Who Says a Teacher Shouldn't Marry?

I WAS reared on a farm in the plainest kind of a little country home and under quite limited circumstances. I had learned to support myself by the usual method of country girls and boys—that of teaching a rural school.

At the age of twenty-two, after having taught two years, I married a young man who was instructor in a high school in a small town.

Being a very ambitious and energetic young man, he had resolved to follow a profession—that of medicine and surgery.

Ile had saved enough money to pay for his first year of professional training, and we had talked over his desires and plans, and decided, at the time we were married, on a course of action:

Our Program of Self-Sacrifice

IF I went on teaching nine months of the year, and he six, he could study for his profession during the summer months, and we could save enough from our two salaries to pay for his medical education.

At a glance this might seem easy enough; but when it came to actually traveling the straight and narrow path toward the one aim, the way over the hills of self-sacrifice seemed very hard indeed.

On Monday morning we would rise early. Ile would drive me a distance of five miles to my school, and return in time for his own daily tasks.

I boarded away from home during the week; each evening, when I got back to my small, lonely room, I used to wear off my longing and loneliness by burying myself in the preparation of my school work for the following day. I was always very happy indeed when Friday evening came, and I saw my husband nearing the town for me after our week of separation and patient toil.

As winter came on, often-times the country roads would be too deep in mud to venture on this ten-mile trip with a horse and buggy; and in the winter storms of sleet and hail the only way I could get to my school was by walking the railroad.

How I Lost My Fear of Tramps

MORE than once (luring those three winters I walked the full five miles, leaving home at six-thirty in order to reach my school-room at eight o'clock. I often got so tired and cold that I could scarcely reach my destination; and it was only the thought of how it would help my husband in the end that enabled me to keep up until the winters were over.

I well remember, on one of my journeys, meeting a typical ragged, dirty rail-road tramp. The one thing I had always feared was a tramp. I was in a dreary, solitary place—hills and woods on either side of me, no house in sight. I watched him closely as we approached each other, and listened after he had passed by to make sure there was no pause in his foot-steps.

And all at once my fear left me: for I realized that in my hand I carried an umbrella, and it flashed across me that if he made any attempt to approach me, I would strike him to the earth and punch him to death with the sharp end of the weapon.

Since that time I have found tramps perfectly harmless creatures.

I experienced many trials (luring those three winters of self-sacrifice, but was al-ways glad when March first of each year came and my husband could be off to the city to resume his study.

He boarded until my school closed; then I joined him, and we lived in light housekeeping rooms the three summer months of each year. The sum of both our salaries was eight hundred and ten dollars a year. Of this sum we saved enough each year to pay for his tuition, medical hooks, clothing, and all expenses.

During the three months I was with him in the city I prepared our meals and kept up the work of the apartment. By close economy I found I could hoard the two of us, including gas and light, for five dollars a week.

I helped him with his studies, always drilling him for his daily tests and final exams. I cut and rolled all his bandages, and he practised bandaging me for every known fracture.

At Last We Reach Our Goal

THE last year I figured he would need extra money for graduation, for clothes, and incidentals. So in my last six months of teaching I looked up a reliable and well known firm that sold women's wearing apparel through country agents.

I took orders in the evenings after school, and delivered the goods on Saturdays; and by the time my school closed for the last year I had made an extra hundred dollars.

Thus through my assistance my husband graduated a professional man, all expenses paid by our own efforts. It was a source of great satisfaction to me to know that I had contributed to his happiness and success and had thereby helped him to a sphere of greater usefulness to the world.

He located in a small town, and soon worked up a good practice. We entered the social life through the church, the clubs, etc., and in three year's time we had a home. Unto us a son was born, and we feel that the future is full of promise.

Our Best Girl This Week

WE present here Miss Margaret Tilden, a Decatur, Illinois, school girl, aged eight, who outdistanced all rival collectors, contributing 1500 pounds out of the 105,000 pounds of waste paper collected by the school children of her city in one school week.

