Surely There Is Something You Can Clean Up or Paint Up This Spring

There are two ways to keep a man out of the mud—so some one has said.

One is to punish him if he steps in.

The other is to black his boots.

You have read a great deal about how a man can change his environment: have you ever stopped to think how tremendously the environment can change the man?

We think of the Greeks as creators of wonderful statuary. It would be equally true, in a sense, to say that it was the wonderful statuary that created the Greeks.

It was the influence of those statues of big, muscular men, and beautiful women, forever before their eyes, that inspired the Greeks to build themselves up toward physical perfection.

Hypnotize a man: dirty his face and hands, and dress him in ragged clothes. What happens?

Instinctively he slouches; his actions become furtive, slovenly. His soul takes on the color of his hands.

Dress him in a soldiers uniform, and with no other suggestion his shoulders straighten.

Dress him like a gentleman, and his every movement betrays an increased self-respect.

What is true of men is true also of organizations.

I know a certain church that was in the dumps. No enthusiasm, no spirit, no pride. Everybody hopeless.

And some amateur psychologist with a little extra money determined to try and experiment.

At his own expense he treated the church building to two coats of paint.

The transforming influence of that paint was little short of miraculous.

Members, for the first time in their lives, began to feel a little pride in their church. And, feeling pride in it, they wanted to do something for it. Out of the pride came effort, and out of the effort enthusiasm, and out of enthusiasm new life for an organization that was almost dead.

I know a town where the Board of Trade never met except to attend in a body the funeral of a member. No new industries came to that town; people went elsewhere to trade. It was rolling downhill with the clutch thrown out and both brakes broken.

And somebody started a Spring Clean-Up Campaign. Men who had never done anything at all for the town got out and worked together on the streets. Little children competed for the tin can prize and swatted the fly with a crusader enthusiasm.

When that Clean-Up Campaign was done it had created a momentum that simply could not be stilled. Citizens who had cleaned a street for the town wanted to do something else. The whole community began to be recreated because it had washed its face and blacked its boots.

For your own sake this spring, go out and clean up something; paint up something. Anything.

Quit spanking the children for tramping mud into the house. Make the house shine, and they will want to take off their shoes and enter in stocking feet.

Quit scolding about your town for its lack of spirit. Get it clean, for once, and see what happens.

Paint the fence in front of your house.

And a surprising thing will occur.

Every time you pass it in the morning on your way to work, you will be so pleased with yourself that the whole day will go better.

I would not be surprised if that feeling of self-satisfaction would actually register itself in your income.

If you want to lift yourself out of the mud—

Now's the time—this spring. Black your boots.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

HER OWN BUSINESS

By FREEMAN TILDEN

Illustrations by George E. Wolfe

IT was the last time they expected to be together.

Next day Elizabeth Farnum and her mother would be on their way to Palm Beach. Hyatt was going back to Chicago, to his desk in the advertising office; and that would be the end of a queer, pleasant companionship which had begun in this old-world city of Charleston and had lasted three weeks.

Now they stood side by side in the half-darkness on the solid stone embankment of the city—the "Battery"—and looked out over the quiet black water toward the blacker line that was James Island. For a long time neither of them spoke. The water lapped gently at the stones beneath their feet. Behind them, from a brilliantly lighted colonial mansion came flickers of dance music, teasingly stopped and released, stopped and released, by the soft wind.

It was she who, looking back at that revelry from which she had fled to have a last word with Hyatt, spoke first.

"I suppose I must be returning," she said regretfully. "Mother will be sending a search party for me." Her tone took on a little irony. "An heiress is so easily lost, strayed, or stolen, you know. I must go back and dance. Or play auction. Or gossip. Or discuss things I know nothing about with other people who know nothing about them. What a life!"

Hyatt turned his head to look at her. In her hurry to quit the lambent house she had seized upon the first covering she saw. It was a man's woolen ulster, light, English, and expensive. She had turned up the collar, but not buttoned it at the neck, and her full white throat showed. Her head was erect; Hyatt could see her sensitive nose dilate with her scornful words. She seemed to him a queen—who had left her coronet at home, and was the queenlier for lack of it.

"You don't know what you have done for me!" the girl burst out with unexpected vigor. "I shall never forget these three short weeks. It isn't merely that you've treated me like a real human being: it's that you've shown me that there's big work and fascinating work in the world. Oh, if I could only do something worth while!"

HYATT leaned toward her and spoke with conviction.

"You can, you can!" he replied. "Don't you see your opportunity? Don't you see there's oceans of fun in it, not to speak of satisfaction and service? Your father must have planned something of the sort; else why, when he died, did he stipulate that you were to be an officer of the company?"

"How he must have wished that I had been a boy!" sighed the girl.

"No doubt he sometimes wished for a son. But this is your chance, Miss Farnum," went on Hyatt eagerly, "to show that daughters, too, can carry on their father's work. But I suppose I have no right to be advising you—"

"Go on! Don't stop!" said the girl, laying a hand tremulously upon his arm. "Tell me everything you think."

"Well," said Hyatt, "to be abruptly businesslike, Miss Farnum, the situation is just this, isn't it?—that the Farnum Paper Company is your own business. You could go into your office to-morrow, and your word would be final. You know nothing of the business—of any business.

But you have begun to despise this other, this syllabub existence. Your father produced the finest high-grade writing paper in the world, as far as we know. It is a clean, an interesting, almost an inspiring business. There is imagination in it, and solidity—and, as I see it, a chance for a woman's taste and finesse. Who is to prevent your going into your own plant and learning the business?"

"Who is to prevent?" echoed the young woman. "Do you know what mother would say if I should suggest being a useful creature? She would look at me with affectionate agitation and say: 'My dear Elizabeth, are you not feeling well?' Poor, dear mother! She even wishes now, I think, that our family name were not tainted with trade of any sort."

"Then, of course, I suppose there's nothing more to be said."

Suddenly the youth and will and deter mination to live her own life burst from the girl.

"But I do want to do those things!" she exploded. "I must do something. I simply can't endure this varnished idleness. Oh, how I should like to know how to do something useful, and do it well! I should like a desk, and letters to write, and interviews about the business. Could I learn? I could, couldn't I? Please say yes, Mr. Hyatt! If I only had some one to help

---

me! But not one of my friends would help me. They'd laugh at me. Mr. Hyatt!"—her eyes were burning with excitement now,—"if I should manage to do it, somehow, would you help me?"

"I'm afraid my words wouldn't carry much conviction with your mother," he replied, laughing. "I am a salaried man, you know, and not a very high salaried man, either."

"Oh, I don't mean that," she went on breathlessly. "I might manage mother. But I need some one near me who understands, if I should take the bit in my teeth. I heard father say, before he left us, that he was thinking of doing some new, important advertising. You are in that business. Would you come, if I should send for you some day? Would you help me that much?"

"I would come and help you, to the best of my ability, if I had to walk from China," responded Hyatt seriously.

They looked each other in the eyes; and each instinctively put out a hand.

"Good night," said the young woman softly. "I may take you at your word. But, if nothing ever comes of it, I want to thank you a thousand times for what you have said and done."

"Good night, Miss Farnum," replied Hyatt.

He saw her make her way back to the villa, the big coat wrapped around her, her head flung back, her step full of confidence. Then Hyatt slowly went up Meeting Street to the "select" Southern boarding-place where they had met. He went in through the gate, and sat on the porch. It was dark and quiet. Something of dreamy loveliness the young woman had left with Hyatt. It soothed him, and filled his head with fancies. But he came back to himself at last, sprang up, burst into a mocking laugh at his own expense, and said, half aloud:

"Wake up, Hyatt! You're asleep. Miss Farnum is worth a million or so, and you're an advertising writer at forty dollars a week. You may meet again—but not on this planet. Now—go to bed!"

HYATT went back to Chicago the next afternoon. Like most healthy, ambitious young men, he felt a sort of relief and renewed life at getting to his desk again. True, there was coupled with this feeling a vague sense of loss, of interrupted adventure, such as a globe-trotter feels when he comes back to dig in his garden. The recollection of that beautiful face, with its wistful eyes, came back to him now and then, and stopped him, with quickened heart, in the midst of a piece of "copy." But he shrugged his shoulders, looked at the clock, and pushed on.

Then, one day, he got a letter. It was written on that wonderfully fine paper which Hyatt recognized at once. It was type-written, too, with a comical uncertainty of touch that explained the roguish line at the bottom: "Dictated to myself."

Edwin Hyatt telegraphed his acceptance, and then sat down to figure out his position. It was like a patriotic militiaman responding to the call of the colors, and leaving the reasoning part—the speculation on the chances of stopping a bullet—till afterward.

Hyatt had felt, for a long time, that his work suffered from diffusion—from his being jumped from one merchandising proposition to another. He had felt himself the possessor of a single-track mind—in a way; and he believed that his best work would be given if he could fix it on one product in which he had consummate faith. He had one priceless asset: he believed in himself; and it was not a vague egotism, but a shrewd analysis of his capacity as he saw it.

Joseph Hauptmann, of the advertising firm of Hauptmann & Burns, for whom Hyatt was working, gave the young fellow that last great encouragement, at parting, which only a highly trained and generous mind can give.

"Hyatt," he said, "I'm honestly sorry to lose you, but we never stand in the way of any good thing that comes to our employees. I think you have real talent, and this is going to give you a chance to show it. The Farnum people have been crazy not to go into the national advertising field long ago. Go to it, and good luck. And if for any reason the thing falls flat, your desk will be right here any time."

Hyatt said nothing as to the peculiar accident that had finally made the "Farnum people" change their minds. The two men, employer and employee, looked at each other for a moment. What the older man saw was a well built, clean-cut fellow of twenty-six, with clear, enthusiastic eyes, touched with humor and imagination, at the threshold of an opportunity.

After an interminable wait—almost three days—Hyatt got off the train at a little station at the side of a swiftly flowing river. This was Farnumville! Flanked on both sides by steep hills—mountains, they seemed, to his middle-Western eyes—off which the available trees had been timbered, the green and brown landscape was good to the eye. Nearly the whole of Farnumville could be seen from the station. Immediately in front of Hyatt, as he alighted, was a long brick structure, with a canal stretching along its side. Through the windows he could see white-capped figures and nimble hands turning over big sheets of paper. Another mill, slightly larger, was at the right. On the side of the mill was a sign, outlined in incandescent bulbs:

So this was Elizabeth Farnum's business!

A SMALL door at the north end of the first mill bore the word "Office." Hyatt left his grips at the station, crossed the little bridge, and entered. Facing him now was another door, announcing "President." He knocked. Then a voice, whose tone sent a tremor through the young man, said: "Come in!" He went in.

"You've come!" said the voice. Never was there such a welcome, Hyatt thought many times afterward, as was contained in those two words. Hat in hand, with flushed face, he advanced toward the young woman who had risen from her chair behind the big glass-topped mahogany desk and was holding out her hand to him.

She had seemed to him, when they were in Charleston, the most beautiful woman he had ever looked upon. But now she was something else—and something more. The bored, dissatisfied expression that had rested in her eyes was

gone. In its place had come a gleam of interest and purpose and pleasure.

She was wearing a simple navy blue tailored suit, collared and cuffed in white linen, with a narrow tie of black velvet at the throat. Instantly Hyatt considered how absolutely and richly feminine the costume was—and yet how admirably it fitted with the surroundings. The business woman had come into being at no expense to the other woman.

"You see," she said quickly, with a smile of unaffected enjoyment, "that I am already at work. And it is only nine o'clock. Did you want to come? Oh, I've got the greatest schemes! I suppose most of them are absurd, but I've got to tell them. They're about advertising, of course. Fancy me giving ideas to an advertising man!"

This was Elizabeth Farnum! This was the young woman who had fallen heir to the great Farnum business when its creator passed away. By hearsay, Hyatt knew the details, in brief. Nathan Farnum, besides building up the business and making his water-mark known throughout the world, had been a conservative but successful investor. It was said that he had left more than two millions besides the plants. The young woman was supposed to be worth more than a million, besides her ownership of the business. And this was she, at the end of a social existence that she had abruptly concluded, sitting patiently in her father's old office, at his old desk, trying to master the myriad details of paper making and selling! And he had had a part in the transformation!

"Miss Farnum," he said, "I think you ought to know that I am not what you would call a finished advertising man. So far as I have gone, I have done well. But I hope I didn't give you a wrong impression when we were speaking of these things down South. I did get mighty enthusiastic, because—well, I always do get that way whenever I think of a high-grade product of any kind. But enthusiasm isn't everything. I haven't the slightest technical knowledge of this product. I—"

"Don't you suppose I've considered those things?" she laughed. "I'm really quite advanced already in business, Mr. Hyatt. Do you remember the day you found me writing a letter, and said jokingly, 'That stationery you're using, Miss Farnum, isn't nearly as good as your own brand'? I replied, you remember, that I knew it wasn't, and I should prefer the Escutcheon, except that it was just a little heavy and mannish for a young woman to use. Then you said, 'But your company ought to make a lighter-weight, more feminine note-paper, of the same fine quality as Escutcheon, Miss Farnum.' And we're going to do that very thing, Mr. Hyatt! And the idea was yours! I don't know why it wasn't done before—but it's going to be now. I've talked with Mr. Rouss—he's the general manager—about it. Now how dare you say that you can't help us?"

"I shall never say so again—until it's proved on me," rejoined Hyatt, with a laugh. "I'11 give you the very best I have. And it will certainly be pleasant to take hold of a proposition like this. I see great chances."

"Did you just come on that train?" she asked. "And your things are at the station? I've taken the liberty of getting you a boarding-place here in town. I thought you wouldn't care to live at the hotel. Perhaps you'd like to go up there now? And I'll telephone our chauffeur to bring the car over, and show you the country round here, this afternoon."

"I'd much rather go through the plant," suggested Hyatt. "I can see the country afterward. "

"No-o," she replied thoughtfully. "I think it's important to see the environment I've asked you to live in."

