Some Fellows Lose Five Minutes Early in Life, and Never Find It Afterward

I LIKE to get to the station a few minutes early in the afternoon, and watch the commuters running for the trains.

I have been watching them now for almost two years, and I know a lot of them by sight.

There are the ladies and old men, infrequent visitors to the city, unused to business, who arrive long before train-time.

There are the regular business men, who arrive one minute ahead.

And—just as the gate is about to slam—there come piling across the station, breathless, coat-tails flying, the members of the Just a Little Late Club.

I used to sympathize with them at first, supposing them to be unfortunates who had missed a car or lost their watches.

But after almost two years of watching I know different.

The membership of the Just a Little Late Club does not change appreciably from day to day. Night after night it is the very same crowd of men who have to run the last few blocks for the train.

Membership in the Just a Little Late Club is not a misfortune: it is a habit. And one of the most exasperating habits in the world.

Napoleon said: "I beat the Austrians because they did not know the value of five minutes."

He beat the Austrians, but he did not exterminate them. Thousands of their descendants and relatives still wave—still with no appreciation of the value of time; still a nuisance in the business world.

There should be some way of marking them. They should be compelled to wear a button or a distinctive uniform of some sort, so that the man who makes an appointment with one of them might be protected against taking the appointment too seriously.

"Never be on time," said Mark Twain. "You waste too much time waiting for the other fellow."

He had in mind the enormous membership of the Just a Little Late Club.

I was lunching the other day in a hotel with a man who has much more money than I have. And a man passed us who has much more than both of us together.

He is a captain of other people's industry, as well as of his own. He began work twenty years ago as an office-boy, and to-day heads one of the great manufacturing concerns of his city.

"A wonderful fellow," said my friend, pointing to him. "Last year I had a long series of negotiations with him about the formation Of a new company. It was necessary for us to meet practically every day for nearly three months. In all that time he was never late but twice, arid then only for a few minutes. And each time he sent word to me from his office telling me that he would be late."

J. P. Morgan figured that every hour of his time was worth $1000, and he had no patience with men who were late for appointments, or who, when they came to see him, did not give him his money's worth in exchange for the time they took.

"It is not necessary for me to live," said Pompey, "but it.t is necessary that I be at a certain point, at a certain time."

And Lord Nelson said: "I owe all my success in life to having been a quarter of an hour before my time."

I hold up the record of these famous men, in the faint hope that it may do some good.

And yet, the hope is very faint. The habit of unpromptness is so very tenacious, so difficult to break.

If I am fortunate enough to be inside when the pearly gates are closed on the judgment-day, I shall know what to expect.

Five minutes later there will be a terrific battering on the gate. St. Peter may be surprised, but I shall not be.

When the gates swing open again, there they will be— some of the most lovable and exasperating people who ever lived—the members of the Just a Little Late Club —panting, apologetic, explanatory to the last.

Bruce Barton. Editor.

HOW BIG MEN ACT UNDER FIRE

By B. C. FORBES

Illustrations by M. L. Blumenthal

SOME Kings of High Finance resent having the "fierce white light" turned upon their thrones. They try to duck. Sometimes they get angry. The ones who have most to hide usually object most.

Your representatives are not always received open-armed and open-lipped when they go to see these notables. You are the public, and your representatives are the financial and other reporters you employ to keep you posted on what is going on.

Most of the Money Kings now realize that you are entitled to know what they are doing with your money, and how they are handling corporations financed by your savings. Others, however, still think it is none of your business. Fortunately, their number is decreasing; but a few of them still persist—strong-willed old remnants of an era almost gone.

George F. Baker is the oldest living specimen of this type. "It is none of the public's business" is his stock reply to all newspaper men who buttonhole him for information. He told the Pujo Congressional Committee the same thing when it began to probe the Money Trust. But Samuel Untermyer, the Committee's lawyer, persuaded him into thinking—or at least acting—differently.

Mr. Baker has lived seventy-seven years, and has rolled up a fortune estimated at as high as $250,000,000, without once telling the public anything about his doings, notwithstanding that all this time he has been fingering the public's money. He told the Money Trust investigators that, if full daylight were let into the workings of banks, business would come almost to a standstill. Mr. Baker was a founder of the First National Bank in New York, in 1863; and, though it began with only $200,000 capital and a handful of deposits, it has to-day as much money as all the banks of New York could boast when he hung out his shingle.

Baker is a dominant power in more corporations than any other man in the world; yet absolutely nothing is known, even by his intimates, about his early career; and little more is known now about his day-to-day activities. He is the financial world's "man of mystery." He is as silent as the Sphinx when approached by interviewers. The stockholders of his bank, however, have no reason to complain, since he rolls up dividends for them at the rate of 50 to 1900 per cent. a year. He is the most successful money-making machine in Wall Street.

J. P. Morgan the Second inherited his father's contempt for the public and its representatives, the newspaper reporters. But he soon discovered that, while his father's brusqueness was tolerated, he could not indulge in similar tactics and retain his peace of mind. His more diplomatic associates whispered a few things in his ear, and he now submits to a bombardment of reportorial questioning every other afternoon. He does not like personal publicity,however. Indeed, he hates it. If he had his way, his name would never appear in print.

When he was summoned to give evidence before the Walsh Industrial Relations Committee, he made a sorry spectacle. His answers were not only superficial, but often supercilious—in contrast with the statesmanlike testimony of young John D. Rockefeller. Other financiers were angry with Morgan for giving such an exhibition. There was a reason: the explanation is that a moving-picture machine was placed within a few yards of Morgan's head, and kept "click, click, clicking" every time he moved an eyelash or uttered a word. He felt that he was being exploited to provide the public with a "show"—that Walsh was anxious to get front-page headlines for his Committee's play-acting.

He Didn't Shake Hands

JAMES STILLMAN—who, with the original Morgan and Baker, formed the "Big Three" of the financial world for many a day—is quite as talkative as was J. P. Morgan or as Baker is to-day. But no more so. He has never in his life given an interview for publication. When I jockeyed another financier into introducing me, Stillman's smileless greeting, without any handshake, was: "You are a man I have long dreaded having to meet." So modest is Stillman, so careful is he to keep out of the public eye, that he is sometimes several months in the country—he spends most of his time in Europe—before even his friends learn of his return. His excuse for not talking now is that he died, in a business sense, a decade ago, when he retired from the presidency of the National City Bank and installed Frank A. Vanderlip in his place. Mr. Stillman would rather run a mile than run into a reporter. Yet he is broadminded enough to sanction a policy of the fullest publicity on the part of the City Bank.

Mr. Vanderlip is the antithesis of his predecessor,, Mr. Stillman. Being an ex-reporter, he still has a fellow feeling for the breed. He is the best friend the financial scribes have. Whenever they are stumped in running down a rumored big story, they turn to Vanderlip. If he can—and he usually can—he gladly helps them out, either by giving them the facts, or by telling them frankly there is nothing in it. Almost every afternoon a deputation of newspaper men wait on him and subject him to a quizzing bee. Often the questions fired at him are more impertinent than pertinent; yet he never loses his patience or his good humor.

"How many shares of International Mercantile Marine has the American International bought in the market?" a daily newspaper reporter asked him, when Wall Street was buzzing with the news that this ambitious Vanderlip enterprise was after control of the Shipping Trust.

"I wonder?" came the laughing reply.

After the reporters had gone, Mr. Vanderlip confided to the writer that only two men in the world had this information: and the number was not increased.

Did you notice how Jacob H. Schiff, head of the second largest international banking house in the United States and a noted philanthropist, slipped out of New York in order to dodge the many gatherings planned for the celebration of his seventieth birthday last January? That was typical of Mr. Schiff. He devotes more time to giving away money and to the doing of charitable work than any other banker in America. But he won't let anybody make a fuss over him or his benefactions. He never grants any interviews in New York for publication; but sometimes he lets himself go when away from home. He also discusses matters very freely with three newspaper men whom he trusts implicitly, but never for quotation. I happened to drop in to see Mr. Schiff just before he disappeared mysteriously on the eve of his birthday, and he confessed that he was just about to decamp. I asked him why.

"There are any number of people," he replied, "who would like to do just as much as I have ever done, but who have not had it within their power. Because God has blessed me with the means to do something for others, that is no reason why I should set myself up to be praised or feted for doing it."

And he hurriedly cleaned up his desk, preparatory to vamoosing.

He Believes in Publicity

OTTO H. KAHN, one of Mr. Schiff's partners, is a strong believer in publicity, and is one of the men whom newspaper reporters call upon very frequently, as he is a great railroad reorganizer at. d is influential in other fields. Like Mr. Schiff, Mr. Kahn very rarely allows his name to be mentioned; but he is not averse to disclosing anything he legitimately can. His views on financial and economic problems are often sought; for he does his own thinking. The only fault the busy newspaper scribes have to find with Kahn is that he invariably asks them to wait before he sees them.

Incidentally, all the time he is being interviewed, he keeps drawing mathematical figures on a pad, with a ferocity suggesting that his life depended upon the number of squares, angles, parallelograms, and circles he dashed off.

H. P. Davison, the star partner of J. P. Morgan & Company, knows how to treat the public. He never lies, or even prevaricates.

Perhaps the most sought after magnate in America to-day is Charles M. Schwab. Whenever the news spreads that he is in the city, all classes of people troop to his office and besiege him. The only reason he does not see them all is that there are only twenty-four hours in the day, and he needs most of these hours to keep his 60,000 employees supplied with work. An exclusive interview with Schwab is accounted a worth-while newspaper "scoop," because Schwab can not talk without saying something interesting. In ten minutes the upbuilder of the American Krupps can rattle off enough to make a two-column front-page "beat." He invariably springs a few jokes.

Judge Gary Is Genial

JUDGE GARY, head of the billion-dollar Steel Corporation, was one of the earliest apostles of corporate publicity. He practises what he preaches. He often inconveniences himself to enable responsible writers to perform their legitimate duty. His manner is as genial as Schwab's.

The president of the largest trust company in the United States, Charles H. Sabin, adopted the same policy as his chum, Harry Davison; but, since he was so much criticized for having revealed that Germany was about to make a move for peace, fie has been a little more reserved, although his information was correct.

The new president of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, A. C. Bedford, being of the younger school, has different ideas from those of his predecessor, John D. Archbold, concerning the value o f taking the public into confidence. The late Mr. Archbold would almost as soon have jumped from the f roof of 26 Broadway as submit to a newspaper interview. Not until a few months before his death did he ever consent to tell anything about his career, and when he was corralled

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on this occasion he was as nervous as a debutante on her coming out. Mr. Bedford has started off by announcing, as did Woodrow Wilson when first elected President, that his door will stand open. The newspaper men hope that he will not follow his distinguished exemplar's precedent by closing it with a bang later on.

Before the war, James Speyer, head of the international banking house bearing his name, submitted to his fair share of reportorial quizzing; but he has religiously refused to be quoted within the last two years, except very occasionally on such matters as the 'Frisco and Rock Island reorganizations, in which his firm has taken a leading part. Mr. Speyer is one of the few financiers who is not afraid to let his sense of humor bubble to the surface once in a while.

One of the coming men in finance, Frederick Strauss of J. & W. Seligman & Company, realizes the necessity for doing things aboveboard. Without pushing himself into the limelight, he usually makes time to answer all reasonable queries regarding his activities. The newspaper men have him spotted as one of the financial district's coming giants. He is equally at home in straightening out railway tangles and in organizing industrial enterprises.

Seward Prosser, who has had a spectacular rise to the presidency of the Bankers' Trust Company, is so genial and good-natured that he can not turn down those whose job is to post you as to what is what in the financial hub of the country. In this respect he stands on the same platform with Otto H. Kahn, who recently made this pointed comment:

"Finance, instead of avoiding publicity in all of its aspects, should welcome it and seek it. Publicity won't hurt its dignity. A dignity which can be preserved only by seclusion, which can not hold its own in the market-place, is neither merited nor worth having."

The Shyest Financier—Vanderbilt

THE only member of the Vanderbilt family who has made any impression in the financial district is Cornelius the Third. Besides having early won his spurs as an inventor of railway devices now in use on many roads, he showed an aptitude for business. He is now a director in important railroads, banks, insurance companies, and the like. The only time you see his name in print, however, is in connection with military matters, when, being colonel of his regiment, he can not well keep himself out of sight. He is one of the shyest financiers in New York. He would sooner put in another period of soldier work on the Mexican border than face a squad of financial reporters. It is not that he objects to corporation publicity, but he personally isn't built that way. He prefers working to talking.

Another hard nut for the reporters to crack is Minor C. Keith of the United Fruit Company, and the developer of Central America. He spent some thirty years outside the reach of inquisitive reporters, while he was working day and night in transforming one Central American country after another from a jungle to a fruit garden; and, though he has been settled in New York for years, he has never become reconciled to the idea that the public has a legitimate interest in his affairs. The only subject on which Mr. Keith can be drawn out is his gigantic scheme for linking North America, Mexico, Central America, and South America by rail. Already hundreds of miles in this colossal project have been constructed, and are now in profitable operation. But some years must still elapse before it will be possible to get aboard at New York or Chicago and ride through to Rio de Janeiro.

Young John D. Rockefeller is very much on the job downtown. For years he squirmed whenever an attempt was made to turn the limelight on him. Finally, when things were made very hot for 26 Broadway, he courageously came into the open and faced the music.

He would have rather faced cannon. After his experience with the Colorado Fuel & Iron rumpus, however, he came to regard the press and the public with less aversion and timidity. He is now a rooter for publicity. Most of his talking, however, he does by proxy, through Ivy L. Lee, formerly of the Pennsylvania Railroad, later a member of the Rockefeller Cabinet, and now established in a large way as adviser to corporations on their relations with the public. There are indications that the son of the world's richest inhabitant will by and by take quite kindly to newspaper inquisitors. Mr. Rockefeller is more interested in the distribution of wealth than in its further accumulation.

Newspaper Men in Wall Street

NOT a few men anxious to get to the top of the financial ladder try to use the newspaper reporters as stepping-stones.

They hatch up all sorts of little schemes to obtain publicity. In former times there were financial reporters not above capitalizing such opportunities, but to-day Wall Street is "covered" by a much higher type of reporter. The salaries paid some financial writers reach five figures, so that there is less temptation to stoop to unworthy activities. It does not take long for these trained financial writers to size up those who want to "work" them. Thereafter the publicity such men receive is frequently of a kind they would rather be without.

Even some eminent bankers and other business notables have a habit of being extremely affable when they are launching some project or have an announcement they want to have "played up" in the newspapers, but extend scant courtesy when approached for information at other times. One international banker is always ready with a glad hand when he wants to be patted on the back for something he has been working on, but at other times he is usually too busy to bother with the press representatives.

The financial reporters have a—well, you might call it tradition—that every house which bolts its doors against publicity and treats the public with a very high hand, sooner or later busts. Without question, failure after failure of this character has occurred during the last decade. In several instances such houses, too rich to go bankrupt, have simply shriveled up from dry rot and evaporated out of business.

It is now axiomatic that concerns which adopt a frank attitude toward the press and the public fare best. Most financiers have come to realize this: the rest are dying off, or little by little swinging into line.

White Folks' Talk

By J. FRANK. DAVIS

Illustrations by Edward L. Chase

R. FARNSWORTH looked up from his morning newspaper, across to where his wife was pouring his second cup of coffee.

"Here's something that might explain why Aunt Carrie didn't get that birthday present we sent," he remarked. "It's a despatch under a Chicago date."

The swing door into the little butler's pantry that joined dining-room and kitchen opened at this second, and Almanzar Evarts came briskly in with another plate of crisp toast. Mr. Farnsworth read on, paying no attention to the servant, who sof t-footedly went about his business in the dining-room, passing the cup that Mrs. Farnsworth had refilled, shifting a window-shade, putting another piece of post-oak on the open fire. Almanzar's ears caught the word "negro" early in the recital. After that they remained open and attentive, although his eyes never once left the tasks on which he was. engaged. Mr. and Mrs. Farnsworth not only did not notice that the colored boy was listening; they did not even consider the fact that he was in the room.

This was the news despatch the head of the house read aloud:

"One policeman was killed, another wounded, and two members of the organization lost their lives during a raid this evening on a gang which has been systematically robbing the mails passing through this city.

"The robberies were committed through the connivance of a trusted negro porter employed in the post-office, who was working in connection with a coterie of thieves led by Michael Bostock, alias Micky Boss, a man with a long criminal record. Bostock and an unidentified member of his gang were killed in the fight. Two others escaped, including the negro, who is said to have fired at least one of the shots. A general alarm has been sent out for their arrest.

"William Wells, the white man wanted, is about thirty-five years old, five feet seven inches tall, has a broken nose, and an old bullet scar on the right thigh. Henry Moore, the negro, is twenty-nine years old, five feet nine inches in height, and well proportioned. He is a mulatto, and is described as having a deep nick in the rim of his left ear."

As Mr. Farnsworth dropped the paper and reached for his coffee, Almanzar slid silently into the pantry and thence into the kitchen. He heard no more of the conversation—which, indeed, would not have interested him, being devoted principally to Aunt Carrie's strayed gift and the moral of sending valuable parcels by registered mail.