Waste-paper week "celebrations" have been held in scores of cities within the last year; for ever since

The public school children of Decatur received more than $1000 for their collection of waste paper, which was piled in an enormous heap in the city park. The school children of Des Moines, Iowa, collected nearly 300,-000 pounds of paper, which was sold for more than $2000.

Therewith to Be Content—

LAST night I ran across this paragraph in the newly published note books of Samuel Butler:

I imagine that life can give nothing much better or much worse than what I have myself experienced. I should say I have proved pretty well the extremes of mental pleasure and pain; and so I believe, each in his own way, does almost every man.

That, when you come to think about it, is wholly true. Some men have more of the luxuries of life than others: but those experiences which are richest in pleasure are the common heritage of us all.

Charles M. Schwab, at last reports, had more money than I—but just what can lie buy with it?

Three meals a (lay, first of all. They will doubtless cost more to serve than my three, but if Charlie enjoys them any more he is going some.

A'roof over his head. It will be a wider and steeper roof than mine, and more rain will run off it; but the rain that runs off mine will be, just as wet, and underneath I shall be just as dry.

A good night's sleep—if he's lucky.

Ile can own more of the world's surface than I. But, try as he may, he can not breathe up any more of its air: he can not absorb any more of its sunshine; he can not bribe the ocean to give him any more invigorating bath; nor the evening stars to shine any brighter over his estate.

The world is full of pleasant sights and sounds and smells, and his cars and nose and eyes do not bring him any sensation a particle more sweet than mine bring to me.

The world is full of lovely women, and each of us can love and marry only one.

Compared with the blessings we have in common, the few paltry blessings which he has and I have not are insignificant.

I have tasted these rich men's blessings.

I have driven an automobile, and sat in the front row at the Winter Garden, and met Teddy Roosevelt, and worn silk hose, and had my finger-nails manicured. And none of these luxuries is one, two, three with a good night's sleep, or a swim at Coney, or corned beef and cabbage when one has worked all the morning in a garden and is really hungry.

The habit of contentment is formed, not from without, but from within; and it is a wonderfully satisfying habit to own.

There is no duty we so much underestimate [says Steven-son] as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world which remain unknown even to ourselves; or, when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor. A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good will, and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.

It is strange that contentment should not be more widespread, considering how very common and close at hand are the elements that go into it.

Work—first of all.

Simple tastes—the power of finding great satisfaction in little things—is another ingredient.

To watch the corn grown or the blossoms set [as Ruskin has it], to draw hard breath over plowshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to pray: these are the things that make men happy.

I would not have any man slothful : there is a difference between the soul that does not worry and the soul that merely does not care. The man who stands still, or slides back, is entitled to no respect.

But he who is wise enjoys the various stages of his progress while he is passing through them. St. Paul, for instance, did a pretty good-sized job in the world, and left a shining record.

He was forever "pressing forward to his goal." Yet it was he also who wrote:

"For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, there-with to be content."

PROFITS BY PERSONALITIES

By Edwin Balmer

"So you're leaving us, Cardon?"

"As quick as I can get my time!"

"What's the trouble?"

"I ain't treated right. I've never had a square deal here. I've got another job, and I'm going to get out!"

Hawley, the works superintendent. picked up Cordon's record card and glanced over it again.

"I low aren't you treated right?" he inquired quietly.

"In no way! Jameson's down on me—" (Jameson was the foreman.) "lie `rides' me every time anything happens in the shop; he's got everybody else down on me, too. . . . There ain't nobody in the plant that's done more for the fellow next him than I have; there ain't nobody that's worked less for himself and more for the interests of the whole shop than me! That's the trouble: I'm easy. I won't lie and try to shove off my breaks on any one else; so the inspectors soak me with everything that's off."

