateful.

The author of "How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day" has now told, in the Woman's Home Companion, how to live twenty-four hours with one wife—or husband. The secret is: don't try to reform her or him.

"Now that he has got her," says Arnold Bennett of the man who believes his chosen one to be free from the defects of her sex, "the vain fellow is intensely afraid lest she may fail to prove to the world the excellence of his taste. Instead of looking for qualities, he is looking for defects. Nay; he is searching for them with a microscope. Find them he must, and he does. And he is pained.

"The terrible thought shoots through his mind: 'It is a human being that I have married.' Then he thinks: 'I am morally responsible for this poor human being. It is my duty to improve her and on her behalf to strive after that perfection which she lacks.'"

The stricken husband gives her a few hints on conduct. Then, no matter how tactful the husband, the trouble starts.

"Now, the recipe for the solution of the above difficulties," says Mr. Bennett, "may be discovered by meditation upon the obvious truths of existence. Such as: practice is better than precept. Or: it is more blessed to learn than to teach. If every man, on perceiving a defect in his wife, and every woman, on perceiving a defect in her husband, said, 'I will cure a defect in my own character or my own deportment,' and philosophically left the other to take charge of his or her own salvation, five sixths of the nervous strain of conjugal life would soon dissapear."

WHAT SCIENCE IS DOING

To Roll This Old World Along

CATCHING HEALTH TRAITORS

IF a doctor discovers that a woman is shamming illness, he calls her a neurasthenic or a hypochondriac; but if he finds that a soldier from the trenches is simulating ill health, he calls him a traitor, according to the Scientific American. Discipline in armies at war must be maintained at all cost; yet sick men must not be sent to the front: and therefore some of the physicians serving in Europe have been forced to become "doctor-detectives." These men have discovered sham jaundice, erysipelas, abscesses, Bright's disease, mumps, high temperature, high pulse, and coated tongues. How many sham diseases have not been detected no one knows.

The best imitation of diseases that has been noted at the base hospitals is that of jaundice. It is to be expected that among so many men there should be many a liver that ceases to function properly; so, when a few cases came in from an African regiment in the French army they were treated in the usual way and little was thought about it. Success brought excess, however, and when an avalanche of patients with jaundice came in from the same regiment the doctor-detectives went to work. The patients had the usual greenish-yellow discoloration of the skin, slackened pulse, headache, biliousness, and sickness of the stomach; but there was no fever and no itching of the skin—both infallible symptoms of the real disease. And, at any rate, such an epidemic of functional disorder could not possibly be legitimate.

By a process of elimination (such as our best detectives use) the French physicians finally found the cause. The Africans had discovered by experiments that small, repeated doses of that dreadful explosive, picric acid, made them very, very ill.

Any time they wanted sick leave, another regiment injected a little turpentine or gasolene under the skin. For a little time it fooled the physicians, for they suffered the same difficulties as from a legitimate boil: fever, inflammation, and pain.

Erysipelas is simulated by rubbing various parts of the face with some blistering substance, such as thapsia. High temperature can be produced very easily by introducing cloves or garlic into the intestinal canal, and high pulse always results from pounding the elbows against a wall. A coated tongue results from smoking straw.

Yet, with all these possibilities and many others probably employed, the percentage of men with feign sickness is infinitesimal. It is dozens among millions; for, when they get to the front, most men want to fight.

WHISPERING TELEPHONE

GET a whispering accessory for that man in the office who yells whenever he talks over the telephone. The new device is a short-barreled cylinder which increases the force of the vibrations set up by the voice, and so makes it possible for the user of the telephone instrument to talk in a very low tone of voice or even to whisper, and yet be heard perfectly at the other end of the circuit.

Telephone business is a modern substitute for the old personal interview which has greatly reduced overhead costs to industry; but there is a flaw in the fabric. Some one is always overhearing the conversation, taking a tip, and upsetting the whole transaction. And right there is where the telephone whisperer—newly invented, and selling for less than five dollars—comes in.