Almanzar, humming a hymn as he washed the breakfast dishes, let his mind dwell cheerfully on the details of the fight that he had just heard described. He filled in the missing parts to his own entire satisfaction. He visualized without difficulty the arrival of the police, their demands, the gang's defiance, the rush to break into the house, the three white men and the negro, armed with pistols, making their brave stand until their would-be captors were down and two of the criminals were able to escape.

That the despatch had not said whether the raid took place in a dwelling house, a store, a stable, a garage, or the forests that, for all he knew, might grow on the edges of Chicago, did not handicap Almanzar's imagination, which pictured the whole scene. He even saw, in his mind's eye, the .45-caliber Colt revolvers in the hands of all the combatants; because he was a Texas negro, and did not suspect that any one ever really used a smaller pistol.

ALMANZAR was cook and general servant at the Farnsworth house; his official title was "house-boy." He was twenty-two years old, was five feet eleven inches in height, weighed nearly one hundred and eighty pounds, and was several shades off Congo black, without being "bright" enough to be described as a mulatto. He was a popular young man in the set in which he moved, and a power for good when he lifted his voice in song in the choir of the African M. E. Zion Church.

Very strict in his attendance at church was Almanzar. His father was a steward in the African M. E. Zion. His grandfather had been a preacher there in an earlier day. His great-grandfather, still living, at least eighty-five years old and stubbornly expressing his conviction that his age was more than a hundred, boasted the proud distinction of having been an exhorter "'way back befo' the wah, on Colonel Reese Evarts' Louisiana plantation." The youngest of the colored Evartses, therefore, came naturally by his devotion to such things.

Almanzar mentioned the Chicago despatch when he called on his father that evening. He mentioned it at length the following night at a party given by the parents of Miss Derisette Boody. He continued to mention it, the more willingly because many other darkies were mentioning it also, and he justifiably felt that lie had received the facts more reliably than they. The whole negro quarter of the city was discussing it for four days, in that undercurrent of gossip which spreads news like wireless among a people that does not read newspapers. In that time it is probable that not a colored man or woman in all the city spoke of the matter to a white person.

Then, after four days, a gentleman of color fifteen hundred miles nearer than Chicago—right there at home, in fact— becoming consumed with jealousy over the philanderings of his fiance, spent a month's savings on two quarts of ice cream, which he sent to her anonymously, after clumsily mixing therein a modicum of rat poison. The poison remained principally at the top. The fiance's little sister opened the package and began to gorge herself without waiting for the lady to arrive home, and the little sister was buried the following day, with white plumes on the hearse and more than six hacks.

Although not a colored person could be found to admit to the police that he or she had ever even heard any man's name mentioned in connection with the family thus rudely broken, the detectives arrested the right man for homicide, and everybody forgot that nick-eared Henry Moore, of Chicago, who had defied white policemen and fought his way to freedom.

Almanzar, as one who had heard the Chicago matter discussed by his white people, had enjoyed unusual prominence and authority while that was the principal topic; but he did not know the rat-poison man, or his near-murdered fiance, or the fiance's greedy little sister, even by sight. Therefore, socially, he slipped into the background.

This irked him somewhat; but he was

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more irked, about this time, by a certain wandering attention on the part of Miss Derisette Boody, whom he had come recently—although no formal engagement had been announced-to regard as his best girl. It had been his custom for some weeks to spend many of his evenings with Derisette. Twice, of late, he had found her absent from home, and her mother's explanations had not sounded exactly reasonable.

ON Thursday evening, therefore, by wheedling Mrs. Farnsworth with a story about a sick aunt,—which. she did not believe and he did not really expect her to believe,—Almanzar was able to leave the house early, his dinner dishes, except the silver, being postponed until early morning. On Thursday was choir rehearsal. If he had not been able to get off early he would have had to go directly to the church, and could not have called on Derisette.

It was one of the crosses of Almanzar's life that Derisette, being a Baptist, could not go with him to choir rehearsals, or hear him vocalize the fruits thereof on Sundays in the A. M. E. Zion auditorium.

Derisette was at home, and all dressed up. She exhibited some surprise at seeing him.

"Wheh you-all goin'?" he asked suspiciously.

"Nowheh. How come you get eroun' tonight, 'Manzar? Ain't it choir rehearsal?"

"Yas. I'm on mah way. I jes' come eroun' to ask of you wouldn't like t' go to the theayter Satuhday evenin'."

"What theayter?" Derisette was not usually so particular.

"Any one." Almanzar was no piker. "They's two shows oughta be both good. Vawdaville at the Majesty, an' a show at the Santex that oughta be awful nice, I should think f'om the name. It's call ' The Doll's House.' Soun's lak they'd be good music an' dancin' in it."

The lady hesitated surprisingly.

"Kain't you come aroun' to-morro'?" she asked. "I kain't sho'ly say jes' this yer minute."

"How come you kain't?" As she still hesitated, he repeated the question insistently: "How come you kain't?"

"'Cause I natchully kain't tell so fah ahaid. Lawdy, 'Manzar! You growlin' lak a ol' beah! Have they set choir rehearsal latah oveh to yo' chuhch?"

Almanzar glanced hastily at the clock on the mantel, saw he had barely time to reach the rehearsal, and put on his hat. His thoughts were a bit confused. Derisette's evening finery again registered itself on his mind.

"Whut you all dressed up full tonight?" he asked. "Expectin' comp'ny, or goin' anywheh?"

"Don' talk foolish!" the girl laughed. "I'm fixin' to stay right yere in the house. An' I don' expect anybody's comin'. Ef you don' hurry, you'll sho'ly get call' down by the rev'ren'."

Almanzar hurried.

MUSIC! How it soothes the soul! How it eases man's longings and lifts him out of himself! What balm for the troubled mind comes with the opportunity to gaze heavenward and sing! Before the evening was past the choirmaster had twice complimented Almanzar, and even the rev'ren' had grumbled a few polysyllabic words of praise.

Almanzar set out for home, on the opposite side of the city, in a softened, happy mood.

It was a mild December night, and he sauntered. His way lay through that portion of East Commerce Street given over to the commercial pursuits and entertainment of colored people. He drifted along, nodding or speaking to occasional acquaintances, looking into show windows, humming to himself the solo that he knew would uplift and thrill the whole A. M. E. Zion congregation on the coming Sunday.

At a certain corner he met Breckenridge Clark, the negro policeman on the beat, walking eastward with Paul Morris, the colored detective. Three blocks farther on he came across a friend of about his own age, gazing raptly into a store window. In the very center of the window, tightly fitting a dummy, was a pinched- back suit of a most ravishing shade of blue. The sign that labeled it read:

The Latest Thing in Tailored Clothes for Swell Dressers. 817.58

Almanzar lined up beside his friend, and they expressed joint admiration.

"I be'n thinkin' of gettin' me a soot something like that," Almanzar boasted. "I wouldn't get it heah, though. I usually trade at white folks' stores."

"Eveh get any do's at Radway an' Dunne's?" the other asked.

Almanzar never had, Radway & Dunne's being the city's largest men's tailoring establishment, with a ready-made department,but no arrangements whatever for negro instalment accounts; but he lied glibly. "Two three," he said. "Mista' Fahnswo'th—he's my white folks—fixes it fuh me."

The other boy was consumed with envy. Envy breeds malice.

"How come you ain' goin' Miss Derisette Boody no mo'?" he asked.

"What you mean I ain' goin' Miss Boody?"

"'Cause you ain't, is you? 'Cause 'at new No'the'n niggah goin' with huh, ain't he?"

Almanzar forgot the beautiful blue clothes.

"What new No'the'n niggah?" he demanded. "You tryin' kid me, 'Fonzo?"

"No, I ain' tryin' kid you. I mean 'at bright fella, come int' town 'bout three fo' days ago.. I s'posed you'd heard erbout him. Mighty biggetty, I say. Hol's his haid up mighty high, b'lieve me! But 'em ladies—Lawdy!"

"Looky heah, 'Fonzo! You tell me!" The smaller youth quailed before the concentrated wrath in Almanzar's voice, and wished he had not opened the subject. "When you see 'at new niggah an' Miss Boody?"

"Monday night. Night 'fo' last. Tonight."

"You say you did? To-night!"

"Sho'ly. I see 'em goin' in Gaines' Palace Theayter not much ovah a houh ago. I see 'em—"

He was talking to empty air. Almanzar was hurrying to cover the block between there and Gaines' Palace Theater.

The arcs before the theater, a picture house for negroes only, stabbed the street's darkness with a blotch of garish light. The tinkle of a mechanical piano filtered out through its open door. In a little ticket-selling booth was wedged a very black, very fat, middle-aged woman, whose appearance gave the impression that carpenters might have to be summoned to get her out. On either side of the entrance were lurid three-sheet posters showing the pictures on exhibition to be the thrillingest of thrillers.

Almanzar Evarts was not thinking of the three-sheet posters, or of the show at all. He was getting as quickly as possible to a place where he could see the entire audience as it would come out at eleven o'clock, after the last show. The only thought that came to him beyond this was the bitter one that he had asked Derisette to go with him to the leading white folks' theaters of the city, and she had staved him off until she could consult with a new flame who took her only to a colored house.

He did not consider the psychology of the situation, which was that a Northern negro would rather go to a colored folks' theater, in which he could sit wherever he pleased, than to a show-house where only the gallery was open to him. Nor did Almanzar realize—not knowing the personality of this stranger from the North—that perhaps the new arrival had grounds for desiring to limit his comings and goings to that part of the city given over principally to people of his own color.

Almanzar's ideas of "the North" were vague, anyway. To his mind, Dallas— three hundred miles—was a great distance off. He rather thought "Yankees" came from just back of there.

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A fussy-looking colored man came out of the theater and threw open all the exits, by which token Almanzar knew the final picture of the evening was approaching its last thrill. The mountainous woman in the ticket-office backed out without wrecking it. The man and she together pushed the ticket-office to one side, and stacked against the walls the easels with their announcements for the following week that had blocked the little lobby.

Almanzar sidled up to a point on the curb-stone almost exactly in front of the center door. He satisfied himself, by earnest scrutiny in the direction from which he had come, that neither Policeman Clark nor Detective Morris were in sight. Not a silver badge glistened in either direction.

There was a hum and murmur from within, and through the exits trooped the people. They were laughing, shouting, grinning, snickering, calling happily to one another. About half the audience had come out, when Miss Derisette Boody appeared.

She was holding tightly to her companion's arm. Almanzar noted, first, that she was looking up into his face and laughing her merriest; second, as her voice came to him, that she was talking with the most correct precision of which she was capable; third, with relief, that the man—who was an overdressed, straight-nosed mulatto of the shade known among colored people themselves as "bright"—was an inch or two shorter than himself and fully twenty pounds lighter.

By the time he had taken in these things he was at their side. He wasted no time—Policeman Clark or Detective Morris might come back any minute. Sometimes white policemen strolled down this way at about this hour, too.

"Interjuce me to you' frien', Miss Derisette," he said.

The girl caught her breath and looked frightened; then she decided to brazen it out.

"Mista' Mosher, meet mah frien' Mista' Evarts," she said.

The new negro grinned.

"How de do, Misto' Evarts," he said in a distinctly Northern dialect. "I'm delighted to make yo' acquaintance."

Almanzar, having gathered more and more indignation while he waited, could not maintain any fiction of politeness.

"Niggah!" he said authoritatively. "You got my lady! *Run erlong about yo' business!"

"Say!" Mr. Mosher grinned, addressing Derisette. "Yo' friend is a good-lookin' young fella, but he ain't excessively superpervided with polite manners. Ef you'll be so kind en' condescendin' as to excuse us," he went on to Almanzar, "we'll be on ouah way. Misto' Evarts, good night!"

"Stan' wheh you is, niggah!" cried Almanzar. "You ain' goin' tek this lady home, 'cause I is."

The new man pushed Derisette to one side.

"You're bigger 'en me," he said to Almanzar, "but w'en they're bigger'n me I cut 'em down to my size."

He kicked up his foot and went into his low shoe for a razor. As he did, Almanzar struck him. It was a sidewise, glancing blow, because the crowd hemmed them in, and it only upset Mr. Mosher's balance and knocked off his stylish, flat-brimmed hat.

The light man straightened up with an ugly roar, and swung back the razor, getting its blade clenched across the palm of his hand. But he did not use it. Almanzar, with one choking cry, pushed aside the people that were in his way—they were all hurrying, too—and fled at top speed.

He might get into a little ruckus with a newcomer over a girl, but he couldn't see himself fighting a desperate murderer. As Mr. Mosher's hat fell off, Almanzar's eyes had observed a deep nick in the rim of his left ear.

There was shouting behind him. He thought the Chicago negro was chasing him. He did not look back. Panic-stricken, he ran like the wind.

A policeman, hearing the sound of pounding feet and seeing a darky coming as if pursued by ghosts, stepped into a dark doorway, whence he leaped, tackling like a football guard. This completed Almanzar's collapse. He could only chatter incoherently when the policeman demanded to know where he had come from and why he was running. He had been in the police station more than an hour, in fact, before he recovered his powers of speech. Then, to official inquiries, he merely said he hadn't been anywhere and hadn't done anything. He was running to get a car. He stuck to this in the face of cross-examination and even of threats.

AT quarter of seven the following morning Mrs. Farnsworth awakened, and was impressed by the absence of all sound in the kitchen. She investigated. A few moments later she was shaking her husband.

"You'll have to get up, Fred. Almanzar isn't here."

"Isn't where?" he asked sleepily.

"Anywhere about the place. I've been out and knocked on the door of his house, and I don't get any answer. He didn't come home last night."

Mr. Farnsworth sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"Don't bother to get any breakfast more than a cup of coffee, as far as I'm concerned," he said. "I'll get something to eat downtown, and you can take your time."

"But what do you suppose has happened to that boy? He's never been away a night without permission since he worked for us."

"Pinched, probably. It isn't likely he's sick or hurt. I'll call up the station. If he isn't there we'll tackle the hospitals. Gee, I wish he'd taken some other day to do it! I'm going to be mighty busy this forenoon."

As soon as he was shaved and dressed, Mr. Farnsworth got police headquarters on the telephone.

"You got a colored boy in there named Almanzar?" he asked, when the sergeant on duty answered.

"What's his last name?"

"Why—er—wait a minute—oh, Evarts."

There was a pause while the sergeant consulted the blotter.

"Yes, sir; he's here," came the reply. "Taken in at eleven-six."

"What's the charge?"

"It isn't made yet. Waitin' for the chief to come down."

"What did he do?"

"I don't know. Didn't kill nobody, I guess."

"Court comes in at eight o'clock, doesn't it?"

"Yes, sir. Eight sharp. Want this boy held back until you can get here?"

"If you please. Tell the chief, will you, that I'm coming right down. Farnsworth is the name—Frederick Farnsworth." The sergeant evidently recognized it. "Certainly, Mr. Farnsworth," he said.

"I'll tell him the minute he comes in." Mr. Farnsworth sat in the chief's office, still breakfastless, half an hour later. The policeman who made the arrest had just arrived, sleepy and ill-natured.

"Along about ten o'clock," the policeman said, "we got that general call to look out for some niggahs that had broken into a house out on San Sebastian Avenue, and orders were to take in any black boys that couldn't account for themselves. At a little after eleven I'm on Commerce Street, when I see this niggah runnin'. He was sholy scared of something. I grabbed him, and he tried to thresh around and get away, and he wouldn't say where he'd been or what he'd been up to. So I take him in."

The officer looked half defiantly at Mr. Farnsworth.

"There kain't no niggahs run like that on my beat!" he declared.

"Have you any reason to think this boy was mixed up in that burglary?" Mr. Farnsworth asked the chief. "I'm pretty sure he isn't that kind. He's worked for me a good while."

"No," the chief replied. "We got those breakin' an enterin' niggahs, all of 'em, later in the night, and they confessed. I don't know what I ought to put against this boy of yours. He probably did something, or he wouldn't be running that way, but I'll admit I don't know what. I was going to vag him on general principles."

Vagrancy, the all-embracing refuge of a policeman in doubt, means from three to six months on the rock pile.

"Of course, under the circumstances, if you want to appear before the judge for him, we won't push the case," the chief added.

"Let me go down and see the boy before he's arraigned. Can I?"

"Surely." The chief called an officer. "Take Mr. Farnsworth downstairs and let him talk to a black boy named Evarts —that big niggah that was brought in just before midnight. Come in and let me know what you find out, will you, suh?"

KEYS turned, doors opened, a rare conglomeration of smells assailed Mr.Farnsworth's nostrils and upset his empty stomach, and he found himself at a foot-square grating in the door of the general detention room—technically known as the "pen."

Some one shouted: "Oh, you Evarts! Get a move on, niggah!"

Almanzar, his complexion several shades lighter than normal by reason of fright, came to the grating and peered through. The warder went away out of hearing. "What have you been doing?" was Mr. Farnsworth's stern inquiry.