There was a note of courteous finality in Elizabeth Farnum's voice that quite settled the argument. It told Hyatt that the young woman had actually assumed the direction of her affairs. He bowed and went out; and as he closed the door behind him, he saw her sit down and get back to her work as if she had been brought up in the office.

THE boarding-place proved to be almost ideal and the price almost alarmingly low to Hyatt, who had been used to city taxation. Promptly after dinner, which was at noon, a big car appeared at the gate. A hundred miles or more Hyatt was hurled along the fine roads of the surrounding territory in company with an intelligent young man from the office, who pointed out the places of interest.

But, pleasant as it was lying back on the upholstery, Hyatt was anxious to get back to the plant. He wanted to get his mind in touch with the product; he wanted to see the wheels go round; he longed to grapple with that most pulsing of all work, the marketing of a supreme article of trade. His mind was already planning a campaign that would make every business man in the country turn automatically to Escutcheon papers when he wanted a messenger worthy of his wares. Above all, Hyatt wanted to justify the belief that this fine young woman had somehow built upon and around him.

In the morning Hyatt got down to the office at eight—the opening hour for the office force. Elizabeth Farnum came a few moments afterward. She greeted him with a graceful "good morning," satisfied herself that he was content with what he had seen of Farnumville, and then pressed a button. A moment later a man entered the room briskly. He cast a glance of obvious surprise upon Hyatt, and then stood respectfully before his employer.

"Mr. Rouss, I want you to meet Mr. Edwin Hyatt, of Chicago. Mr. Hyatt, this is our Mr. Samuel Rouss, the general manager. Please sit down, Mr. Rouss."

The general manager, a tall, nervous man with glistening dark eyes, black mustache, thin under lip, and a scarcity of hair that made him seem older than he was, sat down, with just the faintest trace of ironical interest on his face.

"Mr. Rouss," continued the young woman, "Mr. Hyatt has come from Chicago to be our advertising manager."

"Advertising manager!" repeated Rouss. "Ah, yes; advertising manager. Certainly."

The young woman smiled.

"I think I owe you an apology, Mr. Rouss, for not taking you into my confidence about this. But, you see, I wasn't sure Mr. Hyatt would come to us; and I had no one else in mind. Mr. Hyatt is the gentleman who suggested the lighter-weight Escutcheon—you know."

The general manager flashed a look at Hyatt.

"I must say," he replied, "that I made the same suggestion to your father four years ago, Miss Farnum."

"Indeed?" the young woman said dryly. "Of course I wouldn't have been likely to hear of it. However, it should be done."

"As to the position of advertising manager," went on Rouss, "I confess I am somewhat surprised, Miss Farnum. Speaking quite frankly, I don't see the opening. I don't claim to be an accomplished writer of advertising myself, but I think I have got very good results from the mediums we have used. I really don't see how Mr. Hyatt can keep busy."

"But we are going to broaden out. We're actually going before the public with Escutcheon," said Miss Farnum.

"As I understand it, Mr. Rouss," interjected Hyatt, "you have been using only trade journals—printing and allied trades.

---

"In talking the matter over with Miss Farnum, I made this point, which I should like your judgment on: If a business man says to his printer, 'I want you to get me out so much and so much office stationery on a high-grade paper,' without mentioning what high-grade paper, he may get Escutcheon, but he probably won't. The printer is human. In the first place, there isn't quite the profit for him in using Escutcheon; in the second place, by using a cheaper paper that will make a good showing, he can quote more attractive prices to his customer. But if the business man says, 'I want my stationery to be Escutcheon,' he'll get it. Now, the question is, what will make your business man specifically name Escutcheon? Advertising, won't it? And you can't reach that man through the trade journals. You must reach him through some medium he reads."

"That's it!" added Miss Farnum. "That's what is in my mind, Mr. Rouss."

It was only too obvious that the general manager didn't like the trend of things. He rose with dignity and said:

"Really, it seems to me that it has all been settled—in which case anything I should say—"

"Oh, come, Mr. Rouss!" the young woman interrupted quickly. "Please don't be offended. I do indeed ask your pardon for keeping you in the dark about it all. But, now that Mr. Hyatt is here, we want your help. You were my father's right-hand man, and I have just as much faith in you as he had. Please do be reasonable."

The tone was so ingratiating, so flattering, that Rouss flushed with pleasure, like a commended school-boy. When he spoke again his manner was changed:

"At your service always, Miss Farnum. I realize there is merit in Mr. Hyatt's suggestion. Still, you will pardon me for being frank—"

"I want you to be frank."

"Yes, Miss Farnum. Then I would say to you both, do you realize that a campaign such as you propose means a radical readjustment of our whole business scheme? Do you realize that such a campaign is going to cost a lot of money? Fifty thousand dollars at least—"

"Fifty thousand!" laughed the young woman. "Why, I'm going to spend a hundred thousand the first year if it seems justifiable, Mr. Rouss!"

"A hundred thousand!" Rouss gasped. "You don't mean it, Miss Farnum! Your father—"

"Is no longer here." She spoke soberly, and with a little catch in her voice. "Perhaps, Mr. Rouss, it would be as well to consider only the living now."

Rouss went pale. He knew that she knew he had more than once used her father's name as a sort of club over her. Hyatt relieved the situation by saying:

"It is understood, Mr. Rouss, that not one penny will be spent in advertising until I have made a minute survey of the situation, considered all points, distribution especially, and given good assurance that every dollar that goes out will come back with a rollicking company."

"I understand," replied Rouss, but grudgingly. "I'll be glad to talk it all over with you any time. Is that all, Miss Farnum? I'm very busy—"

"Yes, for the present."

When Rouss had gone, Miss Farnum smiled queerly at Hyatt.

"I'm afraid Mr. Rouss is annoyed," she said. "But please don't be angry with him if he shows—you understand—a little pique—"

"Indeed I won't," promised Hyatt. "Maybe I should feel the same way if he were in my place and I in his."

The young woman looked earnestly at Hyatt a moment. Then she replied:

"No, you wouldn't. It's nice of you to put it that way, but you wouldn't. You're—well, you're bigger than that."

"I thank you," said Hyatt.

The words sounded rather stupid to his own ears, the moment he uttered them—but he was sincerely grateful, and he rested on that.

"And now, Mr. Hyatt," concluded the young woman, "you will find a desk ready for you in the room next to Mr. Rouss. The purchasing agent will get you anything you need. The plants are open to you, and you'll find father's old help mighty nice men. And one thing more. Your are responsible to nobody but me. Nobody. Please remember that. It may save misunderstanding. I choose to think of you, at least just now, as something more than just an employee of the plant."

She reddened, and hastened to add:

"What I mean is, your work will be of a different sort from the rest. And I know we are going to get along splendidly. Good luck!"

As he walked along the narrow corridor to the room that had been hastily prepared for him, Hyatt was more nearly intoxicated than he had ever been before in his life. Elizabeth Farnum had, in less than two days, bound him to her fortunes with hoops of steel. He sat down at his desk feeling marvelously cleansed—he who had always felt clean. Over all, he felt an unspeakable joy at having contributed his little to bring this new existence to her.

MEANWHILE, Samuel Rouss went back to his room and indulged in a prolonged and acid sulk.

Nathan Farnum's keen sense of values had long ago appraised Rouss. Now and then he had been invited to the Farnum home for dinner; and then it was that the girl—as she was then—had deftly perceived that her father treated his manager with more liking than respect. The fact was Rouss, who had come into the office as a boy, had always remained something of a promoted office-boy.

Now Miss Farnum had done the unthinkable thing just as Rouss was settling down to a beautiful state of managership. She had burst suddenly into the office and removed the chair he was sitting in, so to speak.

Hyatt was dangerous in more ways than one. Rouss had begun to dream dreams. And those dreams were not all confined to the business. The general manager, who was only thirty-six in spite of his approaching baldness, had his full share of self-esteem.

The sudden entrance of Elizabeth Farnum into her own business had kindled a hope in Rouss's breast. If Miss Farnum, who, Rouss knew, had disappointed eligible men of wealth—inclined toward the self-made, or self making, kind of man, then why had he not a right to hope—to aspire?

In the next few days Hyatt's tactfulness relieved the general manager's suspicions. He honestly tried to include Rouss in his preliminary moves. Even before he made his first trip through the plants, he asked the older man to furnish him a factory guide who could make the technical processes clear to him.

But Rouss misconstrued Hyatt's modesty and deference. He took them to mean that he had a mild, plastic nature in hand. With this thought in mind, he burst into Hyatt's office, one day, with a box of index-cards in one hand. He found Hyatt sitting at his desk, looking out of the window.

"Ah, Mr. Hyatt," said Rouss briskly, "you're not busy just now, are you?"

It was not within Rouss's vision to perceive that an advertising writer, engaged in what is practically creative work, is never either busy or idle, in the sense that a stenographer or filing clerk is busy or idle.

Hyatt smiled cordially.

"Why, I'm not actually writing anything just yet," he replied; "I was thinking. But is there anything I could do?"

"Yes. These index-cards have got all mixed up. Somehow the girl in my office, who looks after them, isn't showing common intelligence these days. I thought if you weren't doing anything you might straighten them out for me."

Instantly Hyatt remembered Miss Farnum's admonition, not to hold himself responsible to anybody but herself. And, further, it occurred to the young fellow that this indexing was a job for a ten-dollar clerk. But, on the other hand, he didn't want to seem ungracious,—it was a small matter,—and he replied: "Certainly; I'll fix them up for you."

THE next day Rouss appeared at about the same time in the morning. This time he had a bunch of trade papers and a scrap-book.

"I say, Mr. Hyatt," he began, "would you mind clipping our ads out of these papers and pasting them up? I usually do this myself, but I'm rushed to death."

Hyatt looked at the general manager curiously. He was beginning to wonder about it. But he answered pleasantly:

"Of course I'll help you out gladly, Mr. Rouss. Just at this moment, though, I'm trying hard to work out a little problem of my own. I suppose those clippings could wait."

"Oh, any time to-day; but try to get them pasted up by to-night."

Hyatt tried to enjoy the joke, for he insisted on considering it a joke. Yet it was evident that either the general manager didn't realize what Hyatt was in the office for, or that he preferred to ignore it.

The third day in succession Rouss came to Hyatt with a request that had nothing to do with advertising. He appeared at Hyatt's door with a couple of strangers, a man and a woman, who had asked to be shown through the plant.

"I thought you might spare a half hour, Mr. Hyatt. You can make it so much more interesting to this gentleman and lady than one of the clerks—"

Hyatt turned red. He had a dread of starting a scene in the presence of strangers. He telegraphed a glance at Rouss that should have served as an ample warning. Then he said:

"I really ought not spare the time, Mr. Rouss, just now. Might I ask you to try to get some one else—"

Rouss drew himself up with managerial dignity. In a metallic voice he said:

"I should prefer to have you go, Mr. Hyatt."

"No; let Mr. Hyatt stay here! I'll show them through the plant!" said a familiar voice.

Rouss turned at the words, and turned paper white as he looked into the face of Elizabeth Farnum. Hyatt was likewise staring at the sudden apparition.

"If you will come with me," went on the young woman, turning to the strangers, "I'll be very glad to go through the plant with you."

"But—Miss Farnum!" gasped the general manager. "Please—"

Elizabeth Farnum had already started along the corridor with her guests. She stopped a moment and came back.

"Mr. Rouss," she said crisply, "I consider that Mr. Hyatt's time is worth more than mine. Furthermore, Mr. Hyatt is not here as a licensed guide."

And she went on her way.

Rouss, with clenched hands, saw her go. Then, stung out of all self-possession by the rebuff, he turned upon Hyatt like a snapping lash and cried:

Continued on page 19

A COUNTRY BANKER

By FORREST CRISSEY

WHENEVER I hear anybody argue that a big man can not stay in the country and find full scope for his abilities, I just naturally think of a certain country banker down in Central Illinois, who has stuck to his country job and yet has made his name known across the continent.

There has never been an instant of doubt of the fact that "Frank" Harris belongs wholly to the country. For generations the family background has been farms. In fact, he was born on the same farm where his father first saw the light of day and where five generations of Harrises have foregathered. This farm he now owns and operates. It has been under Harris cultivation ever since the Indians surrendered its possession.

If "Frank" Harris was ever tempted to strike out for the big city, on the theory that the country town couldn't give him swing enough, he has never confessed it. He came straight from Columbia, in 1892, to Champaign, Illinois, and had hardly been home a week before he started something that betrayed the bent of his whole career, the key-note of his character—an irrepressible faith in the possibilities of doing things in the country.

He found one of the first electric street railways in America, and took hold of it in spite of the fact that it was a mere shell—a single line connecting Champaign and Urbana, operated by one generator and a small engine housed in an abandoned factory.

Almost everybody advised him to play with something less expensive, and insisted that he was taking a short cut to parting with a large part of the Harris money. Then he handed his critics a jolt that made them gasp. He bought the most beautiful wooded tract that he could find, and built a line of electric road out to it. Possibly a few electric roads in the East may have tried this artificial means of increasing travel; but, at any rate, the precedent of success had not permeated to the West, and young Harris was breaking new ground. The absurdity of building an electric road without having a good town at each end of it was instantly proclaimed by the wise ones. However, Harris had a co-ed university to draw travelers from, and his amusement park proved to be a very nimble and persistent nickel-puller.

He Reduced the Gas Bill

AT this time the gas business of the country was decidedly sick. It was staggering from the first blow dealt by the new feather-weight champion, electric light. Gas had, however, one bright ray of hope in the form of the Welsbach light. Because this worked a positive economy in gas lighting, the attitude of the gas companies generally was to hold the use of these lights to as low a point as possible. Here again the young business executive saw that the gas meter could be made to crowd the kerosene lamp out of scores of town homes if such a change were made clearly economical to the consumer. So he went after the gas business of Champaign and Urbana, and got it. This put him in possession of the whole street railway, electric lighting, and gas interests of the twin towns. It looked like a cinch, and onlookers waited to see how much tribute the young monopolist would exact. But he reduced the price of gas from $2 to $1.50, and astonished the housewives by showing them how they could cut their gas bill and get more light by using Welsbachs. He brought one of the most celebrated cooking experts of the country to demonstrate what comfort and economy could be secured from the use of gas stoves.

