It's a Good Old World if You Know How to Breathe

I ONCE had the misfortune to know a pessimist. There was some excuse for his pessimism. He was a narrow-chested chap threatened with tuberculosis.

He had given himself up for lost, and the rest of us were hoping the end would not be long delayed.

Then, one night, somebody induced him to go to singing school.

I saw him a year later. His chest was filled out; there was a sparkle in his eye; his laugh could be heard a city block away. He was a resurrected and transformed man.

What had happened to him? The simplest thing in the world.

He had simply learned how to breathe.

The average man or woman goes through life with one third of his or her lung capacity totally unused.

That is why, when you run, you get a "stitch in your side." The stitch is caused by the unfolding of some of the lung tissue that you ought to use but don't.

Even when you practice deep breathing exercises you probably do not fill your entire lung capacity. At least, so Dr. William Lee Howard says in his interesting new book, Breathe and Be Well.

You expand your chest: but the really important part of your breathing is done with your diaphragm—a big flat muscle that forms on the floor of your chest.

And the abdominal muscles are the boys you need to train if you are going to get the most out of your diaphragm.

Fill your lungs until you feel your stomach muscles pressing hard against your belt.

That means that your diaphragm has straightened down and is massaging the top of your stomach and intestines—helping along with the process of elimination.

When you breathe out, do it forcibly, with the stomach muscles: like a horse snorting—but without the snort.

Your stomach and intestines will be forced up against the diaphragm again and given another massage.

Breathing in is important, but breathing out is much more important.

Most of the ills to which modern man is victim originate in the intestines.

And most of them—auto-intoxication, constipation—would disappear if the stomach muscles got the exercise they ought to get through deep, forcible breathing.

Doctors have long known that massage of the abdomen actually increases the number of red corpuscles.

Formerly it was thought that the massage simply located and chased into circulation a lot of red corpuseles that were lying around in blind alleys.

That is part of the explanation: here's the other part.

There is secreted in the suprarenal glands, as Dr. Howard explains, a substance called epinephrin, a very powerful stimulant to the red corpuseles.

"Massage of the abdomen drives the epinephrin into action, which forces the blood-cells to take up oxygen—if by proper breathing you are furnishing the oxygen".

Read sometime a book by a man like Thoreau, or John Burroughs, or Stewart Edward White—one of the great open-air writers.

Then, while the impression of its rich, bounding optimism is still strong upon you, pick up a book written by one of the Russian novelisst, or by one of our modern long-haired writers who believe that realism necessarily means murder and drunkenness and prostitution.

What a difference! And what makes the difference?

The realist will tell you that it is because he thinks deeply, while the optimistic writer thinks superficially.

As a matter of fact, the difference is not in the brains of the two men, but in their lives.

It is not the depth of their thinking so much as the depth of their lungs.

The corpuseles of the one are red and fed with oxygen: the corpuseles of the other are pale and fed with cigarette smoke and germs.

"For what, after all, is Life?" asks the old Sanskrit quotation. And answers:

"Life is the interval between one breath and another—he who only half breathes only half lives."

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THEY BEGAN BY SAVING THEIR PENNIES

HARD OF HEAD

By RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD

Illustrations by Harvey Emrich

"WHY do you keep looking at your watch?"

The younger man glanced up quickly at this question, and smiled as if he expected the older man to know at once why he looked at his watch; for he was Ellis Powell, whereas the other sitting across the table in the nearly deserted dining-room of the Atlantic Club was his father—Pier Powell, the consulting engineer, the man who built the Cataract Bridge and the Seaway Terminal Development—and the two were said, by those who knew them, to understand each other excellently.

"For instance," said Morgan Smith, the aged eye, ear, and throat man—"yes, just as an example. Hero's this great overgrown puppy, Ellis—bless my soul!—just out of the university, and panting and climbing all over everything in his enthusiasm, the way good healthy American boys should. Not a Greek god in looks, but near enough. And wonderful to see him and his father when the rest of the family are still up in the Berkshires and they are living in the Club together.

"Heaven bless my soul, what's become of the good old warm companionship between father and son in this modern world—fishing, hunting, walking, quiet dinners, all that? Don't boys and their fathers take any pains to know each other intimately any more? Now, these two—"

Pier Powell just now looked at his son and said:

"A girl?"

"Very," replied Ellis characteristically, and exposing blue eyes which were bluer than ever because his skin was more bronzed than ever. He had just come back from the Delavan Falls dam job.

"Yes," said young Powell. "She's coming in from Chicago on the eight-thirty. I'm going to meet her."

His father glanced at his own watch.

"Bring the cigar tray," he said to the waiter, whose shaven face wore the lively expression of a platter.

"And now, Ellis—you say she is—What was I going to ask you? Oh, yes! Funny I never framed this inquiry before. Is there any girl—?"

"No," the son interrupted. "The matches, please."

"Near it?" the more seasoned man said timidly, raising his heavy eyebrows.

"Darn near it!" Ellis replied. "And yet not near it at all. Well, no one can say how near. It was like war with Mexico—as far as I know, it was tiddlety."

"Um," said the father.

"Want to hear?"

"No," the cautious Powell returned. "Don't tell me."

Ellis laughed outright.

The elder man almost blushed. He said: "Well, of course—"

"Yes, of course," his son repeated, looking around to see whether other club members were present and could hear. "Her name was—"

He stopped as if, in telling the story to his father, he had made a mistake at the beginning; he changed the tense. He said: "Her name is—Vanessa Cherrill. . . .

HER name is Vanessa Cherrill, and she lives at Delavan Falls. She arrives from there to-night. When you sent me out on the construction of the dam above that Montana town, I had my first taste of leaving all the world I was used to behind. I thought there were two kinds of people—those who had heard of the titles of the hundred best books and those who got along without clothes or dentists. I never figured on there being much in between. The Delavan Falls population is all in between. So, at first, when the evenings came on I was left flat.

Delavan is built on a piece of geography that will never produce any nature poet or landscape painters. I never knew such a creature as Vanessa Cherrill could be born, thrive, and open like a tropical bloom under the spell of the Montana United Smelters Company—under those clouds of coppery smoke, in a town where at night the only two interesting things to do are to go to bed or to the devil.

There is Main Street, and the town is laid out along that—first at the East End, the reduction and smelter plants, the freight tracks, then the railroad station, the saloons, moving-picture houses, and the stores, with the workmen's settlements back on the cross streets; and then the yellow Delavan River and the iron bridge, and beyond the bridge the part of town where the "society" people of Delavan play whist and talk copper stocks, and go to bed in their Spanish Missions and their French chateaus; and beyond that the Country Club.

All in all, it's the kind of town where you find yourself counting the stripes on the wall-paper. I gave up smoking while I was out there, just to entertain myself.

Then suddenly one day, when I was coming down the steps of the house where I and a lot of the young fellows in the engineering crew boarded, I saw her!

I certainly had never seen her before. I had seen the young ladies of the charge-account part of town doing their errands in the store part of town, and Gus Kesterman, the bright and early cashier of the Delavan National Bank, who had all their photographs on his bureau, had asked me to go to sixteen successive Friday night entertainments at the Country Club, where they went to examine each other's dinner gowns and to one-step with the Rotary Club. I had seen those young ladies—very nice young ladies, the nice Chicago-schooled daughters of the rich and well-meaning first citizens of Delavan; and some were pretty and plump and extract of violet, and some were tall and willowy and heliotrope essence, and some were laughing and gay and attar of roses, and some were pensive and sad and lavendered. Some played on the piano, but I expect if you said, "I wish I had Plato," they would think you had lost your dog.

SHE was different. She was riding in the back seat of a big maroon-colored touring car, and the sun broke through the copper smoke to fall upon her. It's absurd to say she was pretty, or handsome, or beautiful. I'm not sure she was any of those things. But she looked up at me, as she passed, out of a pair of eyes that were calm and slow and blue—like the quiet sea when the sky is clear. And there was something shimmering about her—little shimmers in the copper color of her hair, little shimmers of expression on her face. I had to stop and say to myself. "You big duffer! She's probably just an ordinary girl. You've been alone too much. If this were not Delavan you'd never notice her." But, just the same, she seemed to me like the spirit of native copper—the bright, soft, yielding metal which, in its molten state, shows on its surface a thousand iridescent lines.

THE next day I met Gus Kesterman—the beau of Delavan Falls. I was all over concrete, because I had been down on the job, trying to buck up the number of cubic yards we were pouring per day, and I looked more like a cement fence-post than a man. Nevertheless, I must have had some of that ineffable charm which the kind of Westerner who spells culture with a large C attributes to the college-bred Easterner, because he said to me:

"Powell, instead of standing in the card-room of the National Hotel, looking over the shoulders of Alf Bergson playing poker, put on your dress suit to-night and come with me out to the Country Club dance."

I showed him my fingers crossed.

He sighed. "Oh, well," he said, as I started to leave him. "Too bad! Vanessa Cherrill is home."

"Who is Vanessa Cherrill? I thought Vanessa was the name of a butterfly."

"Absolutely!" he said. "Absolutely. Gorgeous butterfly. Beautiful wings! But very much of a girl underneath. Daughter of Joey Cherrill—New England stock migrated West, made some money in copper, some in land, then when he was worth a hundred thousand, a friend wrote him asking him to put ten thousand in moving pictures. He put in twenty. Now he's worth two millions. You know the house—it's the one they call Colonial. It's white—has to be painted every few months. Sign of affluence to have luxury of white house in Delavan. Mrs. Cherrill's an old dear. Simple, gray-haired, and sweet, but wants Vanessa in society. No society in Delavan. Come out and make their acquaintance. Tell 'em how to take Vanessa to New York and put her in right. You'll like old Joey. Real American. His word better than securities for collateral."

"Don't believe I can help much," I said, leaving him.

I walked down to the iron drinking

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fountain and took a drink of the artesian well water, and then I walked back. Just then I saw the maroon-colored touring car going over the bridge. There was a patch of white on the back seat, and a lavender automobile veil.

"Gus!" I called to Kesterman, who was just going into the bank. "Changed my mind. I'll go with you."

That's how I met her. She danced well—she had that same shimmering in the motions of her body. She was healthy, and she was full of contradictions. The contradictions all came from her being balanced just then between sweetness and wholesomeness and simple ideals, and, on the other hand, guile and flirtatiousness and cold interest in herself. Birth and the older traditions of her people had tried to make her a very real woman; but Delavan and money and ambition to be modern, smart, and attractive at any cost, and the idea that, as certain kinds of girls say, "All men are alike," was tempting her to make concessions. First one could see her as a creature of the sun, and then as a creature of some artificial glare. She was at the cross-roads, perhaps. She was twenty. She was mad to get away from Delavan.

"She never drinks cocktails," said Louise Fenner. "Vanessa feels and acts like it without them."

DO you see her?—her copper-colored hair, her blue eyes yearning for something big, her lips trembling for warmth, her chin showing the firmness and the stability of her family stock, her vitality calling her to eternal motion, her tremendous interest in her own self and her destiny? Oh, she was like the surface of the molten copper—bright hues, all shimmering!

And there wasn't much left in Delavan, after the day's work, except to take a correspondence school course—or Vanessa.

I suppose I took Vanessa, and overdid it. I suppose it pleased my vanity because the younger crowd in Delavan looked upon me with that strange deference which is paid to persons of old, respectable families who happen to have graduated from one of the Eastern colleges and who have learned to look well without reading articles on how to dress. Above all, it pleased my vanity that Vanessa herself took me as an exception—as a desirable outsider, as a representative of a larger world.

I remember thinking of this one night when I was staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, waiting for the effects of late after-dinner coffee at the Cherrills' to wear off. Some one had told me about a rumor that she and I were engaged.

"Never mind, old man," Gus Kesterman said to me, when I was kicking about it. "It's natural. You see, every one thinks that you would not spend so much time with a girl except for two reasons. One of them would he that you wanted to see if she would kiss you, and the other would be that you were planning to marry her. And because the people here have found out that Vanessa, ever since she was fifteen, has appeared willing to be kissed by somebody, but never has, they can't believe you are the somebody. There've been too many others. So they think you're not trying that. They think you mean it seriously—engagement, marriage, and all that, old man. For you certainly have put in the evening hours!"

The whole thing suddenly filled me with disgust. I had felt a sense of having found the first girl I could love—love always. But all the comparison I made between Vanessa and the picture of a truly fine woman, which my sister and my mother and my friends and—yes, by George—my intelligence had painted, left me wondering whether Vanessa had any real soul, any capacity for fine feeling and bigness, any real dimension of character. My guess was that she had not. It was hard to tell; but that was my guess.

I said to myself: "If you feel like that, you are either right or wrong. If you are right, you don't want to become involved with her; if you are wrong, you are doing her an injustice to act as if you admire her. You must stop seeing her!"

But, honestly, I could barely remember having said that to myself the next day. The recollection of her shimmering personality, the gladness of her laugh, the youth and hope in her eyes, which often grew mighty thoughtful and capable of stirring me when they looked into mine—well, it seemed to me inconceivable that I should give it up.

I WENT back to her. At the end of a week, we had been out for a walk one night—a walk before I went home. When we came back, the Cherrill house was dark, and she stopped at the front door. There wasn't a sound but the panting of the smelters away off at the other end of town. And somehow her hand got into mine. It was the first time.

I've a contempt for hand-holders unless— And at that moment I was convinced—at that devil's moment—that she was fine, that she wasn't light and selfish, and that I had been a terrible rotter even to believe it. I thought—why, I knew—I loved her. That's on the level.

I drew her to me. She was so fragrant! She made the faintest little sound. I couldn't tell what it meant. But she didn't resist. I kissed her.

I've kissed other girls, but there was no significance attached. But this time it was a terrible mistake.

She said to me, when she saw the expression on my face—the awakening expression—my coming out of the dream:

"You are sorry?"

I could not say anything. My hand grew cold and let hers fall.

There's no doubt that she saw at once that I was not going to say that I loved her. I felt all the caution against that I ever felt. It makes me squirm now to think that I was tempted to say, "For heaven's sake, Vanessa, don't misunderstand me. I really had no right to that moment."

But I said nothing.

"Well, I am not sorry," she said firmly.

I said nothing. I felt an emptiness. It may sound foolish, but I felt as if she had been a companion for centuries, and that now something had come about that was going to take her away.

And yet, when I walked down the Main Street, I felt like a creature that has just wriggled out of a trap. I began to use my head. I said to myself that my cool judgment was against choosing her—forever. There was not a sentimental, emotional thing in me that didn't cry out that she was—everything. But my head told me that I had no measure of her real worth—that all the chances were against her being more than the bewitching but selfish and spoiled daughter of parents who could only see for her social ambition and advantageous marriage and all that kind of thing. I could have yelled my joy until people stuck their heads out the windows! I had escaped!