"Nothin'." Almanzar's voice was scared and shaky, but his demeanor was that of immaculate and injured innocence. "I was jes' runnin' to get my car, an' policeman jump out an' grab me."

"Where?"

"Commerce Street."

"You don't get a car for our house on Commerce Street."

A pause. "I was goin' run thu to Houston when I got up a ways." "Where had you been running from?" "Jes' down the street."

"But why? Come on, Almanzar; you've got to tell me if you want to get out. Now, come on! Why were you running?"

"To get a car."

"See here!" Mr. Farnsworth spoke calmly, but emphatically. "I know better than that, and if you don't want to go on the rock pile you've got to tell me. I can't save you this time if you don't tell me."

"Yassuh. Man hit me."

"Where?"

"Front of er picture show."

"What picture show?"

"Cullud picture show."

"Who was he?"

"I don' know, sub. I nev' see him befo'."

"Why did he hit you?"

"I don' know, suh. I guess he mus' tek me fuh somebody else. He jes' hit me. So I don' want to fight, en' he's bigger'n me, so I run. An' policeman jump out an' grab me."

"What were you fighting with him about?"

"No suh. I wasn't fightin'. I jes' come erlong an' was goin' by the picture show, an' fella come an' hit me. I nev' saw him befo' in all my life."

---

"You'd been to the picture show?"

"No suh! I'd be'n choir rehearsal."

"Can you prove it?"

Almanzar considered this.

"No suh," he candidly admitted. "I jes' natchully kain't. Ain' no white folks see me. Ain' no white folks theah."

Mr. Farnsworth returned to the subject of the alleged unprovoked assault.

"What kind of looking man was he—the man that hit you?"

"Big, tall boy," Almanzar said, speaking slowly and thoughtfully, as though taking no risk of descriptive error. "Er- bout six feet, I expect. Lots bigger'n me.

"Black or light?"

"Black. Yassuh. Ve'y black man Wide, flat nose. Had er cap on."

"And I suppose you were fighting about some girl—that's your pet amusement."

"No suh. I di'n' even know 'at man. An' policeman jump—"

"All right. I'll see what I can do." Mr. Farnsworth turned away.

"Mista' Fahnswo'th."

"Yes. "

"Ef you please, suh, will you please see 'at cullud lawyer 'at telefoamed fuh you, an' tell him you've come?"

"Nobody telephoned for me. I called up the station myself."

"Yassuh. I give my money to Mista' Clodden, 'at cullud lawyer, to telafoam you an' get me off."

"How much money?"

"Donal' an' fifteen cents. All I had. He said he'd telafoam you, an' then he'd 'pear foh me in cote."

"Well, I'll get it back mighty quick! Why, the—"

"Mista' Fahnswo'th, please suh! Please don' you go to both'in' with it. I'll see him myself afteh I git out. Don' you say nothin' to him erbout it, please suh."

"But the scoundrel robbed you of—"

"Yassuh. I'll see him erbout it, please sub. You don' want to be both'in' with cullud folks' foolishness. I'll get it back."

"You know blame' well you can't."

"No suh. Yassuh. Anyway, I want you please to let me do it. Please suh!"

Mr. Farnsworth went back to the chief's office without answering. To the chief he said:

"He had a fight with a big black boy that he says he doesn't know, at a colored moving picture theater."

"They never know 'em," laughed the chief. "I thought it was about as serious as that. I'll have him arraigned right away, and you can speak to the judge. I'll tell him we don't care to push the case."

"Before that, chief, there's a nigger lawyer somewhere around here named Clodden that took all his money and—"

"Clodden usually does," interrupted the chief. "You can't do a thing. He is a regular member of the bar, and he talks 'em into it for legal services. At that, they get a run for their money. He appears and argues for 'em."

"Does he ever get one off?"

"Maybe. I didn't happen to be present." He rose. "They'll he bringing your boy up now; we'll go into the courtroom."

THE official proceedings took perhaps a minute. The name of Almanzar Evarts was called, and the clerk told him he was accused of vagrancy, being an idle person.

"We have no evidence to put in," said the chief.

"This boy has worked for me three years and is a good—" was as far as Mr. Farnsworth got when the judge said:

"If he's worked for you for three years, Mr. Farnsworth, he's certainly not a vagrant. Don't you do anything else, black boy, or next time I'll send you up for three months! Discharged."

Lawyer Clodden stood discreetly to one side, and neither he nor Almanzar gave any sign that they had ever met.

On the sidewalk in front of the City Hall, Mr. Farnsworth gave Almanzar a nickel.

"Here's your carfare," he said shortly. "You get home as quick as the Lord'll let you, and get a bath, and send that suit of clothes you've got on to a cleaner's,and get into the house and do your last night's dinner dishes. And see here! This is the last time! The next time the police arrest you, I won't come down."

"Yassuh," responded Almanzar cheerfully.

At his office, Mr. Farnsworth found that he had already missed one important appointment, and a man was waiting to keep another. He was too busy all the forenoon to get out for any breakfast. At two o'clock in the afternoon he finished the vital matters of the day, closed his roll-top with a slam that made him wince, and went home with the worst sick headache he had had in a year. The one thing that usually relieved his headaches was an hour or two of sleep.

He knew his wife would not be there; she had spoken the evening before of a luncheon engagement and an afternoon party that would keep her out until dinner-time. There had been talk that morning of her having to break the engagements if the day's developments should leave her servantless. He let himself into the front door with his latch-key, and went at once into the den at the back of the bungalow, where he stretched himself upon a couch, and in a half hour or so he dropped off to sleep.

There was neither sight nor sound of Almanzar. The servant, he presumed, was out in his house in the yard.

AT about five o'clock Mr. Farnsworth was awakened by voices. An open window of the den overlooked the back gallery, where Almanzar was sitting engaged in some domestic task. At least two other negroes had come to call upon him, with a view, probably, to getting the details of the late unpleasantness.

Mr. Farnsworth thought he would tell them to stop talking. But before he had awakened sufficiently to do this, he caught the drift of the conversation, and remained quiet. The darkies, not knowing any white person was within hearing, were gossiping freely.

The beginning of Almanzar's story had evidently already been told. What Mr. Farnsworth heard was:

"So I says to him, I says, `Niggah, you got my lady!' An' straightway we gits ready to mix. An' w'en he goes afteh his razzer, I clouts him one on the side of his haid, an' then's how come I see his lef' ear."

"What name did Miss Boody interjuce him as?" one of the visitors asked.

"Mosher. 'At ain't much diff'ent f'om Moore. So w'en I see he's 'at nick-eared bad niggah f'om Chicago, I natchully says, 'Mista' Moore-Mosher, I'm on my way.' I nev' did know what 'come of him. I thought he done chase me, but I nev' look eroun'. An' 'en 'at policeman jump out 'an get me, an' put me in the pen."

A third voice spoke: "You di'n' tell 'at policeman, did you, 'Manzar?"

"Nossuh," replied Almanzar positively. "Di'n' tell nobody nothin'. Nossuh. I jes' says I'm runnin' fuh car, an' lets it go at 'at."

The first visitor commented meditatively:

"Won't 'at Miss Derisette Boody get pernicketty w'en she fin's out who 'at bright man is? I don't guess, 'Manzar, she'll have anything tuh do wif common cullud folks fuh long time."

"I should worry!" Almanzar said airily. "I goin' get me a new girl. 'At Miss Derisette she done stub huh toe with me."

Mr. Farnsworth lay very still. After a time Almanzar went out into his house and the other boys went away. Without the servant ever suspecting that he had been in the house at all, Mr. Farnsworth slipped quietly out of the front door and took a car downtown. Before six o'clock he and the chief of police were in executive session.

Late that evening, as the fascinating mulatto was leaving the home of Miss Boody, he found himself rudely seized by four large and violent men, who gave him no chance whatever to draw a weapon ere they handcuffed him.

The next morning's newspapers contained the information that Henry Moore, alias Harrison Mosher (negro), had been arrested for murder, and was being held pending the arrival of officers with requisition papers from Illinois.

No fewer than four colored youths called on Almanzar that forenoon, dug their shoes into the dirt of the back yard, and conversed in low voices, aimlessly. Almanzar himself made two brief visits to the back yards of neighbors, making errands with other house-boys. The underground wireless was in full operation.

At luncheon, Mrs. Farnsworth (her husband always lunched downtown) said to the servant, without emphasis:

"Did you hear the police got that bad colored boy from Chicago?"

Almanzar looked blank.

"You say they did? What boy was 'at, please, Miz Fahnswo'th?"

"His name was Moore—Henry Moore. Did you know him?"

"Henry Moore. I don' guess I evah know 'at boy, Miz Fahnswo'th."

"You heard about a colored boy shoot- ing a policeman up in Chicago, didn't you?" "Policeman? No ma'am. I nev' heah nothin' erbout it. W'en was 'at?" "Oh, a week or so ago."

Almanzar showed regretful interest. "No ma'am," he repeated, and drifted into the kitchen.

Mr. Farnsworth came home early to dinner, and jubilantly told the story of his day's experiences to his wife.

"And the reward will be paid to me next week," he concluded. "A thousand dollars. Now what shall I do for Almanzar? It seems like I ought to give him a good piece of it—a hundred or two, anyway."

"Gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Farnsworth. "Don't! I've been three years training that boy into a good servant. Do you want absolutely to ruin him in one fell swoop? He wouldn't work for six months, and by that time he'd be one of these triflin' bad boys."

"I know," agreed her husband. "It would be no favor to him. I could put some of the money in a separate savings- bank account, without saying anything to him about it, and make him a present of the interest."

"That sounds better. Anything, so you don't completely spoil him."

Mr. Farnsworth pondered.

"Even that doesn't seem quite fair," he said. "He ought to have something right now. Suppose we buy him a big Christmas present."

"Well," she conceded, "don't go too far. It is awfully easy to undo a lot of good work."

Mr. Farnsworth broached the matter to Almanzar, when the servant came in to. get the coffee-cups and his own portion of the dessert.

"Almanzar," he said, "Monday is Christmas."

"Yassuh." Almanzar exhibited nearly twenty-eight teeth.

"If you had the biggest present you could hope to get, what would it .be?" This sounded like a white folks' joke; but one might as well answer it truthfully.

"Suit of pinch-back do's of navy blue suhge," he replied promptly.

"What else?"

"Hat," he said. "Peahl-gray hat with white band an' white bindin' eroun' the rim. An' tan shoes with white tops. An' er shirt—with pu'ple stripes. An' er paih pu'ple socks."

"You'd need a purple neck-tie too, wouldn't you?" Mrs. Farnsworth asked.

"Yassum. An' a pu'ple neck-tie," he agreed.

"You'd buy them down at some place where you colored people trade, I suppose," Mr. Farnsworth said.

Almanzar thought he might as well wish the whole business while he was about it. The place whence it should come was no more extravagant a wish than the wardrobe.

"Ef I had a Chris'mus present like 'at, I'd go get 'em at Radway an' Dunne's."

Both Mr. and Mrs. Farnsworth were smiling in his direction.

"All right," said Mr. Farnsworth. "You get your dinner dishes done, and I'll give you a note to Mr. Radway. Mrs. Farnsworth and I are going to give you all those things for Christmas. You can go down and pick them out yourself, to-night. And you can make it two shirts and four pairs of socks."

Almanzar reeled toward the kitchen. Mrs. Farnsworth's voice followed him:

"If you break a single dish, 1'11 conic out to you, and you'll wish you hadn't!"

"Yassum," he replied mechanically, setting his plate of ice-cream in the oven and opening the door of the refrigerator pre- paratory to putting the coffee-pot therein. Never had Almanzar's singing been so uplifting as on the following day. With eyes fixed heavenward, to the delight and inspiration of a great company, he feel- ingly sang a special piece of music whose refrain was:

Let me evah vir-chu-ous be,
Lovin' truth an' hon-es-tee,
Walk the straight an' narrow way,
Eve' y day, eve'y day!

The entire congregation could see the navy blue serge suit of ultra-stylish cut, the purple-striped shirt, the purple tie. Almanzar's sole regret, as he sang, was that he .could not wear the hat in church, and that the railing of the choir inclosure hid from the assembled multitude the ravishing vision of white-topped boots and purple socks.

HE sat radiant, that evening, in the sitting-room of his parents' house. Since Saturday morning there had been little talk among colored people of anything except the desperate Chicagoan whb had flashed momentarily across their horizon. Almanzar was proud not only of his new raiment, but of the fact that Mr. Farnsworth seemed to have come into some prominence through the arrest. He saw no connection whatever between the two matters.

Over by the stove, his aged great- grandfather had been listening to the chatter. From time to time he cast his rheumy eyes toward Almanzar's gorgeous- ness.

"See yere, boy!" he suddenly rumbled, during a lull. "W'en you had fight wif 'at niggah 'bout 'at triflin' yallah Derisette, an' you see he got nick' cab, you ain't tell anybody? You isn't talkin' cullud folkses' business to w'ite folks, is you?"

"No suh, gran'pa. I isn't say a single wuhd. No suh. Ain' nothin' but trouble cvah to be gain' by tellin' white folks nothin'. No suh!"

Almanzar's mother spoke:

"Sis' Jackson, down at chuhch thisa mawnin', she says 'at white letteh-carrier, Mista' Jennin's, tole huh husban' 'at Mista' Fahnswo'th done got a rewahd. fuh findin"at Henry Moore—much as a hunderd dollahs. Whut you know about 'at, 'Manzar?"

Almanzar, who had not heard anything about a reward, registered scorn at the idea that anybody could tell him anything he didn't already know about his people.

"Jes' white folks' talk," he said.

SPIES AS I SAW THEM

By CAPTAIN A. P. CORCORAN

"There is something despicable in the work of a spy; yet I have never seen one who did not go to his death gamely."

I WAS on the Western front from the Marne to the Somme, and I saw many spies caught and shot. They are shot, you know, not at sunrise, but on sight. At 9 A. M. they are at work. At 9.20 A. M. they are dead. But did that deter them? Not in the least. They kept on coming. They came at noon. They came at night. They came as cures. They came as captains, in our uniform, with our accent. You never knew where you might meet them, or what shape they would take. When you had seen them often enough, you almost suspected the man next to you in the trench, and you saw a semaphore in every clock-tower.

The Spy Still Necessary in War

IT has become commonplace, of course, since the outbreak of this war, that the aerial service supplies the eyes of an army. That is true. It is relied upon to get the range for the artillery, to locate hostile batteries, to report all observable activities that are going on behind the opposing battle line. But there is a tremendous amount of information that no airman could ever reach. He could not find out, for example, where the enemy hides his ammunition, or when convoys are expected, or where they are being sent. Such details can be learned only by eyes and ears close to the ground. And this is where the spy gets his innings.

My first experience with one took place in the village of F in the early days of the war. Kitchener's Boys had just taken over the part of the line that fronts this town. It was a place that had suffered heavily. For the most part it was in ruins, and the only landmark left standing was a church tower that faced the German line. But even this had been injured. A shell had crashed into it, damaging the masonry, putting the clock out of commission, and twisting but not destroying its hands.

In and about this town, as is usual behind the line, were concealed considerable quantities of ammunition, well buried out of sight of enemy airmen. For a while things went well. Then suddenly one day a well directed shell came thundering into a "dump," and up went some ammunition in smoke.

"A lucky hit for the Boche," we said to one another, and laid the matter entirely to chance.

But next day up went another, and then a third and a fourth. The certainty of the German aim grew disturbing. Days went by, bringing fresh disaster, but no possible explanation of the peculiar insight of the enemy artillery, until—

One fine evening a certain London regiment was returning to billets after their spell in the trenches. In the first section of fours in the platoon was a Tommy of an observing nature.

"'Ere, Jim," he remarked suddenly to his chum, "that tower seems to be a friend of ole Bill Kaiser. The 'uns 'aven't 'it it yet. 'Ullo! See that? Watch that 'and run round. Why, I thought that ole clock had a ticket for blighty."

Being in the front section, these two were, of course, behind the subaltern who was leading. Hearing the remark, he hastily turned around.

"What's that?" he demanded, not having seen anything himself.

"Well, sir, I was just tellin' my pal 'ere as 'ow that clock 'ad the luck of ole bloomin' Nick, and suddenlike the 'and jerked round from ten past seven to twenty past eight and back again in a couple of seconds."

That same evening the incident was reported to the brigade major, who immediately posted sentries within sight of the tower. That night nothing happened. But early next day the cure was seen to enter his church. A few minutes later the hands were again in action. This time they made three complete circles, and then reverted to their original position. A hasty investigation followed during the day. At sunset there was a German spy less, and we lost no more ammunition in that useless manner.

If there were no other proof of German preparedness and efficient anticipation of the present terrible war, their spy system would alone be sufficient. Many of the spies whose capture came under my notice had lived for years in the towns where we found them, assimilating the customs of their fellow townsmen, conducting their lives and their business on an entirely Gallic plan, becoming naturalized also, for all I know. Yet all the time, so enduring is the German devotion, they were working in the interests of their fatherland, genuine Teutons in all but name. And so complete and all- concealing was the mask in which they had wrapped themselves, that not even the shock of war could avail to pierce it. During all those early days of the great German advance, wonderful days for the believers in "Der Tag," they had still acted the role of loyal Frenchmen, still doing their work with unobtrusive ease. And the habitual stoicism of the French peasant in sticking to his old haunts under imminent danger of death from shell fire was no small assistance to them in carrying out their appointed tasks.

