At the End of the Second Year

"Now I saw in my dream, that by this time the Pilgrims were . . . entering into the Country of Beulah, whose air was very sweet and pleasant, the way lying directly through it. . . . Here they were within sight of the City they were going to." —The Pilgrim's Progress.

AFTER Robert Fulton had invented the steamship, he took his invention to Napoleon.

It was a great chance for the Emperor. The steamboat would have made him master of the English Channel: his longed-for invasion of England might have become a reality.

But Napoleon refused to see Fulton.

"Navigate a boat in defiance of wind or tide!" he exclaimed. "It's impossible."

Westinghouse offered his air-brake to Commodore Vanderbilt: and the Commodore snorted.

"So you want to stop my trains by jamming air against the wheels, do you? It's impossible."

We do not claim the right of mention in the same breath with Fulton and Westinghouse. We share but one humble distinction with them.

To us also wise men said, when we launched this weekly magazine: "It can't be done: it's impossible."

We were given one month, three months, six months to live, by many whose judgment in such matters is often sound.

But with this issue we reach our second birthday.

You who discovered us tucked away on the news-stand, and who have remained faithful ever since, will perhaps be glad to know that you are not alone in your devotion.

No other magazine in this country has ever, in so short a period, gathered so many readers.

The mark that we set for ourselves a year ago was 500,000 net paid circulation in 1917.

Sound publishing policy dictated that we should not attempt to reach beyond that mark: on the contrary, we have made real effort to stay within.

Yet our circulation has exceeded the speed limit. It is to-day in excess of 600,000.

A year ago we placed at the top of this column the head of Abraham Lincoln.

One may draw many different lessons from the life and character of Lincoln. But to us his presence is a constant reminder of this special truth:

That the greatest service any man or woman can perform to the world is first of all, by hard work, to make the utmost possible of his or her own life.

That only those who have been faithful in few things are worthy to be made rulers over many things.

We have not edited this magazine on the assumption that the American people are chiefly interested in politics: we have not pinned our faith to "movements" or "reforms" or the advent of the millennium through legislation.

Rather, we have sought in our modest way to help each reader to institute his own individual millennium in his own life, by making the most of himself.

By living a healthier, more outdoor life; by being a more efficient worker in his business organization; by cultivating thrift, and joining the most self-respecting club in the world—the company of those who have money in the savings bank.

We believe in lots of good entertainment. (The Boston Transcript credits us with publishing the best short story that appeared in any magazine last year.)

But we believe most of all in self-improvement, in happier homes, in constant growth through constant study. We echo Lincoln's phrase: "Work, work, work is the main thing."

Only those magazines that serve deserve to survive.

Building on that foundation of real usefulness, we expect this weekly to be an important force in American life.

We are more than grateful to you for your enthusiastic helpfulness. We have still some problems to solve; but, like Pilgrim,

We are within sight of the City we are going to.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE BLUE AURA

By ELIZABETH YORK MILLER

Illustrations by Arthur I. Keller

"THAT will do for to-day, young ladies. Ten o'clock to-morrow morning, please."

The rehearsal was dismissed.

Twenty pairs of tired young feet were regalvanized into action, and went scampering up the long stone corridors. Twenty under-nourished and poorly clad girls poured into the dressing-rooms, and, following instinct, took immediate possession of the looking-glasses.

Out came the powder-puffs and sticks of lip salve. Off came the ballet skirts and slippers, and walking attire was resumed.

Several sat down and nursed their poor stricken feet. There had been hours of sheer toe twirling that day.

They were machines—dancing machines. Thin-chested, anemic of face, scrawny-armed, they boasted an underdevelopment that told of merciless training in the ballets.

Three intimate friends had contrived to obtain the best of the dressing-rooms for their exclusive use. By an assumption of arrogance close akin to snobbery, they led the social forces of the little band. The other girls looked up to them, envied them, hated them, longed to be one of them.

On the surface it was difficult to see what occasioned this class distinction. The three were no better off in worldly goods than the others. They were not favorites of the ballet mistress or of the stage-manager. Indeed, one of them was anything but a favorite, and it was precisely this one who had set up the superior clique.

Her name was Dora Trelawny.

As she sat on the narrow bench, buttoning her shabby boots with the aid of a hair-pin, she seemed incredibly young even for her eighteen years. But, looking closer, one might fancy that she was old for her eighteen years. She was as thin as a rail; her eyes were fiercely black; her hair was a short, dark, wavy mop. As she leaned forward it fell over her eyes, giving her a bright, animal look. Her features were rather delicate, and beautiful in profile. Full face, her mouth was too large. When she smiled, her glittering teeth and eyes conveyed a startling impression of ferocity.

OF Miss Trelawny's clothes it were kinder not to speak in detail. She was very, very poor, and had been out of an engagement for three months. The show they were rehearsing might put up its shutters in a fortnight, for all she knew. With her friends she boldly discussed its demerits.

These two friends, chosen by her for their perfect submission to her will, followed Dora Trelawny's lead blindly.

One of them was a tall, worldly-minded young woman, with large features and red hair. She "made up" quite wonderfully, but away from the footlights she was not beautiful. Her name was Ivy Love.

The other, Betty St. Clair, was the only fat girl in the company; that is to say, she was plump—a round-faced little brunette who was always hungry.

As she powdered her plump features she munched chocolates. Her hand-bag contained also an apple and a penny's worth of sweet biscuits, which she took out and laid on the dressing-table.

The tall Miss Love, who had trained herself never to be hungry, eyed Betty's feast with disdain. Dora, who had trained herself to be unspeakably proud, eyed it fiercely. The sight of Betty's placid back at the mirror, with the rhythmic movement of the plump jowls, drove the younger girl to the verge of frenzy.

Her boots buttoned, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes for a moment.

Betty laid down her powder-puff and began on her apple, crunching noisily. It never occurred to her that she was the object of envy.

Dora roused herself, opened her own hand-bag, and surreptitiously examined its interior, hoping perhaps to find a coin that she had overlooked. The two pennies were still there, but no family had been born to them.

Two pennies!

It was last night since she had tasted food, and then only a piece of bread and sausage. This morning she had had a cup of weak tea without milk or sugar. It would be ten days before the first week's salary could be drawn—three days yet before the first performance.

Dora had a true feminine scorn of food when there was plenty of it to be had; but this was different. She was so hungry that even the smell of the rice powder that permeated the little room made her mouth water and her head grow light.

The greedy Betty could do battle with life while waiting for engagements. She had no pride, and, whenever she wrote to him for it, a quite wealthy uncle who owned a draper's shop in Highgate would send her five or ten shillings, as the case might be.

Ivy Love, when not on tour, lived with her parents. Her father was a clerk in a city warehouse.

Dora lived by herself, in a furnished room in New Compton Street. Her landlady was an Italian woman of so suspicious a nature that room rent was demanded in advance. Dora would have died rather than ask any favors of Mrs. Petrosini, even so much as a cup of coffee.

When the girls were dressed they separated. Dora was the last to go. She remained on a pretext of doing her hair over. What really detained her was a half biscuit that Betty had dropped to the floor by accident.

Dora fell upon the morsel and devoured it with pitiful anguish. It racked her insides horribly. What she wanted was coffee and steak and potatoes, with plenty of bread and butter.

DORA had "told the tale" to her friends with amazing success. They believed every word of it. She had a wonderful imagination when it came to details. Quite grandly had she pictured the ancestral seat of her family in Sussex. Trelawny Manor, she called it. She even possessed snap-shots of the place to give body to the story. One of them showed a group of people on a lawn, including a child in a white frock, which she declared to be herself at the age of ten.

The house was a stone mansion, half covered with ivy. In the group was a tall man with a sweeping mustache, with an elegant woman clinging to his arm. These, Dora said,—not without pride,—were her father and mother. She had broken their hearts by running away from home to go on the stage. She believed they had spent a fortune in trying to trace her, but so far without success.

Betty and Ivy thought her rather cruel to have left her parents like that; but they admired her pluck, and basked proudly in the vicarious atmosphere of her aristocratic lineage.

Quite consciously Dora lived up to her role. She ordered them about, snubbed them when occasion required, was intoxicatingly sweet if it suited her, and, above all, honored them with her confidence and friendship. Among other things, she professed never to have been in love—and she never confessed to being hungry.

To-day, however, she confessed hunger to herself most earnestly.

It was after six when she left the theater. Her eyes had the dull expression of a famished, prowling young cat. Her over-exercised legs trembled beneath the weight of her slight body.

The evening was cold. It was late in March, and gusty. The streets about Shaftesbury Avenue were irritating with eddies of dust and scattered papers. Dora's clothes were thin. Her blouse had a deep V which exposed her lean throat to the wind. The pavement struck cold through her boots.

Fortunately, it was not far to her shelter in New Compton Street. The door stood open, and the Italian woman was in the hall, talking to a man. He was a young man, very sleek and dandified and handsome. He had set down two suitcases marked with company tags. Evidently a music-hall artist bargaining for his week's lodgings.

He gave Dora a bright glance as she returned Mrs. Petrosini's greeting. She also stared briefly at him—long enough to be conscious of a faint thrill of interest which for the moment superseded the pangs of hunger.

As she went up the stairs she heard him ask Mrs. Petrosini who she was.

By the time she had climbed the third flight, however, he was all but forgotten in a renewed frenzy for food.

When she entered her bedroom and turned on the gas, she gave a cry of inarticulate delight at the sight of a black-bordered envelop on her washstand. She had been expecting that letter for days, and now it had come—at the eleventh hour.

The address was written in a round, carefully formed hand; the postmark Hillborough, Sussex. Hillborough was the site of the "ancestral seat."

Dora tore open the envelop and extracted the double sheet of expensive mourning note-paper it contained. There were scarlet spots on her cheeks, but they blanched away to dead white when she realized finally that there was no inclosure.

So far as the stationery went, there was no reason to doubt the tall story she had told her simple-minded friends. The letter-head bore both telegraphic and telephonic addresses as well as the inscription: "The Manor, Hillborough, Sussex."

After that came this:

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The crux of this rather grim letter lay in the postscript. The worst had come to the worst.

The girl flung herself on the bed and cried. She was an aching void, clamoring for food. After a while she got up and drank a glass of water. It almost made her sick.

She read the letter through again before she destroyed it.

Write to Mr. Mayfield, indeed! She would rather starve. She was starving. The man to whom she owed the fact of her life, and who had educated her scantily, was less than nothing to her. She hated the very thought of him.

The theory of acting upon the advice of the postscript exploded under the most casual examination. Going into service was not so simple a matter, as the trained lady's-maid, Edith Trelawny, had every reason to know. The advice was cheap, but to follow it was beyond Dora's means.

With her ballet-dancer's mincing gait and her short mop of frizzy hair, no respectable agency for domestic servants would have looked at her. Nor had she any training to fit her for household duties, nor print frocks, caps, aprons, and neat black dresses in which to execute them.

She could be and do nothing. She was nothing at all but one vast hunger at the moment. It kept her from thinking.

OUT in the narrow, untidy street, children were playing noisily at their games, but with no sustained effort. Every now and then a taxicab hooted into their midst and scattered them.

Sometimes the cabs stopped at the Milano, a little restaurant opposite, brave in its fresh paint, maddening in its florid aroma of food.

Dora hung out of her window in the Italian woman's house, and fastened her hungry gaze on the restaurant. She could see the heads of some of the diners, their jaws working like Betty St. Clair's. Every now and then a waiter came into view bearing a steaming dish.

Down below, in the twilight of the street, the front door banged. The good-looking young music-hall artist came out on the steps and stood gazing contemplatively at the Milano. Dora Trelawny read his mind. He was wondering where to have his dinner. She heard him jingle money in his pockets. Then out of one of them he took a small file, and began in leisurely fashion to attend to his nails.

The girl was in no mood to be fastidious. She did not regard him personally at all. She did not think whether she was going to like or hate him. He was simply a means to an end, and the end was food. Never before in her life had she cadged a meal; but she meant to do so now, by hook or by crook. She snatched her hat and raced down the stairs.

By the time she reached the bottom, she had the hard bitten look of one who has been a traitor to herself—to her own best principles.

She smiled on the young man, but wolfishly, like Red Riding Hood's false grandmother when the beast croaked: "The better to eat you with, my dear!"

The youth had finished with his manicuring. He slipped the implement back into his pocket, where it fell with a silvery sound among the loose change. He did not know that hungry Dora Trelawny had marked him down for her prey. In his own mind, it was the other way about.

He raised his soft felt hat, taking it daintily by the middle so as not to destroy the crease.

"Good evening," he said. "Cold, isn't it?"

"Frightfully cold," Dora replied.

She was out of breath from running down the stairs so fast, and settled her black velvet tam-o'-shanter with fluttering fingers.

"Mrs. Petrosihi tells me you're in the profession," he went on amiably. "My name is Tyson—Teddie Tyson—'Tyro and Turco,' you know."

Dora didn't know.

He explained that Tyro and Turco were an acrobatic comedy team. His partner, Turco, was the clown. Turco was his real name. He was a foreigner—something like a monkey in facial expression and agility.

Dora laughed shrilly, but her attention was on the restaurant across the way.

And now he read her mind.

"Do you get your meals over there?" he asked. "Mrs. Petrosini says it's a good place. I was going to Chapin's, but—"

"Oh, you'll like the Milano!" Dora exclaimed.

She made a business of buttoning her shabby glove.

"Come on, then—unless you've another engagement," said Mr. Tyson.

Dora was not sure whether this was an invitation or not. She clinched it with a show of reluctance. In another moment he made it plain that he was inviting her to dine with him.

By the time her appetite was satiated, Dora scorned herself thoroughly. She believed that her weakness had been indefensible.

It was nothing to accept a meal from a man when one did not actually require it as charity—quite something else when it became an obligation.

She, Dora Trelawny, was under an obligation to this stranger. What was worse, he had come gradually to understand that she was, and took a stealthy appreciation of the fact.

SHE was nervous of him. He was not to be over-awed, like Betty and Ivy, with tales of the ancestral seat. He laughed with contempt at her little airs of superiority.

But the girl herself inflamed a heavy interest in him. He liked the spectacular aspect of her: her mop of short, outstanding hair; her wide, red-lipped smile; her fierce, dark eyes. And her great need was his opportunity.

They became intimate in their conversation, and gossiped about themselves. She learned that his father had been a circus clown and his mother a bareback rider. They had both met violent deaths. He had brothers here and there, and one sister who had married out of the profession. He said he was twenty-four and had been tumbling since he was six. He and Turco drew a joint salary of twenty pounds a week, but their traveling expenses were heavy. They were booked now for six weeks in and about London, and so might hope to save some money.

It was Turco who had recommended Mrs. Petrosini's establishment. Teddie Tyson did not think much of it; still he would stay on, now that he had arrived.

Dora wished with all her heart and soul that he wouldn't. To-morrow night she would be ravenous again. Already he was trying to make an engagement with her for to-morrow night.

They went back to Mrs. Petrosini's, and she made him leave her on the stairs, but not before he had managed to kiss her. He went out again. She heard the door slam as she hurried up, his soft kiss still burning her lips. She had been kissed before in her young life, but never without half willing it, never in fulfilment of an obligation.

Her cheeks burned as she sat on the edge of her bed and reflected that she had been fed, and had paid for her feeding with a kiss. It was horrible.

OUT of the dim past a certain heritage of delicacy had come down to her.

It made her dream, and sometimes gave her wonderful visions of herself as she ought to be. At times the story of the ancestral seat and the tragic, well born parents she was supposed to have deserted, was more real to her than the actual facts of her existence, she longed for so many things she did not and never could possess.

It was night, and she undressed and fell asleep finally, her appetite satisfied, yet the torment of to-morrow holding its menace over her like a sword.

What would to-morrow bring? More food—and more kisses?

She did not know. There was a horrible uncertainty about it all.

When the morning dawned she was hungry again. Oh, that hunger! It was like a rat gnawing at her breast-bone.

There was still a little tea left, but it was difficult to bring water to boil over the insufficient gas-jet. The cunning Mrs. Petrosini had tampered so successfully with the burner that only the split two thirds of a flame could flicker up.

However, Dora made her tea, such as it was, and bought a halfpenny bun on her way to rehearsal. This she ate in the street. She was almost satisfied—fairly strong for the day's work.

