Travel Around a Bit This Summer and See the Country You're Fighting For

"A PURITAN," says Gilbert Chesterton, "meant originally a man whose mind had no holidays."

The Puritan left us many good things—a finer idealism, a more exalted conception of duty. But he also left us our most lurid and unpleasant picture of hell. And I think his lack of holidays must have had something to do with that.

The most successful men whom I know happen also to be those who take the most vacations. I used to think they had vacations because they were successful and could afford them: I have come more and more to think that they are successful because they have vacations—that the success is the reward of the vacation, not the vacation the reward of success.

Their jobs are forever new to them: they are constantly being born again: always they are on the threshold of life, attacking its problems with keen appetites and rested minds.

I met an old woman down in the Kentucky mountains who had never been ten miles from the place where she was born. She had never seen a railroad train or Niagara Falls or a comic opera or the Grand Callon.

She had a very comfortable self-righteousness.

She told me that she "thanked God she had never played pitch nor rode straddle."

We are all, by nature, more or less like that old woman.

Our temptation is to settle down inside our little restricted horizons and thank God, like the Pharisee, that we are not as other men.

One of the great dangers in a country as big as this lies in the natural occurrence of that provincial spirit.

It is very easy for the man on the Western plains to thank God that he is not like those wicked New Yorkers. Very easy for the man on Broadway to get into the habit of picking at the Middle West because it is more interested in the price of wheat than in the number of Germany's submarines.

When the question of annexing territory after the Spanish War was raised; Tom Reed declared himself against annexation. He said he "already had more native land than he could possibly love."

All of us have more native land than we can love, unless we make a real effort to enlarge our sympathies—unless we travel enough to know the other fellow's points of interest and his point of view.

Viewed from this angle, a certain amount of travel becomes almost a patriotic duty: for there never was a time when we needed more to think nationally than right now.

By travel I mean something more than merely getting on a train.

There are men who have ridden around the world many times who have never really traveled at all. They remember Omaha as the place where the waiter spilled the soup, and Constantinople as the city where they couldn't get any decent cheese.

One must free his mind from business, and hold it open to new impressions.

Even such a great man as St. Paul could never do this.

He moved about the world a great deal, doing a lot of good to the countries he visited : but the countries did very little good to him.

He passed through some of the finest scenery in the world, but his writings give no indication of it.

Apparently he never saw the mountains he was passing, or the rivers, or the sunsets. He covered a lot of territory, but he was not a good traveler.

Put aside your work and worries this summer and do a bit of traveling.

If you are a real traveler, you will find out that there are more good people in the world than you had any idea; that there are other good ways of doing things besides the way in which you have always done them: that there are at least two sides to every question, and sometimes three or four.

And you will come back refreshed and eager to the job that looked better and better the farther you got away from it.

THE COUNTRY WE'RE FIGHTING FOR

SPEEDING UP THE STORE

By FORREST CRISSEY

IN the first year of their fight to get a toe-hold in the mercantile life of the Illinois town here their country store is located, the "Patrick Boys" did a total business of only a little more than a thousand dollars a month. Their trade for the year just passed touched the eighty thousand point—and that in a town of only two thousand inhabitants.

There is nothing unusual about the town or the country surrounding it; nothing particularly advantageous about the location of the store. Most young men, finding themselves with a store on their hands in such a little town, would have considered the case impossible. But the Patrick Boys believed that the proper kind of enthusiasm put into any proposition, anywhere, would produce success. They started first with the clerks in the store.

Regular meetings of the force were instituted right away; and at one of the first of them the senior partner said: "Now; boys, I want each one of you to go through the stock and make a list of any articles that seem to you to be moving too slow."

Before he had gone through half of the lists that resulted, and heard the comment of the clerks upon them, young Patrick realized that he had "started something." While some of the suggestions offered as to the movement of slow goods did not wholly meet his own judgment, he decided that it was better worth while to let a clerk make a mistake than to take a chance of chilling his initiative. So he said to his helpers:

"I'm going to give each of you a good, square chance to back up his judgment and put his plan over, just as if he owned the whole store. Each of you has his own customers and his own circle of friends. Beginning two weeks from to-day, we are going to have a series of week-end special sales; and the first will be Jim's sale, and will be so advertised. He is to select the articles to be used as leaders, and fix the prices at which they will be sold. He will write the advertising, and will personally arrange the window and counter displays.

"But there is one thing that we must clearly understand at the start: this is no narrow-gage contest between clerks for a personal popularity medal. Naturally, every one of you will hustle to get out all his friends when his own week is on; but the cooperation that each of you gives to the other fellow when the other fellow is having his week is going to count for just as much and perhaps a little more, in the eyes of my brother and myself, as will a big record for his own week. Now, go to it on that understanding!"

Special Sales Conducted by Clerks

JIM picked as his leader about the most hopeless article that he could find in the store. The season for putting up home-made preserves had been under way long enough, at that time, to demonstrate very clearly that, owing to the increased price of sugar, the housewives of the community were holding off in the matter of putting up fruit. A month before, based on the expectations of a normal demand, the store had bought a quantity of the best quality of can rubbers, and there was every indication that about two thirds of them would still be in stock when the home canning season was closed.

Owing to the unusual quantity involved in the purchase, these can rubbers had been bought very closely. Jim decided that a cut in price which would simply absorb the extra margin secured by good buying would prove a sufficient attraction to make the goods move. Of course, there were other leaders for Jim's week; but he put the emphasis on can rubbers.

The sale opened Thursday, because the local newspaper appeared that day. Jim worked nearly all Wednesday night arranging his display. In the preceding issue of the paper he had had one preliminary advertisement, and he had passed the word along to all his personal friends that he was anxious to make his week the success of the store.

The procession of customers that crowded the store from Thursday noon until Saturday night demonstrated two things very conclusively: first, that Jim was a popular young man in the community; second, that the success of his sale was altogether too big to be accounted for on the score of personal popularity alone, and that most of it must be accredited to the soundness of his judgment in selecting his leaders and fixing their prices, and to the effectiveness of the merchandising methods that he brought into play.

When the door of the store was closed late that Saturday night, they had sold eighty gross of can rubbers. The sale had brought a number of new customers into the store, and the volume of business done was of almost record-breaking proportions. Jim didn't forget to thank the other clerks for the loyalty with which they had cooperated. Tom had the next turn, and Jim worked just as hard to make Tom's week a success as he had to score hard when his own name was heading the advertising.

In the course of this experiment, which spread over about six or seven weeks, some of the "clerks discovered that their judgment on certain articles and the prices at which they could be moved was decidedly faulty. On the whole, however, the plan of giving each clerk a week in which to show how far and fast he could go in the role of running the store was a decided success. Not only did it speed up sales, but it distinctly increased the team-work spirit of the force.

Making Use of the Show Windows

JOHN HAAKENSON owns a country store in Wisconsin. It isn't a big store, but the percentage of its profit in proportion to the amount of business it does would make many a bigger merchant show envy. John got his training in one of the old-fashioned country stores, where the merchant knew very little about his costs, gave altogether too much credit, and complained that "a man couldn't get more than a decent living out of a country store." The day came when the local bank had to take over a store across the street. John went to the banker and arranged to buy the store in at a low price.

There then began such a show of speed as that section had never witnessed in a country store. The show windows, which had before been used to house bunches of speckled fruit and wilted vegetables, were painted, and dressed each week with something very seasonable and very appetizing—one week an attractive display of tea. with a card telling something about the history of tea; later, a display of dried fruits, with pictures of the sections where the fruits grew; and, again, a display of macaroni cooked in tempting forms, with signs to point out the nutritive value of macaroni and its usefulness in fighting the rise in the cost of living.

With the problem of the show windows solved, John turned his attention to the clerks. People who complain at the woebegone and generally ambitionless demeanor of country grocery clerks should take into account the fact that the average rate of pay for clerks is about twelve dollars a week. John knew that ambitious, live clerks can increase sales: and he couldn't possibly figure out how a man with a family to support can be either very live or very ambitious on twelve dollars a week. He began raising salaries among his clerks, rewarding good work before the worker thought to ask for it, pushing the pay-roll up, until to-day there is not a clerk in the store that does not get at least twenty dollars a week.

It was ruinous, said John's competitors. No country store could stand it. But they didn't understand: they didn't realize that John was running on high speed, while they were plowing along on low. Many things are possible on high speed that can't be done on low. John knew his costs to the last fraction: he was using his windows, using the enthusiasm of his men, and especially using the brains of every man who came to sell him goods.

"Basket Sample Day"

No drummer ever escaped from that store without yelding John an idea as to how his sales might be increased. One day a drummer suggested a "basket sample day."

The general plan was to advertise a special "cash and carry" day on which a market basket of manufacturers' samples would be given free to every customer who bought a dollar's worth of goods, to be paid for in cash and earned away by the purchaser. Other country merchants had tried the plan, simply filling the baskets with everything the manufacturers were willing to give away. John went at it differently. He planned every item to go into the basket, and carefully considered its future trade-building possibilities. His aim was to have nothing in that basket that would not be a business-getter.

Then, of course, he made his selection of samples with an eye to giving as great a variety as possible. From the house of the salesman who gave him the suggestion he received four hundred quarter-pound packages of a high-quality tea. A big milling concern contributed an equal number of five-pound bags of flour, while a syrup concern sent three hundred small cans of its product.

Almost every manufacturer of grocery package goods was represented in that basket. In order to emphasize its appeal to the housewife, John secured four hundred neat aprons with pockets—and certain makers of woodenware contributed clothespins with which to stuff those pockets, ready for wash day. The exact retail value of the contents of that basket was $1.10.

The "cash and carry" day was one of the biggest that this

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"And did those baskets build trade?" exclaimed the drummer who suggested the plan. "Did they! Well, say, I can't speak for any of the other things that went into the basket, but I do know definitely about what the plan did to trade in the brand of tea of which we gave him four hundred samples. It simply multiplied it by five; and John has not only been able to hold this remarkable gain, but to increase it gradually ever since. Many other goods in that sample basket had much the same history.

"No merchant, however, should jump to the conclusion that a basket of any old samples shot over the counter and then forgotten will do the same work. For a month or more after the basket day you might hear a clerk in that store asking a customer: 'How did the coffee in that sample can suit your taste? Most of our trade have liked it immensely, and we are selling more than three times the quantity of it now that we did before the baskets went out.'

"Nothing that was represented in the basket was permitted to be forgotten. That was the secret of the success of the whole thing. Basket day brought John so many new customers that he will probably repeat it, with an entirely different line of samples."

It is not difficult to find instances that point to the percentage system as one of the most effective devices that can be used in throwing the sales of a force of clerks into third speed. According to one traveling salesman for a big wholesale grocery, there is no other single thing that can compete with this for producing cash-register results and in getting their dependable repetition week after week. This man says:

Selling on a Percentage Basis

"THE best country merchant that I ever encountered—he is not now in business—operated on the percentage basis. He had a cash-register drawer for each clerk, and the salesmen were paid a straight six per cent. on everything they sold. They were the livest, cleanest, brightest little bunch of grocery clerks I ever saw in one country store in my life.

"While each clerk had his own department or particular section of the store for which he was held responsible, you can bet that, with a commission of six per cent in sight, no clerk stayed put inside his own little allotment of floor space. The service that customers of that store received was great. Of course, those clerks got more money than those working for any other store in my territory,—probably about sixty or seventy per cent. more,—but they certainly earned it.

"How can you expect any young man with the makings of any sort of a salesman in him to acquire a real spontaneous interest in the things that he is expected to sell, when he can see only twelve. dollars a week as the top reward of his services? A retail grocer may not like to be told this, but the fact remains that right here is the real reason why the possibilities of retail grocery salesmanship have come so far from realization. On the average, foods are sold with less intelligence than any other form of merchandise. By this I mean that they pass from the hand of the retailer to that of the consumer on a more meager basis of information than any other kind of goods.

"Time and again I have said to storekeepers: 'If you and your salesmen knew what is to be said about the teas that I sell you, and would pass that information on to the customers coming into your store, your sales would double inside of one month, and would keep that advance, too.' The same thing applies to almost every other form of foods. Take stuffed olives as an example. Give me a chance at ten housewives who are not in the habit of buying olives, for example, and I'll undertake to sell seven of them simply and wholly by telling them the interesting story of how olives are grown and handled.

Tickling the Customer's Palate

"THERE is hardly an article of food in your entire stock that hasn't an interesting story behind it, and if that story is told to the average customer it is easy to make a sale. The old, familiar expression about making one's mouth water tells the whole thing. The moment you awaken your customer's interest in a certain food, you summon an ally in salesmanship in the form of a natural human appetite.

"Generally speaking, the grocery clerk has depended upon this appetite to do the selling for him. But, under the stimulating influence of a chance to get all that he can earn, any live clerk is going to find out all he can about the things that he sells, in order to gear up his selling ability.