The Sheep that Wouldn't Run

IT is no uncommon sight, as perhaps you know, to see even now behind the trenches plowmen and shepherds still going about their old jobs, working in fields where mines have already dug craters and where shells are liable to fall at any moment. These farms are often not only near but directly behind the line. Such a strip of land divided the trenches from the village of B--. It was about two miles in length, and the main road ran through it. Up this almost every day trudged Tommies and their officers on their way to and from their work. Most of this land was under cultivation; but there was one large field given over to pasture, and in this was a shepherd, tending his flock of sheep.

"Bo-peep" was the name the men had chosen for him. He was a picturesque figure, in his smock and with his long crook. And he was a very quiet person, who kept strictly to his own business.

Now it happened one day that our artillery suddenly decided to take over the play-ground allotted to the men. At a loss for an open space in which to hold their football match, they made up their minds to intrude on "Bo-peep." As the field was large, and as his sheep usually occupied only one corner, there seemed to be no reason for objecting to the game.

It was progressing uneventfully, until a misdirected kick suddenly sent the ball flying into the midst of the flock, causing confusion among the shepherd's forces. As one of the players ran to fetch it, they scattered on all sides—all except one, which stuck manfully to its spot. Too manfully, as it happened. It roused the soldier's suspicions. He walked up to it, and the others who were watching for the ball suddenly saw him wave his hand.

An officer who was acting as referee ran to see what was the matter, and at the same moment a smart Tommy copped the shepherd, who was running for cover. In the midst of all the confusion there was only one who remained calm, and that was the imperturbable sheep. He still stuck to his post, and for the very good reason that he was entirely unable to leave it.

For this animal could not move of his own volition. He was of wood, not of flesh and blood. But the wood had been cleverly covered by a thick coat of wool. Except for the desertion of his companions he would never have been betrayed. On closer inspection he proved to be an extremely ingenious contrivance. In his side was a trap-door which, when opened, revealed no entrails, but ten or a dozen carrier pigeons. For weeks these birds hart been carrying messages across our lines, containing heaven only knows what valuable information. As bird life is by no means extinct along the firing line in France, their flights had attracted no attention. Of course, their owner had been careful to see that no one observed them leaving the field. However, they left it no more.

So far my stories have been entirely of men who came among us in the guise of French civilians. Now I am going to tell of others still more daring who visited our lines, using our own uniforms and our own language.

A Slip in Language Cost Him His Life

NOW it is quite true that the Kaiser's soldiers have a close acquaintance with the English language. But a language is an elusive thing. It has many pitfalls even for the wary, and a little slip may lead to a long slide. The particular slip I am going to tell about led a very clever man before a firing squad.

On one occasion a company of engineers were rigging up some telegraph and telephone wires. For this purpose they were using, over part of the way, the square concrete, flat-topped towers which, in France, replace the wooden poles seen in this country. At the top of one of these columns was a lineman, apparently testing the wires.

It may have been intuition or inspiration—he himself wouldn't own up to either. Here's the fact. Sergeant-Major B was passing by, and, for some reason he can't explain, he felt an antipathy to the man a-top that tower. By way of relieving his feelings, he shouted these questions, with certain omissions you can supply for yourself.

"What . . . are you doing there? Who . . . are you?"

"I'm a Royal Engineer," came the answer.

Now, no member of that corps refers to himself as did the man on that tower. Had he been legitimate, he would have said "R. E." or "sapper."

"Oh, you are, are you?" replied the Sergeant facetiously. "Well, come down and let's 'ave a look at ye."

The man prepared to descend, but, as he did so, he hastily slipped something into his pocket. Which did not fail to catch the Sergeant's eye.

"Royal Engineer, are ye?" he demanded, when the impostor was on the ground before him. "And what sort of an instrument might this be, now?"

Putting his hand in the man's pocket, he drew out a neat leather case. It was a most compact wire-tapping machine.

That man was in his grave before sunrise, and the Sergeant wears a decoration to-day.

Nearly All Spies Die Game

TO the uninitiated mind there is some- thing disagreeable, if not despicable, in the work of even a highly successful spy. Perhaps it is that human nature abhors deceit, however necessary and however disinterestedly practised. But when you have come in contact with as many men of this profession as I have you tend to change such sentiments for the better. For example, you can not but admire a man who goes to his death gamely, and I have never seen a spy who didn't. I have never known one to beg for mercy. And once again let me repeat that for daring and ingenuity there is no body of men that can in any way be compared with them.

If a record could be made of all the spy work done in France, what a thrilling human document would be written!

I will finish with an incident that goes to prove the absolute perfection of the spy's work, as it is done even now along the line and in the British Isles.

The colonel of a certain battalion of a Munster regiment was extremely proud of the prowess of his boys. They were a splendid lot, with a wonderful record for athletics. So, to distinguish them from the rest of the regiment, he hit on the plan of procuring for them a different set of badges.

The ordinary badge was a brass affair, a hand grenade bursting into flame, with a lion in relief on the ball. He decided to have this in silver, with a gold relief, very much smaller than the official cap title. He applied to the War Office for permission to do so. Naturally, they had first to unravel a lot of red tape. Meantime the men had gone to the trenches, and on the day when the permission finally arrived, some of them were in the first line.

Now there were scarcely five men in the whole battalion that day who knew that the new badges were to be worn. Imagine therefore their surprise, when they heard a shout from the other side of "No Man's Land":

"Well, Munsters, how do you like your new badge?"

The Flag of Lolonnois

By ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

Illustration by George Gibbs

I WAS on my way to the International Trust to cash a check when next I saw the hunchback, Ransome. He emerged from the portals of the bank and stepped into a taxi just as the machine in which I rode stopped at the curb. There was no mistaking him, and my first impulse was to leap from my cab and seize him before he could be driven away. Then I thought of another plan: The bank officials probably knew his address, and I could look in upon him at his home. And yet another plan came to me: I would follow him. I told my chauffeur that I had changed my mind about going to the bank, and ordered him to keep Ransome's taxi in sight.

I make no excuses for this course of action, save a delight in mystery; and surely there was mystery enough about Ransome. In the preceding three days I had done little but think about him and wonder at an anxiety for possession of the flag of Lolonnois that had made him steal it. For, of course, I had not the slightest doubt that he had stolen it.

Yes, my last plan was the best, for I did want to find out all I could about him. I had little doubt that I could surprise him into a confession of having stolen the flag if I got him alone.

It was not the sort of thing to take to the police. I had little faith in their ability to regain the flag for me, and had no wish to be summoned to the police station or to court to identify one of three men who had wanted to purchase the flag. Moreover, the whole business was so out of the ordinary that the newspapers would play it up, and it was not the sort of publicity I desired. So I had let the matter drop.

But now, seeing the hunchback, I fully intended to follow him home, accuse him of the theft, and do my best to get the flag back—not so much because I wanted the flag, as because I objected to any one else obtaining it in such a fashion. And so I lay back in my taxicab, smiling as I pictured the confusion that would be Ransome's when I confronted him. Indeed, I was so pleased that I meditated permitting him to retain the bit of bunting once I had shown him that I was not the sort of man who could be trifled with. I was very young in those days.

My cab halted outside the Hoboken ferry-house. Ransome was already dis missing his driver. Wondering how far my chase would lead me, I paid my driver and cautiously followed. I was among the last to board the boat, and I remained in the stern of the craft until it was secured in the slip across the North River. Then I edged my way forward until I could see Ransome.

NOW, though I had dismissed my first idea of seizing him because of lack of evidence against him, knowing that he would merely have to call an officer to get rid of me, though I had decided to follow him to his home and there confront him, it had occurred to me in my ride across the river that this plan was hardly better than my first. Even though Ransome should be alone in his house, I could hardly threaten a cripple with physical violence. Also, I remembered that Barron and Pelletier would probably throw me out on my head if they happened to be there. In short, lacking any evidence against the hunchback, there was nothing that I could do but accept the loss of the flag gracefully.

Yet it went against my grain to do that. I was not the sort to lie down meekly under an injury, even though that injury had been salved financially. A man has a right to his possessions. Only the State has the right to take them from him against his wishes. Possibly—and despite the fact that Ransome had paid me fourfold for the flag—the little hunchback committed other offenses when he did not reimburse the losers. So, while I abandoned my intention of confronting Ransome, I decided to follow him, after all, and later report my suspicions to the proper authorities. If the authorities found them too vague, all right; I should have done my duty.

All of which shows how easy it was in those days for me to make up my mind to a certain course, and when the time came to do something entirely different. However, as Ransome looked straight ahead, it was easy to follow him. I suppose he walked a couple of miles before he turned in at a large building that looked like a warehouse. There were no apparent signs of life in the building, which was situated, as my pursuit of the hunchback had given me opportunity to learn, on the water-front. Yet Ran- some, without the slightest hesitation, entered this building. I wondered that he, a cripple, should have taken such a long walk, when cabs were plentiful at the Hoboken side of the ferry. It did not occur to me that perhaps he walked because he was undesirous of attracting attention. A cabman might remember having deposited him here. Yet I did not think of that; nor did I remember my just-conceived determination not to attempt confrontation with him. I simply walked to the door of the warehouse, noted that its padlock was unfastened, pushed the door open, and entered.

It was dark inside. Cobwebs had gathered on the window-panes and, with what must have been the dirt of years, kept out the light. Standing just inside the threshold, peering into the gloom, I could not hear a sound save the monotonous lap of waves against the piles that supported the building. From the water end came a flash of sunlight, making a pool upon the warehouse floor. Unquestionably, though a great heap of rubbish in the middle of the floor hid it from me, there was an open door at the farther end, through which Ransome had gone. And toward this door I now made my way.

Filled with the idea that there was mystery in the hunchback's coming to this deserted place, burning with curiosity to solve the mystery, and yet sensible enough to know that uninvited intruders into mystery ofttimes learn more than they wish, at the same time achieving trouble for themselves, I walked cautiously toward the splash of sunlight on the warehouse floor.

AS I had judged, it came from an open door behind the mass of rubbish. To the door I tiptoed, looking out upon a pier in no wise different from any of a score of piers or wharfs on either side of the river. And I could not see Ransome on this pier. Indeed, it was as deserted as the warehouse from which I peered.

But some antennae-like rigging, rising above the wharf-edge, explained the disappearance of the hunchback—the mainmast and wireless of a boat of some sort, aboard which Ransome must have gone. And I tiptoed gently to the shelter of a pile that rose above the wharf's flooring, and around which were cast the lines of the craft, to look down upon her.

I saw at once that she was a power-yacht, perhaps ninety feet long, roomy-looking, and with lines that didn't seem indicative of very much speed. And her deck was as deserted as the wharf from which I leaned. Yet the low hum of her engine gave proof that she was not devoid of crew. And a ladder resting upon her deck showed how that crew had boarded her.

I hesitated. There was something indescribably menacing about this empty deck, about the wharf, and about the vacant warehouse behind me. Even the life that teemed upon the river, upon piers to either side of this one, but accentuated the desertion here. There was something uncanny about such lifelessness in the midst of movement. That same feeling, that, had swept over me once or twice during my conversation with Ransome three day's ago—the feeling that behind the normal lurked something repulsively abnormal—possessed me now. It was, of course, perfectly possible that the Corinna—I read her name on her stern—was the private pleasure-craft of the hunchback. But the empty, moldy-smelling warehouse seemed a strange approach to an innocent pleasure-craft.

OF course, private piers on the North River are luxuries that would tax the purse of a multimillionaire. If the hunchback wished to moor his yacht against the land, it was only natural that some disused wharf would be his choice, as being inexpensive. And yet, so imaginative was I that I could not help feeling that the location was strange. And, because it was strange and quiet, all desire to address Ransome oozed from me. I decided to steal quietly away. At any rate, it would not be difficult to look up the Corinna in a maritime registry and find the owner's land residence. This spot, where his henchmen could easily put into effect any desire for violence that they might hold, was no place for me. So I straightened up from my crouching position, prepared to back away.

As I did so the screw churned the waters beneath the Corinna's stern into foam. Two men, clothed in caps and mackinaws and rough trousers, appeared on the deck. One made forward, and the other came to the rail just below me. He disdained the near-by ladder and mounted the rail. He leaped for the edge of the wharf, and gripped it. Swiftly, while he was occupied with climbing upon the pier, I ran a dozen yards and ensconced myself behind another of the tall piles, thicker than my body, around which no lines were run. Neither he nor the man forward looked my way. Swiftly they untied the ropes, tossed them inboard, and descended to the Corinna's deck. I noticed that in the pilot-house forward a man had taken the wheel. The yacht's stern strained against the wharf, while her bow swung ever farther out into the harbor.

And then I leaped upon her deck.

Until the very moment I found myself in the air, nothing had been farther from my intention than to board the Corinna. But while I had been watching, from my hiding-place, the preparations for departure, pride and timorousness had been waging warfare within me. And resentment that had conquered fear had grown up in my heart.

Ransome had taken my flag; he had scornfully left in its place the sum of money which I had refused. And now he was aboard this, yacht, which was bound—heaven knew where. Possibly he was going to cruise to the West Indies, to avoid the rigors of a New York winter. And he was going to take my flag with him! Because I had no legal proof against him, he could go whither he listed. And I wasn't man enough to face him and demand that which was mine!

I struck the deck with a mighty thump; one of my ankles gave way, and I went to my knees, assisted thereto by the fact that the yacht lurched, made to do so by the wave of a ferryboat that had just passed within a hundred yards. I rolled against the rail, seized it, and clambered painfully to my feet as the man who had released the stern-line rushed toward me. I received my first intimation then of what manner of men were aboard the Corinna. For he held an automatic pistol in his right hand, and he jabbed the muzzle of it against my stomach.

"Well, this is a fine how-de-do!" said he. "Who asked you aboard? What you want? Speak up!"

I shrank against the rail. It was the first scene of violence in which I had ever figured, and I make no doubt that my face was ghastly. I know that my knees knocked together. I tried to answer him, but the pressure of his weapon against my solar plexus held back speech. The other mackinaw-jacketed man reached us on the run. He pushed the threatening automatic aside.

"None o' that, Dazey," he snapped. "Look at all those boats around!"

"Well, what's he doin' here? He's a spy, a blasted spy, and I say, blow his in'ards out, chuck him overboard, and end this fine how-de-do!"

Thus Dazey, as I leaned against the rail, shooting pains running from ankle to knee, and a moisture that was not merely the sweat of fear beading on my. forehead.

"And have a police-boat overhaul us before we get to Liberty, eh?" said my rescuer; for that he was my rescuer I have no manner of doubt. He turned his attention tome.

"Below with you, Mr. Sneak," he said harshly.

But I clung to the rail, speechless. His hand reached out and gripped my collar. Feebly I tried to fend him off; but there was no strength to my resistance. He dragged me from the rail and across the deck. But before we had gone a dozen feet toward the door of the deckhouse in the stern, two men emerged from it. They were Barron and Pelletier.

THEY stopped short, staring at me in open-mouthed amazement.

"Caught him spyin'," said the man who held me. "Dazey was for shootin' him, but I thought it better to bring him below. The chief might want to question him."

To this neither Barron nor the Canadian made any reply. They merely stared at me, mouths agape, but in their eyes an expression that made me shiver. And if they would have said anything, they were prevented by the arrival of Ransome. Brought to the deck, I later learned, by the thump of my landing, he came through the door with catlike speed. He, too, stopped short on recognizing me. But he was never too dumbfounded for speech.

"Well, well!" he cried. "What's all this?"

He was given the same explanation that had been offered the others.

"Quite right, Landers," he said to the

Continued on page 15

HAVE YOU DONE YOUR SPRING ELOPING YET?

HUSBANDS

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MONEY QUEENS

Photographs from O. R. Geyer

Continued from page 10

man who held me prisoner. "We wouldn't want to stain our pretty deck with blood, would we? It is a fine deck, isn't it, Mr. Fitch?" he asked mockingly.

"I suppose so," I stammered; "but I'm not interested in it. If you'll tell this man to let go of me and put me ashore, I'll be much obliged."

"I don't doubt it," he replied. "But why leave us at the very opening of your visit? And may I ask how you happened to pay us the visit?"

"You know well enough," I answered. "The flag."

"Oh, yes; to be sure. Your pretty little pirate flag. And you think I have it?"

"I'm sure of it," I said, a little emboldened by his smooth manner.

"You're sure of it? Well, well, how interesting! But that isn't answering my question. How did you happen to visit me? To know where to find me?"

"I followed you," I told him, with a flush.

"You followed me. Interesting indeed. Then Landers is right: you are a spy. Do you know the treatment meted out to spies, Mr. Fitch?"

"I know the sort of treatment I'm receiving," I said. I wriggled slightly in Landers' grasp. "It is a treatment for which you'll pay, Mr. Ransome, unless I'm released at once."