Mr. Tyson had been nowhere in evidence when she left the house. As the day and her hunger developed, she began to fear that perhaps his interest in her had flagged. Perhaps he would not be waiting on the steps to-night to take her to the Milano. So she was torn between two fears—the fear that he would or would not be there. All day she thought of him in the mingled anguish with which one with an aching tooth contemplates the dentist.

At one o'clock the rehearsal halted abruptly. There would be an interval of two hours, to allow important people opportunity for their lunch.

The three friends, linking arms, wandered out into the streets. They were all rather silent at first. Their purses were empty. By a slip of the post, Betty's money order had not come. She, having no pride, but great confidence in the future, tried to borrow from Dora and Ivy. Ivy, consistently above food, had only her return fare. Dora gave Betty a penny, which the greedy girl invested in chocolate from a curb vender. She offered her friends a share of it, but they refused. Her hunger was like a baby's; it could not be stifled. For the sake of peace, at all costs it must be satisfied. Yet that was a difficult thing to do.

AS they wandered about, looking into shop windows at cheap finery they had little hope of buying, quite gaily their talk turned upon food—upon meals that were past, of restaurants they had known, of Christmas spreads on the stage at pantomime-time.

Dora, however, said nothing about the night before at the Milano. She felt guilty before her friends. They were good girls. Neither of them, she felt sure, had ever bought a meal at the price of a kiss.

Then they talked about love and marriage. Ivy thought the combination must be highly agreeable, if one found the right man and he had plenty of money. Betty longed for it. Dora scoffed at it. She, who had never been in love, discounted the whole idea. It was one half love and the other half marriage that made all the trouble in this world, she said. She spoke with great bitterness, and neither of them knew that she was thinking of her mother and a mysterious man of the name of Mayfield. They admired her for her hardness. There was something so bril-

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liant, so abandoned, in her point of view, that it gave them a pleasurable shock.

As they neared the theater again the conversation turned back to food. Betty was wailing. She knew she was going to faint before the afternoon was over.

"Little pig!" exclaimed Ivy impatiently.

The two nearly quarreled over that. Dora held aloof. She knew what her own temptation had been; how she had fallen —would fall again, perhaps. She hid the fact like the grim secret it was, but it made her more tender toward Betty.

There was the grinding anxiety not only of the future but of the present. The future did not matter so much. They were young enough to sense its charm.

DURING the afternoon's torture a girl did faint, but it wasn't Betty St. Clair. It was a frail, consumptive-looking creature who was rather shunned by the others for something dubious in her relations to society. She had a fur coat and a silver-gilt hand-bag, and taxied to rehearsals. The wardrobe woman was sent out to fetch brandy and milk, and the others stood about watching her restoration to consciousness with greedy eyes and stolid faces.

Dora wished that she could faint. She hated the consumptive-looking girl, and determined to ostracize her more than ever. She could never forgive that girl for fainting.

But, worst of all; she could not forgive her own guilty secret. It filled her with a grievance against the whole world, with the exception of Betty, who was honest about her hunger. Betty got Dora's last halfpenny. It would buy a small bun, and Dora was growing reckless. She felt as if she did not care any more. The girl who did not need brandy and milk, but who had obtained them, nevertheless, through fainting, had put the cap on Dora Trelawny's impatience.

The secret weighed upon her as she hurried home that evening. Freakishly, the weather had changed. It was warm and windless. In the evening papers it was proclaimed that spring had come. There were primroses, daffodils, and violets on sale in the streets.

When Dora reached the house, Mrs. Petrosini came out of a room on the ground floor and eyed her with shrewish, heavy-lidded interest. An adorable child was clinging to her skirts—a soiled little child, but beautiful as the Italian angels.

"Mr. Tyson, he asks after you," said Mrs. Petrosini. "There is something upstairs for you. When can I have the rent for next week?"

Dora winced. The association of ideas was too painful.

"To-morrow—or the day after," she said in reply to the last question.

Mrs. Petrosini shrugged her clumsy shoulders. The child sucked its finger and regarded Dora out of unfathomable brown eyes.

"I should like it to-day," said Mrs. Petrosini, with wistful firmness.

But Dora was just as firm—disappointingly so.

"I haven't got it to-day," she snapped. "You can't give what you haven't got."

"You must pay what you owe," said Mrs. Petrosini gloomily.

"When I owe it, I will," Dora retorted, starting up the stairs with a lofty air of indifference.

"Terms in advance!" the landlady shrieked after her.

"Your terms—not mine," Dora flung back.

A door on the first landing stood at the crack. As she passed it Dora was aware that it moved softly. She trembled with outraged pride. That was Tyson's door, she felt sure. He would have the best room in the house, undoubtedly—and he had heard every word of what had been said.

He would understand that she could not pay her rent any more than she could buy her meals. In his common way, he would see straight through her poor subterfuges. He had not even believed the story of Trelawny Manor, and had shamed her assumption of grandeur by the simple tale of his own humble beginnings. It did not make her like him any the better, but it made her fear him. She felt the elementary power in truth that no sham, however clever, could imitate.

And now the ravenous hunger was on her again. A breath of faintness swept over her as she mounted the last flight of stairs. She went up with heavy slowness. That faintness would have been useful in the theater, but now it served no purpose. It was a pity she had to be so proud when other people were about.

She opened the door, vaguely curious about what she should find there. Mrs. Petrosini had said there was something.

A message from him?

It had taken the form of a bunch of violets, which the landlady had thoughtfully put into water. And romantically thrust in among the tops of the blossoms was a folded slip of paper on which was written the hope that he would see her to-night.

With a very serious face, Dora Trelawny took stock of her wardrobe.

One by one she reviewed the limp gay garments that had seen better days—some of them on other backs than hers. Her selection fell at last upon a sack-like gown of cheap worn black velvet, which looked well enough by night, and, since it was fairly heavy, could be donned without a coat. With it she wore her black tam-o'-shanter and a string of scarlet beads. Her gloves were not decent enough, so she left her hands bare.

As she dressed she was acutely conscious of her hunger. It was like a consuming fire. The fire raged, and she hated herself fiercely, thinking of Betty, too—wondering if Betty's money order had come, or if the complaisant uncle had failed in his duty, as comfortable, well fed people do sometimes fail.

Dora was thoroughly wretched, and being wretched she smiled her wicked smile at the image of herself in the glass. It seemed to her that she was growing ugly—that the grinning skull was inadequately masked by its thin layer of skin and muscle.

Oh, hideous—to fade away to bones! All through lack of food—through lack of what was every woman's right.

THERE was a surprise in store for Dora—almost an agreeable one. She was not to dine alone with the autocrat of food. When she came down, uncertain as to where and how she was to meet Tyson, since no rendezvous had been suggested, he emerged from his room—it was his door that had been on the crack—and following him was a short, powerfully built man, with long arms like an ape's,

and a curious shaven head in which were set a pair of cunning, monkey-like eyes.

After the description she had received, it scarcely needed an introduction to tell Dora that this was Turco, the clown partner.

Tyson frankly apologized for the intrusion of Turco, who, it seemed, had come around with a great idea for a new development in their act. They had been practising it all the afternoon; and both of them were hot and tired.

Turco was slovenly. His wilted collar, much too big for him, his baggy clothes, his red neck-tie, gave him an uncouth, repulsive appearance. There was a dark haze on his shaven chin and cheek-bones, a wrinkling of the brows, and a pathetic expression in the oddly set eyes.

As the three started down the street together, people turned and laughed. Dora was furious.

She walked ahead with Tyson, who was as spruce and neat as ever, and Turco trailed behind them like a dog. So far, nothing more than a smile had passed his countenance.

They were not dining at the Milano this evening: Tyson demanded the wider atmosphere of Chapin's. There was some one he hoped to meet there—a man with whom he had some mysterious business. Dora felt that he was merely taking her along because he knew she had to be fed. It added to her humiliation, and she was sulky when he asked her why she had not worn his violets.

Was she his slave merely for food? She knew she was, but she walked haughtily in her chains, in spite of faintness. Behind them trotted Turco, like the slave's tame ape.

AT Chapin's they had some difficulty in securing a place. They went into the café, a welter of plush couches and chocolate-colored, marble-topped tables.

When they were finally seated, Dora had her first good look at Turco, spoke to him directly for the first time. He seemed old for an acrobat. She fancied that the rough, short hair on his cropped head was actually grizzled. Yet the handsome boy partner had, with his perfect honesty, made it plain to her that Turco's was the more difficult and dangerous of the work they did together. She sensed an affection between the two men—a quiet, established thing fraught with deep loyalty.

For some reason, it angered her. She was a woman, and could part them—could break up that money-getting coöperation of theirs that rested fundamentally upon their good will toward each other.

So she spoke to Turco with the idea of drawing him out and making him look like a fool.

He was glad of her notice. He leaped to it with a charm and delicacy that gave her a shock. Tyson had said that he was a foreigner; but his speech betrayed no sign of it. His voice was soft and gentle, a cultivated voice.

"I suppose, in your work, you meet a great many interesting people, Mr. Turco," said Dora.

"All people are interesting to me," the odd little man replied, with a wistful smile.

"And I am sure you are interesting yourself," Dora said, smiling slyly at Tyson.

Turco shook his head; he was not so certain about that.

"But you make people laugh," she persisted, determined to be cruel.

"He makes 'em roar," Teddy Tyson put in, thinking she referred to his partner's public life.

TURCO, however, knew better. He knew that this handsome, famished girl was laughing at him when he did not in the least mean to be funny. She was laughing at him as a man. There was sorrow in his monkey's eyes as he tried to smile bravely. He did not hate her but quite unconsciously he took a horrible revenge on her. It was he who paid for her dinner that night.

Dora's flesh prickled and a cold-hot wave passed over her ill nourished body when she saw him appropriate the bill and take a handful of gold from his pocket, sorting out a coin with his thin, hairy fingers.

Her eyes met Tyson's, seeking in him a refuge. The young acrobat did not know what she meant, but her glance kindled a flame in him. He leaned toward her, so that their shoulders touched.

Then he got up abruptly. Across the crowded room he had caught sight of the man he wanted to see. He left Dora alone there with the creature Turco.

The girl did not know what to do. The atmosphere stifled her. She wished she could get up and leave the café. But she

Continued on page 22

When Central Turns Sleuth

By JAMES H. COLLINS

LITTLE child died suddenly in a city suburb. The child's father was traveling with an advertising automobile that followed no definite route. Half the time it was out of reach of mail or telegraph. The mother only knew the name of a town in a distant corner of the State where her husband was likely to call.

Problem: Find father.

This job was taken up by the telephone exchange in that suburb. When Central knew the circumstances, all her sympathies were aroused. With nothing before her but the long-distance switchboard, with its lamps, plugs, and jacks, and her wits, Central began a kind of detective work that is done by telephone operators in emergencies much oftener than the public knows.

The first call was made at a quarter to four in the afternoon—an inquiry to A, a town where father might possibly be. The advertising automobile had been seen there, but a messenger sent out to find it reported that it had gone—destination unknown. The two neighboring towns of B and C were called, and told to watch for the automobile, word being telephoned around to hotels and stores.

Then somebody reported that the car was on its way to D, which had not seen it, but which promised to watch, and notified a dozen surrounding points. Then E was called on a rumor, but without results. And by that time it was nine o'clock at night, and the search was suspended until seven the next morning.

Central now searched nine towns in two hours, leaving word everywhere, and hundreds of persons were now watching. Presently a man with the same name as father was brought to the telephone, but proved to be the wrong person. From that period until noon, ten more towns were called, and many clues and addresses followed up.

Then the hunt ended successfully, father being found and connected with his family. For twenty hours' work on a call of this kind, the telephone company sometimes receives only the toll charges on the actual connection finally made when the party is found, with maybe fees for messengers sent after people. Central gets—the satisfaction that comes from a good job done, plus the knowledge that she has helped somebody in trouble.

Problem: Find Yee Ling

YEE SING, a Chinaman, lay dying in a city hospital, and wanted to talk with his friend Yee Ling, who had come with him to this country. He was only a laundryman. Nobody knew where Yee Ling could be found. But a nurse told Central, and the latter was touched, and, sitting in her chair with the switchboard before her, she tackled a search of Chinatown that would have tested police abilities.

First, a Chinese restaurant where she sometimes ate. The stolid manager would not tell her a thing. She tried to jolly him for information. Ever try to pump a Chinaman personally? Hard? Well, sometime try it by telephone! A Chinese merchant was more intelligent, and gave her some addresses to try; and for two hours Central rang herself into Chinese laundries, restaurants, and stores, and was snubbed, and cut off, but would call stores next door, and go in again.

Finally she found the Chinaman for whom Yee Ling worked. It was some time before Yee Ling would come to the telephone at all. And then she couldn't talk to him! For he understood no English. Back then to the Chinese merchant who had given her the original clues. He acted as interpreter, and talked to Yee Ling, who went to see his pal. Yee Sing died shortly afterward. He was not a customer of the telephone company, and so never paid for a single message. Even had he lived, he would hardly have understood how the American devils found Yee Ling.

Again, on election night a trolley car ran off a South Boston bridge, throwing nearly a hundred persons into the river, and drowning fifty. The first word of this accident came when two excited men ran into different telephone stations, crying, "Car in the river—get help!" and ran out again. Immediately Central got busy. Word was passed to different telephone exchanges, and the operators went to work with their hearts in the job. The task of calling help was subdivided. Hospitals were told to send ambulances. Doctors, clergymen, and priests were found and sent to the scene of the accident. A half drowned passenger, pulled out of the river, woke to find that his life had been saved by the pulmotor, hurried there on telephone call from Central. The police and fire departments were among the first called, of course.

When to Keep Off the Line

HUNDREDS of calls were made, and it took not merely quick thinking and ingenuity to handle this emergency, but the work had to be done under a double handicap. A great disaster of that kind swamps telephone exchanges with calls for connections, inquiries from friends and relatives frantically begging for news—together with a flood of inquiries from people who merely want to know what has happened, and where, and how, and who ought to stay off the line altogether. Moreover, this was election night, and the telephone service already burdened with political returns.

Suddenly, while the excitement was at its height, Central noticed that a certain telephone had been used for eight or nine calls in quick

succession. She knew that this was the residence of a marine wrecking concern's manager. She called him, and found that he was trying to locate a diver and get him to the scene of the accident, but that this diver did not answer his home telephone.

Central volunteered her services as a sleuth, and started a switchboard hunt for the man. She got the house next door, and learned that the diver's home was dark and locked. Then the police near his home were called, and asked to canvass the neighborhood, ask about his haunts and habits, and try to locate him. The policeman sent out merely reported that the house was locked and nobody home—regular old Scotland Yard stuff, Watson!

Then Central called real estate men until the diver's landlord was located. He didn't know where to find him, but told her of two men whose names had been given as references when the diver leased his house; and, on the chance that they might be close friends and know his whereabouts, she set out to find them. One was located, but had no information. Then she pressed an automobile owner into service to work on the personal-habits-and-familiar-haunts lint of attack with which the police had failed and as soon as he had gone out searching the diver's neighborhood she rang up every movie theater in that district, and had his name called from the stage. This proved to be the best clue, in the end, for the diver was at a movie show in another town. Walking out, he heard of the accident from newsboys, and went to the scene.

These are typical cases of Central's detective work in emergencies.

To stay at her switchboard while fire, flood, and explosion threaten her safety, warning people and making connections, is a part of her job that the public has heard about frequently—so much a part of her job that she takes it as a matter of course, and will stick at the switchboard until ordered away.

But her persistent, ingenious search for persons who are wanted urgently is quieter and not so well known, because it is often conducted as a matter of routine, all in the day's work, and not heard of outside the telephone service.

In a big city exchange these cases are usually handled by a chief operator, or "Information." The latter has facilities for finding people by name, neighborhood, occupation, and so forth. Familiarity with emergencies gives her a quick, cool head, and as she rapidly runs down names and telephone numbers in her special lists, these can be handed to switchboard operators and a dozen called at once.

A big city, too, has its police and fire departments, its hospitals and emergency crews, always ready for action. Right over the head of every telephone operator in a city exchange, constantly in sight, are printed instructions for reaching these organizations. Central's ear is keen to detect the call from an excited person, and her training makes her expert in extracting information and sending in an alarm. Back of her are the supervisors, chief operator, and information desk, so that very often a word or two sent in over the nearest telephone sets the whole emergency organization of a city at work.