Ask any young man who tried to propose over the telephone how it felt to know that his parents could hear just how he did it from the instrument in the dining-room. But his troubles are over. The little tube has a diaphragm that is actuated by the vibrations of the voice and that in turn sends them on to the real telephone diaphragm. With the help of a soft rubber mouth-piece,—one for each member of the family,—it picks up every wave you send forth and handles a whisper as well as the old transmitter did a yell. It can be attached almost instantaneously.

FOR THE NERVOUS RICH

THE gentleman who has extended himself into four separate bath-tubs is not bathing, but is taking a treatment that has been invented for nervous rich men and women idling in sanatoriums. The efforts of the intern who is handling the electric current will not pain the patient, because the particular variety used causes violent muscular contractions but no other discomforts. They will do him good if he has rheumatism or if his nervous system is in bad shape. The treatment is called the four-cell sinusoidal,

AIR FOR FIREMEN

THIS helmet has been devised by a practical fireman to overcome disadvantages he had met in using the ordinary oxygen helmet. Many men are unable to breathe pure oxygen without producing violent nasal hemorrhages, and therefore this helmet is equipped with a compressed air-tank which holds enough breath for half an hour's usage in a gas- or smoke-filled inclosure where breathing without artificial assistance is impossible. The tank may then be refilled with an automobile tire pump and the helmet is ready for new work.

A telephone ear-piece device makes it possible for the wearer to hear commands; a whistle is attached to the air-tank, so that the miner or fireman can call for help necessary; and the glass vizor can be cleaned by turning a button. Air flows in for breathing from the tank, and escapes after being vitiated, through a tube. The top of the head-gear is equipped with steel arms to deflect falling brick or stones.

GOLDEN PIPES MAKE GOLDEN TONES

THE royal musician of the future will blow his magic breath through instruments of gold, according to Dr. Dayton Clarence Miller, professor of physics in the Case School of Applied Science. After exhaustive experiments he has found that flutes of gold give richer, mellower notes than flutes of either wood, glass, or silver, because gold is so soft and dense. The effect produced is like that of an organ pipe submerged in water.

For centuries musicians have claimed various advantages for wood and metal of different kinds. Physicists have smiled and smirked the while, and said that it was a superstition like unto the effect caused by the passage of a black cat across the path of a householder. Now Professor Miller says that the traditional influence of different metals on the flute tone is consistent with experimental results. He reports in his book, The Science of Musical Sounds, that brass and German silver are usually hard, stiff, and thick, and have so little influence upon the air column that a trumpet-like tone is produced. Silver, which is now used by many flute-makers, is softer and more dense and produces a mellower tone. Elaborate analyses of various possible materials have proved, hoverever, that the gold flute—as a layman might expect—produces the truly golden tone.

The Gospel by Motor-Truck

The Rev. Nels Thompson, U.S.A., wishes to bring the Gospel to the masses and to enable him who runs to read and hear. He has built his church upon a motor-truck, and now, in the only

According to Mr. Thompson, the peripatetic church is by no means an uncomfortable place to live in. The interior is easily lighted by the power from the dynamo and storage batteries of the truck. Sectional bookcases give the living quarters a truly homelike appearance, and a few pictures secured to the walls add to the effect. All that seems to be lacking is a log fireplace.

At present Mr. Thompson is addressing audiences of large proportions in southern California, and he plans to make his way across the country in no hurry. He has painted verses from the Bible on the sides of the white car, so that he can feel that wherever he goes he is carrying enlightenment to all who read; and so unique is the machine that all must read perforce. The church cost $4000, and the evangelist's expenses are defrayed by contributions.

SHORT AND INTERESTING

GASOLENE from molasses! A company has been organized in Natal, South Africa, to manufacture gasolene from molasses. It will build a plant with a capacity of 6000 gallons a day. Tests made with the new "molasses gasolene" show that it behaves as well as ordinary gasolene.

FLYING from the trenches to London and back is said to be a war sport growing in favor. The story is told of a soldier who recently left the trenches in France early in the morning, took a Turkish bath in London some three and a half hours later, lunched at one of the leading hotels, and returned to his work in the trenches by evening.