"Indeed? And who will exact the payment?"

"The law!" I snapped.

"To be sure. The law. I'd forgotten that you were a lawyer, Mr. Fitch. I'd forgotten that our curio-shop friend told me that. And what would you call the offense for which I shall be punished? You came here uninvited. My men find you on my yacht. Isn't it more probable that the law will assume that you are a thief apprehended before he had opportunity to steal, and deal with you accordingly?"

"I'll chance it," I replied. "I think that my story will sound more credible than yours."

"Then why not have gone to the police in the first place?" he asked.

"I didn't know where to find you. I happened to see you leaving the bank a while ago, and followed you."

"And didn't have a policeman arrest me on the spot, eh?" He smiled. "Thank you, Mr. Fitch, for the information you've given me. For a moment I thought as my friends: that you were a spy. But spies. when venturing into danger, usually inform some one where they propose going. It seems that there is no one who might suspect your whereabouts. Therefore—take him below!" he suddenly ordered.

NOW, though a peaceable young man, averse to violence, apt, as has been shown, to become flabby-muscled in the presence of danger, I think that I was so merely because I had no acquaintance with danger. I do not think that I was a coward. Yet once again I felt my soul go sick as I looked in Ransome's eyes and saw the unveiled hate and wickedness therein.

If I had yielded to Landers thus far, it was as much because of surprise as because of fear. But, at what I thought I read in the hunchback's eyes, fear became desperation. A resentment that became wrath, that was the double desperation of anger and horror, possessed me. To say that I was no longer afraid would be to lie. And yet, at my first action fear became submerged for a moment in an emotion that 1 had never felt before, the delight in purely physical struggle. It was a vicious delight, the sort of feeling that moved me to scorn of thy assailants, so long as I got in my own blows upon them.

I twisted completely around with a suddenness that broke Landers' hold upon my coat-collar. I swung my left hand up in a savage short-arm jolt, and Landers went down. Then Barron and Pelletier closed in upon me.

FOR a moment we three swayed upon the deck. I heard Ransome cry out to Dazey to put up his gun, and I had a glimpse of Landers rushing tentatively in with raised hand that held what I took to be a blackjack. But he had no opportunity to use it, so closely were my two opponents tangled up with me. We went to the deck with a crash, myself underneath. But my legs were free, and when I brought up my right knee for the second time, Barron rolled over with a groan, to take no further part in the struggle.

But I had no opportunity to use my feet or knees against the swarthy Pelletier. He held too closely to me, his legs twined about mine and his fingers striving for a grip at my throat. 11 ow I kept them from my neck in the first minute I do not know, for he was stronger than I. But I did so. And then a lurch of the Corinna rolled us against the rail. The Canadian's head struck against one of the posts that supported the heavily painted ropes, and his fingers loosened at the very moment they touched my throat. And, while they were loose 1 managed to smash my right fist against his face twice. He went suddenly limp, and I shoved his body from me and gained my knees.

It was Landers' opportunity; but his very anxiety defeated him. For, as he sprang, I hurled my body aside, and he went past me, clutching at the rail, and, crashing upon the deck, sprawled there, the breath knocked from him by his fall. There was only Dazey to be accounted for.

I was a Berserk now; I was mad as any Oriental that ever ran amuck. As Dazey came in I drove straight at him, swinging with both hands. I do not know how many times I struck him; I only know that he went down, and I charged right across his body, and, forgetful of my hurt ankle, leaped upon the rail, seizing one of the rat-lines to steady myself.

The Corinna's engines had stopped. I learned later that sheer amazement had caused the man in the pilot-house, the skipper of the craft, to signal the engines to stop. So, headway lost, the stern of the Corinna grated against the piles of the wharf. The tide was very low, so that from where I stood I could, not quite reach a string-piece that projected out a couple of feet. I gathered myself for the spring that would enable me to haul myself from this deck of danger. But I never made the spring.

Two arms went around my ankles and gripped them tight. They yanked my feet from beneath me, and my fingers loosed their grasp of the rat-lines. I was pulled to the deck. I heard the voice of Ransome, harsh with fury, call to the captain to go ahead. I heard a bell ring, the engines throb, and then I was at what seemed to be death-grips with a new assailant. And it was Ransome!

I HAD forgotten about him; rather, I had disdained him. And now, where his four henchmen had failed, he was succeeding. His arms had slid up my legs until he gripped me about the knees, squeezing them together. Cripple though he was, no football-player, tackling, could have gained a fiercer hold. Through my mind, as I thrashed about the deck, trying to get free, flashed a recollection of my own self-assurance that I could hardly threaten a cripple!

I think I even smiled as I wondered how Ransome would have received any threat from me. For the man had in his arms the strength of a giant. He was light of weight. As I lifted my knees to my stomach, his body dragged along the deck. But he clung like a bulldog, worrying me, shifting his feet from side to side to change his leverage, to push me back and topple me over. It did not occur to me, in my amazement at his strength, to strike at his head. I suppose that I might have freed myself thus; but at first I did not dream that the hunchback could hold me, and so I fought to loose myself rather than to injure him. And

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when in desperation I would have swung at him, it was too late. Something struck the back of my head and knocked all the fight out of me.

I felt myself yanked to my feet, and knew that Landers held me. I heard Ransome order me taken below. Weak, barely able to keep my feet, my head ringing from the blow that had subdued me, I felt myself impelled toward the deck-house door. A last impulse of self- preservation made me catch at either side of the opening and resist the pressure applied by Landers.

The Corinna was moving slowly, and we passed within twenty feet of a wharf, as I could see over my shoulder. People were gathered at its edge, gesticulating. Then I heard the voice of Ransome.

"Drunken steward!" he shouted.

I made one last effort to break free; but Dazey came up as I did so. His hand was clapped over my mouth, and between him and Landers I was pushed swiftly down a short flight of stairs, along a narrow passage, and into a cabin. They shoved me violently across the narrow room. I collided with a chair, gripped at it to steady myself, then, a sudden nausea seizing me, I pitched forward upon the bunk that took up a third of the cabin, and lay there.

A NONE too gentle hand, shaking me by the shoulder, aroused me from a sleep that was the aftermath of unconsciousness. I sat up and stared into the truculent eyes of Barron. My head ached unconscionably, but my brain was clear enough; hardly had my eyes opened when I remembered all that had occurred.

"Chief wants you," growled Barron. "Come on."

Weak, with an anger that turned into alarm as I felt the lump on the back of my head and realized what that token of violence might portend, I followed Barron along the passage outside my cabin to a large room aft. To reach it one passed the flight of steps that led to the stern deckhouse.

For a moment I had a wild idea of dashing up those steps; but the heavy rolling of the Corinna told me that we must be well out of the harbor, and I realized the uselessness of trying to attract attention from the yacht's deck now.

Ransome sat at a table in the center of the large cabin. It was, as I learned later, his combination bedroom, study, and sitting-room, and, except for the after deck-house room above and the saloon amidships, the largest room in the yacht. The hunchback looked up with a smile that was entirely devoid of malice as Barron stood aside and I entered.

"Feel better? Have a good rest?" he inquired. "Hungry? You must be." He indicated a chair, and shoved a plate of sandwiches across the table. "Sit down. Coffee?"

I stood stiffly.

"Where are you taking me?" I demanded.

"Did you know where you were going when you boarded this craft?" he countered. "Of course not. To be sure you didn't. Then why should you care now?"

"I demand that you land me," I said.

"Didn't you make the same demand this morning?" He smiled. "To be sure you did! And the answer was—it's written on the back of your head, isn't it?"

"It will be written—the final answer— on jail commitment papers," I snapped.

Ransome leaned back in his chair. He tapped the table with long fingers.

"Now, really, Mr. Fitch," he protested, "for a man that can put up such an able argument with his hands, it is pitiful that you should argue so poorly with your tongue. The chances are very much against your ever seeing land again. You can, however, make them very much in favor of your doing so. That all depends on things that we needn't discuss while you are hungry and weak."

"I'd prefer to discuss them now," I said.

"As you will," he said carelessly. "Well, then, do you think me the sort of man to let a single human life stand between me and my plans?"

The veil of good humor left his eyes, though his voice was as nonchalantly friendly as before.

"I think," I answered desperately, "that you have too much sense to commit a murder for which you must certainly pay the penalty."

"On the high seas? With no one having any reason to suppose that Mr. Seth Dorland Fitch was ever aboard the Corinna? Don't he so idiotic as to threaten any more.

We are well beyond Sandy Hook; at the present moment there is no craft in sight of us. The possibilities must suggest themselves to you. Need I harp on them?" I moistened my lips. "What do you intend to do with me?"

"That's better," he commended. "A bluff is an excellent thing, but the man who has the good taste to put down his hand gracefully when called—that man may go far. What do I intend to do with you? Why, nothing—for the present."

"And let him get away with the stuff he handed me?" cried Barron. "Whyn't you toss him overboard now, and settle the matter?"

"Did I ask your advice?" purred the hunchback softly.

"But it ain't sense," persisted Barron. "He can't do us no earthly good, and he might do us harm."

"How?" snapped Ransome.

"I dunno," grumbled Barron. "But, anyway, what good '11 he do you?"

I confess that I shivered, and that my pores emitted cold sweat as I listened to these callous objections against my permission to continue living. I looked swiftly about the cabin, wondering if I could find some weapon with which to defend myself. And Ransome read my thoughts.

"Don't be alarmed, Mr. Fitch," he said. "For the present, and until I decide otherwise, you are my guest, and in no danger. As for you, Barron—" He stared at his henchman coldly. "You ask what good Mr. Fitch will do me? Well, for one thing, he will amuse me. You may not realize it, Barron, but at times I shudder at the thought of being cooped up for weeks, months, maybe longer, with swine of your sort. Of course, you do not understand the desire of a man with some pretensions to intellect to converse occasionally with his mental equals. Never by any possible chance having the remotest glimmer of an idea yourself, it would not occur to you that I sometimes use my brain for the purpose of thinking, and that it would be a pleasure to me to have near me some one else who has realized the functions of his head. Not being able to understand my attitude, then, let it be sufficient that I order that Mr. Fitch be treated as my guest, merely because it suits me to do so. Is that enough, you—"

HERE he burst into a profane tirade that was more evil than anything I had ever heard in my life. I thought that no man living would stand, from any one, the abuse that the hunchback poured upon his follower. But Barron gave not the slightest sign of anger. Only when Ransome paused for breath did Barron interject a word.

"Be careful, sir," he said—and he said it soothingly. "Your head, you know—"

Ransome gasped as if choking. He moved his head around upon his neck as if testing his ability to do so. Slowly his face, that had gone purple, regained its normal hue. I knew at once that he was subject to some heart affection. Also I knew that, having the violent temper so often found in people with his physical affliction, he must have skirted the border-line of death while he vented his rage on Barron. If ever a man had looked apoplectic, Ransome was the man. But when he spoke again he was perfectly calm:

"You understand, Barron. And you will kindly see that every one else aboard the boat understands. And now you may leave the room." Barron nodded and quietly stepped out, closing the door after him.

"Sit down now, Mr. Fitch," said Ransome. He eyed me contemplatively. "Well," he said at length, "you aren't liable to inform the police." His lips curled in a quizzical smile. "You aren't by any chance superstitious, are you, Mr. Fitch?"

I shook my head.

"Yet the very greatest of earth have often been so," he said slowly. "It is said that even Napoleon was. Do you know, Mr. Fitch, it is my fortune, good or bad, to be superstitious?" He said it very gravely, solemnly, and I had sense enough not to smile at his coupling himself with Napoleon. "I believe," he went on, "that it was long ago ordained that our paths would cross."

"It is not necessarily superstition," I said. "That is believing in fate."

"IT is more than that," he said shortly.

"If I only believed that much, it would be a simple thing for me to get rid of you at once. The ocean is large—and deep. But I am superstitious. Fate doubtless ordained that our paths would cross. Has fate further ordained that you shall be of service to me, or a hindrance to me? I confess that I am inclined to believe the latter. But, somehow, I have it fixed in my brain that you may be of use to me. How, I do not know. But I can not believe that it is a mere nothing that you should have boarded this yacht in search of your flag. If I did believe that—believed that fate had ordained no more than that you should want your flag—I should take fate by the throat and toss her overboard with you. But, even as when I saw that flag I believed that its possession was important to my success, somehow I now feel that keeping you aboard this craft is equally important. You laugh at me?"

"Hardly," I said.

"No; under the circumstances, you wouldn't," he smiled. "And you want explanations, you said awhile back, before eating. Well, you shall have them. Has it occurred to you that I perhaps risked more in obtaining your flag than was justified by my statement of being a collector of curios?"

"It has," I answered.

"But, if I am not a collector, why should I risk anything to gain that flag? You tried to figure out that, eh?"

"Naturally," I replied. "But it was beyond me."

"Yet it is quite obvious," he said. "Who would most naturally wish to own a pirate's flag?"

"A pirate, I imagine," I laughed.

And then the laugh died on my lips. For, leaning across the table, and fixing me with eyes that I suddenly knew were the eyes of an insane man, lie said: "Exactly, Mr. Fitch. And that's what I am."

I dared not laugh. Insane though I now knew him to be, yet it was that sort of mania best described by the prefix "mono." On one subject alone was he insane—the subject of piracy. And, even as I understood that this was the case, there came vivid remembrance of Barron's cold-blooded words, of the readiness of the man Dazey to put a bullet into me, of the savagery of the attacks of Landers and Pelletier. If Ransome was insane, his followers did not know it. They were ready to do murder at his behest. That Ransome was a millionaire whose servants humored him was an idea that gained credence in my brain, only to hold it for a fraction of a second. Servants, however faithful, do not commit crimes to humor their employers. And Barron had been anxious to kill me in cold blood. How would he dare, unless—

"You look incredulous, Mr. Fitch," observed Ransome.

I passed a rather shaky hand over my lips.

"Well, it is rather a stunning announcement," I stammered. "You're a pirate?"

"Do you doubt it?"

"N-no," I said; "but—this yacht—" He laughed pleasantly.

"Of course you do not know my plans, Mr. Fitch. The Corinna merely takes me to the boat I shall use."

"And where is that?" I asked.

"At present in New York harbor. It is not feasible to capture a United States war-ship under the guns of Governor's Island. On the high seas, however—"

"You mean that you plan, that you hope—"

I could not finish my sentence. Somehow my incredulity left me; somehow I was perfectly convinced that, monomaniac though he was, if Ransome said that he intended to possess a United States war-ship, he would do so. And in that moment of acceptance of his statements I saw why he must possess the power of life and death over his henchmen. If I, a sane, matter-of-fact person, could accept his statement without question, how much more impressive must he seem to those followers who—I say it without conceit—were much farther down in the scale of mental development than myself?

I realized in that moment, as I stared at him, that his insanity was no different from the insanity that makes multimillionaires continue their insatiable efforts for more. It was the lust for power, which in the case of Ransome was directed into criminal channels. Directed elsewhere, it would have made him a master of finance. It was nearer what the French call the ide fire than insanity. Abnormal it was; yet it might equally be termed supernormal, had it been applied to business. Insane—yes! But the insanity that makes a man a veritable master among his kind.

"Hope?" He laughed again. "My dear Mr. Fitch, I never bother with hope. I plan and—my plans are achieved. Within three days I shall be master of a destroyer, and then— But you haven't eaten anything, and you look ill."

Indeed, I felt ill. But I pulled myself together and reached for the sandwich that I so sorely needed. But as my hand touched the plate a gong sounded.

"Come, Mr. Fitch. Master your hunger just another moment. I shall dine to-night with my officers, and you shall dine with us and make their acquaintance. You shall hear something of our plans, and then you can perhaps decide—"

I drew back from my chair.

"Before I'd join you in your bloody—" "Easy; there's no hurry, you know," he counseled.

"But I wouldn't join you," I cried. "Under no circumstances would I have anything to do with—"

"Your head bothers you; it was a hard blow," he interrupted, with what sounded almost like sympathy in his tones. "After a good meal, preceded by a stiff drink— But there is no hurry. I have said that you are my guest, Mr. Fitch. There is plenty of time before your status changes. And I would spoil no man's dinner with threats. Come along."

I followed him down the passageway to the main saloon. There, at a table, sat half a dozen men, among them Barron and Pelletier. The other four were as hard- bitten rascals as the two I knew. Waiting on them were two Chinese stewards.

A place was made for me near the head of the long table, at Ransome's right, and I sat down. A cocktail—compounded upon a strong whisky base—drove away my feeling of weakness, and I set to my dinner with almost a relish—a relish that dwindled during the fish, and vanished entirely during the roast.

FOR; absolutely heedless of my presence, unless perhaps my being there inspired them to greater flights of wickedness, the group began discussing the career of outlawry they intended to pursue, interlarding their speech with a jocular vileness. I was not lily-fingered or mealymouthed, but I had never heard such language in the worst slums. Moreover, it was not their language alone that nauseated me: it was the feeling that their deeds would match their speech, and a realization that nothing short of a miracle would enable me to circumvent their plans.

And surely such circumvention deserved miraculous aid! For they planned to loot the seas!