But in the suburbs, small towns, and lonely villages, with perhaps one or two operators on watch in the dead of night, it is very different. Then Central must be ready for anything, and handle it herself.

First Aid by Telephone

ONE night in a little factory town a signal lamp flashed before the lone operator. She plugged in, but got no response. It was the telephone of a mill some miles away. She rang back, and finally got an answer from an excited workman, who told her a man had cut an artery and was bleeding to death. He had tried to telephone, but could not leave the wounded man. Central called the nearest doctor and sent him to the mill, and also got simple instructions for first aid and telephoned them to the workman.

If you ever plan a crime, be cautious about carrying it out near a telephone, or first carefully wire the receiver to the hook, so it can not possibly fall off while you are struggling with the victim. For a receiver off the hook, and vague sounds coming through to Central, have often led to the capture of criminals. The receiver has been knocked off accidentally, or somebody has taken it off in terror and been prevented from speaking. Central's suspicions are aroused, she notifies the police, and the burglar or assailant is caught.

Again, a receiver off the hook may mean that some lonely person has been taken sick, and managed to reach the telephone, but not been able to speak. By piecing things together and using her knowledge of the community, the operator in a small town often renders vital service.

Central seldom fails in sympathy or resources when confronted with an emergency, for she must have such qualities before she becomes a telephone operator at all. Tests are made to determine her fitness—she must be confident, a clear thinker, have a fair school education, be healthy, keen, and interested in her work. On top of that, she is given a training that fits her to cope with almost anything that comes along in the traffic. Several weeks are spent at a training school, operating on a practice switchboard, answering test calls that teach her to make all sorts of connections and handle all sorts of people.

The Spirit of the Service

WHEN Central takes her place in a real telephone exchange as a seasoned operator, the spirit of the service permeates her. This is as definite as the corps feeling of railroad, military, or any other disciplined organization. Wake her at home in the middle of the night, while off duty, with some emergency that she knows will put pressure on telephone facilities, and instantly she is on her way to her exchange, ready to go through rain, flood, snow—what not—to reach the switchboard and help.

The public—and that is you—owes Central consideration, courtesy, and thanks for her emergency work.

It also owes her a peculiar kind of emergency coöperation that can best be explained by an actual illustration.

Not long ago there was a fire in the business section of an Eastern town. When the fire chief arrived he saw that a second alarm must be turned in. The city fire-alarm system was then found to be out of order. He sent a fireman to telephone for more apparatus.

The town, not a big one, has a fire whistle, which was blowing. When people heard the whistle they all turned to the telephone, asking Central about the fire. The switchboard was a blaze of signal lights, and the swamped operators were working to answer the "curiosity calls," one by one, with half an hour's accumulation ahead of them. Somewhere among those hundreds of tiny electric lamps, lit by curiosity, was the one with a waiting fireman at the other end, and serious business—perhaps the safety of property, life, the community. How were the operators to know that his call was different? There was no way. Only by chance did one of them plug in and get the real emergency message. But for luck, he might have waited fifteen minutes.

So just bear this in mind:

When you really need Central, call her.

But when somebody else needs her, and your call is backed by nothing more than curiosity—keep off the line!

Her Own Business

By FREEMAN TILDEN

Illustration by George E. Wolfe

"N0, no, no, no!" cried Hyatt. "You mustn't do that, Miss Farnum! Just because—"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes!" she replied, in what was nearly a croon of delight. "I know what I am about now! And if you persist in calling me 'Miss Farnum,' I'll call you 'Mr. Hyatt.'" She ran to him again, and put her hands in his. "Oh, Edwin Hyatt!" she whispered at him, "I'm so happy now! I feel like a little girl again! And to think—you might have gone away from here without saying a word—"

It was useless to think of business then. He held her as tightly as if she had not had a penny to her dowry; as if he had never been gloomy and depressed in thinking of the chasm that separated them. He couldn't believe it, even when he felt her hot cheek against his. She was a woman then! And a million or so of dollars didn't make any difference, after all! The barrier that had appeared so hopelessly insurmountable had crumbled at the first word of love; and Hyatt felt as pleasantly foolish as a man who, groping in the darkness, pushes violently at a door that isn't there—and falls triumphantly through the opening!

Yet he had to say what was in his mind.

"Elizabeth!" he told her, practising gingerly upon the name. "You are doing just what they want you to. I believe in my soul there's a conspiracy to make you sell these plants—and you're playing into their hands!"

She laughed with her eyes—laughed mysteriously.

"Let the conspirators beware!" she said in mock-tragic tones. "Ah, Edwin, I am foxy when I want to be. You just wait. I have a plan! And it isn't a new plan, either. I thought of it long ago—it seems long ago—and now that what has happened—is what has happened—I'm going to do it!"

Hyatt had a great desire to say something heroic at that juncture—and, like many another sincere fellow whose feelings are too big for utterance, he said something surprisingly trivial instead. What he remarked was:

"Oh, well, I can't give you office advice any more. I—I'm fired!"

He thought she would laugh at this. But she didn't. It came near producing the horribly opposite effect. Her eyes clouded as she answered:

"Please never say anything like that again, Edwin! I mean, not while it is a fresh wound—in here—as it is. I know I ought to laugh about it, but—I can't. You don't know what torture it was for me—to say what I did. It's true I didn't want you to work for me any longer! But do you know why I didn't? I—I—"

"Oh, let's not talk about it, sweetheart!" he said, drawing her toward him.

But she drew away.

"Yes, I must talk about it. I must explain it. I didn't want you to work for me any more! I knew I was beginning to care for you—I knew it most when you were away on that long, long trip. I didn't take interest in my work, Edwin. I used to stand in front of the railroad map over there every morning, and wonder just what spot you were on. Wasn't that maudlin? It was then I began to realize—what had happened! It was then I began to half dread your coming back—to greet me as 'Miss Farnum,' as your employer, as somebody who was paying your—good heavens! don't you see what I mean, Edwin? I didn't want you working for me. I wanted to be working for you. I didn't want to tell you what to do. I wanted you to tell me what to do. It seemed so unreasonable and unjust and—and not nice at all—to be the superior of a man who—who was so much superior

to me. I couldn't stand it any longer, that's all! I was glad—yes, I was wretchedly glad when Rouss gave me the chance to make up my mind. Do you understand?"

"I don't understand all that," replied Hyatt, with a trembling voice, clasping the woman tightly. "I only understand what you said about—about looking at that railroad map in the morning, about wondering where I was. That—is so wonderful, it—hurts. Because, do you know that, every single day on that trip, I used to sit down and conjure up this very room we're in now, and I used to see you sitting here? And I used to get bitter sometimes, Elizabeth, because I thought I could never even tell you how I felt. I almost made up my mind not to come back at all. It wasn't because I didn't want to be in your employ, though. Not a bit of that feeling. It was just the thought that I couldn't bear to sit here with you, and look at you, and stifle, strangle every bit of feeling within me. And now—"

"Do you want to work for me any more?" she asked quizzically.

HYATT considered soberly.

"I would work my hands off for you, Elizabeth!" he cried. "But perhaps it's just as well the old relations don't go on. I can't ask you to marry me now. I don't know just what to say. I think this love will give me superhuman strength. I think I can go out and do something tremendously big. I know I can. Then I can come to you and ask you—"

"I don't like the program at all!" she answered, with a queer little pout. "That's all right in story books, Mr. Edwin Hyatt, but I've been brought up differently from that. I never had to wait for anybody or anything—so now! What will I be doing while you are off becoming a Monte Cristo? I want to be happy. I want to be happy, not five years from now, but right now!"

"I do want you to marry me," gasped Hyatt. "But—"

"People will say?"

"I don't care what people say!" he replied quickly. "I only care what I think. I want to have something to give you— something real—position, or money, or whatever it is—"

"You have something to give me," she answered softly. "You have been giving me something ever since the first time we met. It was strength to be myself—that was the first thing you gave me, Edwin. You gave me courage to toss overboard those other silly things. You gave me the chance to get pleasure out of doing something worth while—or, at least, trying to. I was never really happy before I came into this office. I was in a sort of painless doze—but not happy. You gave me that. And now you have given something so much bigger and more beautiful than all the rest—and you say you have nothing to give me!"

"But," persisted Hyatt, with dogged honesty, "I can't stay here; that's plain. And it's just as plain that I must go into something else. And the sooner the better."

"So you think you will leave Farnumville?" Elizabeth said, with a merry flutter in the eyes.

"Why—yes. You are going to sell your business—"

"Yes, I am. But that doesn't mean that you are going to leave Farnumville. Neither does it mean that I shall leave. It merely means that—that mother will leave!"

Hyatt looked absolutely floored; and, seeing his perplexity, she added:

"Oh, I know it's mean of me not to tell you what I have in mind. But, really, I want to do this all myself. After this once, Edwin, you shall tell me what to do. This is my last official act—don't you see? I'll tell you this much, though, before we call the car and go out into the glorious sunshine for a long, long ride. I want to see whether Mr. Rouss can make good on his promise to have the men back at work by to-morrow morning. I'll give him till then. After that you shall act—and in a different way. Come, the weather was made for us! I want to ride fast, very fast, almost endlessly! We'll forget the office. Promise me you won't mention it once till we get back. We have so much else to talk about that's more important, haven't we?"

IT was half-past four when Miss Farnum came back to the office, alone. Hyatt had been dropped at his boarding-place. Rouss was anxiously and impatiently awaiting her arrival.

"I thought you would see the advisability of selling, Miss Farnum," said the manager, by way of greeting. "I've had the wires hot since you left, and the deal can be closed to-morrow morning. I figured that a deal like this ought not be allowed to become cold, eh?"

"But how about the strike?" she answered. "How will it look to them to see a dead plant?"

Rouss fairly strutted across the room.

"Did you think I'd be forgetting that?" he laughed. "Why, Miss Farnum, I've been working to-day, believe me! Tomorrow morning, when you come down here, you'll hear the hum of the machinery. Every man jack of them will be at his place,—that is, with a few exceptions, maybe,—and they'll be working harder than they have any time since—since Mr. Hyatt came here."

She ignored this dig, saying simply:

"Yes; that's fine, surely. But on what terms, Mr. Rouss? That's rather important."

"Oh, Miss Farnum!" exclaimed Rouss, "if I could only convince you that I am working in your interest every minute of the day! What terms? Your own terms, Miss Farnum! I mean by that, the men have returned and thrown themselves on your mercy. I promised nothing! Not a thing! But we'll grease them a little, of course, when the time comes. Or, rather, I suppose the Universal people will—you won't have to worry about that. All you wanted was a full house, and you've got it. Mr. Gaston will be at the office the first thing in the morning."

Continued on page 20

THE MELTING POT

In Which the New Books and Magazines are Boiled Down to Give You Fifteen Minutes of Health, Efficiency, Travel, Biography, and Adventure

THE MOST INTERESTING NEW DRAMATIST

HE is an Irish baron, a professional soldier, a Boer War veteran. He served at Gallipoli not long ago; was wounded in the Dublin rebellion, and is now recuperating to go to the western front. If Dunsany were a boastful man, he could truthfully admit that he is a remarkable cricket-player, a tireless horseman, and the best pistol shot in Ireland.

His name is the third oldest in Irish history, and on his estate within sight of Dunsany Castle rises the balladed hill of Tara.

"It is said by his friends that he is the worst dressed man in Ireland," writes Edward Bierstadt in Dunsany the Dramatist (Little, Brown & Company). "'He looks as if he stood there naked,' they say, 'and had his clothes thrown at him, leaving them wherever they happened to land.'

"Strangers meeting him go away feeling that he is too haughty for them; but they do not understand. He is haughty, but it is not the false pride of a snob. It is as if he said, 'What is the use of having a title or being a poet if you don't get all the fun out of it you can?"

He resents this age of business "push"—"when men no longer die, but pass away at their residences."

"Machinery," he says, "has given us many problems to solve, and it may be a long time yet before we make the ultimate discovery that the ways and means of living are less important than life."

AFTER THE WAR, WHAT?

ARE foreign nations piling up a great mass of manufactured products to "dump" on this country after the war? Mr. F. C. Swedtman of the National City Bank scouted this idea in a recent address. He quoted a commercial attaché in Berlin who wrote recently: "The rumors that belligerent countries are going to flood this country with stuff after the war and put us out of business is entirely wrong. They, and especially Germany, can not get any raw material; neither has she the labor with which to manufacture goods."

It is just as wrong, on the other hand, to assume that Europe will emerge from the war so exhausted as to be unable to compete at all. "Supposing the war to last a full three years, to August, 1917, about 4,000,000 men will then have been killed or hopelessly disabled. The gain in population in these same countries averages 5,000,000 a year, of whom half are males. This means that in three years the male population has increased by, say, 6,000,000, leaving a clear 1,000,000 more of man power for industry than three years before.

"I do not think that the competition after the war between Europe and the United States is going to be the bitter commercial struggle that is talked of. The war after the war will be not so much an economic war between countries as a war within the country against waste, extravagance, obsolete methods, class prejudices, and economic ignorance. Don't think that the United States during this first period of readjustment is going to be fresh and unweakened. We have been drained, not of money, but of what is far more valuable, cattle, hides, wool, steel, oil, copper, and all kinds a real wealth. The cattle available for food here are now twenty per cent. less than in 1907, the number of sheep has declined ten per cent., while population has gained eighteen per cent."

GERMAN INEFFICIENCY

BEFORE the war broke out we Americans were pretty self-satisfied: since then we have heard of nothing but German efficiency and our own inefficiency.

It is worth while to remember that there is another side to the German efficiency picture, as Bolton Hall points out in Thrift (B. W. Huebsch). "Germany's mortality of infants under one year is the highest of any civilized country, except Russia's. It is one third more than the average of careless, dirty Spain and Italy, and over three times more than New Zealand's.

"Many visitors to Berlin have declared that there are no slums there: but the tenements of Berlin are the attics and cellars of houses with handsome fronts. The annual report of the Berlin Society for the Homeless of 1915 shows that over one hundred and fifty-one thousand people were cared for by this one charity.

Since its foundation forty-seven years ago the Society has fed and housed 8,000,000 of Berlin's poor.

"Two thirds of the German people escape their income tax because it exempts incomes under nine hundred marks a year: that is, two thirds of the German tax-payers have less than $225 a year. The British Board of Trade before the war found that generally the German rate of wages per hour in German towns was three fourths of the English rate, and the cost of rent, food, and fuel is nearly one fifth greater than in England; while Dr. Frederic C. Howe, who can not be accused of prejudice against Germany, recognized that the German workman's hours are long, his wages low, his housing bad, and sordid poverty widely prevalent. Very many Germans emigrate. People do not emigrate except to better their conditions."

EDUCATION ACCORDING TO EMERSON

FEARING that education is becoming only practical, that teachers have forgotten the needs of a young person for philosophy and meditation, Charles Franklin Thwing has written Education According to Some Modern Masters (Platt & Peck Company).

You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence [he quotes from Emerson]. You will hear that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. "What is this Truth you seek? What is this Beauty?" men will ask with derision. When you shall say, "As others do, so will I: I renounce my early visions; I must eat the good of the land and let learning and romantic expectations go until a more convenient season,"—then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand men.

We are full of superstitions. Each class fixes its eyes on the advantages it has not. One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail. I knew a leading man in a leading city who, having set his heart on an education at the university and missed it, could never quite feel himself the equal of his own brothers who had gone thither. His easy superiority to multitudes of professional men could never quite countervail to him this imaginary defeet. Balls, riding, wine parties, and billiards pass to a poor boy for something fine and romantic, which they are not; and a free admission to them on an equal footing, if it were possible, only once or twice, would be worth ten times its cost.

HOW TO KNOW A BACKWARD BABY

YOU may have dark moments of doubt not only as to whether your child will be as brilliant as its parents, but as to whether it has even normal intelligence. In a treatise on The Backward Baby (Rebman Company) Dr. Herman B Sheffield tells how you may know that your child is not a defective:

"Immediately after birth a normal baby can hear, see, feel pain, cry when it is uncomfortable or hungry, and exercise its muscles if they are not swathed in fancy frocks.