Hawley listened to the rest of the tirade patiently, for Cardon was a skilled man, an unusually able workman when he was in right temper. He had been trained to operate a machine that required delicate and highly expert manipulation. There were only two machines of the sort in the shop, and Cardon was one of two men able to operate them. With the present over-demand for skilled machinists, it would be practically impossible to find a man competent to replace him; and it would be weeks before a machinist, taken from other work, could be trained to Cordon's efficiency — weeks during which the whole shop would be handicapped by the slowing down of Car-don's machine.

"You're not going to get more pay in your next place, Cardon?"

"No, sir. But I won't be beat out of what 1 do earn, I bet. There won't be a hunch of robbers over there to beat me by charging up to inc every defective piece of work in the whole shop!"

The superintendent referred again, constrainedly, to Cordon's shop record. "You've been charged in the last month, Cardon, with hardly half the 'defects' that have been charged against Mc—Lauren in the same time." (McLauren was the man operating the twin machine to Cordon's.)

"Well, shouldn't I've been? Ain't I the better man? Don't that show it?"

"lt certainly shows that you're not charged with an extraordinary number of 'faults.' The number of pieces charged against you are always bunched. You have a number of days with an absolutely clear record; then a couple of had days when, in addition to doing your work less well, you are reported in trouble with every one—the men working beside you as well as the inspectors."

"Who said that? That liar Jameson? Say, do you—"

"That's enough, Cardon," Hawley interrupted sternly. "I sent for you, when Jameson reported you asked for your time, to see if you had any just grievance. Your leaving just now is going to inconvenience us, as you probably know. It is also going to cost us money."

"I should worry about that."

The Disgruntled Employee

"I BELIEVE that you should. You've been with us now. a little less than two years; you came to us from Boardman Brothers, where you stayed about the same time. Your trouble there was that `nobody treated you right'; you'd come to them from the Wessells Motors, where you'd been about a year and a half and made good wages, and also had been treated badly. The same thing every-where. It's unjust to your employers and unjust to yourself. Last summer, when you were laid up three weeks, we kept you on full pay. Your injury was nothing that you could have held us for: it was oil your motorcycle, on which you were touring by yourself on Sunday. We not only took care of you, but our attorneys got damages for you from the man 'who ran into you, and we charged you nothing for their services. You're forgetting all that because you're clocked two dollars last week, and— No; I can't give you those two dollars. Shop rules and discipline are rules and discipline, and your union recognizes ours as just. Oh, all right, Cardon. Good-by; good luck."

Hawley rang for his secretary.

"Put that card in our 'Left or Discharged' tile and tell Jameson to break in somebody for Cordon's place while we're advertising for another good man. The Clarendon Car people want- that shipment speeded? H-m-m; that's going to be more difficult now. Say, get in that ad right away, and wire them—"

There is no one who employs any considerable number of people who does not deal with this sort of disgruntled employee every few days. There is no employee who does not know a number of fellow workers who feel and act like Car-dons at frequent intervals. Almost every employer recognizes the very grave menace to business of the frequent repetition of the ordinary, accepted incident sketched above; but few employees and very, very few of the general public—who in the end pay the tremendous yearly indemnity for such preventable incidents—have the faintest, idea of the cost.

In a report read before a convention of the National Association of Manufacturers of the United States of America, Mr. Magnus W. Alexander, of West Lynn, Massachusetts, details the figures in regard to twelve factories in six different States. These factories "ranged from the production of big steam engines, many forms of electrical apparatus, and high-class automobiles, to that of fine tools and instruments, requiring labor of the highest skill as well as that of the common kind. The smallest of these factories carries normally less than 300, the largest more than 10,000 employees on its pay-roll." Taking all these figures together: "This group of factories gave employment to 37,274 employees at the beginning and 43.971 at the end of the year.

Why Six Times the Number Needed Are Engaged

"THE net increase in the working force, as between January 1st and December 31st, amounted therefore to 6697 employees, while during the same period 42,571 people had been hired, and accordingly 35,874 had dropped out of the employment for whatsoever reason. In other words, about six and one third times as many people had to he engaged during the year as constituted the permanent increase of the force at the end of that period."