"The more that grocers, grocery clerks, and grocery customers learn about the foods they eat, the better it will be for all concerned. The average consumer of today knows a lot more about foods than did the consumer of a decade ago. This, I confess, is not especially the fault of the retail grocer. The magazines have done wonders in educating the housewife in food matters—though, to be sure, much misinformation has been handed out in these channels along with that which is sound.

But the whole point is that there is a wide latitude for the education of the general public concerning human foods, and that the grocer or grocery salesman who takes the job of helping in this educational work is going to find himself handsomely paid for his trouble in increased sales. If you want to speed up the grocery store, make it a real educational center in all matters relating to food."

And what applies to the store itself applies with equal force to every clerk in it. The shortest cut to more money and better position for a clerk is to know the interesting selling facts about his goods. If the store for which he is working doesn't appreciate the increased sales which that study brings, there will be no difficulty in finding a store that will. The day of the sleepy old grocery that couldn't do more than furnish a "decent living for one man" are passing. The grocery is being speeded up.

The White-Topped Boots

By WALTER PRICHARD EATON

Illustrations by O. F. Schmidt

MAE TENNEY was stenographer for a "low-brow" on the fourteenth floor of the Transcript building. When you come to think of it, it was rather surprising that Mae knew he was a low-brow. It was even rather surprising that Mae was a stenographer. Her father worked for a plumber in the upper reaches of Harlem, and there were five other Tenneys. Yet Mae had contrived to go through the high school commercial course, and to learn shorthand. She had ambitions to be a "business woman" downtown.

Her name represented some dim romantic instinct in her mother. It may have been from her mother that she got her good looks: she was trim and alert. Where she got her clothes, Mae alone knew; but, like so many girls of her class, she contrived to appear in the height of the popular fashion, or rather a little above it. She had two contempts, as she called them—a New York girl who dressed like a "rube," and the mental caliber of her "boss."

"Yours of April 6th received and contents noted. Would say in reply that Little Eva at 10 1/2 is a fine investment" —and so on and so forth. That was all she wrote. Her "boss," a youngish man with a thick neck and a black mustache, did a legitimate enough business, as such things go. He had once staked a claim in the upper Ontario wilds, and Mae had heard him, on one or two occasions, tell a customer about the life there. He spoke with an odd kind of dreamy enthusiasm of the snow and the timber-wolves and the forest. She vaguely realized that perhaps it was because of this latent capacity for such enthusiasm that he never misbehaved toward her. Often the men who came into the office to see him made advances to her, which she knew perfectly how to parry. They were so clumsy about it!

Then, one day, the stenographer in the next office told her that the Transcript, on the first floor, was going to hold an auction sale of books the following day—the accumulated review copies sent to the paper.

"Let's go down," said her friend. "You can get books awfully cheap, and all the newspaper fellows will be around, and it'll be lots o' fun."

"How cheap?" said Mae.

She longed to own some books; but she was helping to put a younger brother and sister through the high school, and, between the board she paid her mother, and her daily subway fare, and something hot for lunch, and her clothes, she had little to spare on such luxuries.

"Oh, five or ten cents, they say. Lizzie Doolin got a Harold Bell Wright for eight cents at the spring sale."

"Me for it," said Mae.

WHEN the girls arrived, a few minutes after twelve, they found the books stacked on a long table near the door of the big city room. The reporters ordinarily didn't come on duty till one, but most of them were here now, poking about the books, laughing and joking. The baseball reporter was acting as auctioneer.

He was extremely chatty and facetious about it, and Mae felt a little out of place, as if she had entered a family party. Besides, she didn't understand a lot of his jokes. However, she poked into the pile on the table, to see what she could find. She didn't tell her friend, but she was really looking for poetry.

The auctioneer was selling a book called "The Art of the Motion Picture."

"How much am I offered for this masterpiece?" he cried. "Here's an author who's discovered what ain't, and written a book about it. Come on, girls, find out why you like Francis X. Bushman!"

"I don't need no book to tell me," a telephone operator giggled.

"Five cents," said another girl.

"Ten," cried a young reporter.

"Aha! Charles is dabbling in scenarios," said the auctioneer. "Ten cents to learn how to make a million. Going—going—gone to Charlie Case for ten cents. Come on, who's got a favorite to put up?"

A reporter handed him two rather bulky volumes. Mae hadn't noticed this young man before; but now she was arrested by something in his face or his manner, she couldn't have said which. Possibly she would have described it as "classs," and let it go at that.

"'History of the Oxford Movement,' two volumes, translated from the French. How much am I offered for this great work about a great subject—whatever it is," said the auctioneer.

"A dime," bid the reporter.

"That means per volume, Al," the auctioneer laughed. "We stick high-brows here."

The reporter smiled, and raised his bid to twenty cents when one of the older men offered fifteen. The bidding was brisk for a second between the two, the reporter finally getting the volumes for a dollar.

Mae watched him take them to his desk across the room, and then return. So he was a high-brow. She wondered what he was really like.

Meanwhile she herself had picked out a volume of poetry—"The Listeners," by Walter de la Mare, and proffered that to the auctioneer. He at once put it up, and she bid five cents. The reporter she had been watching bid ten. "Fifteen," she said bravely. "Twen—"

He was about to complete the bid when he saw her face. She must have been showing her disappointment, for he choked his word. The book went to her. As Mae took it, and dropped her fifteen cents in the collection box, she could not refrain from throwing him a grateful look. He was watching her with an odd, quizzical expression on his face, and a moment later he came to her side.

"I'm curious to find out how you knew de la Mare's stuff is good," he said. "Been reading him in the English magazines?"

He asked the question soberly, but she felt, somehow, a banter behind his words, and she grew hot and shy with embarrassment.

"I—I don't know anything about him," she replied honestly. "I—I just wanted some poetry, and I can't afford to pay much."

"Oh," said he. "Well, you got some good stuff. I can't afford to pay much, either. Now I'll have to write my own."

He smiled into her face pleasantly, and moved away. She didn't buy any more books, but she stayed till the last minute of her noon hour. Just as she was going, she quite brazenly glanced into his face, and he noticed her, nodding good day. Then the color flamed to her cheeks, and she almost ran out of the room with her book clasped tightly.

SHE read it that night in the crowded subway going home, a puzzled frown between her eyes. In a few days she had read it through two or three times, and felt sure that if she could talk it over with the reporter she could understand it. Poetry of this subtle and minor sort was a new thing to her. Yet he had said that it was good. She must find out why.

She bought the Transcript every day now, and wondered which stories he wrote. The Transcript printed a popular column of humor called "The Shooting Box," and she read that too, though she didn't always understand it. Numerous people contributed squibs signed with their

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Then, one morning, she saw an advertisement that the Transcript wanted a stenographer. The pay was no better than she was getting, but, at the risk of being late, she stopped at the newspaper office before she took the elevator. There was nobody in authority there yet. They told her to return at eleven. At eleven she made some excuse to her boss and slipped out. Two or three girls were ahead of her. When her turn came, a sharp-faced man in shell spectacles looked at her keenly and asked her if she could spell. As this was her one accomplishment, she answered emphatically.

"Well, I can't," he said. "That's why I need you—if it is to be you. Why'd you leave your last place?"

"I didn't," she said. "I ought to be upstairs now—Room 1406. But I'd like to work on a newspaper."

"Why?"

"It's—it's horrid just taking business letters, all alike. I want to learn about things."

"When can you come?"

Mae gasped.

"Monday, I guess—but—but aren't you going to want any references?"

"I engage reporters on their looks, and fire 'em if I don't like their neckties," said the editor. "Be here at nine Monday."

MAE got up and walked out in a daze.

She told her boss and her parents that the new job meant advancement, which is everywhere an all-sufficing explanation. Her boss, with whom she had sat in close proximity for almost two years in a small office, stopped his work when she told him, and seemed to regard her for the first time with something like personal interest.

"I shall miss you, kid," he said. "You've done well by me, and cut out the googoo stuff with fool customers. Still, there ain't much for you here." He paused a moment. Then he added: "I got a kid coming along—a girl. She's twelve."

And on Saturday, when she left, he gave her a twenty-dollar gold piece.

That night, on her way home, she looked at the men and women herded into the subway, and felt the stirring of a wonder how many of them were at heart kind and good. The glow lasted till she got home, and she gave the gold piece to her mother.

Mae rose early on Monday and dressed with unusual care, cleaning the white tops of her boots and picking out her best blouse. She reached the office promptly, and was ready and waiting when her new boss arrived. Burdette was his name. She had stacked all his letters neatly, with an opener laid across them. Also, after much search, she had secured a rag and dusted his desk, putting it into some semblance of order. She had even emptied his overflowing ash tray and sent the one available office-boy out for five cents' worth of matches. When the managing editor arrived, he looked at his desk, looked at her, sat down and filled his pipe, lit it, picked up the envelop opener and regarded it with curiosity, and then said: "What's your name, by the way?"

"Mae," said she. Somehow, it didn't occur to her to say "Miss Tenney."

"Well, Mae, the influence of a good woman, as the dramatists put it, is a wonderful thing. You'll be getting me a waste-paper basket next," he said.

"Oh, haven't you got one?"

Burdette laughed, swung in his chair, and began to read his letters. When he had finished he called her.

"My last stenog was a male," he said; "but he couldn't spell. The illogical female mind alone can spell. I am extremely logical. Ready?"

Mae poised her pencil, and he began. For the next hour she worked harder than ever betore in her life. There were no formulas in his dictation, no set phrases known by heart, nor any hesitancy of speech as his mind hunted for a phrase. Letters, orders, notices to post in the city room—he reeled them off as rapidly as he talked, with vivid phrases; and her mind and fingers alike were tired when he spoke the last "period."

"I go to lunch at one," he said, "and get back about two-thirty. You'd better go at twelve-thirty, and then you can have everything ready for me to sign when I get back."

At twelve-thirty, accordingly, she went out, her way leading through the city room. None of the reporters had arrived. But on her return, half an hour later, there were more than a dozen of them sitting or standing about. She glanced at them shyly, looking for the only one who interested her.

"Hello—must be the Old Man's new stenog," she heard one of them say.

"How'd you like to be a managing editor?" another replied, with a laugh that was not insolent, but conveyed something no girl is loath to believe.

The words had not been meant for her ears, and she tried to look unconscious; but she felt herself blushing, and walked

"How did you like 'em?" he asked.

Mae's heart was beating painfully.

"I—I didn't understand them all."

"It does everybody good to read something they don't understand," he smiled in that quizzical way of his. "Are you working for us now?"

"I'm Mr. Burdette's new stenographer."

"Oh, the Old Man has fallen for feminism, eh?"

"Why do you call him old?" she demanded.

"A managing editor is always old," the reporter answered. "At least, he is six weeks after he's been on the job."

Mae had been moving on down the corridor toward her office, and the reporter was walking with her.

"Haven't got those poems with you?" he asked. "I'd like to stick 'em in my pocket this afternoon, if I might. Got a death watch, I'm afraid, to-day."

"A what?" she said.

"Death watch. Ex-Mayor Stone is dying, and somebody has to be near to pipe off the final event and release the obit."

"I think you are horrid!" she said, but added, "I'll get the poems from my bag."

He waited outside while she brought them.

"So you carry 'em around, eh?" said he. Mae inclined her head, and blushed. "I'll let you take 'em if you'll promise one thing."

"And that is?"

"Some noon hour soon you'll explain some of them to me."

"You're a quaint child," the reporter said, looking down into her face. "All right—I'll gild the lily, but it's a crime."

He walked away with the book in his pocket, and Mae went back into her office.

HIS name was Allen Hollister, and he had come from New England. He was regarded as one of the most promising of all the younger reporters. She learned this from hearing the managing editor in conference with the city editor. From her corner she learned many other office secrets. She learned they were secrets, too, for Burdette suddenly wheeled on her and said sharply:

"Mae, spell 'discretion.'"

She spelled it.

"Is that right?" he asked the city editor. Stowell nodded.

"Wonderful girl, that, Joe. She can spell! Mae, you're supposed to have it as well as spell it."

Then he went on with his conference. He was like that always, and Mae had to struggle sometimes to follow him. He never wasted words, and he never said things as other people said them. Also, she knew that he was kind and considerate, and expected other people to be so.

On the third day, at the lunch hour, she saw Allen again. He had evidently come down early. She was eating her lunch indoors that day, and he strolled in and handed back her book.

"Thanks," he said. "What's troubling you?"

Mae turned the leaves of the book indecisively.

"Oh, I don't know," she finally said. "It isn't any special one. I—I sort of get pictures, but I don't know what they mean. This, for example."

Her finger was on the title poem, "The Listeners."

Allen picked up the book, and read the verses in a low, musical voice, while she listened tensely, watching his face.

"You get a picture, don't you?" he asked.

She nodded.

"There used to be an old mansion in the Bronx where dad took us kids to walk Sundays, with big trees all around it, and a garden all full of weeds, and the front veranda caving in, that I kind of see in the moonlight, with a man on horseback knocking at the door."

