"If a Man Die, Shall He Live Again?"

IT is the age-old question, asked at the side of every bier—asked by all the Christian world at Easter-time.

And what can one say in answer to it?

Every one of us is taught in childhood to believe in God and an after life.

I remember, when I was beginning to read and think a little, it occurred to me that, though I had been told there is a future life, nobody had ever given me any proof.

So industriously I set to work in the public library to read the works of the greatest men who ever lived and find proofs for myself.

And I remember how, slowly at first, then faster and faster, I turned through one wise man's book after another. "Surely this one will know," I said to myself; "or this one; or this."

And suddenly the bitter truth flashed over me. They did not know, any more than I did. All their proofs were not proofs at all. In all history there had never lived a man wise enough to prove immortality. Al most everybody believed: nobody really knew.

It was a discovery that left me helpless at first: then slowly out of my helplessness I began to evolve a little system of my own.

In the first place, it seems to me easier to believe than to disbelieve.

"The world just happened," say some men. "It created itself through the operation of natural laws."

And that sounds very scientific and satisfactory.

But who or what established the natural laws and set them to operating?

When you can dump a load of bricks on a corner lot, and let me watch them arrange themselves into a house—when you can empty a handful of springs and wheels and screws on my desk, and let me see them gather themselves together into a watch—it will be easier for me to believe that all these thousands of worlds could have been created, balanced, and set to moving in their separate orbits, all without any directing intelligence at all.

Moreover, if there is no intelligence in the universe, then the universe has created something greater than itself—for it has created you and me.

Is it easy to believe that a universe without personality could have created us who have personality?

Isn't it easier to believe that our personality is a little part of the great pervading Personality that has created and now permeates the universe?

And if there be a Personality in the universe—a God—what kind of a God is He?

He must be at least as good as you or I. He couldn't have made us better than Himself. The worse can not create the better.

And if He is a good God, is it reasonable to suppose that He would have planted in human hearts this unquenchable yearning for immortality, and left that yearning unsatisfied?

You and I would not have done so.

Go where you will, from the most savage race to the most cultured, you find that same instinctive assurance that death is not the end. Would a good God plant that assurance in his creatures merely to mock them?

Without immortality the world is an answerless riddle. We are born; we struggle up through slow years of development; and just as we have reached our highest point of usefulness—we are cut off.

What inefficiency! What waste!

It is hard for me to believe in a universe that made itself, and that ruthlessly casts away its most precious possession—human personality.

It is easier to believe that back of the universe is a guiding Intelligence, of whose personality my own is a tiny spark that shall not go out while He lives.

If I can not prove that this is so, neither can any one prove to me that it is not so.

And, until some one can disprove it, I find it easier, more helpful, more efficient, to believe.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE CONSUL AT PARAMINTA

By LEE FOSTER HARTMAN

Illustrations by George E. Wolfe

THE town lay like a white scar against the green of the hills, with a fringe of wind-blown palms edging down to the shore where the Caribbean curled blue and white upon the yellow sand. Inland there were banana plantations; and Paraminta, in consequence, was a port of call for vessels in the fruit-carrying trade. Two long, cavernous warehouses, flanking the landward end of the jetty, lay steeped in the tropic sunshine; and a stone's throw from the company's office on the water-frout was another frame building, above which flew the American flag.

The particular Central American republic to which Paraminta belonged was repesented by a comandante of some sort, and a customs office—the latter consisting of three men and a clerk, who were the bane of every skipper of the National Fruit vessels that put in there. They were an officious and stupid lot, and most exasperating to deal with, as I had come to learn for myself. Jacobson, the American consul, alone seemed to know how to handle them. In fact, in the lonely years he had been stationed at Paraminta, he had developed an extraordinary genius for manipulating that trio of Latin-Amercan blockheads, and for deftly unwinding the red tape in which they constantly entangled themselves and every one else that came within their official reach.

Jacobson was short and stout—fat, to speak the literal truth—and the belt around his immaculate white trousers must have measured a tremendous number of inches. He suffered from the heat, and I wondered at his uncomplaining endurance in putting up with a tropical climate for so many years at that inconspicuous post. I wondered, too, that Washington hadn't recognized the unquestioned ability of the man, and shifted him to a better post. But at Paraminta he stuck year after year—a seemingly permanent fixture.

The bungalow that was his consular office was always the first place I made for, when in port. There I was sure to find him, fresh shaven and immaculate in his white clothes, always with the same slow, ingratiating smile and offer of a big, masterful hand, while he put his habitual question:

"Beastly hot, isn't it?"

He would wave me toward a chair, and inquire what sort of trip I had had with as marked a delight in my casual visit as if I had come half round the world, when, as a matter of fact, the Bellefair called at Paraminta for cargo every eight weeks.

Next he would clap his hands for his Japanese servant, and would interrupt whatever I might be saying with the query: "You're going to join me in a drink, aren't you, Captain?" And while the Oriental went for ice and glasses, he would lift his ponderous body from the swivel-chair at his desk to cross the room for a box of cigars.

It was a September afternoon, and I had dropped in upon him after a particularly hard run from New York.

"By the way, when were you here last? July, wasn't it? Then it must have happened three or four weeks later. Steam yacht put in here. Private yacht Algonquin—New York party," he explained tersely.

He shook the ice in his glass and dug his straw into it—it was some lime-juice concoction of which he was inordinately fond. Bending over the glass, and with the straw in his lips, he regarded me obliquely.

"You'd never guess what they turned up here for. Treasure-hunting—so they said."

"Treasure-hunting!" I echoed in surprise.

"Um-m," he answered through the straw. "And Villa Nueva is for sale, if you want to buy it," he went on irrelevantly, referring to a big estate which lay above the town, the home of Señor Ybarra, who had lived there in seclusion for several years.

THIS was a budget of news, indeed, for the somnolent little town of Paraminta to produce between trips.

It was the latter part of his intelligence that at once interested me.

"What's become of Señor Ybarra?" I demanded, and it flashed through my mind that he might have vanished from Paraminta as abruptly as he had appeared there five years before. "You don't mean to tell me he's cleared out suddenly, do you?"

Jacobson looked up sharply, and then slowly smiled.

"Well, you might put it that way," he conceded.

"I'm not surprised," I rejoined bluntly.

The consul set down his glass and scrutinized me with half-shut eyes.

"I didn't think you were acquainted with Señor Ybarra," he said thoughtfully.

"Well, I wasn't—exactly. He was once—no, twice—a passenger on my vessel," I answered. Then I added: "I don't believe I ever told you. His real name was Phillips."

Jacobson's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "You knew that? I had no idea—"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Since he's gone, it's no matter. You may wonder that I didn't tell you any time these past four years. But when I discovered that the young fellow had established himself here, calling himself Ybarra, I reflected that it was quite his own affair. It certainly was no business of mine. Of course you could see that he wasn't Spanish."

"Oh, yes," said Jacobson. "He was dark, but not in a Spanish way. He told me himself that he had lived in the States."

"It was one of those queer cases you sometimes come across in the newspapers," I went on to explain, now rather eager to recount the facts that I had so long kept to myself. "At least, that's where I stumbled upon it five years ago. My vessel was being overhauled in the South Brooklyn docks, and I had nothing

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to do but read the newspapers, so I followed the reports of the Phillips case from day to day. The young man had had a sudden rise in Wall Street, and then had gone into some mining development schemes, and had overreached himself. His lawyers maintained he had been victimized by a group of unscrupulous promoters who had made him a vice-president in the company to insure his usefulness as a cat's-paw.

"Half a million dollars had been poured into the scheme—largely through Phillips' personal efforts—before it fell through. When the storm broke, it naturally centered upon Phillips. There was a trial, of course, but nothing was ever proved—except, of course, that the money had disappeared. There was no doubt about that. The jury disagreed—which, on the whole, was a bad thing for Phillips. Everybody constituted himself a jury, and the wrangling went on.

"Phillips couldn't stand it. He fled—which, under the circumstances, was the worst possible thing he could have done. I think he realized that he was making a mistake in scuttling to cover. My vessel was just then out of dry-dock, and he was one of the thirty-odd passengers booked for Jamaica. He was down on the passenger list as Ybarra. He kept aloof from the other passengers, pacing the deck a great deal in the evenings. I took him at first for an overworked business man, making the trip for his health. Something about his face, though, seemed familiar to me. At length I remembered. I had seen any number of pictures of him in the papers. I was sure he was Phillips. When we made port at Kingston, he didn't show himself on deck until the gang-planks were down, and then he hurried ashore.

"I forgot about him until six months or so later, when I came face to face with him here at Paraminta. I was on my way here, and I remember asking you who he was. You told me his name was Ybarra, and that he was a mining prospector."

"It comes back to me now," said Jacobson. "I think he told me that he had been working in Mexico and had got a touch of fever. Thought the sea air here might do him good. He looked pretty seedy at the time."

"Seedy?" I rejoined. "Well, rather! There was a shabby, down-at-heels aspect about him. It occurred to me that, if he had sequestered his share of the half million that had gone glimmering, he wasn't levying on it as yet very strongly. Next time I saw him was in Kingston. That must have been a year later. He came on board the Bellefair, bound back here to Paraminta. He was quite spruced up. I got acquainted with him a little. He told me that he had taken an option on a tract of land at Paraminta, and was going to start a plantation."

JACOBSON spoke abruptly:

"And so you've known who he was—all these years! I wish, though, you had told me."

"Why," I demurred, "I might have let it slip any time if our talk had happened to veer that way. I can't say I regarded it as a secret, exactly. At best, it was only a surmise on my part—seeing his picture in the papers, you know. It's quite possible that he wasn't Phillips—"

The consul thumped upon the desk as a signal to the Japanese to replenish our glasses.

"Ybarra was Phillips," he said shortly. "That New York party that put in here on that steam yacht was quite a jolt for him."

"So!" I exclaimed, suddenly sensing the turn matters had taken. "Well, I can imagine!"

"Oh," said Jacobson, "they didn't know Ybarra—or Phillips, rather. That is—well, let me tell you."

The swivel-chair in which he sat creaked as he swung his heavy body around into a more comfortable position. Through a break in the rattan screen which shut out the afternoon sun, a splotch of light filtered through upon the floor. Through a window on the opposite side of the room I could see the roof-tops of Paraminta and a turn of the white dusty road, edged with royal palms, that wound upward toward Señor Ybarra's estate.

"That party in the Algonquin—I was ready enough to believe that they had put in here on a treasure-hunt. You know how people will try it, off and on. There's something about the vision of chests of Spanish doubloons buried in the sand that some people can't resist. So when Professor Ambrose's party—you've heard of Professor Ambrose, of course?"

I nodded. When a man of wealth achieves distinction as a scientist, he is apt to be heard of. "The botanist, " I answered.

"He's a humorist, too," went on Jacobson. The recollection seemed to tickle him. Then his brows contracted. "In one way, though, it was very far from being a joke. However—

"THE yacht put in here about noon one day in August. Beastly hot, of course—just like this. I naturally expected that the flag flying over this shack of mine would bring me a visit, and I prepared for callers. They came: Professor Ambrose, and his sister, a Mrs. Rutledge; the latter having avoirdupois tendencies like myself, and not relishing the heat any more than I do. What had tempted her to let herself in for a tropical cruise in midsummer, I couldn't imagine.

"The others were her niece, Eleanor Rutledge, a nice-looking girl of twenty-five or so, and a restless young chap named Marchant, a protégé of the professor's. At first I surmised a love affair between the two of them, but I was quite mistaken. Eleanor Rutledge hadn't eyes for any man except her uncle, who was trying to interest her in botany. Rather

too bad, I thought. Then there was the captain of their yacht—Captain Scoville.

"I had Togo squashing pineapples and serving piñas frias all round. I apologized for the meager hospitality my narrow quarters permitted of, but I wanted them to feel that the consulate was entirely theirs, such as it was. I hoped they would make themselves at home. With twenty-four hours' leeway, I could offer them a dinner. Wouldn't they honor me on the following evening?

"They were very nice about it, I must say. They couldn't think of putting me to such a lot of trouble. Instead, wouldn't I dine with them on the Algonquin? But I insisted that they must let me celebrate. So we agreed on lunch the next day at the consulate, and dinner at night on the yacht. Meanwhile I had expressed my surprise that they had ventured so far south in midsummer.

"'Oh, we've come treasure-hunting,' spoke up Professor Ambrose. He was a short, wiry little man, with a close-cut beard and beady black eyes. 'One can't be balked by the thermometer when it's a case of treasure-hunting on the Spanish Main, you know.'

"I grinned a sort of polite acquiescence. Then I noticed that the little professor was laughing at me. He explained that the treasure he was after was rare plants of some sort. The Twin Brother islands, lying off the mouth of the bay, were his objective. He wanted to do a little botanizing there. Presumed there would be no objection to poking about the shores of those islands, would there?

"Why, no, I thought not. The islands belonged to Señor Ybarra. No one ever set foot on them. They could probably be bought outright for fifty dollars gold, if any one wanted to acquire legal title to such worthless crumbs of the earth's surface. If they liked, I would mention to Señor Ybarra, as a matter of courtesy, that they wanted to explore the Twin Brothers.

"Or wouldn't they like to call on Señor Ybarra, themselves, I suggested. They surely would want to visit Villa Nueva—the one show place Paraminta afforded—and the ruined monastery that crowned the hill behind it. I vouched for the cordiality of Señor Ybarra's welcome. They mustn't think him a haughty Spanish don, if his name did suggest it."

Jacobson thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and regarded me with a whimsical smile. "That, you see, was my little joke. I rather relished the surprise they would have in finding Ybarra, to all appearances, a well spoken young American like themselves. You see, I hadn't the faintest glimmer of an idea that his name wasn't Ybarra."

HE stopped abruptly, and went over to the doorway, where he stood for a moment, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief, and looking out across the bay, now a deep sapphire, flecked with bits of white where the water curled across the reefs.

"Beastly hot, isn't it?" he said over his shoulder. "Well, the party set out presently to do the town. It was well past four o'clock, and the sun was slanting pretty obliquely across the hills—no longer murderous, you know. I had suggested that they ascend the road leading to Villa Nueva and get the view of the bay, and call on Señor Ybarra if they found him at home. If he wasn't at home, they would be sure to find his overseer or manager of the estate—a very decent young fellow, and an American, who would show them about. I would have accompanied them myself, but I had some letters to get off by the fruiter that was sailing in an hour. Perhaps I would join them later.

"So they set off, Professor Ambrose and Mrs. Rutledge gradually falling back, Miss Rutledge and the two younger men going on ahead."

"How do you know that?" I interjected.

Jacobson smiled.

"You'll be putting that question to me more than once, Captain, before I've finished. But you'll see presently. Just listen. How Miss Rutledge got separated from her two companions, though, I can't say. Perhaps they halted to view the bay after their climb, and the girl may have impulsively started on again by herself. At any rate, she was the first to set foot upon the grounds of Villa Nueva. Half way up that line of royal palms, she came upon Ybarra himself, superintending a couple of workmen at some job or other."

Jacobson's cigar had gone out, and he now discarded it to take up his pipe, crossing the room to get tobacco. With his back toward me as he filled the pipe from a canister, he suddenly shot a question at me:

"Captain Haskell, in your speculations about Phillips and that financial mess he fled from, did it ever occur to you that he might have left a sweetheart in New York?"

"Heavens!" I ejaculated. "You don't mean to tell me—not that girl? Not really?"

He turned, with the pipe in his lips, to observe the effect that his sinister quesstion had evoked.

"I know I am telling this story very badly," he said in a mock-apologetic tone.

"You aren't telling it at all," I retorted. "You're tempting me to imagine Phillips and that girl coming suddenly face to face after all these years of—well, what? Utter silence? Just as if the earth had swallowed him up?"

"Something like that," assented the consul. He came leisurely back to his chair, and it creaked sharply under his weight as he sat down. "There they were—the two of them—staring at each other, face to face, across that gap of five silent years. It seems that she had never doubted his honesty. Even this flight—without warning to her except for a short, despairing note, such as suicide might pen in his last hour—had not shaken her belief in him. And, while she may have grieved that he had weakened under the strain and stress, her heart couldn't help finding excuses for the poor devil. As a matter of fact, believe it wasn't his own hapless lot that goaded him to that crazy step, so much as his despairing realization that he had done not only for himself, but for her too. He couldn't ask her to share the stigma. He felt in honor bound to take himself out of her life, regardless of the damning consequences to himself in the world's eyes."