When Northcliffe Bought the "Times"

By WILLIAM GUNN SHEPHERD

In the United States we construct our institutions; in England they are born. Our institutions are machines: those of the English are biological growths. In the commercial world our business concerns are scientifically put together: in England business concerns grow, like Topsy. In an American business concern the machinery functions when some man has his hand on the crank turning the wheels: in an English business concern there are no wheels, only legs and arms. With the British business enterprise men come and go, generations pass, and the business—a living thing, not a machine—goes on its way, carrying its managers with it.

It is Jarrolds, of Scoots' Bank, who suggests this comparison—Jarrolds, with his stove-pipe hat, his side-whiskers, and his mysterious alligator-skin bag.

When Lord Northcliffe, after a terrific business fight, succeeded in getting the anciently established British family that owned the Times to take his money and give him a deed to the great newspaper, he discovered that he had purchased an aged oak—so aged that he was fearful to trim a branch or touch a root. When the dream of his life had come true, and he could at last step into the dusty old buildings and breathe the sacred though musty air of the old place, and know, the while, that he owned it all, puzzlement rather than pleasure is said to have been his sensation.

"Why, I can't discharge an errand-boy down there without running the risk of upsetting the whole institution," he said.

Machinery of the Old "Times" Office

WHICH was true, since most of the errand-boys were white-haired men whose duties, formed during decades of service, were as important to the smooth running of the Times as the duties of the editor himself.

The staffs in the business office, the editorial rooms, the press room, and the library consisted, in the main, of white-haired; mysterious old gentlemen who performed regularly a set of mysterious tasks, and had been doing so for many years. In little side rooms clerks toyed with figures that seemed to mean nothing; in other rooms men wrote things that were never printed; in the library were men who appeared to spend their time in taking down books, reading them, and putting them back in place again. They were all on the pay-rolls.

"I can't find out what's done here or who does it," Northcliffe is credited in the London Press Club with having said one evening, with a hopeless sigh, as he saw his great staff depart after a day's toil.

The books showed him nothing but the names of the employees and their salaries. Most of these were ridiculously low. Though the standard of newspaper salaries had risen considerably, the Times had not seemed to know it.

Northcliffe attempted to have the employees called to his private office, one at a time, for conversation; but to be summoned to the office of the publisher was so upsetting to an employee and his friends that Northcliffe discontinued it; the operation was too much like settling questions of life and death.

How Northcliffe Got to His Men

DESPERATION seized upon the great British publisher. They tell in the Press Club how, for some weeks, the gloomy hallways of the Times were haunted by a gentle, smiling British gentleman who, with a business card in his hand reading "Lord Northcliffe," waylaid all comers with the question: "I beg your pardon, but won't you please tell me your name?"

The conversation in the dark hallway usually went like this: "My name is So-and-So."

"Well, I am Lord Northcliffe. Now,

"I do such-and-such a thing."

"Ah! Yes! Now, won't you tell me what your wages are?"

"I have so-and-so many shillings a week."

"Too little, my boy! Too little! You ought to have more. I want to have everybody on the Times happy and well paid, you know. Tell everybody so, won't you? That's a good chap. Tell them not to be afraid of me. I mean quite all right to everybody, you know."

On the card Northcliffe would write a note to the cashier telling him to increase "So-and-So's" wages by so much.

"Now, take that to the cashier and give it to him. You must have more, my boy—must have more! All a little family here together, you know. Want everybody happy and comfortable. Tell all your friends in the office not to run away from me in the hallways, won't you? Want to meet 'em all. Not much of a stair-climber; when they run upstairs I simply can't catch them. That's all. Tell them not to run away, you know."

This system worked better: The informality of it did not terrify the staff, and it also reassured the old oak that it was not going to be cut down. But the change was too slow to suit Northcliffe; so one day he said to Murray Allison, an Australian, and one of his brightest young business stars: "Go down to that Times office and see if you can't get the place modernized without giving it too much of a jolt."

Allison hustled over to the Times in an automobile, dashed in—and discovered, from the hurt and astonished gaze on the faces of the staff, that dashing wouldn't help him any. He decided that it would be best for him to select an office in the building, settle down quietly, and let his modern influence slowly ooze out into the surroundings. After several days of looking around he chose a room that appeared to be unoccupied, hunted up the custodian, and said: "I'd like to have Room 28 for my office."