Naturally, this kind of performance soon landed the young business-maker in

the chair of president of the Chamber of Commerce. He was told that it was up to him to start something that would bring in some live industries. This was not an easy job—in view of the fact that there was no water power to attract factories. But this did not hinder young Harris from tackling the job. Once more he attacked his task in a way that was "different." A tract of eighty acres, on the edge of the town, was bought, sub-divided, and sold for residence purposes, with the result that the organization had a working fund of about $80,000. While the drag-net for industries brought in some "dead ones," the percentage was small, and those remaining from the haul, and now doing a prosperous business, represent an investment of about $700,000.

Meantime he was growing into his real job—that of hitching the banker and the farmer together with a hyphen.

Probably more than any other one man, he deserves credit for putting the "County Soil Improvement Association" on the map of the United States. As The Annalist once put it:

Thanks to the amazing mental and physical energy of a single country banker, B. F. Harris, of Champaign, Illinois, the Agricultural Commission of the American Bankers' Association is doing a work that can not be undone. It is instructing the farmer in sound finance and the banker in good agriculture, both at the same time. It is doing more than that. It is bringing farmers and bankers together on a plane of economic understanding.

I doubt if there is another layman in the United States who has exerted more influence than B. F. Harris on the four big pieces of recent federal legislation bearing on the national system of farm demonstration work, of consolidated rural schools, of good roads, and of rural credits.

"It's about time for us to take interest in the farmers as well as from them," was the slogan with which he went after his fellow bankers.

He established a magazine called The Banker-Farmer, and wrote most of the copy for it. It wasn't much to look at—but after the second issue was out country editors, city editors, financial editors, farm journal editors, and magazine editors began to look for it and to find copy in it. There was not an advertisement in it—but so many bankers bought it and gave it to customers and friends that it was a financial success almost from the start. There was a freshness, a sincerity, and an honest punch in the little magazine, made by a country banker down in the Corn Belt, that carried conviction and interested almost everybody, from the tenant farmer to the big Wall Street financier.

The most remarkable thing about this modest publication, however, was the fact that it put the banker in a new light before the people: it interpreted him to the public as a human being who was alert

to do more for his community than the community was willing to do for itself. While this periodical was opening the eyes of the people to see the representative banker in a new light, it was also opening the mental pores of many bankers to an extent to which they had never been extended before.

Learning Things at First Hand

VERY likely a lot of the startling and aggressive things said by this young country banker in his speeches, his magazine, his newspaper articles, and his personal letters would have fallen flat if he had not early formed the habit of basing his doctrines on personal experience, of finding out things at first hand, of living his progressive ideas first and preaching them afterward. Before he began to talk the benefits of modern agricultural methods, of diversified farming and scientific crop rotation, of developing the "dormant reserve" of the soil and building and protecting its fertility, of draining and reclaiming lowlands, of paving feed-yards instead of throwing sixty cent. of corn into the mud, of raising two litters of pigs a year instead of one, and of arranging farm buildings and fields to save labor instead of wasting it—before he attempted to urge these advanced ideas upon his Champaign County neighbors, he tried them out on a farm of his own.

When he began his experiment he could have bought the farm across the road, which was practically identical with his in character, for $150 an acre. Its average corn yield was from thirty-five to forty bushels an acre. In seven years, by fertility-building methods, he pushed his own production up to eighty bushels an acre, and made his farm salable at more than $300 an acre.

He had proved his theories good: his reward came in the opportunity to help in writing the federal bill that makes the soil improvement expert a direct representative of the government. There are about three hundred and seventy of these country agents in thirty-three Northern States. Their cost last year was about $1,200,000. The Smith-Lever Bill gives the agricultural agents of the whole United States $2,060,000 for 1916-17. Of this $1,254,896 goes to Northern States. Perhaps no man in America is more responsible for this fact than B. F. Harris, the country banker, the man who has consistently declined alluring offers to go to the big city, embrace metropolitan opportunity, and make something of himself.

Possibly B. F. Harris might have made more money in a big city. That must remain a matter of conjecture. His fortune is probably not great, as big fortunes are measured to-day. But it is altogether likely that much more money than he now has would curtail rather than increase his enjoyments and his influence. And it is quite certain that a fortune of several million dollars would be required to give him the same relative standing in the city, in a financial way, that he now enjoys in the country. Apparently there is no luxury that a reasonable human being could desire that this country banker does not have.

About the time when Mr. Harris was president of the Chamber of Commerce, the Governor of Illinois sent a commission to Champaign to talk permanent hard roads. The farmers of the Black Mud Belt responded with a roar of protest that made the chandelier of the Executive Mansion jingle. They observed that the cost of such a highway would be ten or twelve thousand dollars a mile, and that anybody who tried to saddle them with that expense would be mighty unpopular. Then B. F. Harris called a good roads picnic. He said:

"Let everybody come and talk right out in meeting. We're going to have the best speakers on both sides, and the lid will be off. We'll have a lot of fun and learn something besides."

Well, they did. The proposition to authorize $1,600,000 bonds for a system of hard roads is before the people of that county now. To-day even a politician is not afraid to talk good roads in the Black Mud Belt about Champaign.

Largely as a result of his persistent work along this line, the Tice Bill became a law in Illinois. This gives State aid to the cause of good roads in his own commonwealth.

Raising Hothouse Lambs

AS chairman of the Agricultural Committee of the American Bankers' Association Mr. Harris has made these matters—all intimately related to country life—the corner-stones of a nation-wide work, with the result that he has powerfully influenced, in a very direct way, State and national legislation that has lately been enacted along these lines.

Since retiring from that chairmanship, he has pushed the interests of the National Foreign Trade Council, of which he is a member. In urging a big publication to give greater attention to this subject, he used this characteristic expression:

American industries and agriculture must find a wider market if we are to have our natural growth and keep our labor and capital employed, and further develop and increase our capacity and efficiency. The war situation is helping to make us think internationally—as we should—and take us out of ourselves. We are going to be forced into foreign trade, foreign banking, and a merchant marine, with a big navy for protection.

A surprising characteristic of this irrepressible country banker is the ease with which he works. He seems to have plenty of time for everything. The close personal supervision of a twenty-five hundred acre farm is apparently a mere pastime to him—though a farm that turns out about three thousand hogs a year, some sixteen hundred hothouse lambs and beef cattle, and other things on the same scale, looks to most folks like a regular man's job, instead of an outdoor sport for a banker.

He has deprived himself of city advantages. It would be hard to name a man who has a wider personal acquaintance with the big men of the country. And this acquaintance is neither superficial nor confined to leaders in finance. In the world of art, music, literature, the drama and painting, this Corn Belt banker is as much at home as if he inhabited Fifth Avenue the year round. In a word, he is distinctly a cosmopolitan in the truest and broadest sense.

On the Spring Idea

By FANNIE HEASLIP LEA

Illustrations by Hanson Booth

TO begin at the beginning (which mostly isn't being done this year, yet has its advantages if you care about getting at the root of a thing), Linda missed her car that morning. Otherwise she might never have noticed the pear tree. And missing the car interrupted the sequence of Linda's existence, halted her efficient routine—which ran, if you like to stop and look at it, something like this:

Every morning at half-past six Linda Rowland got out of bed to the tune of a large and stolid alarm-clock. She dressed hurriedly, with full attention to soap and water, but little time for face powder. At seven she breakfasted in a clammy boarding-house dining-room: one orange, one slice of toast, one cup of coffee, and one egg. Twenty-eight minutes past seven saw her standing on the corner of Prytania and Toledano streets, and she always caught the seven-thirty car. At eight o'clock invariably she hung up her hat in the office and took the cover off her machine.

She was a stenographer, of course. One doesn't get up at half-past six from sheer personal inclination.

However, upon the morning in question Linda missed her car, a calamity resultant upon several smaller calamities—a broken shoe-string, a delayed breakfast, and so on. She stood like a small, prim figure of Desolation upon the street corner, and saw the seven-thirty go by (having unavailingly run for it). Seven-thirty-three would bring another; but you know how it is: a missed car is a missed car.

It was with the worst grace in the world that she composed herself to wait.

It was then that she noticed the pear tree.

Merely as a pear tree she had seen it before. Gnarled, stubby and naked, it had stood all winter just inside the low stone fence of the corner yard. Birds had passed it by and bleak little winds had jeered through its branches. To look at it you would have said the sap was dead within it. Now, overnight, it trembled into bloom. Against the blue March sky it spread the largesse of a thousand bridals—whiter than sea-foam, whiter than new silk, more fragile than rose-leaves, more buoyant than butterflies. Spring? The quintessence of all the springs in yesterday's seven thousand years! The sky behind it, turquoise; gray-green branches showing through; and oh, that clustered, dripping, ineffably faintly fragrant wealth of small white flowers!

Tears stung Linda's eyelids as she looked—the tears of beauty's lover. She settled her black sailor hat, tightened the collar of her plain white blouse, and buttoned the topmost button of her blue serge coat. Her heart was beating faster; her gray eyes widened, glowing, upon that shameless ecstasy of bloom.

Then the seven-thirty-three car came by, and Linda got aboard. She found a seat far up in front, and resigned herself deliberately to thinking of the pear tree. To look at her, you might have supposed she was thinking of adding-machines. A small, pale face, long gray eyes, an indeterminate bun of brown hair beneath any-woman's hat—that was Linda. Her chin was delicious and the line of her throat slenderly appealing, but Linda did not know it. She wore badly cut white collars, immaculately laundered, and gave the matter little thought beyond buying new collars when the old ones began to fray. As for her hats, they were much the same the year round; felt in winter, straw in summer, but always a sailor, simply trimmed, and rolling a little on one side—as sailors have been known to do.

THERE was, of course, a very good reason for frugality. Linda, as a stenographer in the large and uninteresting office of the Gas Company, made twelve and a half dollars a week, on which you can not very well blossom like the rose with impunity. She gave her mother, who was the hostess of the clammy dining-room, four dollars a week for overhead and underfoot expenditure; and four from twelve and a half does not leave Golconda.

Linda, who had been at work since she was eighteen and who was now twenty-four, had managed, by dint of excessive effort, to save in the last three years a little over two hundred dollars. A small bank-book reposed proudly in a drawer with her clean stockings and handkerchiefs, and she sometimes thought with righteous defiance of that week-end known as a rainy day.

She was as not in love with her work, which was steady routine with small chance for promotion; but she did it to the best of her ability, being one of that large army who need the money: Her employer had never asked her out to dinner, and she had never had to defend herself from the impertinent advances of any of the men with whom she came in contact. She did not like Irish stew, but she ate it two or three times a week for luncheon because it was sensible and inexpensive. For the same reason, she wore cotton stockings.

To such a personality what harm could a pear tree do, however crazily in bloom? Nevertheless—

LINDA thought of it all the way down-town. It came between her and her carbon copies like the wraith of some lonely lady. She perceived its fragrance and felt again the ache of its vernal beauty with every hour told off by the office clock. She was abstracted, and was twice called sharply to time by the head of the Information Department. At noon, before going to lunch, she went reluctantly, in the grip of some amazing impulse, to the bank and drew out ten dollars of her cherished reserve fund.

She made up her mind to buy a hat. I have tried to laugh at her, but I can't. Can you?

AS the long, bright afternoon wore itself away, with the machines merrily clicking, the telephone ringing sweetly, and all the other happy noises of a large office going gaily on about her, Linda's cheeks grew nervously flushed and her eyes bright.

It was not her time to buy a hat. She always bought a straw in April, a felt in November. Also, she commonly paid five for the one, four for the other. Nevertheless—

She asked to be allowed to leave the office early, an unheard-of request from Linda, and therefore more easily granted. Once down the stairs, she went swift as a homing pigeon to a little hat-shop on Canal Street.

It was a little late and the day had been dull; so the large, deep-bosomed lady who waited on Linda showed no amazing interest.

"Something dark?" she observed, regarding with a practised eye the hat that Linda wore. "Something in a sailor, dearie? Kinder simple?"

Linda looked about her. From every shelf flamed roses, lilacs, orchids, lengths of gold and silver ribbon, folds of jewel-colored velvet. Mirrors gave back rainbows of tulle, cascades of metallic lace. Dusk was on the little shop, and the mystery of adventure.

The heart in Linda's breast beat heavily.

"No—" she said at length; "not—not a sailor; something more like—with flowers—"

The large lady looked again, a trifle more keenly. She placed a ringed hand on her flesh-colored Georgette crêpe bosom, and heaved a sympathetic sigh.

"I know," she said; "I know, dearie, just what you want. Sit right down before this mirror—take off your hat. I'll bring it over; I got the very thing—something on the spring idea—eh?"

She went and returned, bearing on her hand a small hat of rough green straw with a narrow band of silvery-looking ribbon about the crown, and a small posy, of all the demurest flowers that grow, perched quaintly at one side.

"Now will you tell me," demanded the large lady, setting the hat firmly down upon Linda's soft brown hair, "is that too sweet—or is it not?"

It was, of course. Beneath that gray-green straw, Linda's eyes turned pools of wistfulness; her clear, pale skin grew softer, her lips warmer, her smile younger. You know what a new hat can do for fainting female spirits.

"I'll let you have it for ten dollars—and that's giving it away. But it looks like you, dearie!" said the lady.

"I'll take it," said Linda briefly.

"You'll never be sorry—that's a chic little hat." (She said it archly, "cheek.") "What's the address, dearie? You got good hair, which is God's own mercy when it comes to buying a hat—if you know what I mean."

Linda gave her address and

---

went home. She flung the pear tree a glance, almost frightened, when she got off the car at Toledano Street; but in the early dusk the pear tree showed nun-like and vague—a white cloud sleeping in the fence corner. Still, its fragrance hovered.