"Of course you're not theorizing about all this?" I demanded sarcastically. "And do you want me to believe that Ybarra didn't carry away his share of that vanished half million," I went on ruthlessly—"that he was quite innocent and had simply yielded to a romantic streak in his make-up? Is that it?"

Jacobson ignored the question.

"I suppose we've got to concede a certain weakness in Ybarra—I mean, in him going off as he did. That wouldn't alter the fact that he was completely in love with Eleanor Rutledge, would it? I suppose, in the sudden overwhelming moment of their meeting again, under those palms, where he was bossing those native workmen, things couldn't be explained in a jiffy—there was too much pressing for utterance. And they could have had at best only a fleeting minute or two, for young Marchant and the Captain were close on her heels. It was with real alarm that she saw them approaching, and turned passionately to him.

"'They mustn't know—and they won't know,' she said hurriedly. 'You see, we were all coming up here to call on you, Señor Ybarra—isn't that his name? I can't tell them who you are—not just now! What shall we do?'

"He had no time to debate so imminent a problem. In the whirl of the moment he did realize, however, that she had quite mistaken his presence there on the lawn at Villa Nueva. She had taken him for the young manager of the estate whom I had told them of. And he couldn't explain in two words his possession of Villa Nueva. He instantly snatched at the only subterfuge that suggested itself

"'Just pretend that I'm Ybarra. It will be all right,' he said in low tones as her companions came up.

"She introduced them nervously to 'Señor Ybarra,' and surprise instantly shone in their faces, as Ybarra extended a cordial hand to them and a welcome in straight American fashion.

"'Well,' promptly blurted out Jimmy Marchant, 'that chunky consul of ours was right when he told us we needn't expect to find you a real Spanish don.'

"Ybarra laughed. 'No; my name is about the only thing Spanish about me, I fancy.'

"THEY stood there exchanging they usual polite phrases—Marchant voluble over the magnificent view of the bay far below them, and the spacious grounds of Villa Nueva, luxuriant in their wealth of tropical verdure. At Ybarra's invitation to tea, they moved toward the house.

"He had to reassure the girl with a covert glance in response to the uneasy interrogatory of her eyes. But it was suddenly clear to him that in this impersonation of himself he was practising a deception only upon her. He began to plan

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how he could manœuver his impromptu little party so that he could speak with her alone. If he could once get the others properly disposed somewhere and occupied with tea and biscuits—

"They mounted to the veranda, and Ybarra gave orders in Spanish to the servant that appeared. A sudden shout from Marchant caused them all to turn. The youth was waving his hand to Mrs. Rutledge and Professor Ambrose, who had come into sight, leisurely toiling up the avenue.

"'My uncle and aunt,' explained the girl, as Ybarra looked toward her in uneasy inquiry. As he drew forward a chair for her, she managed to whisper a question:

"'Isn't this a very risky thing to do?'

"'The servants speak nothing but Spanish' he muttered, 'and—well, I'm accustomed to give orders around here.'

SHE had taken off her straw hat, and a she gave it to him with a quick upward smile as he bent down to take it. Their fingers touched for an instant—a quivering, startled contact. He had a moment's close vision of her as he bent over her, catching the faint perfume about her—and surveying her blond, girlish beauty, intensified in his eyes after those years of separation."

"Mrs. Rutledge and Professor Ambrose came up and were introduced. You see, he had known the girl in New York; these relatives of hers were Boston people. Tea was brought out, and other refreshments, Ybarra playing the host with a sort of feverish gayety. He was becoming more and more restive as he was forced to go further with the deception he was acting before her; and she was tense with fear lest at any moment his audacity might bring exposure. Where was Señor Ybarra? she wondered.

"The others, quite unaware of all this, were making a jovial party of it. If Ybarra wasn't an American like themselves, he was as good as one. Mrs. Rutledge's approval of him had been immediate—and, likewise, of Villa Nueva, which she went into superlatives over, and then archly scolded him for burying himself—at his age—in such utter solitude. He unwillingly found himself drawn off into a sort of tête-a-tête with her, while Miss Rutledge's eyes furtively watched him and her ears strained to catch his every word above Jimmy Marchant's chatter at her side.

"'And you a bachelor,' was the further fact which the artful Mrs. Rutledge had speedily elicited and then pretended to reproach him with. I dare say there are maidens in Paraminta that are longing to have the run of this delightful place.'

"To Ybarra, conscious of the girl's eyes apon him, the colloquy was intolerable. To end it, he abruptly invited them all to come inside and inspect Villa Nueva. They went through the large, darkened rooms, dutifully admiring the strange, exotic richness of the interior." Jacobson thrugged his shoulders with a suggestion of disdain. "The lavishness of Ybarra's expenditure was evident, and yet to me the whole complex and gorgeous ensemble always seemed to have balked somehow its owner's purpose. I can't describe it, exactly—it was as if a sense of frustrated effort were present everywhere.

"In the library Ybarra managed to drop word to Miss Rutledge. Presently she slipped away from the others, and went out on the veranda, waiting for him.

"The library, however, had its fascination for Professor Ambrose, and there the party stuck. The professor dominated in the talk now, and from books the subject turned to botany and the mission of the Algonquin in tropic waters. Professor Ambrose broached the trip of exploration to the Twin Brother islands, and essayed that little pleasantry of his.

"'We've come treasure-hunting, if we may trust our secret to you,' he said to Ybarra. 'And I have reason to believe that those islands of yours may yield something worth hunting for.'

"'Oh, yes,' agreed Ybarra vaguely. 'Almost every cove and stretch of sand along his coast has got a legend of that sort

attached to it. You could dig almost anywhere; but of course you're welcome to try the Twin Brothers if you like.'

"Professor Ambrose laughed outright at the success of his jest. It tickled him immensely that Ybarra should have misunderstood.

"You see," Jacobson explained to me carefully, "to the professor the greatest treasure the Spanish Main could disgorge would be a new species of some insignificant plant. And, with his enthusiasm for his science, it was to him in reality a treasure hunt. He had simply got into the habit of expressing it in terms of buried doubloons, so that the ordinary lay mind might grasp what it meant to him."

"A figure of speech," I suggested.

"Yes, but such metaphors are pretty likely to be misinterpreted down here. If the comandante had got wind of that metaphor, Professor Ambrose would have had spies around him like a cloud of mosquitoes at every step on that innocent botanizing excursion. However, let that pass. When I came up to the house—"

"You?" I exclaimed.

"Yes," said Jacobson. "You see, I had made short work of my mail, and set out after them. I was by no means certain that they would find Ybarra at home, and in any case— Well, when I came up to the house I saw the girl seated alone on the veranda. The sun was nothing but a red ball, slipping down behind the Paramintan hills, their great green flanks darkening in the shadow. The white mass of Villa Nueva had begun to take on a faint, luminous glow in the approaching dusk.

"THE girl was sitting very still, one hand under her chin, looking out across the distant bay. My step on the veranda startled her, but she smiled when she recognized me—a slow, indescribable smile that seemed to struggle to overcome some reluctance of her lips. Without stirring in her chair, she offered me her hand. Something in her action gave me a queer impression; it was as if she were sitting there exhausted after some unusual physical effort. Her eyes, however, shone like stars.

"'So,' I began, 'you found your way to Villa Nueva. And the others?'

"Her head, with the slightest perceptible motion, indicated their presence indoors.

"'Then you found Señor Ybarra at home?' I went on.

"I could see the quick tension go over her muscles as she straightened up suddenly and turned upon me a look almost of alarm. She instinctively darted a look toward the doorway, where at any moment she was expecting her lover to appear. And just then he did appear. He had managed to elude his guests at last, and he came swiftly out, stopping short at the sight of me.

"'Ah, there's Ybarra now,' I said, getting to my feet.

"He must have caught my words. He stood a moment uncertainly, then came forward with an uneasy air.

"'Hullo, Jacobson, how are you?' he greeted me.

"I was suddenly aware that the girl had risen to her feet.

"'You—Ybarra!' came her words, almost in a gasp.

"He visibly paled, shot a look at me, and braced himself for the single word of his answer:

"'Yes!'

"'Then all this'—her arm in a sharp gesture indicated Villa Nueva and its domain—'all this is yours?'

"'Yes,' he said again shortly, and frowned. 'You mustn't think—'

He was laboring under some constraint—my presence there, of course. The girl, amazed, seemed to shrink and draw herself together, standing speechless, frozen—that startled look of wonderment giving

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place slowly to a look of horror. And as the three of us stood there, seemingly riveted forever to that spot, the first gust of the night wind—like a chilling sigh—swept over us.

"I wanted to bolt outright from the spot—take myself out of a situation of which I comprehended nothing but that I was an embarrassment to them both. Just then Professor Ambrose and the others came out on the porch, in a wake of talk and laughter."

JACOBSON broke off with a sigh, and got up stiffly from the desk to lean against the edge of it, while his face betrayed his utter disgust.

"That," he said, relapsing into his favorite vernacular, "that is how I spilled the beans." For emphasis he thumped a paper-weight upon the desk.

"Well, naturally," I reflected aloud. "But it would have come to the same thing, anyway. Did Ybarra think he could keep up that preposterous farce before her forever? She would be certain to find out—"

Puffing at my cigar, I thought to myself that if ever a man's guilt confronted him in all its enormity,—its gross, physical embodiment,—so Villa Nueva, that colossal pile, must have risen up between Ybarra and that girl—a hideous telltale of his crime. One didn't casually fall owner to places like Villa Nueva, or achieve them overnight, as a captain of industry might have done elsewhere. Paraminta wasn't Pittsburgh.

"Tell me," I said aloud. "You seem to know this thing down to the most intimate detail. Did Ybarra try to brazen it out before her? What could he say?"

"There wasn't time to say anything," replied Jacobson. "Twilight had taken them quite unawares, so that the whole party made a rush for it to be gone. Mrs. Rutledge was fidgety to get back to their vessel before it was actually dark. There was a jumble of hasty farewells, and invitations to Ybarra to call on them aboard the vessel, during all of which, I noticed, Eleanor Rutledge didn't speak a word. She stood a little apart from the others, stunned, inarticulate, regarding Ybarra with a cold, impenetrable gaze.

"But she did speak finally. As the party moved down the steps, she turned and said, 'Good night—Señor Ybarra.' There was a fine, scornful accent in those words as she flung the name at him—so fine that it quite escaped every one but him.

"I remember he stood dumbly looking after us as we moved down the avenue until, in the dusk and distance, he seemed like a white specter, rigid and motionless, on the veranda where we had left him—in very truth, the wraith of his former self."

Togo, who had silently appeared at the door,—in response to that thump which Jacobson had given the paper-weight,—now attracted the consul's attention.

"No, I didn't call you," said Jacobson, looking around. "Unless, Captain, you will have another drink? No? Well, then—I was quite mystified, as you can imagine, by that little scene on the veranda of Villa Nueva; but I had little chance to puzzle over it as I walked back, with Mrs. Rutledge on one side of me and young Marchant on the other, between the verbal fire of them both. The girl was ahead with her uncle, holding his arm, and very silent. I was prepared, when necessary; to give her a reassuring look, I wanted her to feel that I was not curious, and that, whatever had happened, it was buried in a tomb, so far as I was concerned.

"I went with them to the wharf, where their launch was waiting, and in the general confusion of embarking, the girl abruptly turned to me. Our eyes met, and somehow, on the instant, an understanding seemed to establish itself between us. Perhaps she thought she could trust me. We were not quite beyond the hearing of the others, so she spoke softly:

"'Has Señor Ybarra lived here very long?'

"'Four or five years,' I answered.

"'He must be very rich,' she said thoughtfully—and then: 'He has been in business here?'

"'In business!' I echoed. 'Señor Ybarra!' The astonishment in my tone was all the answer I could give her, for we were interrupted. The others were waiting for her. With a little nod and a quiet "Thank you,' she took her place in the launch.

"I said I was mystified. Well, I was more so when, about nine o'clock that night, Ybarra bolted into my bungalow, quite unceremoniously for him. In the lamplight as he faced me over my desk, he seemed to have aged. He didn't explain anything. He abruptly wanted to know if he could get himself rowed out to the Algonquin. It was a strange request to make at that hour. He went on to say that it was extremely important. Couldn't a boat be got somewhere? He was in such a stew about it that I started out with him to see what could be done.

"By a stroke of luck, the Algonquin's motor-launch was alongside the jetty. The chief steward had come ashore on some errand. Within a few minutes he reappeared, and consented to take us back with him. It was a trim and speedy little craft, with a quick, throaty 'putt-putt,' that shot us out into the night and brought up under the accommodation ladder of the Algonquin in less than no time.

"'I'll wait here for you,' I said to Ybarra.

"He stared at me for a moment, as if unable to comprehend what I had said. Then he shook his head. 'No; you must come along,' he insisted, gripping my arm fiercely.

"He was so strangely wrought up that I thought best to humor him. Well,' I yielded, 'you'll have to do the explaining.'

"'That's what I've come to do,' he muttered almost under his breath, and as we mounted the accommodation ladder his hand, clutching the rail, trembled visibly.

"I MUST say, though, he had himself under superb control when we were ushered aft to where Professor Ambrose and the others were assembled. They were cozily gathered about a card-table, and in the sharp glow of light from the bull's-eyes in the side of the deck-house the red and black spots of the scattered cards were vivid against the green baize cloth. In the general shifting of chairs, as Ybarra stepped forward, I noticed Miss Rutledge softly withdraw to the rail of the vessel, where she remained standing a little apart.

"Ybarra was already apologizing for the intrusion. He never ventured a glance toward the girl in the shadow by the rail, but shot his words straight at Professor Ambrose.

"'You'll doubtless think this might have been deferred until to-morrow,' he was saying. 'But it has greatly troubled me. I should have told you at once this afternoon—been quite frank with you at the outset. It's quite useless for you to try the Twin Brother islands. Treasure hunters have been over them before. There was a hoard buried there,—they were on the right track,—but it's there

no longer. I found it myself—four years ago.'

"'But, Señor Ybarra!' exclaimed Professor Ambrose bewilderedly, getting to his feet.

"Ybarra, however, overbore him impatiently. He was very pale, his fingers clutching at the hat in his hands, while I stood watching him, completely stupefied, with not the faintest idea that what he was rattling off to Professor Ambrose was in reality his plea, his desperate appeal, to the silent, cold-faced girl aloof by the rail.

"'I've never told a soul—didn't dare to,' he went on. 'The government, if they once knew, would have robbed me of it sooner or later, by one means or another. But I found it. I hadn't really a penny in the world at the time. I got it away little by little—into safe places. Then I bought Villa Nueva. But I had to pretend that I had been rich all the time—that it was no sudden turn of fortune. When you told me you wanted to search the Twin Brother islands, I knew what you were after. But I couldn't let you go ahead with that fruitless quest. I had to play fair with you—trust my secret to you. I should have done so this afternoon'—his glance momentarily was upon the girl in the shadows—'told you the truth at once—incredible as it might seem—'

"'Why, this is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard!' exclaimed Professor Ambrose. 'But, Señor Ybarra, I was only joking. The treasure I'm after is plants—botanical specimens. Don't you understand?'

"The sudden silence that followed was harshly broken by Jimmy Marchant's boisterous laugh.

"'Your jokes, Wilbur,' observed Mrs. Rutledge severely to the professor, 'are sometimes decidedly out of place.'

"Ybarra, jarred by Marchant's laughter, as the truth of the situation broke upon him, looked foolishly down at his hat. I felt ridiculous myself, bolting out to that yacht at that time of night to listen to that incredible but perfectly needless confession of Ybarra's, forced from him by a silly joke. One couldn't blame young Marchant for his laughter. It was all so useless, and so absurd.

"'Oh, well, then, it's all right,' Ybarra managed to stammer, while Professor Ambrose struggled with his chagrin.