I NEVER saw her alone again. In the two weeks that were left she told a few persons in Delavan Falls that I was one of the finest young men who had ever come there. That was all.

Her father came down in their touring car to the station to see me off. But she was not with him.

When the train pulled out of Delavan I was on the observation platform of the last car. I saw her on the porch of the white Colonial Cherrill residence. I suppose we both thought we would never see each other again. She waved her hand, and then went into the house.

That's all.

Except, of course—old Mrs. Cherrill wrote me last week. It was a terrible bungle on her part. She wrote me that they had decided Vanessa must have a wider vision than she could obtain in Delavan—and a wider acquaintance among nice people.

Mrs. Cherrill was going to send Vanessa to New York for a year at a finishing school—an expensive school. All the arrangements were made, and the daughter was overjoyed with the prospect; but Vanessa's train, she said, would arrive in the evening. Would I meet her? Would I see that she got safely to Miss Erica Pell's School for Girls on Sixty-second Street? She said Vanessa. for some unknown reason, had protested against asking me to do it, but that old Joey had told her to go ahead just the same.

That's why I looked at my watch. . . .

THE older Powell drew in a long breath.

"Oh, there is no danger now," his son exclaimed, rising. He called to a club boy, "See if there is a taxi waiting for me." And then, turning back to his father, he said:

"I suppose you will be in bed—reading in bed?"

"Yes, I think I will. You won't be gone long."

"No; Pennsylvania Station, up town, and back."

Ellis Powell threw his napkin on the table, lit a fresh cigarette, and started toward the door.

"Son," said his father sharply.

"Yes."

"In all relations with women, a man mustn't be soft of head; he needs to be hard of head. I wouldn't have told that young woman I loved her."

Ellis laughed. He said:

"Your advice is late—I didn't."

WHEN the Powells, father and son, stay at the Club together in the spring or the autumn, they usually share the apartment known to members as the Oak Room. It was designed for small dinners, but has been added to the supply of sleeping quarters. Two beds have been put in it, and a huge private bath adjoins it. The son likes the room because, as he points out, its dark walls take away the boudoir air which even men's sleeping chambers are given by their unimaginative designers.

The clock on the hall stairs outside this room sounded eleven o'clock.

"Umph!" grunted the elder Powell.

He put down a book with a bright red cover, snuggled down between the warm sheets, glanced up to see that the window facing the Avenue was opened wide, buttoned the top button of his pajama coat, and put out the electric reading lamp at his elbow.

"Humph," he said, as he listened to the roar of the city and the far-away grumbles and toots which came in from the North River on the cold wind of October. This comment he might have made a third time, had not the door been opened cautiously to admit the dark, almost undistinguishable figure of his son. The younger man tiptoed across the room, sat down softly on the edge of his own bed, and stared toward the square of curtained window with the dim light front it upon his face. At last, without turning on the light, he pulled off his coat, hung it over a chair, and sighed.

"Well?" said the older man, as if he could not stand the silence any longer.

Ellis was startled. He exclaimed, "You' awake, dad?" and turned on a ceiling light, which, falling upon the father's face, brought out in exaggerated definition the strong lines carved by struggles, defeats, and victories. Looking at the younger man, whose shoulders filled the tops of his shirt, sleeves with a suggestion of power, but on whose bronzed young features there now was written some unknown emotion, the father reached up for the wall switch and turned the light out again.

"Hurts my eyes," he said. "Use the desk lamp, Ellis. You were gone a long time. What happened?"

"A whole lot," the other answered, with feeling. "Want to hear?"

"To-morrow will do."

The boy pulled off his waistcoat, took out his watch, looked at the hands thoughtfully, and put it on top of the chest of drawers.

"No," said he at last. "It's short; I'll tell you to-night. . . .

I'LL tell you to-night, when it's all fresh pictures and impressions. I met her at the train. No trouble at all. One thing about her—she dresses well—without furbelows. She was in dark blue, and the only ornament was a copper buckle at her waist; it just matched her hair. I am not sure that Vanessa isn't beautiful. At any rate, she shimmers. Naturally enough, she was all excitement about New York, new girl friends and a fashionable school, the "large world" and the "wider vision," as Mrs. Cherrill said.

I think perhaps it was hard for her to see me. It sounds like an absurd, vain thing to say, but I believe she has not ever lost any of the feeling she had for me. Whatever its depth, the stream of it still ran on, and, though she knew it was running nowhere, she could not stop it. But after the first look, and the first movement in her white throat and parting of her lips, she recovered herself, and began with me just as if we were good old friends. Of course I knew that was best. So we were off at once for Miss Pell's school.

"From Delavan to Sixty-second Street!" she exclaimed as the taxi buzzed along. "What a winter this is going to be!"

"Why did you choose Miss Pell's?" I said to her, as if I'd heard, for years, all about Miss Pell's.

"Mother saw an advertisement. The word 'exclusive' made a tremendous impression on her. You know my lovable mother! Then some friend of father's—a prominent lawyer in Chicago—said his wife, who was one of the Powells, had gone to school there. Then there was an exchange of letters, and you should have read Miss Pell's, written in a fine, wonderful hand, and so courteous and dignified. And, Ellis Powell, this just means life to me, almost everything I wanted—acquaintance, close companionship with persons who never even heard of Delavan!"

At last we drove up before of one of those old brownstone houses in the middle of a block where fashionable people still are living, no doubt. The driver said, "'S that one," and pointed.

I don't know just what it was that made me feel wrong about it. It was perhaps a little larger than most of the other houses, but it looked a little more grim and sullen, and not much like a place filled with youth and happiness.

"I'll go in with you," I said to Vanessa.

The door was opened by an old negro maid in a white cap. She had the palsy, and the two hands at the edge of her apron shook. She looked at us suspiciously.

"Miss Cherrill has come," I said.

"Miss Cherrill! Dis de Miss Cherrill

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what's comin' to schyool yere? Yes'm—yes'm. Come right in. Step right into der reception-room. I'll call Miss Pell. I'll call her. She was expectin' you. Yes'm. She'll be here di-reckly!"

The house was all shabby inside—all nice things grown old, bits of wall-paper coming off—the odor of emptiness. It was still like a deserted place, but it was neat—shabby but neat, like a well bred old person who has lost his money and wears clean linen which has to be trimmed at the edges by nail scissors. I just couldn't understand that house, and its silent staircases, and its mystery.

I picked up from the table in the reception-room a prospectus which lay there, just as if the house had insisted that it be put out to be read by any visitor. In it there was the usual description of the school, the names of the several teachers of the staff, a picture of the exterior of the house, and one of a girl's study and bedroom. It had been printed for the year 1908-1909. I kept on reading it, because I did not want to meet Vanessa's eyes. Without looking, I knew they were filled with astonishment and dismay. She never spoke. We just waited.

The driver of the taxicab had taken the trunks and bags into the basement door before I knew what he was doing. Vanessa had paid him. So now everything was quiet again. There was a massive marble clock on the mantelpiece, but it was still—like a thing that had lived its years and then had died. It was so still that, in a great unlit room behind the portières at the back of the reception-room, one could hear the scampering feet of mice.

Then suddenly we both looked up at the sound of a gentle and pleasant voice.

"I am Miss Pell," it said. "I am glad that you have arrived safely, Miss Cherrill. You have had a long and tiring journey, I do not doubt. You have come so far!"

I had drawn back into the shadows, so that I do not think from first to last she saw me at all. But I could see her as she advanced, holding out toward Vanessa a small, white, aged hand.

She is not tall, but she carries herself with a grace that is good to see. Her hair is almost white. She has the quiet, gentle, patient face of somebody who has suffered a whole lot, but is prepared to suffer a whole lot more if necessary.

Vanessa moved her lips, and at last she said timidly:

"This isn't Miss Pell's School for Girls—is it? Is it?"

I could see a troubled look come into the old lady's eyes.

"I mean—is the school—here?"

The old lady's tipper lip trembled.

"Yes," she said. "And your coming, Miss Cherrill, is the beginning of a new epoch for our institution. I had hoped for it long. I think you will understand that I have even prayed for it—prayed that the school would come back into its own. It will be—what shall I call it?—a renaissance!"

The little old lady had put a fine little linen handkerchief to her eyes.

"Oh, you must forgive me for this loss of self-control, my dear girl—my new young friend," she said. "It is so wonderful to see a young face—here—once more!"

"But the other girls—" Vanessa began.

"There are no other girls," said Miss Pell. "I wrote that to your mother. It is a matter about which I have come to feel so sensitive, but I knew I must explain. I think that I said to your mother that yours was the first application the school had accepted for a long time."

Vanessa suddenly understood, I think.

"It is not every mother and daughter who would want to join in rebuilding a private school," the old lady said, beaming once more. "Of course, there is an advantage in the fact that I can give all my time and attention to you. When we have other enrolments we shall engage other teachers. The tuition fees will restore the financial resources. I shall be younger when youth is in the house. I think for the last five or six years I have been too much to myself."

AND then I understood—and I think Vanessa understood at that moment, too. I could see the old fashionable school meeting the new competition of more modern schools. I could see that, in spite of all the worry and labor and pain, Miss Pell could not stop the decline. I could imagine the yearly decrease in pupils. Miss Pell's was no longer fashionable, but Miss Pell still refused to take any but the "nicest" girls. I could imagine the year by year disappearance of the teachers she could not pay, and the emptiness slowly creeping through the old mansion. The school had died, and Miss Pell could not believe it.

"I am glad that your mother saw my advertisement!" she was exclaiming. "I have not inserted any notice before for two years. So much money has been required to keep our school building in good order, so that it would be fitted for a resumption of its usefulness. This was an old residence, Miss Cherrill. I own it, and truly the taxes have become quite a burden in themselves."

She had become garrulous. The thinking she had done when alone had had no expression. It was as if Vanessa's young face, now half grief, sympathy, and dismay, and half smiles and understanding, had called from Miss Pell for a moment her unrestrained inner self.

Perhaps she realized this. She said:

"Miss Cherrill, I do not believe I should say too much. You are tired, dear. But this I want to say: I am sure that, if only I had been concerned, I would not have had the patience to plan and wait for a new era for our school. Year after year the best—some of the best—of the young ladies from many cities came and went in and out of this door—always better for having been here. Could I allow personal discouragements to put an end forever to such an institution? No; it is the school—it is not I, but the school—which has been brave, and patient, and trustful. But oh, it is so good to have youth—here—once more!"

Vanessa's eyes were opened wide, her lips were parted.

"I forgot," exclaimed Miss Pell. "I must go at once and tell Cora to turn down the counterpane on your bed. I've given you the large room next to mine, Miss Cherrill. Just a moment."

She went out.

Vanessa dropped into a chair beside the table and buried her head in her arms.

I knew what her plans had meant to her and to her mother. I knew all the ambition and hopes and dreams which had gone into this venture.

And, just as if she knew what I was thinking, she raised her head and brushed the tears out of her eyes.

"You do know, don't you?" she asked. "It is ridiculous for me to act about it so childishly. But you do understand."

"Of course I do, Vanessa," I said. "But you better stay here to-night anyway. To-morrow I will help all I can. First we'll telegraph the situation—"

"No," she said; "I'm not going to telegraph. I'm going to stay!"

"Stay—stay all winter! You can't."

"Yes, I can, Ellis," she said. "Yes, I can. Don't you see that it's all a question of which one of us—Miss Pell or I—has to bear the burden of the situation? That's the whole question. And do you think I could tell her that I had changed my mind—that I would leave her, after all these new hopes of hers?"

"But the old lady would be unreasonable to expect—"

Vanessa stopped me again by shaking her gloves at Inc. I thought that from her there came to me across the table the same fragrance which I had known only once before.

"Ellis, I am glad it has happened," she said quietly. "I think it will make a lot of difference to me. I won't know many people; I won't gain what I had hoped to gain. But, Ellis, I'm glad! Do you know, I would like to give myself for one winter to her, just as she has given herself to this dead school. Give myself. I suddenly thought of that. Why, Ellis, I never knew—except once, one moment—what it meant to give oneself."

She looked all around the room, and then she said:

"I shall learn—here—this winter."

I sha'n't forget that. She meant it! So she's at the school.

And here I am. . . .

"UMPH!" said the elder Powell. "Demme—that's what I would call—"

"What would you call it?" asked his son.

"Blest if I know."

He turned over and buried his old gray head in the pillow.

Ellis undressed and turned out the light. The room was still enough. Now and then a taxicab on the street below whined along, and the hall clock on the club's front stairs clacked contentedly.

But after some time the elder Powell turned over again in his bed.

"Ellis."

"Yes, sir."

"Were you asleep?"

"No."

There was a pause.

"That girl is all right."

His son made no comment.

"Of course I can't tell, Ellis," the old engineer said. "You ought to know better than I, but I think a man who is too calculating and exacting about a young woman is a fool. What a man wants is to know when he has met the right girl. That takes sense. A man needs to be hard of head—that's the expression—hard of head. I don't know about you, but if it had been me, I'd have told that young woman to-night that I loved her."

Ellis laughed. He said:

"Once more, sir, your advice is late—I did."

$700,000,000 for Music

By ANNA STEESE RICHARDSON

WHEN Geraldine Farrar informed Gatti Casazza, impresario of the Metropolitan Opera Company, that she would require a considerable advance over her already opulent salary for her appearances during the season of 1915-16—so runs the tale—the diplomatic manager expressed profound regret that the organization would have to dispense with the services of the most popular "Madame Butterfly" the operatic world has ever had. Whereupon the personable and magnetic prima donna did not indulge in hysterics, nor did she offer to compromise. Instead she straightway booked a transcontinental recital tour. With her went Reinald Warrenrath, a popular baritone, and she was heard in many cities where formerly Geraldine Farrar was known by name only. Incidentally, late in the winter she brought home to New York more than she could have earned in her popular grand opera roles, and she enjoyed the added triumph of singing several times at the Metropolitan at the new and larger salary for which she had asked.

One stormy Saturday last winter, Charles L. Wagner, manager of John McCormack, the Irish tenor, sent back untasted several of the most delectable specialties served at a famous New York restaurant. When his host rallied him on his loss of appetite, Mr. Wagner replied: "I can't eat when McCormack's throat is in bad shape. It's 'way off to-day, and to-morrow night he's booked at the Hippodrome."