The new hat came home next day, and, still in the grasp of that blind desire for something she had not yet touched, Linda wore it on the third day down to work. She never got on her car in the morning now without a backward glance at the pear tree.

HALF way through that day, it came to her with overwhelming clearness that the green hat made the blue suit impossible—dull, even dusty-looking. Linda caught her breath and wrestled with herself. She thought of rainy days, she thought of illness, she thought of wise provision for old age: but in the end she drew thirty dollars from the bank and bought with it a suit—of some gray stuff, a short, well cut skirt, a loose, boyish-looking coat. And that night, when the boarding-house was quiet, she tried her hair in a new way—a softer way, a way having more "cheek" about it, as her friend the lady in the hat-shop would have said.

"What're you getting new clothes for now?" inquired Mrs. Rowland, when this efflorescence of raiment came to her notice. She was mostly too tired to be very observant.

"Because I need them," said Linda. She evaded further questioning.

But the new suit led to a new blouse—to four new blouses, to be exact, because a business woman can not very well go to bed while her clothes are being laundered; and to dully shining pumps, because a new skirt makes old shoes look shabby; and eventually, upon one feverish battle-ground of a day, to three pairs of silk stockings—that was after a morning in which Linda had stolen a twig of the pear tree over the fence to stick in her buttonhole. The faint, heavy fragrance of the flowers was like an enchanted drink to her. Oh, well! She bought the stockings at noon, and, changing in the rest-room which the so thoughtful Gas Company provided for its retainers, wore a pair of them home with the new pumps.

She did not allow herself now to consider the rainy day. Her first pair of silk stockings provided a thrill that allowed of no gloomy reflections whatsoever.

Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shining, when she stepped on the Prytania Street car. It was the most crowded hour of the day, but what of that?—with silk to stand in! She was not, however, forced to stand. At the very front of the car, next to the door, two small seats faced each other across the aisle. One of these Linda attained.

Her vis-à-vis, a tall young man in blue serge, sheltered himself in an evening paper above which he scowled alertly. Linda folded her hands in her lap, looked down at her feet, and drew a long sigh of contentment. The car, crowded with home-going shoppers and business men, lurched along between vague twilit spaces. Lights blossomed up and down the street. There was the busy murmur of voices, the hiss of the conductor's bell, the occasional click of fares rung up.

LINDA never knew just when she first looked across and met the eyes of the man in the opposite seat. Because her instinct pricked her, and because she had been properly taught by movies and Sunday supplements, she looked down again at once—but not before a little stinging thrill ran over her from head to foot. He had (she was astoundingly conscious of it) the nicest eyes imaginable, deep-set and steady, with a flicker of fun in their depths. In that one startled glance Linda was also aware of a presentable chin and a likable mouth, a dark blue brocaded tie, the glint of a queer greenish stone in his tie-pin—

For five minutes of rather shaken and conscious aloofness Linda looked at the floor, looked down the car, looked out of the window; then, against all precedent and dreadfully against her will, she looked back at the stranger.

His eyes rose to meet hers above his neglected newspaper.

Linda flushed—almost imperceptibly. His look was unmistakably for her, yet somehow entirely without offense. She regarded him coldly and looked away. She was conscious of the fact that he folded his newspaper and rolled it between his hands. With the eyes that every woman wears in the back of her head, she knew that he presently settled his tie.

She was breathing quickly, which surprised her, and a sweet, wild sense of adventure danced about her heart, which surprised her yet further. (It was spring, you remember, and on Linda's homeward way the pear tree still blossomed.) However it was, and whatever the reason, when Linda's eyes for the third time met the eyes of the young man in the blue serge, she smiled—the faintest, shyest flicker of a smile. And the young man smiled—almost as faintly, if not quite so shyly. The car proceeded in a rosy haze.

The old story, you observe. Pity 'tis, 'tis true!

Two blocks farther on Linda left the car—when, to her breathless horror, the young man rose and followed. She had been holding the thought, when she smiled, of her imminent departure; but obviously the fate of the evil-doer was upon her. Her hurried steps took her no faster than his unhurried stride.

"I should have known better!" panted Linda's frightened heart. "He'll try to speak. What'll I do? What'll I—"

She clutched her purse and all but ran, the silk stockings and little new shoes bearing her neatly. Vaguely through her alarm showed a rebellious sense of regret: "And he looked so nice—he looked—"

Then she came all at once in the twilight to her mother's dwelling and security. The old house faced upon the

street, and Linda, with a little gasp mounting the steps, looked to see her pursuer go by defeated.

He mounted the six stone steps behind her.

She faced him, her latch-key in the door, heart stammering against her side.

"What do you want?" she demanded.

"May I come in?" inquired the villain of the piece.

She thought he smiled, and that enraged her.

"Please go away—at once."

"Sorry, but—"

"There is a policeman at the corner!"

"Don't be afraid of him! Besides, I don't really see any—do you?"

His voice was like his eyes, deep and touched with a lazy humor.

"How dare you follow me in here?"

"Well, you see, I—"

"Don't you know I can—have you—arrested?"

She made a nervous little gesture, shrinking closer to the door behind her.

"Please don't !"

"Then go away—at once," said Linda sternly.

"Can't very well," said the young man meekly. "You see, I live here."

"Since when?" inquired Linda with outraged sarcasm.

"Since this morning." He added for her further enlightenment, "I'm boarding here, y'know."

"Oh!" said Linda.

"Yes, really," said the young man politely. He looked very tall in the dusk. "May I open the door for you?"

Whereupon he did, astoundingly, open her own door with her own key, and usher her into her own house.

Linda fled up the stairs like a competent business woman pursued by demons—which is to say, with dignity but without lingering.

THAT night at dinner the young man appeared and was introduced as Mr. Hewitt, from the West. Linda, who looked no higher than her plate, allowed him a nervous and almost imperceptible bow. But after dinner she waited for him in the hall, where odors of cabbage and boiled mutton mingled friendly-wise upon the stagnant air.

"I should like to speak to you a minute," said Linda.

How was he to know that her hands were cold, her knees trembling?

"I'm entirely at your service," said Mr. Hewitt.

They repaired to a corner of the dim-lit and unengaging parlor.

"I—I want to explain to you," said Linda.

He waited courteously.

"That I—I don't want to he misunderstood—"

"Yes?"

"When I—smiled—at you in the car—this evening—"

"Oh—did you smile at me?" he inquired instantly, with every appearance of keen interest.

She looked at him out of her long gray eyes, a little uncertain, a little frightened, then her look steadied bravely.

"I did," she said; "but I don't—that is, I never did before—and I'll be glad if you wouldn't mention it—to anybody here."

"You can trust me," Mr. Hewitt assured her gravely. "Still, you were so displeased when we met on the steps—I'm glad to know you did smile at me."

"It was something funny about your tie," said Linda coldly, and left him standing beside the window.

THE little glow succeeding her temporary possession of the whip-hand endured briefly. You can not in any comfort live alongside your sin—witness our old friend a certain Mariner with an albatross upon his chest. Linda had dared an adventure in a moment of silk-stockinged recklessness, but she had not thought to take the adventure home with her. Life assumed all at once a hazardous but oddly not altogether unpleasing aspect.

"Mr. Hewitt seems to be a real nice young man," commented her mother upon the night after his arrival.

"As young men go," said Linda grimly.

"Well—what's he done to you?"

"Oh, nothing!"

"Didn't I hear him ask you to go out to a moving picture with him to-night?"

"Yes—but you didn't see me go."

"So I see, Miss Cross-Patch," returned her mother tiredly. "It's a wonder you wouldn't be a little more like other girls and a little less like an old lady. Where'd I ever get such a daughter—a little old lady? Where'd I ever— Why, at your age I had more beaux than you could tie a string to."

This to Linda, with the consequence of that one reckless smile eating into her secret heart!

However, the next time that Mr. Hewitt asked her out, she went,—it was, by the way, the very next night,—and within a moving-picture theater called suavely "The Little Trianon," she drank yet deeper of the heady draught deceit had brewed for her.

"Why wouldn't you come out with me last night?" Mr. Hewitt began. There is no place like a darkened movie house for confidences.

She thought it best not to answer him. "Don't you like movies——or don't you like me?"

"It isn't that."

"What is it, then?"

"I don't approve of you," said Linda primly.

"Well, upon my word!" said Mr. Hewitt.

He glanced down at the pretty brown head, the slim white throat rising from the collar of one of the filmy new blouses, and smiled broadly. Linda's own smile broke through to meet him.

"I feel terribly wicked going out with you, now."

"Oh, you do?"

"You see, I never thought I'd ever see you—again—after I left the car."

---

"Oh, the smile was for me, then?"

"I suppose you think I smile at any man who looks at me," said Linda wistfully.

"But you don't, do you?" begged Mr. Hewitt.

Under cover of the darkness and the green straw hat, he put his hand over hers. She let it be. Little exquisite shivers raced up to her heart from every chilly finger-tip.

"I'm not just any-man-who-looks-at-you—am I?"

"I don't know who you are—nor what you are—nor anything—except," said Linda quaintly, "that you do seem awfully cheeky—."

"But you like it, don't you? Little Miss Maiden Aunt! As for what I am—"

He went briefly into detail, an odd touch of abstraction creeping into his manner.

"An engineer?" repeated Linda. "Not on a train!"

"No—little golden goose—in a mine, if at all. Important if true!" He laughed, tightening his fingers on hers. "And I hadn't seen a regular girl nor a regular show in four years, until ten days ago. I'm city-starved. What d'you say if we go to the theater to-morrow night? Can't you dine with me somewhere down-town?"

"Why—I could," said Linda uncertainly.

"Don't you want to?" asked Mr. Hewitt.

He had, beyond question, the nicest eyes; also the strength of his fingers was curiously disconcerting.

"Yes—yes, thank you," said Linda. She drew her hand away, fortunately just before the lights went up.

NEXT day, it goes without saying, she bought herself a frock in which to go to the theater—a white Georgette crêpe with tucks. Also she bought herself a separate coat, gray, so as to be successfully worn over the frock with the little green hat; also a pair of white silk stockings and white buckskin slippers. Naturally this occupied all of her lunch-hour, and she got no lunch. Being a perfect thirty-four, she was able to find an instantaneous fit, paid for the things, and had them sent home that afternoon. When she had done a little sum in her head, and realized what now remained of the rainy day fund, she turned pale. But she did not on that account go back to the shop, nor attempt to cancel her purchases.

The machine clicked merrily away from one to six. Her fingers flew untiringly, and her work had never been better.

Once, in an interval between letters to be copied and letters to be signed, she took herself fiercely to task.

"What are you doing it for, if you're going to be sorry? A little old lady—that's what your own mother called you! Haven't you any nerve at all? It's your money, isn't it? You won't be young so very much longer. What if your money will be gone? Suppose that pear tree hadn't the nerve to have flowers because, sooner or later, they'd have to fall off? You're a little fool—you're a little coward—you're a little piker, Linda Rowland!"

Then she thought of the man who had called her Little Miss Maiden Aunt, and the color crept up to the wave of her smooth brown hair. She thought about him rather continuously, that day and in the days that followed.

THEY went out to dinner that night in a taxicab, which is exactly the same as to say that a certain well known lady in literature rode to the ball in a fairy coach. Linda did not ride in taxis every day of the week. Afterward they went to the theater, and sat in the Delectable Country of the second row. After that, salad and an ice, in a green-and-golden restaurant gleaming with mirrors. After that, home in another taxi. And after that—dreams!

"I like you in that little white dress," Mr. Hewitt had said. "You look as fresh as a cloud."

Dreams indeed! At the door, when they parted, he told her:

"To-morrow's Saturday—we'll go for a walk in the park. And on Sunday—"

They went for that walk, and on Sunday, at Linda's suggestion, they went to church—down to the old St. Louis Cathedral, drowsing in the sunshine beside Jackson Square. He slipped his hand over hers when she knelt. When the organ thundered out above their heads she felt his fingers tighten. Afterward he bought her a bunch of jonquils from a flower-vender on Canal Street, and she pinned them on the breast of the new gray suit. The sky was as blue as the eyes of hope.

Monday night they went to the movies again; and Tuesday once more to the theater; Wednesday they walked up the Avenue after dinner—walked miles and miles in a shadow-peopled world, and talked; and Thursday—

Thursday morning he waylaid her at the door as she was going forth to work, and said hurriedly, even a little curtly:

"Save me to-night—will you? Can't we go to dinner downtown? Just had a wire—I've got to go back to-morrow."

Not many dreams have found a death-warrant briefer than that.

"Why—yes; all right," said Linda.

She didn't even say she was sorry—something so vastly bigger than sorrow had her by the throat.

Anyhow, she went on down to work. A little playful wind blew her a petal from the pear tree, like a kiss, as she passed it. Already, you see, the petals were going. And the sky was not so blue that day—a touch of humidity in the atmosphere, perhaps.

Linda worked until noon. At twelve she went to the bank and drew out what remained of her money. Her lips, when she signed the check, were set in a grim pink line.

"That closes your account, you know," said the friendly young man behind the grill.

"Yes," said Linda, strangely husky. "I see it does."

You know why she did it, of course? Her swan-song! Her little all, flung on to the sacrificial fire! Linda's tribute to Life, the Conqueror!

When she came down to Hewitt that night at seven o'clock, he looked at her a moment in silence.

"Another dress?" he asked at length.

"And a new hat." Her eyes inquired wistfully: "Do you like it?"

"Such a little queen!" he said whimsically. He opened the door, and they went out into the chill spring night together.

Because it was growing a little late, the restaurant at which they dined was none too full. Mr. Hewitt ordered with discrimination, but Linda only played with the food the fat old French waiter set before her. They talked—of what do you talk when the world is crumbling into ashes beneath your tired little feet? At last, with black coffee and crackers and cheese, the waiter left them in peace.

"Thank the Lord!" said Mr. Hewitt.