"'But, Ybarra,' Jimmy Marchant, scenting a tale, put in eagerly, 'tell us about it, won't you?'

"Ybarra only shook his head. He was too stunned and shamed. The situation was intolerable. Eager as he had been to go out to the Algonquin, his one thought now seemed to be to turn his back and escape from that miserable fiasco.

"'I can't tell you all that—not tonight. And I want you to know how sorry I am to have intruded this way—'

"'Indeed, no. It is I that should apologize,' protested Professor Ambrose.

"He started forward as Ybarra clutched my arm and tried to drag me away. There were protests at our leaving, but Ybarra was obdurate. He began to stammer good nights and shaking hands all around. Venturing at last a glance toward the girl standing in the shadow by the rail, he took a step forward.

"'Good night—Señor Ybarra,' came the same crisp, scornful words that I had heard her speak in the afternoon—halting him where he stood.

"His head seemed to drop forward. He converted the movement awkwardly into a bow, and, turning, groped almost blindly for my arm. I had to help him down the ladder to the launch. He seemed completely done up.

"WE didn't speak a word while we were being whisked back to shore. He sat with his head buried in his hands, looking dejectedly at the bottom of the boat. When we were on land, and I was again piloting his steps, he suddenly stopped short and demanded of me savagely:

"'Don't you think I'm telling the truth? Doesn't it sound like the truth?'

"I was startled by the fierceness of his tone, in which I detected a desperate entreaty.

"'Do you think that any of them'—he jerked his hand toward the vessel in the bay—'would think I wasn't telling the truth?'

"'Nonsense, Ybarra,' I tried to sooth him. 'What earthly reason could they have for not believing you?'

"'Well, if I hadn't been quite frank—quite honest before this—' He seeme to be conjuring up some hypothetical situation to torture himself with. 'It might seem like a desperate attempt to account for—for owning Villa Nueva.' He burst out with a bitter laugh. 'Finding pirate's hoard buried two or three hundred years ago! Oh, that is likely, isn't it?' He shook away roughly from my arm and stalked rapidly ahead.

"I pondered over his strange words an his stranger behavior. I couldn't imagine why he should feel called upon to defend his lawful title to Villa Nueva. Nobody had questioned it. And, in any case, it was nobody's business but his own. This treasure business, though—had he gone clean out of his head? But if he had really had the incredible good luck to stumble upon that sort of a gold mine, I couldn't see why he need be so apologetic about it.

"He waited for me to catch up with him, and then, quite without my suggesting it, he started in to tell me the story of his find on the Twin Brother islands—pouring it into my ears to the last detail. He seemed determined to vindicate himself—to me, if to no one else—by the sheer minuteness and exactitude of that recital. For, I soon perceived, he no longer had the least scintilla of actual proof to bolster up his story. He hadn't a vestige of material evidence except Villa Nueva itself, which was so vast a proof as to be no proof at all. That was the irony of it.

"He had been so careful, fearing discovery at the time, that he had gone to extraordinary lengths to escape the most cunning detection, either then or later. The gold—it was practically all in Spanish doubloons and French louis d'or—he had melted down a little at a time. Then he had disposed of the bars—one or two at a time—here and there, in all sorts of places, from Panama to Vera Cruz. Then he had quietly opened bank accounts, at Kingston, Jamaica, and other places—quite modest affairs, and they had slowly grown in size. He had accomplished the whole business with such a painstaking hand that it was absolutely impossible now to go back and seize upon a single step in his methodical operation, and tender it as evidence of his treasure find. He didn't have so much as a single gold doubloon to hold up before incredulous eyes. He had only bank accounts and investments. And as for the hole on one of the Twin Brother islands where he had exhumed his treasure, the sands had drifted in and filled that long ago.

"But I haven't the least doubt he was telling the truth. Did you ever hear of De Costa—that chap in Havana that got hold of an old mutilated parchment recording the location of a treasure hoard buried on these coasts? Everybody said

Continued on page 21

What Big Men Tell Me About Success

By B. C. FORBES

ALMOST every man who has reached the top of the ladder, when I have asked him how he did it, has laid stress upon the necessity, not only of working hard, but of living most frugally in order to accumulate a little capital. While it is often said, and not challenged, that "brains are more important than capital," it is nevertheless true that without some capital it is usually impossible for a man to start a business of his own. The ambitious young fellow who has saved $1000 or $10,000 will find a bank responsive to a request for credit, whereas another young man of equal capacity, but without a cent, will be given the cold shoulder. Bankers help only those who have shown that they can help themselves.

Any man who has failed to accumulate even a modest sum is hardly apt to be trusted with larger sums of other people's money.

John D. Rockefeller first saved a few hundred dollars, and then started out to borrow every cent he could from bankers and others. Andrew Carnegie took a similar course. His first investment amounted to $500, and his mother had to raise part of the sum by mortgaging the house their thrift had enabled them to purchase. To save carfare, H. P. Davison, to-day the most notable partner of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Company, used to cycle ten miles daily through the streets of New York to and from the bank where he got his start. H. C. Frick, now among the half dozen richest men in America, lived in one small room of a miner's cottage when he was first winning his spurs as a capitalist in the coke regions of Pennsylvania. Julius Rosenwald, multimillionaire president of Sears, Roebuck & Company of Chicago, peddled all sorts of odds and ends when he was a lad, such was his determination to acquire a little capital to start in business.

Perhaps the highest salaried man in America a year ago was one whose name was unknown to the public. One morning, however, the public woke up to find him famous. His name was blazoned on house-tops, on meadow bill-boards, in railroad cars, in subway "ads," in every newspaper throughout the width and breadth of the land. "Wilson & Company" read the black type, with, below, "Successors to Sulzberger Sons & Company."

Thomas E. Wilson, the man strong enough to have the name of one of Chicago's leading old-established packing concerns sunk in favor of his, is fitted to discuss our subject; for he has done big things, not only in Chicago and New York, but in scores of other towns where he personally established branches, often in the face of bitter opposition.

Mr. Wilson began as a clerk with Morris & Company, climbed stop by stepto the presidency of that great enterprise, and then secured control of Sulzberger Sons & Company—all in the space of thirty years. He is regarded as the most aggressive force in the packing industry to-day.

"The fellow who can make good in Chicago can make good in New York or anywhere else," said Mr. Wilson—who is a picture of happiness, force, and health.

"No; I have not found it necessary to be more conventional in dealing with New York financial and business men than with those in Chicago or farther west. A man needs simply to be himself—but always at his best, always burning with the conviction that what he is doing at the moment is the most important thing in the world for him to do well.

"As soon as a fellow begins to think or say, 'Well, I have done so-and-so; I have done pretty well; I have made my mark and am going to take it a bit easier'—the moment a fellow says that, or feels that way, he begins to slide backwards.

"No man can stake his future on the past. He must stake it on the present. He must look forward, not backward.

"Push and energy win success. A man, too, must have confidence in himself. He must be ready to tackle any responsibility and give to it every ounce of his ability.

"I'm no wonder—don't get that impression for a moment. My whole success is probably due to the fact that I enjoyed my work, kept at it industriously year after year, and never flinched to tackle a job, no matter how difficult or how great the responsibility involved.

"Success depends on the man, not his locality."

The most powerful figure the tobacco world has ever known, James B. Duke, decided that to reach the topmost rung in the ladder he must migrate from Durham, North Carolina, to New York City. His father, then senior member in the Duke tobacco firm, opposed venturing so far from home. Weren't they making lots of money with their big Durham factory? A factory in New York might prove a failure.

But young Duke was a man of infinite will power and driving force. New York was not only the largest city in the United States,

but the leading port—and he had dreams of world conquest. So he insisted on invading New York. Although his income soon rose to $50,000 a year, he lived on $500 a year, put back every possible penny into the business, expanded enormously, formed the Tobacco Trust, and sold the Duke enterprise to it for $7,500,000, crossed the Atlantic and invaded England, waged a terrific trade war against the combined forces of Britain's aristocratic tobacco interests, won—and became the undisputed king of the tobacco world. When I talked with Mr. Duke on this subject he defined the constituents of success in few words—he is not a talkative man, and until I wormed my way into his office he had never granted any newspaper man a similar interview.

"When young men ask me how to succeed, I tell them: 'Pick out any business, it doesn't matter much which, provided you can learn to love it better than anything else in your life. Then all you need is determination, self-confidence, pluck, application. Stick-to-it-iveness is more important than an abnormal amount of brains. Don't spend money on yourself until you no longer need it to expand your business.' Any young man willing to pay the price can rise to success."

The head of the world's largest dry-goods business, John G. Shedd, president of Marshall Field & Company of Chicago, attaches importance to environment. That is, while a man may possess "success qualities," he is not likely to attain the highest success unless he goes where opportunities for such success are most plentiful. Mr. Shedd was born and brought up on a farm in New Hampshire;

but, not liking farm labor, he got a job in a village store.

"After I had learned the business in New Hampshire and Vermont, I decided," said Mr. Shedd, "that the field there was limited. I felt that I would like to try bigger things. So I set out for Chicago. My first move was to find out which was the best store in the city; and, luckily, the best store was also the biggest, I discovered. I went to see Marshall Field, and when he asked me what I could do, I told him I could sell anything of any kind or character that was for sale. He engaged me.

"There are more opportunities for achieving success under the modern system of doing business than there were when business was all done in a small way. Now in our store there are many positions paying from $10,000 to $50,000 a year.

"The salary is here for the man able to earn it. It is all a question of efficiency."

Villages and country towns are excellent training-schools, Mr. Shedd admits, but young men of ability and abnormal industry—this is very important—can not become so very much more important than their surroundings. Marshall Field could never have become a merchant prince doing millions of dollars' worth of business had he located and remained in some obscure town. Huge steamers can not be run in trickling mountain streams; the place for them is the ocean. Many roads lead to success—if followed persistently and doggedly. But one man can travel only one of the roads.

That is the advice that E. C. Simmons of St. Louis, the largest hardware maker and seller in the world, urges upon every young man who is anxious to "arrive."

"The lesson many a young man needs to-day," said Mr. Simmons, "is to persevere and stick to the business he has adopted and finds congenial. It is fatal to success to dodge around, trying first to be a dry-goods man, then an automobile salesman, next a chiropodist, and finally an osteopath. Strength lies in concentration. Once a youth or young man has chosen his line of business, he should devote all his energy and strength and will power to develop it. The fellow who gives up first one thing and then another has in time the word 'failure' branded on his brow."

Mr. Simmons has proved, by his own career, that success in even the biggest way can be attained outside of the two or three largest cities of the country. He started as an errand boy in a St. Louis hardware store when that city had only 25,000 population. To-day the Simmons Hardware Company alone, in its various plants, supports that number of human beings. He says he did it by sticking to one line of business—by choosing one path and following it without deviation. His life work—he is seventy-seven, but still active—has made St. Louis the greatest hardware center on earth. Mr. Simmons is the man President Wilson wanted to accept the Governorship of the new Federal Reserve Board in 1914.

At twenty-one George M. Reynolds, then an ambitious bank clerk in a small town in Iowa, went to Kansas City with drafts enough in his pocket to open a bank. He looked over the whole situation carefully, but decided that he was either too late or too early—too late to benefit from a recent great influx of people from the East who had spent most of their money, and too early for the prosperity that would come later from the tilling of the soil. He returned the funds he had borrowed, and didn't open any bank. Instead, he went into the farm-loan business in Hastings, Nebraska, and by and by progressed, first to Des Moines, and finally to Chicago. To-day he is president of the largest bank in Chicago.

All offers of New York financiers to bring him to the East he has refused. I asked him why.

"Because," he replied, "I regard Chicago as the greatest productive center in the world. Besides, I am of the West, and I love it and its people."

Here is another instance of an able, progressive young man first winning his spurs in smaller places, then studying prospects in larger fields and moving to the center that appealed to him as possessing the best possibilities.

Population and productivity have more to do with chances for success than have latitude and longitude, Mr. Reynolds holds. People and business, many of them and much of it, are essential to the building up of a financial institution of the first magnitude.

"What," I asked Mr. Reynolds, "are the qualities the right man possesses?"

"The warp and woof of success," he replied with deliberation, "may be summed up in this way: "Character, which stands for honesty, good deportment, good purposes, and fair dealing.

"Industry of the kind that means willingness to work whatever number of hours may be necessary to complete the daily requirement—the bending to one's task with an eye on the welfare of the employer rather than on the clock.

"Patience, which, taking its example from nature, soon learns that what you would reap you must also sow, and, furthermore, that it takes time for the crop to grow and ripen—a patience that makes one wait for his reward until the harvest of his efforts has been garnered.

"Personality. This quality likewise embraces many other desirable qualities, such as neatness, cheerfulness, affability, courtesy, alertness, intelligence, and last, but not least, the knowledge of the science of human nature and the ability to apply it in a practical way.

"All these qualities woven into one fabric spell efficiency, and efficiency spells accomplishment in whatever line of endeavor one may be engaged."

Other men interviewed also emphasized that success seeds take years to ripen, and that young men must not expect to reap immediately what they have sown. The right kind of seeds, however, will germinate anywhere.

"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

THE FIRST AIR MINISTER

AIRMEN have become as necessary as soldiers and sailors, and there are so many thousands of them now that they form a whole division of the British army. Lord Cowdray is the first to hold a new kind Of position—that of Air Minister.

Before becoming a peer and Air Minister, Lord Cowdray was Sir Weetman Pearson, and only a multimillionaire contractor. He built the harbor works at Dover, the tunnels under the Thames, the Southampton docks, and the four tubes under the East River in New York. As a plain business man he was so competent that when he turned his attention to Mexican oil-wells even the Standard Oil lost money.

For these accomplishments King George made him a peer and let him buy Cowdray Park, consisting of 14,000 well kept acres, as an ancestral seat. In its forests Queen Elizabeth used to shoot at deer with an cross-bow.

SURVEYING THE FIRST RAILROAD TO THE COAST

WHAT the discovery of a route to America was in the life of Columbus, the survey for a railroad to the unknown Pacific coast was in the life of Colonel John Frémont, U. S. A. It was his most ambitious dream. Frémont had already made three exploring expeditions for the government to the far West before, in October, 1848, at the age of thirty-two, he left Missouri for a fourth attempt. An account of this fourth expedition is given by F. S. Dellenbaugh in Frémont and '49 (G. P. Putnam's Sons).

Although Frémont had been warned not to attempt a passage over the Rockies in winter, he insisted on doing so, that he might learn the worst obstacles existing for a railroad. It was December when, with his mules freezing at 20° below zero, and his men fighting for breath at an altitude of 12,000 feet, he struggled over the ridge of the great San Juan range.

"At times a mule would drop under his pack and freeze to death," says the author. "The surviving mules began to eat the pack ropes and the rawhide lariats till nothing was left to tie them with and to prevent their wild wandering about in search of food. They ate the blankets put over them at night; they ate the pads and rigging off the pack saddles; they ate each other's manes and tails; and then began to eat the blankets covering the men. They became like ravenous wolves."

On Christmas day Frémont sent four of his men to the little settlement of Taos to secure mules and provisions. He expected them back in sixteen days. But the date set for their return passed with no word from the rescue party. Had they been destroyed by Indians?

At last Frémont and four men started for Taos, with instructions that if he was not back in four days with provisions, the rest of the party were to try to follow him. Seven days instead of four the party waited. Then they set out after him. Their provisions consisted of a handful of sugar for each man, some candles and rawhide. With this miserable supply they began their terrible march down the Rio Grande on the surface of the ice. One of the men begged to be shot. When he was refused, he turned back to die. Another lay down, never to get up again. A third wandered off, insane. More died, and those who lived became snow-blind.

On the third day a shout was heard in the distance. Frémont, who with the aid of an Indian had found his way to Taos, had sent back one of his companions with provisions. The rescuer came none too soon. He found the party scattered. He saved one man, sitting snow-blind and weak by a fire. He came too late to another, who had just died. He found two more, devoted friends, both dead, one in the act of making a fire.

Of the first rescue party that Frémont had sent ahead to find Taos, one had died, and it is said that the others had resorted to cannibalism.