"I'm afraid you can't have it, sir."

"Can't have it? Why, whose is it?"

"Don't know whose it is, sir. He's a gentleman that comes every Saturday afternoon and occupies the room, sir."

Allison passed another dozen days without an office; but the desire for Room 28 grew into a determination to make another try for it. He went to 28 the next Saturday afternoon, seated himself in one of several big leather-covered chairs, and waited.

Jarrolds of Scoots' Bank

AT last a man entered. He wore a high silk hat, side-whiskers, a frock-coat, and carried an alligator-skin bag, which he placed on the floor with considerable care. He gave Allison the "once-over" in a disinterested fashion, seated himself in a great easy chair, and began to read the morning paper, which had evidently been spread out for him on the table.

"My name is Allison," said Lord Northcliffe's representative.

"Ah, yes," answered the man politely.

"May I ask your name?"

"Jarrolds is my name."

"Been with the Times long?"

"Oh, been coming here about twenty-five years now."

"This your room?"

"Yes. Been mine for a long time."

"What do you do here? May I ask your duties?"

"Oh, I come here every Saturday afternoon with my bag, and stay until Monday morning."

"Sleep here?"

"Yes. Can't go away to sleep very well."

"Eat here?"

"Yes. Restaurant chap near here brings up my meals."

"Well—what, exactly, do you do here? What are your duties?"

"Nothing particularly. I just come here to this room and stay here until Monday morning, and read and sleep and wait."

"Been doing that for twenty-five years?"

"Yes, about that. I took the job over from a gentleman who had filled it for forty years. He died."

"Pretty easy way to keep on the Times pay-roll," suggested Allison.

"I'm not on the Times pay-roll, bless you!" said the man.

"Well, who are you, then?" asked Allison, in exasperation.

"Why, I'm Jarrolds. Jarrolds of Scoots' Bank."

"But why do you come here to the Times?" persisted Allison.

"I don't know. I've been coming here for twenty-five years and the gentleman before me came here for forty years. My job is to bring my bag here and stay until Monday morning."

"What's in the bag?"

"Scoots may tell you that. I'm not at liberty to do so."

Monday morning, bright and early, Allison was at Scoots' Bank, demanding to know more of Mr. Jarrolds of Room 28. It took two days for the bank officials to dig out of their two-hundred-year-old files the correspondence between the Times and Scoots' which gave Jarrolds and his predecessor their strange jobs.

The Good Old English Way

SEVENTY-FIVE years ago an editor of the Times who wanted to send a correspondent across to France in a hurry one Saturday night found all the money in the business office was locked up. He took a collection around the office for the correspondent, and then sat down and wrote a letter to the business manager, saying he didn't want to have such a thing occur again. On Saturday nights and over Sunday there must always be some free and loose money lying around the Times office somewhere.

So the business manager wrote a letter to Scoots' Bank asking them to send a man with five hundred gold sovereigns to the Times every Saturday afternoon and keep him there until Monday morning. The Times, he added, would furnish him with a couch and with his meals.

And so the arrangement had been going on for three quarters of a century. The Times grew and established offices in every capital in Europe; no longer were the men from the London offices sent out on mad and sudden dashes to out-of-the-way places. But nobody, in all those years, thought to tell Scoots that their man with his five hundred gold pieces was no longer needed. And all the men at Scoots' and all the men at the Times who had made the arrangement passed the way of mortal flesh, and the men who took their places let things go on in good old English fashion, as they had always been doing.

Allison took Room 28, and the next Sunday Jarrolds, for the first time in twenty-five years, worshiped with his family.

It's all right to talk about American business men adjusting their methods to suit the business systems of other countries. But there is a limit.

Here's a $1 Idea

THIS idea is worth a dollar a month to me, or any woman who has little money to waste on toilet requisites.

It is a perfect face powder, made of egg-shells, free from injurious substances or coloring. The process is simple, and one I discovered by accident.

I live in the country, and raise chickens. We use a great many eggs, and occasionally I run the egg-shells through the meat-grinder to mix in the chicken feed. Noticing a powdery substance adhering to the grinder, I decided to experiment.