"At one month it can locate the direction of a sound.

"At two it is interested in bright objects and declines food it does not like.

"At three it holds its head erect, turns it, smiles, coos, and wants to grasp bright objects.

"At four it begins to recognize its mother, can handle a rattle, and brings everything to its mouth.

"At five it stops crying for food when it sees it approaching and opens its mouth for the prey.

"At six with slight support it sits up, and shows gratification when taken outdoors.

"At seven it begins to imitate sounds, and cries when scolded.

"At eight it tries to creep, to say 'mama' or 'papa,' to understand several words, and to enjoy a game of peep-bo.

"At nine it knows its own name, carries its bottle to its mouth, and is able to bite off and masticate solid food.

"At twelve it attempts to walk, and may be coaxed to throw kisses.

"At two years," says the doctor, "it knows exactly what it wants." These are not, however, hard-and-fast rules, he adds reassuringly.

A TRIBUTE TO THE MULE

OUR real hero in the war is neither Herbert Hoover nor Henry Ford. It is the American mule, who, known at home as plain Maud, now answers roll-call to the more patrician name of Percy.

The mule met his supreme test on the Somme, and met it nobly. Short rations, no care, days and nights of constant and terrific labor, proved too much of a strain for our effete horses. But the mule came out triumphant. The exact ratio of deaths was six horses to one mule.

"The horse, of finer fiber and far more sensitive, thrashes about in a shell-hole and breaks his heart in a fruitless struggle to get out," says Richard Spillane in Commerce and Finance. "Not so the mule. That intelligent animal says to himself, 'This isn't the sort of barn I'd have selected, but it's preferable to hauling cannon along these abominable French roads. I think I'll take it easy while the taking is good.'

"The horse trembles and shows evidence of terror at the sound of the bursting shell; but the mule hee-haws," goes on the writer. "Custom stales. What is the bursting of a shell to one who has known the tonal power of a Mississippi levee muleteer?"

---

THE LETTER OF A KENTUCKY MOUNTAINEER

UNCLE WILLIAM CREECH of the Kentucky mountains dreamed of establishing a school for the Americans who have been lost in the Cumberlands for over a century. So he deeded all his land to a settlement school "that would not only teach book larning, but that would larn folks to do things with their hands." Miss Ethel de Long in the Outlook writes of these American Highlanders. Here is Uncle William's letter:

"Some places hereabouts are so Lost from Knowledge that the young uns dont know the country they were Borned in or what State or County they was borned. We need a whole lot of teaching how to work on the farm and how to make our farms pay also teaching them how to take care of their timber and stuff they're wasting.

"My idea was that if we could get a school here and get the children interested it would help moralize the country. If we can bring our children to see the error of the liquor we can sqush it.

"We want to teach them books and agriculture and machinery and all kinds of labor and to learn them to live up as good American citizens. We are trying to teach them up so they can be a help to the poor and to the generation unborn.

"I don't look after wealth for them. I look after the prosperity of our nation. The question of this world is naught. We are born into it naked and we go out naked. The savin of the soul is what we should seek. I want all young uns taught to serve the livin God. Of course they wont all do that, but they can have good and evil laid before them and they can chose which they will. I have heart and craving that our people may grow better. I have deeded my land to the Pine Mountain School Settlement to be used for school purposes as long as the Constitution of the United States stands. Hopin it may make a bright and intelligent people after I'm dead and gone."

"When we drew up the deed Uncle William insisted on the words 'to be used for school purposes as long as the Constitution of the United States stands.'"

EASIER DAYS FOR WIVES

THE "good old days of our ancestors" may have been all right for the Pilgrim Fathers, but they were hard on the Pilgrim Mothers. For the women the old days were neither good nor happy—even for the women of the higher classes.

Take the wives of the Harvard men who graduated in the class of 1671, for instance. William Hard, in The Women of To-Morrow (Doubleday, Page & Company), has traced their record. There were eleven men in that class. One died a bachelor—at twenty-four.

"Of the remaining ten, four were married twice and two were married three times. For ten husbands there were, therefore, eighteen wives. Mr. G. Stanley Hall, president of Clark University, very competently remarks: 'The problem of superfluous women did not exist in those days. They were all needed to bring up another woman's children.'

"The ten husbands of the Harvard class of 1671, with their eighteen wives, had seventy-one children. They did replenish the earth. They also filled the graveyards. Twenty-one of these seventy-one children died in childhood.

"This left fifty to grow up. It was an average of five surviving children for each of the ten fathers. But it was an average of only 2.7 for each of the eighteen mothers.

"Turn from Harvard to Yale. Look at the men who graduated from 1701 to 1745. The girls they took in marriage were most of them under twenty-one and many of them in their teens, sometimes as young as fourteen. Among the wives of these 418 Yale husbands were:

"Twenty-three who died before they were twenty-five years old.

"Fifty-five who died before they were thirty-five years old.

"Fifty-nine who died before they were forty-five years old.

"Those 418 Yale husbands lost 147 wives before full middle age.

"In commending the Colonial family, one must make an offset for the unfair frequency with which it had more than one wife and mother to help out its fertility record. And in commending the era of young wives and numerous children one must make an offset for the hideous frequency with which it killed them."

WHEN IS A MAN TOO OLD?

SHOULD a man be turned off at fifty, or sixty, or seventy? Is it possible to establish any arbitrary age line at which a man ceases to produce more than he costs? Frank Disston, the saw-maker, says no in an article in System.

"Do we lose in point of individual efficiency by keeping men who are long past the supposed age of efficient effort? Take cases:

"Ben Taylor has been with us for sixty years. Up until three years ago he could do his work as a grinder as well as any one. He refused to take a pension, and we put him on the door. He is just as good a doorman as he was a grinder.

"Fred J. Smith has been straightening saws for fifty-five years, and in the amount and quality of the work he does he is well up with the average of the younger men. Jake Noll, with fifty-two years of service behind him, is still doing the delicate work of blade-hardening as quickly as the men of half his age who work with him. George Harris has kept up his end as a smither for fifty-four years. George Walker worked as a machinist for fifty years. Then his health began to fail and he asked to go on the pension list; he bought himself a farm, and in two years had so recovered that he came back for his old job. He worked for another two years before he again went on pension.

"The theory that a skilled mechanic is useless after he has passed the fifty-year mark is not based on fact. The older man can not always move about so rapidly as the younger man, but where the work requires care and skill without much physical activity I would take the older in preference to the younger man. The arbitrary scrapping of men because of age is a sheer waste of economic effort. 'Old age,' we find, is a comparative term and is something more than years."

BISMARCK'S DARING

IF one would understand the Prussia of to-day, he must know Bismarck: for it was the man of "blood and iron" who stiffened the backbones of the Prussian monarchs, fought down all progress toward democracy, and brought forth the German nation dedicated to the worship of the divine right of kings.

When King William first offered Bismarck the office of Prime Minister he refused, fearing that the King was unwilling to adopt strong measures. But later he withdrew his refusal, the King having agreed that they would govern even against a majority of the national representatives in Parliament.

"For the next four years he governed in spite of the opposing majority," says Andrew D. White in Seven Great Statesmen (Century Company). "Twice he dissolved Parliament and sent its members back to their constituents. At his own will he took money from the treasury for carrying on the administration, including the reorganization of the army. In Parliament he defied the presiding officer and, when called to order by him, declared that he acknowledged no master save the King."

From the first he saw that Prussia's future lay first through the defeat of Austria. His first diplomatic victory was gained in the treaty with Austria over the Schleswig-Holstein question, and of it Bismarck used frequently to boast in after years.

"When I was negotiating the treaty with Biome [the Austrian envoy] I played Quinze [a gambling game] for the last time in my life. I gambled recklessly, so that the others were astounded. But I knew what I was at. Blome had heard that Quinze gave the best opportunity of testing a man's character, and was anxious to try the experiment on me. I thought to myself, I'll teach him. I lost a few hundred dollars, for which I might have claimed reimbursement from the State, as having been expended on His Majesty's service; but I got around Blome in that way and made him do what I wanted. He took me to be reckless, and yielded."

To indicate Prussia's gratitude King Wiliam made him "Count Bismarck."

BOOKLETS WORTH SENDING FOR

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

CANARIES, THEIR CARE AND MANAGEMENT. FATS AND THEIR ECONOMICAL USE IN THE HOME. THE GRAYFISH. HOME-MADE FIRELESS COOKERS AND THEIR USE. THE FOOD VALUE AND USES OF POULTRY. CONVICT LABOR FOR ROAD WORK.

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH THE AMERICAN GIRL?

IN spite of the shiploads of swart Italians and yellow Scandinavians, short Frenchmen and tall Irishmen, that have been coming to this country, a distinct American type is evolving from this conglomeration, says an article in the Chicago Tribune. It's a fine type—the American man. He is taller than all other men but the Scotch. His body is rangy, loose-limbed, graceful. His head is narrow but well formed, and high above the ears, with jutting brows, high cheek-bones, flat cheeks, a clear-cut, aquiline nose and a square, bony jaw—like George Ade, for instance, or President Wilson.

The true blond and the true brunette types are disappearing in this country. From England came milk-white skin and rose-pink cheeks, and from southern Europe olive skins and "eyes as black as sloes"—whatever they are. American skin is a combination of ruddiness and a faint tan—which, come to think of it, is very pretty. American hair is mouse-colored.

But the American girl, stacked up against a European girl, makes a stylish but meager showing; for Annette Kellermann and the athletic young ladies at college are not typical. The American woman is thin, flat-chested, pale, and as "nervous as a witch," to use her expression.

We consider it uncivilized for a woman to work in the fields, and when a Scandinavian woman in Dakota helps her husband with the plowing, the wan members of the Ladies' Aid discuss the brutality of foreign men to foreign women.

When a Swede hired man mentions American femininity, with its frail but utterly fashionable "silhouette," he sneers and speaks in praise of his Hulda. "Stocky from the ankles up!" is one way he puts it.

A Qualifying Turn for Torchy

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Arthur William Brown

AND here all along I'd been kiddin' myself that I was a perfectly good private sec. Also I had an idea the Corrugated Trust was one of the main piers that kept New York from slumpin' into the North River; and that the boss, Old Hickory Ellins, was sort of a human skyscraper who loomed up as imposin' in the financial foreground as the Metropolitan Tower does on the picture post-cards that ten-day trippers mail to the folks back home.

Not that I'd been workin' up any extra chest measure since I've had an inside desk and had connected with a few shares of our preferred stock; I always did feel more or less that way about our concern. And the closer I got to things, seein' how wide our investments was scattered and how many big deals we stood behind, the surer I was that we was important people.

And then, in trickles this smooth-haired young gent with the broad a's and the full set of thé dansant manners, to show me where I'm wrong on all counts. He'd succeeded in convincin' Vincent-on-the-gate that nobody around the shop would do but Mr. Ellins himself, so here was Old Hickory standin' in the door of his private office with the card in his hand and starin' puzzled at this immaculate symphony in browns.

"Eh?" says he. "You're from Runyon, are you? Well, I wired him to stop off on his way through and have luncheon with me at the Union League. Know anything about that, do you?"

"Mr. Runyon regrets very much," says the young gent, "that he will be unable to accept your kind invitation. He is on his way to Newport, you know, and—"

"Yes, I understand all that," breaks in Old Hickory. "Daughter's wedding. But that isn't until next week, and while he was in town I thought we might have a little chat and settle a few things."

"Quite so," says the symphony. "Precisely why he sent me up, sir—to talk over anything you might care to discuss."

"With you!" snorts Old Hickory. "Who the brocaded buckboards are you?"

"Mr. Runyon's secretary, sir," says the young gent. "Bixby's the name, sir, as you will see by the card, and—"

"Ha!" growls Old Hickory. "So that's Marc Runyon's answer to me, is it? Sends his secretary! Very well; you may talk with my secretary. Torchy!"

"Right here!" says I, slidin' to the front.

"Take this person somewhere," says Mr. Ellins, jerkin' his thumb at Bixby; "instruct him what to tell his master about how we regard that terminal holdup; then dust him off carefully and lead him to the elevator."

"Got you!" says I, salutin'.

You might think that would have jolted Mr. Bixby. But no. He gets the door shut in his face without even blinkin' or gettin' pink under the eyes. Don't even indulge in any shoulder shrugs or other signs of muffled emotion. He just turns to me calm and remarks businesslike:

"At your service, sir."

NOW, say, this lubricated diplomacy act ain't my long suit as a general thing, but I couldn't figure a percentage in puttin' over any more rough stuff on Bixby. It rolled off him too easy. Course, it might be all right for Mr. Ellins to get messy or blow a gasket if he wanted to; but I couldn't see that it was gettin' us anywhere. He hadn't planned this luncheon affair just for the sake of bein' sociable—I knew that much. The big idea was to get next to Marcus T. Runyon and thresh out a certain proposition on a face-to-face basis. And if he chucked that overboard because of a whim, we stood to lose.

It was up to me now, though. Maybe I couldn't be as smooth as this Bixby party, but I could make a stab along that line. It would be good practice, anyhow. So I tows him over to my corner, and arranges him easy in an arm-chair.

"As between private secs, now," says I, "what's puttin' up the bars on this get-together motion, eh?"

Well, considerin' that Bixby is English and don't understand the American language very well, we got along fine. Once or twice, there, I thought I should have to call in an interpreter; but by bein' careful to state things simple, and by goin' over some of the points two or three times slow, we managed to make out what each other meant.

IT seems that Marcus T. is more or less of a frail and tender party. Dashin' out for a Union League luncheon, fillin' himself up on poulet en casserole and such truck, not to mention Martinis and demi-tasses and brunette perfectos, was clean out of the question.

"My word!" says Bixby, rollin' his eyes. "His physician would never allow it, you know."

"Suppose he took a chance and didn't tell the doc?" I suggests.

"Impossible," says Bixby. "He is with him constantly—travels with him, you understand."

I didn't get it all at first, but I sapped it up gradual. Marcus T. wasn't takin' any casual flit from his Palm Beach winter home to his Newport summer place. No jumpin' into a common Pullman for him, joinin' the smokin'-room bunch, and scrabblin' for his meals in the diner. Hardly.

He was travelin' in his private car, with his private secretary, his private physician, his trained nurse, his private chef, and most likely his private bootblack. And he was strictly under the doctor's orders. He wasn't even goin' to have a peek at Broadway or Fifth Avenue; for, although a suite had been engaged for him at the Plutoria, the doc had ruled against it only that mornin'. No; he had to stay in the private car, that had been run on a special sidin' over in the Pennsylvania yards.

"So you see," says Bixby, spreadin' out his varnished finger-nails helpless. "And yet, I am sure he would very much like to have a chat with his old friend Mr. Ellins."

I had all I could do to choke back a haw-haw. His old friend, eh? Oh, I expect they might be called friends, in a way. They hadn't actually stuck any knives into each other. And 'way back, when they was both operatin' in Chicago, I understand they was together a good deal. But since— Well, maybe at a circus you've seen a couple of old tigers pacin' back and forth in near-by cages and catchin' sight of one another now and then? Something like that.

"Friend" wasn't the way Marcus T. was indexed on our books. If we spotted any suspicious moves in the market, or found one of our subsidiary companies being led astray by unseen hands, or a big contract slippin' away mysterious, the word was always passed to "watch the Runyon interests." And I'll admit that when the Corrugated saw an openin' to put a crimp in a Runyon deal, or overbid 'em on a franchise, or crack a ripe egg on one of their bond issues, we only waited long enough for it to get dark before gettin' busy. Oh, yes we was real chummy that why.

And then again, with the Runyon system touchin' ours in so many spots, we had a lot of open daylight dealin's. We interlocked here and there; we had joint leases, trackage agreements, and so on, where we was just as trustin' of each other as a couple of gentlemen crooks dividin' the souvenirs after an early mornin' call at a country house.

This terminal business old Hickory had mentioned was a sample. Course, I only knew about it in a vague sort of way: something about ore docks up on the Lakes. Anyway, it was a case where the Runyon people had hogged the waterfront and was friskin' us for tonnage charges on every steamer we loaded.