The host thought this a great joke until he read in the Monday morning papers that the receipts for the McCormack concert at the Hippodrome had broken all records at that record-breaking house—$10,000 in real money.

Not so many years ago, David and Clara Mannes, violinist and pianiste, were making themselves felt, not in smart musical circles, but in the Music School Settlement, where talented boys and girls of New York's East Side were given an opportunity to study and to enjoy good music at prices within their means. Next, the two artists gave interesting sonata recitals on Sunday nights at the Belasco Theater. This year they will play in Aeolian Hall, because the Belasco will no longer accommodate their audiences. They are directing a large and profitable school in New York, and they have acquired a tidy estate on Long Island, near that of William Faversham.

Last winter, Percy Grainger, an Australian pianist and composer, reached America by way of England. He announced frankly that he had come to introduce his compositions to musicians, publishers, orchestra leaders, and band-masters. He gave a few recitals, and presto! he was booked from New York to San Francisco. He had brought with him something more than technique—youth, joyous, optimistic, bubbling youth in his compositions and his playing. He could have done "two a day," as they say in vaudeville, if he had used a dirigible instead of trains and motors.

In midsummer came astonishing news from Maine, the land of musicians in camp. Gabrilowitsch, Bauer, and Godowsky, three popular pianists, had cut their flowing locks and were going about hirsuted like the common garden variety of business men.

"For," explained a musical press agent, "there's such easy money in music to-day that a chap doesn't have to look like a freak in order to draw a house. It's the golden age in music for fair."

And, finally, the most amazing announcement of the year—that, for the first time in its history, the United States will be able to boast this season three first-class grand opera organizations, practically guaranteed by subscriptions: the Metropolitan Company, the Chicago Company, the Boston Opera Company.

What's the Answer?

WHY this sudden and, to the musician, delightful quickening of musical taste and financial support?

Is it the fruit of slow, patient education in musical ideals? The masters would have us think so.

Or is it due to the fact that the European war has stranded on American shores the cream of concert musicians? That is a reasonable argument, and timely.

But the man in the concert-hall box-office tells a different story. He declares that the unprecedented demand for concerts and recitals, the record-breaking attendance drawn by any worth-while musical attraction, are due largely to the movies!

Here, at last, is something to be placed to the credit of the photo-play, so often accused of degrading the public taste. And the argument of those who advance the theory is plausible.

The moving-picture came, was seen, and for a time conquered through sheer novelty. And its conquest included not only those who could spend ten cents an evening for amusement, but those who could spare two dollars for the same purpose.

Outside the largest cities, the dimes and dollars were diverted in a steady stream from the legitimate theater with its "New York attractions." The public was tired of being swindled by Broadway managers who thought they could fool the "road" by bill-posting that read "Straight from a year's run at the Gold Leaf Theater, New York." So it proceeded to use the movies to chastise the New York producer. When the novelty of the photo-play had run its length, and the New York producer had learned his little lesson, it would patronize the legitimate again.

But the New York producer lost too much money, and lost it too rapidly. Companies came rolling back to Broadway by the dozen, the score. The "road" theaters were either closed or transformed into moving-picture houses. As owners and lessees saw the property deteriorate, they sold their theaters for business blocks, warehouses, anything that would bring in money. And then the "road" woke up to the fact that not only was it short on theatrical attractions, but it had precious few theaters.

That section of the amusement-seeking public which can not be satisfied indefinitely with Mary Bickford curls and tears, Charley Chaplin leg-comedy, and the woes of the working-girl, demanded something worth while. Managers of musical organizations and artists grasped the situation and capitalized it. An orchestra, band, musical quartet, or individual artist required no theater. A convention hall or a church would serve the purpose.

Music for a Change

THESE managers flung themselves enthusiastically into the new and fascinating game of paralleling the movies. They corresponded with the officers of clubs for women, with chambers of commerce, boards of trade, "boosting" clubs, church and philanthropic societies, and with music firms, teachers, and musicians. They placed the moderate-priced attractions in small cities and towns. In larger cities and in many small ones where musical taste and public enterprise are out of all proportion to the population—such as Fargo, North Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Columbus City, Alabama—they booked artists who had formerly appeared in perhaps a dozen of the country's leading cities only. And they prospered mightily.

The musical manager or agent succeeded where the theatrical manager had failed—in competing with the movies and making money. The map of musical bookings in America has been made over in twelve months. Cities and towns scorned by managers of so-called first-class dramatic productions and musical comedies have turned with relief from too much movies to good music, and have joyfully lined the pockets of musicians and their managers.

Moving pictures appeal solely to the eye and sentiment. They leave the ear and the soul unsatisfied. And, just as pictures speak in a universal language, so does music require no lexicon.

A man recognized as a compiler of conservative statistics in musical affairs has figured that, in the year which includes the musical season of 1916-17, music-mad America will spend $700,000,000 on its preferred form of amusement. This sum is perilously close to the value of the country's heaviest crop, hay, and it runs neck and neck with the value of the cotton crop. It is more than twice the amount spent, even in these troublous times, for the support of the country's army or navy. It would buy the Danish West Indies several times over; it would rehabilitate Belgium; and it makes musicians and everybody interested in the production of music and the manufacture of musical instruments feel extremely secure and contented.

How the $700,000,000 is Distributed

FOR be it understood that the outlay of $700,000,000 for the current year does not go to musical managers and artists exclusively. It represents the nation's expenditures on opera, symphony concerts, and recitals, bands for parades and orchestras for theaters, organs, organists, and choirs in churches, musical festivals and community choruses, musical instruments, music (sheet and books), trade papers, and teachers. Teachers—and this includes those in conservatories—draw down the major share of these millions—in fact, close to a third of them; for to-day thousands are studying in America who in times of peace would go abroad.

Pianos come next in absorbing the loose change of music students and lovers. Player-pianos, all forms of "canned music" and talking machines, are running close to the piano, which still requires a five-finger exercise training. Royalties to artists for making records are now heavier than the royalties paid to composers, and the amount spent for grand opera comes near the foot of the list.

The most significant figure in this estimate is $25,000,000 for recitals alone. For it is through the recital that the artist and the teacher profit mutually. The artist creates the desire to study music; the teacher, realizing this fact, urges his pupils to hear the artist.

Now for the individual earnings of musicians.

Unquestionably the busiest and best

continued on page 19

The Sport of Kings

By ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

Illustration by A. I. Keller

Our mirthful friend went directly to call upon Classon. What's the answer?

SUCH was the telegram from Sam Benton. My far-fetched suspicions were by way of being verified. What business could Smiler Smith have with Francis Classon? Honest business?

It was exasperating. Here I had at my finger-ends all the moral proof I needed; but the physical proof that would convict—of that I had none, except the negro's identification of Dane. Everything hung upon that one thing.

I glanced into the drawing-room. Miss Leland was there with her friends. The negro had not yet come. It was ten minutes after nine. I began to be vaguely nervous.

Miss Leland came to the door of the drawing-room, and beckoned to me. I went to her.

"He hasn't come yet," I said.

She looked at me closely.

"I'll be in the drawing-room until ten."

She rejoined her friends, and I turned back into the lobby. But at ten o'clock Yancey was still missing. And now I knew that something must be wrong. Downcast I entered the drawing-room. Miss Leland left her friends and came to me.

"Well?" said she.

"Yancey isn't here yet," I answered.

"Then he isn't coming, do you think?"

"It looks that way," I admitted.

"Then what are we to do?" she asked.

"Why," I said, "I'll go out to his place again in the morning and—"

"And meanwhile I'll have cherished evil suspicions for twenty-four hours," she interrupted.

I stared at her.

"Mr. Kernan," she said, "every person has the right of confrontation with his accusers; and if the accusers can't be produced, to hear the accusations. I have known Carteret Dane for many years; I have never known him to do a dishonorable thing. He has done me the honor to ask me to marry him."

She paused a moment, drew a long breath, and, as I stared stupidly at her, went racing on:

"I am not engaged to him, Mr. Kernan; yet I have not definitely refused him. And I tell you these things that you may know why it is that I can not endure to hold what thoughts of him to-day has brought me without letting him know those thoughts."

"But to-morrow I'll have Yancey"—

"How do you know?" she cut me short. "He said he would be here to-night; yet he has not come. Do you think, Mr. Kernan, that I could rest to-night if I had not frankly told Mr. Dane of my suspicions? I am going to ask him now if these things are true."

OF course I could see her point of view, and I made no attempt to stay her as she beckoned to Dane. He left the group and joined us, smiling upon Miss Leland.

"You wanted me, Bobbie?"

"Carter," she said, "you remember what I told you the other night? That Mr. Kernan's jockey had confessed to him that he threw the race on Tuesday?"

"I remember," he said calmly.

"Mr. Kernan has since discovered that a negro fortune-teller named Yancey frightened Vivandière's jockey into acting as he did in the race."

"Yancey? Why, I can't believe that worthless vagabond would dare tamper with a jockey," said Dane.

"You know him, then?" she asked.

"Why, yes," replied Dane. And I thought, though I may have imagined it, that from the corner of his eye he flashed a look of malicious amusement at me. His calm admission of acquaintance with Yancey staggered me. I think it did Miss Leland, too. "I saw him this morning," went on Dane easily. "My valet, Jeff, came to me this morning and said that a voodoo man was bothering the life out of him. Seems that he'd been visiting this fellow Yancey, and Yancey had been threatening him with witchcraft if he didn't buy him off. So I told Jeff I'd settle this voodoo man's hash. I did, too," he chuckled. "I'll bet he's cleared out of Grantham by this time. I told him that I'd have the police on his trail if he didn't quit annoying my man."

I knew he was lying. But what a plausible lie! Already I felt that Miss Leland looked a bit coldly upon me.

"Yes," she said to Dane; "we saw you going into Yancey's house this morning."

If Dane were not surprised at this statement—and subtly I felt that he was not—he counterfeited amazement remarkably well.

"You saw me? You said 'we.' What do you mean?"

"Mr. Kernan and I," explained Miss Leland. "We were in a carriage—had just left Yancey's house, and—"

"Just left Yancey's house? What on earth do you mean, Bobbie?"

Miss Leland's hands doubled into fists and her sweetly curving lips trembled. She made one or two false starts.

"Carter—Mr. Kernan and I—he told me—"

She drew breath and began again:

"Mr. Kernan told me that he'd suspected this man Yancey was at the bottom of Vivandière's bad ride. He told me that he'd been to see Yancey, and that Yancey wanted to see me. Yancey had promised to talk to me. So we went out there, and Yancey was a negro named Higgins that I—"

She hesitated—I hardly believe that she knew why herself. Anyway, she did not tell Dane of her rescue of Higgins from the posse. She said merely:

"—that I knew in Stephanie. Out of gratitude for a favor done he was willing to confess to me. He said that he had worked upon the fears of my jockey until he made him whip Vivandière out of Tuesday's race. And he said that a white man had bribed him to do this."

She stopped, and Dane stared at her.

"Well?" he said.

She moistened her trembling lips.

"Yancey did not know the name of the white man who had bribed him, but

---

said he'd recognize him, of course. And he agreed to be at the hotel here to-night, and if he saw the man to—to point him out."

"Well?" said Dave again.

"Don't you see, Carter? Mr. Kernan suspected that it was you, and I saw you go into Yaneey's house, and—and—"

"Bobbie!"

Hurt pride, humiliation, grief, outraged love—he was a fine actor, Dane.

"Oh, I know," she said. "I know what a beast I've been to think such things. But—"

"Not a word, dear," he said. "You were deceived! I don't blame you—although, knowing me, knowing what we are to each other—"

"Don't, Carter, don't," she said faintly. "I—feel so—"

"No need to feel badly," he said. "But as for the man who filled your innoeent ears with his lies—you, Kernan! Where's the man that was to identify me?"

His voice was hard, but no harder than mine as I answered:

"Perhaps you know that, Dane; I don't."

He laughed scornfully.

"See, Bobbie? I told you what it meant to employ a man ruled off the track up North. How can you expect honesty from—"

"Easy," I warned; "easy."

"No threats, please, Kernan," he snapped. "I've stood about enough from you. You see his scheme, Bobbie? The man's crazy to think he can impose upon any one. He had money on Vivandière—he says. To me it looked as if—well, Bobbie, the track officials have set on foot an investigation of that ride. Kernan's stage-play didn't fool them, as he thought. The judges have reason to believe that he himself instructed his jockey to whip the mare. Knowing his danger, he cooks up this wild scheme—this talk of Yancey being bribed by some unknown white man to fix Vivandière's jockey. Yancey couldn't tell you the white man's name. No. But Yancey said he would be here to-night. He never intended to he here, I believe, nor did Kernan expect him. For Kernan knew that no negro would dare to face me with a lie on his lips. A coward's scheme, Bobbie! A blow in the dark at me! A preparation for next Saturday's race, when, if the mare loses again, he'll have a good excuse. There'll be more talk of plot and—phaugh! Bobbie, the man's insane on the subject of plots!"

He stopped, glaring at me. As for me—well, I held myself in. I could see that what he had said must make its impression. Cleverly, suavely, had Dane turned the tables. He'd been prepared for this. But who had told him? It was hard to believe that Yancey's gratitude to Miss Leland had been feigned.

THEN I saw it. Dane had paused a second before entering Yancey's house; he must have seen us in the carriage and recognized us. He had coupled our presence there with my statement that my jockey had confessed. He was not dull, this man Dane. And so he had come upon Yancey, surprised him into admissions—I could visualize the whole scene. And it was not hard to imagine what Dane had been doing, calling upon Yancey this morning. Yancey had emphasized the fact that Miss Leland must see him before Saturday. Although I had forgotten, this morning, to ask him what he had meant by that, it was not hard to guess the meaning. It had to do with Vivandière's race on that day. And now—I shrugged my shoulders as I waited for Miss Leland to speak.

"You hear what Mr. Dane says, Mr. Kernan?"

I bowed my head.

"Mr. Dane is not afraid to speak boldly in the presence of a lady," I said.

"You did not hesitate to bring just as grave accusations against him," she retorted.

"Mine are justified," I said boldly. "Mr. Dane—"

"I will not listen, to such talk," she cried angrily. "Mr. Dane has explained. I beg his pardon for ever having dared to doubt him for a moment!"

"To his own satisfaction he has explained," I said.

"To mine!" she cried angrily.

She looked long at me, and her eyes were cold—hard almost.

"Mr. Kernan," she said slowly, "it is hard for me to believe that the man who risked his life for Vivandière can be anything other than an honorable gentleman. I have believed you—greatly. I can not understand your—"

"Pardon me, Miss Leland," I interrupted her. "I'd like to ask Mr. Dane one question. Mr. Dane, will you kindly tell me your relations with Smiler Smith?"

