A Portrait of Yourself by a Man Who Is Figuring When You Will Die

IT is the business of E. E. Rittenhouse of the Equitable Life Assurance Society to figure when you will die.

He keeps an eye on you all the time. Not you personally, but you as an average American.

And here is his report about you as presented to the life insurance presidents at their recent convention.

You look smooth, pink, and healthy.

You are a good liver. (He said are, not have.)

You hurry. The medium age at death of the American people is 43.

Your eyes have been strained by inside work: hence the glasses.

Your teeth look good, but they need attention.

You are seriously overstraining heart, arteries, kidneys, nerves, and digestion—as the rapidly increasing death rate shows.

You could detect an head off these troubles if you would go to a doctor for an occasional examination.

Under exertion you are short-winded, due to lack of exercise or a bad heart.

Your four hundred muscles are virtually all soft and weak from lack of use.

You are designed as an erect, outdoor animal, with feet and legs for service; but you lie down all night and sit down all day.

You never walk when you can ride.

The arches of your feet are generally falling, because the muscles provided to hold them up have weakened from long disuse.

Your ancestors lived on a farm: the proportion of people living in cities has increased 131 per cent. in fifty years.

You feed your stomach with all sorts of "tasty junk," much of which can not be fully digested; so you develop auto-intoxication.

With every pound of fat you gain your chances of a shortened life increase.

You eat 30 per cent. more food than your grandfather did; and 374 per cent. more sugar.

You drink 19.8 gallons of liquor: he drank 6.4.

You do this in spite of the repeated warning of insurance companies that moderate drinkers die 18 per cent. faster than total abstainers; and steady drinkers 86 per cent. faster.

You spend 367 per cent. more for patent medicines and drugs than your father did; and drink 54 per cent. more coffee.

In your easy-going, optimistic way, you are cheered by the fact that the general death rate is declining. You food yourself with the notion that his means a green old age for you.

As a matter of fact, the decrease in the death rate is due to the better care of infants.

Not only is the adult death rate not decreasing: it is alarmingly increasing.

Since 1900 the death rate from Bright's disease has increased 15 per cent.; from diseases of the heart, 27 per cent.

These are the diseases of adult life—the diseases of hurry and worry and overeating and nervous wear and tear.

This is not my picture, remember. It is painted by Mr. Rittenhouse, whose business it is to figure how much you ought to pay for life insurance, in view of the fact that you will probably die before you are fifty years old.

Mr. Rittenhouse says there is hope for you.

An annual medical examination; more exercise outdoors; less food; more dentistry; no booze; more walking and less taxicabs.

Most of all—no hurry and no worry.

Simple rules—sensible—guaranteed to put you across the fifty mark, with a good chance for sixty and maybe seventy-five.

But Mr. Rittenhouse isn't very hopeful that you will adopt them. He has been watching you quite a long while—

Sitting up in his office: figuring away: figuring out about when you die.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE FIDDLING MAN

By JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

Illustrations by Hawthorne Howland

BREAULT'S cough was not pleasant to hear. A cough possesses manifold and almost unclassifiable diversities. But there is only one cough when a man has a bullet through his lungs and is measuring his life by minutes, perhaps seconds. Yet Breault, even as he coughed the red stain from his lips, was not afraid. Many times he had found himself in the presence of death, and long ago it had ceased to frighten him. Some day he had expected to come under the black shadow of it himself—not in a quiet and peaceful way, but all at once, with a shock. And the time had come. He knew that he was dying; and he was calm. More than that—in dying he was achieving a triumph. The red-hot death-sting in his lung had given birth to a frightful thought in his sickening brain. The day of his great opportunity was at hand. The hour—the minute.

A last flush of the pale afternoon sun lighted up his black-bearded face as his eyes turned, with their new inspiration, to his sledge. It was a face that one would remember—not pleasantly, perhaps, but as a fixture in a shifting memory of things; a face strong with a brute strength, implacable in its hard lines, emotionless.

It was the best known face in all that part of the northland which reaches up from Fort McMurray to Lake Athabasca and westward to Fond du Lac and the Wholdaia country. For ten years Breault had made that trip twice a year with the northern mails. In all its reaches there was not a cabin he did not know. Yet there was not a man, woman, or child who welcomed him except for what he brought. But the government had found its faith in him justified. The police at their lonely outposts had come to regard his comings and goings as dependable as day and night. They blessed him for his punctuality, and not one of them missed him when he was gone. A strange man was Breault.

With his back against a tree, where he had propped himself after the first shock of the bullet in his lung, he took a last look at life with a passionless impeturbability. If there was any emotion at all in his face it was one of vindictiveness—an emotion roused by an intense and terrible hatred that in this hour saw the fulfilment of its vengeance.

HE measured the distance between himself and the sledge. It was perhaps a dozen paces. The dogs were still standing, tangled a little in their traces,—eight of them,—wide-chested, thin at the groins, a wolfish horde, built for endurance and speed. On the sledge was a quarter of a ton of his Majesty's mail. Toward this Breault began to creep slowly and with great pain. A hand inside of him seemed crushing the fiber of his lung, so that the blood oozed out of his mouth. When he reached the sledge there were many red patches in the snow behind him. He opened with considerable difficulty a small dunnage sack, and after fumbling a bit took therefrom a pencil and an envelop.

For the first time a change came upon his countenance—a ghastly smile. And above his hissing breath, that gushed between his lips with the sound of air pumped through the fine mesh of a colander, there rose a still more ghastly croak of exultation and of triumph. Laboriously he wrote. A few words, and the pencil dropped from his stiffening fingers into the snow. Around his neck he wore a long red scarf held together by a big brass pin, and to this pin he fastened securely the envelop.

This much done,—the mystery of his death solved for those who might some day find him,—the ordinary man would have contented himself by yielding up life's struggle with as little more physical difficulty as possible. Breault was not ordinary. He was, in his one way, efficiency incarnate. He made space for himself on the sledge, and laid himself out in that space with great care, first taking pains to fasten about his thighs two babiche thongs that were employed at times to steady his freight. Then he ran his left arm through one of the loops of the stout mail-chest. By taking these precautions he was fairly secure in the belief that after he was dead and frozen stiff no amount of rough trailing by the dogs could roll him from the sledge.

In this conjecture he was right. When the starved and exhausted malamutes dragged their silent burden into the Northwest Mounted Police outpost barracks at Crooked Bow twenty-four hours later, an ax and a sapling bar were required to pry François Breault from his bier. Previous to this process, however, Sergeant Fitzgerald, in charge at the outpost, took possession of the soiled envelop pinned to Breault's red scarf. The information it bore was simple, and yet exceedingly definite. Few men in dying as Breault had died could have made the matter easier for the police.

On the envelop he had written:

Jan Thoreau shot me and left me for dead. Have just strength to write this—no more. FRANÇOIS BREAULT.

It was epic—a colossal monument to this man, thought Sergeant Fitzgerald, as they pried the frozen body loose.

TO Corporal Blake fell the unpleasant task of going after Jan Thoreau. Unpleasant, because Breault's starved huskies and frozen body brought with them the worst storm of the winter. In the face of this storm Blake set out, with the Sergeant's last admonition in his ears: "Don't come back, Blake, until you've got him, dead or alive."

That is a simple and efficacious formula in the rank and file of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. It has made volumes of stirring history, because it means a great deal and has been lived up to. Twice before, the words had been uttered to Blake—in extreme cases. The first time they had taken him for six months into the Barren Lands between Hudson's Bay and the Great Slave—and he came back with his man; the second time he was gone for nearly a year along the rim of the Arctic—and from there also he came back with his man. Blake was of that sort. A bulldog, a Nemesis when he was once on the trail, and—like most men of that kind—without a conscience. In the Blue Books of the service he was credited with arduous patrols and unusual exploits. "Put Blake on the trail" meant something.

Only one man knew Blake as Blake actually lived under his skin—and that was Blake himself. He hunted men and ran them down without mercy—not because he loved the law, but for the reason that he had in him the inherited instincts of the hound. This comparison, if quite

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true, is none the less unfair to the hound. A hound is a good dog at heart.

In the January storm it may be that the vengeful spirit of François Breault set out in company with Corporal Blake to witness the consummation of his vengeance. That first night, as he sat close to his fire in the shelter of a thick spruce timber, Blake felt the unusual and disturbing sensation of a presence somewhere near him. The storm was at its height. He had passed through many storms, but to-night there seemed to be an uncannily concentrated fury in its beating and wailing over the roofs of the forests.

He was physically comfortable. The spruce trees were so dense that the storm did not reach him, and fortune favored him with a good fire and plenty of fuel. But the sensation oppressed him. He could not keep away from him his mental vision of Breault as he had helped to pry him from the sledge—his frozen features, the stiffened fingers, the curious twist of the icy lips that had been almost a grin.

Blake was not superstitious. He was too much a man of iron for that. His soul had lost the plasticity of imagination. But he could not forget Breault's lips as they had seemed to grin up at him. There was a reason for it. On his last trip down, Breault had said to him, with that same half-grin on his face:.

"M'sieu, some day you may go after my murderer, and when you do, François Breault will go with you."

That was three months ago. Blake measured the time back as he sucked at his pipe, and at the same time he looked at the shadowy and half lost forms of his dogs, curled up for the night in the outer rim of firelight.

Over the tree-tops a sudden blast of wind howled. It was like a monster voice. Blake rose to his feet and rolled upon the fire the big night log he had dragged in, and to this he added, with the woodman's craft of long experience, lengths of green timber, so arranged that they would hold fire until morning. Then he went into his silk service tent and buried himself in his sleeping-bag.

For a long time he did not sleep. He listened to the crackle of the fire. Again and again he heard that monster voice moaning and shrieking over the forest. Never had the rage of storm filled him with the uneasiness of to-night. At last the mystery of it was solved for him. The wind came and went each time in a great moaning, half shrieking sound: Br-r-r-r —e-e-e-e—aw-w-w-w!

It was like a shock to him; and yet, he was not a superstitious man. No, he was not that. He would have staked his life on it. But it is not pleasant to hear a dead man's name shrieked over one's head by the wind. Under the cover of his sleeping-bag flap Corporal Blake laughed. Funny things were always happening, he tried to tell himself. And this was a mighty good joke. Breault wasn't so slow, after all. He had given his promise, and he was keeping it: for, if it wasn't really Breault's voice up there in the wind, multiplied a thousand times, it was a good imitation of it. Again Corporal Blake laughed—a laugh as unpleasant as the cough that had come from Breault's bullet-punctured lung.

He fell asleep after a time; but even sleep could not drive from him the clinging obsession of the thought that strange things were to happen in this taking of Jan Thoreau.

WITH the gray dawn there was nothing to mark the passing of the storm except freshly fallen snow, and Blake was on the trail before it was light enough to see a hundred yards ahead. There was a defiance and a contempt of last night in the crack of his long caribou-gut whip and the halloo of his voice as he urged on his dogs. Breault's voice in the wind? Bah! Only a fool would have thought that. Therefore he was a fool. And Jan Thoreau—it would be like taking a child. There would be no happenings to report—merely an arrest, a quick return journey, an affair altogether too ordinary to be interesting. Perhaps it was all on account of the hearty supper of caribou liver he had eaten. He was fond of liver, and once or twice before it had played him tricks.

He began to wonder if he would find Jan Thoreau at home. He remembered him quite vividly. The Indians called him Kitoochikun because he played a fiddle. Blake, the iron man, disliked him because of that fiddle. Jan was never without it, on the trail or off. The Fiddling Man, he called him contemptuously—a baby, a woman; not fit for the big north. Tall and slim, with blond hair in spite of his French blood and name, a quiet and unexcitable face, and an air that Blake called "damned superiority." He wondered how the Fiddling Man had ever screwed up nerve enough to kill Breault. Undoubtedly there had been no fight. A quick and treacherous shot, no doubt. That was like a man who played a fiddle. Poof! He had no more respect for him than if he dressed in woman's clothing.

And he did have a wife, this Jan Thoreau. They lived a good twenty miles off the north-and-south trail, on an island in the middle of Black Bear Lake. He had never seen the wife. A poor sort of woman, he made up his mind, that would marry a fiddler. Probably a half-breed; maybe an Indian. Anyway, he had no sympathy for her. Without a doubt, it was the woman who did the trapping and cut the wood. Any man who would tote a fiddle around on his back—

CORPORAL BLAKE traveled fast, and it was afternoon of the second day when he came to the dense spruce forest that shut in Black Bear Lake. Here something happened to change his plans somewhat. He met an Indian he knew—an Indian who, for two or three good reasons that stuck in the back of his head, dared not lie to him; and this tribesman, coming straight from the Thoreau cabin, told him that Jan was not at home, but had gone on a three-day trip to see the French missioner who lived on one of the lower Wholdaia waterways.

Blake was keen on stratagem. With him, man-hunting was like a game of chess; and after he had questioned the Indian for a quarter of an hour he saw his opportunity. Pastamoo, the Cree, was made a part of his Majesty's service on the spot, with the promise of torture and speedy execution if he proved himself a traitor.

Blake turned over to him his dogs and sledge, his provisions, and his tent, and commanded him to camp in the heart of a cedar swamp a few miles back, with the information that he would return for his outfit at some time in the indefinite future. He might be gone a day or a week. When he had seen Pastamoo off, he continued his journey toward the cabin, in the hope that Jan Thoreau's wife was either an Indian or a fool. He was too old a hand at his game to be taken in by the story that had been told to the Cree.

Jan had not gone to the French missioner's. A murderer's trail would not be given away like that. Of course the wife knew. And Corporal Blake desired no better string to a criminal than the faith of a wife. Wives were easy if handled right, and they

had put the finishing touch to more than one of his great successes.

At the edge of the lake he fell hack on his old trick—hunger, exhaustion, a sprained leg. It was not more than a quarter of a mile across the snow-covered ice of the lake to the thin spiral of smoke that he saw rising above the thick balsams on the island. Five times in that, distance he fell upon his face; he crawled like a man about to die. He performed an arduous task, a devilish task, and when at last he reached the balsams he cursed his luck until he was red in the face. No one had seen him. That quarter-mile of labor was lost, its finesse a failure. But he kept up the play, and staggered weakly through the sheltering balsams to the cabin. His artifice had no shame, even when played on women; and he fell heavily against the door, beat upon it with his fist, and slipped down into the snow, where he lay with his head bowed, as if his last strength was gone.

He heard movement inside, quick steps—and then the door opened. He did not look up for a moment. That would have been crude. When he did raise his head, it was very slowly, with a look of anguish in his face.

And then—he stared. His body all at once grew tense, and the counterfeit pain in his eyes died out like a flash in this most astounding moment of his life. Man of iron though he was, steeled to the core against the weaknesses of sudden emotions, it was impossible for him to restrain the gasp of amazement that rose to his lips.

In that stifled cry Jan Thoreau's wife heard the supplication of a dying man. She did not catch, back of it, the note of a startled beast. She was herself startled, frightened for a moment by the unexpectedness of it all.

And Blake stared. This—the fiddler's wife! She was clutching in her hand a brush with which she had been arranging her hair. The hair, jet black, was wonderful. Her eyes were still more wonderful to Blake. She was not an Indian—not a half-breed—and beautiful. The loveliest face he had ever visioned, sleeping or awake, was looking down at him.

With a second gasp, he remembered himself, and his body sagged, and the amazed stare went out of his eyes as he allowed his head to fall a little. In this movement his cap fell off. In another moment she was at his side, kneeling in the snow and bending over him.

"You are hurt, m'sieu!"

Her hair fell upon him, smothering his neck and shoulders. The perfume of it was like the delicate scent of a rare flower in his nostrils. A strange thrill swept through him. He did not try to analyze it in those few astonishing moments. It was beyond his comprehension, even had he tried. He was ignorant of the finer fundamentals of life, and of the great truth that the case-hardened nature of a man, like the body of an athlete, crumbles fastest under sudden and unexpected change and strain.