To be continued next week

How to Tell an Enemy

By HIRAM KELLY MODERWELL

IN the great war game that the European nations have been playing for centuries, what determines the lineup?

The people of one nation are always told that another nation has insulted their honor, plotted against their sacred rights, or broken a treaty. In all the bloody squabbles that have taken place in the nineteenth century, statesmen have never neglected to appeal in such fashion to men's ethical instincts. Napoleon, the greatest aggressor of modern history, never made a war of aggression. He was always "defending France," "chastising traitors," or "liberating suppressed nationalities." In the fifteen years in which Frenchmen played Napoleon's personal games, they found themselves successively the friends and the enemies of every important nation in Europe except England. Sometimes their friends became their enemies almost overnight. The Prussians shot with them on the way into Russia, and at them on the way out. The Saxons changed sides in the midst of the battle of Leipzig. The Austrians became their allies when Napoleon married Marie Louise, and their enemies once more after the retreat from Moscow. The Spaniards, within the space of a year, were three times officially told to change sides.

King-Made Wars

SUCH sudden changes of the national position have produced curious results. In 1762 Russia, which had been fighting Prussia to a standstill, suddenly got a new monarch, and as suddenly switched from being an enemy to being a devoted friend of Frederick the Great. The Russian armies, which had been fighting side by side with the Austrians, now campaigned against them.

But something more fantastic was to follow. Within a few months Russia got still another monarch in the Empress Catherine. Catherine was a great ruler, but also a woman. She decided to switch back to the Austrian alliance, for no other reason than that Frederick had said catty things about her to a mutual friend, M. Voltaire. But, having come upon some letters from Frederick to her late husband, and having discovered that the Prussian king was not an enemy but an admirer of hers, she changed her mind. So she called it quits.

The Russian army, all this time, was on the battle-field, waiting to be told whom to shoot. But Frederick and the Russian general Czernichef, who between them had killed thousands of each other's soldiers in the past, were warm personal friends. And, as a personal favor to Frederick, Czernichef remained menacingly on the battle-field while Frederick went in and defeated the Austrians, thus practically deciding the war.

But nations, or at least statesmen, change their minds as readily as women. France and England, who are now avowedly fighting to obtain Constantinople for Russia, fought through most of the nineteenth century to keep, it from her. In the Crimean War they lined up shoulder to shoulder with the infidel Turk for this purpose. And in 1877, after Russia had defeated Turkey, they intervened to keep the Balkans out of her grasp. During all this time Russia, according to Bismarck's policy, was "the natural friend and ally" of Germany.

About 1900, when Russia was casting eyes toward India, Kipling wrote of her as "the bear that walks like a man." About the same time an English statesman in the House of Commons declared that Germany was the natural blood kin and ally of England, and that France was her "traditional enemy." It was about this time that France and England came close to blows over African matters—a crisis avoided by trading the rights over "small nations," Morocco for Egypt. In the Balkan war, Serbia, an ally of Bulgaria in the "holy war" against Turkey, became overnight Bulgaria's enemy in an un-Christian squabble over the spoils. On the other hand, Prussia and Austria, "natural enemies" for a century, became after 1866 "friends and allies" in a compact that brought on the present war. It is the commonest event in history for peoples who are "bitter enemies" to become "friends and allies" within a few months after the treaty of peace.

The Appeal to "Sacred Instincts"

ALL these moves in the political game are, of course, accompanied by the usual official appeals to sacred instincts. It is a part of the business of politicians to know which "sacred instincts" suit their convenience at the moment. Germany went in shining armor to China in 1900 to protect the lives of Christian missionaries; but she finds it inconvenient to interfere at this time with the atrocities of her ally Turkey in Armenia. Nor, during the decades when England was backing Turkey against Russia, did she find it necessary to intervene by force of arms to protect Christianity. Nor yet was France constrained to interfere in force to prevent the forced labor practised by her ally Belgium in the Congo.

Just how the politicians can persuade peaceful people to shoot other people with whom they have no known quarrel, has never been more clearly revealed than in the inside story of the Franco- Prussian War and the famous "Ems despatch," much of which was not made public until years afterward.

We think of this war as one of aggression on the part of Bismarck, as it clearly was. But it required all Bismarck's strategy to create war out of a situation that seemed hopelessly peaceful. His whole game was to goad the French into declaring war first.

He knew that the German people would never stand behind him unless they felt themselves wantonly attacked. But France did not want war, as was proved by an official poll taken at the time of its declaration. So Bismarck started to goad.

First he urged a Hohenzollern prince for the vacant throne of Spain, and the French Emperor rattled his sword. But the Prussian King withdrew the claims of his house, and twice politely assured the French ambassador, Count Benedetti, of the fact.

Bismarck, in despair, was about to resign. Then came the Ems despatch, a confidential report to him of the second meeting with the French ambassador. It contained this sentence:

"His Majesty has decided not to receive Count Benedetti again with reference to the above demand."

The telegram reached Bismarck on the afternoon of July 13. He immediately rewrote it for the newspapers, with this sentence instead of the other:

"His Majesty the King thereupon decided not to receive the French ambassador again."

Prussia had broken off diplomatic relations! This was the apparent substance of the news as it was telegraphed to Paris from the German newspapers the next day. It was intended not for German but for French consumption. It had its effect. French honor had been insulted. The cafs of Paris were all for war. The Emperor, with his council, decided on war that same morning; and the next day the Chamber of Deputies voted the money.

It was not until after Germany was thus "attacked" that Bismarck dared authorize the mobilization of the German armies "for the defense of the Fatherland." When, in July, 1914, Austria sent to Serbia the ultimatum that started the present war, there were few people in the Dual Monarchy who did not believe their cause a righteous one. They felt much as we would feel if the Mexicans had for years been plotting to detach Texas from the Union by force of arms, and had murdered Vice-President Marshall on a visit to San Antonio.

How Austrians Feel About This War

OF course we know that the present war arose from an open and defiant act of aggression on the part of Austria, if not also on the part of Germany But the Austrians knew only the one side of the case. Their foreign office, which for years had been conducting the negotiations that landed them in this war, had been making their friends and enemies for them. And their ministers, after the fashion of Bismarck, had seen to it that the news they read should have the desired tinge. These gentlemen presented Serbia to them in the newspapers as a dangerous and unruly neighbor, wantonly plotting against Austria's national integrity. And behind Serbia there was Russia, constantly looming as the great shadow in the picture. Russia was the master enemy, tireless in its intrigues, ruthless in its ambitions.

Now, it is right and just that a nation should be informed of its own interests. It was right and just that Austrians should know that Russia was plotting complete control of the Balkans in order to shut out Austria and prevent Austrian and German trade from flowing through the Balkans into Asia. But the Hungarian peasant might have been forgiven for questioning whether his Emperor was really as great an enemy of the Russian Czar as he pretended to be. He might remember the story his father told him: how in 1848, when Hungary had all but won her independence in a gallant war against oppression, the Russian Czar sent an army to invade the land, as a simple act of friendship to his pal, the late Franz Joseph; and how, because of this, Hungary once more became a Hapsburg province.

Matching the Peasants Against One Another

HE might have remembered this; but the war seems to show that he didn't.

For the late Franz. Joseph, while his foreign office was producing enemies as it saw fit, took care that a different idea should be placed uppermost in his mind: namely, that the Russian Czar, in his desire for the Balkans, was maintaining an army of more than a million men, peace footing, to invade his country, burn his home, and ravish his women. The Emperor thus appealed to his most sacred instincts, while telling him to get ready to shoot.

But there was another thing that this Hungarian peasant could not be expected to know. That was that the Czar, or his ministers, had also been appealing to the most sacred instincts of the Russian peasant—his religious, patriotic sense.

The Russian has a patriotism perhaps more idealistic than that of any other peasant on earth. Holy Mother Russia has been robbed of her ancient religious capital, Constantinople, by the infidel Turk. To regain it is a sacred duty, more holy than that of the Crusades.

So the two peasants arm. And, having armed against one another, they regard each other as enemies. And, having accepted each other as natural enemies, they are willing to shoot —each in response to his most sacred instincts.

Thus, like fighting cocks: the European people have allowed themselves to be matched against one another in order to win the wagers staked by their kings. If you inquired of them, in time of peace, who was their enemy, they would be obliged to reply:

"Wait a minute, please. I must ask my foreign office."

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

TRAVELING COMFORTABLY WITH A BABY

THERE was a time when only a Spartan mother would attempt to take a young baby on a journey. Now, the smaller the baby, the better. For he can be tucked away in a market basket or suit-case and travel peacefully on, to be spoiled by his grandmother, with little strain on himself, his parent, or his fellow passengers.

"One ingenious woman, having to go on a trip with her baby, who was three months old, purchased a good-sized market basket, and padded the sides and bottom, and placed him therein," says Mae Savell Croy in 1000 Things a Mother Should Know (G. P. Putnam's Sons). "The baby was comfortable, as he rested as well as if he had been in his own little bed at home. The mother was not worn out at the end of the journey, as she would have been had she held him in her arms."

Other helps in traveling with the baby are:

Pack absorbent cotton in every traveling case that goes with a baby. It is better for bathing than wash cloths, because it can be thrown away, and there will be no danger of gathering impurities.

Take along a bottle of alcohol. An alcohol rub, followed by a dusting with powder, refreshes the baby when he is tired, and will often quiet him when he cries.

Use cheese-cloth instead of the towels supplied by the railroad. Five yards is not expensive, and may be thrown away with little loss.

Carry a large paper bag to put the baby's clothes in. Put the baby himself in a suit-case and set it on a car seat. This is more restful to the mother than if she must hold him. When he comes out of the suit-case, the clothes can go in.

Ship his extra clothes in a clothes-basket by parcels post, and after you arrive at your destination use the basket for his bed.

Take a high chair with you. It will be worth the trouble.

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.

TRUE MAHOGANY. Gives a full, illustrated account of this highly esteemed cabinet wood, its marketing, uses, etc. Also some information about the 67 varieties of wood that are wrongly called "mahogany." (Department of Agriculture, Bulletin 474.) Price, 10 cents. INFORMATION FOR PROSPECTIVE SETTLERS IN ALASKA. New edition of a useful little pamphlet. (Department of Agriculture, Alaska Agricultural Experiment Stations, Circular 1, revised.) Price, 15 cents. ADULT ILLITERACY. Five and a half million people in the United States over ten years of age are illiterate. (Bureau of Education, Bulletin 1916, No. 35.) Price, 15 cents. RAILWAY STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS. Survey of arbitration and conciliation laws of the principal countries of the world for the prevention of strikes. (Board of Mediation and Conciliation.) Price, 30 cents. DAILY MEALS OF SCHOOL CHILDREN. New issue of a collection of facts regarding wholesome meals for school children. (Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1909, reprint No. 3.) Price, 10 cents. NAVY YEAR BOOK, 1916. A copious digest of legislation and statistical information relating to the United States Navy, with some statistics of foreign navies. (64th Congress, 2d Session, Document 555.) Price, 70 cents.

DON'T INVEST IN INVENTIONS

"I AM frightened by my prosperity," wrote Mark Twain to a friend. "It seems to me that whatever I touch turns to gold."

The letter, which is quoted in the Boys' Life of Mark Twain, by Albert Bigelow Paine (Harpers), was written soon after the publishing firm in which Mark Twain was interested had brought out General Grant's Memoirs. As a result of the sale of that book Mrs. Grant was paid more than $450,000 in royalties and the firm realized more than $100,000.

But it is hard to hold on to money quickly made. To Mark, in his prosperity, came an inventor with a marvelous machine for setting type. It would set and distribute type, adjust the spaces, detect flaws—would perform, in fact, anything that a human being could do, with more exactness and far more swiftness.

"All other inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly into common-places contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle," said Mark.

The trouble with the machine was that it was too wonderful: it consisted of so many thousand delicate parts that it could run for only a very short time before something would break, requiring weeks of readjustment and repair. For months Mark continued to put money into it, believing each day that to-morrow would bring it to perfection: at the end he had sunk $190,000 in it. The machine is exhibited in the Sibley College of Engineering to-day as "the costliest piece of mechanism for its size ever constructed."

Years later an author wrote to Mark Twain asking for an indorsement on a book written in aid of inventors and patentees. To which Mark replied:

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN WILL

IF you have a million dollars it doesn't much matter whether you make a will or not. There will be enough of your estate left for your wife, even after the courts and lawyers get done with it, to keep her comfortable. But for the man with only a few hundred dollars to die without a will is a tragedy, says Clyde Scott Stilwell, a lawyer, in the May Woman's Home Companion.

Here is a form of will that must protect any woman. "Let John, your husband," says Mr. Stilwell, "sit down and copy this simple form on a plain piece of paper. If you have any property, if the home is in your name, or any securities, you copy it also on another piece of paper, bequeathing and devising your property to him.

"What does this legal language mean? Simply that your husband, John Thompson, has devised and bequeathed all his property to you to do with as you please. You can sell the house, mortgage it, or lease it; you can draw out the money which stands in his name at the banks; you can dispose of any stocks that he may own, or have them transferred to your name—and no court nor any other outsider can hinder you in any way. Once you have presented that simple piece of paper at the probate court, and received your official letters testamentary, you are in supreme authority. After paying the funeral expenses and other obligations, you have the right to give to your children whatever you and John may have decided was proper, or to use the entire estate as long as you live, and give it to them at your death. But neither they nor any other relative, nor any creditor, can set up any legal claim which takes the estate out of your hands."

WILL INFANTILE PARALYSIS COME BACK?

LAST summer there were in the United States 27,000 cases of infantile paralysis, says Jonathan A. Rawson in the New York Evening Post. The great majority of these were in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Will these same districts be visited by the plague this summer? The health officers say that they expect it to appear somewhere, but confess that they do not know when or where.

Perhaps the most definite statement is in the report of the State Medical Institute of Sweden for 1912, according to which places that have been severely affected by the disease have every prospect of escaping it in epidemic form for several years. "In all probability," says the report, "in the part of the population chiefly affected there is a general and widespread immunity against a renewed infection."

Last year's experience seems to indicate that a general quarantine does little good. The immediate isolation of individual cases is, of course, imperative, but those cities that attempted to examine all incoming and outgoing travelers apparently suffered as much as cities that did not. Another discouraging fact is that no method has been discovered of identifying healthy carriers of the disease.

On the other hand, encouragement is found in the knowledge that the contagiousness of the disease has been greatly over-estimated. In a study of 7000 of New York City's cases it was found that more than one case rarely developed in the same family.

"The degree of susceptibility of children and other members of the community to infantile paralysis," says Dr. Simon Flexner, of the Rockefeller Institute, "is relatively small, and is definitely lower than in such communicable diseases as measles, scarlet fever, and diphtheria. The fact in itself constitutes a measure of control; and while it does not justify the abatement of any practical means which may be employed to limit and suppress the epidemic, it should tend to prevent over-anxiety and panic."

To keep the children under supervision, to keep the nose and mouth thoroughly disinfected, and to keep away from places of possible exposure as much as possible—eliminating all unnecessary travel with small children—these are common-sense rules that last year's epidemic taught.

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YOUR NEXT YEAR'S SUIT WON'T FADE

ONE of the finest things that has come out of the war for America, says Commerce and Finance, is the certain independence of this country from Germany for coal-tar dyes and chemicals. When the war came and shut off importations of dyes, there was consternation in the textile industries. People resigned themselves to going without until the end of the war, when the cheap and excellent German dyes would be imported again. But makeshift dyes were necessary, so a few daring companies were formed, and went to work experimenting in a small and humble way.

Soon money began to pour in to them. In two years $184,139,000 was invested in the new chemical companies of this country.

In the last part of 1916 these new firms seemed to be on the wane; but, as people realized that America was going to war, the business leaped up again. In the months of January, February, and March, $19,300,000 found its way to the companies.

After the war was declared, an interesting and highly important development took place. Four of the largest companies merged into one huge organization, which will be able to meet the needs of the government for high explosives during the war, and after to compete on equal terms with Germany for the dye-stuff and chemical trade of the United States. The new company is called the National Aniline and Chemical Company.

There are now in America twenty or more firms which are manufacturing dyestuffs. One of these, which three years ago was turning out three million pounds of dye-stuffs a year by using imported intermediates, is to-day manufacturing its own intermediates, and can turn out thirty million pounds per annum. Another company, employing 50 men in 1914 and capitalized for only $75,000, to-day employs a thousand men and is capitalized for $5,000,000.

WHY GARDENS GO WRONG

We embark suddenly on a large garden enterprise—to begin with a wide variety of trees and shrubs and plants —is like adopting an orphan asylum and then wondering why each child doesn't do one credit," writes Frances Duncan in The Joyous Art of Gardening (Charles Scribner's Sons).