He started slightly, but his voice was under control as he replied:

"Not recognizing your right to ask any such question, still—I'll answer it. Who is Smiler Smith?"

I shrugged my shoulders. I turned to Miss Leland.

"I think that's all, Miss Leland," I said. "Yancey hasn't come; Mr. Dane is safe in his denials; I seem to be a fool, frightened of bogies and—"

"You're not a fool, Mr. Kernan," she said. "Nor do I think—I will be fair to you, Mr. Kernan. Mr. Dane tells me to discharge you."

"You have that privilege," I said coldly.

"Of course; but I do not wish to exercise it. You have hinted at things not creditable to Mr. Dane. Mr. Dane replies, in part, by intimating, by charging that you are paving the way to Vivandière's defeat on Saturday. Mr. Kernan, how good a chance has Vivandière in the Hotel Stakes?"

"She should win by lengths," I replied.

"That is your opinion?"

"It's an opinion," I said, "that I intend to back with my money—so mueh money, Miss Leland, that there can be no question, in the minds of sane people, as to my honesty in starting the mare."

"How much?" sneered Dane. "A hundred dollars?"

"Ten thousand," I said.

DANE whistled. His eyes held a fleet-ing gleam of respect for an adversary who fought so hard and against sueh odds. For he knew that I was no fool and recognized the odds against me. Miss Leland looked surprised.

"So much as that? Indeed! Then, Mr. Kernan, if you risk that mueh on a horse trained by you, your honesty is beyond question."

"If he bets it," put in Dane.

The girl looked from one to the other of us.

"I believe he will," said she.

But Dane did not like this turn of events.

"Aren't you going to discharge him, Bobbie? Not because of his insult to me, of course, but because he's bluffing. He won't make such a bet; Vivandière will lose, and he'll have his excuse and—"

The girl looked at me.

"If Vivandière loses Mr. Kernan will make no excuse. He has said his horse will win. Mr. Kernan, I expect Vivandière to win."

She inclined her head in token of dismissal, and with a bow I left them. There was more than ever at stake upon Saturday's race now. My honor, in the eyes of Miss Leland, was at stake. For my effort to show Dane's connection with crookedness had failed. She was inclined, in the reaction from suspicion to faith in the man who wanted to marry her, to look suspiciously upon me. She expected Vivandière to win! That meant that if the mare lost the girl would think me a liar, a thrower of mud upon better men. She'd think my betting talk was what Dane called it—a bluff. She'd think I'd carefully concocted all my charges of crookedness to hide my own dishonesty behind. She'd believe as Dane told her: that I raised this black cloud, like any cuttle-fish, to hide my own evil presence. If Vivandière lost! If she lost!

I left the hotel and took a car. Too much was at stake; I wanted to sleep in the same building with that mare of mine. Jerry was a good protector, but two are always better than one.

How easy, after the event, to tell what one should have done. I had been a fool to trust Yancey to come to the hotel. I should have stayed right with him. More! When Dane entered the negro's house I should have let no scruple of delicacy prevent me from taking Miss Leland back there—at once.

It was to make such efforts to repair the damage done as might be possible that I swung off the trolley for another visit to Yancey. But, as I might have known, he was gone. He had left town for good, an old colored woman who answered my ring informed me. He had sold his furnishings to her, and she had moved in at once.

A coin refreshed her memory. Yes, Yancey had left word for Mr. Kernan. It was to the effect that he was powerful sorry he couldn't do what he had promised, but important business had called him away. Also, he had left word that Mr. Kerman was to "watch out" on Saturday. And that was all.

Jerry was seated at the door of the stable, smoking a battered old pipe, when I arrived there.

"The naygur didn't stick?" he asked.

I told him all that had transpired.

"And now," I ended bitterly, "she thinks I'm a liar and—"

"Ye know a lot about women, Misther Sale," said Jerry. "Ye'er knowledge is appallin', it is; it's so incorrect!"

"Oh, you know it all, of course," said I.

"Ye've sort of figgered that Dane saw ye and the lady near Yancey's, and put two and two together, eh?"

"Of course," I said.

"And ye don't give her any credit for doin' some figgerin' too?"

"What are you driving at?" I asked impatiently.

"If it's ye'er head, a concrete wall," said Jerry. "I'll say no more—beggin' ye'er pardon for what's already said, and ray-fusin' to take it back." He grinned. "So old Sam Benton wires ye that Smith and Classon met, eh? Now, what do ye make of that?"

I sighed wearily.

"Jerry, I can't make heads or tails of anything! I know—and you know—that there's something mighty big going on. But just what— Of course, it looks as if Classon is interested in pool-rooms, but—proof, Jerry, proof! I'm all muddled up!"

"Did the lady seem terr'ble surprised whin ye told her ye'd bet tin thousand dollars?"

"Well, she looked surprised."

"I sh'u'd think she might," sniffed Jerry. "And she didn't ast ye whare ye got it? Ye that wor-rks for her for two hundred a mont'?"

"No," I answered.

"And they say a woman's curious," said Jerry.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Did ye iver stop to think, Misther Sale," he inquired, "that there's more real actresses than there are real actors? First-class ones, I mean. That actin' seems to come more nacheral-like to the ladies than to the min?"

"No. What of it?"

"Oh, nawthin'," he said.

HE applied the flaming match to his pipe, and puffed. When he threw the burnt match away, it was as if the charred wood took with it his previous train of thought, whatever it had been.

"I saw that Murphy lad to-day," he said. "Fifty dollars is all it costs us—to his owners for the use of him. Fifty more to the lad himself."

"It'll be worth more than that to him if be comes home first," I said.

"I hinted that same to him," said Jerry. "He was over this ev'nin', gettin' acquainted with the darlin' inside. He has a way wid him, and she tuk to him."

"How is she?" I asked.

"O. K. 'Tis a race she'll run day after to-morrer. Though tin thousand dollars is a lot to bet on annyhorse."

"Jerry," said I earnestly, "we know what horses are opposed to her. We know that she can give away ten pounds to the best horse in the race and breeze home lengths in the lead. As far as a bet goes, it's legitimate enough. But—there's more than the mere money to be gained."

"I understand," he said. "And I wouldn't be afther preventin' ye from bettin'. Ye know that. All I got mesilf goes down on her. But—Misther Sale, I don't leave the horse one second from now until she goes to the post!"

"And I won't be absent much," I said grimly. "Jerry, if all these suspicions of ours are absolutely true, and all these hints and threats are true—Jerry, we're both old horsemen. There isn't any trick of the game we aren't wise to. You say Murphy is honest. You know men well enough: I'll take your word on that. And no one will get near the mare between now and the race. And during the race—I'll give Murphy instructions how to ride—nothing can happen during the race. We both know all that. Then, Jerry, when the devil and how the devil will they rib us up?"

"If we knew that," said Jerry, "we'd not worry. How? Gawd knows, Misther Sale. And mebbe—sometimes a bluffer lays down his hand whin the play is too strong. Mebbe nawthin's goin' to be ribbed up."

"I'm dead sure of that," I said grimly. "But how will they try?"

"They may not even try, Misther Sale," he said.

But both he and I shook our heads at that. Matters were too sinister for us to gather any consolation from the belief that my hand was too strong for the Grantham gang to buck. We knew they'd buck it. How?

JERRY had two cots on the stable floor, drawn across the entrance to Vivandiere's stall. There we spent the night. Not a restful one for me, for the tension I was under was too great for me to slip away from it even in my sleeping hours. I had no dreams, but ever and again I'd wake with a start, look around me, and then, content that no intruder had come to the stable, try to sleep some more. It was a bad night.

And the ensuing day was worse. Of course, the early morning was passed in my duties as trainer, which included giving Vivandière a gentle breather. She was right on edge.

To-morrow she'd be at her best.

But after my duties with the mare were over, I was nervous, restless, upset. I did not want to go to the hotel, for I feared seeing Miss Leland. Feared it because—well, I didn't want to see the girl I loved and read in her eyes a distrust of me. Nor could I bear the sneer that I knew would be in the eyes of Dane. I was close to the fighting point. A little more of Dane and I'd go to the floor with him, and that, I feared, would damn me forever with the gently bred girl I loved. So I moped and fidgeted all morning.

In the afternoon I watched the horses run again, and saw Miss Leland and her party at a distance.

I felt that a good meal would do me good. So, knowing that Miss Leland rarely dined before seven, and intending to be through before then, I went in to town after the racing was over. On the trolley was Colonel Buckmaster. It was an open car, and there was plenty of room on the seat he occupied. So I made my way down the running-board until I reached him. But he did not welcome me. His face was set and white, and his eyes held a wordless pleading that I interpreted as a wish for me to move on. So I barely nodded to him and took a seat behind him. I didn't want to compromise the poor old man by my presence, and he evidently feared that I would.

The car stopped before a gate of the tropical garden around the hotel. I stepped from the running-board. From his seat ahead Colonel Buckmaster did the same thing.

"Kernan," he whispered, "withdraw the mare."

I shook my head.

"Might as well face the music to-

Continued on page 19

WHITHER ARE WE WHENCING?

REEL LIFE AND REAL LIFE

---

THE MOST INDEPENDENT MEN

What Becomes of Prisoners of War?

By RUTH DUNBAR

AT the outbreak of the war the militant countries were well supplied with means to take prisoners. The one emergency for which they had not prepared was the care of the prisoners after they were taken.

In little more than a year after the war had been declared, Germany, with a population of 70,000,000, had to provide for 2,500,000 prisoners; Russia for 1,600,000; all the other countries for large numbers; even little Serbia for 70,000, a number that equaled one fourth of her standing army. There is in Europe to-day an excess of 5,000,000 prisoners. No wonder, then, that there has been inconvenience, suffering, bitter complaint.

When a man is captured by the Germans, he is moved back a short distance from the front until the sick and wounded are segregated from the well prisoners and sent to the hospital. Then he is detained until it is made sure that he is free from vermin, when he is moved to a prison camp.

Has To Take a Kerosene Bath

THERE he is isolated for fourteen days in barracks reserved for incoming prisoners. His hair is cut, and every fourth day he is sent to the bath-house, laundry, and disinfecting plant. His clothes are placed in the steaming room for thirty minutes, and his surplus clothes and bedding are boiled and washed. The worst thing that happens to him is that along with his warm, soapy ablution he has to take a kerosene bath. At the end of a fortnight, if he is free from vermin, he is sent to permanent quarters.

The usual German camp of twenty acres, planned for five thousand men, sometimes has six thousand. The modern prison camp, unlike the stone dungeons of former wars, consists of an inclosure surrounded by high walls, topped with barbed and charged wires, which are more effective in preventing runaways than are the guards stationed on platforms to command a view of the camp.

The barracks are rude sheds put up since the war began, or factory buildings pressed into service, or, as in the case of Ruhleben, the greatest civilian prison camp, a race-course whose grand-stands and box-stalls house the prisoners. In the center of the grounds are kitchen, laundry, bath-house, and recreation fields.

The prisoner who is to make his home here—he knows not for how long—receives two blankets and a pallet filled with excelsior (which the Germans have found better suited for bedding purposes than straw), two suits of underclothes, two shirts, two pairs of socks, an overcoat, an outer suit, and a pair of boots. He receives also a wooden bowl and a spoon, which do service for china and cutlery.

The food, served at the kitchen, is considered by impartial authorities to be hardly enough for hungry men. It consists of rather slim portions of soup and black bread, a coffee substitute, an occasional slice of sausage, pork, or cheese, and sometimes soured cabbage. There is a canteen where, if a prisoner has money, he may buy such luxuries as tobacco and books.

They Never Get Enough Black Bread

MOST of the British receive parcels of food from home. Otherwise they would be hungry; for they throw out their soup, and the black bread they give to the giants from the Russian steppes, whose dream of heaven is to get enough of what is to them a delicacy. In fact, one of the amusements of the British is the unsuccessful effort to fill their Slavic allies.

The camp is a miniature city. Studios, farming, banking, tailoring, shoe factories, chapel, entertainments, bands and orchestras—all are organized and directed by the prisoners, who are allowed to elect their own petty officers. The men exchange lessons in French, German, Russian, and English, work in the factories, edit papers, do anything they can to kill time. There is not so much insanity in the prison camps as in the trenches. Only an occasional case of cholera comes in from Russia. The worst foe is tuberculosis. In spite of the constant effort at sanitation, the close and poor housing, small amounts of coal, exposure in winter, and insufficient food have left three per cent. of the prisoners tubercular.

A civilian prisoner wrote, in a book of his experiences at Ruhleben, that only once did he come in contact with the abusive type of non-commissioned officer—one whose brutality to his own men had been a matter of bitter complaint for years at every session of the Reichstag. Even this encounter was of no moment.

"Now," said the officer, "you English swine, you cats and dogs, you worse than barn-yard fowl, the light is going out, and if I hear a sound from you, you'll suffer."

The light went out. There was a silence that would have made a British officer suspicious. But the German, used to brow-beaten privates, began to strut out of the barracks. Suddenly from one corner through the darkness came a loud bow-wow!"

"What's that?" demanded the officer sharply. "Didn't you know that dogs were not allowed in camp?"

"Meow—meow," came from another corner.

"Cut-cut-cut-cut-at-cut," came from another, and from a fourth came piggish grunts. Soon the whole barracks was melodious with barn-yard sounds.

"Gentlemen," said the officer, swallowing hard, "I apologize."

Crows and cluckings, barks and snorts melted into a cheer.

England's Prisoners Better Fed

IN Great Britain, Alexandra Palace, warmed, equipped, decorated, with spacious grounds, takes care of 2500 men in barracks that would accommodate 500 more. At Handforth, a large rubber factory just completed at the outbreak of the war was utilized at once for a clean, well warmed, roomy camp.

The Isle of Man, where 30,000 men are kept, is a choice site for prison camps, because conditions are peculiarly healthful there. Dorchester has only temporary huts. Rough compared to some of the quarters enjoyed by prisoners, in the end this proves of advantage, for the men live more of an outdoor life, which in that mild climate means no privation, but better health and spirits than those of men in more luxurious camps.

As England has not suffered from the food shortage prevalent in Germany, she has been able to give more generous rations to her prisoners. The camps are conducted much as the German camps are. The various organizations are directed by German prisoners elected by their mates.

Russia, with her vast territory, is hampered by lack of transportation facilities. Unprepared as she was to care for the army of prisoners, she has sent many to Siberia, where isolation takes the place of barbed-wire compounds and guards.