HE regained his feet slowly and stupidly, assisted by Marie. They climbed the one step to the door. He sank back heavily on the cot, in the room they entered, and closed his eyes for a space. When he opened them, Marie was bending over the stove.

And she was Thoreau's wife! The instant he had looked up into her face, he had forgotten the fiddler; but he remembered him now as he watched the woman, who stood with her back toward him. She was as slim as a reed. Her hair fell to her hips. He drew a deep breath. Unconsciously he clenched his hands. She—the fiddler's wife! The thought repeated itself again and again: Jan Thoreau, murderer, and this woman—his wife.

She returned in a moment with hot tea, and he drank with subtle hypocrisy from the cup she held to his lips.

"Sprained my leg," he said then, remembering his old part, and replying to the questioning anxiety in her eyes. "Dogs ran away and left me, and I got here just by chance. A little more and—"

He smiled grimly, and as he sank back he gave a sharp cry. He had practised that cry in more than one cabin, and along with it a convulsion of his features to emphasize the impression he labored to make.

"I'm afraid—I'll be a trouble to you," he apologized. "It's not broken; but it's bad, and I won't be able to move—soon. Is Jan at home?"

"No, m'sieu; he is away."

"Away," repeated Blake disappointedly. "Perhaps sometime he has told you about me," he added with sudden hopefulness. "I am John Duval."

"M'sieu—Duval!"

Marie's eyes, looking down at him, became all at once great pools of glowing light. Her lips parted. She leaned toward him, her slim hands clasped suddenly to her breast.

"M'sieu Duval—who nursed him through the smallpox?" she cried, her voice trembling. "M'sieu Duval—who saved my Jan's life!"

Blake had looked up his facts at headquarters. He knew what Duval, the Barren Land trapper, had once upon a time done for Jan.

"Yes, I am John Duval," he said. "And so—you see—I am sorry that Jan is away."

"But he is coming back soon—in a few days," exclaimed Marie. "You shall stay, m'sieu! You will wait for him? Yes?"

"This leg—" began Blake. He cut himself short with a grimace. "Yes, I'll stay. I guess I'll have to."

MARIE had changed at the mention of Duval's name. With the glow in her eyes had come a flush into her cheeks, and Blake could see the strange little quiver at her throat as she looked at him. But she did not see Blake so much as what lay beyond him—Duval's lonely cabin away up on the edge of the Great Barren, the hours of darkness and agony through which Jan had passed, and the magnificent comradeship of this man who had now dragged himself to their own cabin, half dead.

Many times Jan had told her the story of that terrible winter when Duval had nursed him like a woman, and had almost given up his life as a sacrifice. And this—this—was Duval! She bent over him again as he lay on the cot, her eyes shilling like stars in the growing dusk. In that dusk she was unconscious of the fact that his fingers had found a long tress of her hair and were clutching it passionately. Remembering Duval as Jan had enshrined him in her heart, she said:

"I have prayed many times that the great God might thank you, m'sieu."

He raised a hand. For an instant it touched her soft, warm cheek and caressed her hair. Marie did not shrink. The darkness was thickening swiftly and she could not see his face. To shrink—yes, that would have been insult. Even Jan would have said that. For was not this Duval, to whom she owed all the happiness in her life—Duval, more than brother to Jan Thoreau, her husband?

"And you—are Marie?" said Blake.

"Yes, m'sieu, I am Marie."

A joyous note trembled in her voice as she drew back from the cot. He could hear her swiftly braiding her hair before she struck a match to light the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. After that, through partly closed eyes, he watched her as she prepared their supper. Occasionally, when she turned toward him as if to speak, he feigned a desire to sleep. It was a catlike watchfulness, filled with his old cunning. In his face there was no sign to betray its hideous significance.

Outwardly he had regained his iron-like impassiveness; but in his body and his brain every nerve and fiber was consumed by a monstrous desire—a desire for this woman, the murderer's wife. It was as strange and as sudden as the death that had come to François Breault. The moment he had looked up into her face in the doorway, it had overwhelmed him. And now even the sound of her footsteps

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on the floor filled him with an exquisite exultation. It was more than exultation. It was a feeling of possession. In the hollow of his hand he—Blake, the man-hunter—held the fate of this woman. She was the Fiddler's wife—and the Fiddler was a murderer.

Marie heard the sudden deep breath that forced itself from his lips, a gasp that would have been a cry of triumph if he had given it voice.

"You are in pain, m'sieu," she exclaimed, turning toward him quickly.

"A little," he said, smiling at her. "Will you help me to sit up, Marie?"

He saw ahead of him another and more thrilling game than the man-hunt now. And Marie, unsuspicious, put her arms about the shoulders of the Pharisee and helped him to rise.

THEY ate their supper with a narrow table between them. If there had been a doubt in Blake's mind before that, the half hour in which she sat facing him dispelled it utterly. At first the amazing beauty of Thoreau's wife had impinged itself upon his senses with something like a shock. But he was cool now. He was again master of his old cunning. Pitilessly and without conscience, he was marshaling the crafty forces of his brute nature for this new and more thrilling fight—the fight for a woman.

That in representing the Law he was pledged to virtue as well as order had never entered into his code of life. To him the Law was force—power. It had exalted him. It had forged an iron mask over the face of his savagery. And it was the savage that was dominant in him now. He saw in Marie's dark eyes a great love—love for a murderer.

It was not his thought that he might alienate that. For that look, turned upon himself, he would have sacrificed his whole world as it had previously existed. He was scheming beyond that impossibility, measuring her even as he called himself Duval, counting—not his chances of success, but the length of time it would take him to succeed.

He had never failed. A man had never beaten him. A woman had never tricked him. And he granted no possibility of failure now. But—how? That was the question that writhed and twisted itself in his brain even as he smiled at her over the table and told her of the black days of Jan's sickness up on the edge of the Barren.

And then it came to him—all at once. Marie did not see. She did not feel. She had no suspicion of this loyal friend of her husband's.

Blake's heart pounded triumphant. He hobbled back to the cot, leaning on Marie's slim shoulder; and as he hobbled he told her how he had helped Jan into his cabin in just this same way, and how at the end Jan had collapsed—just as he did when he came to the cot. He pulled Marie down with him—accidentally. His lips touched her head. He laughed.

For a few moments he was like a drunken man in his new joy. Willingly he would have gambled his life on his chance of winning. But confidence displaced none of his cunning. He rubbed his hands and said:

"Gawd, but won't it be a surprise for Jan? I told him that some day I'd come. I told him!"

It would be a tremendous joke—this surprise he had in store for Jan. He chuckled over it again and again as Marie went about her work; and Marie's face flushed and her eyes were bright, and she laughed softly at this great love which Duval betrayed for her husband. No; even the loss of his dogs and his outfit couldn't spoil his pleasure! Why should it? He could get other dogs and another outfit—but it had been three years since he had seen Jan Thoreau!

WHEN Marie had finished her work he put his hand suddenly to his eyes.

"Peste! but last night's storm must have hurt my eyes. The light blinds them, ma chérie. Will you put it out, and sit down near me, so that I can see you as you talk, and tell me all that has happened to Jan Thoreau since that winter three years ago?"

She put out the light, and threw open the door of the box-stove. In the dim firelight she sat on a stool beside Blake's cot. Her faith in him was like that of a child. She was twenty-two. Blake was fifteen years older. She felt the immense superiority of his age.

This man, you must understand, had been more than a brother to Jan. He had been a father. He had risked his life. He had saved him from death. And Marie, as she sat at his side, did not think of him as a young man—thirty-seven. She talked to him as she might have talked to an older brother of Jan's, and with something like the same reverence in her voice.

It was unfortunate—for her—that Jan had loved Duval, and that he had never tired of telling her about him. And now, when Blake's caution warned him to lie no more about the days of plague in Duval's cabin, she told him—as he had asked her—about herself and Jan: how they had lived during the last three years, the important things that had happened to them, and what they were looking forward to.

He caught the low note of happiness that ran through her voice; and with a laugh, a laugh that sounded real and wholesome, he put out his hand in the darkness—for the fire had burned itself low—and stroked her hair. She did not shrink from the caress. He was happy because they were happy. That was her thought. And Blake did not go too far.

She went on, telling Jan's life away, betraying him in her happiness, crucifying him in her faith. Blake knew that she was telling the truth. She did not know that Jan had killed François Breault, and she believed that he would surely return—in three days. And the way he had left her that morning! Yes, she confided even that to this big brother of Jan, her cheeks flushing hotly in the darkness—how he had hated to go, and held her a long time in his arms before he tore himself away.

Had he taken his fiddle along with him? Yes—always that. Next to herself he loved his violin. Oo-oo—no, no—she was not jealous of the violin! Blake laughed—such a big, healthy, happy laugh, with an odd tremble in it. He stroked her hair again, and his fingers lay for an instant against her warm cheek.

And then, quite casually, he played his second big card.

"A man was found dead on the trail yesterday," he said. "Some one killed him. He had a bullet through his lung. He was the mail-runner, François Breault."

IT was then, when he said that Breault had been murdered, that Blake's hand touched Marie's cheek and fell to her shoulder. It was too dark in the cabin to see. But under his hand he felt her grow suddenly rigid, and for a moment or two she seemed to stop breathing. In the gloom Blake's lips were smiling. He had struck, and he needed no light to see the effect.

"François—Breault!" he heard her breathe at last, as if she were fighting to keep something from choking her. "François Breault—dead—killed by some one—"

She rose slowly. His eyes followed her, a shadow in the gloom as she moved toward the stove. He heard her strike a match, and when she turned toward him again in the light of the oil lamp, her face was pale and her eyes were big and staring. He swung himself to the edge of the cot, his pulse beating with the savage thrill of the inquisitor. Yet he knew that it was not quite time for him to disclose himself—not quite. He did not dread the moment when he would rise and tell her that he was not injured, and that he was not M'sieu Duval, but Corporal Blake of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. He was eager for that moment. But he waited—discreetly. When the trap was sprung there would be no escape.

"You are sure—it was François Breault?" she said at last.

He nodded.

"Yes, the mail-runner. You knew him?"

She had moved to the table, and her hand was gripping the edge of it. For a space she did not answer him, but seemed to be looking somewhere through the cabin walls—a long way off. Ferret-like, he was watching her, and saw his opportunity. How splendidly fate was playing his way!

He rose to his feet and hobbled painfully to her, a splendid hypocrite, a magnificent dissembler. He seized her hand and held it in both his own. It was small and soft, but strangely cold.

"Ma chérie—my dear child—what makes you look like that? What has the death of François Breault to do with you—you and Jan?"

It was the voice of a friend, a brother, low, sympathetic, filled just enough with anxiety. Only last winter, in just that way, it had won the confidence and roused the hope of Pierrot's wife, over on the Athabasca. In the summer that followed they hanged Pierrot. Gently Blake spoke the words again. Marie's lips trembled. Her great eyes were looking at him—straight into his soul, it seemed.

"You may tell me, ma chérie," he encouraged, barely above a whisper. "I am Duval. And Jan—I love Jan."

He drew her back toward the cot, dragging his limb painfully, and seated her again upon the stool. He sat beside her, still holding her hand, patting it, encouraging her.

The color was coming back into Marie's cheeks. Her lips were growing full and red again, and suddenly she gave a trembling little laugh as she looked up into Blake's face. His presence began to dispel the terror that had possessed her all at once.

"Tell me, Marie."

He saw the shudder that passed through her slim shoulders.

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"They had a fight—here—in this cabin—three days ago," she confessed. "It must have been—the day—he was killed."

Blake knew the wild thought that was in her heart as she watched him. It was Marie's hand that gripped his now.

"No, no, no—it was not Jan," she moaned. "It was not Jan who killed him!"

"Hush!" said Blake.

He looked about him as if there was a chance that some one might hear the fatal words she had spoken. It was a splendid bit of acting, almost unconscious, and tremendously effective. The expression in his face stabbed to her heart like a cold knife. He might as well have spoken the words: "It was Jan, then, who killed François Breault!"

Instead of that he said:

"You must tell me everything, Marie. How did it happen? Why did they fight? And why has Jan gone away? For Jan's sake, you must tell me—everything."

HE waited. It seemed to him that he could hear the fighting struggle in Marie's breast. Then she began, brokenly, a little at a time, now and then barely whispering the story. Perhaps at one time the rivalry between Jan Thoreau and François Breault, and their struggle for her love, had made her heart beat faster and her cheeks flush warm with a woman's pride of conquest, even though she had loved one and had hated the other. None of that pride was in her voice now, except when she spoke of Jan.

"Yes—like that—children together—we grew up," she confided. "It was down there at Wollaston Post, in the heart of the big forests, and when I was a baby it was Jan who carried me about on his shoulders. Oui, even then he played the violin. I loved it. I loved Janalways. Later, when I was seventeen, François Breault came."

She was trembling.

"Jan has told me a little about those days," lied Blake. "Tell me the rest, Marie."

"II knew I was going to be Jan's wife," she went on, the hands she had withdrawn from his twisting nervously in her lap. "We both knew. And yet—he had not spoken—he had not been definite. Oo-oo, do you understand, M'sieu Duval? It was my fault at the beginning! François Breault loved me. And so—I played with him—only a little, m'sieu!—to frighten Jan into the thought that he might lose me. I did not know what I was doing. No—no; I didn't understand.

"Jan and I were married; and on the day Jan saw the missioner, a week before we were made man and wife, François Breault came in from the trail to see me, and I confessed to him, and asked his forgiveness. We were alone. And he—François Breault—was like a madman." She was panting. Her hands were clenched. "If Jan hadn't heard my cries, and come just in time—" she breathed.

Her blazing eyes looked up into Blake's face. He understood, and nodded.

"And it was like that—again—three days ago," she continued. "I hadn't seen Breault in two years. And he was mad. Yes, he must have been mad when he came three days ago. I don't know that he came so much for me as it was to kill Jan. He said it was Jan. Ugh, and it was here—in the cabin—that they fought!"

"And Jan—punished him," said Blake in a low voice.

Again the convulsive shudder swept through Marie's shoulders.

"It was strange—what happened, m'sieu. I was going to shoot. Yes, I would have shot him when the chance came. But all at once François Breault sprang back to the door, and he cried: 'Jan Thoreau, I am mad—mad! Great God, what have I done?' Yes, he said that, m'sieu, those very words—and then he was gone."

"And that same day—a little later—Jan went away from the cabin, and was gone a long time," whispered Blake. "Was it not so, Marie?"

"Yes; he went to his trap-line, m'sieu."

For the first time Blake made a movement. He took her face boldly between his two hands, and turned it so that her staring eyes were looking straight into his own. Every fiber in his body was trembling with the thrill of his monstrous triumph.

"My dear little girl, I must tell you the truth," he said. "Your husband, Jan, did not go to his trap-line three days ago. He followed François Breault, and killed him. And I am not John Duval. I am Corporal Blake of the Mounted Police, and I have come to get Jan, that he may be hanged by the neck until he is dead for his crime. I came for that. But I have changed my mind. I have seen you, and for you I would give even a murderer his life. Do you understand? For you—you—you—"

And then came the grand finale, just as he had planned it. His words had stupefied her. She made no movement, no soundonly her great eyes seemed alive. And suddenly he swept her into his arms with the wild passion of a beast. How long she lay against his breast, his arms crushing her, his hot lips on her face, she did not know.

The world had grown suddenly dark. But in that darkness she heard his voice; and what it was saying roused her at last from the deadliness of her stupor. She strained against him, and with a wild cry broke from his arms and staggered across the cabin floor to the door of her bedroom. Blake did not pursue her. He let the darkness of that room shut her in. He had told herand she understood.

He shrugged his shoulders as he rose to his feet. Quite calmly, in spite of the wild rush of blood through his body, he went to the cabin door, opened it, and looked out into the night. It was full of stars, and quiet.