"It is better, when making a first year's garden, to choose the most easily grown plants, turning resolutely from extraordinary novelties as from so many temptations of the devil." When, with no apparent cause, a tree or shrub does not flourish, here are some of the possible causes:

Wrong Planting. The hole may have been neither wide enough nor deep enough, in which case the roots were cramped. The hole should admit the roots comfortably, and there should be room enough for a shovelful of manure in the bottom to give the roots incentive to go down. In planting, look for the earth-mark on the stem and plant it precisely as deep—no deeper. Starvation. It is on new places, where grading has been done, that starvation for garden or lawn is immanent. Contractors have a distressing habit of burying the good top-soil, while the hard-pan is put on top; which labor-saving process makes a good lawn or garden impossible for several years.

Too Rich a Diet. Perhaps the shrubs have had too much manure. When they "run to leaves," as the gardeners say, and do not flower, they may have been over-eating. Any manure must be well rotted and not fresh, and well mixed with soil.

Planted Too Late. If trees or shrubs have been planted when coming into leaf, they have a hard time of it; they are like people who begin to work directly after an operation, omitting the period of rest and recovery.

Overcrowding. It is customary to plant shrubs and young trees closely for immediate effect, with the praiseworthy intention of thinning out later; but the thinning out is rarely done, and there is no way for the shrubs to secure the space they need but the jungle method of killing one another until only the strongest survive. If, therefore, the plants are too close for comfort, dig them up in the early spring, while still dormant, and set them at a peaceable distance from one another.

If Your Flowers Don't Grow They May Be Too Near Trees. Gardeners have a quite unnecessary panic if the bole of a tree is not hidden by shrubbery; and yet half a tree's beauty is in the outline of the trunk, balanced by the quiet stretch of greensward beneath. To attempt flower beds beneath them is a mistake—both trees and plants will be unhappy.

A CHANCE FOR MOTOR-CYCLISTS

"IF the United States raises an army of 1,000,000 men, at least 10,000 motorcyclists will be needed," says a writer in a recent number of Motorcycle —Captain Louis Keene of the British army.

"We count upon having 20 motorcyclists for every 2200 men, and some basis would doubtless have to be adopted.

"Altogether, Great Britain is using about 70,000 motorcyclists, of whom 40,000 are employed as despatch riders, and the remainder chiefly in the machine-gun corps.

"I do not for a moment wish to belittle the despatch riders, for there are heroes among them by the score: but it is the motorcycle machine-gun that weighs heaviest in the scales for victory. We consider one machine-gun equal in fighting strength to 100 men, and when it is possible to move such a weapon quickly from point to point by means of the motorcycle, you will understand that the combination is wonderfully strong.

"The business of riding a motorcycle in war is no sporting proposition," says Captain Keene. "It is grim, bloody business; and often a whole fleet of motorcycles, rolling along a road, will be wiped out by a single shell.

"Even snore often motorcyclists have been run down and killed by the great trucks engaged in transporting ammunition for their own armies. The transport trains have orders to get through at top speed, regardless of other road users—and they follow orders.

"If they run through a motorcycle squad and smash them right and left, it's all in the day's work—and the motorcyclist knows it."

It is said that more than a million motorcycles have been worn out or smashed by the British armies since the beginning of the war.

THE GREATEST ACTRESS IN THE WORLD

ELEANOR DUSE is coming back. For years the woman who is to many the world's greatest actress has lived out of the world. Now she will be seen again. But this time it will be in moving pictures. She is now writing for the films the pieces in which she will act.

She is not handsome. Her figure is not beautiful. She has not an imposing presence. She has no animal vitality. Yet she "thinks with her whole body." She "acts with her nerves."

Her pale, dark face can stir thousands "with a tremble of the lips." She has built a speaking tone of her own, and no

one who has heard it ever forgets the low, moving melody. When she was playing in Italian the same roles that Bernhardt was playing in French, many were more won by her simplicity than by the sumptuous art of Bernhardt. Compared to Duse, said Bernard Shaw, Sarah was a child.

The obscure Italian player became the idol of Europe almost in a night. Her parents were poor traveling show-people. She was literally born on the road, in a railway train. She still has the antique silver coffer where she lay as a baby when her mother was on the stage. She took her first part at four. When her parents died, she was handed over to other players. She was beaten and starved. Had she been an infant prodigy her lot would have been easier. But she was just an unpromising girl. She did not show a glimmer of dramatic talent.

Not till she was twenty did she give any sign of power. When she was twenty- four, she burst suddenly into glory. Then fame came swiftly and abundantly. She made $7000 a night. People would pay as much as $20 a seat to see her. Nobles waited in Roman streets to cheer her as she left the theater. When she played Camille in Vienna, she was so showered with camellias that she shed tears.

In spite of her greatness, Duse hated the stage. She hated it so that her daughter, the one child of her unhappy marriage, was not allowed until her own marriage to see her mother act, or even to know that she was an actress.

"The reason why Duse is the greatest actress in the world is that she has a more subtle nature than any other actress, and expresses her nature more simply," says Arthur Symonds. "All her acting seems to come from a great depth and to be only half telling profound secrets."

LEARN TO FACE UNPLEASANT THOUGHTS

THE VERY experience we have that arouses a pleasant emotion at the same time we like to recall again and again. On the other hand, an unpleasant experience, or an idea associated with unpleasant things, we have a tendency to forget. We repress it, and it goes into our subconscious mind. These unpleasant thoughts, stored away in the unconsciousness, are known as complexes. Instead of facing the thought of an unpleasant experience, as an adult human should, most people crowd it out of their conscious minds and store it away in the unconsciousness. There it grows and develops like a sickly plant in a cellar.

"It is natural that we should remember the pleasant and forget the painful," writes Wilfrid Lay in Man's Unconscious Conflict (Dodd, Mead & Company). "But the pleasant occurrences, being frequently talked over with our friends, are brought into alignment with our daily conscious lives. They give us strength for our present and inspiration for our future tasks. A bit of travel or adventure is unfolded, and acquires relations with all of our mental life, and so does not become coagulated or tangled up in a bunch.

"A complex, on the other hand, being repressed into the Unconscious on account of the painful feeling connected with it, at once begins in the Unconscious to associate with itself a number of other ideas, all of which take on the unpleasant quality. The person in whose mind these complexes are forming will not without an effort be able to remember these ideas when he wants them. He will forget names and addresses and incidents and words. Or, for some unaccountable or forgotten reason, he will be afraid of being alone, or of dirt and germs; or he will evade people and fear to express himself.

"There must be complexes forming down there in the Unconscious from infancy. They continue to develop and attach more and more ideas to themselves, until finally our minds are made of an overwhelming majority of forgotten or repressed matter, none of it of any use to ourselves. Only the fullest human lives can prevent this formation of a sodden mass of complexes in the Unconscious. The most active and successful men and women, therefore, will have the fullest memories; will be able to converse most entertainingly, for they will have the fewest complexes."

Don't Be Flat-Footed

By WILLIAM J. CROMIE, of the University of Pennsylvania

CIVILIZATION is making men and women flat-footed. Street-cars, elevated trains, and automobiles have made it almost unnecessary for men to walk at all: and the consequence is falling arches, with their attendant ills—early fatigue and constant pains in the legs and back. Many a man who believes himself afflicted with rheumatism or some other baffling malady is suffering from nothing else but the distress caused by improper standing and walking due to flat feet.

The increase in flat-footedness among Americans is alarming, and growing rapidly every year. This is the unpleasant side of the question. The pleasanter side is this—that flat feet can be cured. Not by arches or mechanical devices—not even by the treatments of costly specialists. The cure is within reach of every one who has the will power to take up a simple course of exercises in his own home, and persist in them. Flat foot is not a natural condition: children are seldom subject to it: even the children of flat-footed parents are born with feet well arched. Whoever has flat foot, therefore, has only himself to blame: he can not charge his troubles to heredity or ill luck. He has let himself get into the condition: it is up to him to get himself out.

A high and well marked arch is a sign of strength. It gives an elegance and grace to the appearance of the foot, which is as beautiful as the flat foot is ungraceful and awkward. A firm step and an upright carriage of the whole body are also generally to be found with a well arched instep, while the flat foot may always be inferred by the unnatural and shuffling gait of the victim. The action of the arch is like a spring under a carriage or automobile: it prevents the jar from injuring the structure and internal organs of the body.

The arch is enabled to re-

tain its form by means of strong ligaments or bands passing from one bone to others, and these, held closely together, sustain the weight of the body without giving way.

When one stands on the foot the arch is flattened by the pressure and becomes lengthened. If one stands on the feet for six or eight hours a day the pressure tends to stretch these ligaments unduly, allowing the bones to loosen, and sinking the arch; while the same strain, if continued indefinitely, would force them to grow in this position and the fault would thus become a serious and painful deformity. This is the reason that flat foot is so prevalent among nurses, clerks, waiters, barbers, motormen, and among all otherswhose occupation requires continued and prolonged standing.

Broad-jumpers sometimes incur flat foot—the arch being broken from the shock of landing on hard ground. Dr. Bernard Roth, an orthopedic authority of London, England, claims that "anything that tends to weaken the general muscular system during years of growth will also predispose to flat foot." He has found that, out of every three cases of lateral curvature of the spine, two suffer from flat foot—one severely so.

Shoes that are too tight or too stiff, especially over the instep, cramp the foot and fail to allow it proper freedom. If a heel is run down on one side, it has little or no support, and tends to flat foot.

Flat foot is usually indicated by pains in different parts of the foot, shooting up the calf of the leg. Flat-footed people wear down the inner side of the heel and sole of the shoe. A baby's foot has the appearance of flatness, because the pad of fat in its foot is not absorbed until the child has learned to walk.

"The treatment of flat foot," says Professor R. Tait McKenzie, of the University of Pennsylvania, "must both support the arch and correct the deformity, so that no treatment is complete which does not develop the structures involved in the normal preservation of the arch." He claims that more harm than good has been done by the use of ill fitting and imperfectly supporting foot plates, and that a foot plate or bandage must be looked upon in the light of a

splint, to be discontinued as soon as possible, and to be used only in conjunction with other means of treatment.

The first thing in the treatment of flat foot is to wear a shoe that is broad enough to let the toes be well spread out. The heel of the shoe should be broad and low, and more than double the thickness of the sole in front. The shoe should not be laced very tightly.

The tendons and muscles of the foot should be well exercised, because when strong there is no danger of a breaking down of the arch. Vigorous walking is excellent.

The arch is flattened while standing, but the curvature is increased when the foot is allowed to hang free. In walking, this curvature at every step becomes greater, through the action of exercising the muscles. Walking on the toes, with the heels raised not more than two inches, is an effective exercise for strengthening the muscles and preventing flat foot. This should be indulged in from fifty to one hundred steps at a time.

Exercise can be more easily pictured than described. I have tried, in the photographs here presented, to indicate the various exercises which, if persisted in, will correct the flat-foot condition. A few treatments will not avail. Flat foot is a defect that develops slowly, and yields to treatment slowly: but it does yield. Five months ago I took an impression of a student's foot: a photograph of it is shown at the top of this page. After five months of treatment I took another impression, and that also is shown. The treatment had entirely corrected the condition. Five months is not long when measured against a life-time; and, when measured in the improved health and feeling or the man or woman who has suffered from flat foot, it is a low price to pay.

Do It Now

PLAY fair with your baby or child, giving it an opportunity to become useful, happy, and independent," says Home and Progress. Do this by depositing to-day the first dollar on a First National savings account, so that the savings bank account and the child can grow up and develop together.

"If you will read over the following table, you will really be amazed to see the amount of money you can accumulate in this way, if you keep at it regularly and consistently.

"Depositing a dollar each week brings the following results:

                       

At the End of	To Your Credit	At the End of	To Your Credit
1 year	$52.78	12 years	$749.98
2 years	107.15	13   "	825.43
3   "	163.17	14   "	903.16
4   "	220.88	15   "	983.23
5   "	280.33	16   "	1065.73
6   "	341.58	17   "	1150.72
7   "	404.68	18   "	1238.28
8   "	469.69	19   "	1328.48
9   "	536.67	20   "	1421.41
10   "	605.67	21   "	1517.15
11   "	676.75

"If not $1, try 50 or 25 cents—but something—regularly."

Torchy in the Gazinkus Class

By SEWELL FORD

Illustration by Arthur William Brown

I EXPECT I'll get used to it all in time. This rural stuff, I mean. But it ain't goin' to come easy. When you've been brought up to think of home as some place where you've got a right to leave your trunk as long as you pay the rent prompt,—a joint where you have so many square feet of space on a certain floor, and maybe eight or ten inches of brick and plaster between you and a lot of strangers,—and then all of a sudden you switch to a whole house that's all yours, with gobs of land all around it, and trees and bushes and things that you can do what you like with—well, it's sort of staggerin' at first.

Why, the day Vee and I moved into this Harbor Hills place that I'd made the swift trade for with MacGregor Shinn, we just had our baggage dumped in the middle of the livin'-room, chucked our wraps on some chairs, and went scoutin' around from one room to another for over an hour, kind of nutty and excited.

"Oh, look, Torchy!" Vee would exclaim about twice a minute when she discovered something new.

You know, we'd been in the house only once before, and then we'd looked around just casual. And if you want to find out how little you really see when you think you're, lookin', you want to make a deal like that once—buy a joint just as it stands, and then, a few days after, camp down in it and tot up what you've really got. Why, say, you'd 'most thought we'd been blindfolded that first time.

Course, this was different. Now we was takin' stock, you might say, of the things we was goin' to live with. And, believe me, I never had any idea I'd ever own such a collection, or so big a slice of the U. S. A.

"Only think, Torchy," says Vee, after we've made the rounds inside. "Ten rooms, just for us!"

"Twelve, countin' the cellar and attic," says I. "But there's more outside, ain't there?"

Yep, there was. There was an old stable that had been turned into a garage, with a couple of rooms finished off upstairs. Then there was a carriage shed, with more rooms over that, also a chicken-house beyond. And stowed away in odd corners was all kinds of junk that might be more or less useful to have: a couple of lawn-mowers, an old sleigh hoisted up on the rafters of the carriage house, a weird old buggy, a plow, a grindstone, a collection of old chairs and sofas that had seen better days, a birch-bark canoe— things like that.

Then there was our lily pond. We had to walk all round that, poke in with a pole to see how deep it might be, and wonder if there was any fish in it. On beyond was some trees—apple and pear and cherry, accordin' to Vee, and 'way at the back a tall cedar hedge.

"Why, it's almost an estate," says Vee. "Nearly five acres, you know. How does it seem, Torchy, to think that all this is ours?"

"How?" says I. "Why, I feel like I was the Grand Gazinkus of Gazook."

BUT, at that, my feelin's wa'n't a marker to the emotions Professor Leon Battou, our artist-chef, manages to work up. He's so tickled at gettin' back to the country and away from the city, where him and Madame Battou come so near starvin' on the street, that he goes skippin' around like a sunshine kid, pattin' the trees, droppin' down on his hands and knees in the grass to dig up dandelions, and keepin' up a steady stream of explosive French and rapid-fire English.

"Ah, but it is all so good!" says he. "Le bleu ciel, les fleurs, les oiseaux! C' est bonne, tres bonne. Ne c'est pas?"

"I expect it is, Leon," says I. "Although I might not state it just that way myself. Picked out a spot yet for your garden?"

Foolish question! That was his first move, after takin' a glance at the particular brand of cook-stove he'd got to wrestle with. Just to the left of the kitchen wing is a little plot shut in by privet bushes and a trellis, which is where he says the fine herbes are meant to grow. He tows us around there and exhibits it chesty. Mostly it's full of last year's weeds; but he explains how he will soon have it in shape. And for the next week the only way we ever got any meals cooked was because Madame Battou used to go drag him in by the arm and make him quit diggin' long enough to hash up some of them tasty dishes for us.

If all amateur gardeners are apt to go so dippy over it, I hope I don't catch the disease. No danger, I guess. I made my stab at it about the third day, when Vee wanted some ground spaded up for a pansy bed. And say, in half an hour, there, I'd worked up enough palm blisters and backache to last me a month. It may seem sport to some people, but to me it has all the ear-marks of plain, hard work, such as you can indulge in reg'lar by carryin' a foldin' dinner-pail and lettin' yourself out to a padrone.

Leon, though, just couldn't seem to let it alone. He almost made a vice of it, to my mind. Why, say, he's out there at first crack of day, whenever that is; and in the evenin', as soon as he has served dinner, he sneaks out to put in a few more licks, and stays until it's so dark he can hardly find his way back.

You know all them window-boxes he had clutterin' up the studio apartment. Well, he insists on cratin' every last one of 'em and expressin' 'em along; and now he has all that alleged lettuce and parsley and carrots and so on set out in neat little rows; and when he ain't sprinklin' 'em with the hose or dosin' 'em with fertilizer, he's out there ticklin' 'em with a rake.

"Gee!" says I. "I thought all you had to do to a garden was just to chuck in the seeds and let 'em grow. But accordin' to

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your method it would be less trouble bringin' up a pair of twins."

"Ah-h-h-h!" says he. "But monsieur has not the passion for growing green things."

"Thanks be, then," says I. "It would land me in the linament ward if I had."

I must say, though, that Vee's 'most as bad with her flowers. Honest, when she shows me where she's planned to have this and that, and hints that I can get busy durin' my spare time with the spade, I almost wished we was back in town.