One commander is supposed to have pocketed the appropriation intended for provisioning his camp, with a horrifying result in starvation, exposure, and disease. Frightful conditions that have been reported were said to be caused, not by intentional cruelty, but by inefficiency, dishonesty, or criminal negligence.

They Can't Run Away in Siberia

SOME of the prisoners sent in an open freight train to Siberia reached their destination with frozen feet and hands. The government allowed each prisoner twenty-five kopeks for food, to be bought at the stations; but the stops were so far between that the men were half dead for lack of food by the time they reached Siberia. Some of the Siberian barracks are fairly warm. Four days a week each prisoner dines on Russian soup, a pound of heavy black bread, and two lumps of sugar with as much tea as he wishes. The bread is so sour and soggy that it causes stomach trouble, and the water supply is bad. Whenever a package comes from a war relief society, the men all but weep if they receive no boots, clothing, or insect powder.

Some of the prisoners have been sent to other provinces, to live with families, and have the freedom of the village. The Russians are instructed to treat the incoming prisoners as they would guests, and to assist them in finding work. The Russians are themselves so poor that they have little to share; but what they do they do gladly.

While the Germans are supposed to treat their British prisoners with more severity than they do the French, the Austrians are said to treat their British prisoners with less severity than they do the Italians.

Who Knows About the French Prisoners?

LITTLE is written about the French camps. Germans complain of cruelties to their captive countrymen in southern France and in Africa, where many have been sent to work on French railroads. But definite information is hard to get, for the French maintain about their prison system a complete silence.

Every warring nation, indeed, has complained of the hardships and cruelties endured by the prisoners in foreign camps. Probably there has been less accusation of England than of any other country. But, offsetting tales of privation and torture that were filling the air at the beginning of the war, there are now reports of constant improvement in the prison camps.

JACK LONDON'S LAST LETTER

I REMEMBER going into the library at college and finding a magazine with a story called "The Sea Wolf" by a writer named Jack London. I had never heard of Jack London, but I began reading that story—and from that time on I was his captive: I read everything of his that came within my reach.

Of all the hundreds of short stories by all kinds of writers which I have read, only a half dozen made any permanent impression on me. Two of these half dozen were his: I could almost rewrite them from memory, they were so vivid, so virile, so different.

We never met: I never received a letter from him, while he lived. But two weeks after his death an envelop came to the office bearing his name in the corner. Inside were the two letters printed below.

You who were lovers of Jack London, and who have a soft place in your hearts also for this little magazine, will share with me in a solemn kind of pride that the last letter Jack London wrote should have been written to Every Week.

It is a letter which we, in this office, shall always cherish.

THE EDITOR.

From Mr. London's Secretary

Glen Ellen, California, November 28, 1916.

Editor Every Week.

Dear Sir:

Enclosed is a letter to you from Mr. London, the last written by me for him and which he had not signed. This letter was on his desk for his signature the day he passed out, November 22d. At request of Mrs. London, I have attached his signature by rubber stamp, and am sending you the letter. Yours very truly,

J. BYRNE, Secretary for Jack London.

Mr. London's Letter

Glen Ellen, California, November 21, 1916.

Editor Every Week.

My dear Sir:

Curses on you, "Every Week"! You keep a busy man busy over-time trying to get rid of you while unable to tear himself away. I wish the man who writes the captions for your photographs had never been born. I just can't refrain from reading every word he writes.

And the rest of your staff bother me the same way.

Hereby registering my complaint,

Sincerely yours,

Jack London

"I HAVE NO TIME TO READ"

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

WHAT MAKES A WOMAN BEAUTIFUL?

THE beauty of a woman's figure in America lies in her curves; in China her beauty lies in her straight lines. In China a woman's figure is most shapely when it has no shape. Protruding curves or rounded lines are not only grotesque malformations, but shockingly immodest. The hands and feet of our women loom huge and awkward beside the tiny extremities of the Chinese. Our swinging stride excites great mirth in the bosom of the tottering, stiff-kneed Oriental. Our light hair and eyes are frightful, our straight brows strike terror to Eastern hearts, our long, narrow heads are abnormal to a round-headed race, and our big noses are fiendish.

"The fear and disgust with which big-featured, yellow-haired Westerners are received in out-of-the-way communities are also lavished upon Asiatics who depart from the Chinese standard in type," writes a correspondent in China to the Manchester Guardian. "For we are `ocean demons,' and the Indians are 'black demons.'

The Tibetans, who among themselves admire big noses and large, outstanding ears, are hideous savages. The Mongols, with their bow legs, big joints, and rolling gait, are grotesque and bestial. The Turki of Turkestan, who admire buxom women with round faces and straight black eyebrows meeting above the nose, are scarcely less hideous than the European.

"Strange as it may seem, the Westerner who lives as an isolated representative of his type among Orientals adopts their standards unconsciously. China absorbs and models all things to her ways. A foreigner who has seen no other foreigner for a year or more astonishes himself by feeling decidedly shocked and repelled by the first European face he sees. It is a caricature, a gargoyle. Upon his return to civilization, his own women-folk seem ill-proportioned, awkward, bovine, and altogether lacking in charm. Which goes to prove that whatever we see most frequently is normal and therefore beautiful."

WHEN DICKENS LIVED IN A DEBTORS' PRISON

"ONE evening in 1833 a man glided furtively through the shadows of Fleet Street, London. Suddenly he stopped and stood trembling before a letter-box. Then he glanced around him with profound anxiety. He hesitated a few minutes, remaining silent and undecided. He held in his feverish hand some object, which he ended by depositing in the box, after which he fled away like a thief."

Nothing to be alarmed about, say Charles Dickens' most recent biographers, Albert Keim and Louis Lumet (translated from the French by Frederic Taber Cooper; Frederick A. Stokes Company). Merely one of England's greatest novelists sending his first "Sketch by Boz" to a magazine.

At the time of Dickens' birth his father, whose portrait his son afterward faithfully gave to the world in Mr. Micawber, was beginning to feel the need of money with more than usual poignancy. The meager household belongings went, one by one.

"It was not long," say the biographers, "before the prodigal father became convinced that a debtors' prison was an acceptable refuge from the vicissitudes of life." And soon his family came to share his captivity in the Marshalsea.

Thus at twelve Charles was thrown entirely upon his own resources. He worked at sealing up bottles of shoe-blacking in a gloomy basement at $1.50 a week. "What was worse, the swiftness and dexterity of his movements often drew a crowd to his window, which attention reduced him to an agony of humiliation."

On one occasion Dickens fainted at work. A compassionate fellow worker volunteered to take him home. "Charles would have allowed himself to be chopped in pieces," say his biographers, "rather than admit that his home was in a notorious debtors' prison. He led Bob from street to street quite at random, and finally stopped before a house of respectable appearance." After thanking his escort he went into the vestibule, and got out of the dilemma by asking the servant who answered the door for the first person whose name occurred to him.

Which example of resourcefulness foreshadowed his later years of brilliant work as a reporter.

WHAT WAR HAS DONE TO THE MAILS

IF you should write to your brother to-day—the one driving a motor ambulance in Europe—and ask him whether he wants heavy winter flannels or just medium, when you get an answer spring will be blowing up from the south.

"Mail to England and France has been easy enough to deal with; although the best and fastest mail-ships are carrying troops or have been sunk, letters get there—eventually," says the Postmasters' Advocate.

But the mail to Germany and the Central Allies offers a different problem. The United States Post Office does not send any mail through the countries that are enemies of Germany. For that reason, neutral ships carry it to Norway, whence it passes through Sweden and Denmark to Germany. But, as is well known, the Allies claim the right to censor all mail, and as the Scandinavian boats pass north of England, they are hauled in at Kirkwall and their German mail is examined. If ships do not stop at Kirkwall, they are driven in protesting by the big guns of a British cruiser. In the past nine months 42,020 bags of German mail have been seized by the British and French and, say the Germans bitterly, only a small part of it dispatched to its destination.

"Special delivery stamps," we learn from the Advocate, "may hasten a letter on its way in this country; but they have no effect on the delivery of letters abroad. Be sure also that your letter abroad has enough stamps on it, because all mail in Europe is forwarded. If there is a shortage the person who gets the letter has to pay double the amount."

GOING TO SCHOOL IN GERMANY

"THE children of Germany are certainly hard-worked little creatures. School begins at eight; it is yet dark when our landlady's son, aged ten, starts for his academy." Mrs. Percy V. Pennybacker, whom all American clubwomen know, wrote this seven years ago, when she went to Germany to place her two children in the Munich schools. (Mrs. Percy V. Pennybacker, by Helen Knox; Fleming H. Revell Company).

"Everything is mapped out with the utmost system. You may not be taught very comfortably or very beautifully, but you are certainly taught very thoroughly." Her daughter Ruth went to school from seven in the morning until eight at night—bedtime; and was righteously unhappy because she had to wear a severely plain dress with an absurd black alpaca apron.

Mrs. Pennybacker's son went to a German boys' school, and, as an obedient unit and part of an educational machine that never wasted a second and had scientifically conducted recesses, he was allowed a bath only once a week.

"As a special dispensation I got per-mission for Percy to have two baths; but so many restrictions are thrown about this that it is really like drawing teeth to aecomplish it. I have to assure the Herr Direktor that I relieve him of all responsibility of the bath."

When the young men enter the university, however, all is changed, and freedom prevails. "My physician remarked, 'My son won't do any work this year. It is his first, you know, and the Dueling Corps will take a good deal of his time.'' These, with their brilliantly colored caps and scarfs, give a vivid bit of color to the streets; but I must say, the sight of so many sears on the cheeks of these good-looking young fellows is to me most revolting."

HOW TO GET THROUGH THE WINTER

WET feet in the winter may not give you tuberculosis, but they are pretty sure to break down your health in some other way. In trench-warfare, wet feet have given rise to a special disease called trench-foot (local frigorism). The loss of heat in feet and legs while standing in cold water has in some eases equaled the heat value of all the food eaten in twenty-four hours.

How to meet the slighter winter perils, that carry off 160,000 persons in the United States every year, is described by the Monthly Health Letter of the Life Extension Institute:

"The storm-windowed, weather-proofed, over-heated homes of the well-to-do are often unhygienic. In every household there should be an accurate thermometer. This should not rise above 70° and preferably should be between 65° and 68°.

"Old-fashioned sweeping methods are abominable. Wood floors should be wiped or mopped, and carpets should he cleaned with a vacuum cleaner.

"Fresh air in the bedroom is all-important, but beware of bare feet on a cold floor. Alcohol lowers resistance to infection. If you wish an attack of grippe, drink it freely. Tobacco, used freely, causes inflammation of the throat, and invites the attack of germs.

"On the first sign of a cold, a hot foot bath, lasting half an hour, and a drink of hot lemonade—or, better still, hot linseed tea (⅟₂ ounce of whole flaxseed to pint of boiling water, flavor with lemon peel or licorice root)—will often break its force."

---

IS THE RUSSIAN PEASANT A BARBARIAN?

THE Russian moujik scarcely moves without a prayer and a sign of the cross. The ikon, or sacred picture, is in every home, every railroad station.

Does his private life show evidence of this influence? Speaking from personal experience, it does, says Alan Lethbridge in The Soul of the Russian (John Lane Company).

"In no other country is the hand of sympathy so readily extended to the unfortunate, be he mentally deficient, physically deformed, or morally depraved. The Russian sees not the sordid side of the case, but is merely impressed with the fact that here is a creature who is not as others, strong, sturdy, and normal, and hence merits special consideration. He may be jingling only a couple of kopeks in his pocket, but he will deem it natural to give one of them to this brother."

For the moujik is innately a gentleman.

REMARKABLE NEWS PHOTOGRAPHS

The most remarkable news photograph ever taken, Francis A. Collins says in The Camera Man (Century Company), was probably that of the attempted assassination of Mayor Gaynor of New York. The attack was made on the deck of an ocean liner. A news photographer had asked the Mayor to pose for him, and the camera had been leveled and focused when the shot was fired. The Mayor tottered for a minute, and then slowly fell backward. The Police Commissioner, who stood beside the Mayor, grappled with his assailant. Despite the confusion, the photographer kept his head, and, with his eyes on the finder of the camera, released his shutter.

The Mayor was photographed as he fell, and the camera man found time to change his plates and make two more exposures within the next two seconds.

There may still be some institutions that are not influenced by moving pictures, but war is certainly not one of them. Villa made a definite contract with a moving picture concern, during one of the Mexican campaigns, to have all the fighting take place between 9 A. M. and 4 P. M., to insure the best results with the films. And several times when, according to all the rules of military strategy, the army should have advanced to follow up the advantage gained in the day's fighting, the drive was postponed on the comment of the camera man that he certainly couldn't snap a decent picture in that light.

Villa is very fond of pictures; in fact, he relishes them so keenly that he lets no occasion slip by without the photographer. Burrud, the camp photographer, was called to his tent early one morning, and told that he must take pictures of the execution, at sunrise, of twenty prisoners.

The camera man, however, said his films were rotted, and if any satisfactory pictures were to be had they must wait till he could get a new supply of materials. Villa postponed the execution—and finally changed his mind and canceled it altogether.

A photographer fears no man. No man is a hero to him—only a subject. An American broke all the stern laws of etiquette at the German court when taking a picture of von Bissing. The German officer accompanying the camera man was so awed by the general that he could not explain what was wanted; but the American came forward:

"General—step this way; a little farther, please."

"Mein lieber-Freund," he said afterward, "a general more or less is nothing to me. I have photographed three Presidents."

THEY NEED NO PORCELAIN TUBS

MAN is the only animal that does not like to bathe. All wild animals keep themselves clean, says John Muir in The Boyhood of a Naturalist (Houghton, Mifflin Company). Birds, as much as other animals, take pains with their tubbing and toilette, and if they can not find a shallow pool large enough for a good splash, they take a sponge in a few carefully used drops of dew that have gathered overnight on broad leaves. Sometimes on cold mornings they hesitate on the edge of their bath, dreading the shock like a small boy shivering over his plunge; but they always take it. Even ducks, just because they happen to live in water, do not neglect the fine touches of cleanliness, but manage to get a shower bath for their backs, and brush and comb their feathers as carefully as land birds.

When a man refuses to keep the pores of his skin open and healthy by more than two baths a year, he usually remarks that as he is not amphibious, it is unnatural for him to paddle in the water like a frog. But, says the naturalist:

"Natives of tropic islands pass a large part of their lives in water, and seem as much at home in the sea as on the land; swim and dive and pursue fishes, play in the waves like surf-ducks and seals, and explore the coral gardens and groves and seaweed meadows as if truly amphibious. Even the natives of the far north bathe at times. I once saw a lot of Eskimo boys ducking and plashing right merrily in the Arctic Ocean."