I know it was something that had to be renewed annual, for I'd heard Mr. Ellins beefin' about it more'n once. Last year, I remember, he was worse than usual, which was accounted for later by the fact that the ton rate had been jumped a couple of cents. And now it had been almost doubled. No wonder he wanted a confab with Marcus T. on the subject. And from where I stood, it looked like he ought to have it, grouch or no grouch.

"Bixby," says I, "Mr. Ellins would just grieve himself sick if this reunion he's planned don't come off. Now, what's the best you can do?"

"If Mr. Ellins could come to the private car—" begins Bixby.

"Say," I breaks in, "you wouldn't ask him to climb over freight-cars and dodge switch-engines just for old times' sake, would you?"

Bixby holds up both hands and registers painful protest.

"By no means," says he. "We would send the limousine for Mr. Elhins, have it wait his convenience, and drive him directly to the car steps. I think I can arrange the interview for any time between two-thirty and four o'clock this afternoon."

"Now, that's talkin'!" says I. "I'll see what I can do with the boss. Wait, will you?"

0H, boy, though! That was about as tough a job as I over tackled. Old Hickory still has his neck feathers ruffled, and he's chewin' savage on a black cigar when I go in to slip him the soothin' syrup. First off I explains elaborate what a sick man Mr. Runyon is, and all about the trained nurse and the private physician.

"Bah!" says Old Hickory. "I'll bet he's no more an invalid than I am. Just coddling himself, that's all. Got the private car habit, too! Why, I knew Marc Runyon when he thought an upper berth was the very lap of luxury; knew him when he'd grind his teeth over paying a ten-dollar fee to a doctor. And now he's trying to buy back his digestion by hiring a private physician, is he? The simple-minded old sinner!"

"I expect you ain't seen much of him lately, Mr. Ellins?" I suggests.

Old Hickory hunches his shoulders careless.

"No," says he.

Then he gazes reminiscent at the ceilin'. I could tell by watchin' his lower jaw sort of loosen up that he was thinkin' of the old days, or something like that. It struck me as a good time to let things simmer. I drops back a step and waits. All of a sudden he turns to me and demands:

"Well, son?"

"If you could get away about three," says I. "Mr. Runyon's limousine will be waiting."

"Huh!" says he. "Well, I'll see. Perhaps."

"Yes, sir," says I. "Then you'll be wanting the dope on that terminal lease. Shall I dig it up?"

"Oh, you might as well," says Old Hickory. "There isn't much, but bring along anything you may find. You will have to serve as my entire retinue, Torchy. I expect you to behave like a regular high-toned secretary."

"Gee!" says I. "That's some order. Mr. Bixby'll have me lookin' like an outside porter. But I'll go wind myself up."

ALL I could think of, though, was to post myself on that terminal stuff. And, believe me, I waded into that strong. Inside of ten minutes after I'd sent Bixby on his way I had Piddie clawin' through the record safe, two stenographers searchin' the letter-files, and Vincent out buyin' maps of Lake Superior. I had about four hours to use in gettin' wise to the fine points of a deal that had been runnin' on for ten years; but I can absorb a lot of information in a short time when I really get my mind pores open.

At that, though, I expect my head would have been just a junk-heap of back-number facts if I hadn't run across the name of this guy McClave in some of the correspondence. Seems he'd been assistant traffic agent for one of the Runyon lines, but had been dropped durin' a consolidation shake-up. And now he happens to be holdin' down a desk out in our general offices. Just on a chance, I pushes the button for him.

Well, say, talk about tappin' the main

Continued on page 15

TREES

A Photograph for EVERY WEEK by KARL STRUSS

SPRING ought to be tree-planting time for every American who owns a bit of land. "How a tree rebukes by its tough and equable serenity in all weathers this gusty-tempered little whiffet, man, that runs indoors at a mite of rain or snow!" exclaimed Walt Whitman. In the Crimea are trees a thousand years old (each one yielding fruit enough for five Tartar families); England has yews that were two thousand years old when William the Norman won at Hastings; and in California are cypresses so vast that the cost of cutting one is more than $500.

The Greeks peopled their woods with hamadryads, and the Saxons built their Druid worship on the mystery of the forests. An old Norse legend declares that the first woman was made from an elm, and the first man from an ash. If we do not worship the gods in trees now, we do treat them with a very real reverence. Except in China (where the hills have been stripped to make coffins) and in Turkey, forestry is practised as a science in every civilized country in the world.

By planting the moors of Jutland with fir and spruce, Denmark tripled her fortune in forty years. In Germany forest districts most in danger of fire are blocked off by avenues sometimes 600 feet wide. And in all Europe, before the war, it was the rule that the annual cutting must not exceed the annual growth.

Only in the last few years have we Americans considered forestry a problem, careless in our possession of 700,000,000 acres of fine timber. But if we do not plant, as Germany did, a tree for every one cut down, we more and more are securing government possession of our timber lands: already the government owns almost a fourth of the country's timber.

OUR OWN MODEL MOVIE: 15 PICTURES—15 THRILLS

---

SKY PILOTS

Continued from page 10

feed-pipe! Why, that quiet little Scotchman in the shiny black cutaway coat and the baggy plaid trousers, he knew more about how iron ore gets from the mines to the smelters than I do about puttin' on my own clothes. And as for the inside hist'ry of how we got that tonnage charge wished onto us, why, McClave had been called in when the merry little scheme was first plotted out.

I made him start at the beginning and explain every item, while we munched fried-egg sandwiches as we went over reports, sorted out old letters, and marked up a perfectly good map of Minnesota. But by three P. M. I had a leather document case stuffed with papers and a cross-index of 'em in my so-called brain.

"When you're ready, Mr. Ellins," says I, standin' by with my hat in my hand.

"Oh, yes," says he, heavin' himself up reluctant from his desk chair.

And, sure enough, there's a silk-lined limousine and a French chauffeur waitin' in front of the arcade. In no time at all, too, we're rolled across Seventh Avenue, down through a tunnel, and out alongside a shiny private car with a brass-bound bay-window on one end and flower-boxes hung on the side. They even had a carpet laid on the steps. It's a happy little home on wheels.

Also there is Bixby the Busy, with his ear out for us.

Talk about private seccing as a fine art! Why, say, I fairly held my breath watchin' him operate. Every move is as smooth and silent as a steel lathe runnin' in an oil bath. He don't exactly whisper, or give us the hush-up sign, but somehow he gets me steppin' soft and talkin' under my breath from the minute I hits the front vestibule.

"So good of you, Mr. Ellins," he coos soothin'. "Will you come right in? Mr. Runyon will be with you in a moment. Just finishing a treatment, you know. This way, gentlemen."

SAY, it was like bein' ushered into church durin' the prayer. Once inside, you'd never guess it was just a car. More like the corner of a perfectly good drawin'-room—easy chairs, Turkish rugs, silver vases full of roses, double hangin's at the windows.

"Will you sit here, Mr. Ellins?" murmurs Bixby. "And you here, sir. Pardon me a moment."

Then he glides about, pullin' down a shade, movin' a vase, studyin' how the light is goin' to strike in, pattin' a cushion, shovin' out a foot-rest—like he was settin' the stage for the big scene. And right in the midst of it I near spilled the beans by pullin' an afternoon edition out of my pocket. Bixby swoops down on me panicky.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" says he, pluckin' the paper out of my fingers. "But may I put this outside? Mr. Runyon can not stand the rustling of newspapers. Please don't mind. There! Now I think we are ready."

I wanted to warn him that I hadn't quite stopped breathin' yet, but he's off to the other end of the room, where a nurse in a white cap is peekin' through the draperies.

Bixby nods to her and stands one side. Then we waits a minute—two minutes. And finally the procession appears.

First, a nurse carryin' a steamer rug; next, another nurse with a tray; and after them a valet and the private physician with the great Marcus T. walkin' slow between.

He ain't so imposin' when you get that close, though. Kind of a short, poddy party, who looks like he'd been upholstered generous once but had shrunk a lot. There are heavy bags under his eyes, dewlaps at his mouth-corners, and deep seams across his clean-shaved face. He has sort of a cigar-ash complexion. And yet, under them shaggy brows is a keen pair of eyes that seem to take in everything.

Old Hickory gets up right off, with his hand out. But it's a social error. Bixby blocks him off graceful. He's in full command, Bixby is. With a one-finger gesture he signals the nurse to drape her rug over the chair. Then he nods to the doc and the valet to go ahead. They ease Runyon into his seat. Bixby motions 'em to wrap up his knees. By an eyelid flutter he shows the other nurse where to set her tray.

It's almost as complicated a process as dockin' an ocean liner. When it's finished, Bixby waves one hand gentle, and they all fade back through the draperies.

"Hello, Ellins," says Runyon. "Mighty good of you to hunt up a wreck like me."

I almost gasped out loud. Somehow, after seein' him handled like a mummy that way, you didn't expect to hear him speak. It's a shock. Even Old Hickory must have felt something, as I did.

"I—I didn't know," says he. "When did it happen, Runyon?"

"Oh, it's nothing," says Marcus T. "I am merely paying up for fifty-odd years of hard living—by this. Ever try to exist on artificial sour milk and medicated hay, Ellins? Hope you never come to it. Don't look as though you would. But you were always tougher than I, even back in the State Street days, eh?"

FIRST thing I knew, they were chattin' away free and easy. Course, there was Bixby all the time, standin' behind watchful. And right in the middle of a sentence he didn't hesitate to butt in and hand Mr. Runyon a glass of what looked like thin whitewash. Marcus T. would take a sip obedient and then go on with his talk. At last he asks if there's anything special he can do for Mr. Ellins.

"Why, yes," says Old Hickory, settin' his jaw. "You might call off your highwaymen on that Manitou terminal lease, Runyon. That is, unless you mean to take all of our mining profits."

Marcus T.'s eyes brighten up. They almost twinkle.

"Bixby," says he, "what about that? Has there been an increase in the tonnage rate to the Corrugated?"

"I think so, sir," says Bixby. "I can look it up, sir."

"Ah!" says Runyon. "Bixby will look it up."

"He needn't," says Old Hickory. "It's been doubled, that's all. We had the notice last week. Torchy, did you—"

"Yep!" says I, shootin' the letter at him.

"Well, well!" says Runyon, after he's gazed at it. "There must have been some well founded cause for such an advance. Bixby, you must—"

"It's because you think you've got us in a hole," breaks in Old Hickory. "We've got to load our boats and you control the docks."

"Oh, yes!" chuckles Marcus T. "An unfortunate situation—for you. But I presume there are other dockage facilities available."

"If there were," says Mr. Ellins sarcastic, "do you think we would be paying you from three to five millions a year?"

"Bixby, I fear you must explain our position more fully," goes on Mr. Runyon.

"Oh, certainly," says Bixby. "I will have a full report prepared and—"

"Suppose you tell it to my secretary now," insists Old Hickory, glarin' menacin' at him.

"Do so, Bixby," says Marcus T.

"WHY—er—you see," says Bixby, turnin' to me, "as I understand the case, the only outlet you have to deep water is over our tracks to—"

"What about them docks at Three Harbors?" I cuts in.

"Three Harbors?" repeats Bixby, starin' vague.

"Precisely," says Marcus T. "As the young man suggests, there is plenty of unemployed dockage at that point. But your ore tracks do not connect with that port."

"They would if we laid forty miles of rails, branchin' off at Tamarack Junction," says I. "That spur has all been surveyed and the right of way cleared."

"Ah!" exclaims Bixby, comin' to life again. "I remember now. Tamarack Junction. We hold a charter for a railroad from there to Three Harbors."

"You mean you did hold it," says I.

"I beg pardon?" says Bixby, gawpin'.

"It lapsed," says I, "eighteen months ago. Here's a copy, O. K'd by a Minnesota notary public. See the date?"

"Allow me," says Mr. Runyon, reachin' for it.

Old Hickory gets up and rubbers over his shoulder. "By George!" says he. "It has lapsed, Runyon. Torchy, where's a map of—"

"Here you are," says I. "You'll see the branch line sketched in there. That would cut our haul about fifteen miles."

"And leave you with a lot of vacant ore docks on your hands, eh, Runyon?" puts in Old Hickory. "We could have those rails laid by the time the ice was out of the Soo. Well, well! Throws rather a new light on the situation, doesn't it?"

Marcus T. turns slow and fixes them keen eyes of his on Bixby the Busy.

"Hm-m-m!" says he. "It seems that we have overlooked a point, Bixby. Perhaps, though, you can offer—"

He can. Some shifty private sec, Bixby is.

"Your milk, sir," says he, grabbin' the tray and shovin' it in front of Runyon.

For a second or so the great, Marcus T. eyes it indignant. Then his shoulders sag, the fire dies out of his eyes, and he takes the glass.

He's about the best trained plute I ever saw in captivity.

"And I think the doctor should take your temperature now," adds Bixby. "I will call him."

AS he slips off toward the back end of the car Mr. Runyon lets out a sigh.

"It's no use, Ellins," says he. "One can't pamper a ruined digestion and still enjoy these friendly little business bouts. One simply can't. Name your own terms for continuing that terminal lease."

Old Hickory does prompt, for we don't want to buy rails at the price they're bringin' now.

"And by the way, Runyon," says he, "may I ask what you pay your young man? I'm just curious."

"Bixby?" says Runyon. "Oh, twenty-five hundred."

"Huh!" says Mr. Ellins. "My secretary forgets my milk now and then, but he remembers such trifles as lapsed charters. He is drawing three thousand."

I hope Marcus T. didn't hear the gasp I lets out—I tried to smother it. And the first thing I does when we gets back into the limousine is to grin at the boss.

"Whaddye mean, three thousand?" says I.

"Dollars," says he. "Beginning to-day."

"Z-z-z-zing!" says I. "Going up, up! And there I was plannin' to take a special course in trained nursin', so I could hold my job."

For I'm to Be Queen of the May

By GRACE SARTWELL MASON

Illustrations by Hanson Booth

IT was the first of May. Six o'clock in the morning, to be exact, and a fine, typical spring day, with a peevish wind swooping through the cañons of the cross-town streets, piling dust and rubbish in neat windrows against area railings.

In Miss Molly Jaffer's tidy bedroom a small alarm-clock was tied with a blue ribbon to the head-rail of Miss Jaffer's little white bed. At six-fifteen it emitted a sound not unlike the snarl of a bad-tempered Pomeranian. Miss Jaffer reached up one round white arm and put a finger in the Pomeranian's throat. It struggled an instant, and then died, whereupon Miss Jaffer let her arm fall back on the counterpane.

She lay still for three minutes, staring up at the ceiling. What calamity, catastrophe, cloud of disgrace hung over her head? What disaster impended? Had she lost her job? Had her sister written to her for more money?

"Oh, my soul!" moaned Miss Jaffer suddenly. "It's the first of May."

With a groan, she sank back on the pillow from which she had started. How nice it would be just to expire quietly and decently! After a while they'd begin to telephone from the office of the Samuels Real Estate Company to know what was the matter with old Samuels' secretary. Then the landlady would knock, and finally would unlock Miss Jaffer's door with the pass-key. And there she'd be, white and sad, but dignified.

Then Samuels—the old coward—would have to go down to the Van Dyck Apartments himself. Miss Jaffer was perfectly certain that, lying there cold and white, she should be a witness to what would happen to her employer at the Van Dyck, and her dead heart would give one thump of satisfaction.

Then this sad picture of her demise was succeeded by another. She saw it with great clearness. An alert, broad-shouldered, pleasant-countenanced young man boarding a boat for Panama, without one backward glance. Two tears forced themselves under her lids and rolled down her cheeks. The first of May was bad enough with an apartment-house like the Van Dyck on her hands; but this first of May would stand out from all the rest, a black milestone in her life. She wiped away the two tears with the back of her hand, sat up, and put one small foot out into the dreary world.

"I always knew," she said aloud, "that when I fell in love he'd either drink or be married."

This remark was hardly relevant to the situation, for the young man on the gangplank of the Panama boat was involved in neither drink nor matrimony. But it summed up Miss Jaffer's state of mind.

Slowly she dragged herself from her bed, wavered uncertainly in the middle of the room for a moment, and then, opening the top drawer of her chiffonnier, took out her handkerchief box and from it brought out a newspaper clipping. It was the photograph of a young man of a cheerful and determined countenance. Underneath was a line explaining that this was John Lloyd, who had just been appointed to the corps of electrical engineers in the Panama zone. He would sail May first.