By February the survivors were all sheltered with Kit Carson in Taos. Thirteen men in all had lost their lives, and Frémont had not been able to make his survey. This he did, however, in spite of more starvation and freezing, on a fifth terrific but less disastrous expedition.

ARE COLLEGE MEN GOOD BUSINESS MEN?

IF your son has a bent for business, is he wasting time to go to college? President Harry Pratt Judson of the University of Chicago thinks not.

The four great necessities for success in a business man, he says in The Higher Education as a Training for Business (University of Chicago Press), are industry, knowledge, acute intelligence, reliability.

A college student is industrious. He must work hard and play hard, and do both systematically. The well trained college man has to keep at a thing till he masters it, which is the best habit a business man can have.

A college student, no matter how unwillingly, absorbs knowledge. While literature, history, and other so-called "useless" studies are not the most important part of college training, at least a business man will be no worse a business man for knowing them.

He can sell a hundred feet of waterfront just as well, perhaps better, if he knows how many feet there are in a line of Browning.

As for the social sciences of economics and government and the material sciences of biology and chemistry, they have a practical business value.

True, intimacy with triploblastic-cælomate animals would not help a man to manufacture collars, unless he had acquired the technique of the collar business; but, having acquired it, he would be a better manufacturer for his acquaintanceship with tripoblastic-caelomate animals.

A college student must have an acute mind. No matter if he has obtained it only by daily practice in hoodwinking a professor, he has at least learned to think quickly, accurately, and to see a point at once.

"Knowledge may be power, but a disciplined mind is powerful," says the author. "It is this trained alertness of mind which business needs. The college man has ready command of the tool which every business man must use—his head."

A college man must be reliable. Students do not tolerate shams. He is ostracized if he does not develop that respect for his word which is the foundation of business solidity.

Finally, says President Judson, a higher education fits a business man for society at large.

"It makes him more than a business man. A highly educated man is many-sided. He is at home everywhere. He is not provincial, but cosmopolitan. He is a citizen of the world."

WILL HE SING IN THE TRENCHES?

EAT CRUSTS AND KEEP YOUR TEETH

IF we would keep our teeth we must improve their circulation (yes, teeth have circulation) and that of our gums. The disease of pyorrhea is due to modern methods of living and modern cooking, says Dr. C. M. Cobb in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.

"Our ancestors lived upon coarser food and used their teeth to masticate their food rather than as ornaments. Modern cooking prepares food in such a way that the average individual does not see the necessity of masticating. If he does use his teeth for that purpose, he does it as a part of some cult. The consequence of this is that the teeth are not properly nourished; the circulation in the gums is poor, and the gums are not able to resist disease."

Therefore, exercise your gums. Put them through morning calisthenics with a tooth-brush, which is as valuable for them as it is for the teeth. Give them an osteopathic treatment by eating dry crusts.

NOT AFRAID TO DIE

WHEN the sentence of death has been pronounced upon a man—that is a time when his greatness or his littleness comes out. Charlotte Eaton, in A Last Memory of Robert Louis Stevenson (Thomas Y. Crowell Company), tells of meeting him after he had completed his plans to go to Samoa, where, as he well knew, his life could go on only a little while.

He was, to all outward appearances, happy. He joked and talked of many things—of his work, saying that "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" was the "worst thing I ever wrote."

"He regretted leaving the haunts of man, he told us, particularly the separation from his friends, which was satisfactory, coming as it did from the man who coined the truism that the way to have a friend is to be one.

"We knew that the parting would be a life-long one and that we would never look upon his like again. This regret each knew to be uppermost in the mind of the others; but when the good-bys began we made no sign that it was to be more than the absence of a day."

And Stevenson himself refused to admit any note of sadness.

"'What was civilization, anyway,' he said, 'to one who needed only sunshine and négligé?'

"Thus in no other than a tone of pleasantry did he refer to his condition; and I never have seen a face or heard a voice so exempt from bitterness."

He was not afraid to die. This was his fighting chance.

"And," he said, "a fellow has to die fighting, you know."

---

HOW TO APPROACH A PROSPECTIVE EMPLOYER

SINCE looking for a job is one of the most unpleasant and anxious experiences that people have to go through, Selling Your Services (Sales Service Company) ought to be a guide and a comfort to any one who is following up "want ads." When you finally get an interview with your prospective boss, says this Baedeker to Business—

Do not wear loud clothes.

Do not walk into a private office with your hat on.

Do not walk into an office with a cigar, a cigarette, or a pipe in your mouth or hand.

Do not put your hat on the executive's desk.

Do not try to hand him a cigar.

Do not try to do all the talking—be a responsive listener.

Do not bring up purely personal matters. Do not knock your present or past employers. Speak well of them.

Do not let the interview grow stale. When you feel that you have gone as far as you can toward closing the deal, get out.

There is also a chapter of rules for writing the first letter of application:

Do not start your letter with the statement that you have read the advertisement and that it interests you. The employer knows you read the advertisement: otherwise you would not have applied.

Do not make statements like this: 'There is scarcely anything in the nature of bookkeeping and accounting problems of to-day of which I am not master.'

Do not use longhand. Typewriting is inexpensive.

Do not use social note paper.

Do not write that you are not interested in salary if the prospects are bright. Executives are not looking for 'something for nothing' offers.

Do not make any flippant, bombastic, or studied, clever remarks.

Do not talk about your family.

Do not specify your personal habits, such as smoking, chewing, and drinking. The average employer has at least one of these habits. Take no chance of stepping on his toes.

ARE YOU MAKING TOO MANY FALSE MOTIONS?

SUPPOSE that some day you should try to see how many motions you could save in getting through your day's work—how you could finish the day with the fewest wasted steps, the fewest wasted words, the least fatigue. The result would probably surprise you.

There is a science in handling any job in the world right, as Frederick Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management (Harpers) proves. Yes, even handling pig-iron can be done scientifically.

Mr. Taylor once approached a workman named Schmidt, employed by the Bethlehem Steel Company. Schmidt was making $1.15 a day, and handling 12½ tons of pig.

"If you'll do exactly what I tell you," said Mr. Taylor, "you can make $1.85 a day instead of $1.15."

So Schmidt promised.

"He started to work, and all day long and at regular intervals was told by the man who stood over him with a watch, 'Now pick up a pig and walk. Now sit down add rest. Now walk—now rest,' etc. He worked when he was told to work, and rested when he was told to rest; and at half past five in the afternoon had loaded 47½ tons onto the car. And he practically never failed to work at this pace and do the task that was set him during the three years that the writer was at Bethlehem."

Stand watch over yourself some day. Never pick a paper from your desk and lay it down again without finishing it: never take a step you can avoid. See if you can't scientifically manage yourself. The "big fellows" whose desks are always so bare, and who never seem to do any work, but who get away with the big salaries just the same, seem to have learned the secret somehow.

THAT GERMAN DISCIPLINE

OUR WEEKLY LIST OF BOOKLETS WORTH SENDING FOR

Any of the following books may be secured by sending a money order to the Superintendent of Public Documents, Washington, D.C.

THE PHYSICAL CARE OF RURAL SCHOOL CHILDREN.

Deals with some problems of rural school life that require special consideration. The rural school-teacher should have it. Price, 5 cents.

GEOGRAPHIC TABLES AND FORMULAS.

New issue of a valuable reference book. Price, 25 cents.

GROWING CHERRIES EAST OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

There are nearly twelve million cherry trees of bearing age in the United Satates. This is a compact manual on cherry growing. Price, 5 cents.

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 1916.

The annual reports of the great scientific bureaus of the government are not mere dry figures. This one will be read with interest by everybody who catches fish—or eats them. Free.

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE CHIEF SIGNAL OFFICER, U.S. ARMY, 1916.

And here we have the latest news of military aviation in the United States. Free.

SEA ISLAND COTTON.

A revised edition of an earlier bulletin on this subject. Of interest to planters in Florida, southern Georgia, and eastern South Carolina. Price, 5 cents.

TAKING CARE OF A SICK CHILD AT HOME

EVEN a very sick child, with a long illness like scarlet fever or typhoid, may be nursed at home and by his mother, writes Emelyn L. Coolidge, M.D., in The Home Care of Sick Children (D. Appleton & Company).

"Great care should be taken that the room is suitable. It should be situated at the top of the house, as germs fly upward, and it will therefore be much easier to prevent others from taking the disease; it should be on the sunny side of the house, and large enough to be well ventilated. If possible there should be an open fireplace in the room, as this greatly aids ventilation and is convenient for burning cotton and other small articles which it is not safe to take from the sick-room. In winter it is very convenient to have window-boards with holes bored into them to regulate the air in the room; in summer there should be screens in the windows.

"The child's bed should be placed so that he does not have to lie and stare at the direct light. Plenty of sunshine should be admitted to the room, but his eyes should be protected from the glare. There should be no carpet on the floor; it should be of hardwood or linoleum, which can be wiped up daily with a damp cloth. Pictures that can be burned at the end of the disease are best; the same is true of toys—they should be inexpensive and easily washed or destroyed. Furry animals and such articles should not be allowed in the sick-room. Growing plants may be allowed, but very few cut flowers, and these should be removed at night.

"A screen with wash curtains, a bed-table, or a tray on legs are also useful. Only the necessary furniture should be allowed, and this should include no upholstered pieces. A metal bed with comfortable springs, a good hair mattress and pillow protected by rubber sheeting and pads should be used. A bath-room near at hand will lessen the work of taking care of the child.

"The mother should wear a wash dress and keep her hair covered by a pretty cap while in the sick-room. If the disease is one that can be carried, she should change her cap and dress and wash her face and hands before going to another part of the house. A wet sheet hung at the door of the sick-room will help to keep the germs from flying about the entire house; for this purpose a solution of carbolic acid—one part acid to twenty parts of water—is usually used. And laundry that is to be washed in another part of the house should be soaked in disinfectant and carried in covered pails or bags.

THE WOMEN WHO MAKE FRANCE

"'NIGHT life, amours, Montmartre, faithless wives, callous mothers? My dear sir, that is not France. We are France.' That is how the typical Frenchwoman would answer the inquisitive Anglo-Saxon, if ever he should penetrate into the real French home," says Laurence Jerrold in France (Bobbs-Merrill Company).

"The French home would surprise the outsider exceedingly," according to Mr. Jerrold. "If the foreigner has lived ten years in France he may begin to hope that he may one day cross the threshold. He will be surprised to find that it is he who is looked upon as dangerous.

"'Sometimes we go to a café, and the foreigners' vivacious manners there divert us of an evening. But afterward we are glad to get back to our own, quiet, plain French home."

Thus speaks the wildly and perversely passionate Frenchwoman of song and story.

Again, "it has been said that Frenchwomen have more head than heart. I do not subscribe to that, but they know what they are about. They are no slaves to sex, though well knowing how to use its weapons; but they are finally the rulers. There is almost certainly no modern society in which woman holds so great a sway as the French. The French business woman keeps the books and runs the business in a hundred trades. I know many business houses in Paris where the wife is the head partner: she brought, let us say, two thirds of the capital; she finally directs the business."

The Man Who Paid

By WILLIAM DAVID BALL

Illustrations by George A. Faul

MY father lay in the county hospital with six bullets in his body. Ed Marvin, night watchman of the Colonial Trust and Savings Company, was noted as a crack shot with a revolver. My father had miscalculated Marvin's appearance by sixty seconds.

They allowed me to see him as the end drew near. His face was white and drawn with the pain; but the thin, straight lips were as set and resolute as ever.

"Sit down, Henry," he said to me, when the others had left the room. "I have ten or fifteen minutes left, and I want to talk.

"I leave you, Henry, well equipped to carry on your calling. I have trained you carefully. I have taught you that the eye and the ear, directed by an intelligent brain and with the help of a few simple instruments, can open any combination ever invented by mechanical genius. You have learned well.

"You have the power of intense concentration and driving action; above all, you have the repression and control of a Spartan. Stifle all tender feelings, all emotion. Tender feelings—bah! That's what got me. Last night, as I stood before the vault ready to go, I spent a moment in thinking of a lame news-kid—and Marvin got me.

"You know that I have always sought the laws by which human lives are governed. You are familiar with these fundamental tenets. Remember that the intellect is the supreme motive power in human affairs. What men call virtues are either deliberate hypocrisies or else puerile weaknesses. Self-preservation demands that the individual prey upon his fellow men. If your work is bungling, you must expect the reward of the common thief; if you use your brains, if your work is artistic—"

My father stopped abruptly. A spasm of pain convulsed him. He fought grimly and silently for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was a whisper:

"We have always regarded our philosophy of life as perfect. Lately I have felt the workings of a nameless law—a law that we have somehow missed, that we have not reckoned with. I can not grasp it—it is new to me. I have sensed it much as one feels the presence of another person in the dark. And, though I do not know what it is, I know its power. It mocks at reason and logic. It makes demands—insistent, extortionate demands. The thing that terrifies me is the certainty I feel that these demands are always met. The settlement is inevitable—as death. I advise you to seek this law. Unless you find it, unless you circumvent it, it is only a question of time until—until—"

These were his last words.

I WENT my way, heedless of my father's injunction, confident in my own skill and cleverness, with a smile for the smug respectability of the world. I lived as a young bachelor of extensive means. I held a degree from one of the large universities; I belonged to two of the most exclusive clubs. Friends I had none, but my acquaintances were chosen from socially prominent and well-to-do people. I always worked alone. I laughed at the police, the countless detectives and spies. I snapped my fingers at them all—but one.

Among the detectives employed by the banking trust was one whom I considered it worth while to study. I respected him for his sagacity, his uncanny powers of detecting crime. There was about him a cold persistence, an impersonal cruelty that was not human. The name of this man was Charles H. Beaumont.

The morning after I robbed the Arlon State Bank, Beaumont arrested me. I knew I had left no trail. My plan, as always, was perfect in conception and execution. But there must have been a weak spot somewhere or Beaumont would not have arrested me.

I was discharged, of course. There was no evidence. As I was leaving the

room in which I had been questioned, I encountered Beaumont. We both stopped and stood for a moment face to face, eye to eye. His eyes were gray, with a singular metallic luster to them. I returned his stare casually, indifferently. He spoke as I passed.

"It is only a question of time," he said.

GRAHAM is a town of perhaps three thousand people, in the farming section of Willoughby County. Rural districts have always had, for me, a peculiar charm. The beauties of Willoughby County were especially appealing. It was in Graham that I spent a month's vacation in the early part of one summer, idling about, enjoying myself thoroughly.

At the end of my stay I made arrangements to leave on Monday, which was a holiday. Sunday evening, while I ate supper in the restaurant, I heard the talking of some men who dined in a private room behind me.

The Hollingsworth people sent the cash to-day, didn't they?" asked a voice, which immediately followed the question with another: "How much did they send?"

"Seventy-five thousand," answered a loud voice, which I recognized as belonging to Babcock, owner of the Graham Bank.

I listened without much interest to the scraps of conversation that drifted over the partition. Finally the voice of Babcock was raised in stubborn assertion.

"I tell you," he cried,—and I heard the bang of his fist on the table,—"burglars can't rob my bank. The combination of my safe is absolutely burglar-proof—absolutely! I have a watchman who is in the bank from five o'clock in the afternoon until eight o'clock in the morning. And another thing I want to tell you that you don't know." Here his fist banged twice. "I have a burglar alarm that I invented myself. To open the door of my safe rings a bell at police headquarters!"

Suddenly I wanted to open that safe. I wanted to match my brain against that of Babcock. I wanted to test the infallibility of this infallible banker.

The next morning I secured the information I wanted, and made my plans. There was no day watchman at the bank. The day was a holiday. The night watchman was to visit the building twice during the day—at eight in the morning and at two in the afternoon. Beyond these momentary inspections the bank would be unguarded. The one daily train, which I intended to take, left Graham at four o'clock in the afternoon. There was to be celebrating at a little park at one end of the town, at which the various officers of the bank would be present.

At three o'clock I let myself in the side door of the bank, and stepped behind a partition that jutted out from the wall. When I emerged I was coatless and hatless. Black sleeve-protectors covered my forearms. I wore a large green eye-shade on my forehead and a pen behind my ear. I walked to the front windows and pulled down the shades about half way, just enough to dim the flood of light without obstructing the view from the street. I then mounted a stool, opened a ledger, and made my observations.