IT was quiet in that inner room, tooso quiet that one might fancy he could hear the beating of a heart. Marie had flung herself in the farthest corner, beyond the bed. And there her hand had touched something. It was coldthe chill of steel. She could almost have screamed, in the mighty reaction that swept through her like an electric shock. But her lips were dumb and her hand clutched tighter at the cold thing.

She drew it toward her inch by inch, and leveled it across the bed. It was Jan's goose-gun, loaded with buckshot. There was a single metallic click as she drew the hammer back. In the doorway, looking at the stars, Blake did not hear.

Marie waited. She was not reasoning things now, except that in the outer room there was a serpent that she must kill. She would kill him as he came between her and the light. Then she would follow over Jan's trail, overtake him somewhere, and they would flee together. Of that much she thought ahead. But chiefly her mind, her eyes, her brain, her whole being, were concentrated on the twelve-inch opening between the bedroom door and the outer room. The serpent would soon appear there. And then—

She heard the cabin door close, and Blake's footsteps approaching. Her body did not tremble now. Her forefinger was steady on the trigger. She held her breath—and waited. Blake came to the dead-line, and stopped. She could see one arm and a part of his shoulder. But that was not enough. Another half step—six inches—four even, and she would fire. Her heart pounded like a tiny hammer.

AND then the very life in her body seemed to stand still. The cabin door had opened suddenly, and some one had entered. In that moment she would have fired, for she knew that it must be Jan who had returned. But Blake had moved. And now, with her finger at the trigger, she heard his cry of amazement:

"Sergeant Fitzgerald!"

"Yes. Put up your gun, Corporal. Have you got Jan Thoreau?"

"He—is gone."

"That is lucky for us." It was the stranger's voice again, filled with a great relief. "I have traveled fast to overtake you. Matao, the half-breed, was stabbed in a quarrel soon after you left; and before he died he confessed to killing Breault. The evidence is conclusive. Ugh, but this fire is good! Anybody at home?"

"Yes," said Blake slowly. "Mrs. Thoreau—is—at home."

Where Herm Belonged to Be

By SEWELL FORD

BLAMED if I know how it is I happen to catch so many of 'em. Honest, if my name was Spider Webb instead of Shorty McCabe, or if the Physical Culture Studio was in the basement, with a trap-door from the sidewalk, the crop of strays couldn't be much bigger.

Now, here I am, sittin' quiet and dignified with my heels up on the roll-top, enjoyin' an hour off because one of my reg'lars had canceled a date. I wasn't even readin' the mornin' paper that I had spread out in front of me.

Well, I looks up to see a total stranger dodge through the front office door and close it after him soft and sleuthy. He listens a second, with his ear to the crack, before he lets go of the knob.

When I say he was a total stranger I mean it all, too. Not by any chance could he be some one I'd met before and forgot. Hardly! He has the kind of map you're apt to remember—shifty, narrow-gage eyes; long, thin nose; droopy mustache; and a chin that fades away into a prominent throat apple. It's a combination you don't meet every day. Then there's the soft black hat with the wide brim, the roll-plated watch-chain looped across the port side of his vest, and the near-cameo charm danglin' from the third buttonhole. Oh, he's a moss-agate, all right.

Not the bashful, retirin' kind, though.

After he's stretched his ear once more towards the keyhole, he slouches across the room and favors me with a grin.

"One of these here health studios, eh?" says he, jerkin' his thumb at the sign on the ground glass. "Just thought I'd drop in and take a look around."

"How folksy of you!" says I. "But we don't claim to be in the same class with Grant's Tomb or the Art Museum, you know. So make it snappy."

That little hint don't get to him at all. He proceeds to gawp at the ring trophies and signed photos on the wall; and then, pullin' up a chair, he plants himself easy.

"I reckon you can guess who I am, neighbor," he remarks.

"In a way," says I. "You're the kind we see at Niagara Falls in the summer, and St. Pete., Florida, in the winter; one of the Cousin Butt-in breed."

He seems more disappointed than peeved.

"Oh, come!" says he. "Take a look."

"Thanks," says I, "but I've mislaid my lorgnette. Shoot me the answer before I get nervous."

At that he leans over and whispers husky:

"I'm Gundy."

"Are you?" says I. "Which Gundy?"

Which don't make a hit with him, either. He pushes the dusty black felt further back, revealin' a forelock of mud-colored hair, and scowls a trifle annoyed.

"Why, the Gundy," says he. "Hiram Gundy, of Maumee, South Carolina."

"Sorry," says I, "but I don't circulate much down in the blind tiger belt. What made you think, Herm, that I ought—"

"Well, you are slow, you New York folks," he breaks in. "Don't know what's goin' on right in your own town. Here! Lemme show you." With that he reaches for the mornin' paper and turns to the front page. "There! That's me."

"Oh!" says I, readin' the head-line. "'Gundy Will Tell All.' Oh, yes!"

Course, I don't pretend to keep track of half these bunk jobs they put over on the government. And this special one—something about a big water-power graft that had been slipped through with the pork bill—hadn't got me any more excited than the others. I knew, in a general way, that a senator and a Cabinet officer was said to be mixed up in it, along with some of our Wall Street bunch.

Generally, too, along with the big names that come up, there are one or two unknowns thrown sudden into the

---

spotlight, and for a few days they're reg'lar head-liners. Near as I could make out, something like that had happened to this Gundy person.

"'Gundy Will Tell All," I repeats. "Well, will you?"

"Maybe," says he, waggin' his head; "maybe not. It depends."

SAY, it don't take much to amuse me when I've got spare time on my hands. I gives Gundy the droop-eyed size-up. You can see the Main Street Smart Aleck stickin' out from every angle of him.

"I expect you're some guy—down in Maumee?" says I.

"How about here, too?" he asks.

I hunches my shoulders.

"New York's quite a big burg, you know," says I.

"Not so derned big it can fool with Herm Gundy," says he. "I reckon I've made it sit up and take notice already. And I ain't through yet, not by a dumbed sight. I know a few things, I do."

"Think of that!" says I. "It's a wonder they let you run around loose."

Gundy indulges in a throaty cackle.

"They don't," says he. "That's why I ducked in here: to give 'em the slip. See?"

"No," says I. "I don't quite get you. Give who the slip, for instance?"

"Secret Service men and private detectives," says he. "There's a pair of each. But say, I got good and tired of bein' cooped up in that gosh-dinged hotel, with nobody to talk to but fool lawyers. So I took a sneak out a side door. Thought I'd made a clean getaway, too, until just as I got along here, when I had an idea I could see one of 'em trailin' behind me. That's when I dodged into your stairway. I reckon that threw 'em off, eh?"

"We'll hope so," says I. "I ain't anxious to get mixed up in anything. You're a witness to something or other, I take it?"

"I should say I was," says he. "I'm the witness. Why, the whole government case is built up on what I can tell. Wa'n't the deal put through right in the sample room of our hotel?"

"Oh!" says I. "You're a landlord, are you?"

"Well," says he draggy, "not exactly. Amounts to the same thing, though. For what old man Hovey knows about runnin' a hotel ain't much. It's me that 'tends to 'most everything, from keepin' the cook good-humored to meetin' guests at the Junction and drivin' 'em down."

"Must be quite a joint if you had all that swell push down there?"

"We can take care of fifteen or twenty when we're pushed," says he. "I been at old Hovey to build on a wing and put in a couple more bath-rooms—reg'lar ones with white porcelain tubs in 'em. But not him. He won't even get me any new ice-water pitchers, nor paint the front veranda. All he wants to do is sit around and swap yarns with drummers. Lazy! You wouldn't believe."

"Yes, I would, Herm," says I. "I've put up at places just like the Hovey House—dozens of 'em. It's catty-cornered across from the general store, with a fine view of the hitchin'-rail and the hay-scales. There's about five porch rockers out front, some with the bottoms gone and all of 'em with the arms well whittled up. Inside there's a rusty Franklin wood-stove in the middle of the office, and for wall decorations there's a collection of fire-insurance calendars, some datin' back to 1903. And I'll bet the ice-water cooler in the corner ain't been scoured out since the pink roses painted on the front was new. Has it, now?"

Herm shakes his head.

"You got it about right," says he. "We don't put on many frills at the Hovey House."

"And you mean to say," I goes on, "that you had a lot of big guns—senators and so on—stoppin' there? Ah, back up!"

"I didn't claim we had the whole United States Senate," says Gundy. "But we had one senator, all right. We've had him before. Comes down for the quail-shootin'. And say, we got the best bird

country in the State. Maybe that's what this Mr. Stillmore and Mr. Lamson came for, too. Maybe!" And Herm drops his left eyelid.

"Stillmore?" says I, prickin' up my ears. "Not old H. R. himself?"

"That's the very one," says. Herm. "He didn't put it on the register, but them was the initials on his bag—H. R. S.—and I heard the senator call him by name. Didn't he do some cussin' about the mattress in his room, though! One night on that was enough for him, he says. That's how I happened to be sittin' up until all hours, so I could drive him back to the Junction to catch No. 37, that goes through at one-fifteen. And some close session them three had in the sample room that night, I'm tellin' you."

"Huh!" says I. "Come now, Herm, didn't they talk it over out in the office right in front of you? Or maybe ask you to join in?"

"No, they didn't," growls Gundy, turnin' sulky. "But, just the same—Well, I know what I know. What's more, they suspicioned I do, too. If they didn't, why should they be tryin' to pump it out of me?"

"Have they?" I asks. "Who, Stillmore?"

"That slick young feller came from him, I'll bet," says Gundy. "Who else in New York would be so anxious to show me the sights, take me to the the-ayter, and put me up at that swell hotel? I've been lettin' him, too. All them Secret Service men did, after I wrote on to Washington hintin' what I could tell, was to send me a summons and forty dollars expense money. But this young Mr. Palmer acted different. He knew how to do it right. Why, say, I been ridin' in these here taxicabs, and eatin' fancy dinners, and goin' to musical shows and cabbyrets for near a week. Never cost me a red, either. And talk about free cigars—Look at them!" At which Gundy displays his bulgin' vest pockets.

"And if I was a heavy drinker," he goes on, "I could have anything they got at the bar any time I want. But I got to keep my head straight, with such a lot dependin' on me while I'm up here. I got to think of the gov'nment, ain't I?"

"Herm," says I, "if you're a federal witness, how is it you're chasin' round with scouts from the other side? Is that playin' it square with Uncle Sam?"

"How should I know who this young Palmer is from?" protests Gundy. "He ain't said, and I ain't asked. And if he wants me to go inspect some mines or something down in South America—well, why shouldn't I?"

With that he tips me another of them cagey winks, and proceeds to bite the end off a twenty-five-cent Havana.

"So it was you sent out the tip on them three gettin' together down there, was it?" I asks. "How'd you happen to think of doin' that?"

"Well," says he, "I'll tell you. It's because I had my eyes and ears open. I've been readin' the papers, ever since I was a kid—readin' 'em close, and thinkin'. And it struck me that gettin' into the papers was what counted. I got to figurin' how I could break in.

"But it wa'n't until Congress begun to talk up this investigation that I saw my chance to land. Took 'em just three weeks after they got my letter before they got busy. I reckon they was lookin' up the facts. But when they found I knew what I was talkin' about—

"Well, here I am. I've broke in, ain't I? Say, I've had my picture printed more'n a dozen times; I've been followed by reporters all over town; and I'm livin' high. That's gettin' there, ain't it?"

"Ye-e-es," says I, "if that's what you want."

"It is—just," says he. "Nobody at home thought I could do it. Why, say, ten days ago I amounted to about as much in Maumee as a ham sandwich at a fried chicken dinner. Maybe people would nod to me, maybe they wouldn't. What do I care for 'em now, though? I've made my name known from one end of the country to the other. I've got Congress waitin' on what I'm goin' to say next. I've stirred up New York and got some of your big men squirmin' restless. They're losin' sleep nights askin' themselves, how much does Herm Gundy know, anyway? Ain't that so?"

I couldn't deny it.

"Between you and me, Herm," says I, "what did you hear that evenin'?"

GUNDY, he glances around cautious.

Then he leans back and chuckles.

"That's the big joke," says he. "Not a blamed thing."

"Eh?" says I. "You mean—"

"I was sound asleep on two chairs out in the office," he goes on. "Why should I be rubberin'? I didn't know who Stillmore was at the time, or anything about this water-power graft. I supposed they was playin' poker in there. But say, they don't know that. I got 'em buffaloed all right, too. That trip to South America ain't all I'm goin' to pull out of this. Before I get through I mean to strike 'em for— Say! What was that?"

I'd heard it, too. Sort of a scrapin' sound from outside the air-shaft window just beyond the desk. And a shufflin' out in the hallway behind Herm. I signals to him to slip over to the door, while I jumps to the window and runs up the sash.

It's no false alarm. Here's a couple of well dressed gents crouchin' out on the fire-escape.

"Hey, you!" I calls out. "This way out. Ah, yes, you will, or I'll let loose the extinguisher on you. That's right: Come in and be sociable."

I expect they didn't like the looks of that copper tank I'd grabbed off the hook. Anyway, in they climbs.

Meanwhile Gundy has hailed another pair that he's found in the hallway, and in a minute we has the quartette facin' each other. Herm seems to know 'em all, by sight anyway, for he nods to three of 'em; and to the other—one of the pair on the fire-escape—he says jaunty:

"Hello, Palmer. That you?"

"Well, gents," says I, "is this a surprise party, or what? And why all the sleuthy motions?"

The pair from the hallway exchanges glances, and then one of 'em speaks up.

"You may have him, Palmer," says he.

"Send him to the South Pole if you like."

And with that they makes a quick exit.

YOUNG Mr. Palmer stands starin' at Gundy, gettin' pinker and pinker under the eyes. Finally he breaks out with:

"I say, Gundy, we have no further use for you. Get back to South Carolina the best way you can."

He's real waspy about it, too. But Herm Gundy ain't to be crushed that way. What chin he has he's holdin' up off his collar.

"Oh, that's the way you feel about it, is it?" says he. "Came rubberin' around, and got an earful, didn't you? And now you're goin' to kick me out. Say, lemme tell you a few things first. I'm as ready to go as you are to have me. I've seen enough of your town to last a life-time. I put one over on you. Had you scared stiff. That's enough for me. If you think I want to stay on much longer in this messy, noisy mob of foreigners, you're mistaken. Maumee for me, every time. But say, Mr. Palmer, I ain't goin' to walk."

"What do you mean?" demands Palmer.

"I can still tell the newspaper boys about that South American trip."

Mr. Palmer shrugs his shoulders.

"How much?" he asks.

"Oh, a hundred ought to do it, I reckon," says Herm careless.

And Palmer, after countin' out five twenties, turns on his heel. Gundy gathers the yellow-backs from the floor where the young man has tossed 'em peevish.

"Oh, well!" says he, with a chuckle. "It didn't last long, but I broke in."

"And now," says I, "it's back to Maumee for good, eh?"

"Uh-huh," says Herm. "I reckon that's where I belong to be."

"I HAVE NO TIME TO READ"

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

FOR HE WAS SCOTCH, AND SO WAS SHE

By JEAN BLEWETT

THEY were a couple well content
With what they earned and what they spent,
Cared not a whit for style's decree—
For he was Scotch, and so was she.
And oh, they loved to talk of Burns—
Dear blithesome, tender Bobby Burns!
They never wearied of his song,
He never sang a note too strong.
One little fault could neither see—
For he was Scotch, and so was she.
They loved to read of men who stood
And gave for country life and blood,
Who held their faith so grand a thing
They scorned to yield it to a king.
Ah, proud of such they well might be—
For he was Scotch, and so was she.
From neighbors' broils they kept away;
No liking for such things had they,
And oh, each had a canny mind,
And could be deaf, and dumb, and blind.
With words or pence was neither free—
For he was Scotch, and so was she.
I would not have you think this pair
Went on in weather always fair,
For well you know in married life
Will come, sometimes, the jar and strife;
They couldn't always just agree—
For he was Scotch, and so was she.
But near of heart they ever kept,
Until at close of life they slept;
Just this to say when all was past,
They loved each other to the last.
They're loving yet, in heaven, maybe—
For he was Scotch, and so was she.