Molly Jaffer gazed at the clipping forlornly. Then, with a stern gesture, she put it away.

"If I was you I wouldn't be such a fool," she said, closing the drawer. "Why should you expect him to write you, when he's probably all dated up to the last minute? And why should he say good-by, anyway, to a girl he's only seen twice? What if he did take you out to dinner? What if he did look at you in that queer way all evening? What if he did say you were the first girl he'd ever met that was easy to look at and listen to at the same time? That was three weeks ago—and three weeks is a long time in New York. After seven years of earning your own living in this town, you ought to know that. But there's no fool like an old fool, you know, Molly."

Which last remark was a malicious slander; for, by the time Molly had had her cold shower and had coiled her shining brown hair, had put on her last year's tailored black suit with a spotless linen stock encircling her slender throat, had donned her jaunty black straw sailor with a cockade sticking out smartly over one eye, had drawn on her freshly washed white gloves, and cast a critical eye at her pale gray spats, she did not look a day over her age, which was twenty-six.

SHE was spewed up, half an hour later, from the subway mouth at Columbus Circle. Spring had come to the Circle. It flowed out of Central Park in waves of vague sweetness. It opened the shabby overcoats of the barnacled derelicts that sit on their spines on the benches at the park gates. And into the heart of Miss Molly Jaffer it thrust a sharp knife of longing.

Slower and slower walked Molly, and more bitter became the rebellion within her.

Of course, the fact that she could hear the mooing of big boats far off in the river had nothing to do with her rebellion and longing. The picture of a pleasant and determined young man walking up a gang-plank of the Panama boat was not the cause of the pain in her heart. No; the way she felt was due, so she told herself, entirely to the fact that this was the most horrible day in the city calendar—the great American moving day.

She had reached her corner now, and she hung hack an instant, for she knew what her eyes should behold when she turned it. Then she threw up her chin, laughed sardonically, dabbed at the moisture that befogged her sight, and whispered:

"Go to it, Molly, for you're to be Queen of the May."

Then she dashed around the corner with a fine imitation of a young business woman hastening to work.

IN front of the Van Dyck, four moving vans the size of the old red schoolhouse back home had drawn up. Black-browed pirates were laying violent hands on bedsteads, bric-à-brac, and beloved domestic articles. As they toiled they exchanged pleasantries so pungent and fascinating that two paper-hangers, a piano-mover, the gas-meter man, the janitor, and both elevator-boys of the Van Dyck hovered hopefully near. Molly's nostrils dilated as if she sniffed the smoke of battle.

"Oscar, George, William—I'd like to see you inside." She spoke concisely; and the janitor melted into his area-way and two ebony boys scurried for the house door. Molly went within.

"Miss Jaffer," called the telephone operator from her fortress under the stairs, and her voice glittered with gratification, "Apartment Seven-X won't move out till noon, and the gent-mun that rented it, he's clawin' the air. And old Miss Woods says they're puttin' the wrong color of paper on her sittin'-room. She's cryin' into the 'phone. Eleven-D won't give up his key till you've fixed up his telephone bill. Mr. Samuels just telephoned for you to smooth down that sculptor on the top floor. He's ravin'. I don't know what's the matter with him. It ain't up to me. The paper hasn't come for Fourteen-E, and Mrs. Eley says she'll break her lease if you don't have her apartment ready by night. And Oscar's going to quit. He says—"

"Very well, Pauline," returned Molly Jaffer smoothly; "I'll attend to everything. Send Oscar to me."

Oscar appeared reluctantly from the depths.

"Now, then, Oscar, what's this about your leaving?" asked Molly Jeffer. "It's a joke, isn't it?"

"No'm, tain't no joke. Ah's jest clear beat out, Ah is. It's 'Oscar, my, apartment's too hot!' an' 'Oscar, what do you-all mean by lettin' the fire go out so early?' an' Mr. Samuels 'phonin', 'Oscar, if you burn another bucket of coal I'll discharge you'; an' old Miss Woods blamin' me because the ice-box overhead leaks down into her kitchenette; an' bein' called up out o' my baid every night becus the Downey Sisters forgit their key! Ah tell you, Miss Molly, flesh an' blood cain't stand it."

"I know it, I know it, Oscar. An ordinary janitor couldn't. But you—why, Oscar, of all the janitors I've hired for this house you're the only one that has a—a real genius for being a janitor. Look at the perfectly wonderful way you have with the elevator when it sticks—"

"That elevator is a hellyun, Miss Molly. She sticks at midnight, and she sticks when I'm jist sittin' down to my breakfast—"

"I know it, Oscar," Molly soothed him earnestly. "And that's the reason, don't you see, why you mustn't leave me. Not to-day, Oscar, with all these people moving out and in. I couldn't get through the day without you. If you're going to leave me, I might just as well throw up my job. You're not going to leave me, are you, Oscar?"

And, under the wistful compellingness of her blue eyes, Oscar backed down the basement stairs, muttering but melted.

MOLLY turned toward the elevator. It bumped down, and out of it boiled three angry ladies. They were perfect strangers to one another, but a common rage had made them allies.

"Good morning," Molly sang sweetly. "You're here bright and early, and what a lovely morn—"

Three voices interrupted:

"My apartment isn't cleaned. It isn't papered. It isn't painted. Nothing's been done. And my furniture is coming in. And Mr. Samuels told me the apartment would be ready for me. I never saw such management. It's an outrage. Mr. Samuels assured me—I'm going to telephone Mr. Samuels—"

The elevator door opened again. This time two men seethed out. One of them carried under his arm a figurine very nicely executed in clay, but less clothed than apartment-house halls are accustomed to. The angry ladies averted their eyes and fell back. He of the figurine shook his hair like the mane of a lion, and, indicating the other, seized Molly's arm.

"Mees, this person has my apartment," he cried. "He is moving a piano into it. My apartment, what you rented to me last week. Mees, you remember me—Antonio Fizzerolla? I pay the rent. I come thees morning with my work—all my figures, my busts—in the hall they wait—"

"But to me you rented that apartment!" He of the nervous, tapering fingers seized Molly's other arm. "You remember, I take it on account of the great quietness? My piano, it is already out there in the air—going up. This afternoon my accompanist comes. To-night I sing at—"

"Miss Jaf-fers!" called the voice of Pauline. "Telephone."

Molly released herself and darted at the telephone. Two pink spots were beginning to burn high in her cheeks. She welcomed the interruption as heaven-sent, for too well she knew what she had done. She had indeed rented one apartment twice over. Possibly it was the

---

similarity in hair that had betrayed her; but more likely there was another reason. The day she showed that apartment to the two temperamental ones was the day she had read in the paper that John Lloyd was going to Panama. Even as she put the telephone to her ear, she recalled how heavy her heart had been that day, how dull her brain. He was going away! She would never see him again—never again. What if this were he telephoning now? She snatched the receiver.

"Miss Jaffer," snapped a voice at the other end, "all my radiators are leaking, and there's a mouse in my kitchenette. If you don't have these things attended to I'll—"

Molly hung up the receiver. She faced her cloud of persecutors once more. The elevator glided down again. Out of it steamed a figure as impressive as the Queen of Sheba.

"Where's the person that's running this house? Where—oh, there you are." The circle gave way before her deep professional contralto tones. "I've just telephoned Mr. Samuels that you've allowed those wretched paper-hangers to put blue in my bedroom when I distinctly said mauve. Mauve. In all my experience of apartment-houses, I never saw one more mismanaged than this one. I told Mr. Samuels so. He said you were to see about it at once."

"But, madame, you said blue yesterday. The day before it was mauve. I showed you the samples—"

"Blue? Never! Blue makes me look bilious!"

"Then you'll only look natural!" trembled on Molly's lips, but she caught back the words in time.

NOT for nothing had she earned her own living for seven years. But, deep within her, Molly began to have a queer, trembly feeling. It was not fear. She had weathered too many moving days in the temperamental Van Dyck Apartments to be afraid. No; rather, it was a desperate, nauseated weariness of her job. A little coaxing, provocative wind frisked in at the door—a little wind that bore on its wings a vague sweetness and the hoarse, faint call of a boat's whistle. Suppose she walked right out that door. Suppose she took a taxi and was whirled down to the Panama boat. Suppose—

"You've no spirit," she thought bitterly. "A man that doesn't care enough even to say good-by!"

And the voice of Pauline cooed, "Telephone, Miss Jaffer."

Molly took the receiver eagerly. Suppose this were he? Then she said sadly:

"Yes, Mr. Humphry; I'll send the plumber right up. You want to see me? Very well; I'll be up at once."

Eluding five pairs of outstretched hands and dodging a pirate with a piano lamp in his arms, she sprang for the elevator.

WHEN she had gained the darkness of Humphry's little hall, suddenly the horrible conviction smote her that she was going to cry. How humiliating, to cry before a tenant! Mr. Humphry's voice came to her kindly:

"I suppose they're all after you this morning, Miss Jaffer?"

It was the kindness that did it. Suddenly, to her inexpressible dismay, she was sitting on Mr. Humphry's sofa with her face in her hands. She was aware that she was spoiling her eyes and nose for the rest of the day. But it felt so good, just to break down and cry! And, by a blessed coincidence, Mr. Humphry was the only one in the building she could weep before and still keep her self-respect. Mr. Humphry seemed to her an old, old man.

Probably that was why she stopped weeping so abruptly, and stared at him with her mouth open, when all at once he asked her to marry him. For seven years she had been collecting rent from Mr. Humphry, and she had never seen his face anything but non-committal, pale, and tightly closed. Now it was a mottled red; his mouth, under his scraggly iron-gray mustache, worked queerly; and his pale eyes glared.

"Works you to death—that's what he does—old Samuels. Leaves you to do all the dirty work in this house, while he's getting rich. Old fat spider! Look here, Miss Molly, you marry me. You—yes, I mean it! You marry me. I've thought of it before. You're a nice, sober, competent girl. I've watched you. You've run things in this house like a general. But you're getting tired. This spring you look all run down. You marry me and—"

"Mr. Humphry!"

Molly's eyes were dry now. She rose and tried to compose her features into an expression that was not so unflatteringly astonished.

"Of course I know I'm older than you are," admitted Mr. Humphry complacently. "But what's twenty years' difference? I'm as spry as I ever was. I can appreciate you a lot more than the average young fellow."

"I don't doubt that, Mr. Humphry," murmured Molly sadly.

For the first time she really looked at Mr. Humphry. Possibly the fact that he was in the cold-storage business was what gave him that juiceless appearance. He must have a kind heart—she recalled that in all these seven years he had never found fault with her, as the other tenants were in the habit of doing. And now here he was offering her something no one had ever offered her—protection and care. For Mr. Humphrey, taking courage from her silence, began to plead his case. He told her all about his financial standing, which was very good; about his family, which was respectable; and about his habits, which were above reproach.

Molly walked over to the window and looked out. Mr. Humphry was offering inducements now—California, the Adirondacks, Bermuda, Florida in the winter, a Riverside Drive apartment if she liked. And Molly listened.

SHE thought of the past seven years, and she looked ahead to the next seven. Seven first of Mays. Seven first of Octobers. Fourteen moving days in the Van Dyck Apartments. Complaints, bad-tempered grievances to adjust, temperaments to abase herself before, old Samuels to submit to. Seven years of hearing the alarm-clock go off at six-fifteen, seven years of going without things a girl longs for, seven years of seeing the spring come without any one to send her so much as a bunch of violets. In seven years she would be thirty-three. Molly shivered a little. No time to make oneself attractive, no heart left to break loose, no youth to buoy one up.

"You needn't be afraid I won't be good to you," said Mr. Humphry.

"Oh, no; I know you'd be good to me," whispered Molly.

Mr. Humphry's window was open, and she leaned out a little to let the breeze fan her cheeks. She tried to weigh Mr. Humphry and his inducements against that hot protest in her heart. Hadn't she always believed that she would marry in some golden future? Ah, yes. But to marry Mr. Humphry! That she hadn't contemplated. Well, why not? He could take good care of her. His financial position she knew all about; he was reputed to be as steady as a clock. Like his cold-storage fowls, he hadn't much flavor, possibly, but he was reliable. And he'd take her out of the wrangles and routine and disagreeable tasks that made up her life. Why, she could walk right out, if she chose, and let old Samuels run his own ill paid staff. She could walk out this very minute—no need to consider her employer, after all the years he'd overworked and underpaid her—walk out into the sunshine and begin buying a trousseau. Bermuda—a Riverside apartment—

From the window where she stood she could see a thin slice of pale green between two tall buildings—the park. They had walked across the park that Sunday afternoon three weeks ago—she and John Lloyd; and then, because it was too raw and cold to sit on the benches and there was no sitting-room in Molly's lodging-house, they had taken refuge in the Museum. Behind a friendly statue of a Roman emperor they had sat while John Lloyd had told her about the appointment he was to get. And she had been perfectly happy just listening and watching the enthusiasm in his pleasant hazel eyes, letting her glance wander from his face to his lean young hands. Incredible that an afternoon could be so short.

And then dinner in a comfortable family restaurant on 125th Street, and afterward the walk back to her boarding-house.

That was when he had told her she was the first girl he had ever known he could really talk to. And he had put down her address so carefully in his notebook, both the boarding-house and Mr. Samuels' office. They had laughed a good deal, breathlessly, as they shook hands twice over, and it was understood without words that they would see each other many times before he left for Panama.

But two days later his cousin told her he had been suddenly called to Washington. And then not a word from him until she saw the bit in the paper about his sailing the first of May.

With a start, Molly withdrew her gaze from the strip of green.

"You must let me think it over, Mr. Humphry," she said faintly.

But Mr. Humphry insisted there was no time like the present. Suppose she let him stop on his way downtown to see about the license?

"You've got all the facts in hand," he persisted. "Why not make up your mind now? You—"

The telephone bell drowned out his words.

"It's for me, probably," said Molly. She took up the receiver, and that faint, incorrigible hope that would not be killed sprang alive in her heart. But—

"Mr. Samuels to speak to you, Miss Jaffer!"

"Yes, Mr. Samuels."

A strident buzz over the wire.

"But, Mr. Samuels, I'm doing the best I can. You know how it is the first of May. Everybody wanting everything at once—"

A long clamor. Molly listened, her face becoming whiter and a gleam coming into her eyes. Then suddenly she spoke crisply:

"That will do, Mr. Samuels. I don't want to listen to any more of that. If you don't like the way I'm running things, why don't you come down here and run them yourself?"

She hung up the receiver.

"I've gone perfectly crazy!" she thought. Then she suddenly laughed aloud at sight of Mr. Humphry's astonished face. Mr. Humphry made a move as if he would fain have taken her hand; but she backed into the little hall.

"They're all waiting for me. I must go," she cried. "No, no, please. I'11 give you my answer this noon, if I live through the morning."

And the hall door closed behind her.

A SHORT time after the closing of this door, the door of Mr. Samuels' office was besieged by a tall young man of an alert and cheerful countenance, who desired to know of the office-boy if Miss Jaffer was within. He was told that Miss Jaffer was not here to-day. If she was not at the Van Dyck she was prob'ly at the Swarthmore, or mebbe at the Kensington.

"Good Lord!" The young man looked at his watch. Then he exhibited a Coin. "Get 'em all on the telephone for me. Find out which one she's at. And do it quick, son."

Half an hour later he leaped from a taxicab at the door of the Van Dyck. He was beginning to look a little nervous now, and he consulted his watch twice

---

while he waited for Pauline to terminate a telephone conversation and attend to him.

"Miss Jaffer?" said Pauline at last languidly. "I'm sure I don't know where she is. Oh, yes; she's in the buildin' somewhere, but I can't say where." She yawned and did something to the back of her hair. "Oh, no, it's no use telephonin'. There's twenty-four apartments in this buildin'. I don't know which one she's in."

"How many floors are there?"

"Six," replied Pauline languidly.

Then she sat up and stared, for the young man was taking the first stairway two steps at a leap. On the second floor he looked about him. Fortunately, this was a smallish building; he could see all the doors of the four apartments at once. In the doorway of one a paper-hanger was exchanging conversation with a pirate. Two more pirates were scratching a side-board against the doorway of Apartment C. Miss Jaffer was in neither apartment. The young man rang the bell of Apartment A. No answer. He looked at his watch.