"What?" I gasps. "Want me to excavate all that? Hal-lup!"

"Pooh!" says Vee. "It will do you good."

Maybe she thought so. But I knew it wouldn't. So I chases up the hill to the Ellins place, and broke in on Mr. Robert just as he's finishin' breakfast.

"Say," says I, "you ain't got a baby-grand steam-shovel or anything like that around the place, have you?"

He says he's sorry, but he ain't. When he hears what I'm up against, though, he comes to the rescue noble by lendin' me one of his expert Dago soil-disturbers, at $1.75 per—and with Vee bossin' him she got the whole job done in half a day. After that I begun to enjoy gardenin' a bit more. I'm gettin' to be a real shark at it, too. And ambitious! You ought to hear me.

"How about havin' a couple more lanes of string-beans laid out?" I suggests. "And maybe a few hundred mounds of green corn, eh?"

And then I can watch Joe start the enterprise with a plow and an old white horse, and I can go to the office feelin' that, no matter how much I seem to be soldierin', as a matter of fact I'm puttin' in a full day's work. When I get back in the afternoon, the first thing I want to see is how much I've got done.

Not that I'm able to duck all kinds of labor that way. Believe me, a country place is no loafin' spot, especially when it's new, or you're new to it. Vee tends to that. Say, that girl can think up more odd forms of givin' me exercise than a bunch of football coaches—movin' bureaus, hangin' pictures, puttin' up curtain- rods, fixin' door-catches, and little things like that.

Up to a few weeks ago all I knew about saws and screw-drivers and so on was that they were shiny things displayed in the hardware store windows. But if I keep on tacklin' all the odd jobs she sits me on to, I'll be able to qualify pretty soon as a boss carpenter, a master plumber, and an expert electrician.

Course, I gouge myself now and then. My knuckles look like I'd been mixin' in a food riot, and I've spoiled two perfectly good suits of clothes. But I can point with pride to at least three doors that I've coaxed into shuttin', I've solved the mystery of what happens to a window-weight when the sash-cord breaks, and I've rigged up two drop-lights without gettin' myself electrocuted or askin' any advice from Mr. Edison.

WHICH reminds me that what I can't seem to get used to about the country is the poor way it's lighted up at night. You know, our place is out a couple of miles from the village and the railroad station; and, while we got electric bulbs enough in the house, outside there ain't a lamp-post in sight. Dark! Say, after 8 P. M. you might as well be livin' in a sub-cellar with the sidewalk gratin' closed. Honest, the only glim we can see from our front porch is a flicker from the porte cochere at the Ellinses' up on the hill, and most of that is cut off by trees and lilac bushes.

Vee don't seem to mind, though. These mild evenin's recent, she's dragged me out after dinner for a spell and made me sit with her watchin' for the moon to come up. I do it, but it ain't anything I'm strong for. I can't see the percentage in starin' out at nothing at all but black space and guessin' where the driveway is or what them dark streaks are. Then, there's so many weird sounds I can't account for.

"What's all that jinglin' going on?" I asks the other evenin'. "Sounds like a squad of junkmen comin' up the pike."

"Silly!" says Vee. "Frogs, of course."

"Oh!" says I.

Then I listens some more, until something else breaks loose. It's sort of a cross between the dyin' moan of a gyastacutus and the whine of a subway express roundin' a sharp curve.

"For the love of Pete," I breaks out, "what do you call that?"

Vee chuckles. "Didn't you see the calf up at Mr. Robert's?" she asks. "Well, that's the old cow calling to him."

"If she feels as had as that," says I, "I wish she'd wait until mornin' to express herself. That's the most doleful sound I ever heard. Come on; let's go in while you tinkle out something lively and cheerin' on the piano."

I never thought I was one of the timid kind, either. Course, I'm no Carnegie hero, or anything like that; but I've always managed to get along in the city without developin' a case of nerves. Out here, though, it's different. Two or three evenin's now I've felt almost jumpy, just over nothing at all, it seems.

Maybe that's why I didn't show up any better, here the other night, when Vee rings in this silent alarm on me. I was certainly poundin' my ear industrious when gradually I gets the idea that some one is shakin' me by the shoulders. It's Vee.

"Torchy," she whispers husky. "Get up."

"Eh?" says I, pryin' my eyes open reluctant. "Get up? Wha-wha' for?"

"Oh, don't be stupid about it," says she. "I've been trying to rouse you for five minutes. Please get up and come to the window."

"Nothing doing," says I, snugglin' into the pillow again. "I—I'm busy."

"But you must," says she. "Listen. I think some one is prowling around the house."

"Let 'em ramble, then," says I. "What do we care?"

"But suppose it's a—a burglar?" she whispers.

I'll admit that gives me a goose-fleshy feelin' down the spine. It's such a disturbin' word to have sprung on you in the middle of the night.

"Let's not suppose anything of the sort," says I.

"But I'm sure I saw some one just now, when I got up to fix the shade," insists Vee. "Some one who stepped out into the moonlight right there, between the shadows of those two trees. Then he disappeared out that way. Come and look."

Well, I was up by then, and half awake, so I tries to peer out into the back yard. I'm all for grantin' a general alibi, though.

"Maybe you was only dreamin', Vee," says I. "Anyway, let's wait until mornin', and then—"

"There!" she breaks in excited. "Just beyond the garden trellis. See?"

Yep. There's no denyin' that some one is sneakin' around out there. First off I thought it might be a female in a white skirt and a rain-coat; but when we gets the head showin' plain above some bushes we can make out a mustache.

"It's a man!" gasps Vee, clutchin' me by the sleeve.

"Uh-huh," says I. "So it is."

"Well?" says Vee.

I expect that was my cue to come across with the bold and noble acts. But, some-

how, I didn't yearn to dash out into the moonlight in my pajamas and mix in rough with a total stranger. But I didn't mean to give it away if I could help it.

"Got a nerve, ain't he?" says I. "Let's wait; maybe he'll fall into the pond."

"How absurd!" says Vee. "No; we must do something right away."

"Of course," says I. "I'll shout and ask him what the blazes he thinks he's doin."

"Don't," says Vee. "There may be others—in the house. And before you let him know you see him, you ought to be armed. Get your revolver."

At that I just gawped at Vee, for she knows well enough I don't own anything more deadly than a safety razor, and that all the gun-play I ever indulged in was once or twice at a Coney Island shootin' gallery where I slaughtered a clay pipe by aimin' at a glass ball.

"Whaddye mean, revolver?" I asks.

"S-s-s-sh!" says she. "There's that Turkish pistol, you know, that Mr. Shinn left hanging over the mantel in the living-room."

"Think it's loaded?" I whispers.

"It might be," says Vee. "Anyway, it's better than nothing. Let's get it."

"All right," says I. "Soon as I get something on. Just a sec."

SO I jumps into a pair of trousers and a coat and some bath slippers, while Vee throws on a dressin'-sack. We feels our way sleuthy downstairs, and after rappin' my shins on a couple of rockers I gets down the old pistol. It's a curious, wicked-lookin' antique about two feet long, with a lot of carvin' and silver inlay on the barrel. I'd never examined the thing to see how it worked, but it feels sort of comfortin' just to grip it in my hand. We unlocks the back door easy.

"Now you stay inside, Vee," says I, "while I go scoutin' and—"

"No indeed," says Vee. "I am going too."

"But you mustn't," I insists.

"Hush!" says she. "I shall."

And she did. So we begins our first burglar hunt as a twosome, and I must say there's other sports I enjoy more. Out across the lawn we sneaks, steppin' as easy as we can, and keepin' in the shadow most of the time.

"Guess he must have skipped," says I.

"But he was here only a moment ago," says Vee. "Don't you know, we saw him— Oh, oh!"

I don't blame her for gaspin'. Not twenty feet ahead of us, crouchin' down in the cabbage patch, is the villain. Just why he should be tryin' to hide among a lot of cabbage plants not over three inches high, I don't stop to think. All I knew was that here was some one prowlin' around at night on my premises, and all in a flash I begins to see red. Swingin' Vee behind me, I unlimbers the old pistol and cocks it. I didn't care whether this was the open season for burglars or not. I wanted to get this one, and get him hard.

Must have been a minute or more that I had him covered, tryin' to steady my arm so I could keep the muzzle pointed straight at his back, when all of a sudden he lifts his right hand and begins scratchin' his ear. Somehow, that breaks the spell. Why should a burglar hump himself on his hands and knees in h truck patch and stop to scratch his ear?

"Hey, you!" I sings out real crisp. Maybe that ain't quite the way to

---

open a line of chat with a midnight marauder. I've been kidded about it some since; but at the time it sounded all right. And it has the proper effect. He comes up on his toes with his hands in the air, like he was worked by springs.

"That's right; keep your paws up," says I. "And, remember, if you go to makin' any funny moves—"

"Why, Torchy!" exclaims Vee, grabbin' my shootin' arm. "It's Leon!"

"Wha-a-a-at!" says I, starin' at this wabbly party among the coldslaw.

BUT it's Professor Battou, all right.

He's costumed in a night-shirt, an old overcoat, and a pair of rubbers; and he certainly does look odd, standin' there in the moonlight with his elbows up and his knees knockin' one another.

"Well, well, Leon!" says I, sighin' relieved. "So it's you, is it? And we had you all spotted as a second-story worker. All right; you don't need to hold the pose any longer. But maybe you'll tell us what you're crawlin' around out here in the garden for at this time of night."

He tried to, but he's had such a scare thrown into him that his conversation works are all gummed up. After we've led him into the house, though, and he's had a drink of spring water, he does a little better.

"It was to protect the cabbages, monsieur," says he.

"Eh?" says I. "Protect 'em from what?"

"There is a wicked worm," says Leon, "which does his evil work in the night. Ah, such a sly beast! And so destructive! Just at the top of the young root he eats —snip, snip! And in the morning I find that two, four, sometimes six tender plants he has cut off. I am enrage. 'Ha!' I say. 'I will discover you yet at your mischief.' So I can not sleep for thinking. But I had found him; yes, two. And I was searching for more when monsieur—"

"Yes, I know," says I. He's glancin' worried at the old pistol I'm still holdin' in my hand. "My error, Leon. I might have guessed. And as the clock's just strikin' three, I think we'd all better hit the hay again. Come on, Vee; it's all over."

And, in spite of that half hour or so of time out, I was up earlier than usual in the mornin'. I had a little job to do that I'd planned out before I went to sleep again. As soon as I'm dressed I slips downstairs, takes that Turkish pistol, and chucks it into the middle of the pond. I'll never know whether it was loaded or not. I don't want to know. For if it had been—Well, what's the use?

COMIN' back in through the kitchen, I finds Leon busy dishin' up toast and eggs. He glances at me nervous, and then hangs his head. But he gets out what he has to say man fashion.

"I trust monsieur is not displeased," says he. "It was not wise for me to walk about at night. But those wicked worms! Still, if monsieur desires, it shall not occur again. I ask pardon."

"Now, that's all right, Leon," says I soothin'. "Don't worry. When it comes to playin' the boob act, I guess we split about fifty-fifty. I'd a little rather you didn't, but if you must hunt the wicked worm at night, why, go to it. You won't run any more risk of being shot up by me. For I've disarmed."

I Know It Is Saved

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

TWO men were discussing a small investment that one of them had made. It paid a very low rate of interest, but was noted for its freedom from risk or likelihood of loss. Both men had their doubts as to whether the money might not have been placed out at greater interest.

"But," said the investor, with an air of relief and finality as he closed the discussion, "at any rate, the money is saved."

As this article is written it is apparent that vast sums of money, the savings of millions of people, will be called for by the government to prosecute the war. At all times the use of that word saved has a significance that should make every one pause. To-day it has a national and international importance of the first order.

We have all used the word save so many times in regard to laying money by that we forget-what it means. Its first and root meaning is to preserve, keep, or rescue from danger, evil, injury, and destruction. Saving money is not merely to keep from spending it, or to put it in bonds and stocks, but to put it where it is safe. It is only half the battle to avoid spending. Money is not really saved until it is placed either in a safe-deposit box, where it earns nothing, or into a secure investment. Hundreds of millions of dollars are each year carefully and frugally kept from being spent, only to be invested and lost rather than saved.

In one sense, the floating of immense government loans in this country will be a blessing in disguise. It will draw away from the wiles and snares of the financial sharks, as could no other force, hundreds of millions of dollars now wasted. It will teach the people of this country that security at 3 or 4 per cent. is infinitely better than the promise of a fortune, coupled with the cold mathematical certainty that perhaps half a dozen persons out of a million are sure to win and all the others lose. Talk about the evils of a lottery! They are as nothing compared with the evils of the ordinary alluring advertisement of rich rewards through investing in some unknown, untried mining, oil, motor, or moving-picture stock. For all men know the lottery to be a gamble, and go into it with open eyes. The alluring stock advertisement is just as much of a gamble; but most of the people who respond to its glowing invitation suppose that they are saving and investing.

I am often asked how to tell the safe from the unsafe investments. Here are a few working rules:

1. United States Government bonds. The rate of interest on the first issues are sure to be low, but both principal and interest are absolutely secure. If later issues are put out at higher rates, the early issues are pretty certain to be converted into them, so that early subscribers will not lose.

2. State, city, town, and village bonds. Low rate, but secure.

3. Savings banks. Low rate but secure.

4. Life insurance. Low rate but secure.

5. Shares in building and loan companies, cooperative banks, and credit unions. Pay a high rate of interest and are safe if they have a good local standing. Information about them to be had only from local business men and bankers.

6. First mortgages on real estate. All degrees of safety and rates of income. The great majority of mortgages are both safe and pay a fair income. For uninformed investors it is absolutely necessary to consult mortgage bankers of established reputation and reliability.

7. Stocks and bonds (other than those of governments, States, and municipalities). All conceivable degrees of safety and income. To buy stocks and bonds safely, one must do one or both of two things: either consult a reliable investment banker or broker, just as one consults a physician, or make an elaborate and extended personal investigation into the security offered. To buy a stock or bond merely on the strength of an advertisement, circular, or salesman's say-so, without following one or the other course, is simply throwing money away. Only long study and experience render it safe to invest on one's own personal investigation.

For most people there is but one method of obtaining the name of a reliable investment banker or broker—to ask one's local bank. A few newspapers and magazines such as this one are careful to admit only reliable financial advertiseinents to their columns; but vast numbers do admit the fakirs, so that in general the fact that a concern advertises proves nothing.

Finally, it may be said that, as a practical, common-sense proceding, nearly everybody should invest the first few thousand dollars they have saved in life insurance, savings bank deposits, government and municipal bonds, and possibly an annuity or a home, before they even think of buying mortgages, bonds, and stocks. It is the first investment that really counts. Each successive step becomes easier. As in learning to run an automobile, one can not be too careful at first. Speed comes naturally only as the result of much experience and practice, and is not safe until these have been had.

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

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

John Muir & Company, 61 Broadway, New York City, have made arrangements whereby _particular facilities will be offered to purchasers of U. S. War Loan Bonds in $100 denominations. The firm is not charging for its services in connection with the distribution of the Government Bonds.

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

Sound opinions on the situation as related to business and financial operations, and to effect upon securities have made the Bache Review known throughout the United States and Europe. It is read by thousands of business men, who are guided by its authoritative conclusions. Issued by J. S. Bache & Co., 42 Broadway, New York. Sent upon request without charge.

High grade improved Montana farm property first mortgages bearing 6 per cent. interest net are offered for sale by Phelps-Eastman Co., investment bankers, McKnight Building, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Also Minneapolis city bonds in convenient denominations and bearing 6 per cent. interest net. Descriptive literature will be furnished upon request.

"June Stock and Bond Investment Suggestions," a circular containing a diversified selection of securities at present available, is issued by Merrill, Lynch & Co., members of the New York Stock Exchange, 7 Wall Street, New York City. This circular and a list of high-grade $100 bonds suitable for the moderate investor sent on request.

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

The Odd Lot Review, published weekly; presents in plain English a clear-cut viewpoint on financial and market conditions. Sample copy sent on request to 61 Broadway, New York City.

A new circular, showing how to obtain a dividend every Month through the Odd Lot method, has been issued by Hartshorne & Picabia, members of the New York Stock Exchange, 7 Wall Street, New York City. Ask for circular 0-14. The firm also offers special inducements in the way of advice to small investors.

Any one interested in the security market should send to L. R. Latrobe & Co., No. 111. Broadway, New York, 'for their statistical books on Copper Stocks, Motor Stocks, Standard Oil Stocks, Investor's Guide (270 pages), or Weekly Market Letter. This firm will mail you any one of these books free on request. Partial-Payment Plan. First farm mortgages and real estate bonds are not subject to fluctuations in value in these uncertain times. E. J. Lander & Co., Grand Forks, North Dakota, will send a booklet free to those who are interested in farm mortgages. Ask for booklet "R."

The safety of the first mortgage loans of Perkins & Company, of Lawrence, Kansas, has been fully established by over forty years of successful business. Interest paid promptly each six months. Their saving certificates yielding 6 per cent. are convenient for small investors. Write for circular No. 721.