"Good," said he. "That's the house, then. Somebody lived in it once: maybe the horseback rider lived in it. He went far away, and promised those who loved him to come back; but he stayed a long time, and when he returned there were only ghosts. If the music of the poem sings to you, and the images fill your mind, and you get a sense of beauty or of sadness, what more do you want? I can say an old house is full of ghosts and memories, and some prodigal came home too late—and that's prose. This writer says it his way, and it's poetry. Little snatches of minor music, little wistful pictures out of memory. I thought all the poems lovely.

"But the way to understand one poet is to read another poet. Better try Keats next. You'll find him in the library over there. Ever read Keats?"

Mae shook her head. "I—I'm awfully ignorant," she answered.

"Of course you are," he smiled at her. "You're one of the great majority who think if they get through high school there's nothing more to learn, and life is to consist of the day's work and, the evening movie, with babies in the offing."

The girl flushed, whether at the reference to babies or the bantering superiority of his tone she wasn't sure—possibly both.

"You don't get much time to study when you work all day and help your mother at night," she said.

"Nonsense. Anybody that wants to study can always find the time. You found time to read those poems. Now go read Keats."

He was climbing down from the desk where he had been sitting, but Mae did not rise.

"Suppose I wanted to study something that would get me on in the world, make me more valuable to—to Mr. Burdette?"

"Still Keats," he smiled. "Sensitiveness to impressions, a feeling for language, will make anybody more interesting. You've got to be interesting to get on with the Old Man."

HE moved away toward the editor of the woman's page, who had just come in, and began to chat with her. Mae got up and passed through the city room to the library. The librarian was out, but a young reporter was among the stacks.

"Do you know where Keats is?" she asked.

He was a pleasant-faced boy of twenty-two or so, a cub reporter appropriately named Bobbie, just out of Princeton; and, though Mae had no idea what he was talking about, she laughed. The reporter laughed, too.

"If anybody can find anything in this morgue, he gets the medal," said he: "come on, I'll help you hunt."

They searched merrily in the dim and dusty room for nearly ten minutes before the Keats was found. It was she who discovered it. Mae thanked him for his help.

"Not at all," said he. "I saw it twice before you did!"

She blushed and made a bold little face at him as she hurried from the room.

Page 8

Burdette caught her reading Keats that afternoon, in a slack hour when he had no work for her.

"'The Stenographer Who Read Keats'—not a bad title for a story," he laughed. "Hollister ought to write it."

"Wh-why Mr. Hollister?" she managed to say, keeping her voice calm.

"That's his line—fiction, I mean, not stenographers. We won't keep him long. Fiction pays better than facts."

He turned to her again presently, and she felt his eyes and looked up from the pages of "The Eve of St. Agnes" with the spell of it still on her.

"H'm—" he said. "You were reading 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' eh?"

"Yes; how did you know?"

"My dear child, I was twenty-two once myself. Take the book home to-night—I'll never tell—and finish it. We'll have to do some letters now."

His tone was so gentle that she was surprised. He was a strange, dear man. They had no right to call him "old"!

"WELL, how's Keats?" said Allen a day or two later, as he strolled into the dim library where she was putting the volume back in her noon hour.

"I never knew such beautiful things had been written!" she answered.

"They haven't—again," said he. "What are you tackling next, funny child?"

"Why do you call me a child?" she demanded.

"Because you are one."

"Why?"

He looked her up and down deliberately, with that laughter she knew so well behind his eyes. She was seated on a flight of steps in front of a case, and she grew painfully aware that her ultra-stylish short skirt didn't meet her white boot-tops. She was glad she had put on one of her two pairs of silk stockings that morning, anyway. She gave her skirt a little hitch down.

"Children are vain," he finally smiled,

Mae felt her cheeks redden.

"A lot you know about styles!" she said.

"I was talking of taste, not styles," said he. "They seldom have any connection. Grown up folks wear white-top boots, that's all. Of course, years have nothing to do with being grown up: I wonder the Old Man stands your boots—he fired a reporter once for wearing lavender socks.''

Mae was silent. She wanted to snap: "Mr. Burdette doesn't stare at ladies' feet!" But she didn't.

"Another thing," he added. "It's winter, and cold and raw to-day. If you weren't childishly vain; you'd be wearing long underclothes."

Her face burned now with hot shame as well as anger. She twitched her feet up under her skirt, not daring to look at him.

"Oh, you—you—" she began.

And then she realized that he was apparently quite unaware that he had said an immodest, shocking thing. He was continuing calmly:

"My sister wouldn't wear them once, and she got horrible rheumatism in her legs. I chuck my knee-lengths now at Thanksgiving. It's hard to grow up and be sensible; but gosh! how much more comfortable you are after you've taken the plunge!"

"I don't know why I sit here and let you talk to me this way!" she found herself saying rather weakly.

"Nor do I," he laughed. "Unless it's because nobody ever did talk to you this way, and you rather like it."

"I don't! I don't!" she retorted.

"Did you ever see one of Shaw's plays?" he shifted.

"Not unless it's been in the movies," she snapped.

"That's doubtful," he smiled. "Don't you go to anything but the movies?"

"A lot of chance I have!"

"I'd take you sometime on my night off, if it weren't for the fact that if the play was good, you wouldn't like it and talk; and if it was bad, you would like it, and wouldn't let me talk," said he.

She was close to angry tears now.

"You seem to think I'm a fool!"

"On the contrary," Allen said, with sudden gentleness, dropping his bantering tone, "I think you are a remarkably plucky and smart girl. But if you want to get on with the people that count, and not just take dictation all your life, you ought to change your boots—and read Shelley. Here, try Shelley, now you're through with Keats."

HE had taken the book from the shelf and put it in her lap. He did not touch her, but he stood close in front of her and compelled her to raise her face till her moist eyes were looking into his. Then he smiled, a lovely, friendly smile, and went away.

She sat for a long moment with the book on her knees, and mopped her eyes with her handkerchief, disseminating a strong odor of perfume in the dead atmosphere of dust, ink, and stale tobacco smoke.

It was so that the Princeton cub found her as he walked suddenly around the corner.

"Hello!" he exclaimed. "Why the weeps?"

She gulped hard, tried to smile, and finally managed it.

"Just silly," she said. "Girls are that way, you know."

"Yes, I know," said he sagely. "Say, fair one, I'm off to-night, and I've got two seats from the dram. ed. for 'The Springtime Girl.' Want to go? Zippy music, beautiful fairies, and all that sort of junk. It'll cheer us up a bit. I'm low, too."

She had to laugh at this.

"You!" she said.

"Sure, me! I'm awfully temperamental. I'm poor, too. We'll have to dine at Child's, I guess, unless I can get an advance at the business office."

"No!" said she. "Mr. Burdette doesn't approve of that. We eat Dutch, or I don't go. Oh, dear, I'm not dressed for the theater!"

"Forget it. We represent the toiling masses. We'll laugh down the bare backs of the plutes and think how much more useful we are."

"Are you inviting me just because you thought I was unhappy?" she asked suddenly.

The boy laughed frankly.

"Partly," he answered. "Partly because I'm a lone, lorn critter about a hundred and fifty miles from my best girl, and you are a female, and it don't hurt me a bit to look at you and have you round. Now, that's honest, ain't it?"

"Very," said Mae. "And—and I like you for it. I'11 go."

She met him at the outer door after her day's work, and they rode uptown. There was still almost an hour before the shops closed, and she suggested that they walk up the avenue. He was chattering in his irresponsible manner, and scarcely observed that she paused before every shoe store to gaze in the windows, and watched the feet of every woman alighting from a limousine.

"Say," he finally commented, "what are you doing? Thinking of buying a car?"

"I'm looking at feet," she swered soberly. "Rich women don't wear boots with white tops, do they?"

"Some rich women don't," said he. "Some do, I guess."

Then he was silent, having more penetration than skill in such an emergency. They walked for some paces, embarrassed. Then he grinned.

"We all make breaks," he said. "I was a green guy at college, and I got a waistcoat with sort of lavender stripes—the man soaked me seventeen bones for it, too. Some sophs took it off of me, put it on a, bulldog, and sicced him on a cat across the muddy road. The front side was underneath the dog, of course, and he crawled through a barbed-wire fence before he came home, at that."

They both laughed, and the subject was dropped. Mae forgot everything in her genuine pleasure at the musical comedy, the lights, the crowds, the music, the dancing, the romantic costumes. The boy insisted gallantly on taking her all the way home to Harlem, too, chattering gaily.

"I can catch the Albany night boat back," he affirmed, "and get to the office by one to-morrow, if I cut out breakfast."

At the door of her flat house she turned to thank him. He was putting out his hand, so she gave him hers, but with a quick fear that he was going to spoil their evening. He was only shaking hands good night! It was a custom unknown to her, but she gripped his fingers warmly in her gratitude, and said, smiling:

"I hope your best girl wouldn't mind our party."

"If I can't get a berth on the night boat, I'll sit up and write to her about it," he laughed, and disappeared down the street.

Mae crept quietly into her little room, which she shared with a younger sister, and began unlacing her white-topped boots, that she had once been so proud of.

The theater party seemed suddenly a thing of the remote and dim past. She wanted to throw those boots across the room. In the dim light she could see under the bed the tops of her sister's Sunday boots, and they were white, too. For a second she hated her sister; she hated her whole family. She pulled off her stockings, and saw that her legs were chapped. It made her hot with anger that Allen was right. But she went to sleep beholding an image of his final kindly smile, and she seemed to feel his presence close in front of her, compelling her to raise her face to his.

FOR two weeks she avoided him. She had secured some extra copying from the editor of the woman's page, who also wrote stories for the magazines, and she worked at this during most of her lunch hour. Then she ate her lunch in the same room, where the reporters never came unless they were summoned by Burdette. She didn't once go out for lunch. She was skimping and saving in every way she could. She no longer went to the movies, either. That was another saving, and it also gave her time to read. She studied each evening with her sister and brother who were in school, sometimes turning from her own book to help them.

"Ain't Mae funny?" her sister remarked, after the third day, to her mother. "She seems sorter different and grown up."

But Mrs. Tenney was too busy to notice.

It was no ordinary pair of black boots that Mae had set her heart upon. She wanted real leather boots—not the sort that flake off when you stub your toe or knock your ankle-bone. They didn't sell that kind in the store where she ordinarily shopped. It was two weeks' before her extra work and her savings from her salary amounted to the price of a pair. Then she got away early from the office one day, and bought them. The next morning she had an instinct to lay aside her plated bracelet and her two garnet rings. She put on a plain blouse, too. Then she set out for the office.

That morning Burdette regarded her in a puzzled way. She saw him looking at her two or three times as she brought him clippings, which it was now a part of her task to gather from the morning papers. But he said nothing till nearly twelve, when he suddenly remarked:

"Mae; beginning next week, I'm raising you three dollars a week."

"Thank you, sir," she gasped. She had no chance to say more, for he cut in, "Don't let me forget it," and instantly resumed his dictation.

At the noon hour she walked out through the city room, and chanced to be

Page 9

But Allen followed her into the library presently.

"We are very haughty," she heard him say over her shoulder.

"What do you mean?" she tossed back. "Oh, I don't mind. I shall talk to you anyway, if I want to. I must say, the new boots are a success. I never knew you had such pretty feet."

She had to turn at that, to see if he meant it. He was smiling, but a kindly smile. He did mean it! A catch came in her throat.

"Thank you," she said, with a mocking bow. "But I couldn't afford 'em."

"No? I'll bet the Old Man raises your salary."

Mae had to laugh, she was so happy.

"He did, this morning," she laughed.

"It was the boots," said Allen: "Have you—?"

"That's none of your business!" she retorted hastily, blushing to the roots of her hair; but he only laughed and swung himself up to a seat on a table.

"Glad you got the raise," he said. "Money comes in handy, though it isn't what we work for, after all."

"What else would we work for?"

"That's all you'll ever work for, if you have to ask. Your amusing friend Bobbie, for instance, gets fifteen dollars a week for writing funny police-court stories. The man who sets 'em up on the linotype gets forty-five or fifty—I don't know but more. But do you think Bobbie would change places with him?"

"Of course not; but Mr. Thorne'll get more some day."

"Not so awfully much more, if he sticks around here. But, wherever he goes, it'll be less for the money than the chance to do something that amuses him in the doing."

"Are you going to stick round here?" she asked. "Mr. Thorne—Bobbie—says you write dandy stories."

"I'll stick till I can make a living with the stories, that's all. Sold two yesterday. I'm thinking of leaving 'most any time now," he laughed, "and writing the Great American Novel. Why don't you strike the Old Man to let you have a fling at the woman's page? It would be more fun than taking dictation."

"Oh, but I don't know how to write or report. What could I write on the woman's page?"

"No; I don't suppose there's a thing you could do for 'em," he mused. "You have to have an ambition to express yourself, even to be a reporter, and some knowledge of the English language."

He was kicking his heels idly together, while his legs swung over the table edge, and he delivered his words with a kind of impartial carelessness.

Mae looked at him, hurt.