SEVERAL people passed, glancing in carelessly.

The safe was in plain view from the street. The make and pattern of the lock I recognized at a glance. It would take me fifteen minutes to open it. There still remained the matter of the bell which was supposed to ring at police headquarters. It was unlikely that Babcock's burglar alarm was anything like the elaborate electrical devices used in the big cities. The explanation that occurred to me was that a wire ran through the safe and that an open circuit was maintained. The opening of the safe door released a catch of some kind which closed the circuit. But when the cashier opened the safe he first threw a switch, probably hidden in another part of the building, to keep the circuit open. I could find and throw this hidden switch, or I could find and cut the wire. The latter method was the simpler.

As I was about to get down from the stool, a huge form strolled into view on the sidewalk. It was the sheriff of Graham. He saw me and stopped.

I nodded my head and raised my pen in salute. I was thankful for the dim light and the eye-shade. He walked to the door and tried to open it. I shook my head sadly—I was a poor bank clerk, doomed to toil at my accounts while my comrades made merry, but I could admit no one to these sacred premises, even to offer me sympathy. He turned away.

I examined the safe. From a hole in the top a steel rod, surmounted by a knob, projected. I pulled it up carefully. A sliding bolt, flush with the surface of the safe and behind which was a spring, pressed against the rod. Presently, as I pulled, the bolt slipped into a notch cut in the rod. Here was the hidden switch! The circuit was now locked open. It was ingenious—the ingenuity of a child.

Twenty minutes later, with $80,000 in my suit-case, I walked toward the railway station. It was ten minutes to four.

A BLOCK from the station I came upon a small crowd of men in front of a livery barn. In the center of the group was single-seated buggy, to which was attached a spirited bay horse. The liveryman and his helper bent over the rear axle and worked at something with a chisel. A young woman, perhaps twenty-three years of age, stood near them.

She seemed out of place in such surroundings. The fresh simplicity of her dress, the healthy tan of her cheek, the unconscious grace and vitality that showed in every movement, all spoke of the open country.

From a by-stander I learned that the girl lived somewhere in the direction of Mayville; that she had left her horse and buggy at the barn that morning; and that, on her return, it was found that some one had passed a chain through the spokes of a rear wheel and locked it with a padlock to the springs.

The liveryman straightened up with a shake of the head.

"No use," he said. "That chain is good steel. I haven't got a hack-saw, and none of the blacksmith shops are open."

The girl appealed to the crowd.

"It is going to storm," she said, "and I have twelve miles to go. Can't any of you do something?"

A broad-shouldered man stood in front of me. I pushed him to one side and stepped forward. It would be an easy matter to open an ordinary padlock. And then, on the opposite side, at the outer edge of the crowd, I saw Charles H. Beaumont.

I slipped back behind the broad-shouldered man. Would Beaumont know what I carried in my suit-case? I asked myself. Of course not. Nor would any one know that the Graham Bank had been robbed until to-morrow. But let Beaumont see me now, and fifteen minutes after the bank opened in the morning he would be on my trail.

The whistle of the arriving train recalled to me the necessity for action. I heard the screech of the brakes as the train came to a stop. Five minutes the train would wait, and then—

For the first time in my life I felt the unreasoning panic of the hunted. I wanted to run—a wild, insane desire that set me trembling. I glanced at the girl. I approached the buggy.

"I can open the lock," I said to her.

"Thank you," she replied. A tinge of red, came to her face.

As I drew the chain free from the spokes I heard the train pulling out, and as I straightened up I faced Beaumont.

Continued on page 15

THE FILIBUSTER

CIVILIZATION, law and order, and card-catalogue living have been accused of blotting the romance out of life. But there is one game that they will never destroy. So long as there are blockades there will be blockade-runners. If you want the zest of a Captain Kidd cruise, or the pure adventure of the free-booters of early days, you can have it right now. Try to slip by the English fleet with a shipload of rubber into Sweden. Or, if your morals be more adaptable, there is the good little game of smuggling arms to South American revolutionists or Chinese into the United States over the Mexican border.

In the Civil War the federal blockade for 3000 miles of coast sharpened the wits of many an English skipper. One man brought his cargo of cotton safely out of the Rio Grande by spreading the report that there was yellow fever aboard. Another old schooner drifted leisurely among the ships of the blockade until it innocently sailed over the shallows into a Confederate port with a cargo worth hundreds of thousands.

The blockade-runner, the filibuster, the smuggler—not moral gentlemen, perhaps, but interesting none the less—we shall have with us as long as the pulse of youth runs high: as long as the thing that "can't be done" becomes at once to youth the most interesting thing in the world to do.

HALF-MINUTE TALKS WITH ONE DOZ. BUSY MEN

LIVES of great men all remind us to set an alarm-clock a quarter of an hour ahead. If you are still in your first youth—about seven or eight—and have your health, nothing we could say editorially could [?] the help to you (we admit it freely) as these little glimpses into the after-school [?] of a dozen of the season's most succesful young business men. "How do you do it?" we asked them. "How is it that our treasurer is kept up nights sending out prizes to you all eve [?] for brilliant increases in sales? Tell us your secret," we said "and let us pass the good word along." Back staggered the faithful postman with hundreds of prompt replies, of which we give you a dozen—all the page would hold.

---

SOMETIMES WE DREAD THE FUTURE

Photographs by Paul Thompson

Continued from page 10

He nodded slowly, with no sign of expression on his masklike face. I answered his nod curtly, and turned to the girl. My mind worked quickly. At Mayville, fifteen miles away, was a parallel railroad. With almost thirty hours' start I should have no trouble making a get-away.

"I am going out in the country," I said. "Will you give me a lift as far as you go?"

"I shall be glad to," she answered. The flush on her face deepened.

Beaumont stepped forward.

"Miss," he said in a low, rapid voice, "this man is being watched by the police. I advise you to have nothing to do with him."

The girl's voice was low and quiet as she answered: "This gentleman is my friend."

God! How my heart pounded and surged! Never before had a human being shown such trust in me.

Beaumont turned on his heel.

AT first neither of us spoke. She handled the reins skilfully. I noticed her hands—shapely, but firm and capable. When I gathered courage to look at her face I saw that a spot of red still showed through the clear tan of her cheek and the trace of a frown lingered on her forehead. I was puzzled and somewhat troubled by the strange sense of elation that possessed me. This girl at my side was no longer a girl to me. She was a woman, the most wonderful being I had ever met. There was a faint, delicate fragrance about her that savored of the mystery and the magic of fairyland.

She turned to me, smiling. "Do you like farming?" she asked.

"I think I was destined to be a farmer eventually," I answered seriously. "I have been thinking of buying a farm. The city, with its excitement and its feverish work, has lost some of its attractiveness in the last month."

She nodded her head sagely.

"I know—you have been making comparisons. The six years I spent in a large city I regard as a blessing. They taught me to appreciate the honesty and sincerity of country life."

She went on to tell me of her life with her father and brother, of her books and her friends; and all with a rare touch of humor, a lightness of spirit, born of a sane view of life. There was music in her voice, the spring music of singing waters and mating birds.

I told her what I knew of art and the drama in New York. I asked questions about the crops. I confessed my utter lack of experience in farming, but presently I found myself, from my book knowledge, discoursing learnedly on the relative feeding value of the various legumes and the difference between a haphazard rotation of crops and one that was balanced.

She leaned forward suddenly and gave the horse a smart cut with the whip.

"The storm will be on us soon," she said. "We must reach the Drysdale Place. It is just beyond the next bend. When you buy your model farm you must learn to watch the heavens better than you do now."

"It doesn't look like much of a storm," I said in my ignorance.

"Oh, but it is. Notice how the advance guard of the clouds is being whipped into thin, ragged lines. That means a high wind, when the clouds are so low. And see—back farther, the black is cut by a broad band of white. I think there will be hail."

Beyond the bend in the road we entered a lane bordered with tall elms. Through the trees on either side I could see clumps of lilac bushes in full bloom. At the end of the lane a white cottage was half hidden by the shrubbery and the climbing vines. Never had a place seemed to me so suggestive of home, of the quiet, lasting happiness we dream about but never attain.

"This has been called the Drysdale Place ever since I can remember," said my companion. "It belongs to my father. He tells me it is to be my wedding present. In the meantime he rents it. This year it is farmed by the man to the south of us. There is no one living in the house. It is homelike, isn't it?"

"Tell me," I asked irrelevantly, "how can you read my thoughts?"

"Your thoughts are so simple," she retorted mischievously—"so simple and obvious."

We unharnessed the horse quickly and put him in the stable. My suit-case I threw in one corner, cursing it silently but thoroughly.

The storm broke before we could start to the house. First came the hail, driven by a savage wind. The stones were not large, but their lack of size was compensated for by the fury with which they seemed endowed. They stripped the foliage from the trees; they pounded holes in the rubber roofing of the stable. The hail ceased and gave place to intermittent gusts of heavy wind and drenching rain. When the water began to drip on us through the roof, we made a dash for the house.

A blast of wind struck us before we had gone ten feet. I caught the girl by the arms as she was thrown violently against me. Together we fought our way to the partial shelter of the porch.

The door was locked. I opened it with one of my skeleton keys. This was the second time she had seen me open a lock as if it had been a child's toy. Yet spite of this, in spite of Beaumont's warning to her; not a hint of suspicion showed, in the engaging frankness of her manner.

The house was fully furnished. I built a fire in the big kitchen range and put on a kettle of water. We rummaged in the pantry, where we found two packages of crackers, several cans of sardines and fruit, and some coffee.

While I cleared the table I quickly reviewed my plan. Always, from the background of this delightful setting, stared the eyes of Beaumont, sinister bits of gray iron. I must arrive at Mayville before seven o'clock in the morning. At seven a train left Mayville for the north; I would buy a ticket for that train. At seven-fifteen a train went south; I would take this train. About eight o'clock, just before the telegraph wires got busy, I would drop off. From that point my actions would depend on circumstances.

SHE set the table while I lighted the lamp and tried to make the water boil for the coffee.

"This is much better than a camping party," she said, as we finally sat down. "If we were in a tent the roof would leak, the water would run under the flaps and make little puddles on the floor, the wind would blow the lamp out, and things in general would be messy."

"I can not imagine things being messy near you," I answered. "Besides, I think you have discovered the secret of happiness; and the law of happiness, you know, does not depend on external conditions."

"My, how solemn," she mocked, as she rose to make the coffee.

Now, the moment I uttered the word "law" there came to my mind the almost forgotten words of my father on his death-bed. Here was a woman whose life had been the exact opposite of mine. Through the airy lightness of her speech, through the gaiety of her manner, there flashed at times a shadow of profound seriousness that startled me. That she had grasped vital facts of life to which my father and I had been blind, I could not doubt. Perhaps she knew this other law.

"I HAVE a friend," I said, when she was again seated. "This man has unusual talents, as is evidenced by his success. But, in plain language, he is a thief. For the twenty-five years of his existence he has devoted his talents to acquiring the pleasant things of life and to avoiding the disagreeable ones. He sums up his philosophy in these words: 'To pay little for what you get is a tribute to your brain power; to pay nothing is a sign of genius.' He applies this philosophy not only to material things, but to all of life. He is ignorant of the meaning of the word duty; he has never borne responsibility; he has never known sorrow. He confessed to me that for some time he has had a premonition that his plan of life may be interfered with by some power, some law, that he has not recognized. He wants to know what this law is."

She poured the coffee slowly.

"Your friend deserves much pity," she said gravely. "Not alone because he is a thief, but because is possessed of unusual talents. It is for such as he that the tears of the world have been shed. He is a little wayward child, disobedient, pathetic, chasing the rainbow—on the railroad tracks."

An instant's silence, and she spoke again:

"For everything we get a price is exacted; sooner or later we pay."

"How will he pay?" I asked in a low voice.

"I do not know. Perhaps in some great moment of his life, some crisis that he will be unprepared, incompetent to meet."

She looked out the window and continued dreamily:

"Perhaps he will find the one woman. Then he will pay—like a craven: but he will pay."

She turned to me with a little gesture, as if dismissing the subject, and smilingly reached out for my cup. Our hands touched and lingered, our eyes met and held each other; and for one brief instant nothing else in all the world mattered. A rosy glow spread over her face and a radiant light leaped to her eyes. Then her face went white.

Somewhere in the depths of my soul I had hidden my secret. Did a faltering of the eyes betray me—did a telltale message flash through the quivering nerves of hands that clung? I know not. But in that moment God tore away the curtain, and my soul lay bare.

The storm had ended suddenly. The full moon was shining. Through the window I stared at the lilac bushes, stripped of their purple clusters.

Finally I spoke, huskily but doggedly:

"In my suit-case is $80,000 which I took from the Graham Bank this afternoon."

She nodded slightly, as if she had scarcely heard. The pain that was in her eyes made me turn away. I dared not look at her again. The silence grew unbearable. What came next? What could I do? This was the great moment of my life, and for the deeds I had done I must pay—like a—

I got to my feet and made my way unsteadily out of the house and to the stable. Gropingly I found the suit-case. I retraced my steps, circled the house, and entered the lane.

She stood in the front doorway. The pain was gone from her eyes, but there were tired lines about her mouth, and her face in the moonlight was of a deathly pallor. She held out her hand to me.

"He will pay like a man," she said.

I pressed her hand to my lips and left her. At the bend in the road I looked back. She was still standing in the doorway, her arm against the door-frame, her head buried in her arm.

I stumbled on through the mud, to Graham and to Beaumont.

FOR nine hours a day we work in the hot, dust-laden air of the jute-mill. At five-thirty in the afternoon we are locked in our cells for the night. On Sundays we are herded into the open court for air and exercise. The work, the abuse, the stripes of shame—these I could endure easily; they are part of the price I pay.

But at night I dream—dreams in which I see an elm-bordered lane in the moonlight, a white cottage half hidden by the shrubbery, and a slender form that leans, sobbing, against the door.

Are You Yourself?

By W. G. SHEPHERD

HOW hard do you fight to hold on to your personality?

You are willing to fight to save the money you have earned, to hold your job or to get a better one. You fight to keep your external possessions, but do you fight to keep yourself?

Without a personality, an individuality, it is impossible to achieve any great success, no matter how successful you may appear for a time. The success that comes from having some strong man's personality working through you is not permanent or genuine.

When Napoleon was fighting Austria in 1797, on the very soil where the Italian battle lines stretch to-day, he discovered that his own future depended on the overthrow of the royalist party back in Paris. He sent a young officer named Augereau to Paris to accomplish a revolution. Augereau succeeded in bringing about what Napoleon desired. But neither Napoleon nor history has ever given Augereau any credit. He deserved none. It was Napoleon, working through Augereau, who overthrew the royalists. Augereau lacked personality, individuality. That was why Napoleon chose him as a tool.

Trilby, singing under the spell of Svengali, entranced her hearers; but, with Svengali's influence gone, she was the same unsuccessful, lonely Trilby. Svengali chose her as victim of his influence because her personality was not strong enough to resist him. He stole her personality, just as he might have stolen her little money or her old blue military coat.

Dr. Johnson was so strong a character that he unwittingly overwhelmed Boswell, and Boswell spent the remainder of his life tagging around after Johnson, worshiping him and writing down all he said.

But the Napoleons, the Svengalis, and the Dr. Johnsons are not the only influences in this world that rob us of ourselves.

"Personality," says H. Laurent, the French writer, "is the quality of being yourself."

"Personality is the part played by an individual among the multitude," says Paul Carus.

For you the world is really divided into two parts. One part is the multitude; the other part is you. The multitude tries to take away your individuality and make you part of itself. If it succeeds, your life is bound to be a failure; for there can be no success for the young man or young woman who permits the multitude to absorb him. Laurent, whom we just have quoted, finds that many young men in his country are failures because they "are tempted to mold themselves according to the common herd."

It is the multitude, represented too often by our friends about us, that is the thief of personality in these days.