From Canadian Poets and Poetry, chosen and edited by John W. Garvin, B.A. (Frederick A. Stokes Company).

ARE YOU LETTING YOUR CHILD BE HONEST?

IF Willy stoutly refuses to play nicely with Mrs. Browne's little Mildred when they come to call, it may be embarrassing for you, but it is better for Willy in the long run frankly to make faces at Mildred than hypocritically to kowtow to a grown-up's idea of the proper thing. In Preventive Medicine and Hygiene (D. Appleton & Company) M. J. Rosenau traces neuroses, psychoses, and many of the mental ills of adult life to a childhood full of situations where the youngster was induced to "act as if he felt a certain way" when he did not.

"It is necessary to look upon existence," says Mr. Rosenau, "as a continual series of adjustments between fundamental instinctive demands on the one hand, and the requirements of society on the other. As the child's life unfolds, these adjustments increase in number and complexity. The capacity for adjustment varies greatly in different individuals, but every one may be helped by proper education in early youth.

"Of the utmost importance in laying the foundation in childhood for mental reactions which in later life may prevent mental difficulties is the cultivation of a frank emotional attitude. The sex instinct is involved most frequently and most profoundly, and it is to be hoped that the movement for instruction in sex hygiene will grow upon a rational and strong foundation. Personal difficulties of children should never be dissembled, but faced in their realities. Children do not feel the same emotions as adults, and the efforts of parents or teachers to make them feel sympathy or sorrow or remorse when they do not, simply plant the seed for unreal emotional attitudes in later years. Recourse to the unreal is the habit which it is the mental hygiene's great task to prevent. It is much better to have a child do something to relieve suffering than to induce him to act as if he felt an emotion which in reality he does not. No other course will so surely prevent the growth of self-love and self-consciousness as the frank facing of actuality in childhood."

CLINICAL DEATH AND TRUE DEATH

WHEN a man's body becomes suddenly cold and rigid, when his breath fails and his eyes stare and glaze, we say that the man is dead. "So far, it is only clinical—that is, bedside death," writes Dr. D. H. Dooley in the University of Missouri Bulletin. "A better term is relative death."

Death is a long process. First one of the important organs—the heart or the lungs or the nervous system—fails of its vital functions. "In turn, as dependent upon one of these and interrelated, the failure of others follows." But until every organ in the body has been drained of life it has the power to live and get strong again. Each organ may be restored to function by reproducing its natural conditions; and even the nervous system, which is more delicate and intricate than the heart and lungs, may be restored and and every known faculty of mind return.

"Cut off the head of a snake, and his body continues to wiggle—not necessarily to the popular sundown limit. Statements that the hair and nails have continued to grow after death are to be found. There is absolutely no scientific reason why this may not happen. Given the proper temperature, it would be expected. The cells that develop these are the most primitive, and could receive sufficient nourishment from the fluid which bathes them. It is not until every vestige of life, both in function and in growth, has vanished that true death, the absolute condition, becomes a reality."

All this, concludes the doctor, is for the sake of encouraging patient effort in working over people whom others believe "drowned-dead."

WHAT ONE OF OUR PRESIDENTS HAD TO BEAR

WHEN Andrew Jackson became candidate for President he was a wild roysterer compared to the suave John Quincy Adams with his Boston accent. His enemies called him the "Tennessee Slander," the "Great Western Bluebeard," the "Man of the Pistol and Dirk." "Violent, uxorious, and a gambler, Jackson is all this besides a Duellist and a Murderer," said one critic.

"The only attack that touched the war hero was aimed at his wife," writes Edwin E. Sparks in The Men Who Made the Nation (Macmillan Company). "Jackson, the young lawyer, crossing the mountains in western Tennessee, took lodging in the side cabin of Mrs. Donelson, who lived with her daughter, Mrs. Robards, in the main cabin.

"The latter, deserted by a jealous husband, appealed to the chivalrous nature of Jackson. Simply upon rumor that the husband had obtained a divorce, he married Mrs. Robards. As a lawyer he should have been more careful. Even the later action of having a legal marriage ceremony after the divorce had really been granted could not amend this carelessness.

"During the election the Adams papers found a rich morsel in this scandal. 'Who is there in the land that would be pleased to see Mrs. Jackson (Mrs. Robards that was) presiding in the drawing-room at Washington? There is pollution in the touch, there is perdition in the example of a profligate woman!'

"Jackson comforted himself with his coming revenge when this slandered woman should be the first lady in the land. She was not without a certain beauty, but falling short of the present standards by the defects of her border training. She was said to be illiterate and fond of her fireside and pipe. But to Jackson's faithful nature she was the embodiment of attractiveness.

"After his election had been assured, the people of Nashville prepared an elaborate ball for him and Mrs. Jackson before their departure to Washington. At nine o'clock, on the night prior to the reception, Mrs. Jackson died.

"Rumor said that she had overheard a comment on the weight that her past record would be about the neck of her husband, that she returned to the Hermitage in tears one day, and in a week was dead. Her husband sat by her body day and night, unwilling to believe that fate had snatched from his hands the prize, now that it was within his grasp."

POLICEMAN TEACHERS

A NEW rôle for policemen is teaching good citizenship in the public schools. Arthur Woods, the Police Commissioner of New York City, describes the pedagogical work of his cops in the Red Cross Magazine. Since two people are killed every day by automobiles in New York City, according to the coroner's hooks, the main purpose of these lectures is to ask the children to help policemen keep down the number of street accidents.

Hundreds of school children responded to the policemen lecturers. Here is one letter:

What I liked about you was that you talked slow and loud enough to hear. I also liked what you said about officers wanting to be big brothers. I promise you that I will never break the law in any way. I sometimes get those funny notions that boys get in their heads, but when I grow up I will be the kind of citizen the city wants.

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IS MEXICO ANTI-AMERICAN?

THE first mistaken thought we have about Mexico is that it is a scrawny little country, inhabited by half-breeds clothed in sombreros and pistols; so few of us have cared whether Mexico is anti-American or not. But when John Barrett reminds us in the Pan-American Union that Mexico is as large as all of the German Empire, all of France and Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Holland, that it has more than five thousand miles of sea-coast; that under peaceful conditions it will become one of the richest commercial countries in the world on account of its natural resources—the matter seems more important.

"In Mexico I have looked carefully for 'anti-American feeling,' but I have been unable to find it," says Mr. Barrett. "The trouble is that in every country there are sensational editors and professional agitators whose prominence depends on attacking another government. They have plenty of them in Mexico. They are the ones who talk loudest and who misrepresent the purposes of governments and peoples. Before 1911 an American could have traveled in the remotest parts of Mexico as safely as he could have done in any part of America. There were few, if any, evidences of hate among high or low Mexicans or among Mexican employees toward American employers.

"A certain class of Americans, however, were in some degree responsible for anti-American feeling. I refer to those who when in Mexico did things that would not have been tolerated in the United States. Of the same kind were the Americans who obtained concessions for their own benefit without regard to the local government and people. Naturally, such instances were advertised by their enemies.

"Here is another way in which this pseudo-enmity was developed:

"In former times, when great mining and railway concessions were secured by a certain class of Mexicans, there were often associated with them Americans. They had eventually to bear the blame of Mexicans who wished to reform the methods of granting concessions and safeguard the interests of the people. Mexicans may have been more responsible for these monopolies than Americans; but it was the interesting and sensational thing to emphasize the part American capital and men played, and to warn the Mexican people against them.

"It is only just to add that authoritative, responsible Mexicans have repeatedly informed me that thinking Mexicans desire the incoming of worthy Americans, the investment of their capital, and their participation in the reconstruction of Mexico."

WOMEN WHO WON THE NOBEL PRIZE

WE have been taught that man is the creator of all great thought, while woman, with her inferior ability and lack of initiative, is only the conserver of thought.

Julia H. Gulliver, in Studies in Democracy (G. P. Putnam's Sons) protests that women are as capable of greatness as men.

Since the Nobel Prize was established in 1901, three women have won it. Madame Curie, a Polish woman, received the prize in physics in 1903 conjointly with her husband. She received it again in chemistry (1911) for what she had done alone. Baroness Bertha von Suttner, an Austrian, received the prize in 1905 for her work in the advancement of peace. And Selma Lagerlof (Swedish) in 1909 in literature.

Since this prize of thirty thousand dollars is given each year to persons who have done most for the benefit of mankind, these facts "ought to give pause in uttering such ultimatums as that of Professor Thorndike." This learned man says from his little lecture platform at Columbia that "the restrictions of woman to mediocre grades of ability and achievement should be reckoned with by our educational system."

OUR WEEKLY LIST OF BOOKS WORTH SENDING FOR

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

ANNUAL REPORTS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 1916. CORN GROWING UNDER DROUGHTY CONDITIONS. COMMERCIAL HANDLING, GRADING, AND MARKETING OF POTATOES. UNIVERSITY TRAINING FOR PUBLIC SERVICE. ARTIFICIAL DYESTUFFS USED IN THE UNITED STATES. SURVEY OF TYPICAL COÖPERATIVE STORES IN THE UNITED STATES. THE SEWAGE POLLUTION OF STREAMS.

STUDY THE BUILDINGS IN YOUR TOWN

"AS you leave your home, look back and see if it is a residence you are proud to live in. Study the building you work in, and try to decide whether it pleases you, and why. Study the streets down which you walk, and note the glow of pleasure or even awe which you feel where some really beautiful building rears its walls. In this way," says Talbot F. Hamlin in The Enjoyment of Architecture (Duffield & Company), "you will have opened the great book of architecture."

Mr. Hamlin wants every building in the country to express something. Office buildings should register power and permanence; theaters may add the note of gay abandon; temporary structures for fairs and expositions may be and often are mere "solidified laughter." Incidentally they should keep the rain out and let the light in.

"The ordinary city school-house of thirty years ago was generally an unbeautiful, unhealthy affair, with close, unventilated rooms, dark corridors, and dangerous wooden stairs, a gloomy place where children were herded. The modern school-house is airy and conveniently arranged. For this state of things the architect is directly responsible. It is his pride to surpass the minimum requirements of the law in and popular opinion in convenience, efficiency, sanitation, beauty, and safety. Similarly, during the last twenty years there has been an even greater improvement in housing conditions, for which the architect is responsible. Incidentally, they have given New York the greatest number of bath-rooms per family of any city in the world.

"The tragedy of the slums," maintains Mr. Hamlin, "lies as much in its ugliness as in its crowded and unhealthy conditions. The gaunt and terrible ugliness of the typical American manufacturing town sheds perpetually a subtle, baneful influence upon the life of that town, adding always to class hatreds, turning boys to drink and drugs, and speeding girls into the life where a flashy and temporary luxury burns with false beauty and dies in terrible tragedy."

IS CANCER HEREDITARY?

IF one of my parents or grandparents died of cancer, am I likely to be afflicted with it too?

That question haunts many American minds: for the death rate from cancer in this country is growing higher. In fifteen years it has risen nearly thirty per cent.; in the past decade it has occasioned the death of Americans to the number of the entire population of either Maine or Florida. Has each one of these three quarters of a million people left behind him children predisposed to cancer?

This was the question that Mr. Arthur Hunter, actuary for the New York Life Insurance Company, set out to investigate. His report is published in the Proceedings of the tenth annual meeting of the Association of Life Insurance Presidents.

Mr. Hunter took 488 life insurance applications in which it was stated that one parent had died of cancer, and traced them down. In all this number there were only four cases in which the other parent also died of cancer. Apparently the disease is not readily communicated from one human being to another—is not, in other words, contagious.

Next were taken 118 insurance applications; from six different companies, in which both parents of the applicant had died from cancer. Mr. Hunter investigated the 472 grandparents; also 314 sons and daughters of the 236 parents; also 301 brothers and sisters of the parents. The number of deaths from cancer in each case were as follows:

     

472 grandparents	2
314 sons and daughters (both parents died of cancer)	0
301 brothers and sisters of parents	9

Comparison of the family histories of an equal number of cancerous and noncancerous patients by Karl Pearson led to "the conclusion that there was practically no difference between them as to the prevalence of the disease among their relatives.

"It would be rash to state that the low percentage of deaths from cancer among the groups of those with a family history of that disease was an indication of resulting immunity," concludes Mr. Hunter. "On the other hand, the material that has been presented justifies the belief that cancer is not hereditary, and that there is no hereditary predisposition to that disease."

Her Own Business

By FREEMAN TILDEN

Illustration by George E. Wolfe

ELIZABETH FARNUM'S mother had done her best, as she informed a few of her most intimate friends, "to be reasonable." With unspeakable amazement she had seen her daughter slip her social bonds and madly associate herself with her own business. She had seen Elizabeth—or, rather, she had heard her—arise at the utterly impossible hour of six-thirty, to walk unattended later to that absurd office, actually to engage in conversation on a common footing with employees.

At first Mrs. Farnum patiently humored the strange whim. It seemed preferable to some other fads—suffrage picketing, for example. But as time went on, and the young woman seemed actually to be thriving upon this self-abasement, Mrs. Nathan Farnum flung back her head and declared to herself that the folly must end.

Unfortunately, as she had to acknowledge, she didn't know exactly how to end it.

Once, since Elizabeth began to occupy her father's old office, Mrs. Farnum had visited the plant. On that occasion she came down in the car, went up the worn old wooden stairs as if she were stepping on live coals, and entered just as Elizabeth was conferring with the factory superintendent. The excellent lady stood until the superintendent went out. Then, with all the polite sarcasm of which she was capable, Mrs. Farnum remarked, studying Elizabeth's favorite office costume with a blasting eye:

"Positively, my dear, you look like a waitress!"

Whereupon Elizabeth Farnum rushed incontinently upon her mother, kissed her with frantic, laughing kisses, and moved her gently toward the door, saying:

"My darling mother, you mustn't bother Elizabeth while she is at work. Good-by, mother dear! I'm so glad you called!"

The queer part of it was that these two women, who were a million miles distant from each other nowadays in their outward views, loved each other tenderly. The death of the father had brought them closer together than ever before. Honestly, without selfishness, Julia Farnum had planned a glorious future for her girl—a future in which she was willing to play a minor and shaded part. She wanted to see her established. She wanted to see her take the place that was due her as a rich and beautiful young woman, married to a rich and talented man. And the man was clearly in her mind. He was Harvey Bowles, eldest son of a paper manufacturer who had started in business about the same time as Nathan Farnum, had later been the moving spirit in the big merger known as the Paper Trust, and was now its president.

It was not a mere matter of eligibility. The families had always known each other. The children had played together at the sea-shore in the old days, and there was a frank affection between them. Harvey was a frequent visitor at the Farnum home. All things considered, Mrs. Farnum decided that the time had come to act. So one evening, when the mother and daughter were dining alone, Mrs. Farnum opened the campaign.

"Beth dear," she began in her sweetest voice; "don't forget that we are to go down to Lakeview Thursday afternoon. I had a letter from Mrs. Bowles this morning. The Brazilian Ambassador—"

"Oh, I really couldn't think of going, mother," said Elizabeth hastily. "Not this week. Some other time, perhaps."

"But what on earth could prevent you? You must go. Now don't—"

Elizabeth Farnum shook her head. She looked across at her mother, her eyes full of this strange enthusiasm which the older woman couldn't understand.