"I—I think I ought to hate you," she said.

He raised his eyes to hers in apparent surprise.

"My dear girl, you ought to have no feelings toward me whatever—only toward what I say. I'm one of those people who are only important in print, as it were, and nobody but myself knows I'm important there."

"You don't really mean that," she retorted, as sarcastically as she could. Then she paused thoughtfully, and added: "To tell a woman she oughtn't to have feelings toward a man is like telling a—a bird it oughtn't to sing."

Allen swung off the table with a little shout of delight.

"That's a good line!" he cried. "That's real female psychology. I'm going to put it down before I forget it. You're improving, all right!"

And he abruptly left her, while the tears welled into her astonished eyes.

IT was not long after, as she was coming downtown in the subway, scanning the morning paper, that she suddenly gave a little audible gasp and put her hand quickly to her mouth: There it was, in the column of social notes—the announcement of his engagement to a Miss Evelyn Somebody-or-other—the name meant nothing to her. Why should his engagement mean anything to her, for that matter?

She called herself a silly little fool, and choked back the tears. But the paper lay unread in her lap, and she gazed with unseeing eyes at the ironic white boot-tops of a girl across the aisle.

PRESENTLY it occurred to her that she had never thought of him as one, of those mysterious people who could get their social doings into the papers without being public characters. Why was this? He didn't have money. If she, or even Mr. Burdette, were to be engaged, no paper would mention it. She had. always supposed the "society" people were the millionaires.

Anyway, he might have hinted to her that he was going to do this thing. "Why?" a voice asked her. She couldn't tell.

The other reporters were congratulating him when she came back from lunch at one o'clock. She waited in the woman's department, hoping he might see her, and presently he did come to her side.

"May I congratulate you too, Mr. Hollister?" she asked, suddenly shy, but putting out her hand.

He took it. That was the first time he had ever touched her. She felt her hand must be trembling, and kept her eyes lowered.

"Thank you," he said. "You should congratulate me and condole with the lady."

"You might have let some of us know it was going to happen—then we wouldn't have been so surprised," she managed to say, withdrawing her fingers.

"My dear Mae, what possible interest was it to anybody around here but myself?" he answered. "I would as soon think of announcing my symptoms."

"Of course it was of interest to—to all of us."

Her voice was very low. He had called her by her name, and even at such a moment that affected her.

"Nonsense," said he, with a laugh. "Week after next, when I'm gone, there won't be a soul here remember me."

"You—you're going?"

"Yes; I'm taking the Old Man my resignation now. There won't be anybody here to browbeat you after Saturday week. All the rest are your willing slaves. Petticoats don't belong in a newspaper office, anyhow!"

Mae had turned her head away, and did not move till she heard his retreating step. Then she sat down weakly in a chair, and fought back her tears.

THAT afternoon she asked Burdette if sometime he thought she could have a chance to try a little reporting for the woman's page. He laid aside his proofs, wheeled his chair toward her, and regarded her shrewdly through the shell-rimmed goggles. He didn't laugh!

"Not satisfied with this work?"

"It's not that," she answered quickly and loyally. "But I want to do more than—than just earn money. I want to do something that will make me use my own brain, if I've got one. Mr. Hollister as good as told me I hadn't," she added.

"Hollister! Humph!" said the managing editor. "Mae, it may shock you to hear me say so, but anybody can be a chauffeur or a reporter. It takes brains to be a secretary. I've been thinking I need a real secretary instead of a stenographer. You and I get along pretty well together, don't we?"

"Oh, yes, sir," she answered gratefully, looking through his glasses into his

"Of course your salary will be increased."

"That doesn't matter," she said.

"No?"

He smiled, and wheeled suddenly back to his desk.

The next Monday the bulletin-board carried a notice of her appointment, to give warning that orders signed by her in Burdette's absence were official.

"And now," said Allen, smiling down into her eyes, "may I congratulate you?"

For the second time their hands touched.

The memory was still on her when Bobbie swept up and ceremoniously hailed her as "boss." She tried to laugh at him, and made a mess of it, to his evident disappointment.

FOR a third time, on Saturday, when Allen came to the office to draw his last pay envelop, took her hand. He had come into Burdette's room to say good-by to his managing editor.

"I suppose, Hollister, we'll dust a chair for you when you come back, as Thrums did for Sentimental Tommy," Burdette remarked.

"Are you, implying—?"

"Only that you'll be famous, my boy," the other man said. But Mae, from her corner, detected a certain mockery in his tone, and wondered at it; for they were talking in riddles to her.

Allen laughed, in his easy way.

"You're on the wrong track," he said. "Well, good-by; and don't forget that your new secretary is a woman and can't work as you do, you old pack-horse."

"I won't forget that she's a woman," Burdette replied, again with that curious tone.

Mae had risen to take Allen's outstretched hand. He was charmingly easy and casual.

"You'll find Swinburne an excellent antidote for your taciturn and prosaic boss," he laughed—and was gone.

There was a long silence in the office.

"He can't help it, I suppose," Burdette finally said.

"Help what?" she asked.

Each knew whom the other was thinking of.

"His ancestry, his class, his general air of superiority—call it what you like."

Then Mae asked the question that had long been puzzling her:

"Why should his engagement be announced in all the papers? He's not done anything to make him famous yet."

"He doesn't have to do anything, my dear child. He just is. His great-grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence, or lived in Salem, or something of that sort."

"But does that make any difference in America?" she asked again.

"It makes as much difference in America as anywhere else in the world. That it doesn't is one of the many lies you learn in school. It makes him able to patronize us in his pleasant, superior way, and it makes us unable, if not downright unwilling, to resent it. My great-grandfather, if I ever had one, was a blacksmith, and my dad is a mechanic in Schenectady. I fought for my education, just as you did. He was born educated, so to speak. He's one of those men who belong to a club after he's been in New York two weeks. The young cub, he used to take me to dinner sometimes in his marble halls, and tell me how to run the paper! They love to regulate everything and everybody, his kind. Damn it all—excuse me, Mae—he was usually right, too!"

"He told me what kind of shoes to wear—and he was right again," said the girl.

Burdette looked at her sharply.

"I could tell you that," he retorted, "—the kind you've got on."

Mae thrust out both her neatly clad black feet, the plain boots laced tightly around her pretty ankles.

"These were his choice," she said, looking at her toes.

SHE felt the man still gazing at her and slowly raised her face till their eyes met.

He had never looked at her this way before. His glance was so intimate, so—so tender! She felt herself blushing, but she could not look away.

"I'm glad Hollister has gone!" he said.

Again there was a long silence. Presently he spoke again:

"I live a lonely life, Mae. I get here usually at ten or eleven in the morning; and sometimes I stay till one the next morning. I've neither kith nor kin in the city. Some day will you take a night off with me and go to one of those show the dramatic critic says are so bad? I'd like to know whether to fire him or not."

"Yes," she assented slowly.

"And wear your white-topped boots?"

But she shook her head.

"I, shall never wear them again," she said.

Can a Man Be Crooked and Win?

By HAROLD CARY

IF you have figured out a hole-proof, accident-proof, fate-proof method for robbing a bank or your employer, even of doing away with that pestiferous insurance agent, hesitate just a moment. You won't get away with it. William J. Burns, the great detective, said recently:

"No man ever lived who was cunning enough to commit a crime and cover up his tracks. I have been in the secret service and a detective for thirty years, and I could not, with all my inside knowledge, commit a crime and escape detection."

Since Cain killed Abel, every criminal has tried to cover up his tracks, so that by now almost every 'possible' method has been used a hundred times. Even if you have studied all the ways of doubling on a trail, even if you sneer at such palpable deceptions as walking backwards through the snow or of strapping a pair of woman's shoes to your feet, you will be caught. The scientific criminologist knows that you will commit an "error in the situation."

By that he does not mean that you will make a mistake, because his use of the word "error" is purely technical. He means what Burns means when he says: "There is no such thing as a mystery if the detective uses a little common sense." He means that you can not cover up your tracks, and that something which you did will be a working clue in your detection.

The McNamara Cage

THE most elaborate case of track-covering was done by the McNamara dynamiters. They bought the materials for their bombs in a great many different places. When an Indiana bridge was to be demolished, they bought the explosive two hundred miles away. The materials went through the hands of a number of different persons; and the man who placed the charge did not know where the bomb had come from. Yet he himself had an alibi because the bomb was set to go off eleven hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-nine seconds after he set it and disappeared.

The "error in the situation" was something beyond his control. He used more than one bomb, and among the several dry batteries used to make a spark for the explosion was one that was defective. The bomb did not go off.

Thus, with one infernal machine to work upon as a clue, the flock of detectives started after the criminals. They examined every sale of dynamite in that part of the country for some time past. Eventually they found that the sawdust in the bomb was identical with the sawdust used to pack dynamite by a dealer in a little mining town two hundred miles away. It was of a certain kind of wood, cut in a certain way. The connection was established, and from then on it was but a mechanical job to run down the man who had made the purchase.

You may steal an apple every day in the year from the push-cart on the corner. No one will catch you if you are more clever than the owner of the cart. The next step, the one so easy to take, is to steal two, and then three. If the owner of the push-cart were a trust grocer, he would then find it worth while to watch for you. The error begins to assume proportions soon after that. Every thief begins in a small way, just as every

The last thing the criminal tries to do before leaving a job is to destroy all his tracks. He can not do it.

Bill Brockaway, a counterfeiter, lived on the East Side in New York City, and made his counterfeit notes in New Jersey. He was very careful not to get acid on his clothes in his shop, and as a preventive he made himself an oil-cloth apron.

The Criminal Always Leaves a Clue

WHEN Brockaway's counterfeiting establishment was discovered, his apron was on a hook. In his New York room they found the left-over oil-cloth from which the apron was made. Without this evidence the criminal might never have been caught. Yet Brockaway had used the apron to prevent a clue:

The greatest criminologist in the world is probably Hans Gross, professor in the University of Graz, Austria. There is no weapon a criminal can possibly choose about which Gross does not know almost everything. He probably has one like it in the University collection. He knows every method for covering tracks that has ever been devised. He teaches hundreds of men all the tricks of the trade; and every criminal is to him an amateur. He can tell from footprints whether the criminal was walking or running, whether he was carrying a light weight or a heavy one; he can even diagnose a great many diseases from footprints. He has been a doctor, a lawyer, and a judge, as well as a criminologist.

Gross looks for the error in the situation, finds it analyzes and tells the police whom to arrest. He was once employed to catch a man who had planned for months just how he was going to rob a banker. This banker always had a great many valuables about him, but he locked his bedroom door nightly by means of a bolt. The thief is secured emploment in the house of the banker, made himself familiar with the habits and prepared for the robbery shaped a little piece, of wood, and in the absence of the banker placed it in the hole in which the bedroom door bolt ordinary was shot home.

When the thief entered he found that the floor of the room through which he would have to go had been newly varnished, and for the moment he was non plussed. The door ahead stood unlocked; he was certain of it. The banker was a

The thief took off his shoes, walked across the varnished floor, entered, and completed his errand. The police next morning called upon Gross, who came, took the peg, and photographed the footprints. The latter he enlarged a hundred diameters and took to a textile expert. The peg he carried to a carpenter.

"Did a carpenter make this peg?" asked the criminologist.

"No," answered the workman; "this is a finer job than a carpenter would do. We do not work so closely, or use the tools with which that was made."

Gross approached a cabinet maker, who reported that it was not the sort of job that a man of his trade would do ordinarily, although it was possible to a cabinet-worker. A wood-carver told Gross that he thought the job was done by a last-maker—that the Marks of the tools were such as last tools would make. And a shoe manufacturer confirmed this report.

The criminologist reported to the police, recommended—that they gather up from among the best dressed crooks in town all who had ever worked in a shoe factory. By a process of elimination, the four or five men with criminal records who answered Gross's requirements were reduced to one who could not tell where he had been that night. When one of the banker's notes was found in his home, he confessed. Still the police were mystified.

"How did you do it?" they asked Gross.

"It was simple enough," he answered. "The man who stole the banker's valuables wore silk stockings; and as to the peg, you already know that it was made by a last-maker."

A crook who had once been a shoemaker, and who now wore fine clothes and silk stockings. Pretty good description, isn't it? Yet not even the most careful criminal could ever have dreamed of its being deduced from a little block of wood and a footprint on a varnished floor.

What Criminals Are Up Against

"A BUTCHER killed that man," said Gross on one occasion.

The murderer was caught, and the police, curious, wanted to know where the inside information came from. Gross told them that the knife had been wiped with an up-sweep of the hand, and that if they observed closely the next time they bought meat they would see that butchers invariably wipe knives in that way.

The safe-blower who robbed a flour-mill was easy for this school of criminologists. The deed had been done on a rainy night when the streets were muddy. The criminologist told the police to find the man who had a layer of flour between two layers of mud on the soles of his shoes. They did, and the man confessed.