DOING WITHOUT SERVANTS

FEELING the pinch of the war, in which economy has become a part of patriotism, three Englishwomen gave up their London house with its small family of servants, and took an ancient farm cottage in the Highlands. Content with Flies(E. P. Dutton & Company) is the book Mary and Jane Findlater wrote on how to be comfortable without the servants who have tiptoed through your house since the day you were born.

"During the coming hard times, the flower of civilized living may fade amongst people of moderate income, and a way of life much less elegant will take its place. Much that is mere trimming may be removed, leaving the essential beauty and refinements of home unchanged." Perhaps servants and a cumbersome house, think the authors, are mere trimmings to a comfortable life.

In the Scotch farm-house a book of kitchen proverbs grew up, "just to take the finicking edge off any worker who was apt to become self-righteous." "It's not lost that a hen gets," "Let sleeping dust lie," "Eternity itself wouldn't suffice to cook a haricot bean," were some of them.

"We were bad economists. Bread puddings, if continuous, pall; crumbs accumulated. We never even tried to use the outer leaves of vegetables, and we gave away the drippings—'so there!' as the children say."

The law of order in housekeeping is to do everything in its allotted time. "Every muddle maketh another," they found; and an hour's neglect of routine meant chaos. Eventually "the Chief Cook developed a somber passion for cleaning the sink. To stand back and see the zinc surface polished white evidently gave her great pleasure, for sink-cleaning had become an art and was no longer a drudgery."

Lacking most of the conditions that make work easy, hero are hints for those who wish to try the experiment: 1. Don't rise too early. 2. Don't do any hard work before breakfast. 3. Resolve to take no makeshift meals. 4. Take a long rest after dinner. 5. Eat in the kitchen.

ADVERTISEMENTS THAT ATTRACT WOMEN

To be successful, an advertiser must understand what no man claims to understand—women.

"Many commodities are strictly women's propositions," says Henry Foster Adams in Advertising and Its Mental Laws (the Macmillan Company), "and the advertiser, to secure the largest returns, should know the foibles of the sex and base his campaign upon that knowledge."

To make the hard lot of the advertiser easier, therefore, psychologists have studied the differences between men and women in three mental phases with which the advertiser must deal: getting the attention, keeping the attention, impressing the memory.

In getting the attention, size attracts women more than it does men, and frequent repetition attracts men more than it does women. Women are attracted by red or by tints, men by blue or by unmixed colors. Women are less attracted to pictures than men are.

In holding the attention of a woman advertisements should make a personal appeal to her ambition or pride, show her how to make money in leisure moments, drive bargains, get goods at a cheap price.

In holding the attention of a man, advertisements should appeal to his pride in his union or lodge, should flatter him with an indirect argument that draws on his intelligence, or appeal to his liking for names of old firms, rapidly growing firms, or recommendations by people in authority.

In impressing the memory, a trade-name has more value with men than with women. Men remember size more than women do, just as women are more attracted by it than men; and women remember frequently repeated objects, just as men are more attracted by them. While men are more drawn to a picture in an advertisement, women remember it better. In fact, it is usually the chief thing that sticks in their memory.

Although women are popularly supposed to be more emotional than men, experiments do not prove it. Experiments give also only a little evidence for the other popular theory—that men are more logical and prefer an appeal to their reason by the long circuit rather than by the short circuit to intuition.

Women are supposed to be more sheep-like in their tastes. If Mrs. Jones is impressed by a certain advertisement, it is likely that most other women would be reached in the same way; whereas the fact that Mr. Jones liked an advertisement would not mean that it would reach most other men.

This is the exact opposite of Bernard Shaw's theory that when men reach a certain age they are so much alike that it makes no difference which one a woman marries.

WAR, THE LEVELER

WHAT SCIENCE IS DOING

To Roll This Old World Along

HAVE YOU HAD YOUR FIRE TO-DAY?

DO you know whether or not your house burned down while you were at business this afternoon? Somebody's house did. The great dragon that crackles when it walks must be fed to keep up our statistics of five hundred dollars a minute fire loss, and it may be that in your absence from home your house was offered up. If it was not, you have to thank the Underwriters' Laboratories, Inc., very probably, because that great public service institution prevents more fires than the firemen put out.

The American is a perfect demon at setting his play-things and his domicile and some one's else barn afire. No other type of man in the world can compete with him. He is exceeded only by his wife, who starts, according to the statistics, sixty per cent. of the fires of North America, exclusive of those for beneficent purposes in stoves and furnaces. She leaves the electric iron on the cloth-covered ironing-board; she has lace curtains in the kitchen, which blow over the flames of the gas stove; she will use gasolene in the house.

Our passion for fire kills five thousand persons every year; and were it not for the above-mentioned unique institution on the shores of Lake Michigan, which quietly, almost secretly, prevents those fires in our homes and our factories, the toll would double with a quick leap. Perhaps you have seen one of the sixty million labels bearing the name "Underwriters' Laboratories Approved," which the establishment affixed to various products last year. Do you know what that really means?

The label means that the device or product that bears it has passed the most rigorous fire tests known to mankind. Did you see it on a patent fire extinguisher? Then this is what it means: a roaring fire was built in the yard of the Underwriters' Laboratories, and the experimenters, after the fire had a good start, rushed out for passers-by and dragged them in to use that extinguisher to put out the fire. If the device is simple enough and effective enough for the office man or laborer who is hauled in for the test to manipulate it and put the tire out, the extinguisher was through the first test. After that it went through laboratory tests to determine how well it would keep, whether it would stand a long, bumpy ride in an automobile, and whether or not it would stand abuse of all sorts.

Just now these laboratories are experimenting with expensive apparatus to find out whether or not skyscrapers as they are now built are fire-proof. Every kind of loaded column, with every variety of standard covering, is being tested while it is carrying the load it is designed to carry. Months have been spent setting up the hydraulic ram, the furnace, and the restraining frame by which the loads are applied to the columns to be tested. It will take two or three years to complete the experiments.

IS FIFTH AVENUE ALIVE?

HAVE you an ultra-microscope? Come in; murder may be about to be committed, since there is a strong possibility that the very pavement beneath our feet is teeming with countless numbers of colloids. If a colloid is not a living particle, why does it dash so wildly over the field of our microscope, so wildly that on the screen a motion picture of it looks like a field of dancing stars leaping from point to point? Asphalt, which comes from the West Indian island of Trinidad, is full of colloids which are about .000,030,37 of an inch in diameter.

Some chemists, who are busily engaged in investigating the matter, believe that colloids are alive, as their tremendous movement seems to indicate; but the generally accepted opinion is that they are merely finely divided particles of

matter, bombarding each other and being bombarded by even finer particles of the solvent in which they are dissolved. If they are alive, imagine 1715 vehicles passing over this great race of somethings, crushing them, demolishing them, right beneath the eyes of our traffic police!

To look at colloids, borrow an ultra-microscope. Pick a good dark night when the colloids are asleep, and then dig up a square inch of asphalt pavement. Dissolve this in carbon bisulphide and use a drop of the resultant liquid. Then you can see them.

KILLED BUT NOT WOUNDED

OUT on the battle-fields of Europe, among the terribly wounded and the demolished bodies of what were once men, the surgeons have been finding dead men who were not wounded in any way. What killed them? Both Germans and English have found the same condition; and, since dead men tell no tales, the mystery of their death has been profound. A pocket aneroid barometer, found on the body of one of these strange dead men, has given the answer.

The body of this dead soldier showed no wound whatsoever. It looked as if he might have died of fright or heart disease. The barometer showed, however, that some atmospheric freak had occurred. Two levers were out of adjustment and the value of the instrument was destroyed temporarily. It was repaired and tested under a bell-jar in a vacuum. The same disarrangement of levers occurred at a pressure of sixteen inches, or a little more than half sea-level pressure. It is about the normal reading for Mont Blanc.

Surgeons and engineers came to this conclusion: bursting shells create a sudden temporary vacuum. Oxygen and carbonic-acid gases in the blood are freed, form bubbles, and clog the capillaries, causing instant death. The theory has in no way been proved, however. Violent death, seemingly from shock, has been observed when shells burst too far away for this effect to be even faintly possible.

EYES FOR OUR BLIND ARMY

BOTH the army and the navy of these glorious States are blind as a bat. The Great War has shown that neither branch of defense can do any real work without aëroplanes. But there is still hope for us. The last Congress appropriated $17,500,000 for aviation.

There are countries overseas that boast as many as nine thousand aviators and thousands of planes; yet this land of invention that made it all possible—whose Langleys and Wrights were before all others—has only about fifty aviators in the service. But already we are spending that appropriation, slim as it is.

Lieutenant-Colonel George O. Squires of the army has already been given charge of the 175 machines which have been ordered for him, and which will be delivered as soon as our manufacturers can turn them out. Fortunately, the latter have been making machines for Europe and have splendid equipment. One hundred hydro-aëroplanes have been ordered for coast patrol, and another hundred for school service in training aviators.

Almost five hundred men will be started on a course of training as soon as machines are ready, and two additional schools like the government school at San Diego are to be established. Private schools for civilians are also to be under the jurisdiction of the army.

These schools will give the training necessary to place a man on the reserve list, but when he is called to active service, it will be necessary for him to learn military flying at one of the regular army schools. State militia units can be formed by any State wishing to have one. It is necessary only to pick a commander and his junior and arrange to have them sent to San Diego for training. They must have one aëroplane for use when they get home. When six officers and thirty-nine men are enlisted the government will recognize the unit and supply it with oil and gas for a probationary period of one year.

The eagle is about to fly.

ADJUST MY EARS, DOCTOR

CAN you hear a cricket chirp? Can you hear the lowest note on a pipe organ? Some people can not hear either; but the wily inventor, thinking, as he will think, of lovers' whispers and eavesdropping detectives, has devised an ear-phone for the deaf, which is adjusted

like eye-glasses. It may be that you need a spun brass diaphragm because you can hear only shrill sounds. If you wear this device all sounds become shrill, and then yon can hear everything. But you hear deep sounds? Then you can have a lead diaphragm, which makes all sounds deep.

The new hearing machine has been placed on the market now, and buyers are fitted with the particular kind they need. Silver, bronze, rubber, and brass are used as well as lead, and remarkable results have been obtained.

HEY, MOUSE! TO WORK

WHISTLE up a mouse and put him to work making thread. When he dies in a spring trap you lose capital worth fifteen dollars! If you have never chased a mouse, or had a mouse chase you, it will be impossible for you to appreciate the English mouse-power thread-mill. Think of this for a moment: a mouse, an average little half-ounce fellow, will run ten and a half miles a day in a cage. Almost perpetual motion!

It took a Scot to find out about it, of course. David Hutton once saw a mouse in a treadmill cage for sale for a quarter. He bought it, and put it to work spinning thread, because that, was the only power job he knew that a mouse could do. Here are his results: A mouse eats a penny's worth of oatmeal in thirty-five days. He will run 362 miles in that time. Two mice twisted 120 threads a day. At that rate one mouse earned eighteen cents every six weeks, or a dollar and a half a year clear profit. It takes fifteen dollars at six per cent. to earn that much.

"Let's utilize our mice in mouse-mills," says the St. Louis Republic, in reporting Mr. Hutton's work.

$700,000,000 for Music

Continued from page 8

paid woman in the concert or recital world is Madame Schumann-Heink. She is an American institution. Last year she sang in every State in the Union.

The male singer who probably cleared up the most clean cold cash in the season of 1915-16, and who will duplicate his earnings if he does not increase them in the current season, is John McCormack. A concert-hall box-office expert who knows the seating capacity of the various halls in which Mr. McCormack has sung has figured that this favorite Irish tenor received about $150,000 in return for his concert appearances last season, and as much more for royalties on phonograph records.

Of the pianists, Josef Hofmann is now so rich that he declines to play recitals, which are most tiring for artists. Last season he appeared only with the New York Symphony Orchestra in its tour from coast to coast, forty concerts in all.

Among the violinists, Fritz Kreisler broke all records last season. Always recognized as a master violinist, the publicity given his service in the Austrian army, during which he was wounded at the battle of Lemberg, increased his popular appeal. It is said that he cleared, in recitals and royalties on works, $100,000.

Mischa Elman gave 103 recitals in the East and Middle West last season. His average returns on a recital are said to be $800.

Julia Culp, the popular Dutch "lieder" singer, gives three or four recitals a week between November 1 and April 1, at not less than $800 an appearance.

Ossip Gabrilowitsch, known among music lovers as the tone poet, specialized last season on a series of six recitals tracing the history of composition for the piano. This historical series, with general recitals and joint appearances with Harold Bauer, eighty recitals in all, carried him between New York and Chicago eighteen times. Gabrilowitsch can discuss with equal facility the increase in musical appreciation and the rolling stock of transcontinental roads.

In music, perhaps more than in any other art, specialization and personality count tremendously. Julia Culp might be called the master of specialization. She offers nothing but songs. Leginska, the English pianiste, is a triumph of personality.

Grand opera reputation is valuable to the concert or recital artist. Many grand opera singers make flying trips in the season and long tours in the spring. Among the opera folk who look pleasant when their managers telephone about recital dates may be mentioned Frieda Hempel, who this season is devoting herself almost exclusively to recitals; Anna Case, Olive Fremstad, Lambert Murphy, Sophie Breslau, Emilio de Gogorza, Mabel Garrison, Clarence Whitehill, Louise Homer, Herbert Witherspoon, Gadski, Susan Metcalfe-Casals, Alma Gluck, and Mariska Aldrich.

America not only receives foreign musicians with open arms and supports the art royally, but it is coming to believe that in spending $700,000,000 a year for its musical pleasure and improvement it is old enough and strong enough to indorse native ability.

"How I Am Trying to Raise My Children"

WE will pay $25 for the best letter, $15 for the second best letter, $5 for each other letter good enough to publish, on the subject, "How I Am Trying to Raise My Children."

What are you doing for your children that your parents did not do for you, to make them healthier, more useful, more able men and women?

What difficulties do you meet? How do you overcome them?

What have you discovered, in your experience with your children, which other fathers or mothers can use?

We invite letters from fathers as well as mothers.

Letters must be not over 1000 words at the outside, and must be in our hands by February 20.

Under no circumstances will any manuscript be acknowledged or returned.

Your identity will be kept a secret. Tell us intimately what you are trying to do for your children.

Start your letter now.