"By George, not much time!" he muttered, and wiped his forehead. Then he rang at Apartment B.

A stout lady in a boudoir cap came to the door:

"Miss Jaffer? Are you looking for her too? Well, so am I. I've been telephoning and telephoning downstairs. I've just got to find her. She promised to have my floors down to-day. I'm all torn up—"

She came out into the hall. The young man backed away.

"Are you going to look for her?" cried the lady in the boudoir cap. "Then I'll go with you. I've just got to find her. It's an outrage to keep me waiting, when I'm all torn up—"

The young man hastened up the stairs, with the confiding lady in the boudoir cap behind him. On the third floor they encountered a plaintive couple who desired much to tell Miss Jaffer that the persons in their apartment refused to give up the key till noon, and there was all their furniture in the van downstairs, and what should they do?

"You'd better hunt for her, the same as we're doing," volunteered the lady in the boudoir cap helpfully. "Don't you think so?"—to the young man.

The young man, who had been ringing hells rapidly and without results, laughed wildly. "Oh, sure! Follow the man from Cook's. I don't mind."

But he looked as if he would gladly have slain the lady in the boudoir cap as he charged up the next flight of stairs with a cue behind him.

At the top of this flight a plumber sat peacefully slumbering. As the procession would have passed him he started up industriously.

"Hi! Say—wh—where's somebody that knows somethin' about what wants doin' in this house? Here I'm wastin' my time hangin' around—"

"It's Miss Jaffer you want," offered the lady in the boudoir cap.

"Jaffer—Miss Jaffer—that's the name. She was to come up here and tell me—"

BUT what Miss Jaffer was to tell him the young man and his followers never knew: for at the name of Miss Jaffer, shouted in an aggrieved tone by the plumber, there rapidly descended the stairs two figures, both of them very pronounced as to hair, gestures, voices, and emotions. The sculptor still hugged his favorite figurine, and being evidently of the milder nature, he was a step behind the pianist; but he managed to tread on the pianist's heel as they both reached the level.

"Miss Jaffer—is she here?" they cried almost simultaneously.

"Love o' Mike!" the young man murmured. "Look what's after her now!"

He looked at his watch, then feverishly rang two bells. The lady in the boudoir cap, the plaintive couple, and the plumber surrounded the two troubled temperaments, who immediately, finding themselves with a sympathetic audience, threw themselves into a kind of syncopated duet, setting forth their grievances. The young man hesitated but an instant.

"If she isn't on this next floor, she's in the coal-cellar," he muttered, and put one foot to the lowest stair.

But the other foot never followed; for at that instant something startling happened to him. At the foot of the stairs was an open window. In front of this window he stood for the merest instant while he considered what to do next. But this interval was long enough for a hand to pluck at his coat behind, and a voice to whisper:

"Mr. Lloyd!"

He wheeled about, to behold around the edge of the window a blue eye and a forefinger pressed to a pair of scarlet lips. They were immediately withdrawn, but not before the forefinger had curved in a beckoning gesture.

MR. LLOYD glanced hastily at the group in the hall; then he put a leg over the window-sill, and found himself on an airy fire-escape. Pressed against the railing in a corner of this high perch was a young woman who looked as if she didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

"Did any one see you come out?" she whispered.

"No," he reassured her. "I take it you're not out here merely for the air?"

"Listen to that!" she admonished him, as the voices of the pianist and the sculptor rose higher.

Then suddenly she stiffened to a deeper attention. There had sounded above the din the clang of the elevator door; then immediately there boomed through the hall a strident voice of authority.

"Now then, now then, what's all this? Where's Miss Jaffer?" demanded the voice.

Molly Jaffer collapsed limply against the rail, and her eyes grew strained.

"Mr. Samuels!" she whispered, looking at the young man appealingly.

It appeared that John Lloyd was a man of action; for he instantly took her arm and drew her toward the ladder-like steps leading to the floor above. "Let's climb out of the barred zone," he said quietly.

Their flight did not end until they had climbed out of sight and hearing of the questioning ones below. Then they sat down on the window-ledge of a vacant apartment.

"Thought I'd never find you," said John Lloyd. "This appears to be your busy day. What—"

He stopped suddenly, peering sharply into her face. As the window was a narrow one, his position offered him facilities for a very good close-up of Molly's eyes.

"You've been crying!"

His tone was so shocked and the hand he suddenly put over hers was so sympathetic that Molly's lips quivered again.

"It's been such a horrible morning," she quavered. "I rented an apartment twice over. Then I lost control of myself, went clean crazy, and sassed Mr. Samuels. I'll lose my job, probably. And, besides all that, a man proposed to me."

"The devil! I beg your pardon. Did you accept him?"

"I'm to let him know at noon." Molly sighed and gazed off over the roof-tops. "I don't much care what becomes of me."

"Is he—do you—are you fond of him?" John Lloyd had great difficulty with this question.

Molly twisted herself around and met his eyes with tragic gloom in hers.

"He's in the cold-storage business. I think he's about ninety or a hundred. But I'm sure he has a kind heart. Anyway, he couldn't treat me any worse than old Samuels does." Then she smiled with determined brightness. "But let's not talk about me. So you're on your way to Panama?"

He glanced at his watch. "I am, and there isn't much time, either. Look here—why didn't you answer my letter?"

Molly's eyes became perfectly round.

"I never got it! Oh, how dreadful!" John Lloyd groaned.

"The criminal carelessness of the post-office department! It was an important letter, too. I said—some things in that letter—"

He paused, visibly embarrassed.

"Yes?" Molly prompted him softly.

---

"Oh, hang it all!" he burst out. "Molly, I want to kiss you, but there's an old lady over there in that window looking at us. And there's no time to lose. If she'd only look the other way—"

"I think she's near-sighted," whispered Molly.

There ensued a long silence on the fire-escape. The old lady stared, scandalized. She was so old that she was in the enjoyment of what is known as second sight. But the two on the window-ledge did not know it.

SPRING had come indeed. It breathed softly even on fire-escapes and over dingy roofs where the debris of winter had collected. John Lloyd's face was close to Molly's.

"Thank God I found you, you sweet little thing!" he said.

Silence again on the fire-escape. The old lady almost fell out of her window. Then suddenly John Lloyd rose and pulled Molly to her feet.

"We must get out of here in a hurry. There are a lot of things we have to do before that boat leaves. We'll take a taxi and skid down to City Hall for the license,—that's the most important,—and then we'll fly up to your house so you can grab a few things—"

Molly's hands went up to her breast, and her eyes, like those of the character in the fairy tale, became as large as mill-stones.

"Do you mean that you're going to take me with you?" she gasped.

She looked so radiantly incredulous that John Lloyd's throat tightened. With great tenderness he put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a little shake.

"Do you think I'd leave my wife behind—such a brand-new wife?"

They raised the window and reconnoitered. The upper hall was empty. They entered by the window, and rang the elevator bell. Molly drew a quivering breath of anxiety.

"The old thing sticks every little while," she said.

But after what seemed an hour it lumbered up, with Oscar at the helm.

"Oh, Oscar, I'm glad it's you," cried Molly. "Don't stop for anybody, will you, Oscar?"

"Take us to the ground floor in one swoop, Oscar," added John Lloyd, pressing a stimulating green bit of paper into a black-and-tan palm. They started to glide downward. The bell at the fourth floor rang long and violently.

"Oh, Oscar, don't stop, don't stop, don't stop!" Molly prayed.

"If you stop, Oscar, I'll knock your block off," breathed John Lloyd.

Oscar showed the whites of his eyes.

"It's Mr. Samuels," he murmured. "But I'm quittin', anyhow."

AS they ambled past the fourth floor they had a cinematographic picture of Mr. Samuels, with a background of discontented tenants.

"Did you find her, Oscar?" he was bellowing. "Did you find Miss Jaffer? Hey, stop! I want to go down. I want to—"

His voice grew fainter. The turbulent voices of poor wretches who were not going to be married and go to Panama, who did not even know that spring had come, who were merely moving out or moving in, swelled or grew fainter as the elevator passed downward.

Molly felt a pang of exquisite pity for them. She looked up at John Lloyd with eyes that were tenderly shining.

"I shall always love the first of May," she said.

Her Own Business

Continued from page 7

"Very well Mr. Rouss, and thank you," she replied quietly.

Rouss did not go out. He lingered at the doorway, fumbling his watch-fob.

"There was something else, Miss Farnum," he began. "I don't know exactly how to express it—"

"Has it to do with the business?"

"No-o. No; it is something else—"

"Then, Mr. Rouss," she returned, "don't you think we might let it go over till after this other thing is settled? And particularly as you are not yet quite able to express it—?"

The last was a bit cruel. It would have been crueler if Rouss had caught the meaning. He was too intent upon his own brilliant plans. For reply he murmured something assentingly incoherent, and fell through the doorway in his too great desire to make a dignified exit. He went to the telephone and called Gaston in Regina, six miles away.

"It's all right!" he announced. "First thing in the morning, Mr. Gaston! I'll meet you at the station."

At about the same time Miss Farnum was calling Hyatt on the telephone.

"It's arranged for the first thing in the morning, at my office," she told him. "You'll be in by nine, won't you? Good night—Edwin."

A few minutes later Mrs. Farnum was called to the telephone. "The thing is done, Mrs. Farnum," came Rouss's jubilant voice. "Your daughter is to meet the representatives of the Trust to-morrow morning."

"Splendid, Mr. Rouss!" said Elizabeth's mother.

THERE was a cold rain falling next morning. Gaston and his secretary, who rashly attempted to motor to Farnumville, discovered what a mountain autumn rain was like. The chauffeur lost his way, ditched the car in the clay mud two miles from Farnumville depot, and Gaston and his companion walked the rest of the way. They staggered into the Escutcheon office, drenched.

When they arrived, the other three conferees were seated in Miss Farnum's office, with a dense silence in progress. Rouss was nervous, and irritated by Hyatt's presence.

Hyatt, absolutely at sea in respect to the part he was expected to play at the conference, contented himself with sundry surreptitious glances at Elizabeth.

Gaston greeted Elizabeth—they had met before—with graceful cordiality, and introduced his secretary, Thornbush. Then he began:

"Miss Farnum, I understand now the real reason why you have decided to talk over the disposal of your properties. It's because, every time you use your car, you run the risk of getting drowned."

Elizabeth shoved a transient smile.

"This gentleman," continued Gaston, nodding at Hyatt, "is a new attorney, Miss Farnum? I rather thought Barstow & Riall handled your affairs."

"No. Mr. Hyatt is—or was—our advertising manager. I haven't spoken to my attorneys. I don't think that will be necessary, Mr. Gaston."

Gaston raised his eyebrows a trifle at the mention of Hyatt's position, then went on: "I think you should have been represented by counsel. However, the preliminaries can be disposed of properly, I suppose, without him. Miss Farnum, to be very brief, the Universal has several times made you a generous offer for your interests. I now understand that you have decided to accept. I think you do well. Your father would have done well to join us, too. He would have had a high place in our organization now. But that was his own business. He made a beautiful paper. We want the highest grade writing paper in the world—we who make all grades. If you have been held back by the fear that we might lower the quality—"

"Mr. Gaston," Elizabeth interrupted, speaking a little tremulously at first, "that is not the reason I did not want to sell. It wasn't the reason my father had for not selling, either. I know what my father thought. He knew he would not be happy anywhere else except with his own business; and he had a loyalty toward the men who had helped him to make the business, too. And I have—yes, I have even now, though they quit me as they did at—at somebody's bidding.

"I came into the office to see whether I could love father's work as he did. I found I could. But, with one exception, —Mr. Hyatt, here,—nobody wanted me to stay. My mother didn't like it; my friends, my acquaintances, laughed and sneered at me; I couldn't have gone on if it hadn't been for—well, perhaps my own stubbornness helped. To be laughed at is bad enough; to be cornered and made to sell is worse. And that's what has happened to me. I don't blame you, Mr. Gaston, for your part. You had your work to do. You were to watch for the time when things were difficult for me—"

"Oh, no; I beg of you—"

"Oh, yes. I know. Well, I was angry with you—with you all—last night. Now I feel like apologizing for bringing you here on a fool's errand. Because, really, you are wasting your time here."

"You haven't changed your mind?" burst out Gaston.

"About selling? No. How can I? Everybody, everything, forces me to it. I shall sell. Yes. And the reason is, I have found something bigger and better for me even than business. But I shall not sell to the Universal. I have made other arrangements."

Rouss stared at Elizabeth. Gaston stared at Rouss. There was a deadly pause, during which Hyatt turned inquiringly to Miss Farnum, and saw her raise a hand warningly in his direction.

"Other arrangements," parroted Gaston. It was obvious that his quick, practised mind was speeding. "I don't quite see—you mean to some independent manufacturer?"

"To an independent?" smiled Elizabeth. "Why, I suppose you might say he is an independent. At least, he is independent of the Universal. There is no mystery about it at all. I am going to sell my entire paper interests to Mr. Hyatt."

The announcement produced upon the four men varying results. Gaston seemed least perturbed and surprised of all. He was too much used to successes and failures to be upset even over this deal.

The words fell on Hyatt's ears with little force, and left him simply in a dazed condition of asking himself whether his hearing had gone wrong.

ROUSS bent forward, almost in acrouching attitude, staring at Hyatt. Then, recovering himself, he leaned back and forced a laugh.

"Why, Miss Farnum," he said, "you're just having fun with us, aren't you?"

"You have never seen me posing as a humorist here, Mr. Rouss!"

"By no means; I meant—"

Gaston was shrewd enough to make the next move. He rose, reached for his water-soaked hat, and said:

"Miss Farnum is obviously serious, Mr. Rouss. I don't know the circumstances; but I must say, I congratulate the young man. Permit me, Mr. Hyatt!"

Hyatt jumped up. It occurred to him that he had better act like the new owner of Escutcheon, even if it was burlesque. He shook hands solemnly with Gaston and his secretary. Rouss did not rise.

"Well," Gaston was saying cheerily, "I hope Johnson has dug a canal for that car of ours by this time. It is—"

The trust representative was interrupted by a stout rap at the door—a big-knuckled rap, artisan-size and shape. And the next moment, without waiting for invitation, a big, wild-eyed, red-faced man, whose corn-colored pompadour hair bristled like quills, pushed his way in.

"I beg pardon, Miss," he roared. "I did not like to indrude, but I am afraid you vill nod see me oderwise. I vill nod dake but a moment of your dime. I vish to dell you dis man Rouss iss a grook! Ach, yes—a grook. He make a fool of me, and he make a fool of you also!"

"Thornbush!" said Gaston very distinctly, "we must be going."

"I'll go with you as far as the station," said Rouss, jumping up hurriedly. "As for you, Schopp, you get out of here, or I'll have you arrested! Miss Farnum, I'll call a man and have him throw this fellow out."

"Indeed not," was the reply. "Calm yourself, Mr. Schopp, and sit down. Tell me all about it. Mr. Rouss, I wish you to stay a few moments."

"But this fellow is crazy," snarled Rouss. "He'll do somebody harm if you let him go on. I told him this morning—"

"Yah, you dold me diss morning!" echoed Schopp. "Veil, vot did you dell me? Dat I needn't gome to work, yah! You gome to me two veeks ago and dell me you are sympadizer wit' us labor' man. I am de man to start a strike—yes?—to get more wages for all de poor boys. You dell me diss man Hyatt, he stant out against us, bud you vill see ever't'ing settled nice. Yah! I dold you—"

"Mr. Schopp, you don't mean that!" cried Elizabeth, turning pale.

"He's a liar," ground out Rouss. "Schopp, you get out of here. I did use the fool, Miss Farnum, but I used him for your benefit. Let me tell you—"

"You needn't tell me, Mr. Rouss," said the young woman wearily. "Mr. Hyatt is the new owner. You'll have to tell him. Mr. Schopp, this is Mr. Hyatt. Tell him all about it. He is now the owner—understand?—he owns these plants. I'm sure he will be fair to you all."

She came close to Hyatt and whispered:

"You must deal with them, Edwin. I haven't any energy left. I'm going up in the rag room and watch the girls. Do be generous to both of them. And when you are alone again, telephone for me."