I wash the shells carefully, using shells of one color. I use the shells of what I call a pink egg. I remove the membranous lining of the eggs, and place the shells in a pan to dry out. When dry, I crush them with my hands and run them through my meat-grinder. After passing through the meat-grinder, I grind them again in my coffee-grinder, a handy contrivance I use for pulverizing coffee.

I haven't a stone mortar, so I use a new wooden chopping-bowl, in which I place the pulverized shells, and with a wooden potato-masher I pound vigorously until the powder is absolutely smooth and velvety to the touch.

Removing the powder from the chopping-bowl, I place it in an absolutely clean white porcelain dish, and with an ivory paper-cutter I blend in a few drops of my favorite perfume, which happens to be arbutus. The result is a most exquisite face powder, natural in color, which so far has proved in no way injurious to my skin.

There are many shades of egg-shells, from a perfect white to brownish pink. One has only to select the shade to suit most perfectly her blond or brunette coloring.

A Church in a Week

IT does not take long to do things in these days of high speed. In a week they can destroy a fort that it took years to build. They can capture a city and make an ash-heap of it in the same length of time. They can do some wondrous things in Europe in a week. But if we were to award the prize for fast workmanship, there is a church in Reading, Pennsylvania, that would receive the blue ribbon. This church was built in less than a week.

On Monday, April 26, the Church Extension Committee of the Pennsylvania Presbytery North met in Philadelphia and decided to build a church in East Reading.

"I've got the place you want," said the Rev. William F. Klein of Reading—"a lot at 17th and Perkiomen Avenues that is vacant except for a few bill-boards."

"And I've got the church," supplemented the Rev. M. S. Bush, of the Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia. "Our new church is just about finished, and there is no more use for the old one. You can have it."

"You two get together," ordered the Presbytery.

They did. As a result Mr. Klein skipped to Reading and bought the lot from John Close, a liquor dealer, who was glad to sell it for $6000.

"There are some liquor ads. on the bil-lboards," said Mr. Close.

"When do their contracts expire?"' asked Mr. Klein.

"On Wednesday," said Mr. Close.

"They'll come down," said Mr. Klein, who is president of the Anti-Saloon League. Then Mr. Klein immediately telegraphed the Rev. Mr. Bush: "Send on your church."

All that on Monday, April 26th!

A block away the St. Paul's Lutheran people were also building a new church. Mr. Klein hunted up the minister, the Rev. H. M. Stetler.

"I want to buy your old church as a social room for our new church," said he.

"You can have it," answered Mr. Stetler.

"I'll take it along," said Mr. Klein, and a gang of men immediately got busy transferring the church to its new site.

In the meantime the Holy Trinity Church had arrived by railroad.

All this Tuesday, April 27.

The next day the "busy day" sign was up around 17th and Perkiomen Avenues. The men from Philadelphia immediately got on the job. There was rivalry among the contractors as to who should finish first. That day the outer shell was finished on both buildings and the inside work was all that remained.

That on Wednesday, April 28.

On Thursday it was evident that the social rooms would be finished the next day. There were a basketball floor and gymnasium on the first floor, with a reading-room in the front. The second floor served as a pool and billiard room.

"Open house in the social rooms on Friday evening," said Mr. Klein, who had been out getting members for his new church. "Two games of basketball, and the pool table going."

That was Thursday, April 29.

By Friday noon the social rooms were completed, and the church was getting new coat of paint. A sign announced:

Friday evening the social rooms were opened and the neighbors crowded in. The games of basketball came off, and when the club closed that night it had a membership of two hundred men and boys.

"Preaching services on Sunday," announced Mr. Klein.

All that for Friday, April 30.

On Saturday the church was finished and the Philadelphia contractor and men went home. At 10.30 that night, when the club closed, they had another hundred members.

That was on Saturday, May 1.

Sunday morning the church opened and received thirty-eight members. In the afternoon the Sunday school a enrolled hundred and thirty-two members. The evening service totaled twenty-four more members.

"Some week!" said the Rev. Mr. Klein.