Address the Editor of this magazine, 95 Madison Avenue, New York.

The Sport of Kings

Continued from page 10

morrow as later,” I whispered back, lest some one hear who might do the Colonel injury by reporting our conversation to those who gave him his job. "Besides, I can play tunes myself."

"But yoh'll do the dancin'," he muttered.

"I guess not," I said.

Then I swung from the car and made my way to the hotel. He followed more slowly, and a little later I looked up from a telegram which the room clerk had handed me and which I was reading in the lobby, to see the Colonel enter. I learned a great truth as he passed from the door to the elevator, his face drawn and white and very old. That truth was this: there is no price that pays for the loss of honor.

Justification a man may claim. Colonel Buckmaster had as much justification as any man may: he was dishonoring himself, that his blind daughter might not come to want. And yet, I felt that he could not have suffered more had his daughter been starving.

My telegram was from Benton:

Your fetter received. Think you must exaggerate danger. Anyway, no one will pull anything on you with your eyes open. Can learn nothing of S's business with C. Maybe things are rotten, but not so open as you think. You're plot shy after experience up here. Glad the mare is right. Have tipped a few of your friends and are going down strong. Luck to you.

I smiled bitterly. I couldn't blame old Sam, despite the evidence of rottenness that I had written him two days ago. No one not actually "in the know" could believe that things were as bad as I painted them. My relation of Dane's threats—Sam must have thought those threats but the ravings of a drunken man. Sam believed, probably, that Dane and Smiler Smith and Classon were up to some sort of game; but that that game should include a deliberate plot to steal a race—Sam was a long way off; he had never raced in Florida; he did not know to what unclean depths the sport of kings had sunk in that State. And he was going to plunge on Vivandière! I knew that nothing could stop him so long as I intended to do the same thing.

I folded the telegram and put it in my inside pocket. Then I went out once more to the stable. If Thursday night had been wakeful, Friday night was even worse. I barely closed my eyes all night. And every time I moved, Jerry would start up from his cot and ask me what was wrong.

To be continued next week

The Green Silk Dress

By FRANK HURBURT O'HARA

Illustrations by Anita Parkhurst

MISS VANITY JONES, aged nineteen, had always wanted to live up to her name. Six days out of seven, from 8 A. M. to 5 P. M., in the black dress and white collar that is the disguise of service in the Sergeant Meadows Store, she sold modish evening gowns, and the people who knew her called her "Miss Jones" or "Van." But there was nothing in the world she wanted so much as to live up to the fluffy name her parents had bestowed upon her at the baptismal font. Van had the manner of a violet and the soul of a sunflower. She longed to wear gowns, not to sell them. Then, late one summer afternoon, her chance came.

To begin with, Tom Cody, of the shipping department, earlier in the day had come to Van with a suggestion opening up a vista of alluring possibihty. Tom was big and brawny. He was very much in earnest. He was eager about his job, as many flights below Van's in the elevator shaft as his ambitions were in the social scale. And he was keen about Van—the rightful owner of genuine sunshine hair, hazel eyes, sylphlike form, lips that smiled with rosy ease to display pearly teeth, imitation silver mesh purse, white shoes with high heels, a tendency to hum musical-comedy airs, and a naïve way of locating back hair-pins while she talked to you. These were exteriors. Tom Cody liked them; but Tom could see down in Van's eyes something that pleased him more.

"T've got a fine idea for to-night," he began without prelude.

"What do you want to do?" she demanded languidly. That was the violet over the sunflower.

"I've got a couple of tickets for the Battery Z ball in the Venetian Room of the Senate Hotel," he announced.

His suggestion was like the sun. Van Jones's ambitions stirred and turned toward it.

"Will you go?" Tom asked eagerly.

"Will I go!" the girl repeated, with equal zest. Then: "Tsn't it sort of late to be inviting a lady to a swell party, Tom?" she queried. "Who's died?"

Tom's face flushed.

"See here," he exclaimed, "you know nobody's died. Bill Boswell's been doing the publicity for Battery Z, and he sent around a couple of comps. this morning. They're worth five bucks apiece. Will you go?"

"I'll go," Van decided. "And," she continued, her eyes brightening, "I'll wear my new silk gown. It's awfully classy, Tom. Really it is. I picked it up yesterday before the sale began. Only eleven fifty-five, Tom, and it's worth twenty-five if it's worth a cent. I know: I sell 'em."

The sunflower within her flared large as she pictured her pale green entrance in to the social whirl as typified by the Venetian Room and Battery Z.

Tom Cody showed his pride. He rose to the occasion.

"I'll hire a bird-tail," said Tom.

Van put a slim hand on his coat sleeve.

"You're a peach," she murmured—and meant it.

But, after all, it was not this offer that gave Van her chance. Not that she didn't want to go, and mean to go, and not that she didn't appreciate his consideration altogether. Perhaps Van herself will never know quite why she did what she did later that day. But the explanation was simple. She had been waiting for a long while for a single gilded opportunity to seem what she'd like to be. And, when Mr. Berthel Carus came along with his astounding proposition, Van remembered—and forgot. She remembered her longing, and forgot Tom Cody.

Berthel always looked as if he had just stepped out of a barber shop. His collars were of the proper height, his cravats of the correct width, his tronsers the current distance from the heel. And, though young Mr. Carus was toiling in the business office of the great store at something like twelve dollars a week, no one doubted that he was merely seeking what a young man has to seek after the academies are through with him: Berthel was in search of experience.

IT was later afternoon. Carus, hat in hand, passing through Van's department to pick up some detail of the closing day's work before he left for his suburban train, stopped short when he beheld the lovely Miss Jones lingering before a three-sided mirror, a radiant vision in pale green silk. She was doing a strange thing. Unconscious of an onlooker, she was stepping back to get a full view, and she was nodding smilingly at her own reflection. Carus heard her say: "Thank you very much; I've had a lovely time."

Carus coughed. Van flounced about.

"Oh, how do you do, Mr. Carus?" she nodded. They laughed together.

Carus thought he had never seen anything lovelier. He said so.

"Do you really like it?" asked Van eagerly. "You know, I've got one just like it at home. It's the first honest-to-goodness nice dress I've ever had. But of course you don't know."

She had known Carus a year or more, but she had never been so unreserved with him before. The peach-blow of her cheeks deepened. Carus liked the effect.

"Say," he exclaimed, "your customers haven't got anything on you, Miss Jones!"

Her eyes widened. But she tossed her head and parried:

"You're just being nice."

"Not at all. I think you know I'm not."

"Well," the girl temporized, "T'll admit the thin lady I've been showing these frocks to hasn't so much."

She laughed as she pointed to the rainbow disarray on the tables and thought of the angular woman.

There was a pause. Carus was thinking. At last he said:

"Miss Jones, I really meant what I said. I've known a lot of girls, society girls and all, and I'll wager none of 'em has a thing on you in that green dress."

Van pointed a playful finger at him, but he hurried on:

"You think I'm kidding, don't you? Well, I'll show you I'm not. I'm going out in the world to-night. To be explicit, T'm going into Brookedge society. I live in Brookedge. It's a highbrow suburb, believe me. Mrs. Jerrick is giving one of her salons. They're quite the thing at Brookedge: very ultra. All sorts of people—lions, and that sort. She's having a namesake of yours to-night—Fay Jones, of the 'Midnight Moon,' that closed last week. Will you come along?"

Van caught her breath.

"T don't think you're very nice to make fun of me," she said.

"I'm not. I have a hunch you can play up to Mrs. Jerrick's style and come her one better. There's a six-forty train that gets there about seven-five. T'll have the family hack there to meet you. What do you say'?"

Van tried hard to look disinterested; but it was difficult. "Mrs. Gerald Jerrick?" she couldn't help asking.

Carus nodded. "The same," said he.

"But I haven't anything to wear."

"Why, you look like a million dollars right now," the man averred.

"But it isn't mine."

"You got one like it, you said."

"Tt's at home."

"Well?"

"That's miles away, Mr. Carus. I couldn't possibly make it."

Carus pondered, then smiled.

"Any of the gowns in your department ever been out overnight?" he suggested.

"Sure," said Van.

"Ever suspect they'd been worn?"

The girl laughed.

"We know it, sometimes. But that's by folks like—Mrs. Jerrick."

"I've said she hasn't got anything on you!"

"Of course it'd be almost like wearing my own," Van mused.

"Exactly," Carus put in quickly. "You'll come, won't you?"

All at once Van assented.

"Remember," said Carus, "T'll have the 'bus there to meet you. The six-forty. See you later."

Van, left alone, lost herself in the fancy of a preposterously unreal prospect suddenly lifted to reality. She could picture the strange event. Then back into her consciousness flashed Tom Cody.

She wondered what she could do. Carus was out of reach. Meanwhile, Tom Cody was down in the shipping-rooms. Between them there were merely several floors of busy store world. And, since there was no telephone in her home, and Tom lived just around the corner from her, she could fell two birds, according to proverb.

Van penciled a brief message on an address tag, and despatched it to him by a parcel boy. She had one thought to console her: Tom wouldn't have to rent a bird-tail coat.

AT nightfall a slim girl in a pale green dress stepped on to the station platform at Brookedge. She was the last to leave the train. She watched the impatient commuters troop north and south toward lights blurring in the dusk. She had expected to find the familiar fashionable form of Berthel Carus hurrying to meet her. Instead, as she looked, a dark figure came up to her.

"Miss Jones?" he demanded.

"Yes," said Van.

"This way," the low, muffled voice directed; and he led the way.

Van followed. He took her to a small closed cab.

"You're going to Mrs. Jerrick's?" she asked.

The man grunted affirmatively; then added, "She's looking for you."

Van stepped inside, and the door shut behind her. She sat erect, looking straight before her. A vague unease possessed her. She wondered why Berthel Carus had failed to meet her. Then her mind jumped to Tom Cody. She thought of her home, perched three flights up in a shabby flat building, and of her mother and father and little brother. She wondered what they would think of her first message that she'd not be home till late. She wondered when the ride would come to an end.

At last the driver jerked his horse to a stop. Van looked out to see the lights of a large isolated house penciling the darkness. The cab door opened. She got out. The driver resumed his seat and drove back into the night.

OUT of her prison, Van felt better. She laughed uncertainly at her recent misgivings. Something had detained Carus, of course. She had been silly. She was not afraid; she could finish what she had started.

She walked boldly up on the veranda. Almost instantly the door swung open. A distinguished gentleman in full dress confronted her. She knew him for a butler. She tried to say easily, "Miss Jones," but the legend caught in her throat. She went where he directed, and let a maid take her hat and modest cloak. She surveyed herself in the mirror of a maple dressing-table. The view was reassuring. She tried her smile again. It was still working. She went down the broad stairs and into a large room, wearing the smile.

There was no one in the room. The crackling log fire was friendly, and she was moving toward its companionable glow when suddenly what appeared to be solid white woodwork at one end of the room slid open, and she heard gay voices and saw the shimmer of a dinner-table. The guests were coming ont.

Miss Vanity Jones stopped in her progress toward the fireplace, and stood at attention, her party smile curving her lips.

And the party spread about the room, engulfing her; and no one seemed to notice her. Coffee-cups were being circulated. A heavy-set man with eye-glasses on a black ribbon was passing. He stopped.

"I beg your pardon," he said easily. "You haven't had your coffee, have you? It iscoffee?" he added, his inflection rising, though Van did not know why.

"Yes—coffee," she murmured, and was about to add, "Thanks," but substituted, as she had heard some one near her remark: "You're very clever to know."

"But I couldn't forget," the man replied with matter-of-fact banter, trying to remember who she was. "Two sugars?"

"Thanks," said Van.

At this stage she began to feel helpless. She was grateful to the exotic-looking woman who approached them and addressed the man with a Southern accent.

"Bobby," pleaded the newcomer, "won't you please find me some Chartreuse?"

"Bobby" dodged Chartreuseward, and the Southerncr turned to Van.

"I never appreciated Chartreuse until the war began," she confided; "but, now that it's so hard to get, I'm simply mad about it. Perverse in me, isn't it?"

She seemed to expect Van to say something.

"It makes madam very smart," said Miss Vanity Jones of the Sergeant Meadows Store, wildly reciting the only phrase that came into her head.

The other laughed melodiously. "Clever!" she applauded. "Don't you just dote on hearing them say that?"

"No, it bores me," said Van, unconsciously getting back to form.

VAN looked nervously over her shoulder. She thrilled to spy rescue advancing. But her thrill promptly froze to a sickening dismay. The woman who was bearing down upon her beamingly was tall and angular. Out of her Sergcant Meadows training the girl had learned never to forget a customer's face. And, anyway,she had seen the woman far too recently to forget. Her angularity seemed to spell instant disaster. But the woman came

---

up with extended hands, and took both the girl's hands.

"I'm so glad to see yon, Miss Jones," is what she said. "I know you're Miss Jones," she rushed on, "because you're the only one I don't know. I'm sorry you couldn't come for dinner. But where's Mr. Simkins?"

"Mr. Simkins?" Van repeated dully.

"You don't mean to tell me he didn't come?" the woman marveled.

Van didn't know Mr. Simkins, but she ventured the fact that he had not come with her. The woman was distraught. If she had dreamed that Miss Jones would have to come from the station alone, she'd have gone down herself. Van told her it was perfectly all right.

"Ah, you stage people!" retorted the other. "You're always so self-possessed. Really, I envy you. But come, you must meet my guests."

Van looked at her with a start.

"Then you," she said, "are Mrs. Jerrick?"

"Of course. How stupid of me not to have introduced myself!"

THE subsequent half hour was a dazed one for the slight girl whom the social magnate steered about. It seemed as if she were moving through a thick haze of talk she did not comprehend. Out of it all she got only the realization that she was there doubly under false colors. Through the hum of her embarrassment she could hear the voice of Berthel Carus saying, "She's having your namesake tonight—Fay Jones, of the 'Midnight Moon.'" She wanted to tell Mrs. Jerrick of the mad mistake; but every time she tried, she noted her angularity and recalled the tiresome siege of showing unbought gowns to her hostess a few hours earlier in the day, and she refrained. So she listened to talk about footlights and long runs and her own supposed charm of "putting over" popular tunes. She didn't know what answers she was making, and somehow couldn't care. She realized only that they thought her interestingly "different." She was.

"I know where you got that gown," whispered Mrs. Jerrick, growing chummy in a lull. Van believed her. "And it looks perfectly stunning on you, my dear. I saw one just like it this afternoon, when I was scouting for costumes for our Country Club Revels."

"Not really?" Van echoed the caught-up phrase, feeling like a criminal.