"Absolutely impossible!" she replied with finality. "Why, mother, I've set Friday as the time for our big conference. Our Mr. Hyatt has completed his plans for the big advertising campaign. We're going to thresh it all out Friday. A month from now, mother, you'll see Escutcheon advertising in all the big magazines. You ought to see the copy Mr. Hyatt has written! Why, mother, it would just make you go down to the stationer's and plead for a box of Escutcheon Linen. After this one will be a social nobody if one doesn't write on our paper. Isn't it simply splendid?"

MRS. FARNUM opened her eyes.

Her mouth opened, too, in a combination of astonishment and fright, as she looked across the table at her daughter. Then the mouth slowly closed—closed till the lips were tightly compressed, and her eyes showed a gleam of exasperated determination that was rare in them.

"Beth," she said, with metallic emphasis, "really, this is going too far. You know, my dear, I have tried not to interfere with your pleasure—if you think it pleasure to sit down there in that musty office and play at business. But there is reason in everything. Advertising! Good heavens! Aren't we advertised enough, as it is? Doesn't that big electric sign on the plant shout trade into our ears—and our friends' ears—every time we pass it? Haven't I been humiliated often enough by having upstarts come smirking up to me and saying, 'Mrs. Farnum, my husband uses your paper in his office'? Why, my dear, I tremble every time I go into strange company, for fear I shall be introduced as Mrs. Escutcheon! You may laugh, my dear, but it's not pleasant to

Continued on page 18

OUR GRANDFATHERS SENT THEM ROSES

STRUCK OUT BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

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ARTISTS IN SLANG

WHAT SCIENCE IS DOING

To Roll This Old World Along

"OH, YES; THAT FILLING IS PERMANENT"

DID the dentist say that your new filling was permanent? Having said it, did he mean it? If it was gold, either inlay or placed by the old hammer method, he undoubtedly meant it; but if it was cement or silver or anything else, he was most probably spoofing you, because he has not yet obtained a supply of the perfect cement that a research laboratory has just concocted.

When the Mellon Institute of the University of Pittsburgh says it has solved a problem, it stays solved, and that laboratory has just announced the perfection of dental cement.

Dr. C. C. Vogt is one of the research students at the Mellon Institute who for several years has had just one problem in life. He has been searching for a cement that would stay put when the dentist was ready to take the napkin from under your chin, and which would prevent a continuance of the disintegration of your molar or bicuspid. He went at the problem in a scientific way. First, he decided what was necessary to produce a substitute for gold nuggets in both front and back teeth, and then he found it. He was employed by a manufacturer of dental supplies, who outlined the millennium for cavities and took a chance that an expert chemist

with nothing on his mind but ultimate success would some day find it; and he did.

"The ideal material for filling teeth must have plasticity and adhesiveness of cement," began his orders. "It must also have the appearance and characteristics of porcelain; and it must be as durable as gold."

After one year of exhaustive research Dr. Vogt found that he had all these things—but the virtues were deposited in half a dozen different cements instead of in one bonanza. In some way he had put them all together; but, unfortunately, they would not mix and retain at the same time the good points.

Gradually he brought them together, like the parts of a picture puzzle. Strength and looks came first; but the stuff would not stick any better than pure quicksilver. But a pinch of this and a pinch of that finally brought the necessary adhesiveness, and finally produced a non-shrinkable material. Each pinch was measured in chemical symbols, and was as accurate as the weight of a new gold coin.

The resultant cement has more virtues than the manufacturer demanded. It will not conduct heat and hence give you a toothache; it will not induce electricity, as when you touch the filling with your pea-knife; it can be colored to match your particular variety of tooth; it acts as a support for the walls of a tooth as almost no other filling material does, and thus prevents breakdowns.

More than that, it is a silicate cement. The formula is a secret, owned by the company that hired the research chemist.

SEAWEED FIGHTS GERMS

FRENCH doctors have discovered still another use for agar-agar, that jelly-like product of Japanese seaweed which has been recommended to office workers for the digestion, and which the bacteriologists have used for years to grow germs. The new use is in healing wounds, in which the agar-agar takes the place of Dr. Carrel's sponge tissue, invented only a few months ago.

To make wounds heal rapidly, it is essential that they should be kept in a bath of antiseptics. In an ordinary hospital this is accomplished by constant redressing. This is impossible when there is a large number of wounded men and the supply of nurses is small. Dr. Carrel's sponge tissue proved a great advance in treatment, but the sponge did not hold enough liquid and was neither elastic nor plastic enough, says the Paris Medical.

The agar-agar is cooked until the mucilaginous material of which it is formed can be taken off in much the form of gum. It is then sold in translucent rods or tablets. The material has the property of absorbing eight times its weight in water upon being soaked. For hospital use it is placed in bags of sizes varying according to the need for different shaped wounds.

When agar-agar is used on superficial wounds it is placed in flat rectangular bags and soaked in antiseptic liquid. The latter is unchanged to any degree by the components of the material. In chemical language, little of the active chemical is "fixed." That is, the hydrocarbons, minerals, albuminoids, nitrogen, and salt of which it is composed do not unite with the antiseptic agents and destroy their value.

For deep wounds the agar-agar is placed in tiny bags the shape of the opening, and placed well within the aperture, thus carrying the healing chemicals into the very depths.

In practice it has been found that agar-agar is compressible, yet holds tremendous quantities of liquid, is dilatable, electric, and for these reasons holds its shape and can be made to conform with openings. A great many wounds have been treated by the new method with excellent results, and the time required for healing has often been greatly reduced.

SPYING WITH A CAMERA

THE only spy who can use a camera successfully is the aërial photographer, and it takes weeks of instruction to teach him to get good pictures. Sergeant J. S. Frewer, official camera-man for the United States Flying Corps, has obtained

some splendid negatives under difficult conditions.

To make a picture from an aëroplane, a great many apparently insurmountable obstacles must be overcome. The camera is traveling up to one hundred miles an hour. If you have ever tried to take a picture from a railroad train going thirty miles an hour, you will realize that this fact alone is worth thinking about. It is counterbalanced somewhat by the distance at which the camera must work from its subject. Even an intrepid aëronaut does not often desire to approach much closer than within a mile up from an anti-aircraft gun for mere photography. For these reasons, the camera in use in this country is equipped with a double telephoto lens and the fastest shutter made. The lens is also remarkably fast.

WORK FOR VOLCANIC STEAM

ITALY is taking vengeance for the destruction of its ancient city of Pompeii by utilizing the "devil's breath" for lighting the city of Florence, says Chambers's Journal (London).

Bore-holes have been sunk to the depth of 500 feet, where the source of live steam is tapped. The holes are lined with steel pipe from which the vapor issues at an extremely high temperature. This steam is full of corrosive acid and can not be run into boiler tubes or into steam-engine cylinders; so it is used merely as fuel in a specially constructed boiler having aluminum tubes. The power is quickly converted into useful channels.

TO BRING THE ENGINES

AFTER several Cincinnati citizens attempted to turn in fire alarms, and succeeded in doing nothing more than strain their fingers, the chief of the fire department inaugurated lessons on bringing the engines. Five thousand women and two thousand men stormed the new school. They had always wondered what the little red box marked "fire alarm" was for, and they learned.

In order to prove that turning the handle and pulling the hook did something, a booth was constructed to illustrate the interior of a fire house. Each pupil was treated to action when he turned in his practice alarm. They saw the "joker" fall, releasing the horses, the lights flash on, the trap-doors in the ceiling spring open, and the firemen slide down the brass poles. The mystery of the fire-box has been solved.

The school was held as part of an educational campaign during Cincinnati's fire prevention week. Other cities, especially those having a large foreign population, unable to read English and prone to the belief that the fire-box is a mail-box, should follow Cincinnati's example.

BENZOL BECOMES AMERICAN

THE word benzol spells German industrial efficiency to most Americans to-day; but that day is almost done. Benzol is the light oil from which aniline dyes are made, and the lack of it—as well as the lack of men and factories to use it—is the cause of the weak printing inks of to-day, and the pale garments which fashion has been apologizing to women for since dyes stopped crossing the Atlantic.

America is now producing light oil from coal at the rate of forty million gallons a year. Forty benzol plants are in operation; eight more are being constructed. Three large plants are being added to for increased production, and by the end of the year the rate of production will undoubtedly be increased to fifty million gallons, according to Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering.

At the close of 1913 there were sixteen plants turning out benzol, but their output was used almost exclusively for enriching illuminating gas, and there was no benzol left for other purposes; nor was there a demand for any America was satisfied with its importations. American captains of industry feared that this by-product of the coke oven would complicate their plants. Now that they are making it, the United States can begin to make its own coal-tar dyes.

PROPELLER POWER

IT is the constant wonder of people that a stick of curved wood can drive an aëroplane a hundred miles an hour or more. We even hear that these whirling blades have pushed and pulled the winged craft of war as fast as one hundred and forty miles in one hour.

The secret of the mystery is that air is a fluid, like water, and power can be applied to it just as a boat can be paddled through the water with one's hands. The power of three hundred horses, applied to the air by means of the revolving of the curved blades of the propeller shown in the photograph, pushed this tremendously heavy motor-truck through Detroit streets at twenty miles an hour with the wheel brakes on.

This was done in testing a new aëroplane motor. The truck weighed two and a half tons.

What Trivial Doubts Can Do to You

By H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

Illustrations by E. Hopper

THE centipede was happy quite
Until the toad, for fun,
Said, "Pray, which leg goes after which?"
Which worked her soul to such a pitch
She lay distracted in a ditch,
Considering how to run.

THESE merry lines ought to bring a smile to every face. But also they ought to provide food for serious reflection. The foolish behavior of the centipede is too often matched in human life. There are plenty of people who needlessly vex their minds about things of no great importance, to the detriment alike of their happiness, their working ability, and their health. Nay; there are people who behave exactly as the centipede is supposed to have done. There are people in whom the habit of futile doubting and reasoning about trivialities is so extreme as to amount to a veritable disease. This seems incredible to you? Let me tell you a little story of actual occurrence.

To a neurologist in the city of Washington there came one day a man thirty years of age. There was nothing in his appearance to set him apart from other people. He was intelligent-looking, well dressed, well mannered, and he did not seem at all out of health. But this, in effect, is what he said to the neurologist:

"Doctor, I have come to you as a last resort, and if you can not help me I do not know what I shall do. I am mentally all in pieces. My mind is so weak that I can not even decide what clothes I ought to put on.

"My indecision shows itself the moment I awake in the morning. I start to get up: then it occurs to me that perhaps I ought not to get up immediately. So I lie down again, wondering just what I ought to do. Not until somebody enters my room and insists on my rising can I bring myself to do so.

"At once a terrible conflict begins within me as to the clothes I should wear. Every article of my clothing has to be carefully considered. It is as if a vital problem had to he solved. Sometimes, after I am dressed, the thought strikes me that my underwear may be too light, or too heavy, or that something else is the matter with it.

"Then I have to undress and put on fresh underwear, which I minutely inspect. Or perhaps it is my shirt that troubles me, or the pattern of my necktie, or the suit I have put on.

"Always I fear that I have made a mistake in some way. Dressing consequently becomes an endless process to me. Even with help—and I nearly always have to be helped—it is two or three hours before I am finally dressed."

Consider also the case of a morbid doubter who was successfully treated by that well known Boston medical psychologist, Doctor Boris Sidis. In this case doubting was only one of several disease symptoms. Here, somewhat abridged, is Doctor Sidis' own account of his patient's indulgence in trivial doubts:

"The patient is troubled by a form of folie de doute. He is not sure that the addresses on his letters are correctly written; and, no matter how many times he may read them over, he can not feel assured that the addresses are correct. Some one else must read them and assure him that they are addressed correctly.

"When he has to write many letters, sometimes a sudden fear gets possession of him that he has interchanged the letters and put them into the wrong envelops. He has then to tear open the envelops and look the letters over again and again, to assure himself that they have been put by him into the right envelops.

"Similarly, in turning out the gas-jet he must needs try it over again and again, and is often forced to get up from bed to try again whether the gas is 'really' shut off. He lights the gas, then tests the gas-jet with a lighted match to see whether the gas leaks and is 'really' completely shut off.

"In closing the door of his room he must try the lock over and over again. He locks the door, and then unlocks it again, then locks it once more. Still he is not sure. He then must shake it violently, so as to get the full assurance that the door has been actually and 'really' locked."

A Serious Hindrance in Business

THIS second illustrative instance brings out vividly the fact that I specially wish to emphasize—the fact, namely, that at bottom these doubting manias are only exaggerations of a phenomenon of common occurrence. There are times when virtually everybody is tormented by doubts regarding matters that ought not to cause any indecision or perplexity. Moreover, while comparatively few people feel the need of going to a physician to be cured of abnormal doubting, there are many others who might advantageously seek the specialist's aid. People often are blind to their great weakness in this respect, though their friends may see clearly that their vacillation with regard to things great or small constitutes a defect that of itself accounts amply for their inability to make headway in the world.

Like the Washington neurologist's patient, if in less degree, there are people to whom the choice of clothing presents a prodigious problem. To others the choice of foods is a never-ending puzzle. At every meal they find themselves sadly at a loss to decide what they shall eat. Others again, acting in much the fashion of the young man treated by Doctor Sidis, conjure up visions of possible mistakes and mishaps in connection with the writing and mailing of letters, the opening or shutting of doors and windows, the carrying of umbrellas, etc. Also there are doubters of a kind well described by a physician who has made a special study of abnormal doubting:

"There are people who doubt whether their friends really think anything of them. They think that, though they treat them courteously, this may be only common politeness, and they may really resent their wasting their time when they call on them. They hesitate to ask these people to do things for them, though over and over again the friends may have shown their willingness, and above all, by asking favors of them in turn, may have shown that they were quite willing to put themselves under obligations.

"They doubt about their charities. They wonder whether they may really not be doing more harm than good, though they have investigated the cases or have had them investigated, and the objects of their charity may have been proved to be quite deserving. They hesitate about the acquisition of new friends, and doubt whether they should give them any confidence, and whether the confidences they have received from them are not really baits."

To Doubt Is to Waste Energy

HERE, manifestly, we find a state of affairs not only breeding unhappiness, but involving a vast waste of nervous energy. This it is that chiefly makes the yielding to trivial doubts a menace to human welfare. To conserve energy for useful purposes we are so constituted that, ordinarily, the little acts of every-day life—our rising, dressing, eating, attending to household or business details of a routine character—are done by us automatically. We take it for granted that we do them correctly, and usually we so do them. If now and then we make a mistake, we think little about it. Rightly, we regard it as of no account compared with matters of more importance. Thus we conserve our energy for our life-work. Whereas the doubter about trivialities fritters his energy away.

Whence, then, arises the costly habit of doubting about trivialities? Still more important, if men become victims of a doubting habit, how may they overcome it? To answer these questions, it will be helpful to turn once more to the cases of the two morbid doubters who consulted the Washington and Boston specialists.

In both of these cases psychological analysis was undertaken to ascertain the causes of the exaggerated tendency to doubt. In both it was found that the patients had been subjected in childhood to conditions almost inevitably productive of a profound distrust of self. This was particularly true in the Washington case. The patient in this case was the only son of parents whose love had led them to be over-solicitous about him. When he was a little fellow they could not bear to have him out of their sight, lest something should happen to him. They had anticipated his wishes, gratified his whims, done for him things that he should early have been taught to do for himself; and, when he did attempt to do things for himself, they intervened to help him.

The result was an enfeebling of his consciousness and of his will. The man grew up without initiative. People had always done things for him, had always decided things for him. How could any one expect him to decide anything for himself? It was not that he was naturally weak-minded, weak-willed: it was that his training had engendered in him conditions making for mental confusion and instability of purpose.

Such was the outcome of the neurologist's psychological study of his case. It held the possibilities of a cure, through "psychic re-education," having as its starting point the emancipation of this child of thirty from slavish dependence on his parents. And after nearly two years of patient effort a cure was actually effected.