These are the things against which the criminal must work. The criminal career is the opposite of the business career. Succeed along legitimate paths, and each pulls for the future. Every time a criminal succeeds he is one step nearer jail. It is easy to take the first step, easier still to take the second, and once started it is almost an impossible road back.

No man can be crooked and win.

One Week's Mail for Mrs. Finley Shepard

Every American, at some time or other in his life, writes to Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, or Mrs. Finley Shepard (Helen Gould). It's a national habit, hard to break. One hears about some poor struggling church needing help; or one is deeply interested in a good movement that needs just a few thousand dollars to accomplish its worthy work; or one meets a most-promising young man who ought to have a college education: and, presto! one sits down and takes one's pen in hand. If you are one of those who wrote last year to any or all of our country's foremost philanthropists, and if you received no response, do not cherish hard feelings. Look over the analysis of one week's mail received by Helen Gould Shepard: read, and take pity, and forgive.

SPIES

But—Can They Bake a Cherry Pie?

Page 13

PERSISTENT PEOPLE

The Blue Aura

By ELIZABETH YORK MILLER

Illustration by Arthur I. Keller

THERE came a pounding at their door before Dora and Teddie were awake next morning, and Mrs. Petrosini announced that Mr. Turco was in the sitting-room, come to have breakfast with them.

Dora dived under the bed-clothes, trembling in panic. Tyson, thoughtful and apprehensive, dressed himself hurriedly.

She lay shivering after he had gone out of the room, curled up, making herself almost as small as she felt.

In a moment Tyson was back.

"Get up, get up! Turco says he's glad. He was only afraid the girl would be unhappy. He didn't want her to know how different she was. Dora darling, he's forgiven you!"

Dora comprehended at last.

Turco wanted to see her. He had been to Covent Garden and bought her some flowers. He was going to give a dinner- party in his rooms that very night, and Dora must wear her ballet costume and dance for the poor little prisoner. They were going to have a regular performance.

SO Dora dressed herself. When she came in, Turco was sitting at table, having his breakfast with Tyson.

"Good morning," she said diffidently.

"Hello, 'Meddlesome Matty'!" said Turco

Dora blushed.

"It's all right. Only—it mightn't have been," he added.

"I'm sorry, Turco—but you were so mysterious. It was your fault—"

"Ted says it's his fault," Turco observed, "and you say it's mine. Dumpling says it's hers, because she called to you to come in, and she's been forbidden to entertain strangers. Mrs. Smith says it's her fault for leaving the door unlocked. Anyway, it isn't 'Meddlesome Matty's.' Oh, no!"

"You said he wasn't angry!" Dora cried reproachfully to her husband.

"He isn't," Tyson replied. "It's only Turco's fun!"

"He needn't make fun of me!"

Dora tossed her head.

Turco continued to gibe at her at in- tervals; but he was kind, too, and the bunch of flowers measured his feelings.

Turco wanted to give a party for his ward by way of introducing her more fully to the world—a charming bit of which had forced itself upon her.

He was so taken up with his idea, that he—who was the task-master—called off their strenuous rehearsing and proclaimed a holiday. All that was required of them was to turn up at eight o'clock in costume—Dora in her new Columbine dress and Tyson in his white ruffled shirt and black satin knee-breeches.

After delivering this order and finishing his breakfast, Turco trotted off.

DURING the day Dora tried to prepare her husband more fully for the revelation of Turco's secret.

"Whatever you do, Ted, don't stare at her. She doesn't realize how different she is."

"As though I would!" Tyson exclaimed.

"And she's queer in other ways—she's like Turco. She makes pictures of beautiful thoughts."

"Pictures?" Tyson was puzzled.

"Water-color drawings!"

"What rot! She must be 'touched.'"

"I think she is, a little. I fancy she's even worse than Turco at it. Do you suppose he really sees those things?"

Continued on page 18

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

ITALY'S GREAT COMMANDER

THE great man of Italy, General Cadorna, began to play the game of war at the age when most boys are playing marbles. He entered the Military College at Milan when he was ten. He became a second lieutenant at eighteen.

When he needed relaxation and amusement he wrote books on military tactics which to-day are still used as text-books by Italian military students. By the time he had become a major he had studied all the recent campaigns up to date, especially the Franco-Prussian War, and had written his opinion of them in so masterly a way that he was accepted as an authority. When he was sent out to investigate the defense system of the Italian frontier, he went after the problem in his usual thorough, exhaustive way. It was fortunate for Italy that he did: the knowledge he gained then is the basis now of the Italian campaign.

In spite of the fact that he had seen almost no active service, it seemed quite natural, in 1914, that Cadorna should become Chief of the Italian Staff.

The national hero is practical, consistent, studious, a strict disciplinarian, and a devout Catholic. Although he is sixty-seven years old, he is strong, active, and can ride across country with a skill envied by younger men. He is quiet, simple, sincere.

THE WOUNDED OF THE HOURS"

FRANCE has devised another method of honoring her soldiers. For each semester (about seven months) spent in the trenches a soldier is given a stripe of honor on the left sleeve. So now one may occasionally see a few fortunate men wearing four stripes, showing that their "baptism of fire" has lasted a thousand days.

These stripes represent, says Le Temps, "all the lost dawns and the twilights, the joyous middays, the gay mornings, the nights of work or pleasure, the emotions, the passions, marvelous lost possibilities, whole seasons with their varying lights and perfumes. It is easier," says Le Temps, "to sacrifice a piece of one's flesh than a fragment of one's existence. The loss of years is irremediable. The wounds of time are the cruelest of all; they can not be wiped out."

In effect, the wearers of these stripes are "the glorious wounded of the hours."

ARE CHILDREN EVER "CRIMINALS"?

THE rights of the child have been the last to be recognized. A century ago they were still hanging children on Tyburn Hill for larceny. In 1756 a child was beheaded because he stole a shawl, and his head was set on a paling as a warning to other children not to steal," writes Ernest K. Coulter in The Children in the Shadow (McBride, Nast & Company). "Men failed to realize that children were usually the victims of bad environment."

Until recent years, children born into squalor, underfed, sick, whose only sin perhaps was to have a drunken parent, were tried in court with the same solemn heartlessness that is meted out to hardened criminals.

"The proposition to create a special court for children in Chicago in 1899 was derided as 'the foolishness of a lot of women and other long-haired cranks.' Finally, the sending of an eight-year-old girl to an institution where she came into contact with older persons steeped in immorality, set the women of Philadelphia to bring about a different condition. This 'hopeless little criminal' was rescued from the reformatory, and grew up to lead an upstanding, useful life."

WHAT AMERICAN CAPITAL CAN DO IN RUSSIA

RUSSIA will be one of the great fields for American investment after the war, predicts Samuel McRoberts, vice-president of the National City Bank of New York, in an address before the American Institute of Banking. It has one sixth of the land area of the globe.

It has all kinds of climate, from that of Labrador to that of Florida. It has the longest rivers, the biggest plains, and some of the highest mountains in the world. It has deposits of nearly all metals. It has more first-class farm-land than any other country; it produces more oil than any other country but America; it has practically all the surplus timber available outside of Canada and the United States. Its Imperial Bank is the largest in the world. It is not, moreover, the melancholy, uncivilized country that we have always pictured. The only way to get any idea of it is to travel through it. And travel in Russia does not mean by sleigh, with the wolves yapping for your blood. "The first-class trains furnish the same speed and comfort that we enjoy in this country. From the car windows you see abundant crops, tilled and harvested with machinery, much the same kind that we have at home."

To judge Russia's credit, says the banker, you must judge also the Russian temperament.

"The Russians are a far-north people, with the physical vigor and energy characteristic of Northern races. They walk fast, talk fast, and, ignorant or learned, are quick to perceive. They are a democratic people, fond of congregating in crowds for games, amusements, or conversation. The Russian business man is more like the American business man than any other European.

"Europe must go to Russia for timber when the inevitable rebuilding program begins. Russia will then have a wonderful opportunity to realize upon the latent wealth of her forests. An enormous outlay of capital will be needed for the building of railroads, port facilities, steamships, sawmills, pulp-mills, and all those things incidental to the manufacture and transportation of timber products."

HE PAINTED THE COMMON PEOPLE

MILLET was the proverbial poor artist. His father was a French peasant with eight children. Jean Francois, the oldest, worked just as hard and went just as hungry as the others. But he had a gift that the others lacked. All the time he was drudging in the fields, he was trying to draw. His talent excited the interest of his teachers, and they had him sent away to study. Charles L. Barstow, in Famous Pictures (Century Company), tells how he struggled and finally triumphed.

When he was twenty-three his family and friends helped him to Paris. For ten years he painted while he and his wife almost starved. Then, with another artist, he took a cottage at Barbizon, on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau. He went for the summer he stayed the rest of his life. It was the best place he could have gone to. He was back among the peasants whom he knew and loved. For the first time since he was a boy, he felt at home. He even went back to wooden shoes and an old red sailor jacket.

Then he began to paint the peasants around him. They made him famous. When he was forty-five years old he painted "The Angelus." Millet himself got only $400 for it, but the last time it changed hands it sold for $150,000.

HANDLING THE OBSTINATE CUSTOMER

PROVIDING you know how, an obstinate customer is one of the most easily handled," writes H. W. Yeager in a pamphlet entitled A Lift (Smith Brothers Company). "At first his indifferent attitude to a friendly greeting would freeze the blood of an inexperienced salesman. You strive to overlook his indifference and try to interest him one way or another, without any apparent effect. Possibly his wife and daughter have been urging him for months to make this purchase, and now you find him in no frame of mind to be congenial. He has been, and is still, trying to defer this in-road on his bank roll. Keep right on smiling, always remembering a smile is just like a disease—it's catching. He could scrap in a minute if you would give him half a chance, but there is something in your voice and manner that mellows him, and he soon becomes talkative."

The salesman is trying to sell a piano, say. After the obstinate customer loosens up, smiles a little, ventures some remarks, "right here is where you drive your entering wedge by ascertaining his line of business and propounding questions of the seeking-advice order that will compel him to answer. Try two or three pianos and ask his judgment as to their quality: Let him know you recognize his ability along this line.

"Now you have him up to a point where he will listen to you. Now suggest a piano of your own choice—one that will make a reputation for your house and one that will give him real service. From now on move fast. Right here somewhere is the supreme moment: When you have found it, suggest he take it now.

"Let's recapitulate this whole progress. You, by first being humble, pleasant, and kind, were enabled to hold your reserve force of salesmanship until you got down to the real man; in other words, until you found him.

"This plan of handling an obstinate purchaser will redound to the highest welfare of all parties concerned thereto."

Page 17

HOW TO READ THE FINANCIAL PAGE

EVERY young man ought to read the financial page of the newspapers, whether he owns a share of stock or not. It is the barometer of trade: both prosperity and panic cast their shadows before them across it.

Certain items on that page especially should be watched, says Sereno S. Pratt in The Work of Wall Street (D. Appleton & Company). First bank clearings. "Inasmuch as 85 per cent. of all the business in the country is carried on by checks, and as the great bulk of the checks pass through the clearing houses, it follows that the 111 clearing houses of the country furnish an admirable test of the volume of trade, and it is possible by an intelligent use of the weekly statements to learn what section of the country is doing best or suffering most, as the case may be."

Railroad earnings. "As most of Wall Street speculation is in railroad stocks, and as one fifth of the nation's wealth is invested in railroads, it is needless to say how important becomes the condition of these properties."

Railroad cars in use. "If there is a shortage of cars, it follows that the business pressing for transportation is greater than the facilities. A large surplus of idle cars means depression."

Statistics of business disasters. "The monthly records of commercial failures published by R. G. Dun and by Bradstreet, next to the record of bank clearings, are the most important business statistics."

Price index numbers. "Bradstreet's in this country and the Economist in England publish regularly price index numbers—that is to say, numbers arrived at on systems which it is unnecessary to explain, but which purpose to show the prices of the leading articles entering into consumption, so that one price number, stands for a multitude of prices. One may gain much information regarding fundamental economic conditions from a study of prices of leading commodities."

WHEY THE PRUSSIANS CAME TO POLAND

VON HINDENBURG himself and a long train of Prussian war lords made the house of Laura de Turczynowicz, on the Eastern front, their headquarters. She worked day and night to serve them, getting what food she could for the Russian prisoners, attending to the wounded, and all the while her three little children were delirious from the typhus. In When the Prussians Came to Poland (G. P. Putnam's Sons) the story of Prussian manners in an invaded town is told. The enemies of Prussia are not the only sufferers in Poland. The German soldiers are also the victims of a terrible machine.