Mrs. Jerrick switched the subject. A large woolly dog had intervened. Mrs. Jerrick petted him and pretended chagrin at his admission.

"He's not really mine at all," she explained. "He belongs to a family down the road—middle-class, you know. And Woolly is esthetic. He'd rather starve here than go to his rightful owners."

Van looked at her hostess with narrowing eyes. The speech had wakened her.

"What do you mean, middle-class?" she said.

"Oh, you understand."

Don't you think it's funny, all this talk about classes?"

SHE might have said more—she might even have lifted herself unconsciously out of the pretense of her evening—if Berthel Carus had not just then hurriedly entered the room.

"Van," he cried, for the first time using the name which, under the circumstances, sounded good to the girl, "how did you ever get here? I had a blow-out half way to the station. When I got there the train had gone. But I thought, of course, you'd wait; so I hung around until the next train. Thought you'd missed yours. How'd you find the place?"

"Why, I came in the hack," said Van. "You said you'd have it there."

"The hack?" he repeated, too surprised to laugh. "Why, I meant our car."

Then, hastily, she told him what had happened.

"I told you they didn't have anything on you," Carus boasted.

"But what am I going to do?" sighed Van.

"Do? Finish the game, of course."

"Nothing doing," she objected. "I'm going home. Fay Jones will be dropping in any minute."

She started toward the hallway. Mrs. Jerrick joined them.

"Oh, you know Miss Jones, do you?" she greeted Carus.

Van did not like the tone. Her misgivings flashed upon her for an instant. Still, Berthel Carus seemed her nearest approach to a friend to-night. With him, at least, she was not false.

A telephone bell tinkled in a recess of the hallway. Mrs. Jerrick was summoned. Van looked after her, and then nervously at Carus. Once more she made for the stairway.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Carus cautioned. "This won't do. She'll be out of there in a jiffy."

And she was. But she merely urged them to start the dancing.

"Dancing must be second nature with you, Miss Jones," she observed sweetly.

It was; Van had never been taught. As she glided lightly over the floor with Berthel Carus, no observer would have guessed that she needed lessons.

AFTER the dancing and supper, some one lightly ran fingers over the keys of the grand piano in a corner of the room. Van looked. It was a girl dressed in yellow, with bits of gold here and there. Presently she began to sing, her large eyes round and childlike. Van could not understand all of the song, for its verses alternated between English and French. But what she heard made the color deepen in her cheeks. The girl ended in a patter of applause and bravos.

"I could sing something rough, if I wanted to," said the girl, looking round with her childish eyes.

They acclaimed her threat, but she left the piano and slipped demurely into a chair somebody offered.

Van was so preoccupied that at first she did not understand what the assembled guests were calling for. When she did, her blood throbbed warm at her wrists and temples. They wanted her to sing! She felt faint at the thought. And yet—something new and triumphant throbbed within her, too—something like the belligerency that had flared at mention of the middle classes. When Berthel Carus came reluctantly, upon demand, to

Continued on page 23

Should I Buy Motor Stocks?

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

AT the present time the country is being flooded with stock offerings in automobile or automobile accessory companies. Judging from present indications, the public will within a few years find itself "landed" with millions of dollars of worthless pieces of paper.

These statements may seem strong, but only blunt talk will save people from throwing away their money. Never was the fly-by-night promoting game running at such speed as now. The country appears to be filled with persons whose pockets overflow with money, a class without experience in determining genuine investment values, unaware even of the dangers of "margin" trading in stocks, and therefore the easiest of prey for designing and unscrupulous promoters.

The fundamental condition is that in times of prosperity, when public interest runs high in any given group of established stocks, the imitators and parasites come along to take advantage of the public whim and flood the country with new offerings of the same general nature, but usually without any of its merits. For several reasons the motor business has undergone a great expansion in the last few years and has experienced unusual prosperity. But it is, in a way, a giant out of hand.

Great Profits in Motor Stocks

I DO not deny that great profits are yet to be made in this business. Indeed, it seems most likely that individual manufacturers, as well as stockholders in many companies, may reap tremendous riches. But this condition can not continue indefinitely, and when the inevitable turn comes it will be the newly launched ventures that will suffer. As Mr. W. C. Durant, who is chairman of the largest motor concern next to Ford, said at the annual meeting of his company: "There are no mysteries, nor is there anything mystifying about the motor-car business. It means capital, good management and organization, and good product."

Every prospective buyer of motor shares should let these words burn into his brain. Even assuming that the future of the motor trade will be as rosy as the present, it is absolutely certain, unless all business and financial experience is to be proved worthless, that scores of the newly promoted companies will never attain to commercial success. And of course, if there should be a slump, the score or two of well established concerns will be the only ones that will weather the storm.

At least two companies have sold stock to no fewer than ten thousand separate investors. If a single one of those gullible persons had stopped to think over Mr. Durant's statement he would not buy such stock, because the specifications of success are plainly not met in such stock offerings. In some cases companies that are selling stock haven't any product at all, for they haven't made any cars.

I suggest that investors should be wary of all shares in motor companies that are not established producing concerns. Shun especially stocks the promoters of which fill their literature largely with telling you about the profits other motor companies have made. While there are a few notable exceptions, the majority of legitimately concelved and promising enterprises are able to obtain the assistance of reputable bankers in selling their stock to the investing public. Scores, probably hundreds, of reliable bankers and brokers are offering motor notes and preferred stook, and in a few cases common stock. Many of these offerings are extremely attractive speculative investments, paying 7 per cent., 8 per cent., and even more.

Among many other legitimate offerings by well known and responsible bankers have been the 8 per cent. preferred stock of the Pierce-Arrow Company, sold by the bankers at 107; the notes of the Packard Company; common stock of the Chalmers, sold at $35 a share, with dividends of $3 a year expected after January I; the 7 per cent. preferred stock of the Paige-Detroit Motor Company; and either notes or preferred stock of several truck companies, paying from 7 to 8 per cent. These are only a few of the legitimate offerings, most of them in no sense gilt-edged or conservative investments, but a reasonable "business man's risk."

Free Booklets that You May Have for the Asking

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 35-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.

"A Long Look Ahead" is the title of a circular that analyzes present market predictions as to the course 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, Q-33, will be sent on request.

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. Coombs & Co., 122 Broadway, New York City, will send you a copy on request.

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.

The new 1917 Dividend Calendar shows approximate ex-dividend and dividend payable dates, of shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange and New York Curb. This Calendar and Odd Lot Booklet are sent on request, free of charge, by Baruch Brothers, members of the New York Stock Exchange, 60 Broadway, New York City.

Bankers and business men all over the country read the Bache Review to keep in touch with the financial situation. It contains comprehensible, reliable, and able views of current events as they affect business, finance, and investments. It is issued weekly by J. S. Bache & Co., 42 Broadway, New York. Sent on application.

A booklet explaining why public utility holding companies' securities offer safe and conservative investments for all classes of investors will be sent upon request to inquirers mentioning thi smagazine by H. M. Byllesby & Company, 218 So. La Salle Street, Chicago, or 1219 Trinity Building, New York. The booklet describes the properties of, and cities served by, Standard Gas & Electric Company.

The Odd Lot Review, a weekly financial paper for small and large investors, will keep you in touch with all investment opportunities. It is edited in an interesting manner, and can be read in fifteen minutes by the business man who wishes to know the financial developments that occur from week to week. Sample copy will be sent on request to 61 Broadway, New York City.

Phelps-Eastman Company (Farm Mortgage Bankers), 500 McKnight Building, Minneapolis, Minnesota, are specializing in the best farming district of the prosperous Northwest—Montana, the great wheat State. This company will select 6 per cent. mortgages to cover specified amounts, and send full description. Write for booklet, "Questions and Answers."

"Scientific Saving" is the title of a booklet comparing different methods of saving and showing how quickly small amounts accumulate. This booklet and a copy of Bond Talk, a bi-monthly magazine discussing investment bonds, will be sent on request. Ask for booklets "E" and "W," by P. W. Brooks & Co., 115 Broadway, New York City.

Investors desiring to acquire $100 bonds of the best known issues, and of a class that is 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.

Of special interest to investors is the January Public Utilities Letter, issued by Williams, Troth & Coleman, 60 Wall Street, New York City. This may be secured without charge by writing for Report "2."

Any one interested in 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.

A special letter on Argentine Conditions and Argentine Railway Securities, with full reports, is available to all investors without charge. Send to Messrs. C. W. Pope & Co., 15 Broad Street, New York City, for letter "E."

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 five cents in stamps, at 95 Madison Avenue, New York, he will send you a copy.

Continued from page 21

escort her to the piano, she rose quickly. "Buck up," he whispered.

Mrs. Jerrick was at her side.

If you'd rather not," she began anxiously.

"Oh, thank you; I'd rather."

"Give us something from the 'Midnight Moon,'" they chorused. "Give us the 'Lunar Dip.'

Van turned to them, her back to the keys.

"No," she said; "I think I'd rather not. I'11 give you something—middle-class. I'm afraid it isn't rough." And she looked calmly at the girl with the innocent eyes.

Then she sang. In her queer, untrained voice, with her simple, untrained accompaniment, largely chords, she gave them two or three common songs of the day. They listened and approved and asked for more. Perhaps it was merely politeness. Anyway, Van paused a moment, and then in the hush sang "Just Play in Your Own Back Yard." The guests applauded—genuinely, it seemed.

WHEN Van came downstairs in her cheap little hat and simple cloak over the borrowed green silk dross, Mrs. Jerrick was standing angularly in the hall. Van went up to her with resolution in her eyes. But Mrs. Jerrick spoke first, softly.

"My dear, you're very wonderful."

"Mrs. Jerrick," Van replied, "I'm a cheat."

Mrs. Jerrick smiled.

"Please don't put it that way," she said. "You're even better it this than you are at showing gowns."

"Then you've known all the time?" the girl breathed.

"No," said Mrs. Jerrick. "Only since Miss Jones telephoned." She put her hand lightly on Van's shoulder and looked into her eyes. "I think I'm glad she couldn't come," she confessed.

Van took the hand.

"Thanks for letting me come," she recited. "I've had a lovely time." She hesitated. Something made her add heartily: "I've had a fine time!"

She was silent on the way to the station. She felt Carus's presence at the wheel, so close to her, but she did not look at him. His free arm brushed against her. She shrank away. At the station Carus jumped out, helped her to the platform, and said:

"Wait a minute, and I'll run in and get your ticket."

"Thanks," she answered; "I bought a round trip."

"Then we'll get a little air," he said. "The train's not due for ten or fifteen minutes." He looked at his watch. "Twelve," he corrected. "Shall we walk the platform, or take a spin?"

"The platform," Van murmured.

So they walked.

"You were stunning, Van!" he cried.

She did not answer.

"Not, sleepy, are you?"

"No, I'm not sleepy," said Van.

She thought she heard a distant whistle. She looked back at the station. There was no one waiting. The vague uncertainty that had been upon her in the cab stole over her again.

"Hadn't we better turn back? I couldn't miss my train, you know."

If you did, honey, I'd take you in in the car," he whispered.

And all at once his arms were about her, and she felt his lips on her face.

She did not cry out. She did not try to wrench herself from his embrace. She buried her head in the crook of his arm, and guarded her face from his kisses.

"Van," he whispered, "I'm crazy about you. I knew you weren't our sort, but I knew you could climb in and make good. You were wonderful, Van, wonderful!"

"You knew I wasn't—your—sort," came in muffled tones.

The whistle sounded again. Van's body stiffened, and her hands clenched until the nails dented the palms.

"Gee, I'm crazy about you!" muttered Mr. Berthel Carus.

With a clash the train was beside them. It groaned into the station and stopped. Then Van pushed the force of her clenched hands against him, slipped from under his arms, and stood for a second, gasping.

"You piker!" she said, and ran for the train.

SHE reached the last coach as it was moving away from the platform. She caught at the iron railing and with an effort swung herself to the lowest step. And, as she lifted her trembling body to the step, she could hear the shrill, sibilant sound of tearing silk. It was the pale green gown.

She dragged herself into the coach, and in the light stared numbly at the rent. It zigzagged from waist to knee. She smiled grimly, perhaps partly from hysteria. She was thinking of the duplicate gown at home.

The conductor came down the aisle from the other end of the car.

"What's the matter with you, lady?" he growled, taking her ticket. "Don't you know better than to hop a train like that? Lucky you didn't break your neck."

"If you say another word to me," she stammered, "I'll—"

"Well, what'll you do?"

"I'11 cry," said Van.

But she didn't. The conductor moved on, and she stared out of the window, dry-eyed. She did not see the station lights, or the inky silhouettes of trees. She saw other things—poignant things. She saw a silly little girl who had been Vanity Jones. She wondered wistfully at the girl's ambition to live up to her name. She saw her family that.

An alonesomeness came over her. She wanted to be home. She wondered what they were doing there, and if all were well. Of course nothing could have happened; yet, for all that, she felt that she never should have deserted them for a bit of stolen vanity. "Vanity, vanity, vanity," the rails took up the thought. She would have given a great deal to have had Tom Cody, brusque, stalwart, honest, in the seat with her.

All the way home on the elevated the same fears followed her. When she hastened up her dingy street her footfalls beat the same refrains on the walk. Then, almost there, Van's heart gave a sudden bound, and seemed to stop.

In the street before the building in which her family lived a crowd had gathered. Fire engines chugged at the corners, fire wagons were at the door, and a vast sheet of steam and smoke ascended skyward, enveloping the outlines of the building. Through the mist she could see the lanterns of the firemen, three flights up, floating about like toy balloons.

AT the restraining ropes that hemmed the crowd out, she was stopped. She tried to tell them that she must go on, but her words were unintelligible.

Then a hand was put firmly upon her. She looked up dully. It was the hand of a man who had apparently come out of the fire. His face was grimy, but Van recognized Tom Cody.

"Are they safe?" Van managed to whisper hoarsely.

"Yes, "said Tom. "They're in our house."

"You were there?' faintly.

"I went over to see what I could do. I got there first," he told her simply.

"Oh, I'm glad they're safe!" cried Van. She looked up tremblingly into his face. "Is everything gone?" she faltered.

He nodded awkwardly. "Your mother says it's insured."

"I wonder," said Van, and paused. "I wonder if—"

"Yes, dearie?" said Tom soothingly.

"I was wondering about—about a pale green dress—"

"My God, Van!" cried Tom Cody. "Can't you over forget—"

But Vanity Jones had put her slim arms about his shoulders, and was weeping into his grimly coat. The wet soot trickled against her gown, unheeded.