HE leaned his elbows on the table, knit his strong, lean fingers together, and looked at Linda.

"I've been waiting all day for this."

Linda said nothing at all. Men came and went—she knew, having heard often enough of the discomfiture of other girls. At least, now, no one should know. She inquired in a careful little voice:

"When do you go?"

"To-morrow afternoon."

"Out West?"

"To the mine. I was trying to get backing for it. I've about succeeded—and I'm needed there—"

"We'll be sorry to see you go," said Linda.

"Say that as if you meant it," said Mr. Hewitt.

"We've enjoyed knowing you—"

"Not really!" He touched her fingers audaciously across the table. "Is that the best good-by you've got for me?"

The old light look and laugh!

"That's all it means to him," said the unsteady drumming in Linda's breast. She smiled above it, an amazingly gallant smile.

"I don't like good-bys."

"No more do I," he agreed. "Let's not say any, then."

She winced away from that.

"Oh, when a person's got to go—I'd rather say it than not—wouldn't you?"

"Listen to me," said Mr. Hewitt. "I've got something to tell you. We can say good-by after that, if you like. Are you listening, Miss Linda?"

"Go on," said Linda. She shut her hands together tight beneath the table. She had grown a little pale.

"Well," said Mr. Hewitt, "here it is! I came to this town a little over two weeks ago on business—as I told you, for the mine owners. First morning I went downtown—I was staying with a chap on Louisiana Avenue—you got on the car. I thought you'd break your little neck looking back out of the window at something on your corner. Remember that morning?"

"It was a pear tree," said Linda—"in bloom." She drew a long breath.

"I know—I looked back to see. Some pear tree, too! You got on my car every morning after that. That is—I got on your car. Any girl that could look like a hungry dryad over a flowering tree! Inside the next ten days I found out where you lived, by scouting around—learned that your mother took boarders—and moved in. Linda, you blossomed into a little beauty in those ten days, right under my eyes. What did it?"

"Clothes," said Linda faintly.

"What?"

SO Linda told him, with the color flaming in her cheeks and her eyes burning, about the day she had bought the green hat, and the facile descent to Avernus. She did not once credit the pear tree, not knowing the pear tree's part in the matter.

"If a rainy day comes now, I'll drown," said Linda; and finished, like Jenny Pearl, "Who cares!"

Then she remembered that he was going away, and sudden tears ached against her eyelids.

"Do we say good-by now?" asked Mr. Hewitt very low. "We do not! We believe in fate. Look at me, little Miss Pear-Blossom! To-morrow—I want you—to marry me—"

"Oh, I couldn't!" cried Linda, just above a frightened whisper. "It's too soon—and I haven't any—"

"Haven't you just been getting yourself a trousseau?" he suggested gently. "What do you think all this has been about? Believe me, I'm not going back alone—and to-morrow is another day—"

Then he beckoned the waiter and paid him. Outside was a taxi.

"Drive uptown and through the park," said Hewitt.

They passed under purple and silver arc-lights and through a world of undoubted enchantment; but he did not kiss her until the live-oak shadows dappled their fairy coach.

Then ardently he stooped, and, flushed from brow to chin, she lifted her lips.

Shameless Linda! Little sister to the pear tree!

Outside the chauffeur glanced at the meter ticking beside him, and laughed to himself.

"Gee!" said the heartless chauffeur. "Spring has came!"

The Other Brown

By ADELE LUEHRMANN

Illustration by Lucius W. Hitchcock

"I DON'T think there is danger of her fainting now."

As she spoke, Bianca Gil set aside the glass and spoon and the bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia which she had just brought from the bedroom of Mrs. Martinez. "And I think the light is about as you want it," she added to Scarborough. "All out except a table-lamp with a green shade."

"That sounds all right," he answered. "Just enough for her to see Mr. Brown, but not to see him distinctly."

He turned to the young man. "Ready?" he asked.

The latter nodded. He ran his fingers through his thick blond hair.

"I must have looked pretty wild that night," he explained.

Scarborough regarded him critically.

"You've got all the points well in hand, now—all the questions? You won't forget anything?" he asked, in the anxious tone of a stage director to an untried actor intrusted at the eleventh hour with an important rôle.

"Forget!" Brown stared at Tim with an odd smile, his mouth hard, his blue eyes glittering. "Forget? With all that depends on it!"

"All right, then," said Tim.

Mrs. Gil led the way from the small room, where they were alone, through the

hall to a larger apartment in which half a dozen people sat waiting in tense silence.

Tiptoeing in, the new-comers paused a moment for a glance about. Then Scarborough crossed noiselessly to the door leading into the next room, and turned the knob with extremest care to make no sound. Brown stood ready, beside him, while Bianca Gil waited near the hall door, her fingers on the electric switch.

AT a nod from Scarborough her hand moved, and the room turned black until, as Tim slowly swung back the door, the wan green light from the adjoining room entered it. And now, as Brown lingered beside the door, the watchers could see the gray head of Mrs. Martinez sunk in its pillow; then Brown's tall, shadowy form hid it from them as he crossed the threshold and stole over to the foot of the bed. There, for a taut minute, he waited. It was evident that the old woman's eyes were closed—that she had neither seen nor heard him. Suddenly he spoke:

"Juaña Martinez—wake up!"

At the summons, uttered in a low, sepulchral voice, a shiver ran through the group in the room beyond, even before there followed almost instantly a choking scream from the bed. Stepping back quickly, Brown waited again, while the old housekeeper continued to give out short gasping cries, and her hand, shaking as from palsy, made the sign of the cross.

"Silence! No one can hear you or help you. You are alone—with me!"

"Ah!" It was a toneless shriek, stifled immediately.

"Look at me!" the low, hollow voice went on. "You know me. What is my name?"

Juaña Martinez stared out in terror, but she did not speak.

"Answer!"

But the command had to be repeated several times before the woman could obey. Inarticulate sounds came from her, but she seemed incapable of forming words. At last, however, intelligible even to the more distant listeners, was heard the name:

"Señor McRae."

"When did you see me last?"

"Three nights ago—when you killed the señor."

"And why did I kill him?"

A tense hush. From without came the distant night noises of the city; but in the room there was no sound except the brushing of Mrs. Martinez's trembling hand against her night-dress as she spasmodically crossed herself.

"It was for what he did to you," she answered at last, with a frightened gulp.

"And what was that?"

Again a silence.

BROWN took a step nearer the bed. At his approach she recoiled with a cry. He halted.

"If you wish to live, answer," he said sternly.

She clasped her shaking hands.

"Let me live—let me live!" she begged. "I will answer—I will speak."

"Then speak; I am waiting. What happened that night in London when Luis Yznaga was killed?"

"You don't know—now?" She emphasized the last word strangely.

Brown hesitated—then:

"No. But if you lie to me I shall know it—now."

"I will not lie," she promised hoarsely. "I will tell you everything."

In the cold light from the green-shaded lamp, her heavy face was livid, and her gray hair, hanging disorderedly about, gave her, to those watching from the next room, a forbidding, witchlike appearance.

"You were asleep," she began in a fal-

Continued on page 15

BRIGHTER DAYS FOR LIONS

KIND WORDS FOR OUR COMPETITORS

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MILLIONAIRES FOR A DAY

The Other Brown

—continued from page 10

tering whisper; for the secret kept through more than twenty years was not easily told. "They quarreled—Señor Luis and the señor""

"Speak louder," ordered Brown. "Why did Yznaga and Welles-Hewitt quarrel?"

"It was about you—and the mine. Señor Luis had gained much money from you by the cards, and you had given to him a paper for the mine. But that night you brought money to buy it back, and he took the money and gave you another paper that said the mine was yours again. It was for that they quarreled—because the señor wanted the mine. He had brought you the first time to Señor Luis to play, and when you lost, a half was his. So it was always when he brought people to play. And he wanted the mine, the Rosalba. It was worth more than the money, he said. And he went to the sofa, where you were asleep, and took the paper out of your pocket and gave it to the señora."

She stopped and drew a deep breath, as if the recital cost her intense effort.

"Was the Señora Yznaga there all the time?" Brown questioned.

"Yes." The reply came reluctantly.

"She was in love with Welles-Hewitt and not her husband—isn't that true? Answer me."

"Yes—it is true," Juaña Martinez, admitted after a moment, with another labored breath. "She wanted to keep the paper and put the money in its place. But the señor said they could keep the money also. 'He will not know,' he said. 'When he wakes up he will not remember.'

"And then Señor Luis was very angry. 'I am a Spanish gentleman, not an English thief, like you,' he said. And then—"

"GO on—go on!" urged Brown excitedly, forgetting the part he was playing and taking a step nearer the bed.

But the old woman shrank back. "I will tell you," she cried. "Don't touch me!"

Brought back to his rôle, Brown instantly receded, and, resuming his awesome tone, said again: "Go on."

"The señor—it was the señor who struck Señor Luis. It was not to kill, only that he was angry. The cane was there—your cane—and—Señor Luis fell and—he was dead."

The old woman bent her head.

"Were you there?"

"I came in when the señora screamed. I was listening at the door to the quarrel. We did not know what to do. Then the señor took the paper for the mine from the señora, and gave it to me. 'Go and burn that—quick,' he said. And I went away.

"When the police called me I came back and—you were awake. They could smell the whisky you had drunk, and—you did not remember anything."

"And then they hung me," said Brown in a hollow voice.

The woman shivered and covered her face.

"Why did you not speak? Why did you swear you had seen and heard nothing?"

"For her, the señora." Juaña Martinez's hands went out in a gesture of appeal. "She was my daughter. You did not know that; no one knew—not even Señor Luis. He believed, like everybody, that I was her servant. You see, he was a gentleman and we were of the people. She had to pretend. But I could not, and I wanted to stay with her. She was a lady, and—ashamed of me."

"And that paper? Why didn't you burn it as you were told?"

"I was afraid," she whispered.

"But afterwards?"

"It was the señor. I did not trust him. I was afraid he would sell the mine and go away with the money and leave me and the child to starve. But because I had the paper he did not dare to sell the mine."

"Where is it now?"

Without speaking she slipped her hands beneath her coverings and drew out a small package attached to a belt. Brown snatched it from her, stepped back to the lamp, unfastened the worn oilcloth wrapping, and took out the paper it contained. One glance at it, and the next instant he was in the adjoining room. Scarborough swung the door to behind him, and Mrs. Gil switched on the light. Then for several moments no one spoke.

It was he who broke the silence.

"Eric!" he cried exultantly. "I've got it,—our deed to the mine!"

And as exultantly his brother answered.

"He was innocent, Fred!" he said. "Our father was innocent!

AS the brothers stood together for a moment the contrast between them was very marked. Alike in physique and coloring, and bearing to each other a marked family resemblance, they were at a second glance easily differentiated. Fred was shorter and more narrowly built, and there was a leanness about his face, a sharpness of nose and chin, that made him less handsome than his elder brother. That they were totally unlike in temperament, had different ideals and ambitions, was plain to any eye able to read the signs.

At that moment there were on them several pairs of competent eyes—Redding's and Searborough's, Lars Johansen's and Dr. Tierney's: though the doctor probably gave no thought whatever to the matter, for he went at once to look after Mrs. Martinez. And, indeed, the two brothers remained together only a few seconds. Fred turned to his wife, the former Amélie, and Eric's glance sought Alba.

But she was not there. "She slipped out when the lights went on," Valentin Gil explained. "If you will wait, Mrs. Gil will speak to her."

Eric nodded. "Thanks, I will," he said, and stood aside while the others followed Gil to the drawing-room below.

Alone then he waited impatiently for his hostess to appear. He knew what Alba must be suffering, how black the world looked to her now—as black as it had been to him when he had first heard how his father had died. But he could console her. The barrier was down now, and his arms ached to hold her.

In the adjoining room the old house-keeper was slowly sinking into the oblivion of sleep, freer from her incubus of guilt than she had been since the night when she assumed it so many years ago. Standing at the bed with Dr. Tierney, Bianca Gil shuddered.

"Mother-love!" she said. "It is that we must hold responsible for her terrible silence. Think of it!"

"Dear lady," the doctor answered, "what but love could have borne the burden?"

"Yes," Bianca murmured, "love has much to answer for—in all of us."

Then, mindful of her guests, she left the doctor.

Eric greeted her arrival with relief. Would she not go at once to Alba and persuade her to see him? He must see her—if only for a moment.

"Of course. Poor child! I should have known—I should have thought."

She found Alba sitting in her room, white and miserable. But the girl got up at once when she heard the message.

"I'll see him, if he wants to see me," she said dully. "But, no matter how he feels, I could never forget."

And when Bianca made a move to leave her when they reached the door of the room where Eric waited, she caught at her hand.

"Don't go, señora—please, please," she begged, and Bianca was forced to yield.

But Eric hardly seemed to see her there at the girl's side.

"Don't look like that, dearest!" he begged. "It was cruel of me to let you find out about it that way, but we didn't know how things would be. I ought to have told you this morning—I wish now that I had. But I didn't know then that I should ever be able to prove it."

"I don't wonder now that you shrank from me," said Alba, shuddering—"that my name was horrible to you. I'm horrible to myself."

"Alba!"

"When I think that my mother let

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an innocent man die, when she knew he was innocent—"

"Don't think of it—don't! We'll never speak or think of it as long as we live."

"I shall never forget it!"

"But you will! I'll make you forget! Now that my father's name is vindicated, nothing stands between us. I'd sworn never to think of anything else until that was done. It was a sacred duty. But now I'm free to love you and to make you love me. Mrs. Gil, help me." He turned appealingly to Bianca. "This morning, when she believed that my father had killed hers, she came to tell me that that made no difference in her feeling for me—"

"But this is different!" Alba said. "A man may kill another in an instant of madness—that doesn't prove that he was a bad man. But when people lie day after day, and see an innocent man die because of their lies, they are bad and wicked and horrible. And my mother—"

"No, Alba, no! Your mother never did that." It was Bianca Gil who spoke.