"So many men were killed in the taking of Kalvarya that even the sanitary orderlies of the hospital were called to the trenches. One, in the hospital under my roof, was a young violinist. Not yet in the army, he volunteered for the sanitary service; very nervous, sensitive, it struck terror to his soul when called out for the trenches; and he drank essence of vinegar to make himself ill. Somehow or other it was suspected. The boy was disgraced and beaten. Really ill, after the questioning he was put to bed in a room directly under my bedroom. Feeling death near, finally a confession was wrung from him. After that all were forbidden to go near him, even to give a drink of water. Shut in by himself in that big room, his voice echoed weirdly, begging and pleading for mercy, for a drink of water. One cf the German nurses got hysterical at the sound. Two days and nights we heard him. I tried to console myself with the thought that he was delirious. Quieted at last by the death he had prayed for, we saw how the boy was brought out, clothed only in a shirt, thrown on a peasant's wagon dragged by two Russian prisoners. The German soldiers were ordered to see how a traitor was served."

EDUCATE YOUR SKIN

HEALTH, like beauty, seems to be skin-deep. Fresh air used to be obtained for the lungs; now it is obtained for the skin.

If your skin gets the right kind of air, says the Monthly Health Letter of the Life Extension Institute, it's not quite so important what you breathe.

Train your skin, therefore, to demand the proper atmosphere.

Close air makes heavy odors, which in turn make a heavy brain, prevent proper radiation from the body, affect the nose and throat, allow harmful dust particles to float about, keep your skin from getting into training.

Fresh air clears out odors and dust, spurs the body to normal evaporation, stimulates circulation, gets the skin in athletic trim.

When you can't go outside, bring the outdoors in. A tilted board by your open window sends the fresh air up to where you breathe. All the windows opened wide twice a day changes the temperature, which is part of the skin's training. An electric fan is more needed for a close, overheated room in the winter than for a warm but airy room in the summer.

When you can get your fresh air outside, do it. "The earth and the sea and the sky, the foliage, the sweet-scented breeze, the living things, find a response in nerve-centers that, perhaps, have inherited memories of days in the open in long-past ages, when man was an outdoor animal."

ARE THERE ANY MORE WOMEN LIKE THESE ?

HORACE GREELEY only said "Go West, young man"; but the young men of the '50's did not find it good to go West alone. In Tillicum Tales, a collection of first-hand reminiscences of the settlers of Thurston County, Washington, edited by Mrs. George E. Blankenship, we find thrilling stories of the part pioneer women played in the "farther West" movement.

"In those days," says Mrs. Jane W. Pattison, who accompanied her young husband by wagon train from Illinois to Oregon, "every man was given the chance to take up 640 acres of land; and as an encouragement to the women the government made an offer to wives of a similar amount of land. We left Sparta, Illinois, in 1848, myself with a three months' baby in my arms. When we reached The Dalles, Oregon, the men cut logs and made a raft for us to go down the Columbia River. We were twelve days traveling nine miles. Then the provisions gave out, and our lives were saved only by the generosity of an Indian family, which divided its winter salmon supply with us. In payment," records Mrs. Pattison, a little bitterly, "my father-in-law told them to select anything of ours they liked. And if they didn't choose my clothes!"

Mrs. John G. Parker hit the Oregon trail from Saline County, Missouri, when she was a girl of sixteen. For the first few days caravaning was great fun. Then the party was stricken with black measles. One after the other, five graves were made and left behind beside the road. They were those of Mrs. Parker's mother and four brothers.

Events moved swiftly in the '50's. "Rushe," Mrs. Parker's father greeted his daughter one evening, "get me some hot water for shaving and put me out a clean shirt." "Why, father," she said, "are you going to town?" "No," he replied; "I am going to attend your wedding. You might as well be married one time as another. Parker wants you, and I want to go East." "Rushe" shied some tears over the unwonted haste, while father broke the news to Parker, the most frequent of his daughter's callers. An hour later the bride was in her black silk, the bridegroom had finished explaining that, though he was a poor man, he would do his best, and all was "merry as a marriage bell."

LIFE WITHOUT NEWSPAPERS

MAKE A CHART OF YOUR SAVINGS

YOU never will make much progress in saving money until you have definite, hard-and-fast system for doing it. One very ingenious device for visualizing the bank account is described by Albert W. Atwood in his book, How to Get Ahead (Hobbs Merrill).

"I have arranged a scheme so that I can actually see my hoard growing," says the inventor, a young man. "My system is simple. It requires about two minutes a week, but it stimulates my saving instinct just enough, so that I have acquired a fine nest-egg since I started doing it.

"The first thing I did was to procure some paper ruled off into squares (the kind surveyors and efficiency engineers use). Horizontally my squares represented $5 each. Perpendicularly the squares represented two weeks. Then I went to work to 'plot' my curve. The first week I saved $5 and put a dot opposite the first $5 mark and ran a line up from the zero mark—that is, to the intersection of my constants. Perhaps that isn't clear to you, bat you will see that the more nearly vertical my curve runs the faster I am saving.

"Up to the fifty-dollar mark—that is, ten divisions of my vertical—I made a mark. That represented my temporary goal. If I had saved that amount; in ten weeks, my curve would have been a line running at forty-five degrees. As it was it took me twice as long. Then I decided I was going at too slow a rate, so I increased my saving each week, and the line shot off at a sharp, angle upward. In that way I could actually see the improvement I made. Everytime the line begins to sag a little take the hint and deduct a dime or a quarter from my luncheon money or other expenses. I stick to it until the curve straightens out. It seems a little thing; but I never saved a cent until I started the chart."

OUR WEEKLY LIST OF BOOKS WORTH SENDING FOR

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

The Blue Aura

Continued front page 15

Even Turco's closest friend couldn't answer that question. What visions the strange little man had could be vouched for, only by one who saw eye to eye with him, and Teddie Tyson did not lay claim to psychic powers.

Dora dressed that evening with as much care and excitement as for a gala performance. The Columbine dress softened her; made her less of a savage. In the fluffy white skirts hung with garlands of pink rosebuds, and the wreath to match clamped on her dark hair, she looked charming.

In his way, Tyson was no less attractive; and they were very proud of each other.

Dora threw a cloak over her shoulders. It reached barely to her ankles, and the fulness of the ballet skirts made it stand out ludicrously; but they were going in a cab, so it did not matter.

"We look like a fancy dress ball," giggled Dora.

"You look like an angel," her adoring husband replied.

TURCO in his own home was an altogether different man from the one Dora knew in their theatrical lodgings. Could she have seen him that day, she would have been surprised.

Turco was master in his own home—an admired being looked up to with awe, admiration, and love by the two feminine creatures of his household.

To little Dumpling, the prisoner from the world, with her shining, wonderful hair and soft eyes, he was a god among men, the being who very nearly compensated for the world from which he had shielded her.

Then there was Mrs. Smith. The curious thing about Mrs. Smith was that, although she too was almost a cripple, she had once won a man's love. There had been a Mr. Smith. Where and when Turco had picked her up was a mystery. As long as Dumpling could remember, there had always been Mrs. Smith—a bowed, hobbling little woman, who did everything required to be done, even to making Dumpling's pinafores and scrubbing out the great practice room on the floor above, where Turco kept himself in professional trim, and incidentally, when he had time, gave boxing and fencing lessons. For in this half of his double life Turco was Monsieur La Tureque, a professor of gymnastics.

All this was news to Teddie Tyson. Intimate as the two men had been, always lodging together when they were on tour, in constant daily association, and grudging nothing of affection and loyalty to each other, it had taken Dora, with her woman's persistent curiosity, to smell out this secret and track it down.

THE gymnasium was to be the scene of the party. The room was big and airy,—an attic, in fact,—furnished with everything necessary to their profession. There were the tumbling mattress, the swinging bar, the slack wire, the stout white tables, chairs, ladders, and barrels. All these Turco left as they were.

At the audience end of the room a Roman feast was in contemplation. Turco arranged the table and chairs and helped Mrs. Smith to prepare the spread. There were quite a number of things in the way of food, ranging from beer, cold sliced sausage, and potato salad, all the way to cream cakes and vanilla ice, the latter packed solidly in a freezing-pail. There were flowers as well as food on the table, and candles with pink shades set in china holders. Where they had come from, only Turco could say. He had his own ideas, and managed to carry them out, somehow.

The crowning achievement, however, was the lighting scheme of the room. He had bought a dozen paper lanterns and hung them by cords from the ceiling. It was not his fault that they were not all on the same level, but the effect was better than if they had been.

How beautiful they looked when he lighted them!—like great golden oranges and pagodas of richly stained glass. He clapped his hands, turned a somersault in his absurdly comic clown's costume, and went downstairs to fetch poor little Dumpling.

The girl was waiting for him in a fever of impatience. Her face was pale, her eyes like stars. Mrs. Smith had dressed her in a white pinafore; her hair was tied back with a blue ribbon, and she had a blue sash.

Turco appeared to be overcome by her splendor. He struck an attitude denoting shock, fell over himself backward, recovering his balance with marvelous dexterity. The girl laughed shrilly.

"Oh, Turco, you are so funny! But do let us be quick. It's nearly eight. You

She held out her thin arms, the hands so beautiful that they seemed carved by a sculptor in transparent wax.

"Take me up now, Turco! I can't bear to wait. I ought to be there when they come. They'd think it odd to see you carrying me."

The painted, grinning smile of Turco covered the tenderest of expressions as he gathered the little figure into his arms. She clung about his neck, scolding him mercilessly:

"Oh, Turco, you clumsy fellow! You're crushing my pinny. Do be careful. I shall look a sight, I know. Oh, do be careful of the banisters, Turco—there's dust on them, I'm sure. Hark, isn't that the street door?"

She craned her neck over his shoulder.

"Yes—yes! They're coming! I heard Dora laugh. Do be quick—you old slowcoach."

But Turco would not be any quicker than he saw fit. She had forgotten but he remembered that the least jolt would give her intense pain. Perhaps at the moment, however, she would not have felt it.

By the time the guests had climbed the stairs, Dumpling was in her chair and had smoothed her rumpled feathers. More astonishing to her even than Dora was Teddie Tyson.

As he came into the room in the train of the radiant Columbine, Dumpling's lips parted in an exclamation of surprise. Besides Turco, the doctor was the only man she had ever seen, and the doctor was neither youthful nor an Adonis.

She flashed a reproachful glance at Turco. These wonderful beings belonged to the world from which he had kept her.

"This chair, dear Dora, next to me—and Ted on the other side. Mrs. Smith usually eats with us, but to-night she says she won't—I can't think why."

Mrs. Smith, in a clean white apron that very nearly covered her, glared at Dumpling.

But Turco cried loudly:

"Neither can I. Why shouldn't she? Sit you down, Mrs. Smith, and we'll all wait on each other."

Dora smiled at her, and Mrs. Smith's severity relaxed. She allowed herself to be coaxed to the table, and she and Turco sat together at the foot. Dumpling was at the head, as should be, with the visitors from the world on either side of her.

Immediately the fun grew fast and furious. Turco saw to that. This was his party, and he meant it to be a success. He was something to laugh at, and with. Here in the bosom of a lately expanded family circle, he was more than a mere dozen of clowns: he was the very soul of mirth. And with his mirth was mixed the teasing, indulgent love of the ideal paterfamilias—clown and father in one.

DORA wondered if he could be the same man for whom she had felt such repulsion that night at Chapin's. She had been frightened when he paid for her meal—terrified when she was left alone with him. Yet it was the same Turco. Unless she was mistaken, he was wearing the very same red tie.

How kind he had proved to be that night, helping her when the world was crumbling beneath her feet, when even Ted—she glanced across the table at her adoring husband—yes, when even Ted

Page 19

Dora shivered.

"Are you cold?" asked Dumpling. The shiver had been accompanied by an audible "B-rr!"

"Something is walking over her grave," said the sepulchral Mrs. Smith.

This was a cheerful idea.

"It's the ice," said Tyson. "Ices always give Dora a chill."

Perhaps it was the ice.

TURCO picked up his fiddle. He didn't want Dora to shiver any more.

"Is it too soon after supper to begin?" he asked.

"Oh, no; do begin!" cried Dumpling. "I want Dora to dance. I want to see her stand on her toes and whirl, like you showed me, Turco."

Dora took the center of the cleared floor on tiptoe, with arms extended, wrists drooping, head slightly to one side.

"Ladies and gentlemen," announced Turco, ready with his fiddle, "I have now to introduce the greatest of all ballerinas, Mademoiselle Dora."

Then, with a professional leer, he added:

No sooner said than done. As a violinist Turco might not have been much good; but as a fiddler he was perfect.

Dumpling, Mrs. Smith, and Dora's husband strained forward, watching not only Dora, but the eccentric fiddler as well. Turco was her discreet but melodious shadow.

"Great!" Tyson cried. "We ought to work that into the act."

He would have applauded but for Dumpling, who sat under such a spell of enchantment as made him wish he had not spoken.

The spell, however, was broken from outside.

The door opened quite casually, and two men from the world appeared. They were what Edith Trelawny would have designated as gentlemen—also she would have recognized them both.

Dora stopped, and held her pose unconsciously. Turco ceased fiddling.

"I'm sorry; are we intruding?" asked the younger of the men.

He wore a little mustache brushed up at the corners, and a monocle attached to a black ribbon. His expression was quizzical, and as he spoke he looked, not at Turco, but at the lovely Columbine.