Europeans laugh at us Americans because we all wear the same kind of hats. Americans who return from Europe, where each man wears the sort of hat that suits him best in his own opinion, marvel at the sight of the thousands of men on Broadway, State Street, or Market Street, each wearing a hat exactly like the other fellow's.

We all put on and take off our straw hats at the same time. We all go insane about bicycle riding, and then, for some unknown reason, we all decide unanimously that bicycling is silly. Bowling used to be an old-fashioned game. We all took it up some years ago, praising it for its healthfulness and its fun; but we are again deciding that it is old-fashioned and its vogue has gone out. Skating is the thing now. We are all taking it up, and we have decided unanimously that it is a healthful and a splendid pastime, just as if it had not, all these years, been a healthful and splendid sport.

We permit the multitude to tell us what kind of hats to wear, how long to work each day, what games to play, what forks to eat with, how high to raise our windows when we sleep. We even have styles in religion.

This loss of personality is such a ghastly thing that when Yves Delage, a French scientist, published some years ago a description of how some fifty species of crabs in various parts of the world were the victims of another creature that entered their shells and controlled their entire lives, he was accused, in a polite way, of nature faking. He has since been sustained by other scientists.

The crabs of which Delage wrote are the victims of a cousin crab which fastens itself upon them. This cousin is known as the sacculina. Externally it makes itself evident only as a rather small-sized sack on the under side of the crab. But if we open up the crab we find that its cousin has made itself at home in every part of its host. It has insinuated its rootlike branches throughout the length of every claw and leg, and has sapped every ounce of the crab's strength by the hideous completeness of its system of branching fingers. Through these it drains all the vital substance for itself, making of its host a weak and undersized cripple, a dwarf edition of its kind.

Far more startling is the change it works on the males of the victim crab. It unsexes the males, until in time they bear external resemblance to the female, and develop her adaptations for the care of eggs and the young.

Delage, in his study of the sacculina, discovered that there was nothing in the baby sacculina to cause a crab to fear it and to guard its shell and its personality when it was about. He found that the young of the sacculina were very normal little crablets, showing no resemblance whatever to the adults, living freely on the surface of the sea like other crabs, and showing no threat to their cousins.

After shedding their baby shells and assuming a slightly different form, however, two ominous hooklike feelers develop, which come into use when each little sacculina has found a crab on which it intends to live. One of these feelers the sacculina uses as a dart to thrust through the shell of its host. From then on, it grows into the other crab.

Deluge is not the only scientist who has discovered victims of parasites. It seems to be a common natural law that all creatures must guard against parasitic tendencies, even we humans.

We do guard our possessions against parasites; but do we guard ourselves, our personalities?

Your personality is really all you have in this world.

"What we think and what we feel are the only things that are really ours," says Carus.

Goethe wrote:

I know that naught belongs to me
Except the thought that, light and free,
Out of my soul is flowing.

If you think the mob's thoughts or let the mob think yours, if you live the mob's life and have the mob's feelings, you don't own anything. There isn't any you.

As you look yourself over, are you permitting anything to crowd you out of yourself?

Does any sacculina menace you?

How I Climbed Out of the Basement

WHAT chance had the girl in a department-store basement? Was there no escape? For six months I had sold suits, coats, and dresses in a dimly lighted hole, with no hope of advancement. I asked one of my co-workers if any of the sales-girls had ever been transferred to an upstairs department. "No; in all the six years I have been here, only one girl was ever taken: but she was a 'looker.'" I questioned the other sales-girls. Their stories were all the same.

The question of freeing myself became almost a mania. It haunted me all day; I dreamed about it at night; and I could find no satisfactory solution to the difficulty. The "want ad" columns in the daily newspapers showed me this was the dull season, and if I did give up my job the possibilities of getting another were very slight.

I decided to go to the manager's office and ask to be transferred.

The superintendent received me kindly, and heard my story without comment.

"I'm sorry, but we are laying off help, not taking it on." He said this in the cold, uninterested voice that business men are apt to use. Then he added in a more kindly tone:

"Don't lower yourself to the basement; bring the basement up to yourself."

I went back to the department. The words of the superintendent kept coming back to me. "Bring the basement up to yourself." From that moment I decided that I would become one of the best saleswomen in the department.

The next morning I brushed my black dress carefully, put on a freshly laundered collar, and arranged my hair in a becoming manner. I had already learned that the well dressed sales woman makes the best impression on a customer. Then I began to watch the other clerks as they conducted their sales. Within half an hour's time I saw four dissatisfied customers leave the department.

One clerk had shown a brilliant rose-colored gown to a red-headed lady with freckles. The girl assured the prospective purchaser that it was a stunning model. The woman gave the clerk a haughty stare, got up, and walked out of the department. As she left I heard her tell her companion that she was going to some store where the sales-people used their heads and not their elbows.

My next move was to visit the library evenings. There I read articles and books on the suitability of clothes, colors, and textiles. I learned that dark green was becoming to the auburn-haired lady; that long lines were becoming to the stout matron.

I studied my stock so carefully, and learned to "size up" my customers so readily that frequently the buyer chose me to wait on his most particular trade.

I never forced a sale. I was as courteous to those who bought as to those who didn't buy. I tried to remember that it is the little courtesies that are the biggest assets in the selling game.

The upstairs and downstairs departments were conducted by different buyers. Therefore I made it my business to become acquainted with a good saleswoman in the upstairs department. If I couldn't satisfy my customers downstairs, I would suggest the department on the second floor, mentioning the name of the saleswoman I knew. The saleswoman upstairs gladly returned the courtesy. Team work of this kind not only increased my sales, but better still, made customers feel that I was personally interested.

I evolved a little sales catechism of my own:

Never judge a woman by the clothes she wears. Women are easily flattered, and a plainly dressed customer is frequently as good a purchaser as the elaborately gowned woman.

Never argue with a customer. If a missionary wishes to convert you, accept the situation gracefully. If a non-suffrage woman tells you that "woman's place is in the home," agree with her.

A memorandum of shoppers likely to become permanent customers I also found valuable. Once a sale was closed and the customer had given me her address, I made notations like the following on a small pad that I kept in the back of my schedule-book:

Mrs. C. G. Brown, — West 120th Street, New York City. A dark blue coat with fur collar, $24.75. Tall, thin, light hair; prefers dark colors and simple lines.

At night I copied my notes into an alphabetically arranged card-catalogue. This helped me to remember Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Jones.

A neatly engraved card gives as much prestige in business as in society. I found that a little personal outlay along those lines will amply repay itself.

A few moments spent at noon-hour daily in the different departments gave me a personal interest that made the store "my" store.

Somehow, these little things came to be noticed. One day I was called to the buyer's office.

"I have noticed that you have been taking an unusual interest in your department. I think that many of your ideas might be used by the other girls. Write them out and we will see."

In this way I came to be a buyer. I have had occasion to watch many other girls in the succeeding years. I am convinced that there never was a basement so deep and narrow that the right girl—or man—can't get out.

The Other Brown

By ADELE LUEHRMANN

Illustration by Lucius W. Hitchcock

IT was from Mrs. Gil that Alba received, next morning, the news of Eric Brown's arrest, though she did not learn of it until after she was again in the Gil home. Bianca had appeared at the convent quite early, bringing a note from Dr. Tierney to Alba in which he advised her to persuade Mrs. Martinez to accompany her back to Mrs. Gil's. Juaña was well enough to be moved, the doctor wrote, and in his opinion the change would be good for her.

This message put Alba in a quandary, for it had been her purpose to remain at Santa Ysobel's. To continue to live with the señora under the existing conditions would be too difficult for them both, she felt. However, her attempt to express this feeling to Bianca was met by such contrite pleading that she had yielded.

It was after Mrs. Martinez was comfortably settled in her new bed that, alone with Alba, Bianca had as gently as possible told the girl of the developments of the preceding night. The news of the arrest Alba took very quietly.

"He denies that he committed the murder," said Mrs. Gil, glad to be able to offer that solace; "but he refuses to explain—anything. He says he knows nothing about the murder, but—he does admit that he is the son of Roderick McRae."

"Roderick McRae?" echoed Alba. "Who is he?"

"Oh—you don't know," Bianca said; then stopped and, crossing to a table, opened a newspaper lying there and held it out to the girl. "This will tell you the story better than I can," she explained; and, as Alba fell at once to reading the indicated article, Bianca walked over to a window and stood there, looking out.

Her heart ached for Alba. Yet how fortunate that she was not married to that wretched young man!

"Señora! Is this true?"

Bianca turned quickly, struck by a strangely eager and excited note in the girl's voice.

"Is it true—that his father killed mine?"

"Yes—it must be. Have you never heard of this before?" Bianca returned.

"Never—not a word!" said Alba. "Where is he now? I'm going to him—I must see him."

"But, my dear—do you think that quite—necessary?" Bianca demurred.

"Yes, yes; it is, señora. I must see him," Alba said quickly, starting for the door.

"But not now—not at once! Wait—let us talk about it a little—"

"Wait? You didn't wait when Señor Gil was arrested!"

"No; but—" The two cases were not parallel, Bianca was about to say; but, realizing the uselessness of that argument, she said instead: "I will go with you, then."

IN a few minutes they had started, and the journey was made rapidly enough for even Alba's impatience. The delay came after their arrival at their destination, though Bianca's recent experience helped her to take the shortest way to their purpose.

But at last Alba found herself alone, staring a little dazedly at a door through which she had been told "the prisoner" would be brought to her. At the windows of the room were iron bars.

It seemed unreal. She in such a place! And he! A vision of their first meeting and the second came to her—the moonlit hills and the sunny Alameda. That was reality, not this. This was a dream—grotesque, horrible.

Then the door opened and he came in.

For one instant she was aware of the figure of a guard standing behind him in the doorway; then it disappeared, and they were alone. For another moment then she waited before, hardly knowing

that she moved, she started toward him. He met her in the middle of the room; and as his arms closed round her the room seemed to them both blotted out. There were no barred windows, no guarded doors in the world—no world but that which they held in their arms.

But suddenly she drew back.

"And now you must tell me what I can do—how I can help you," she said. "I know you are innocent. I have never had a doubt of that—never. You believe me, don't you?"

For answer he raised the hand he still held to his lips.

"There is nothing we can do—but wait," he told her then. "Oh, my darling, I wish I could explain everything to you. But I can't—not yet. You'll trust me a little longer, won't you?"

"I couldn't stop if I wanted to," she answered eagerly. "I trust you as I love you, and I can never stop doing either. But I know now why you looked as you

did when I told you my name. It was because of our fathers, wasn't it? You thought that when I knew about that I should hate you. But, you see, I don't—I don't! I feel just the same. I know your father killed mine; but does that change you—or me? I never saw my father; I don't remember my mother. And you can't remember your parents. They have all been dead for years and years. But we are alive—and we have to go on living. And I can't go on without you—not—if you love me."

"I do, sweetheart—more than anything in the world," he answered.

"Then what else counts?"

"Other things count sometimes."

"More than love?"

"Yes—more than love."

"And the thing that stands between us is not that your father killed my father?"

"No." He turned his eyes from her as he answered, and stared out through the window; and suddenly she noticed how changed he was—how worn and gaunt.

"Oh!" she cried out in self-reproach. "You are ill, and I have come here and worried you about myself, when I really wanted to help you. Forgive me; I won't be selfish again. But let me help you—let me do something for you."

He drew her to his arms again.

"You help me just by loving me. Just to know that you do makes me strong. But there is nothing else that you can do."

"Is there no friend that I can go to?"

"No—no one. There is nothing any one can do."

"But—will you do nothing to defend yourself—nothing at all?" she questioned in alarm.

He shook his head. "Oh, just trust me, dearest," he pleaded. "And love me—love me—no matter what comes."

"I will—I will," she promised solemnly.

THE announcement of Brown's arrest in the morning papers made it imperative, as Dozy viewed the situation, for him to put himself in Scarborough's hands.

Tim was not surprised to see him; and, to Dozy's relief, he did not insist

---

upon knowing the nature of the object he had seen Brown hand the boy.

"He said it was his—something he didn't want the papers to get hold of if he gave himself up—and I promised to take care of it," Dozy explained. "I had to promise, Tim. If you had seen how he looked!"

"I understand. Yes, he does look as if he'd been having a pretty bad time of it," said Scarborough.

He listened then to the account of Dozy's meeting with Brown after the murder and their talk together.

"When I saw him starting to unlock that boarding-house door," Dozy finally declared, "I knew I'd been right about the dual personality."

"Did he admit it?"

"Not right at first. Wanted me to promise not to tell if he did. But I said I couldn't promise that. And I tried to get him to give himself up—I told him he'd be caught in the end. I said if he hadn't been himself at the time, but a different personality, they couldn't hold him responsible—that it was like being insane."

"What did he say to that?"

"Went right up in the air; said that was just it—that they'd say he was insane and lock him up."

Tim nodded.

"I thought so. That's probably the reason he won't talk now."

"But he told me last night—told me positively—that he didn't kill Welles-Hewitt. He said he knew he didn't."

"How?"

"He didn't explain; but I thought he had changed back to the way he was when he was in the Welles-Hewitt house and remembered what he did there."

"But in the case he described to us the man didn't know in one state anything he did or thought in the other. Then how could he remember that he had remembered?"

Dozy looked blank. "I never thought of that," he said.

When he was gone, Scarborough went again to Brown. Dozy had asked to be taken along; but Tim declared that the visit would be unwise, considering Dozy's connection with the case.

From Brown, after much questioning and with the aid of what he had learned from Dozy, Scarborough got at last an admission that the young man was the victim of a secondary personality.

"And you don't remember anything that happened while you were in the Welles-Hewitt house the other night?"

Brown shook his head. Under the tan his skin was gray. He looked as if he had not slept for a long time.

"You told Cullop that you know you're not the murderer. How do you know it, if you remember nothing?"

"Because, Mr. Scarborough, it isn't in my nature to do such a thing," said Brown, a strained, pleading look in his blue eyes. "Not in either nature," he added.

"Not if you hated a man intensely—as you hated Welles-Hewitt?"

Watching as he fired this shot, Tim caught the sudden tensing of Brown's haggard face; but he did not speak.

"Now, look here, Brown," Tim said earnestly. "I like you, and somehow I don't believe you did that murder. I don't believe it is in you, as you say. But you were in the house—what for?"

"I've told you all I can, Mr. Scarborough."

Tim rose impatiently.

"I'm sorry," he said shortly, and left.

THE District Attorney received the story of dual personality about as Tim had expected.

"Wants to plead insanity, does he?" he snapped disgustedly. "And with a new twist. Won't that be pie for the experts? We'll never get through with the case."

"I doubt, Mr. Redding, that he will plead insanity," Tim replied. "He seems to have a horror of being called insane. When I was talking with him on the train, before I had any idea that the case he described was his own, I remarked that dual personality seemed to me to be just a form of insanity. And he didn't like it a bit, I could see. But he said he knew that was how most people would look at it, and that was why a man so afflicted would do anything to keep it secret—that anything was better than being thought insane. And it isn't he who has brought up the subject now. It's Cullop. And we both had trouble getting Brown to admit it."

"Well, the thing to do is to put him in the psychopathic ward at Bellevue, where he can he watched. But first I want to talk the case over with somebody that's up on such things. All I know about double personality I got from fiction—had an idea it began and ended there; but if you say it is a matter of medical record, then I'm going to find out what's known about it." He thought a moment. "The best man, I should say, is Tierney," he decided, reaching for his telephone.

"But he's a friend of Miss Yznaga's," Tim objected. "Isn't it possible he would favor Brown for her sake?"

"Oh, I think not. He's honest—as honest as any of them. And he has one great quality: he can say a thing and get through."

AFTER some insistence on Redding's part, and his assurance that the consultation would be brief, Dr. Tierney consented to see them at once, Scarborough going along to repeat to him Brown's description of his case.

The luxurious office was already well decorated with the elegantly dressed, idle, discontented women who are the mainstay of the "nerve specialist." No one need have felt compunction at stealing their valueless time by keeping them waiting, and Dr. Tierney felt none. As soon as the patient who was closeted with him had departed, the two men were admitted. He listened closely to what they had to say. He was plainly both interested and surprised.