In the second case, distrust of self had been produced in quite another way. This patient's parents had not spoiled him by over-attention. On the opposite, they had not given enough thought to the importance of developing in him emotional control, the need for which was particularly indicated in his early childhood by great dreaminess and sensitiveness of disposition. Liking to read, he was especially fond of a type of fairy tales now known by medical psychologists to be exceedingly unsettling and weakening to supersensitive children by reason of the gory elements in the tales. His special need for training in the control of his emotions was further evinced by the violence of his reactions to happenings of a disturbing nature. Once, for instance, when he unexpectedly met in the street a deformed, paralyzed man, he fainted.

This should have been sufficient warning to his parents that they must make every effort to stiffen his character and to protect him from needless shocks. As a matter of fact, they exposed him to conditions that would have been harmful to any child. During his early years he was thrown much into the company of an old grandfather afflicted with sundry ailments, among them the doubting mania in an extreme form. Also he was allowed to witness the death agonies of several relatives.

Distrust of Self

ALL this was bound to leave a lasting imprint on his mind and his nervous system, filling him with vague fears both as to life in general and, in particular, as to his own ability to live successfully. It was impossible for him to escape the knowledge that he did not endure the difficult and the unpleasant as well as other children did. And, with this knowledge, distrust of self, a sense of inferiority, took firm hold of him.

Nevertheless, he contrived to get along passably until he entered college. He was nervous and a little "queer," but not markedly so. When, however, he found it necessary to study unusually hard for some examinations, a breakdown came. Various disease symptoms, physical and mental, developed in him, including the

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habit of perpetually fretting and doubting about things of small significance. In his case, that is to say, faulty training in childhood had laid the foundation for a psychic weakness, to the full development of which a physical condition—fatigue—had acted as the immediate cause.

Correcting Parental Mistakes

Now in most cases of morbid doubting that have been thoroughly analyzed, parental mistakes have similarly become apparent. There may be—there usually is—a constitutional tendency to nervous troubles. But the parents have not appreciated this. Or, if they have appreciated it, they have failed to offset it by

education especially designed to strengthen the will and inspire self-confidence, and by measures having as their end a sound physical upbuilding. Also they have failed—and this is of the utmost importance—to externalize the personal interests, so that self-consciousness shall be at a minimum.

This does not mean, however, that the unfavorable results of the parental mistakes can not be remedied later in life. There is reason to believe that even in most extreme cases of morbid doubting—except the comparatively few cases where organic brain disease is responsible—it is possible to effect a cure.

As has been said, both of these patients were cured, and their cases may be regarded as fairly typical of this variety of mental affliction at its worst. Accordingly, when the tendency to trivial doubts is less marked, there is the possibility not only of cure but of self-cure.

Self-consciousness, timidity, distrust of self, a conscious or subconscious feeling of inferiority, and often a lack of physical vigor—these are the elements that chiefly contribute to the growth of a tendency to anxiety and indecision about trivial things; these are the weaknesses that specially need to be overcome. As a preliminary measure, the doubter should make it a rule to take exercise daily in the open air, and to see to it that his living and sleeping quarters are well ventilated.

Indecision, even in the most energetic of men, is frequently a resultant of deprivation of fresh air. To reach decisions, to settle doubts quickly, a well nourished brain is indispensable. And no brain can be well nourished unless the blood flowing to it is well supplied with oxygen. For the same reason, he needs an abundance of good food.

Physical upbuilding, moreover, will have the desirable effect of increasing his power of concentrating attention on some serious life interest.

This, above everything else, is what the doubter needs to do. He must develop an interest in something worth while—his work, a useful hobby, occupation of some sort—an interest so intense that it will take him completely out of himself.

What the Doubter Needs Most

THE trivial doubter—the doubter of any kind—is preëminently a man or woman devoid of a keen life interest. If a life interest were present, there would be neither time nor inclination to dissipate energy in useless doubting. If you, my reader, recognize in yourself one of the doubting kind, you will appreciate the truth of this. You will admit that you have little enthusiasm for your work, little interest in anything that would keep you from being too occupied with thoughts of self.

Developing such an interest, self-consciousness will diminish, self-confidence will grow. Gradually less and less attention will be paid to the petty details of daily existence that formerly gave so much concern. They will be pushed more and more into the background of the mind, will be managed automatically, as it was intended they should be managed. No longer will your indecision be a source of pitying, perhaps amused, comment by your friends. Instead they will have occasion to comment, with pleased surprise, on the vigor and promptness of decision in all things that has taken the place of the old indecision.

One word more:

If you are a parent, bear in mind particularly the histories of the two unfortunate young men of Washington and Boston. Be careful not to make the mistakes their parents made. Study your children. Develop in them emotional control, unselfishness, an alert interest in the world around them. Keep them from becoming morbidly self-centered. Do not let them become too dependent on you, but at an early age foster in them the spirit of initiative.

Remember always the old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

"What I Did When I Lost My Job"

WE will pay $25 for the best letter of not more than 500 words on the subject, "What I Did When I Lost My Job."

Also regular magazine rates for any other letters good enough to publish.

The letters will be judged for their interest and helpfulness to other people rather than for their literary finish.

Tell how you reduced your expenses when your income stopped; how you went about it to get another job; how you turned your misfortune into a stepping-stone toward better things.

All letters must be in our hands by May 15. They will not be acknowledged or returned. If you want to save your letter, make a copy.

Your name will not be published: open your heart and tell anything and everything that might help somebody else.

Address BRUCE BARTON, Editor, 381 Fourth Ave., New York.

Her Own Business

Her Own Business

—Continued from page 10

have a trade-mark attached to one, like a number on the back of a football player! Advertising! No, no! It must stop—and at once!"

The cheeks of the young woman burned. Often as her mother had hinted these things, she had never come out in the open before. Elizabeth felt as if she had been struck with a whip. Finally she said: with enough self-control:

"Surely, mother, you're not ashamed of the business that father's brains and energy built up?"

Mrs. Farnum was on thin ice. She hesitated a moment before she answered.

"My dear Beth," she said finally, "you don't understand. While your father was alive I was content. If anybody had said these things then, I should have given them short shrift indeed. Fortunes have to be made, and I must say your father's was made in a decent, outright, honorable way. But now, dear, it has been done. We have a right to retire from trade decently, and take our places in another —er—er—you know what I mean. You owe it to yourself, Elizabeth, to accept this tremendous offer from the Trust. Eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars! Just think of it!"

"I shall not accept it, mother!" was the impulsive cry. "Father wouldn't have sold to them, and I shall not."

"You owe it to the man you will marry—"

"I am not thinking of marriage."

"Harvey Bowles—"

"Is a decent fellow. I wonder that he is so clean and generous and kind, mother, considering that he has never done an honest day's work in his life. Let him go to work and prove himself a man instead of a moth, and then I may consider him. Why, the way I feel now, mother, I'd rather marry a carpenter—"

"Beth Farnum!"

"Well, there have been some great carpenters. But seriously, mother, I'm not thinking of marriage: I'm thinking of work. I love it! It's so clean and interesting. Father was happy at his work. I want to be happy. I want you to be happy, mother. Can't we both be—each in our own way?"

The young woman had risen, gone to her mother's side, and put her arms around her neck.

The older woman tried to disengage herself. It was manifestly impossible to be stern and unbending so long as this position was maintained. But Elizabeth clung tightly. Then Mrs. Farnum felt a drop of water trickle down her own cheek. She was sure she was not crying; so it must be Elizabeth.

"At your age, my dear!" expostulated the mother.

"It's silly, isn't it?" was the response. "I never used to cry. Somehow the tears come easily nowadays. I think it must be because I am happier than I ever was before."

There was only one remark left to Mrs. Farnum.

"My dear," she said, "try to be reasonable. Think of what you owe to yourself."

"I will think of it," promised Elizabeth.

BUT, if Mrs. Farnum had allowed herself to be cajoled for the moment, she had no intention of dropping the matter.

As the daughter of a wealthy man, she had brought to Nathan Farnum loyalty and love and culture; and, indeed, she had been a good foil for his unveneered matter-of-factness. But, now that she was alone with her daughter, Julia Farnum's mind automatically went back to the world from which she had come—a world in which young women did not work in offices, in which the best people did not talk business in the boudoir, and in which nobody lived in a place like Farnumville any longer than was absolutely necessary.

Certainly, in spite of her pretended ignorance and real dislike of the business of her daughter, Mrs. Farnum must have had a keen perception of happenings at the plant. For, in some way, she knew that the general manager's nose was out of joint, and she knew that a young man named Hyatt had come to loom large in her daughter's affairs.

Now, Elizabeth's mother wanted to know more. And, she picked her source of information with the skill of a social diplomat. Ten minutes after Elizabeth had left the house, Mrs. Farnum called up the plant, got Rouss on the telephone, and asked him to come and see her.

Rouss answered the call with alacrity. Since Nathan Farnum's death, the manager had been at the Farnum house only a few times. The plain truth was that Mrs. Farnum did not like him; but of this Rouss was happily ignorant. When the telephone call came, he dropped everything flat, rushed to the dressing-room to see if he was well ordered, and pounded up the road with a fast beating heart.

MRS. FARNUM received him flatteringly. "Mr. Rouss, you were my husband's right-hand man. I am going to take you into my confidence, and I feel sure you'll not abuse it. My daughter's eccentricity—this working at the factory—has made me very unhappy. It is not seemly, and it is not sensible for her to engage in such work. I have told her so. She—is not in a mood to listen."

"She certainly has a mind of her own," said Rouss, rubbing his hands in frank admiration, even though he was hurt by it.

Mrs. Farnum looked upon the manager with a frosty eye.

"A mind of one's own is not invariably an asset in social intercourse," she replied tartly.

"No, indeed—I should say not," added Rouss hastily.

"I am going to speak very abruptly and very clearly, Mr. Rouss. I suppose you have heard that the Universal Paper Company has made a large offer to Miss Farnum for her business? Well, then, I may tell you that I have strongly urged her to accept. It is for her interest to do so. I wish her to. There are many reasons. Miss Farnum clings to her notion that her father would not wish her to do it. It is true, my late husband refused several offers for his business. But the situation is entirely different now. Mr. Rouss, I do not believe that this is Elizabeth's real reason—or, at least, that it is the only reason. Can you think of any other?"

"There is another reason, Mrs. Farnum," said Rouss. "I don't know as it is proper for me to mention it."

"I wish you to tell me. We are speaking in confidence."

"Well," said Rouss, "the plain truth is, Mrs. Farnum, that your daughter would never have come to work at the plant if it had not been for Hyatt. He filled her head with these notions—and I tell you further that he is the one who is prompting her not to sell to the Trust. I know it. I tell you further," went on the manager, his voice trembling as he emitted these wrongs that had been stifled in his soul, "that Hyatt is in the saddle over there at the plant. I have worked faithfully in the Farnum interests, and you know it, and Miss Farnum knows it; and it hurts, Mrs. Farnum, to have an outsider come in—"

Mrs. Farnum, not in the least interested in Rouss's private afflictions, gasped:

"What is there, sir, between this man Hyatt and my daughter?"

"Oh, don't misunderstand me, Mrs. Farnum," choked out Rouss. "I didn't mean to insinuate that there is any personal attachment, or anything like that. But she is under the influence of his ideas—which will ruin the business if he has his way, mark my word! She plans to spend a hundred thousand dollars in advertising—"

"Advertising! Ugh! I know it. Mr. Rouss, this is very distressing. It is most distressing to me. Is there no way you can—er—assist me in making Elizabeth see the folly of it all?"

Rouss felt that his opportunity had come. He folded his hands judicially.

"Mrs. Farnum," he began, "there is a way. There is a way to show Miss Farnum that she had better dispose of the property at the handsome figure the Trust is offering. But—frankly, I have to look out for myself. If the plants should be sold, I would be walking the streets, wouldn't I?"

"But the Trust would probably retain you in the same position."

"Ah, yes, Mrs. Farnum—if I came to them with the semblance of authority, I could make terms, and advantageous terms. If I could go to them and say, 'Gentlemen, while I do not represent Miss Farnum, I do speak with the knowledge and permission of her mother,' I should feel free to act."

"I don't quite see your point," said Julia Farnum warily.

"The point is, I can get rid of Hyatt, and gradually bring Miss Farnum to see that she should sell—if I have your—your silent approval."

"Then do so! Do so at once!" said the mother, with relief.

"At once! Oh, that's impossible. It might take six months; it might take longer. But I can do it."

"Six months of this, and I shall be a shadow," moaned Mrs. Farnum. "You must do better than that. But go ahead."

ROUSS coughed slightly. So far, everything was running in oil. He now came to a more important matter. Rising, walking a few steps toward the door, and then returning as if it were a casual afterthought, he said:

"In all this, Mrs. Farnum, I must say that I couldn't do anything that would give Miss Elizabeth any unhappiness—"

"You will be working for her real ultimate happiness!"

"Er—yes. Mrs. Farnum, if my plans mature, and I should succeed in doing what you wish, I may have a very responsible position with the Trust. I—er—remember that Mr. Farnum was a thoroughly democratic man. He was very kind—er—to me. I suppose—er—if Miss Elizabeth should incline toward a self-made type of man—like myself—you would not object, Mrs. Farnum—"

Mrs. Farnum saw what was in his mind—what he was stumbling with—and her face was red and white. "The colossal impudence of the man!" she thought. At any other time she would have indicated the doorway to this presumptuous employee who dared to aspire to her home. But the social diplomat prevailed.

Rouss was the only man who could help. She mustn't antagonize him. She had too much decent pride to offer him any false promises, but she gave way to the temptation to let the man deceive himself. So she answered:

"I am an old-fashioned mother, Mr. Rouss; but times have changed, and daughters have changed. I'm afraid in such a matter as you have in mind I shall have very little influence. Still, I have faith in my daughter's wisdom to choose wisely."

In fact, Mrs. Farnum said almost exactly nothing at all; but Rouss left the Farnum home feeling certain that he had Mrs. Farnum's tacit permission to become a suitor when the time should come.

But, though Rouss's head was in the clouds for the time being, his feet were on the ground. The same tireless tenacity that had put him in his present position made his pretensions well worth considering. He knew that Elizabeth Farnum admired the steadfast loyalty he had shown toward her father; he knew that she was aware of the patient hard work he had done. Now he counted on showing her something else—that he was capable of swinging bigger interests, of dealing with "big business" on its own ground—and to her advantage.

MEANWHILE Hyatt found himself immersed more deeply in his work than he could ever have imagined. The magnificent scope of the plan he and Elizabeth Farnum had worked out piled details on him that were new and puzzling. In the advertising agency he had been a producer of "copy." The sales plan had been decided on—and he worked from it. When he had produced the actual message to the public, his work was done. But now he had to begin at the foundation and work up to the very last cornice. Together with Elizabeth, he had to select the mediums they were going to use. He had to familiarize himself with the buying of "space." He had to work with an artist in "laying out" the copy. He had to go into every minute branch of the complicated business.

This work brought Elizabeth and Hyatt a good deal together. Once in a while they sat under the electric lights after the office force had gone, and the big hive was so quiet that they could hear a mouse rummaging the waste-baskets.

Again and again Edwin Hyatt was amazed at the shrewd analysis that the young woman contributed to these labors. She knew nothing whatever of the technique of advertising, and she showed little desire to bother with it; but she seemed to know how to approach the trade for which they were looking.

"It seems to me," she said, "that we should advertise Escutcheon just as we would advertise a piano that sells for twelve hundred dollars. I mean, the advertisement ought to be just as well written and as beautiful as our paper."

"And yet have all the tensile strength of Escutcheon," suggested Hyatt.

"Yes," she said; "that's just what I mean."