They Love Us—They Love Us Not

"Soldier, Soldier" from Bonnie Dundee

In your November 1, 1916, issue you reprint one of Joe Lee's poems with the question, "Who is the new poet?" Joe is a Scot, and came to my home town, Dundee, Scotland, about ten years ago to edit the Tocsin, the organ of the Independent Labor Party. The paper was a wonder. All the editorials, cartoons, and poems of the early numbers came from the pen of this young genius. Later he joined the staff of the People's Journal. Joe is also an orator of no mean ability. He is now serving at the front in "Dundee's Own Black Watch."

"Wooden Leg" O. K.'s Us

To-day my emotions overruled my judgment. I have always thought only cranks wrote letters to editors. But your whole magazine is brimful of that stuff which makes a person feel like going out and doing the world up. Your picture page, "In Spite of Everything," appealed to me very much. I am a "wooden leg" myself, and, believe me, pictures, even the best ones, can't show up the problems of the fifty thousand people who lose limbs in this country every year. As you say, the world should give cripples a better opportunity to do more for themselves.

Fine : Tell Us About Them

Your magazine is pretty good, but you seem to think that New York is the only place on the map of the U. S. A. Broadway and Fifth Avenue and Wall Street may be all very well, though I can't say from my own knowledge. But I presume there are just as many interesting characters per square foot on our principal street—around noontime at least—as there are in the Bronx or other much advertised New York parts. This is equally true, I dare say, of a number of Uncle Sam's smaller but live towns.

See "Beautiful Men" in November 27 "Every Week"

Why do you everlastingly give us women's faces on your covers? Did it never occur to you that, at least half of your readers being women, we might like something else to look at? When I think of the millions of beautiful things in nature and the noble characters of history that might be used on your covers, things that would elevate our thoughts, I am just about ready to write to cancel my subscription. For pity's sake, if you can't think of anything better, give us a rail fence or a dog-fight or a bunch of ragweed—anything but your eternal, vain, conscious feminine faces.

Artists Are Hard to Manage

I have been a steady reader of your magazine from its beginning, and all my family enjoy it as much as myself. We must admit we like Torchy more than anything else in the magazine, and have ever since he first made his appearance. Shorty too. Keep an eye on the man who illustrates them, though. Sometimes he doesn't have them look like one would expect them to look like after reading the story.

Knows What He Likes

In your library department entitled "I Have No Time to Read" you have certainly hit the nail on the head. I have never had time to read much, what with keeping the wolf from the door and all. The selections you are now giving us from the new books and magazines are very interesting, especially the clippings from the foreign periodicals. In my opinion, they fill a long-felt want.

Relief Has Set In

Inclosed please find money order for two years' subscription. Your little magazine is a relief from the general run of magazines.

Our Own Optimist

Russell Sage II

I have read your editorial on the saving of money, and I must say you strike it right. I am a boy of sixteen years and possess a bank account of $18.50, and, as you say, it does give a person a sense of his importance. My little money is as much to me as the millions of some of our wealthy men are to them. So I herewith take the liberty of asking you to send your book entitled "What to Do with Your Money When It Reaches $100."

The Glad Game

Thank you for your clean, wide-awake, heartening little periodical, in which every one from editor to office-boy seems to be playing the "glad" game.

Why Go Far from Home for Investments?

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

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 here is one sensible and obvious course to pursue. Often a safe, reliable, and sufficiently profitable investment lies directly at hand and 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 disappointament.

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 rich 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, 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 $1415.23. This includes dividends, increase in price, and bonuses which are given 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.

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 a 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 31-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 the 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, members of the New York Stock Exchange, 7 Wall Street, New York City. Ask for circular O-14. The firm also offers special inducements 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 a cross for his name in English. But A. Paladini, "Fish King" of the Pacific coast, says: "I not much book-smart, but know plenty other thing, you bet."

Paladini is now seventy-three. He came from Italy to New York and then round the Horn to San Francisco in 1867. Having made a "little bit money," he bought a fish stall in Washington Market. He has since kept on in the fish busiess. "Hard at first," Paladini says. "By little, by little, by little, better! When I can, I take wife—Papa bring home everything! Seven 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. "Man who works can't fool 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 steamer 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 make fish food for man: king, he make man food for vulture."