"Dual personality is not insanity," he said, when, after stating their case, Redding put the question. "No moral irresponsibility is involved. There can be no dispute among alienists about that, and the young man will be foolish to plead insanity on such ground."

"But is it possible that he has, as he claims, a second individuality which alternates with his normal one, and that neither has any direct knowledge of the acts of the other?"

"Perfectly possible," answered Tierney. "Alternating personality is a phase of multiple personality, and is an established fact, though its explanation is a moot point. Formerly cases of it were looked upon as freaks or monstrosities, and were disregarded by science; but we have now come to see in them merely an abnormal condition of the mind, that is interesting and valuable because it reveals the very make-up of personality. A man's personality, as you know, is the sum total of the qualities and characteristics peculiar to him as an individual; and in a normal individual these ingredients of his mentality cohere, stick together, forming a single whole. But sometimes they do not. Sometimes the personality becomes disintegrated. Certain elements separate themselves from the whole—nobody knows how or why—until, in extreme eases, there is a dissociation of so many kinds of mental activity that it leads to a distinct change of personality. Do you follow me?"

The doctor paused for a glance at his listeners; then, satisfied that he was not being too technical, continued:

"Sometimes the change occurs only once, lasting in certain cases for years, when the original personality appears again. But there are instances on record in which the two alternate, each in turn controlling the body and the mentality of the individual. And—this is very important—each of these personalities has the right to be considered as such, because each is conscious of itself as a separate personality, and because it can exercise will and reason. And this man Brown can not shirk responsibility for the Welles-Hewitt murder on the ground that he committed the crime while under the influence of a secondary personality, because that secondary personality is as responsible an agent as the primary one. That, I take it, is the point you want settled?"

"It's one of them," said Redding. "But what we are after now is some means of finding out what that second personality knows about the murder. Brown was seen there just afterwards—he admits that. But he denies that he is the murderer, on the ground that in neither of his mental states is he capable of the crime—"

"That's reasonable," said Tierney.

"Yes, but he was there! What was he there for? He says he doesn't know. He claims that he didn't even know Welles-Hewitt was dead until he heard of it some hours later. He says he knows nothing that happened while he was in the house."

"Perhaps he doesn't, consciously; but subconsciously he does, if he was there," the doctor answered. "And we ought to be able to get it out of him very easily by hypnotism."

"Hypnotism!"

"Yes. His secondary personality is at present submerged; but it's there—as much a part of his mentality as the other. And it can be roused by hypnotism—that is, if he'll agree to it. You can't hypnotize a man against his will. But if Brown refuses it will be because he is afraid of what he will tell. If he is confident of his innocence he will probably not refuse. You might consult him, and if he consents I will recommend a good man for the work—I don't do that sort of thing myself. But I shall be glad to be present. In fact," Tierney finished, with a laugh, "if I am not present I shall never forgive you."

Redding smiled.

"It is an interesting case," he agreed.

"Interesting!" said Tierney. "Why, man, dual personality is the most fascinating thing in the world. And why? Because there isn't one of us who doesn't know that he has not only one other but several other selves hidden away inside of him. I consider this case of Brown's simply an extreme instance of a universal condition. And I have a theory about it. I believe it is the result of suppression—the suppression of strong natural tendencies or tastes. For example, you tell me that, according to Brown, his second self differs from the first in that it is high-strung, reckless, and intemperate, while the first is self-controlled, even-tempered, with no desire for liquor—contradictions of each other, in short.

"Now, we know a little about this young man's ancestry, and it is very significant. His grandfather, you say, was considered 'queer'; his father killed a man in a drunken rage, and was hung for it. Now, suppose the boy, even when a small child, showed signs of excitability and quick temper. What would the mother do? Would she not, between her prayers, try to teach him self-control? Wouldn't she point out to him in every example she could find the disastrous results that come from a lack of it? And when, some day when he was older, he came home with his face bleeding and his clothes torn, excited, angry, yet a little triumphant because he had had a fight with another boy and whipped him, wouldn't she, desperate with fear for him, tell him about his father?

"Now take the boy. He's just at an intensely impressionable age, with a child's vivid imagination. He can see his father's body on the gibbet. And when the poor, frightened mother has brought the lesson home to him, he sees himself there. A hideous fear comes to him. He's afraid now of himself. He's afraid of every impulse, every desire. He questions each one; if it seems dangerous he stifles it. Of course, the stifling isn't done in a day. Again and again he lets events excite him. He loses his temper—he fights. But after each lapse comes the vision of that dangling form. He lives with the fear of it.

"It's horrible. But he goes on like that for years. And gradually the dangerous impulses come less often, less strongly. He gets them all stifled at last, all crushed down inside him—so far down, finally, that he thinks they're dead, because he never feels them any more. He even in time forgets that he ever felt them. He thinks he has won his battle. He has succeeded in making himself into something he was never meant to be. Instead of the light-hearted, high-spirited, demonstrative man he ought to be, he is self-contained, grave, unemotional. He will never get into a drunken rage and kill a man and hang for it, because he never loses his temper and never drinks.

"That is how he thinks about himself. He doesn't know that he has not killed his natural tendencies, but has only repressed them. They are down in the subconscious strata of his mind, as much alive as ever. Perhaps they'll stay there as long as he lives—perhaps not. Some day he may have an accident, a violent mental shock; or some slight incident may recall a vivid memory of his childhood. No one knows just what brings on these changes—

"YOU understand that I'm only theorizing," Tierney interrupted himself to say. "I'm building on the few facts we know about Brown a hypothetical case to show you how double personality may be explained. Brown's actual experience may have been quite different. But I feel sure that in his case and in all others the beginning was repression of certain mental elements by which these were put out of gear with the rest of the conscious mind. Just what caused them to combine and finally emerge from the subconscious nobody knows. It is possible that Brown woke up one morning to find himself in a strange room and in a strange town. Being still possessed of reason, he may have thought himself insane, or been thought so by others. Perhaps he ran away—you could hardly blame him for it. Or he may have stayed on, kept his wits about him, and gradually found out enough about his normal self to play the part. Of course he was changed in disposition, manner, tastes. He may even have looked somewhat different. A change of expression and bearing are sometimes quite transforming. He probably made an entirely new set of friends to suit his new tastes—perhaps dissipated and drank and got into rows. In one of his two states he seems to be married, in the other not."

"And in the other he met and fell in love with Miss Yznaga. My God, what a tragic plight!" said Redding.

The doctor's brows contracted. In his professional interest in the case he had overlooked his personal concern in it.

"I hope it won't be a long trial," he said. "It is going to be a terrible ordeal for the girl. I advise you to try hypnotism on Brown as soon as possible. You see, when the conscious mind is put to sleep you can reach the subconscious, and that's where the information you want is hidden."

"We shall try it, by all means, if Brown

Continued on page 20

WHAT SCIENCE IS DOING

To Roll This Old World Along

THE VIGOROUS MOSQUITO

IN 1754 a French scientist, M. Joblot, reported that he had seen in the water of a basin at St. Magloire, Paris, "a new kind of fish which might be called an aquatic caterpillar."

According to the Survey, M. Joblot might see his "aquatic caterpillars" by dozens in the electric-lighted glass tanks that you may study in some drug-store windows in Manhattan, or at the entrance to New York's Health Department today; for his "new fish" proved to be neither exclusively Old-World specimens, nor limited to the eighteenth century. They were nothing more or less than mosquitos in the larva stage.

But no caterpillar ever showed such earnest zeal as do these air-hungry little wrigglers in the tanks, struggling to the surface to breathe. Even the pale green inch-worm is positively Delsartian in its gestures, compared with these writhing little dark things. Their contortions are one means of identifying them, it seems; for the larvæ of the Culex mosquitos feed at the bottom of a pool, where they find small algæ or debris of dead animals.

"Some are markedly cannibalistic, and devour living organisms of almost their own size," says Dr. C. S. Ludlow, in her study of Philippine mosquitos.

When rations are strewn along the bottom of a tank, where instinct tells them to seek food, they scurry after it. But when they have fed they come to the surface to breathe, hanging head downward, stiff as little sticks, as if, even in the midst of a city, an interested dragon-fly, seeing something move, might pounce. Only the little hairs around the mouth vibrate, attracting particles of food.

Except a few brilliantly colored species, larvæ are of a soft, dull gray—so excellent a protective coloring amid the sticks and moss and debris of their native pools that even experienced collectors confess to have narrowly escaped missing them.

ALPINE RAPID TRANSIT

LIGHTING THE FIRE-MAN'S WAY

To aid in fighting specially smoky fires, the Los Angeles fire department has installed on its trucks powerful searchlights which penetrate smoke to an almost unbelievable distance. A generator installed on the right footboard and connected with the main shaft furnishes power for the lights. There is also a series of large lighting batteries capable of furnishing these lights for several hours.

There are five large lights mounted on the rear of the truck, three of which are stationary and two portable.

By means of special adjustments the stationary lights can be swung from side to side, and elevated or lowered, enabling the firemen to throw their rays upon any part of a building.

The two portable lights can be carried

by a large handle, or they may be adjusted to a tripod and operated.

The lights are useful also after a fire is out and the crew is ready to return to the fire station. The equipment may be collected, ladders may be lowered more readily, and hose picked up, and all equipment collected with greater efficiency.

ROPE TIRES FOR AUTOMOBILES

A ROPE automobile tire made of coir fiber, which is bullet-, nail-, and glass-proof, has appeared in Australia, according to the Automobile.

The advent of the automobile in Australia has, to a very considerable extent, solved the difficulties of transportation. In many parts of the country the roads are merely brush tracks or overland stock routes. The rough nature of the country through which the cars travel, and the excessive heat, have made the cost of rubber tires a serious item in maintenance.

As a result, many experiments were made to obtain a suitable rubber at a moderate cost. Tests of tires made with various kinds of fiber were tried, with the result that coir fiber was found to be the most suitable for the purpose, because of its lightness, cheapness, resiliency, and durability.

When first placed on the market, the homing tire, as it was called, was sold as an emergency tire; but it proved so satisfactory that in some country districts the rope tires are frequently used altogether. It is claimed that, if a speed of sixteen miles an hour is not exceeded, they are almost as easy riding as rubber tires.

The rope tires take the place of both outer and inner tubes, being attached to the rim by four or five straps.

The Other Brown

—Continued from page 18

consents," said Redding. "But if you are anxious to hurry things, Doctor, you can do it by letting us talk to Mrs. Martinez."

"Doctor," put in Tim, "do you know whether Mrs. Martinez was in Mrs. Yznaga's employ at the time of Yznaga's death?"

The doctor thought a moment.

"I think it very likely, because she was with Mrs. Yznaga six or seven months later, when I attended her at the birth of her child in Mexico City. But neither of them ever spoke to me of the tragedy in London. I never heard of it, in fact, until after I came here. I have no objection to your questioning Mrs. Martinez now—none whatever. She is better, and I have allowed her to be moved to the home of Mrs. Gil."

"Is that so?" said Redding, surprised.

"Yes. Mrs. Gil came to me last night and—suggested it," the doctor answered.

"Doctor," said Tim abruptly, "has Mrs. Martinez got a very weak heart?"

Dr. Tierney looked at him, frankly mystified, whereupon Tim explained:

"When I found her the other night after the murder, I thought she had fainted from fright at seeing Brown suddenly dash by her. But she denied seeing anybody. She said she felt a sharp pain in her heart and—just fainted from that."

"I see," said the doctor. "Yes, she has a rather weak heart that goes back on her at times, especially if she has over-exerted herself, as she had that day in packing."

"But it isn't dangerously weak, is it?" Tim persisted. "I mean that she isn't likely to—to die—from a sudden shock?"

"Oh, no; there's no danger of that."

"Thank you; I was just wondering about it. Good morning, sir."

"Now what were you wondering?" demanded Redding, the instant the two were in their cab. "Got a new idea?"

"Not exactly new," said Tim. "But that talk about hypnotism started me thinking. You know, I've said from the first that the old woman holds the key. But what's the use of asking her questions? She'll only lie. If we could get at her subconscious mind, now! She'll never consent to being hypnotized, of course; but—"

Entering his office in the Criminal Courts Building a little later, Redding suddenly came to a sharp halt. A young man had risen and stepped toward him.

Oh, no—the man was not Brown—he saw that now. Besides, he could not be. It was their blond hair and the contour of head and figure that were so alike. But this was another man altogether.

"Mr. Redding—the District Attorney?"

Redding nodded.

"My name is Brown."

"What!"

"You don't seem particularly glad to see me," said the young man, his blue eyes flashing. "And, do you know, I flattered myself you would be. I thought you might like to have me tell you who killed Welles-Hewitt. Because I know, you see. I was there."

IT was an hour later. Again the District Attorney and Scarborough sat together in a taxicab, silent. Only once between the office of Haldine & Company, brokers, and the Pan-American Trust Building did either speak. Redding asked: "Can you beat it?" and Tim shook his head.

The cashier of the Pan-American Trust Company received them at once, and as soon as they were seated Redding asked:

"Have you had any trouble here recently with counterfeit money?"

"No—no more than usual."

"Seen any bad hundreds lately?"

"A counterfeit hundred!" The bank official sat up in alarm. "Why, no—no."

"The reason I ask," Redding explained, "is because the question has been raised as to whether there could have been any had money given to Welles-Hewitt when he cashed that twenty-five thousand dollar check from the Mexican Mines. Is that possible, do you think?"

"I think it decidedly impossible!"

"Well, with your permission and in your presence, I'd like to ask some questions of the teller who cashed the check. His name is Baker. I talked to him yesterday, you remember."

As Baker entered the room his glance fell on Redding, and it seemed to the latter that his advancing foot faltered.

"Mr. Baker," the District Attorney began courteously, "I just want to ask a few questions about that big check you cashed for Welles-Hewitt the other day."

There was a slight pause; then the teller said "Yes, sir," with the agreeable accent of deference that had prepossessed Redding at their first meeting.

"Have you been following the case?"

"Well—yes; I've read about it some."

"Then you know, of course, that Brown was arrested last night, and refused to make a statement of any kind?"

"Yes, sir."

"But you probably have not heard that he has since—confessed."

On the final word Redding involuntarily leaned forward for a closer view of the face he was watching. The teller's answer was composed enough, however:

"No, sir, I hadn't heard about that."

"He admits," Redding continued, "that he entered the Welles-Hewitt house from the roof, as we supposed. He had never had a thought, he says, of killing Welles-Hewitt, or even of robbing him, but went there for another purpose. He hid in the library behind a large davenport that stands diagonally across one corner. He was there when Gil came. He was familiar with Gil's voice. He says the two men quarreled violently over Welles-Hewitt's refusal to accept the certified check Gil offered him, insisting that he must have cash or the deal was off.

You see, Mr. Baker, one of the striking features of Brown's statement is that it confirms Gil's story in every particular. Judging from what he heard, Brown says that Welles-Hewitt evidently did mean to take Gil's money and give him a deed for the Rosalba mine, although he had on his person at the time the twenty-five thousand dollars you had paid him that day on the Mexican Mines check."

The District Attorney's tone had gradually become quieter, more deliberate. It might even have been called soothing. For Baker had gone white.

"And now, Mr. Baker," said Redding, "I want to ask if you have had any trouble with counterfeit money la—"

THE question was never finished. There was a violent start from the teller, and the next instant his right hand jerked an object from his hip pocket. At sight of it the other three men sprang to their feet; but they were too late. Baker's hand went to his head, there was a shot, then his body dropped with a thud to the floor.

At once from without came running steps, excited voices. The cashier jumped to the door and stood against it.

"What is it?" he gasped to Redding.

The District Attorney did not answer. He was watching Scarborough, who knelt beside the teller.

"Dead," Tim presently announced.

Redding looked over at the cashier.

"Suicide is confession," he said.

"Confession! What's he done?"

"Murder," replied Redding. "He killed Welles-Hewitt."

An explanation of his words did not follow until later, after the body of the dead teller had been removed and the excitement in the bank quelled. Then, in the private room of the president, who had been hastily summoned, the District Attorney made a brief statement.