"There's a word I've been looking for," said Hyatt, "and if I could find it, it would be worth a week's work. My mind seems to hover all around it, but it eludes me every time. It's a word that will describe Escutcheon so that you can hear it, and feel it, and see it. It's a word that will make the reader actually hold a sheet of Escutcheon in his hand, fold it, put it in the envelop. It suggests richness, taste, and yet durability. Hang it all, there is such a word! I've pretty near worn Roget and the dictionary out, looking for it."

He saw Elizabeth's face grow suffused with that ardent interest she always showed when they were struggling for expression.

"I know—I know!" she cried. "Wait! It's—no, wait again! Richness, taste. I know—I've felt it, in writing on Escutcheon. It's that thing my father was so proud of. It's the thing that others can't

---

or won't put into their paper. It's—like the rustle of starched linen!"

"Rustle!" shouted Hyatt, jumping up. "Rustle! You've said it, Miss Farnum. Wait a minute. Let me write it down and see how it looks! 'The aristocratic rustle of Escutcheon.' Wait a minute—let me print it in Roman capitals: 'THE ARISTOCRATIC RUSTLE OF ESCUTCHEON.' Can you hear it? I can.' The paper of Big Business'—how's that?"

"No-o," she objected, after a first assent. "No-o. That's a little bit crude, I think."

"You're right; it is," admitted Hyatt, with the cheerfulness of an adventurer who has taken the wrong road and likes the fun of traveling. "'The paper of business diplomacy'—how's that?"

"That's better. That's fine!" cried Elizabeth with delight. "That's the very idea. Escutcheon is the ideal paper for 'introducing you' to the class of people you want to know."

So they worked it out together. She was never more splendid than when she sat, her chin buried in the palm of a hand, her eyebrows knitted, her breath coming fast, the tips of her white teeth just showing between the half-shut lips. And Hyatt would gaze at her for a moment, and then guiltily turn his head away, and a queer feeling would come into his throat.

There was a little tinge of bitterness in his thoughts at those moments. He could be with her; their minds could interplay, entwine, give and take; he could be close to her. And yet, he could never even tell her that she was the most marvelous woman he had ever seen! He could never say to her even those innocent and pleasing things that he could have said to her if—if his father had been a successful manufacturer.

Once, indeed, he dropped his guard and blurted out, with admiration that he could no longer suppress:

"Miss Farnum, honestly, I don't see how you do it! You have just started in business, and yet you seem to grasp it all—in the larger aspects. Sometimes I feel like thanking you for just letting me sit and watch your mind play over these things."

"Thank me!" she laughed. "Thank me!" Then she grew serious. "Mr. Hyatt," she said, with a gratitude in her glance that made him wince uncomfortably, "do you know what you have done for me? Do you realize that you rescued me from a Slough of Despond and made me one of the happiest beings in the world? Do you realize that it is you, not I, that have the imagination to make this work a continuous adventure? Don't I know that when I do say anything worth while, it is in response to something you've put into my mind? Please don't say those things. You make me feel so small, so mean! For what am I doing for you all this time? Paying you a salary! It hurts me to say it. Paying you a salary! No; I'm glad, though, I began to talk about it. I want an understanding about your—your—oh, goodness, what shall I say? Your—profits. That's it. I want you to share in the good things that come from this advertising—because I know it's going to be a success."

SOMEHOW, Hyatt felt suddenly disillusioned, miserable. He had dreaded this moment. From the moment he knew that he loved Elizabeth Farnum, he hated the idea of their relationship of employer and employee.

"I can't talk about it now!" he burst out, with more feeling than he meant to show. "I don't care—until we get these ads launched—whether I eat or not—much less what I am paid."

"It isn't pleasant for me, either," she reminded him, with just a tiny reproach. Then she went to the window and looked out.

"Quick!" she said, turning. "We must get out of here! It's half-past eight. This must be the very last time we work down here after hours."

As they were leaving the office, she said:

"I shall have to ask you to walk home with me. And let us make an agreement—not to talk a word of business after we leave the office—ever."

He agreed.

"I suppose," she said softly, as they walked along, "your parents are living, Mr. Hyatt?"

"No; they are both dead," he replied.

"Ah, it is the great leveler, isn't it? To lose those we love—that is the thing that makes us reach out for understanding. That's what makes money and social position seem trivial. I suppose it was losing father that made me—think. I have almost no feeling of caste these days. Sometimes I feel that I belong to those who bid highest for me—highest in sympathy and understanding and success at life. Perhaps—perhaps there is somebody back there in Chicago—who means that to you? I haven't any right to ask that, I know; but nowadays I see people more as—brothers and sisters of mine."

"There is nobody," replied Hyatt, with a lump in his throat.

He left her at the corner of her street. They shook hands swiftly and parted. For a few minutes Hyatt felt depressed. But he tried to shed his selfishness, as he saw it, saying: "I'll work for her as long as she wants me. Then—I'm man enough to walk away with my head up."

ESCUTCHEON advertising went straight to the center of the target, just as Edwin Hyatt and Elizabeth Farnum had faith that it would. In a day when advertising was no longer a blundering experiment, but a real graphic art, the Escutcheon campaign made a stir.

The first heartening word from the outside world was a telegram to Hyatt from his old Chicago employers. It read:

You have done yourself proud, Hyatt. Unanimous verdict here that Escutcheon copy has dignity, pulling power, and striking originality. Don't forget you were raised in our office.

The last sentence Hyatt knew to have been written jocularly. But he realized that there was a deal of truth lying back of it. He wired back:

Thank you a thousand times. Never doubt I forget what I owe to you all.

From a New York advertising man with whom he was utterly unacquainted came this:

May I congratulate you on the beautiful Escutcheon copy? It speaks with the voice of the artist. Hereafter we use Escutcheon in this office.

But it had to do more than elicit the praise of the advertising craft. It had to get home to the user of high-grade paper. And it did.

The other verdict—the voice of the buyers—did not come so readily; but it came surely. Business men went from the advertising pages to their purchasing agents.

"How about this Escutcheon? If it's as good as all this, why aren't we using it? Let me see that paper's watermark! If it doesn't say Escutcheon, why doesn't it? Of course we want an 'envoy extraordinary.'"

So good advertising should work—and so the Escutcheon advertising worked. Perfect balance of type and white space; crisp, virile, striking phrases that were not freakish—these were the things that brought the orders home.

And then—the distribution promptly fell down, in the midst of a rush of orders.

Rouss had hung back, on the outskirts of the plans, covertly sneering, openly doubting, outwardly professing his willingness to do his part by holding plenty of Escutcheon in readiness for the jobbers—and actually doing nothing. The result was that heartrending, maddening situation—a big demand for Escutcheon and an inadequate supply.

For the first time in his life, Hyatt went into the air. Rouss had given him absolute assurance that the distribution was to be taken care of. Nobody but Rouss could provide for this. But, whether purposely or because he honestly doubted the efficacy of the advertising, the general manager was simply riding on his rims.

When it became obvious that they were

---

losing the very high tide of the results of their campaign, there was a brief session in Elizabeth Farnum's office. Three persons were present—Hyatt, Rouss, and Miss Farnum. There was a high wind outside that morning, but it was a zephyr compared with the gale in the office.

The general manager, half defiant, half apologetic, insisted that the campaign had been sprung too soon. He had not had time to get ready. He protested that he had not been kept informed. He even ventured to remark that the whole plant had shown a disposition to loaf ever since Miss Farnum had come into the office—assuming that, with a woman at the head of the business, the old standards of efficiency had automatically been relaxed.

This was more than even the customary poise of Elizabeth Farnum could stand. She shot a look at Rouss that made him drop his eyes, and, pointing a finger at him, she said, in the first hard tones Hyatt had ever heard from her lips:

"Mr. Rouss, I never want to hear you mention such a thing again. If the discipline of the force has been relaxed, I hold you, not myself, responsible. If the word has been passed that I am here in my office as a pastime or a prank, then it was your duty to correct that illusion at once. I am bitterly disappointed—I am more disappointed than I can say. But it's no use now to speak of what's past. I want the trade supplied with Escutcheon, and just as soon as humanly possible. You will run nights, if necessary."

"Night work is time and a half," objected Rouss.

"No matter if it is three times! It is my order. Please understand it, Mr. Rouss."

"Yes, ma'am," replied the astounded manager.

He looked a bit wild, now, himself. Not even Nathan Farnum had ever issued an order to him as cuttingly as this. At the door he fixed an assassinating glance on Hyatt. Then he said weakly:

"Is there anything else?"

"There is nothing else," replied the young woman.

Rouss gone, Elizabeth turned to Hyatt and said:

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Hyatt, for you."

"For me? Why for me? I'm not sorry for myself. I'm just clean mad," growled Hyatt. "I wasn't doing this for myself. I was doing it for the company—for you."

It was the first time she had seen Hyatt angry. It acted as a sedative on her own emotions. After a moment she began to smile, and then she went on:

"We're both angry, Mr. Hyatt. That won't do. That doesn't make for efficiency, does it? I—to tell the truth, I rather like to see you that way. You're usually so good-natured, I had wondered if you could get fighting mad. You can, all right. I thought, for a moment, you were going to rush on Mr. Rouss and tear him limb from limb."

Hyatt, in spite of himself, began to laugh. Some people have a way of making anger look ridiculous—and Elizabeth Farnum was one of them. The strain of the moment over, they both brightened. But as Hyatt was leaving the office she called him back and said:

"After all, this has a serious side. Mr. Rouss was either stupid or something else. If it was stupidity I forgive him. I want to know if it was something else. Partly to find that out, but mostly because the time is ripe for it, I think, I'd like to have you visit every one of our distributors and meet every one of our salesmen. It will be a two months' trip at least. Will you do it?"

"But I'm not a salesman; I don't know that I have that kind of ability," gasped Hyatt.

"You will have by the time you get back," was the confident reply. "Now, let me tell you my plans."

IT was not as a salesman that Hyatt went out, wonderingly, from Farnumville. He was really going to press home, by means of his enthusiasm, the campaign

his copy had started. If he had started out with the necessity for selling hanging over him, probably he would have failed. But, unhampered by that necessity, he found himself, actually if indirectly, selling Escutcheon. He believed in this wonderfully fine product, head and soul. He knew how it was made, from rags to sizing. And, backed now by a steady and ample flow of supplies from the mills, he was able to say, as he started for home seven weeks later, "I believe I could sell a little, after all!"

AS he started for home, a strange feeling—as if he were going back to all that meant anything to him on this earth —came to him as he climbed into a Pullman at the Grand Central station in New York, with a bunch of magazines under his arm. He was going home! And suddenly there rushed through his head a torrent of images, fast flying pictures, of the office, the mills, that street where he had left her the last night they stayed late at the office. And then—she was sitting in her office, and he was there, and she was looking at hiin with humor bubbling from those glorious eyes, and saying, "We mustn't both be angry, Mr. Hyatt—"

"Perhaps," thought Hyatt grimly, "it would be better if I wasn't going back at all. What chance—have I?"

At the same time, he observed that the train was moving more slowly than any train he had ever before traveled on.

Hyatt missed connections at Springhaven with the train that went up to Farnumville. Rather than wait three hours, he took a trolley car that would carry him to a point four miles from the plants, and walked the rest of the way. It was a fine, tonic afternoon, and Hyatt swung along briskly, in spite of a heavy bag he carried. He knew that the road would bring him to a point where, by crossing a foot-bridge, he would come out at the back end of Number 2 mill.

As he crossed this foot-bridge, filled with the zest of walking, and glowing with ideas that had swarmed to him on the way, Hyatt stopped short and listened.

Something was missing. He couldn't make out at first what it was; but something was lacking. He crossed the bridge and listened. The big mill was silent—that was it. The wheels weren't moving! He pulled out his watch. Half-past four. They should be working. He looked up at the windows. There was no sign of life.

At the rear end of Number 1 mill was the office-supply stock-room. Hyatt had a key to this outside door. He let himself in with trembling fingers, and walked through the mill toward the office. There was not a sign of life. He went through the rag-room, gleaming with upright knives where the rags were sliced; through the room in which the big white vats, lay yawning for the lime solution. The rooms were empty.

The enormous tanks of "half stuff," like snowy clotted milk, looked up at Hyatt just as the paddles had left it when they stopped. He passed the big rolls, with their endless sheet of white paper still serpentining between, and saw a telltale film on the surface of the gutter of sizing, and noticed that the grippers that took the cut sheets from the end of the machine were poised at an angle, with a sheet still clinging to them.

HYATT shivered. His own footsteps sent a warning, melancholy message to his brain. Something was the matter! The plants should be running. He wondered vainly if he were somehow mistaken, and if it were really Sunday or a holiday. No chance of that—the newspaper in his hand told him. He looked around. A blue-bottle fly was buzzing at a window that should have been open. He felt as if he were resting on the bosom of a sick giant.

At the entrance to the factory from the offices was a big double metal fire-door. Hyatt pushed it open, expecting to find the offices deserted, too. But the click of typewriters that greeted him informed him on that point. Stopping at his room only long enough to throw his bag upon the desk, Hyatt went swiftly down to Miss Farnum's office, and knocked. He felt frozen to the core at the fear that she wouldn't be there. But she was. He heard her voice—life-saving, it sounded to him. Then he went in.

"I came through the factory," he panted. "What's the matter?"

Elizabeth Farnum looked at him with a smile that was not like her smile. It reflected disappointment, anxiety, and faint, struggling hope. She rose, came over to him, and said:

"I'm so glad to see you back again. I—need you. We have a strike on our hands."

To be continued next week

They Love Us—They Love Us Not

We Are Going to Be Hung

Dear Editor:

If you will autograph and send me three copies of your editorial on breathing, when you come to Washington you will find them hanging framed in a university, a bankers' club, and a school.

C. W. O'C., Washington, D. C.

Us for Posterity

Dear Editor:

Just a word in appreciation of "The Sport of Kings." I have read many stories each year, but have never enjoyed one so much. When 1917 is completed I shall assuredly have a bound volume of EVERY WEEK in my library.

E. L. H., University of Chicago.

Ask 3517. He Knows

Dear Editor:

An old grouch of a mail-carrier who packs about three hundred copies of EVERY WEEK every week on his district desires to hand you a knock. The magazine that grown-ups and kids fight for to get first on my route is EVERY WEEK.

The magazine that makes even a mail man laugh and feel cheerful because he knows it's going to make the folks on the district just a little more human, the magazine without "isms," just real American humor and wit—EVERY WEEK. The magazine with a sure-'nough live-wire editor and snappy to-the-point editorials—EVERY WEEK. If ever a magazine showed well balanced literary taste and expressive individuality, it is EVERY WEEK. More success to you.

CHICAGO 3517

To "the Man Who Wants to Walk Upright"

Dear Sir:

We have your letter with its inclosures. Why not send in your name and address, so we might talk things over?

THE EDITOR.

Thrills for Everybody

Dear Editor:

When you get letters from big, influential men telling you how good your magazine is, I suppose you get a thrill. Well, it gives me—an $18-a-week clerk—just as much of a thrill to be able to write you and tell you that I read EVERY WEEK from cover to cover, and thank you for the great pleasure I get out of it.

E. L. V., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Votes for Fathers

Dear Editor:

Congratulations on the article, "How It Feels to Be a Father." It is good to know that there are men like that in the world who so glorify parenthood. May God grant him all his hopes for his little son.

S. G., New Cumberland, Pa.

Why Not Raise Your Own Salary?

By DONALD A. KAHN

J.B. BLANK, the owner of a chain of retail grocery stores, happened one evening to be passing his Twenty-third Street branch store, in New York, just as the clerks were carrying indoors the sidewalk display of fruits and vegetables. He stopped to watch his men at their work. After the last basket had been carried into the store, a new clerk, who did not yet know the owner by sight, came down to the curb near where he was standing and picked up a potato that had rolled out of one of the baskets.