"Listen, child. I have something to tell you—something I meant to tell you later. But wait—there's some one else who must hear."

And, without pausing to explain, Bianca ran into the hall and down the steps. A minute later she was returning with Lars Johansen. Stopping outside the door, she glanced significantly toward the two young people.

"I promised you a granddaughter," Bianca whispered. "But I think I shall also be giving you a grandson."

"You don't mean her! And him!"

"Would you like it?"

"Make me believe it," he begged.

SHE made them all believe it; for her short, simple story carried conviction even without the confirmation given it later by Dr. Tierney. Alba's mother, she said, had died a few days after her child's birth in Mrs. Grassi's boarding-house. The father, Carl Johansen—known as Charles Johnson—was away, at the time, and it seemed uncertain that he would ever come back. Nothing was known of his people, and his wife had no family, so it had looked as if the baby would have to be sent to an orphanage. Naturally, then, when the doctor told her he knew of some rich people who would take it and bring it up as their own, on condition that no one should ever know, she had consented. And she would never have known who the people were had not Bianca, who had loved the baby's mother, followed the doctor when he carried it away. It was not, however, until long afterward that she came to understand that Mrs. Yznaga had wanted the child to inherit half the Rosalba mine and so prevent its passing to distant relatives of her husband.

To Alba the story brought a relief and joy that were almost too poignant. For it meant to her release, not only from the horror that had just fallen upon her, but from her whole past life. She heard Johansen's words, returned his tender embrace, without any sense of reality. She talked and laughed and cried, all together.

"We must give her time to find herself," said Lars Johansen to Bianca, when they were alone again. "To-night she has no room in her heart for me—I am not even real to her. But I can wait."

And after a time Bianca spoke to him of the things she had not explained.

"I want to tell you," she began falteringly, "about my husband and Mr. Welles-Hewitt—"

"Please don't," Lars Johansen interposed kindly. "I think I understand."

"It was my fault," she declared eagerly. "I had told him about Alba's birth. He was trying then to buy the mine for a client, and I was afraid that the truth might come out sometime and he would be involved. And—well, it was a temptation. We are not rich. With his knowledge of the facts he was able to force a sale from Mr. Welles-Hewitt, and—and—"

"Never mind—never mind," said Johansen. "Let us forget it. You have done me a service. Let's think of that, and of what I can do to repay you."

"How kind you are!" exclaimed Bianca gratefully. "But there is nothing you can do. I have my husband back. He's all I want."

The tragic story of Roderick McRae, which Redding and Scarborough had heard that afternoon, was repeated when all were again assembled downstairs in the drawing-room. The explanation of the scene in Mrs. Martinez's bedroom, which some of the witnesses had not entirely understood, was made by Fred Brown—or Fred McRae, as he was henceforth to be known.

"In order to explain fully why I entered the Welles-Hewitt house as I did," he said in preface, "I shall have to tell you first something about my father and my grandfather."

The grandfather McRae had been a man of an original, inventive mind, cursed with a passion for gambling; and, between his efforts to make a fortune by invention and his attempts at discovering a roulette system, he was soon at the end of a substantial inheritance. It was at this financial ebb that the family appeared in Spitzen. McRae's periods of seclusion had been for the purpose of working out, not an invention, as his wife had asserted, but a system. And the extreme privacy was forced on him by her determination that their young son, Roderick, should not see the wheel.

Whether an access of funds or another cause took the McRaes from Spitzen at the end of two years, Fred could not say. And of the eight or nine years following he knew little. His grandfather had succeeded, finally, with one of his inventions, an attachment for a drilling-machine, and from this had drawn considerable royalties, the larger portion of which had gone the way of all the money that had ever come into his hands. Dying when his son

was twenty-two,—the mother was already dead,—he had left to him the royalties and an intense abhorrence for all forms of gambling.

Finding himself alone in the world, without any near relatives that he knew of, and without even the ties of established friendships, Roderick went to Mexico to hunt for gold. The desire to go was the one outcropping of his inherited gambling instinct to which he ever yielded consciously; and even that he did not recognize for what it was, so disguised was it by the glamour of adventure.

Then it was that he had encountered young Johansen,—though of this meeting and its consequences Fred had never heard,—and they had prospected together, McRae supplying the necessary funds and Johansen the technical knowledge. They had luck and secured two fair mining claims, side by side. But Roderick McRae did not stay to develop his claim. He had married a young English governess in Mexico, and finally yielded to her wish to go back to England to live. There he obtained a business position in London, and settled down with his wife and baby.

THE first change of personality came upon him without warning of any kind. One night about eleven o'clock he found himself, quite suddenly as it seemed to him, playing cards with several men whom he was sure he had never seen until that moment. He thought he must be dreaming, and sat still, staring about him silently. Then the arrival of a servant with a tray full of drinks brought him to a realization that he was awake and that what he was experiencing was real; for the servant's face was familiar. Some years before, when in London with his father, he had followed the latter to a gambling place and tried to dissuade him from entering, and this man had thrust him from the house door. And now he was in that house, gambling and drinking—

In horror he dropped his cards and sprang up. How had he come to such a place? Not of his own volition, surely. Something had happened to him! Ah—he remembered; he had been on his way to his office, had just turned a certain corner, passed a certain building; and that was only a minute ago—only a minute! But now he noticed that the men at the table were staring at him in amazement, and one of them had jumped up and was asking him anxiously what was the matter.

"I'm ill—that's all," he muttered. "I think I had better go home."

"Righto," he heard somebody answer. "I'll send Simmons with you. You're as white as death. Simmons, get a cab."

It developed then that there was a score to be settled. McRae had been losing, he found—not a considerable sum, but more than he had with him. Not daring to question his companions' statement, he wrote a check and went home.

THE memory of that lost day was never recovered. If any of his acquaintances saw him during those twelve hours of forgetfulness, Roderick McRae heard nothing of it. Illness served as an explanation both to his wife and to his employers. He knew he had had an attack of mental aberration, and was both disturbed by the fact and ashamed of it; but why distress his wife with the matter? The thing would probably never happen again.

The thing did happen again—and many times. Yet he never told any one. If he did he would be followed about and watched; his wife would be afraid of him. He might even be locked up as irresponsible. And the matter was not so very serious. He lost more money gambling than he could afford; that was all.

Unfortunately, it was not all, however. As was bound to happen, he was sometimes seen at these "off" times by old acquaintances. Some of them hardly recognized him, so changed was he in manner and speech; and he never recognized them. It was rumored that he was drinking, gambling, and, in short, going to the dogs. A hint of this from his employers caused him to resign his position, for fear of being discharged. Still he took no one into his confidence. Better, he felt, to be thought dissolute than demented.

The possibility of being declared insane had become a horror to him—all the more because he was convinced that he was not. His trouble was that he had a second self; but that self was as sane as the first. He knew this indirectly from the associates of the second self. They never thought him irrational. He was different, to be sure—liked different people and different things, and had other motives and ideals than his normal ones. But all that was nothing to be locked up for, to lose wife and child and home for.

His meeting with Welles-Hewitt occurred early in the career of the new personality, and led to his introduction at the house of Luis Yznaga, a small, surreptitious gambling resort. From that time on it was there that Roderick McRae habitually went whenever his normal self was in abeyance. Mrs. Yznaga was a lively woman of a handsome Spanish type, and McRae found her agreeable to his changed taste. But that he ever took an undue interest in her he expressly denied in the tragic document from which most of the facts of his son's narrative were obtained.

Whether or not the Yznaga household knew his secret McRae could not tell. He had several times, after playing late and drinking heavily, thrown himself on a divan and gone to sleep; and Yznaga had left him there, thinking it unwise, probably, to turn him out of the house in such a condition. And the next morning, on awakening his normal self, as he always did, McRae had found it very difficult not to betray his ignorance of the events of the evening before. He thought that if the Yznagas and Welles-Hewitt did not understand they must have wondered at the change in him; but if they suspected the truth they gave no hint.

Of the killing of Yznaga, Roderick McRae remembered nothing whatever. He knew only that he had suddenly found himself looking down at the Spaniard's body, on the floor at his feet. On one side of him was Mrs. Yznaga, on the other Welles-Hewitt, holding his arms to restrain him; and in his right hand he saw a heavy walking-stick that he often carried.

"My God!" he had exclaimed. "What have I done?"

At his trial, he could deny nothing that was testified against him by Welles-Hewitt and Mrs. Yznaga. It was true, perhaps, that he had quarreled with Yznaga because of the latter's refusal to let him redeem the claim to the Rosalba mine, which he had signed over in payment of gambling losses. He knew that he had signed over the mine, even had Mrs. Yznaga not had a paper with his signature as proof. He had given Yznaga the paper at his last visit six weeks before, and on discovering the fact the next day had been extremely worried by it. For it had been his intention to start soon for Mexico to make arrangements for the development of his property there.

The Rosalba had been his one hope of rebuilding his fortunes. To lose it was to lose all, and if Yznaga had refused to let him pay what was owing and redeem it, there must certainly have been trouble between them. That the ill feeling was increased by the Spaniard's jealousy of his attentions to his wife, McRae also could not deny.

In desperation he tried to tell his lawyer of his strange changes of personality, of the periods of forgetfulness; but the man cut him short.

"You're not in America now, McRae; you're in England," he said. "Insanity is a good plea in New York, but it won't help you here. It will only cast a life-long suspicion on the sanity of your child."

BUT the night before his execution McRae's second personality appeared. Learning from his keeper of the peril in which he stood, he had written a frantic letter to his wife, telling her of all that he now remembered. He was sure he had not killed Yznaga, though he could not say who had. Mrs. Yznaga and Welles-Hewitt had lied about him. It was of Welles-Hewitt's attentions to his wife that the Spaniard had been jealous, not of his. And he had not quarreled with Yznaga. The latter had given him a quit-claim deed to the mine in return for the money due him, and this deed McRae remembered putting in his pocket.

They had played after that, and he had grown sleepy, as often happened when the second personality was about to subside. He had lain down on a divan and must have slept, for he recalled nothing after that. How he suddenly happened to be standing over the dead body of Yznaga, he could only guess. Evidently another's guilt had been put on him.

He implored his wife to go to the

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American Ambassador with his letter, to get a stay of sentence. Carefully sealing the letter for fear of its falling into unfriendly hands, McRae gave it to the keeper, who sent it at once to the wife. But nothing resulted from it; there was no stay of sentence; the wife did not even come. And when the keepers went to get McRae ready for his execution they found him sleeping; and when they woke him he did not remember the night or the letter. He was his normal self again.

Had he not distrusted his lawyer, had he sent him the letter, had he sent it to any one rather than to his wife, it might have helped him. When it reached her she was in a delirium brought on by mental anguish, and never saw it. Her brother, believing it to be merely a farewell message, and feeling bitterly toward the writer for the suffering and disgrace he had brought upon his family, put it away, to be given to his sister later.

As soon as possible he took her and her little boy to the Continent, where he hoped she might grow strong for the ordeal still ahead of her. But when the expected child was born it cost her life. Her babies were left in Belgium on a farm, the uncle giving their names as Eric and Fred Brown. The kindest service he could do them, he felt, was to cut them off entirely from their father's name and history. But they were well cared for, and when they were older he had them brought back to England to be educated. Not until after his death, however, when they were both grown, did they learn their real name and their father's story. In a communication left to them by their uncle they found the still unopened letter.

WHEN the first shock of the revelation was over the brothers promised each other not to rest until they had established their father's innocence and proved their right to the Rosalba mine.

Eric, the elder, more concerned about his father's memory than about the mine, stayed on for a time in England, trying to find people who had known Roderick McRae and might be able to tell something about the curious change that took place in him at times. But Fred started at once for Mexico with his wife, a young actress whom he had recently married. There, under the pretext of wanting to buy the Rosalba mine, he learned many things about Welles-Hewitt's affairs, some of them from Mrs. Gil. One promising clue he finally focused upon. Why had Welles-Hewitt persistently refused the splendid offers of Lars Johansen for the mine? There must be a strong reason. What was it?

When the Welles-Hewitt household left for New York, Fred and his wife followed, and there the latter put into execution a plan. Using her skill as an actress, she got into the Welles-Hewitt home as a French maid, and on the first day of her service she overheard enough of a conversation between Welles-Hewitt and Gil to learn that some sort of scheme was under way involving the mine. As only the most cautious and intermittent eavesdropping was possible for her, she and Fred arranged for his entrance to the house by way of the roof.

"As soon as Baker had gone with the money," Fred said, when he had again told the story of the murder, "I got out from behind the davenport and hunted for those papers of Mr. Gil's. I had no intention of taking them away; I only wanted to look at them. And I wanted to see if there were any other papers on Mr. Welles-Hewitt that might help me. I knew the risk I took in staying there even for a minute; but I knew I'd never have such a chance again. I was looking for Mr. Gil's papers when Cullop heard me opening the desk drawers. But they were in the wallet.

"I had just come across them when Cullop rang the door-bell. So I put them in my pocket, and stuffed the other papers back into the wallet. Then I started to leave, and met Cullop. The meeting was so unexpected, and his calling me by my name took me so by surprise, that I completely lost my presence of mind. Otherwise I should have stayed and faced the

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thing out. When I reached the top of the second flight of stairs a door suddenly opened, and Mrs. Martinez stepped out. At sight of me she screamed, and as I ran on I heard her fall. But I had no idea then that she took me for my father's ghost. It was Mr. Scarborough who suggested that. The experiment that we have just put through so successfully was his idea entirely."

"But it was your story of your father that gave me the idea," returned Tim.

"You're too modest, Scarborough," put in Redding. "You've declared all along that Mrs. Martinez held the key to the mystery."

"But she didn't hold the key we were after."

"She held a bigger one," Redding insisted. "Without the results of your plan this evening these young men would probably never have cleared their father's name or proved their right to the Rosalba mine."

Here Johansen spoke.