"I was under the impression that this was our night, Monsieur La Turcque. I couldn't make any one hear, so we just came up. This is my friend Mr. Mayfield. Weren't you expecting us?"

Under his grotesque make-up, poor Turco was sadly crestfallen. He came forward apologetically.

"Beg pardon, my lord; it was my mistake. I'd clean forgotten your boxing lesson. We—I—we're having a party."

Lord Anthony Harland smiled—at Columbine. She let herself down on her heels with a little thump, and minced across the room in leisurely fashion.

"So I see. May we stay? This is the great professor, Mayfield—but it doesn't look as if we'd get our little bout with the gloves to-night."

"How do you do, sir?" said Turco.

The second man nodded in offhand fashion. He too seemed interested in Dora. He had seen her only once before in her life—at her wedding. But he had every reason to be interested in her, and he remembered her face at once. He was neither so young nor so attractive as his companion.

How describe him? One of those men who has outlived his youth, but not the illusion of it. A dandified old man with thinning hair that looked to be artificially darkened, plastered in streaks over the dome of a narrow skull. A clean-shaven old man, with deep lines in a thick, sallow skin, and a decided "waist" to his tail coat. He had thin old hands marked with blue veins, jaded eyes, and a cynical mouth. Above and beyond all, he was extraordinarily neat, as if polished and put together by his valet.

"I hope the professor will allow us to stay," he murmured. "It seems a fascinating party."

He had a soft, almost feminine voice. Dora was staring hard at him now. She looked hateful.

Turco did not know what to do, but Dumpling solved the problem for him. She leaned forward from her cushioned chair as graciously as any queen and with truly royal unconsciousness.

"Of course you may stay. Do sit down. Dora was dancing for us. She will be charmed to dance for you too."

Harland winced as he glanced at the speaker; but his companion showed more self-control.

"Thanks very much. And who may you be, young woman?" Mayfield asked.

"My adopted daughter," Turco put in abruptly, "and this is Mrs. Tyson and Mr. Tyson, my partners—Lord Anthony Harland and Mr. Mayfield—make you all acquainted."

"Delighted, I'm sure," said Lord Anthony.

He went straight over to Dora and began talking to her.

For a few moments it began to look as if the party, as a party, would be a failure.

The arrival of the strangers had put a damper on things. Dora did not want to dance again. Tyson was stiff and self- conscious, and it seemed as if Turco had suddenly lost the art of being funny.

Mrs. Smith, ridiculous in her big white apron, hobbled about, clearing away the table, making a clatter.

The crippled girl sat silent in her cushioned chair, her soft brown eyes inquiring of everybody. Tyson also sat silent beside her, his eyes hard and resentful.

The dandified Mr. Mayfield was engaging Turco's attention, asking innumerable questions about the art of boxing, and inquiring into the purposes of the various tools of the acrobats' trade with which the room was littered.

DORA was at complete ease. She had ceased to regard Mr. Mayfield. After all, what was he to her? It was something to be talking to a lord, and one who evidently found her pleasing.

After a few complimentary preliminaries, Harland broke the news to her that she was not altogether a stranger to him.

"Once I saw you crying. It was the first time I saw you. Can you guess when—and where?"

Dora flashed her amazing fierce smile at him, eyes and teeth glittering.

"Go on! That's a good one! Tell another."

"It's the truth."

The monocle winked back at her.

"It's a lie!" said Dora, forgetting just for that instant that he was a lord.

"I shouldn't have noticed you if you hadn't been crying. The tears were simply rolling down your cheeks. And it was the night before you were married, too. The manager told me all about it."

"Oh! Now I remember!" Dora exclaimed. "You came behind that night. I saw you talking to Mr. Symonds. But I wasn't crying; we were having champagne."

Harland threw back his head and laughed, and the monocle dropped.

"Never mind; I won't tease you. The next day I went to see you married—"

"With Mr. Mayfield?" she asked quickly, a flush dyeing her face.

"No—by myself. Come to think of it, Mayfield was there too."

He glanced at his friend.

"Are you and Mayfield friends?"

"No," Dora replied shortly. "I don't know him."

"Then how did you know he was at your wedding?"

"My mother told me," she said, too confused to concoct an untruth.

"Ah, your mother knows him?"

"She did once—but what's it got to do with you?"

"Nothing at all. I bow to your decision, fair Columbine. Let us change the

Page 20

"It is not!" said Dora snappily.

At this point little Dumpling's patience ended. She had clamored for the world, but she did not want it in such large doses.

"Dora—dear Dora—please dance again. Turco, do something! You said it was to be just like the theater—and nobody's doing anything."

Harland turned and stared at her coldly. He did not wince this time, but his expression was one of distaste.

"The girl is speaking to you, I believe," he said to Dora.

"Oh, Dumpling, do you really want me to?" she protested.

"Why shouldn't you?" Tyson put in sullenly. "That's what you came for, isn't it? Didn't we promise Turco—"

"If we're spoiling the party, Lord Anthony and I will go at once," said the courteous Mr. Mayfield.

His remark awakened everybody's conscience on the score of hospitality. Protesting that they were both very welcome, —that, far from spoiling it, the party was all the better for their presence,—Turco seized his fiddle, Dora spun into the middle of the room, and Tyson shook himself out of his sulks and followed her. He too could dance.

The strangers gave an enthusiastic round of applause, and Dumpling laughed aloud in her excitement. Mrs. Smith, hugging a pile of plates, hovered like a dour little shadow in the doorway.

Once started, the ice was broken.

Dora danced and danced. Turco fiddled and fiddled.

Then, when she was tired and leaned laughing and breathless against the wall, Turco threw aside his fiddle and leaped upon the slack wire; and from there he bounded to Tyson's shoulders, and the two of them executed their marvelous interlocked somersault the whole length of the room.

Overhead the lanterns swung gently in the rush of air produced by the gymnasts' gyrations.

The crippled girl strained forward, pale, her waxen hands folding and unfolding, her head inclining to every movement. Harland played nervously with the ribbon of his monocle and twisted the ends of his mustache.

He shrewdly suspected his friend's relationship to Dora, and the idea that this girl in the Columbine's dress was Henry Mayfield's daughter added to her piquancy. His pulse drummed with heavy insistence. He wanted to be more actively in the picture, to take his own part in the violently agile and graceful performance.

Of them all, Henry Mayfield alone was unmoved.

"I say, La Turcque—" he drawled, "his lordship wants a round or two with the gloves. Would the ladies object?"

Turco, glistening with perspiration, leered in agreement.

"I'd be pleased—I'm sure they'd like it."

"Love it!" shrilled Dumpling, who by this time was almost off her head.

"I should have to take off my coat—" Harland began.

"And shirt, collar—and monocle," Dora finished for him.

HER forwardness did not please her husband. He frowned at her. But Dora took no notice. She was whirling around on her toes again, and pointing abruptly at five minutes to twelve.

"I can lend you a jersey," said Turco. "Only you'll have to wait a goodish bit while I clean off this make-up."

"Don't bother," Dora's husband spoke up. "I can give his lordship all he wants."

Dora glanced quickly from one man to the other. She saw them exchanging polite smiles. What was the matter with Ted? Why should he want to box with Lord Anthony Harland?—pushing himself in where he wasn't asked!

"Right you are," said Harland. "The professor's reach is a bit short for me—and, on the other hand, he's too swift. You'd be just about right."

Dora again gave her quick glance. Those last words of the noble lord's sounded almost like an insult; but perhaps Ted hadn't noticed.

Turco piloted his guest to the dressing-room; but Tyson unconcernedly stripped off his ruffled silk shirt in the presence of all, and was revealed naked to the waist. He walked over to the rack and began choosing the gloves.

Dora felt snubbed, somehow. Why hadn't he looked at or spoken to her?

"Will they hurt each other?" quavered Dumpling; for she, too, sensed the serious atmosphere.

"Bless you, my child, not in the least," said Henry Mayfield.

He had settled himself comfortably in a chair, from which his interested gaze centered almost wholly on Dora. He did not know that she knew him. He was trying vaguely to recall the past in her; but it was difficult. A man's flesh and blood is never so little his own as when it reveals itself in a creature like Dora.

"Her mother must have been a wonderful woman," he thought.

He was a cynic all through, but a terribly just one, although mistaken in this instance. Dora's mother was not a wonderful woman.

Without his eye-glass, and in one of Turco's white jerseys, Lord Anthony looked strangely different. He had, mused Dora, almost a ruffianly appearance. She admired her husband more.

The two men leaped upon the mattress. Turco was to be the referee. He examined the gloves and approved of Tyson's choice.

"Shake hands," called Dora jeeringly.

They did, and squared off.

IT was a beautiful fight. None of the spectators could deny that. It quite carried them off their feet, including the blasé Mayfield.

Before the first round was over it became apparent that the opponents were well matched. This rather disappointed Dora. She had expected Ted to be superior, as a matter of course.

Slap! bang! went the gloves. Tyson's supple body grew pink and was bathed in glistening perspiration. His dark hair straggled over his forehead in damp patches.

His opponent, even in the white woolen jersey, looked cooler. There was an insolent twist to Lord Anthony's little mustache, and he made frequent jocular remarks:

"That's right! Come on again, Buster! Almost, but not quite. Aha, would you tickle my ribs? Fanning the air again. How's that? . . . Whugh! You would, would you?"

Tyson would, but couldn't. The color had risen from his torso to his face, and now inflamed his eyes. He was growing angry.

"They are hurting each other!" Dumpling cried softly. But no one paid any attention to her. She twisted helplessly in her chair, wishing to get away, and finally covered her eyes with her beautiful hands.

"Time!" called Turco, who was holding a turnip of a watch.

Tyson picked up a coarse towel and drew it smartly across his shoulders to dry them. The night had grown stifling.

"Sorry I haven't a hair-pin to lend you, Ted," Dora said.

He did not answer her.

Harland, breathing rather fast, met her glance with a smile.

"Some sport, eh? Your husband's a fierce customer, Mrs. Tyson. Knocks spots out of our little professor, here."

"He doesn't seem to be able to do much to you," Dora replied, thus heaping a generous supply of fuel on the flames.

Tyson threw down his towel.

"Have you had enough?" he asked insolently.

"Dear me, no," put in Mr. Mayfield; "it's just beginning to be interesting."

"But have you had enough?" Tyson put the question to his opponent.

"I think we might have another round, unless you are tired," Harland replied. "I shall have to watch out for myself this go."

"Time's up," said Turco.

Page 21

Tyson opened the second round with a bull-like rush. Harland was taken off his guard and very nearly off his feet. Before he could recover his wits he was getting it left and right.

"Easy, Ted!" Turco cautioned.

"Go for him, Tony!" Mayfield advised, in his thin, feminine voice.

The two men, crouching like beasts, circled each other more slowly.

Harland was getting angry, too. He no longer joked.

A mocking little laugh from Dora turned the trick as far as Tyson was concerned. He was not a quick-witted young man, but he would have had to be a veritable dunce not to realize that Dora was on his opponent's side.

With the second rush he caught Harland a swinging upper cut with his left. It sounded as if the noble jaw had been broken. Down he went like a log; and Turco, forgetting that it had started as a friendly set-to, gave him the count in true professional fashion.

It was more than ten seconds, however, before Lord Anthony came to.

Dumpling cried quietly and unnoticed in her cushioned chair. She had known that something dreadful was going to happen. It was not so dreadful as she feared, however; for presently Lord Anthony sat up, dazed, laughing, and holding his jaw ruefully.

"Give you best, Tyson," he said. "Sorry I was such an ass. Right, professor; no more of that flowing sponge, if you please. No, Mrs. Tyson, my jaw-bone is intact, thank you, although I must look a sight."

He struggled to his feet, and insisted upon shaking hands with his opponent.

"You must give me another lesson sometime. If I could spar regularly with you, Tyson, I might learn to use the gloves some day."

Tyson muttered an apology. It was difficult for him to explain why he had forced those rushes, and why, above all things, he had committed the sin of actually knocking out his opponent.

He was—although Dora had been unable to see it—by far the better man. Perhaps, for her sake, he had to prove it.

After that the party broke up. Turco suddenly discovered how tired Dumpling was. He encouraged his guests to leave, since nothing would induce Dumpling to be carried out in their presence.

Dora and her husband drove back to New Compton Street in an open taxicab. During the drive they said not one single word; each was displeased with the other.

Lord Anthony Harland and Henry Mayfield left the house on foot.

"Rather a savage, that fellow," Harland commented, nursing his face with his handkerchief. "What the devil he wanted to do that for, I don't know."

Mayfield delicately flicked the ash from the cigar he was smoking.

"It didn't occur to you, perhaps, that the woman was his wife."

"Who? What do you mean?"

"Columbine."

"Of course I knew she was his wife."

"And have you never had a husband jealous of you before, Tony? Really, my boy, you positively asked for it."

Harland shrugged his shoulders and muttered, "Rot!" But deep down in his heart he was not altogether displeased.