Making inquiry, some time later, of the branch manager of this store, the proprietor learned that this new clerk seemed to possess a "mania" for eliminating waste. He "persisted," the branch manager complained, in saving the twine and heavy wrapping paper that came around shipments, and in using this second-hand material on outgoing orders. Also, the disgruntled manager confided, this new clerk was such a "fool" on the subject of thrift that he even picked out canned goods with soiled or torn labels when buying supplies for his own use.

Mr. Blank said nothing in regard to this protest, but he remembered the frugal clerk. Within a few months the young man found himself in charge of an outlying store in the chain—a store where overhead expense had been running wild.

An employee's economy is generally appreciated by the man who has to pay the bills.

Fred Shafer, who was bookkeeper in a factory that manufactured various wooden toys, bought a load of the shop cuttings for fire-wood. One evening, as he was starting his furnace, he noticed that in the wood-pile were a great number of pieces of dressed pine boards, all uniformly shaped like the blade of a butcher's cleaver.

It occurred to Fred that a pair of miniature bob-sleds might easily be constructed out of four of these pieces. After supper he tried his hand at the task, with pleasing results. The following morning he carried the toy to the factory with him, and demonstrated to his employer a profitable use for what had been regarded as a waste product.

How Margaret Got into the Firm

THE employee who concentrates upon business matters during working hours is bound to climb. Take the ease of Margaret Jones. At the age of twenty she was employed as stenographer in the office of Stanton & Dox, a Chicago firm of real-estate brokers. One afternoon a man from out of town came into the office with a number of photographs, and explained to Margaret that he had a farm on the edge of a Michigan city to sell for fifteen thousand dollars cash. Mr. Stanton, of the firm, happened to be up in New Hampshire at the time, and Mr. Dox had gone from the office with a client. The farmer said he would have to leave for home that evening, and wanted to close a deal before going back.

Stanton & Dox never touched farm property, and Margaret knew it. The firm was reluctant about venturing far outside the "Loop." But as the farmer described his eighty-five acres Margaret was doing some thinking.

As a result she suggested to the farmer that he leave the photographs and a description of his farm with her, and also that he give her firm a thirty-day option on the property at the price asked for. This the farmer was glad to do.

When Mr. Dox returned to the office next day, Margaret explained what she had done.

"But we never deal in farm lands," protested Dox.

"I know," replied the stenographer. "But this farm is only three quarters of a mile from the post-office of that Michigan city. I heard the other day that Whiteson, Speedweigh & Company are looking for out-of-town property suitable for subdivision, and I was thinking that we might sell our option on this farm to them. This property should be a bargain to any subdivider at $20,000."

The option that a wide-awake stenographer purchased nominally for one dollar, and for which she actually paid nothing, was disposed of to the firm of sub-dividers for $5000. The sign on the door of the office in which Margaret works now reads "Stanton, Dox & Jones."

A Boy Whose Eyes Were Open

EACH morning, in a northern Indiana shirt factory, a pail of mixed starch left over from the previous day was thrown out as waste. This worried a boy who did odd jobs about the factory. He had noticed girls in a neighboring tobacco factory mixing flour and water to use in affixing revenue stamps to the tobacco packages. The thought occurred to the boy: why not sell the left-over starch to the tobacco manufacturer for use as paste?

On Saturday night of that week the lad went to his employer and turned over thirty cents—his gross receipts from the paste, which he had succeeded in selling to the tobacco manufacturer at five cents a pailful. Thirty cents, as a sum of money, meant very little to the shirt-factory owner; but the boy's attitude toward the business pleased him greatly. He put the odd-chore boy in the packing department, and hopes soon to start him out on the road with a trunk of samples.

Clerks in the Continental Department Store noticed that Ella Smith, a saleswoman in the white-goods department, after completing her transaction with a customer, would call the latter's attention, in a friendly way, to "specials" on sale that day in other departments. The other clerks thought that Ella's efforts were a waste of energy. But not so the buyer in Ella's department. He called the attention of the superintendent to this clerk who seemed interested in the total of a customer's purchases, not merely in the volume of her own individual sales. Ella is now a buyer of leather novelties, and as such enjoys the salary and privileges of a department manager.

A shirt cutter who lives at the Young Men's Christian Association helps his overstocked employer by bringing his friends around to buy sample shirts at a reduction. A grocery clerk offers to accommodate a customer by delivering her order on his way home to luncheon. A department-store packing clerk works out a more simple method of handling charge shipments, and saves time and money for his employer. A clothing salesman practises sign-writing at home, and surprises his boss by lettering some attractive price cards for the store window. In these and a thousand and one other ways employees do a bit more than is asked of them. Their motives, undoubtedly, are various; but, whether they are actuated by altruism or by selfishness, the result of excess service to an employer is promotion—invariably. Ask the men at the top.

How I Lost and Won My Boys

I HAVE three boys. I am domestic by nature, and I devoted myself to my little family. I liked nothing better, after a busy day, than a quiet evening with a new magazine or a bit of fancy work, and my children and their father with me.

But, of course, as the boys grew, outside interests began to take hold of them. They tried to share these with me, but I was too blind to understand. When they were little they begged me to visit their room at school; but I was always too tired or too busy. Later they wanted me to go to places with them, but it was the same excuse. I tried to explain to them that by the time I had pressed and cleaned their suits and ironed their shirts and darned their socks and cooked their meals I did not have much time or energy left for anything else.

As a matter of fact, these duties did about exhaust both my time and energy. It did not occur to me seriously that I was doing many things that the boys could just as well do for themselves. Like all boys, they were not fond of doing "chores," and I, instead of training them as I should, excused them on one plea or another, and did everything myself.

The result was—first: the boys ceased to ask me to go with them, and they came to confide in me less and less; second: they grew to be thoughtless and selfish, taking all I did for them as a matter of course.

I did not realize, however, how far apart my boys and I had grown until their father lay in his last illness. I really had not thought of them as selfish until then; but during that trying time I began to see them in a new light. They left me alone with him night after night. They never thought to do any of the many little things that they could have done just as well as not.

I was too worried to think to the bottom of the matter then. After his death I suffered terribly from loneliness. The boys never offered to spend an evening with me. If I asked one of them to stay home, he would usually do it; but he was so plainly bored that I did not soon repeat the request. They never offered to do small chores, and I would not ask them to, no matter how tired I was.

It chanced, almost a year later, that I was going into the city to shop. It also chanced that two of the boys had no other engagement at the time my train was due, and they carried my grip and put me on the train. I was so grateful for this little act of courtesy that after the train had started I cried.

Then, suddenly, I sat bolt upright. Another thought had struck me square in the face. Why was I so absurdly grateful? Had I not a right to expect at least that much from my boys?

I found that I could get a train back home in an hour, and I cut my shopping short instead of staying all night at a friend's, as I had planned. That evening after supper I said to the boys:

"I would like to have you give me at least an hour. I have some things to say to you that can not be put off."

They seemed surprised, but came into the living-room and sat down.

"When I went away to-day," I began, "Ralph and Walter carried my grip for me and put me on the train. Do you know what I did the minute I was alone? I cried from sheer happiness. Do you realize that this is the first spontaneous courtesy you have shown me for a long time?

"I am going to take most of the blame for this condition of affairs upon myself," I went on. "When you were younger and wanted me to go to places with you, I should have gone, instead of waiting on you, as I did, until I was too tired to go. I should have insisted upon your helping me. The result is that we have been drifting apart. You do not realize it, boys, but you have grown very selfish and thoughtless. I have cried many a time because you went off for a good time instead of staying with your father when he was sick, even though he did not need your actual services. And I've cried many a time since because you leave me alone night after night. As I said, I'm blaming myself. I ought to have gone with you when you wanted me to, and I ought to have expected you to help me, so I could go. I'm going to do both in the future."

I had planned to say much more, but, woman-like, I broke down and wept. The boys were affected too, and we cleaned up old scores and agreed to start anew.

But our good resolutions would have amounted to nothing if I had not held to my purpose to enter into their life more fully and to expect certain things from them in return. Old habits were hard to break. I did not care to go out in the evenings; I did not care to invite company in. But I forced myself to do it. It was easier, often, to bring in a bucket of coal than to ask the boys to do it; but I held myself rigidly to this pledge too. And gradually I began to get acquainted with my boys again.

It took time and patience and good nature to effect this reform. But it has all paid, for to-day my boys and I are chums.

Don't Buy Stocks You Can't Sell

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

FREQUENT inquiries come to this magazine as to whether a certain stock is "listed" on the Stock Exchange, and if not why. Nearly all the New York City newspapers publish a complete catalogue of listed stocks, either in the column showing the actual sales or in the tabulation of inactive stocks for the day, showing the so-called "bid and asked" prices. But it is not so easy to give the reasons why any particular stock is dealt in on this or that market. Yet nothing is more important for the investor, when purchasing a security, than to have some idea where he can sell it in case of necessity.

A practical rule to follow is this:

Never buy a share of stock from a salesman or in reply to an advertisement or circular unless it is proved to you beyond reasonable doubt that there will be plenty of available buyers should you desire to sell.

The function of the Stock Exchange is much misunderstood. It is not a great auction room, where any stock or bond may be bought or sold. Dealings are permitted in less than two thousand stocks out of a total of several hundred thousand in this country.

Yet these few stocks represent probably more than one fifth of the total capitalization of all American companies. Thus the Stock Exchange is the market for the

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big corporations. It has no eager welcome for any company with less than $10,000,000 capital.

Stocks are not admitted if they are tied up by promoters' agreements or if they are not widely distributed. The exchanges in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities are even more restricted, and besides are local in character. Public auction sales of stocks are held weekly in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia; but they are places for executors of estates and brokers rather than for individual investors.

Most generous and open of all is the curb market in New York City; but even this is limited to a very few thousand different stocks.

Most Stocks Sold "Over the Counter"

THE vast majority of all stocks find their only market privately "over the counter" of brokers' offices. This really means over the telephone. There are several brokers engaged in this class of business in every large city, and perhaps a hundred or more in New York. These transactions, vast in the aggregate, are publicly reported or recorded in only the most partial and haphazard fashion. Here, of course, is the essential and overwhelming advantage of a listed Stock Exchange security.

But while in countless instances "over the counter" dealers fix their own prices, which are often so far apart as to disconcert the investor, yet if the demand for the particular stock becomes great enough, if the company becomes very well known and there is an ample supply of the stock, the "over the counter" or "outside" dealers will make just as fair and close prices as brokers on the Stock Exchange. In other words, the market for a stock nearly always depends on the stock itself.

Aside from the publicity of its open price-making and the strict rules of business honor that the Stock Exchange imposes upon its members, there is not necessarily a better market on the Stock Exchange than off, other things being equal. That is, a small, little known company of no great merit will never have an active market for its stock, no matter where it is.

"Why are fire insurance stocks not sold on the New York Stock Exchange or the curb?" asks an agent for one of these companies. "I know they are sold by a few specialists who fix their own prices, but I understand there is no active market."

Fire insurance stocks are not listed chiefly because the capital is usually a very small one. There is one company with a capital of $10,000,000, the Continental Insurance Company, and 19,000 of its $25 shares were dealt in on the Stock Exchange last year. But it is the only listed fire insurance company. Another reason—and this applies to banks likewise—is that the stock is closely held by a few people who are directly in the business, or by their friends, and so there is little chance for outsiders to speculate.

Dividends are quite steady on banking and insurance company shares—except, of course, in the case of fire insurance companies when there is a wholesale disaster like the San Francisco earthquake; and because they are closely held by the insiders there is little opportunity for the outsiders to profit, even when dividends are raised or lowered.

Off the Stock Exchange

A SUFFICIENTLY "close" market exists in Wall Street for municipal bonds, government bonds, bonds of the better known public-utility holding companies, guaranteed railroad stocks, short-term notes and equipment bonds of railroads, and such industrial stocks as those of the Standard Oil companies, Borden's Condensed Milk, Child's Restaurant, New Jersey Zinc, Otis Elevator, Royal Baking Powder, and Singer Sewing Machine, even though no market exists for them on the Stock Exchange. This is because such securities are always desired either by banks or by the wealthier class of private investors.

Often the greatest objection to an "investment" in shares of new and small oil, gold, copper, and automobile concerns and new and small companies engaged in selling a limited line of manufactured articles or a single patented article, is not so much the possibility of loss through actual failure, as the fact that from the very nature of the case no adequate market can be provided for the resale of their stocks.

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

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

Write Slattery & Co., Inc. 40 Exchange Place, New York, for current issue of their fortnightly publication, Investment Opportunities, which describes many sound and attractive investments. Ask for 42-E, including booklet explaining the Twenty-Payment Plan.

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

So much is written about the war and its effects, that for business men a condensed and interesting treatment of things that are happening, as they affect business, is of value. The Bache Review has an international reputation as the most graphic publication of this character. Issued weekly by J.S. Bache & Co., 42 Broadway, New York City. Sent on application.

Circulars outlinging the permanent organization of the Railway Investors' League, of which Mr. John Muir is Chairman, will be sent on application to P.M. Whelan, Secretary of the League, 61 Broadway, New York City.

Exceptionally complete annual reports showing the progress made by Standard Gas and Electric Company and Northern States Power Company will be sent to investors by H.M. Byllesby & Company, Managers and Engineers, 218 South La Salle Street, Chicago, and 1219 Trinity Building, New York.

The investor who realizes that in these days of $100 bonds there is no excuse for investing small amounts irrationally, should send to E.F. Coombs & Co., 120 Broadway, New York, for a copy of their booklet, "How," and List 14, which will be sent free of charge.

A new circular, showing how to obtain a dividend every month through the Odd Lot method, has been issued by Harthshorne & Picabia, members of the New York Stock Exchange, 7 Wall Street, New York City. Ask for Circular O-14. The firm also offers special inducements in the way of advice to small investors.

The population of Minneapolis is steadity increasing with the development of the Northwest. First mortgage bonds on improved real estate in Minneapolis, paying 6 per cent. to the investor, may be obtained from Phelps-Eastman Company, investment Bankers, McKnight Building, Minneapolis. Send for their descriptive circular " A."

The Odd Lot Review, published every Saturday, gives a viewpoint on market opportunities for the small and large investor. Sample copy will be sent on request to 61 Broadway, New York City.

All investors interested in the remarkable progress of public utility bonds should write to. P. W. Brooks & Co., 115 Broadway, New York, for a copy of their magazine, entitled Bond Talk, which deals with the fundamental principles of investment and the advantages of public utility bonds. Ask for "Bond Talk" E.

Investors desiring to acquire $100 bonds of the best known issues, and of a class that is legal for investment by trustees and savings banks, should send for the special list U that has been prepared by Merrill, Lynch & Co., members of the New York Stock Exchange, 7 Wall Street, New York City.

Public utility companies have shared the prosperity and rapid growth of this country. Investors who are interested may obtain further information by writing to Williams & Coleman, 60 Wall Street, New York City. Ask for copy "O 4."

Any one interested in the security market should send to L.R. Latrobe & Co., 111 Broadway, New York, for their statistical books on Copper Stocks, Motor Stocks, Standard Oil Stocks, Investor's Guide (270 pages), or Weekly Market Letter. This firm will mail you any one of these books free on request. Partial-Payment Plan.

Information of value for the average investor on $100 bonds and other securities yielding 3 to 7 per cent, is supplied by Coleman & Reitze, 50 Broad Street, New York, through their weekly market letter, The Finacial Review, which will be supplied if requested. Address Department E.W.

First farm mortgages and real estate bonds are not subject to fluctuations in value in these uncertain times. E.J. Lander & Co., Grand Forks, North Dakota, will send a booklet free to those who are interested in Farm Mortgages. Ask for booklet "R."

Have you read Mr. Atwood's finacial booklet, "Marking Your Money Work for You"? It is written especially for our readers, and if you will write him, inclosing five cents in stamps, at 95 Madison Avenue, New York, he will send you a copy.