"It will be my privilege to adjust matters with the Mexican Mines Company," he said. "They acted in good faith and must be compensated. I will attend to this in payment of the debt I have owed all these years to Roderick McRae's heirs."

"That's too generous of you, Mr. Johansen," protested Eric McRae, speaking for the first time. "We could not accept so much. We'll manage about the mine somehow, and if we lose it it won't much matter. The big thing that we've gained to-night we can not lose. That's our father's vindication. And for it I feel we owe a debt to Mr. Scarborough that we can never pay."

AS he ended Eric's voice was a little husky. There could be no doubt of the deep sincerity of his words, and his hearers understood that he had seized the opportunity to express in their presence his gratitude for a service he felt to be beyond thanks or the possibility of any adequate return. They understood, too, why he felt so. The exoneration of his father restored to him an honorable name, one he need not shrink from offering to the girl he loved.

"You don't owe me anything at all," Scarborough disclaimed at once. "After meeting you on the train and having that talk with you, I just couldn't believe you were the murderer, no matter how things looked."

"Which shows that you thought better of him than he did of me," Fred McRae put in, with a laugh.

"I didn't believe you guilty for a minute, Fred," Eric protested; "but I thought you had some strong reason for running away as you did, and I wanted to give you every chance. And when Cullop made the mistake of thinking you were my second personality, the easiest way to shield you was to let him go on thinking it. I owe a lot to Cullop. He was certainly a friend in need. I hope he'll forgive me sometime for deceiving him."

"Oh, he will," said Tim. "But there's one thing you haven't explained yet. What were you going to Mrs. Malone's boarding-house for when Dozy stopped you? How did you happen to have a key? That was the thing that misled Dozy."

"Fred gave me the key. He had it made for me when he took the room at Mrs. Malone's. His plan was for us to take turns spying on Welles-Hewitt. But I was never in the Welles-Hewitt house—never meant to go. I was working on

another track altogether. I had been to several places where my father had been known; trying to find people from whom I hoped to get data to prove the claim that his personality did actually change. In Spitzen I had got the name and address of a man here in New York, and as soon as I arrived I telephoned to ask for an appointment. As it happened, he was leaving town the next day; but he agreed to see me if I would come up at once. Then, when I talked to him, he became so interested that he kept me several hours."

"So you had an alibi that would have cleared you," said Redding.

"Yes, me—but not Fred. When I left this man I called Fred up at his hotel, and was told that he and his wife had gone away suddenly and left no address. Thinking I'd find Fred at Mrs. Malone's, I went there, that's all."

"And those papers you gave to Dozy?" Tim asked.

"They were private papers that would have established my identity," Eric answered. "You see, I was thinking of giving myself up. Of course Cullop thought they were Mr. Gil's papers. But, as you know, Fred had those."

"I should say I did!" exclaimed the younger McRae. "And I was in terror of the police nabbing me and finding them. They would have convicted me on the spot. But I couldn't destroy them, because I knew they might be needed to clear Gil. So we took turns carrying them about."

He turned to indicate his young wife, who sat near by. Chic and pretty and untroubled, she was very little like the frightened maid Scarborough remembered so vividly. Possessed of dignity and poise, she was just the mate, he thought, for the volatile Fred.

The conversation now became general, and shortly afterward Redding and Scarborough rose to go. It was then that Eric Brown seized an opportunity to get Tim alone for a minute in the hall.

"I wish there were something I could do to repay Cullop for what he did for me," he said.

"Oh, there is," Tim drawled, with a smile. "Ask him to be best man at your wedding—that is, if there's to be a wedding—"

"Oh, yes!" The answer was so prompt that they both laughed.

"That's great! That's fine!" declared Tim, gripping his companion's hand.

"And of course I'll have Cullop for best man, if you really think he'd like it," said Eric.

"Oh, I was only joking about that," Tim answered. "I was just trying to find out—well, what I did find out. Still on the job, you see. But as for the kid liking it, he'd like nothing better. He'd be tickled to death."

"Then that's settled. And now, if there were only something I could do or say to you to express my—"

"Forget it," said Scarborough. "I'm just as pleased as you can be at the way things have come out. And don't imagine I haven't got something out of it, too. It's put me in touch with the District Attorney, and that will help a lot. Oh, I'm satisfied," he added. "Our meeting on the train was luck for both of us."

"Luck?" Eric echoed the word doubtfully. "Do you think it could have been just—luck?"

"Well—I call it luck," said Tim. "I don't know what it was. Nobody does—or ever will. And—luck is a shorter word than providence."

The End

Her Own Business

—Continued from page 5

"So you would sit there and see Miss Farnum show those people through the factory!"

"She gave me no choice in the matter, any more than she did you," was the quiet reply. "I'm sorry this happened, Mr. Rouss, but I don't feel responsible."

"No; you're not responsible. No; of course not!" sneered the manager. "You've got to sit looking out the window, while everybody else is working. Let me tell you right now, Mr. Hyatt, you won't get far by antagonizing me. If you think you can waste good money advertising something that doesn't need it, I want to tell you that I'm going to stand in the way."

Hyatt stirred uneasily.

"I'm sorry to hear it," he said. "I surely don't mean to antagonize you. I've tried to show you that as clearly as I could. As to whatever advertising is done or not done, I fancy that will lie in Miss Farnum's discretion, won't it?"

"Miss Farnum's discretion!" repeated the general manager loudly. "Look here, Hyatt, don't try to pull the wool over my eyes. You met Miss Farnum somewhere down South, and you saw a chance to get a soft berth with easy money. Now, I don't blame you for that. You filled her head with a lot of pipe-dreams about advertising, knowing that she didn't know the first thing about the business, and you're perfectly willing to go ahead and shoot any amount of her good money at the moon. But the rest of us, who are making that good money—do you think we're going to see it go up in smoke? I guess not! Don't you believe it for a minute!"

Hyatt's lips compressed until his mouth was a warning straight line. He was hurt, and he took no pains to conceal his hurt.

"That's not fair talk," he said. "It's not just to me, and it's not decent to Miss Farnum. She will do what she thinks is best—"

"What she thinks is best!" snarled Rouss. "Don't try to kid me, Hyatt. You know as well as I do that Miss Farnum is playing. This is great fun for her. Day after to-morrow she's likely to lock up the office and beat it for the White Mountains or Europe or South America. She'll forget Farnumville and the plants here as if they never existed. She—"

HYATT rose, trembling.

"Mr. Rouss," he said in a shaking voice, "I believe in Miss Farnum's purpose, and her will to carry out her purpose. You can say anything about me you choose. You think I'm not on the level. All right; it's up to me to prove to you that I am. But the next time you mention Miss Farnum to me in that sneering, unmanly way—"

The young fellow paused, and tried to get a hold on himself. Rouss saw it as irresolution, and he showed his teeth in a bitter grin as he asked, "Well, what?"

Hyatt threw up the window.

"I'm going to put you out that window, head first—unless you can put me out the same way," he barked. "And I'm ready to begin right now!"

Rouss looked at the window, and at Hyatt. There was no possible doubt that Hyatt meant what he said. But it wasn't the threat that stopped Rouss so much as the fact that the worm had turned—and not only turned, but displayed unexpected fangs. This is always a disconcerting discovery.

"We'll see about this," said Rouss, and went out.

Hyatt was left breathing hard, unnerved, ungeared. He had come to Farnumville never dreaming that there would be any positive friction like this. Hard work he was expecting and inviting—but a struggle between an older employee and himself had not entered his thoughts. He was not prepared for it, and he felt shot to pieces.

An hour later Hyatt's interior telephone rang. Miss Farnum would like to see him as soon as convenient. He went at once to the corner room.

When he entered, Miss Farnum was standing at the window, looking out at a pair of horses struggling up a steep incline with a dray overloaded with big bales of rags—the raw material of Escutcheon.

"Look!" she pointed, as Hyatt came in. "I'm beginning to feel like that already! I feel that I'm going uphill too! At least, I can do something for the horses, though."

She picked up the office telephone, called the receiving department, and said in her mellow, friendly way:

"Don't you think, Mr. Braid, it would be just as well not to ask the horses to draw quite so many bales up the hill? . . . If you will see to that, please. Thank you so much!

THEN the young woman turned to Hyatt, looking at him inquiringly from her big eyes.

"It was very unfortunate—that incident, Mr. Hyatt. Such impertinence on the part of Mr. Rouss I never dreamed of. Fortunately the matter came to a head very quickly. Mr. Rouss and I have just had an understanding. He has made an issue of it. Either you or he, he says, will leave the plant."

"Then I beg you will let me go!" said Hyatt quickly. "Please don't think it will be hurting me at all. I came only on a hazard, you know. I can always go back to my place in Chicago—"

"I have told Mr. Rouss," the young woman continued, "that he may go or stay, as he chooses. You are going to stay here!"

"Now, please, Miss Farnum," began Hyatt. "I appreciate that. It was fine of you. But you mustn't do it. It's a question of who is the more valuable asset to the company—and Mr. Rouss is a hundred times more necessary than I am."

"That may be, but it isn't the question. The question is whether Mr. Rouss is going to dictate the policy in this office while I am here—and I assure you he is not!" replied Elizabeth Farnum.

Her head was thrown back, her words came with spirit, and her mouth became identical with that in the picture of Nathan Farnum, which hung on the wall facing her.

"Besides," she went on, "I know the man now! He won't quit. It is a bluff, and he knows now that I know it. You will stay, Mr. Hyatt—won't you?"

Hyatt was silent a moment.

She took several steps toward him. He saw two fine, slender hands stretched toward his, and she was looking into his eyes with a new earnestness. She laid the hands upon his wrists and said:

"You will stay to help me, Mr. Hyatt! Something bigger than all this is in the air. I shall need your help more than ever. The Trust has made us an offer for the business."

"The Trust? The Universal Paper Company?"

She nodded. "They have been after the business for years. Father stood like a rock against them. Their offer is generous—astonishing."

"But how can I help you?"

"If I sell—I go back to auction, the one-step, and the porches of summer hotels. I have never in my life been so happy as since I took this desk. You have done that for me—yes, you, Mr. Hyatt. Will you do something more? Will you help me to keep myself here?"

"I will stay with you just as long as you need me, no matter what happens," Hyatt replied.

She said nothing, but gave him a look that was reward enough, for a hundred times the sacrifice.

And, with that look still clear to his eyes, he went back to his desk. He went back with something strange clutching at his breast. Suddenly he felt lifted to the heights of happiness, and then he was quickly lowered into dull misery. For it had come swiftly upon him that he was in love with Elizabeth Farnum—hopelessly in love with a woman he could never dream of having. He sat down heavily, put his arms on the desk and his head on his arms, and bitterly wished that he was back in Chicago—and that nothing of what was had ever been.

To be continued next week

They Love Us—They Love Us Not

They Do, Bless 'Em

Dear Editor:

We are two, and each of us is of the opposite sex. For many, many weeks we have read EVERY WEEK, and enjoyed it immensely—she for your fine attitude toward women, the human-interest stories, and the appealing pictures; I for the man stories, your inspiring editorials, and the deliciously malicious disregard of literary conventions in the write-ups of the pictures.

Now do we love you?

HE and SHE, Somewhere in America.

Likes Sugar with His Bread

Dear Editor:

The proportion of pictures to reading matter in your very meaty magazine is just right. They please the eye, are instructive and interesting, and their combination with valuable articles and worthwhile fiction goes to show that one needs bread and meat as well as sugar in a well balanced meal.

S. E. H., Brooklyn, N. Y.

We Were Always That Way

Dear Editor:

It is a source of amazement to me that you can be so sane on so many subjects. It is a real relief to know that there are some level-headed people left to help balance this crazy old world.

E. I. G., Kensington, Md.

Apple Turnover

Dear Editor:

I like your magazine because it reminds me of an apple, clean and wholesome, good for man or beast, looks good outside and is full of health inside, thoroughly sound.

J. E. P., Roslindale, Mass.

Discovered

Dear Editor:

No wonder I see EVERY WEEK read everywhere I go. It is attractive, up-to-date, not tongue-tied or hide-bound, and above all it has a purpose.

E. C. S., Lewisburg, Pa.

Geraniums for Us

Dear Editor:

I like your paper, and, believing firmly in sending flowers while people are still alive enough to enjoy them, I see no reason why I shouldn't tell you so. After I saw the first copy by accident I spent the rest of the afternoon ransacking the country-side for back numbers. It's like having an old, delightful, well understood friend drop in once a week for a comfy chat across the fire, EVERY WEEK is.

E. T. M., Clarksville, Tenn.

Happy Reader

Dear Editor:

May I tell you how much I like your magazine, particularly the center page pictures and the splendidly human and inspiring editorials? Long life to you, sir!

E. H., Caribou, Me.

Ditto

Dear Editor:

Stories come and stories go, but pictures live forever. They are the first to receive attention with every new issue; they are why we file the magazine. They are distinctively EVERY WEEK.

A. S. E., Philadelphia, Pa.

Suffragettes Wanted

Dear Editor:

There are other story magazines as well as novels and newspapers for those who want more reading matter, but the class of pictures in your paper is so instructive and so well chosen and arranged that they are a benefit to the soul. They bring me into acquaintance with people who otherwise I should never know about. Can't you have another page devoted to Suffragettes? I wish you would, and a whole page of operatic stars too. But, whatever you do, please don't leave out the pictures.

Mrs. W. S. G., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Fifty-Fifty

Dear Editor:

I am a constant reader of your magazine, and am now sending you a collection of my water color pictures for you to use. I hope you will take the same interest my work that I take in yours.

0. P. F., Newcastle, Pa.

All the Best Authors Are Married

Dear Editor:

After reading the last instalment of "The Triflers" I decided that the author, Frederick Orin Bartlett, was single. But a friend of mine disagreed. I decided a few days ago that Holworthy Hall, another of your authors, was married. Again disagreement with my friend. Will you settle the dispute, if it is not against your rules?