"When I came here I did not know whether Baker was guilty or not," he said. "I had only Brown's word for it. What he told me was this: After Gil left the Welles-Hewitt house, two or three minutes passed; then the door-bell rang again, and again Welles-Hewitt answered it. Brown, still in hiding behind the davenport, could hear the Englishman talking to some one, and presently he and another man, Baker, came back to the library. Nothing was said for a minute; but Welles-Hewitt must have taken from his person a money belt.

---

"'Here are the hundreds,' he said; and then Brown heard the sound of the money being handled, and Baker said: 'These are all right, I'm glad to say.' Then: 'I'm sorry to have troubled you, sir, but I was afraid might have given you one of the bad ones. I remembered your telling me you were going to Mexico to-night, so I thought I'd better come up.'

"Welles-Hewitt thanked him, and Baker said good night. Brown heard them walking toward the door—and the next thing there came a heavy fall.

"Forgetting all caution, Brown says, he raised his head, and saw Baker standing looking down at Welles-Hewitt. In his right hand, which was still raised, Baker held a bronze statuette. Suddenly he turned and put the statuette back on the book-case, then crossed over to the desk and put in his pockets the money belt and loose bills that lay there.

"Brown ducked again, and in a moment he heard the parlor doors open and close, then the street door.

"Now, gentlemen," Redding went on, after a slight hesitation, "Brown makes no bones of saying that if he himself had not been seen and recognized while in the Welles-Hewitt house that night he would probably never have told what he knew of the murder, because, in his opinion, Welles-Hewitt deserved death. But when he learned that he himself was suspected, he realized he was in a serious predicament.

"But before he dared move in the matter he had to have proof. How could he get it? All he knew was that the murderer was a bank teller. So he waited and watched the papers. As you know, he didn't have to wait long. When Gil's arrest was announced, Baker's statement to me about Gil's large cash deposit on the morning following the murder was published as one of the reasons.

"When he read that account yesterday, Brown came down here and, on the pretext of having a bill changed, talked to Baker, and got from him an admission that it was he who had told about the deposit. When the bank closed, Brown followed Baker to his boarding-house; and last night, with the help of an accomplice, he got into Baker's room and searched it, and found some of the stolen money hidden there. He also found letters that revealed the fact that Baker had been gambling in stocks."

At this ominous news the officials of the Trust Company moved nervously.

"Yes, gentlemen," said Redding. "I think it likely he did borrow from you without leave. Haldine & Company, his brokers, told me he had been speculating heavily and had lost. That was what led to his crime, no doubt—though I do not believe the murder was premeditated. I think he must have gone to Welles-Hewitt with the counterfeit story to find out where the money was being carried, intending to steal it that night in the sleeping-car. A bottle of chloroform found in his room seems to prove this.

"At any rate," Redding added, rising, "we know he was the murderer."

"But how about Brown?" protested the bank president. "If he was not in the house to murder or rob, what was he there for?"

"Exactly," said the cashier.

Miles Redding glanced quizzically at their expectant faces.

"Your curiosity is very natural, gentleman," he replied. "But at present I can only assure you that the rest of Brown's story has nothing to do with the Pan-American Trust Company."

To be concluded next week

The Consul at Paraminta

—continued from page 6

the thing was a hoax, but De Costa interested a few wild blades like himself in the scheme, and they fitted up a vessel to go and search for the treasure.

"De Costa put in here at Paraminta, hired half a dozen laborers, and put out for the Twin Brother islands. It was just at the time that Ybarra first turned up here, with nothing in particular to do. He fell in with De Costa, and was taken along in some capacity. They dug and dug for weeks. Then they gave up in sheer disgust. De Costa left that precious parchment with Ybarra, and went back to Havana.

"One day Ybarra was struck with a sudden idea. He sat down and wrote a letter to the Naval Observatory at Washington, and asked them if they could tell him what had been the position of the North Magnetic Pole about the year 1680, and how much the compass had shifted during the last two hundred years and in which direction.

"I suppose Ybarra's letter must have reached the desk of some employee hired to answer fool questions. And Ybarra's query was no worse than the next. It was perfunctorily but succinctly answered. A week after Ybarra had worked out a new series of compass bearings, his spade went thump against the uppermost of those little cedar casks buried in the sand.

"WE had reached the bungalow," said Jacobson, "before he had finished telling me all this. By this time I was convinced that the man was telling the absolute truth. I pointed out to him that it was no story to allow to reach the government's ears. They'd believe him quickly enough, and, even at this late day, would exact their share.

"'They're welcome to it,' he retorted bitterly. 'My God! Jacobson, I wish I'd never found the cursed stuff! I'm clean done for now.'

"'Look here, Ybarra,' I broke out. 'I can't make head or tail of what you're driving at. You surely understand that?'

"'I know,' he said wearily. You must forgive me for boring you with all this. It's been a relief, though, to tell you and feel that you believe it. If you really knew me'—his lips twisted in a bitter smile—' you would probably think I was lying, too.'

"He was gone before I could frame a rejoinder to his astounding words. Well, on the following morning, with my guests from the Algonquin coming to luncheon, there was no time to puzzle over this queer business of Ybarra. All my energies were engaged in getting Togo electrified into action and impressed with the fact that lunch at one-thirty didn't mean a quarter past three.

"I WAS in the thick of the thing, along about half-past twelve, when I caught sight of Miss Rutledge approaching the bungalow alone. She came in a little timidly, apologizing for intruding.

"'I wanted to have a little talk with you—quite by ourselves—before the others came,' she explained slowly. Her eyes searched mine for an instant. 'And, Mr. Jacobson, I hope you won't mind if I am quite frank with you.'

"She was very beautifully dressed—just what she had on I'm sure I can't say. I know it was all white, and the effect was exquisite. But I detected a harassed, driven look in her face when I studied her closely, as if she had been laboring under some great and secret strain.

"You heard what Señor Ybarra told us last evening. Mr. Jacobson, do you really think it's true?'

"'I haven't a doubt of it, Miss Rutlege,' I said promptly.

"Her breast rose and fell as she seemed to weigh my answer. 'It seems so—so unbelievable—actually digging up a fortune on a desert island out there.' Her eyes were lost in the distance of the bay.

"'Unbelievable—well, naturally,' I answered. 'But you know such things have happened before in this part of the world, and may happen again. Some people declare that the shores of the Caribbean are still a literal treasure ground—'

"If I only could believe—that it was out there—on those lonely islands—'

"I'm convinced of the truth of it,' I put in strongly. 'Miss Rutledge, Señor Ybarra last night told me the whole story—'

"'The whole story!' she broke in, turning upon me in sudden alarm.

"Yes—how he came to find that treasure of his on the Twin Brothers.

---

Miss Rutledge, I confess I don't understand this thing, but I'm convinced of the truth of Ybarra's story, although there can be no proof.'

"'No proof?' she queried.

"'Unfortunately, not. You see, he had to exercise the utmost caution in exhuming all that gold and transferring it to various places of safety in a way that wouldn't arouse suspicion. It's utterly impossible now to prove that it was once all Spanish doubloons, buried out there in the sand. There are no witnesses and no evidence—except Villa Nueva as you see it to-day.'

"Villa Nueva,' she repeated. 'Yes, there's Villa Nueva, of course.'

"'And you must understand,' I went on, 'when Señor Ybarra first came to Paraminta he had nothing at all.'

"She darted a quick look at me. 'Did he tell you how he came to have'—she hesitated, 'nothing at all?'

"'I know nothing of his history,' I said.

"For several moments she debated with herself, while her fingers toyed nervously with the paper-weight on my desk.

"'Mr. Jacobson,' she said at last, 'Señor Ybarra is not a stranger to me. I—I knew him in New York.'

"I merely lifted my eyebrows at that, although you can imagine my surprise. And you can imagine my further surprise as, gradually, she told me more of the story. It was far different from the version you gave me, Captain. Well, naturally, you'd got yours from the newspapers. Certain phases of the affair she slurred over—very gently, yes, and lovingly, too. Through it all vibrated a plea for the poor fellow, and a shaken trust in him.

"BY this time it was clear to me that she was in love with Ybarra, and it began at last to dawn upon me why Ybarra's sudden and inexplicable wealth might be looked at askance. And then, at last, I understood. She had come to me in desperate recourse to lift her out of her torment of doubt, to have me justify him, if I could. Once his name chanced to escape her lips—Howard.

"'Howard?' I queried.

"She hesitated, then frankly told me: 'Yes; his name is Howard Phillips.'

"The name struck me as oddly familiar. As I continued to listen to her, it teased my recollection, evaded my mental efforts to recapture it. Then all at once, in a blinding flash, it leaped full at me.

"My heels came down to the floor with a bang as I jumped out of my chair and confronted her across the desk. 'Howard Phillips?' I demanded. 'Howard Phillips?'

"Her glance, wide-eyed and frightened, followed me as I bolted across the room and began jerking open the drawers of my letter-files and recklessly tearing at their contents.

"'It's here—somewhere. I've got it. You see, it came years ago—'

"'What came?' she checked me.

"And then I explained in feverish, detached phrases, as I tore through those letter-files. It was a letter for Howard Phillips, addressed in the care of the American Consul at Paraminta. At the time I had carelessly opened it, without looking at the envelop—while going through my consular mail, with which it was mixed. But I could discover no Howard Phillips in Paraminta; nobody had ever heard of him. After a month or so I would have returned the letter to the writer, if I hadn't already opened it. It lay on my desk for weeks, rebuking me for that carelessness, before it disappeared. Then—months later—it came to light, in a general house-cleaning upset. It seemed too late to do anything with it then. I put it aside, and again forgot about it.

"Miss Rutledge was at my side while I was telling her this, taking the packets of papers from my hands as I delved into each in turn and rejected it. At last I unearthed it.

"'Read that,' I said, thrusting the letter into her hands. 'I think you have every right to.'

"I turned my back on her and went over to the door. I couldn't watch her. I drew off to the door, feeling that some sort of privacy should be hers at that moment—the letter demanded it. I could hear the paper faintly rustling in her hands, and Togo leisurely padding about, setting the luncheon table in the room beyond. I stared out across the bay, but my eyes saw nothing. I was striving to recall the wording of that letter which I had blunderingly opened four years before, and which had meant nothing to me at the time; I stood waiting—waiting.

"SUDDENLY I caught the rustle of her dress, the sudden movement of a chair, and a deep sob. I turned round at last. She had sunk down at the desk, her head buried in her arms, and from one hand hung the letter."

Jacobson got up abruptly from his chair, and cleared his throat a couple of times. I noticed that the handkerchief, which he applied perfunctorily to his face, covertly touched also the corners of his eyes.

"Beastly hot, isn't it?" he demanded.

"The letter," he went on after he had coughed again, "was from one of the big men in that mining fiasco which had worked Phillips' ruin. It was not exactly a confession, but it was nearly that—written from some bleak spot near Saranac, New York. I guess the poor chap, in the weeks he was compelled to spend bundled up, sitting alone out of doors, contemplating the great white silence about him,—and perhaps a vaster silence that he was slowly being brought to face,—had been moved to do a decent, generous act. It was all he could do, but it was enough. The letter was sufficient evidence that Phillips had remained clean-handed in that fraudulent mining affair. With that testimony in his possession, he could squarely face his old world once more. And it had been kicking around my office for nearly four years—thanks to you."

"To me?" I demanded.

"Why, of course. If you had ever told me that you knew Ybarra's real name was Phillips—as you told me to-day"—Jacobson's look was almost reproachful—"if you had taken me into your confidence—"

"But, Jacobson—" I protested.

"You should have seen that poor girl," he went on, ignoring my rejoinder, "after that sudden and complete ending of the tension and despair she'd been under. Her face, when at last she lifted it, was radiant. It was like the sun breaking out upon a shower-swept sea.

"'Now, Miss Rutledge,' I said, half embarrassed to have witnessed her emotion, but too delighted to realize what I was doing, 'I'm going to take this letter up to Señor Ybarra at once.' I was that ready to plunge out into the broiling, sun at high noon, and climb the road to Villa Nueva.

"She hesitated a moment, turning the letter over in her hands as if reassuring herself of its actuality. Then she spoke, and her smile broke out full upon me:

"'Dear Mr. Jacobson, it is I who have doubted him. Please let me take it!'

"Naturally, I consented.

"'And bring him back with you to lunch,' I instructed her. I went out and ordered Togo, who had at last succeeded in getting six plates and six chairs appropriately arranged, to make it a table for seven."

Jacobson got to his feet, lifted his arms above his head, and lazily stretched them.

"So—we were seven at table that day," he ended, with the air of proffering the most casual remark.

I smoked in silence, deliberately withholding all comment.

Presently he broke out again:

"But you—hang it! If you hadn't been such a close-mouthed individual—"

"It would have spoiled your story," I sardonically flung at him.

Then he grinned. I could see that he was immensely pleased.

What Are the Profits in Foreign Exchange?

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

IF the operation did not seem so technical and complicated, far more people would seize the present opportunity to invest—or speculate if you prefer the word—in foreign exchange. Great possibilities are there; upon that point all agree. Just how great are the risks is not so clear.

Foreign exchange came into being because of the expense, duplication of effort, and danger involved in shipping money to all parts of the world. A woolen "draper" in London sells a thousand yards of his product to a New York merchant, and draws a written order, draft, or bill—all three words mean much the same—upon the New Yorker. To ship the bill, collect the money, and send it to England would involve time, trouble, and risk. But if another Londoner has bought steel bars in New York, and the two drafts can be handled by the same banker, it is possible to make an offset in one city or the other, and avoid shipping more than a minimum amount of money.

Buying and selling these bills and offsetting international debts is the business of foreign exchange. Of course the bills must be expressed in terms of money, just as the price of a share of stock or a safety razor or a pound of bacon is expressed in money terms. But there are two kinds of money, because there are two countries, each with a different system. So the rate of exchange is the price of one kind of money in terms of the other. "Sterling 4.75³⁄₈" means that $4.75³⁄₈ will buy one English pound sterling. "Francs 5.85½" means that 5.85½ French francs will buy one American dollar. "Marks 65.75" means that four marks will buy 65.75 cents American money. "Rubles 28.35" means that one Russian ruble will buy 28.35 cents American money. "Lire 7.54" means it takes that many Italian lire to buy one American dollar; and so on through the list of foreign moneys.

The "rate of exchange," like the price of anything else, depends upon supply and demand. If payments of every description between England and America were exactly equal (and if there were no speculation or other disturbing factors) sterling exchange would always be $4.866, which is the amount of gold in an English sovereign or pound sterling. If we are buying enormous amounts of goods from England and they very little from us; if we owe them interest on mortgages; if our tourists are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in England, and Englishmen living in this country are sending back large sums to their relatives, then there will be a huge demand for drafts to remit funds, and the rate will go up. This did happen once, and although the gold in the English pound is worth only $4.866, yet Americans were paying $6 and even $7 for an English pound sterling bill.

At the present time the situation is exactly reversed with nearly every European country. That is because they are doing all the buying, and therefore scrambling for drafts to remit to us.

There are two ways of taking advantage of this situation. One is to establish a credit in a foreign country, and wait for the end of the war to bring you a profit in converting the credit back into American money. This can be done by paying over to a banker a sum of American money for him to buy exchange with and set up an account in a bank in the foreign country. The speculator would receive no interest probably during the war, but his risk would be limited to a further fall in exchange rates. The other and more common method is to buy internal bonds of foreign governments. Here the risks are double. You may lose, both from a further decline in exchange, and in the price of the bond itself. But the chances of profit also are double.

Suppose you buy a Russian internal bond at 95 per cent., the price at which it may be selling in Russia. If the bond rises to 100 per cent. (Russian money) after the war you will have more Russian money to exchange into American money than you have now. Then, of course, if ruble exchange returns to normal, there will be a profit on that end of it too, because you will then exchange your Russian money for twice as much American money as you can now. In addition, there is the interest being paid to your account during the war; and if this is left abroad until exchange becomes normal there will be a profit on the interest also.

How long it will take to reëstablish normal exchange rates after the war, no one can tell. That some rise in the value of foreign money in relation to ours should take place as soon as peace is assured is reasonably certain. If the foreign countries repudiate their debts, the risk in buying their money is great; but if they continue to meet their debts there is sure to be a gradual return to normal exchange rates.

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