HALF an hour afterward Hyatt and Miss Farnum were together again. The first thing Hyatt said was:

"Now, dear, what in the world does all this mean? I'll be a qualified actor before I get through. I've been talking with Schopp just as if I were really the owner. How long am I to maintain this pose?"

"First tell me," she replied, "what Schopp had to say."

Hyatt looked serious.

"It's an ugly story," he replied. "I wouldn't want to prejudge Rouss, but if Schopp is telling the truth it looks very bad. As near as I can find out, Rouss got Schopp to instigate the strike—at the same time playing this other man from New York against the poor old fellow. When the time came, the New York man threw up his hands, advised the men to go back to work and wait for terms. They lost heart, of course, and came back, as he advised. Poor Schopp was frozen out. Rouss just fired him and one or two of his friends in cold blood."

"The scoundrel! Did Rouss hear Schopp tell you all this?"

"Rouss didn't wait. He shook his fist at me as he went out the door, and said something about going with some people who appreciated a real man."

"I hope he does," sighed Elizabeth. "I had no idea he would do a thing like that. I suppose Gaston will find him a place. But what about Schopp? Surely you'll take him back, won't you?"

Hyatt laughed uneasily.

"I take him back?" he answered. "Am I still supposed to be the new owner? I told Schopp I should do all I could for him. Please tell me your plans. I'm up in the air entirely."

"You are going to buy me out, Edwin," she said briefly.

"But that's preposterous," he replied. "Buy you out? Why, dear girl, have I ever said anything to lead you to believe that I could buy out anybody? Honestly, you make me blush, because I never realized before how poverty-stricken I am. How could I buy you out?"

"I am going to lend you the money. I am going to sell to you for eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I will lend you that amount. I shall want six per cent. interest. I am frightfully business-like, Edwin. I spent two hours with my lawyer, Mr. Riall, last night. I told him

---

the scheme. He thought it was a good one, provided you were the right man. I told him I was very sure you were the right man. I told him that, dear, and never smiled. Please never wear a tie of any color but dark blue, Edwin. Yes, like that you have on. I told Mr. Riall that I had watched carefully and selected you out of a large number of men, as the ideal proprietor of Escutcheon. That was a fib, Edwin, but it sounded very—progressive, I dare say. Please, Mr. Hyatt, will you buy a paper company? Oh, my dear, I'm getting positively silly, am I not? But can you blame me, after all this fuss and feathers? Come, I've told them all you are going to buy me out! You won't go back on me, will you?"

"I—I'm stunned!" breathed Hyatt. "Dear girl, I don't know what to say! There doesn't seem to be anything to say. I am to be the manager—"

"No! You are to be the owner!"

"Very well. The owner of Escutcheon. But, Elizabeth, I don't know that I'm capable of taking hold like this. You may be risking your money foolishly. It might be better to sell to those other people. Then, at least, you'd be in no danger of loss—"

"Dear boy!" she interrupted. "You don't think half well enough of your ability. I am really very canny, Edwin, because I know this is a good investment. But, even if you should lose everything, you'd lose gloriously—and perhaps, perhaps that would bring us even nearer together than success. And I shall be so very happy, watching everything you do! For I want to share, you know, as a silent partner. I do hope you'll make some blunders—so that we can work them out together, like a big human puzzle.

"You've mentioned lots and lots of things you wanted to do for the workers—things that would be good for them and good for the company—not hare-brained philanthropic notions, but real ideas for human efficiency. Now is your chance. You do those things! There is no Rouss to stand in your way now; not even an Elizabeth Farnum to say 'no'—and I'm just wild to see what will happen! Aren't you—the least bit glad, Edwin?"

Hyatt passed a hand across his eyes. The door of the world had opened, and he was being beckoned in. New work, new responsibility, new opportunity was calling. But he wasn't thinking, because he couldn't think of those things just now. She who had come into his heart, and made it hers, was standing before him. She was not showering him with benefits so much as she was giving him the chance to conquer. She had cleverly done everything possible to annihilate the distance that once lay between them. And, in the bargain, she was giving, with a mature and womanly surrender, herself. In a swift moment he had caught her in his arms.

"It was you I wanted—just you, sweetheart!" he told her. "Without all this, I am far too rich!"

She raised her face to him.

OUTSIDE, a big car purred up to the curbing, and continued to purr with that correct, subdued sound which can be obtained only from expensive machinery.

"My mother!" cried Elizabeth, gliding from the young fellow, and hastening to the glass with fingers outspread to repair rumples.

There was no question about it. Somebody was rustling up the stairs—rustling just as expensively as the motor-car was purring outside. The tread was uncertain and cautious, as if the owner feared to put even a gloved hand upon the well worn rail. Then the door opened.

"Well, my dear!" began Mrs. Nathan Farnum.

She stopped, seeing Hyatt. It was evident that it was not Hyatt she expected to see there. But she went on, after appraising the young man carelessly:

"I suppose it is all settled, Beth! You should have told your mother! I shouldn't have known, except—"

"It is all settled, mother," was the reply. "That is, if you mean that I have sold. I suppose that is what you mean."

Mrs. Farnum was ecstatically happy. She placed a fragrant maternal kiss upon the mouth of her daughter.

"My dear," she went on, "I was sure you would see it my way. You must come right home with me. I have such huge plans."

WITH a roguish smile, Elizabeth Farnum took her mother by one hand, at the same time reaching out her other hand toward Hyatt.

"Mother," she announced, "this is Mr. Hyatt, you know. He has bought the plants from me."

"Mr. Hyatt!" exclaimed the older woman, with pardonable surprise. "Mr. Hyatt! I thought—"

"You thought I had sold to the Universal. But I decided to sell to Mr. Hyatt, who is a much more eligible buyer, from my point of view."

Mrs. Farnum was concerned only with the sale. That being a fact, she was not disposed to worry her unclear mind any further. She thought it rather strange that a young man who had been advertising manager should graduate with this celerity, but she was not inclined to argue the matter.

"I congratulate you, Mr. Hyatt!" she said sweetly.

"Yes, mother," went on Elizabeth; "and I have some other news for you, too. Mr. Hyatt has asked me to be his wife, and I have promised. You see, mother, this has been a very important day for me."

Mrs. Farnum dropped her hand-bag upon the table, threw back her head, looked twice each at her daughter and Hyatt; then, being unpersuaded, she had recourse to her lorgnette, and looked at each twice through the glass.

"My dear Elizabeth!" she said. "What—do you mean? Not—really?"

"Yes, really, mother."

Mrs. Nathan Farnum rose to the occasion brilliantly. True, she had to rise brilliantly or not at all. But, considering the fact that she was barely aware of Edwin Hyatt's existence, it was rather a shock to have him handed to her as a son-in-law at sight.

Two considerations prevented Julia Farnum from weeping, fainting, or being in any other form un-Spartan and un-patrician. One was that, as she looked steadily, at Hyatt for a few seconds, she observed something in him that gave her courage to meet the test; the other was that, for some years past, becoming better and better acquainted with her daughter's character, Mrs. Farnum had braced herself for—anything.

The elegant lady stepped forward two steps toward Hyatt, who emerged from his corner with weakness in his knees and misgivings in his soul. She extended a hand to him, saying, "I congratulate you again, Mr. Hyatt. Elizabeth, I shall have to ask you his given name."

"Edwin," replied Elizabeth, stuffing a corner of her handkerchief against her mouth to keep from shouting.

"Edwin!" went on the mother, "I ask you an important question, first of all. It isn't about your family or yourself, though I'm bound to say I should like to know many things. It's simply this: After—you are married—is this office going to be yours or—or—hers?"

"Mine," replied Hyatt promptly.

The older woman sighed.

"Mind you stick to that!" she said. "I am relieved. The car is waiting; let us all go home. All three."

The End

The Blue Aura

Continued from page 5

had had her meal, and now she was under an obligation for it to this other man, this most repulsive man. She did not know whether Tyson was coming back or not. What should she say to Turco—how rid herself of him?

HE, on his part, also seemed embarrassed. He sat with his oddly wrinkled brow and deep-set little eyes blinking at her as if she, not he, were the curious one, the novelty in human flesh. She felt that no man had ever looked at her in that way before.

What was he thinking? If he would only remove his hateful scrutiny!

Suddenly he spoke, and what he said was so unexpected that she experienced a great shock:

"Excuse me, little miss, but I was looking at your aura."

In an indefinite way Dora had heard of auræ. They were nebulous somethings of different colors that formed an atmosphere about one. Blue was a good color. It meant love and fortune. The girls who visited soothsayers said so.

With the shock came also a sense of relief, because she had discovered what Turco was thinking of when he sat gazing at her so strangely. She flashed her brilliant, fierce smile on him. A lock of hair fell forward over her eyes, giving her the daring gamin expression that was her greatest charm.

"My aura? Is it blue?"

He shook his head.

Not blue? A disappointment, rather. She was wistful, interested all at once.

"Can you tell fortunes?" she asked abruptly.

Again he shook his head.

"No—I can only see the future."

"But that is telling fortunes! What do you see in my future?"

His reply filled her with foreboding: "Myself—and two others."

She laughed awkwardly.

"You! I don't think!" There was no mistaking the contemptuous sneer, but Turco sat firm under it.

"Myself—and two others. But myself first, little miss," he said gently.

"Go on!" Dora jeered. "I'm more interested in the others. Who are they?"

He inclined his head toward the side of the cafe where Tyson had gone. "One of them is that boy, and the other—"

"Yes, yes! I am more interested still in the other."

"The other is a gentleman, little miss," he asserted solemnly.

"And which of you am I going to love?" Dora asked in a tone of raillery.

As she became used to the curious creature in his baggy clothes and flaming red neck-tie, he took on more human qualities. It was his voice that did it—the sweet, melancholy voice with no uneducated rough notes in it.

"You will love all three of us," he said; "but in different ways, perhaps."

Dora laughed uneasily.

"An exciting future for me!"

"No—for us," Turco said.

"You annoy me!" she exclaimed. "What right have you to—oh, well, never mind!" she broke off suddenly, curiosity getting the better of her.

The situation was all the more uncanny because since yesterday evening, when she had first met Tyson,—passed him in the corridor,—she had felt that he, at least, would play some part in her life. And she had dreaded the part he might play.

Now was come the strange partner seeing an aura about her. For some unknown reason, she had more faith in him than in those who told fortunes for shillings and half-crowns.

"Go on—tell me some more," she commanded, leaning her elbows on the table and facing him confidentially.

"But I don't want to annoy you, little miss."

"You don't, really. I didn't mean anything. What color is my aura, if it isn't blue?" She still hoped it would prove to be blue.

"It is brilliant—like a rainbow, little miss."

"Oh! Is that good? There ought to be a pot of money at the end of it. Is there?"

"What do you want with a pot of money?" he asked rather fiercely.

IN her silence he read her answer. Suddenly he dived into his pocket, took out his handful of golden coins, and slapped them on to the table.

"If you need money, there it is. Take what you want. Why do you hesitate?"

Tyson was coming back. Dora saw him get up and say his farewells.

She did need money. It would be impossible to live through the next ten days without it.

All at once she ceased to feel afraid of Turco. It was his handsome, boyish partner she feared.

"Yes, yes; take what you want," Turco urged, as if he read her tortured mind.

Her hand went out and pocketed a sovereign. He swept up the rest, and by the time Tyson had crossed the room the table between them was clear.

To be continued next week

A Letter from Mrs. Burnett

Do you know, I should like to place myself on record with regard to Every Week in these its early days? I read so few magazines, because most of them seem to limp after each other in such weary imitations. Yours, despite its tender youth, walks quite firmly in a path of its own, and I like to follow it.

It is a vigorous little thing, with clear young vision and a view which reaches far on all sides. I wholly believe in its continued and broadening good fortune.

Yours sincerely,FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.

How Can I Borrow a Little Money?

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

THESE questions are typical of many that frequently come to this magazine. The first question is the most interesting and important, because it is most fundamental. The answer is, you can't do it. You can not borrow money from a bank without security.

A bank lends to a business man—let us say, a coal dealer or a builder; and, while the bank does not actually take the coal to store in its vaults or the builder's tools and lumber, yet the bank usually has some sort of claim upon these material things, and that is its security. Of course the bank will lend upon direct security in its possession, such as bonds or stocks, and it will lend upon mortgages in some cases, or even in a few cases upon a life-insurance policy. The bank considers the man's income, character, and other personal affairs, but it must have something besides that. Security is sometimes waived if two indorsements can be obtained; but they must be indorsements of responsible business men well known to the bank. Moreover, such loans are made only to depositors.

Until recently the country was overrun with loan sharks, unscrupulous money-lenders who lent without security, but often charged more in interest than the amount of the loan. These were the chief resort of the very small wage-earning borrowers. The Russell Sage Foundation, through its division of Remedial Loans and other agencies of reform, has fought this evil most successfully.

For one thing, there are now thirty-eight cities in twenty-four States that have remedial or semi-philanthropic loan societies. These are operated by prominent and public-spirited men on the basis of definitely limited dividends. In New York City, by way of illustration, there is the Provident Loan Society, the Hebrew Free Loan Society, the Chattel Loan Society, and a number of others. The Morris Plan banks, while different in many respects, are similar, in that well known and public-spirited men are connected with them.

None of these semi-philanthropic small-loan societies are able to lend at low rates of interest. At the very lowest they must charge 12 per cent. a year (there is only one, I believe, that charges so little), and most of them charge from 24 to 36 per cent. a year. The high rate is absolutely necessary, because, unlike banks, they have no deposits to lend, and must depend solely on their own capital. All these semi-philanthropic societies are obliged either to take a chattel mortgage upon furniture, or else to secure two indorsements of responsible parties.

While the semi-philanthropic concern is a great improvement over the loan shark, the real way out for a wage-earner who needs to borrow is to become a member of a credit union. Being a cooperative enterprise, and having deposits to lend, the credit union operates on a far cheaper basis than a private loan enterprise, even though the latter is conceived in a spirit of philanthropy. Any small group of men and women having a common bond can form a credit union under the laws of New York, Massachusetts, and numerous other States. The members should either all live in the same neighborhood, or have a common occupation or other interest. If they all live near one another, or work for the same firm, belong to the same church, club, labor union, school district, or grange, they are fitted to form a credit union.

Each member buys one or more shares in the union on the weekly instalment plan, each share having a par value of $5. Proceeds are used for loans to members desiring the same. The interest charged is not allowed by law in New York to be more than 12 per cent. a year, and often is much less. No security whatever is required, but the borrower must obtain the indorsement of one or two fellow members. It is a fundamental principle of credit unionism that the loan must be of benefit to the borrower—that is, effect a saving, add to his working efficiency, or supply an urgent need. Those who desire further information about credit unions can secure all the printed directions from the Russell Sage Foundation, 130 Bast Twenty-second Street, New York City.

Answering the last question, it may be said that no good reason presents itself for doubting the safety of the 5 per cent. $100 bonds sold by the Morris Plan banks.

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

The Railway Investors' League, of which Mr. John Muir is chairman has been incorporated as a membership corporation under the laws of the State of New York. The organization is taking an active part in the movement to secure higher rates for the railroads. Descriptive circulars may be obtained on application to P. M. Whelan, secretary, 61 Broadway, New York.

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

The Key, a monthly magazine published by R. H. Woods & Co., 128 Broadway, New York, contains quotations and information about high-grade bond investments in $100, $500, and $1000 denominations. An excellent and helpful publication for those who above all want to invest safely with an interest return of 4 per cent. to 6 per cent. Copy sent upon request. Ask for booklet 2.

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.

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.

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

Some very interesting literature regarding 6 per cent. farm mortgages on improved Montana farm land is being issued by Phelps-Eastman Co., Investment Bankers, McKnight Building, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Copy sent free of charge on request.

The Odd Lot Review, published weekly, summarizes financial conditions in terse, readable form in a style to meet the need of the small as well as large investor. Sample copy 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., No. 111 Broadway, New York, for their statistical books on Copper Stocks, Motor Stocks, Standard Oil Stocks, Investor's Guide (270 pages), or Weekly Market Letter. This firm will mail you any one of these books free on request. Partial-Payment Plan.

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 Financial 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 financial booklet, "Making Your Money Work for You"? It is written especially for our readers, and if you will write him, inclosing five cents in stamps, at 381 Fourth Avenue, New York, he will send you a copy.