M. M. M., North Adams, Mass.

Prize-Winning Suggestion

Dear Editor:

First of all I want to say that I appreciate your editorials very much. Most of them have the ring of sincerity back of them. I think that you usually have a message to give; but if some weeks you do not happen to have a message I think it would be better not to try to make a message.

H. S., Minneapolis, Mimi.

On His Way

Dear Editor:

I hope I am in time to secure a copy of "Eating for Health and Efficiency" from EVERY WEEK'S library. I have been on a diet for six months now, and have reduced between thirty-five and forty pounds; but, as I still tip the beam at about 230 pounds, I believe there is some distance still to go.

J. J. N., Washington, D. C.

A Bouquet for Our Boiler-Room

Dear Editor:

What kind of a boiler do you have in your boiler-room at the EVERY WEEK office? Because the way you boil down the gist of your recommended books and magazines on your "I Have No Time to Read" pages is certainly a triumph. I not only got some valuable suggestions as to what books to give away at Christmas, but was at the same time edified and entertained myself. You fellows have such a clear and at the same time amusing way of putting everything, from cabbages to kings.

R. M. C., Chicago, Ill.

Darkest Before Dawn

Dear Editor:

It just won't come—that EVERY WEEK, and I want it worse than anything in the world. Maybe your mailing clerks are busy with the European War or something, but won't you just ask them again to send it to me? P. S.—Here it is. Hurray!

M. R. H., Meridian, Miss.

Our Own Gambler

Dear Editor:

When your publication made its debut I discovered in it page after page of history, science, and biography exquisitely set forth in gorgeous photographs. I carefully clip selected pictures from the magazine and paste them into my own Hall of Fame. Sometimes there are good pictures

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on both sides of the paper. In that case I toss up a coin—and, whether it is heads or tails, I buy another copy of EVERY WEEK.

J. H. K.

Wants to See More of Us

Dear Editor:

Don't do what either F. R. D. or K. B. R. say about leaving out a story or leaving out picture pages. Unless you desire to print more pages and raise the price to five cents (which I think very few of your readers would mind), I think it is best to leave the "Magazine of Wonders" as it is.

S. E. F., New York.

Perpetual Motion

Dear Editor:

Probably you would be glad to know that at the end of every month I send my copies of EVERY WEEK to a friend in Montana who lives forty miles from a railroad. He passes them along to his neighbor homesteaders. So you are not only read every week that you come out, but during many succeeding weeks besides.

A. E. T., Racine, Wis.

For Sweetness and Light

Dear Editor:

For heaven's sake, don't let Roosevelt and his war howlings get into EVERY WEEK. I stopped taking one magazine that was all for strenuousity. We want more about sweet little Mary Pickford and not the martial growls of a bulldog.

H. L. S., Porterville, Cal.

We Travel First-Class

Dear Editor:

Please send your six booklets to my Wall Street Girl, so that on my next trip home we can go over them together. Each week I read EVERY WEEK thoroughly, and then send it to Her first-class, with my comments on the margin. My pard and I are twenty-five and twenty-seven years young, and we and our three kiddies are training like everything for real success—the kind you teach.

R. B. E., Waynesboro, Pa.

'Nother Milestone Passed

Dear Editor:

The funny things you say under the pictures in the two middle pages get more laughs in our family than all the humor in the so-called comic magazines. Go on reveling in levity all you like.

M. C. K., New York City.

So Does the Office-Boy

Dear Editor:

Funny thing about your paper—one always takes time to read it, even when one hasn't the time.

M. F., Philadelphia, Pa.

Horse Sense

Dear Editor:

Let me thank you for "The Sport of Kings," not so much because it is a horse story,—though, being a Kentuckian myself, I appreciate that,—but

because of the principle involved: the fine-tempered steel sort of man and the abused little thoroughbred mare versus the sledgehammer sort of persons who too often win the races on the turf, and off too.

Mrs. M. N. W., Baldwin, L. T.

Editorials in Book Form

WE are filled with gratitude and embarrassment every week by receiving a number of letters from readers asking whether the editorials printed in this magazine are available in book form.

They are not, as yet: whether they ever will be depends somewhat on how many people want them. Will all those who think they might like such a book, if it didn't cost more than $1, please stand up and be counted?

Referendums are popular now. If you are interested, spend one cent for a postal card and address it to the Editor at 95 Madison Avenue, New York. You won't obligate yourself at all: we'd just like to know how many of you there are.

He Put Winsted on the Map

Winsted, Connecticut, is a modest little new England town with no more right to a national reputation than Foxboro, Massachusetts, or Polo, Illinois.

But the whole nation knows Winsted: it is there that the spring lies come from. You must have seen the little despatches from Winsted on the fron page of your city paper. Here is one of them:

Otis Gillette of Winsted has been greatly trouble by mosquitos. He is quite bald, and the mosquitos light on his head and bite him. Mr. Gillette had a spider painted on the bad spot, and now the mosquitos don't dare go near him.

And here are two more:

Claude Berne of John Street, Winstead, found a crow's nest to-day and carried off the eggs. On the way home one of the eggs was hatched in his hand. Claude, the human incubator, tried to rear the baby crow, but unfortunately it died.

Tom Hicks of Winstead has grown tired of feeding the squirrels around his house for nothing, so he has trained them to earn their board. For ten gopher nuts the squirrels brush Tom's coat and pants and shoes. The squirrels bit the ends of their tails and swing backwards and forwards, rubbing their tails against Tom, making the dust fly.

Who send these bits of nature lore forth to instruct the nation's youth? The New York editors, who had been guilelessly printing them for a long time, sent a man to Winsted to find out. And they discovered Lewis Timothy Stone, editor of the Winsted Evening Citizen—not a white-bearded old Yankee, but a square-jawed, clean-shaven newspaper man, who for years has been enjoying himself, and contributing to the merriment of nations, and—incidentally—putting Winsted on the map.

WHAT SCIENCE IS DOING

To Roll This Old World Along

MACHINE CONTROL FOR SUBWAY TRAINS

THE new municipal subway in New York can handle twenty per cent. more traffic than any other tube in the world, and handle that terrific amount of travel more safely than any railroad system, because the automatic train-control system has eliminated the human element.

There are now on the market eight or ten different inventions which guarantee that, no matter what may happen to the engineer of a train, no wreck can occur except on a faulty roadbed.

In other words, with the device now in use a train can not be hit by the train following. The engineer can not make the trains collide. A little instrument concealed in the cab will slow the train down and stop it before it can strike any track obstruction. The human factor is done away with.

Statistics show that seventy per cent. of wrecks on American roads could have been prevented by an automatic train-control device. These accidents were caused by illness of the engineer, neglect of orders, excessive speed under bad conditions, or similar human faults.

The instrument in the subway cab records every act of the motorman. When he passes a block signal he must acknowledge it by pressing a button. If he does not a shrill whistle blows until his ear-drums threaten to split. Meanwhile a little paper tape records his neglect.

The control system is operated by a current running through the rails, which is picked up by a special shoe for that purpose only. This shoe also serves to notify the despatcher's office of the whereabouts of all trains. The despatcher can not send two trains into the same block, because purely mechanical interlocking levers prevent him from signaling to permit it. The blocks are made very short, however, and for this reason trains may follow each other very closely and a greater load may be placed on the road than under the old method of block signaling. In addition, a revolving ruled sheet of paper traces the run of each train, so that the despatchers' efficiency may be accurately determined as well as the accuracy of the work of the motormen.

RIP-SAWING ICE

A TRACTOR ice-sawing machine that will saw a cake of ice every second, or 30,000 cakes a day; equaling the output of sixteen men and eight teams, is the interesting invention that has just been perfected by John F. Oehler, a practical ice-handler of La Crosse, Wisconsin. The demonstrations that were conducted on the Mississippi River this winter showed that this machine possesses the distinct advantage of working both forward and backward. Spiked wheels take care of the

traction. The buzz-saw can be lowered or raised, as the case may require, to a depth of from six to sixteen inches. The speed of the machine is regulated by a friction disk similar to that used on many automobiles. The saw is geared directly to the engine.

At the end of the cut the guide is shifted to the last mark made, without turning the machine around. The machine serves as its own guide after a correct start is made.

When the 25-horse-power engine is hard at work, the cakes of ice are trimmed off so cleanly and rapidly that it doesn't take long for a mammoth ice-house to be filled with an abundant harvest.

THE CARE OF CREAM

THE University of Illinois has issued an interesting pamphlet having to do with the care of cream on the farm. Excerpts from it follow:

A good many producers do not stop to consider that to command the highest price their cream must be of the best quality. In order to pay the highest price for cream the butter-maker must make a very good, marketable grade of butter, and added to this he must have a good grade of raw material from which to make his product. His finished product will be no better than the cream from which it is made. Therefore, if a farmer expects to receive the best market price for his cream, he must produce a quality of cream that will warrant such a price. The following rules offer suggestions for caring for cream on the farm:

Keep the cows clean.

Use covered milk-pails.

Milk with dry hands.

Remove all milk from the barn immediately, and separate it at once.

Set the separator so that it will skim cream that will test from 35 to 40 per cent. in the winter and from 40 to 45 per cent. in the summer.

Wash, scald, and dry the separator and all utensils immediately after using. The separator bowl may be dried in a warm oven, though the oven should not be so warm that it will melt the tin on the bowl parts. Setting utensils in the sun is a good practice, as the sunshine acts as a germicide.

Keep all utensils and separator parts dry when not in use.

Cool the cream immediately after skimming by setting the can in cold running water. Construct a cooling-tank, so that the cream will be cooled with the water that is used to fill the stock tank.

Never mix warm cream with cold cream. Cool the cream before mixing it with previous skimmings.

Do not allow the cream to freeze in cold weather.

Stir the cream at least twice a day; this will keep it smooth and free from lumps. Do not use a wooden paddle for a stirrer, as it is unsanitary.

Deliver cream frequently, at least twice a week in winter and three times a week in warm weather.

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DIAGNOSING YOUR DISEASE

A HOSPITAL has been founded in New York City for the exclusive purpose of diagnosing disease. To this institution doctors may bring all their puzzling cases just as soon as they know that a careful, scientific diagnosis is necessary to determine what treatment will help the patient.

Dr. A. W. Ferris, writing in the Modern Hospital, says that the medical profession is "dismayed at the decay and even death of thousands who should be in the prime of life, efficient and vigorous." Meanwhile, educated persons are decrying the prevalence of a suffering old age instead of a hale, hearty one, and the idea is growing that the trouble is that diseases of these persons are not being judged and treated correctly.

Dr. Ferris says that many of the adopted theories of the profession have not reached the general practitioner. Many doctors do not know the facts of malaria, established in 1898; the absolute facts of vaccination for smallpox; the newer conceptions of that old scrap-basket, rheumatism; the now generally accepted views regarding diabetes; the relation of mouth hygiene to health; and on down the list. He goes even further and mentions the new science of dread, which was brought to light by the Freudian school.

"What more satisfying to the practitioner than to pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the hidden troubles of the brain, and restore calm judgment by means of circulatory and digestive improvement, and perhaps by psychoanalysis?"

The country doctor often can not make the tests that are now considered necessary to diagnosis, and even the wealthy physician has no such apparatus as the electrocardiograph, which photographs heart action and other important functions. The diagnosis hospital has been founded for the purpose of improving these conditions, and assisting physicians in their difficulties.

WHAT IS A TWISTER?

NEW YORK members of the National Guard had peculiar experiences with "twisters" on the Texas border. These big winds had no respect for tents and seemed to care little whither they traveled. J. K. Lamoree, who took this photograph of a wind dervish that just missed his tent, says in Travel: "Twisters start from nothing, grow, and keep right on traveling. They resemble gigantic tubes of smoke, moving rapidly across otherwise perfectly clear prairie."

These winds are technically tornadoes full of dust, which attain a velocity of from one to two hundred miles an hour in the vortex, and are local to Texas, Iowa, Kansas, and other States of the middle West. They are caused by areas of cold air superimposed upon areas of highly heated air near the surface of the earth. The difference in temperature causes the hot air at the bottom to rise, and a figure is created in the atmosphere not unlike that in a wash-bowl when the water is let out in a little whirlpool.

GUARDING COMMERCIAL NOSES

Men with queer, rabbit-like faces are not necessarily gas-masked fighters in the cause of war. They may be on the commercial firing line, where gas masks have been worn for years to protect the

health of workers in the peaceful factories of the United States. Various disinfectants manufactured in this country contain chemicals that are similar to the poison gas of the European trenches, and in order to conserve the lives of the employees it is necessary for them to wear air purifiers or even oxygen helmets.

Chloride of lime gives off some quantities of chlorine gas, and the picture herewith was made at Bush Terminal, New York City, of men working outside a plant. Such simple masks are also worn by workers in factories that use soda and potash in various forms. Oxygen helmets must also be worn in the manufacture of absorbent cotton for surgical use; for the disinfectant used is the most deadly known to science—hydrocyanic gas.

SYNTHETIC SOUP

NEW YORK may have relieved the food situation with smelts and hominy, but Philadelphia has waked up to synthetic soup—or stone soup, as the chemist who spoke before Franklin Institute called his invention. A synthetic substance is a chemical composition made in the laboratory instead of one grown by nature; and this meat or soup is produced by a formula that ought to scare even a chemist if he is thinking of dinner. Nevertheless it is good, nourishing, and cheap, if the audience at the Institute was properly quoted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Take portions of sodium phosphate, calcium carbonate, and ammonium sulphate, add a little sugar and some yeast. All the ingredients except the last two are, in a general way, minerals. Yeast is an enzym, or contains fermentive agents called enzyms, which digest the mineral matter automatically, and the resultant sticky paste has all the nutritive qualities of beef extract, smells like it, and tastes like it. The yeast changes the inorganic material into an organic meat substitute.

There were doubters among the listeners to this remarkable story, but their doubts were removed by the act of tasting the "stone meat." Every man present pronounced it good. The chemist thinks he has produced artificial meat that will be tender, no matter how old the calcium soda used may be.