THE Tyro-Turco Troupe of Comedy Acrobats opened their season in Birmingham. From there they played Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, and then skipped lightly over the border into Scotland.

The first few months she had been on tour, Dora enjoyed herself immensely; but this time she did not like it. Their lodgings were not always comfortable. The long train journeys on Sundays, when she wanted to sleep late, were a great infliction. Turco and Tyson always had so much to do that they were not much good to her in a social way. The luggage alone kept one or both of them constantly occupied; for, although the troupe was well paid, the acrobats practised the economy of attending to their own properties.

Dora's part was to look after the wardrobe, and that was a business in itself. There was always the worry about the package from the cleaners not arriving in time or following them promptly. There was always shopping to do, meals to order, rehearsals when there were not performances, and fights with landladies.

She complained not only of monotony and overwork, but of neglect. The men were too occupied to need her. They worked like fiends. They thought of nothing but their work and how they could improve it. What the audience "rose to" and appreciated was the only thing that really thrilled them. They nursed their points, elaborated favorite tricks, got it down "all smooth and oily," "put it over," and after that they cared for nothing but food and bed.

Dora was a true Cockney at heart, and these cities so different from London, these audiences who had to be studied differently, the north-country tongue, the very aspect of the houses and people, made her sick for New Compton Street. When they were on the homeward trek, she could have cried for joy.

EACH week found them a little nearer.

The third week in January, a cold, rainy Sunday, they arrived at Euston at four o'clock in the afternoon. Turco parted from Ted and Dora at the station. He was going where a warm and cheerful welcome awaited him, and he was very happy.

The Tysons, with their personal luggage, went to Mrs. Petrosini's.

In spite of her pleasure at getting back, Dora was in a bad temper. She was thoroughly tired out for one thing, and the rain depressed her. Worst of all, they had no holiday in prospect, for the troupe opened the following week in Chiswick.

In the cab, Tyson reached for his young wife's hand.

"Glad to get home, kid?"

"We've got no home—not a proper one," Dora said sullenly.

"That's right; we haven't," he replied, a little surprised, for the question had never bothered him before. "How would it do for us to take a flat or something?"

"What's the good, when we can never be in it?"

"Oh, sometimes we could. Like now, for instance."

Dora shrugged her shoulders. She really didn't know whether she wanted a flat or not. Tyson tried again:

"It's been a hard tour. The provinces are killing. I always say, deliver me from the provinces in the winter."

"Or at any other time," snapped Dora.

"Yes—I guess you're right," he admitted, with a sigh. "Turco and I didn't used to mind—not so awful much. But, for a girl it's different. Perhaps you'd like to cut the show, Dora?"

"And lose my ten quid a week? Not likely!" said Dora.

"I can take care of you right enough."

"Yes, and you can spend a healthy lot, on yourself, too. Much I should get when you'd handed in your expense account."

Tyson did not argue the point. Fine raiment was his weakness; but in these days, if he bought himself silk hose and

Page 22

"Sometimes I think you hate me," he said meekly.

To this Dora made no reply. For her there were but two emotions—love and hate: and one could not love all the time.

"You've never been quite the same to me since that night at Turco's," he went on.

"You were a beast that night!" Dora stated vehemently.

"Because I put his high and mightiness to sleep?"

"Rotten bad form," drawled Dora, who had learned a few mannerisms at her cheap little boarding-school.

"He deserved it!"

Tyson exclaimed.

"You were jealous—that's why you did it," she taunted. "You saw I'd made an impression on him."

"Jealous or not, I laid him out, and I meant to. I'll do it again, too if—"

"Likely a gentleman like Lord Anthony Harland would ever give you a chance!"

"Gentleman, is it! I suppese I'm not one?"

"You!—next you'll be saying Turco is a gentleman."

"He is."

"Oh, mon chapeau! Hark at you!"

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing. Only you make me laugh."

"Laugh away, you heartless girl. You make me think of a tale Turco once told me; I wonder what he sees in you, anyway?"

"Turco understands me," said Dora, who did not in the least mind being called heartless. "What was the tale?"

"About a girl in Denmark—anyway, the chap who first told the tale was a Dane, Turco said. She threw down a loaf of bread into a mud-puddle to step on, so's to keep her new shoes tidy. And the bread was really her mother's heart. That didn't save her. It was a quagmire, and she sank down, down, and horrible things happened to her—all because she was so proud and heartless."

"How interesting!" said Dora. "And you say I'm like that! Little you know about my mother. She hasn't got a heart to tread on."

Dora looked out into the rain, and her lips quivered. Ted accused her of hating him, when it was quite plain he hated her. The taxi turned into the familiar street, and, assuming cold indifference, Dora left her husband to wrestle with the luggage while she went in to see if their rooms were ready.

There was a cheerful fire in the sitting-room. Mrs. Petrosini had been warned of their expected arrival. Tea would be forthcoming immediately.

Having disposed of the luggage problem, Tyson joined his wife at tea.

By this time Dora was in a softer mood, and Ted was only too willing to follow her lead. He did not enjoy quarreling for its own sake.

Dora's power over him was uncanny. Whenever he did get the advantage of her, he was either too slow or too tenderhearted to follow it up. She held him in the hollow of her hand.

AS if they read each other's mind, each was thinking of the same thing about the time the second cup of tea was despatched. They thought of the afternoon when they had quarreled in this very room, and Dora was going to leave him.

Tyson drew the hassock close to her arm-chair, and seated himself, resting his head against her knees.

"Dora, I didn't mean it—about the girl who trod on the loaf being like you. I don't know what made me think of it."

"I did," said Dora, sweetly contrite. "I know I'm horrid sometimes. But I do love you, Ted."

He twisted about so that he could put his arms around her waist. He looked uncommonly handsome, to her way of thinking, but his eyes were too wistful—like the eyes of a patient ox.

"Dora—don't go away from me!"

"You, silly dear!"

"I know you wouldn't really—only, don't pretend to, ever again. Why are you so sharp with me sometimes?"

"I don't know. I don't mean to be."

"Why do you flirt with other men?"

"I don't!"

"Perhaps it isn't flirting. It's the way you look at them. You don't mean anything—but how do they know?"

"You are such a foolish dear," said Dora lazily.

She smoothed his hair as if he were five and she his mother.

"Suppose I made eyes at other girls?"

Dora laughed.

"Plenty make eyes at you. You get more love letters than I do. In Edinburgh you were simply, swamped with 'em, and I only got two."

"I always did—in Edinburgh," Tyson replied simply. "Long before I met you. I never answered but one in my life."

"Who was that from?" Dora sat up straight, all of the lazy softness gone but of her. "You never told me."

"No, I neyer told you. I never told anybody—not even Turco."

"Ted!"

"Was it a crime?"

"Who was she? Did you meet her?"

"Aha, somebody else is jealous now

"Not a bit! I only want to know."

Dora relaxed; but haughtily.

"I did meet her. She was rather a nice girl. She worked in a confectionery shop. She wanted to go on the halls. She could 'clog' a little."

"What was her name?

"I'ye forgotten."

"Was she pretty?"

"No—and she, wasn't young, either."

Dora felt relieved.

"What's happened to her?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. I never saw her again."

"Was there never anybody else, Ted?"

TYSON flushed uncomfortably. He was no liar, but in one instance he had rather suppressed the truth. There had been some one else—the girl Turco had thrown out of the troupe so unceremoniously.

"What's the use of talking about such things?" he asked.

"I'm sure I don't want to know," Dora said indifferently, but there was a haunted look in her dark eyes. She hugged him fiercely, and made him swear eternal allegiance all over again.

"And it is good to get home! London is beautiful even in the rain. But what shall we do to-night—Sunday! I want to go somewhere."

"I'll tell you what—let's have dinner at Chapin's," her husband suggested.

"Will you give me some champagne?"

"Why not?"

Dora made herself very fine that evening. Tyson did not disapprove of the black dress with its bodice cut in deep points back and front—and no sleeves at all. If anything, he would have described it as a quiet dress. Dora, however, gave it a restless quality. There was a jet butterfly poised on each thin shoulder, and she fastened a narrow scarlet ribbon about her throat, which from a short distance looked alarmingly like a gash. Her hair she left as it was, merely combing it out to stand a bit more wildly.

Chapin's, however, was used to such sights. Dora was not in the least out of place in that expensive but bohemian café.

How different it was from the other time she had gone to dine there, a famished little wretch cadging for food and with the spirit nearly starved out of her.

They were early, and the café was half empty, so they had a choice of tables. Dora chose a corner where she could sit with her back to the wall, on a crimson velvet settle. She ordered the most

Page 23

They were having soup when who should arrive but Turco, escorting Betty and Ivy. Turco had gone around to Mrs. Petrosini's, and so had the girls, who knew Dora would be back that afternoon. How lucky that Mrs. Petrosini knew where to send them!

Betty and Ivy were rehearsing now for nother revue, and Betty was just as frankly hungry as ever. They were both charmed at the sight of the food and sparkling wine.

Tyson ordered another bottle. Turco preferred beer, but was none the less gay for that. He wanted them all to come back to Percy Street with him after dinner. In fact, he had gone around to fetch Dora at Dumpling's request.

Dora nodded happily. She was so glad that Turco was not bored with her.

The three girls chattered like magpies—they had so much to tell each other. Betty had a sweetheart, a young man who worked in her uncle's drapery emporium in Highgate. He was earning three pounds a week, and her uncle thought well of him. When he got to four they might be married. At the moment he was suffering from a bad cold that kept him tied to the house; but as soon as he was better Dora must meet him.

Ivy surreptitiously gave Dora a grimace which told the latter she was not to expect anything wonderful of the young man. Ivy herself looked higher even than Highgate; but she had not found the right one yet.

"Why don't you marry Turco?" Dora suggested.

To her horror, Turco was annoyed. He took the suggestion seriously, and rejected Ivy on the spot.

Ivy, too, was annoyed. As she was sensitive about her height, and as Turco was a little man, Dora's joke seemed pitilessly pointed.

For a few seconds there was a depressing lull in the conversation.

And then entered Lord Anthony Harland.

To be continued next week

Starvation and Storage Batteries

By ERNEST A. STEPHENS

"MY storage battery won't hold the charge," is the all too common complaint of the average motorist.

If the battery could talk back, it would say accusingly, "There is a strong probability of my going on a thirst strike that may cause you a lot of trouble."

Neither camels nor storage batteries need a drink every day, and there is a popular impression to the effect that any kind of water is good enough for either, should they become thirsty. Friend camel may be easily satisfied as regards quality; but pure distilled water is necessary for the well being of the battery. Keep all the cells filled to a level of half an inch above the tops of the plates, not higher.

Don't assume that because your car has just been delivered the storage battery must be all right. Perhaps the car may have stood for a time in the sales-room, and the lighting and operation of the starter been demonstrated time after time to prospective purchasers, with the result that when it reaches you the battery is no longer operating at its full capacity. The reason for this state of things is, obviously, because the car has not been running on the road and the generator has not had an opportunity to restore the used-up energy.

It is a good plan to test your battery at definite periods—say twice a month. For this purpose a little instrument known as a hydrometer syringe, costing a dollar, is needed. The hydrometer syringe tells you at once how things stand by registering the gravity of the electrolyte in the storage cells. If it shows a specific gravity of from 1,275 to 1300, everything is all right; but if your diagnosis comes out much below this, the indication is that the battery needs recharging. A reading of 1150 tells you the battery is empty; but do not wait until this happens.

Do not get the idea that your generator will always keep your battery at the proper point. The battery has to meet a very severe (though momentary) strain when starting your engine; it has also to keep the lights going, and it is quite conceivable that you may have to take out more current than your generator will replace. This holds good particularly when you have many stops or short, slow runs. You should study the art of preserving the balance between the lights and the battery by taking a long run the day after you have made considerable use of your lamps—and don't forget that it is probable you have added a spotlight or an inspection lamp to the outfit originally furnished, and that these are calling for more current.

Have you ever wondered at meeting a car with the head-lights lit in the full glare of a noonday sun? There's a reason. If you take a long non-stop journey in warm weather, and during that time your battery has no starting or lighting work to do, it is quite likely that the continuous charge will cause the generation of a considerable amount of heat. Under these circumstances burning all your lamps while driving will tend to reduce the temperature.

A good rule is to take the battery temperature each summer day—110° Fahrenheit is dangerous, 120° may ruin the battery, and it is well to set 100° or less as the limit of safety. Another point to be remembered is that your battery is not actually at rest while your car is in the garage,—a continual but slow discharge is always going on,—and if at any time you find it necessary to give your car a long rest, do not forget to arrange for the battery to be recharged regularly.

If, through neglect or oversight, your battery dies of starvation, you can have it restored to life by a course of prolonged charging at the service station. It is a process that demands the attention of an expert, and the operation may take a couple of weeks. Don't use a battery that leaks; get the cells put right or replaced without delay; and don't forget that there are several things that you should take care of in connection with your battery before you put your car away for the winter. This side of the matter will be dealt with at a more seasonable time.