Mr. Alexander chose, for his analysis, the figures for the year 1912, which was before the war and which may be considered to have been an industrially normal year. He mentions the seasonable and

"'The important fact stands out that 42,571 people had to be engaged during the year iii order to in-crease the working force by only 6697."

Mr. Alexander presented as a reason-able allowance for the replacement of employees who die, 1 per cent.

Replacement of those on sick leave for whom others must be substituted temporarily, 4 per cent. Replacement of employees who, although selected with good judgment, are found unsuited, or who leave because they do not find work congenial, do not like climate, or for other reasons remove from locality, 8 per cent.

Engagement of extra employees for short periods, 8 per cent.

Finally, allowing for the fact that no employment department can be run on a 100 per cent. efficiency basis, he sets 80 per cent. as a readily attainable efficiency for the selection of employees. Thus, "while theoretically only 6697 employees should have been employed to allow for an increase of the working force by that number, the additional engagement of 13,843 persons, or a total engagement of 20,540 persons, would be justified. Yet the fact is that 42,571 employees were engaged where the employment of only 20,540 persons could readily be defended; 22,031 were, therefore, engaged above the apparently necessary requirements."

To Prevent Labor Waste

ALLOWING for the loss from the five items of hiring expense, instruction for new employees, wear and tear, reduced production, and spoiled work, Mr. Alexander arrives at the minimum figure of 8831,030 as the economic waste due to the apparently unnecessary engagement of 22,031 people within the year.

The summary of experience of twelve plants in six different States is quoted be-cause it- may be considered characteristic, not exceptional or abnormal. The "labor turn-over" is less than one hundred per cent.; labor turn-overs of two hundred, three hundred, and four hundred per cent. are really high "turn-overs." In the same year which Mr. Alexander considered, a Detroit factory hired 54,0(X) men to keep an average working force of 13,000. This was more than 400 per cent. labor turn-over.

Most of the means that employers are taking to reduce this terrific waste—some of the means effective under certain conditions—are profit, sharing, bonuses, improvement of work conditions, pensions, and other welfare. In previous articles I have presented to the readers of this magazine some of the newer

Page 4

A Study of "Social Difficulties"

AMONG the more recent recognitions of important causes of such a situation as that sketched above, are the findings of Dr. Herman M. Adler of the Harvard Medical School. His report, as published in Mental Hygiene, is not intended to "be considered an attempt to ascertain the fundamental causes of unemployment"; but his analysis "on the basis of personality of a selected number of persons for whom unemployment was a serious problem" brought conclusions of the greatest interest to every employer and, no less, every employee. Working through the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, with its annual admissions of two thousand and with fifteen hundred others in the out-patient department, he found unusual opportunity for studying the extreme cases of social difficulties of many types.

"The difference between studying this sort of material and the much more abundant material obtained in the employment agencies, labor headquarters, court-rooms, etc., is that the Psychopathic Hospital patients are subjected to uniform and fairly searching examination, at the completion of which a very fair idea may be had of the physical and mental equipment and shortcomings of the different individuals. . . . Only a part of the patients admitted to the Psychopathic Hospital suffer from mental disease. However, all of them show the effects of fairly definite psychopathic tendencies. The study of these extreme types will often show in an exaggerated way, and therefore in a way that will impress the observer, difficulties of personality and of career that in a more nearly normal individual might hardly be considered significant."

Dr. Adler's report considers more specifically one hundred cases of unemployment which had been received as patients—that is, cases of men who had been all their lives more or less regularly out of jobs. "These were unselected cases so far as the diagnoses or the nature of the employment difficulties were concerned. The only selection exercised was in regard to age and sex. Only males of from twenty-five to fifty-five years of age were included. Each patient was subjected to the routine examinations of the Psychopathic Hospital, which consisted in a complete physical examination, a psychological examination, with intelligence tests to determine feeble-mindedness, supplemented by a history of social service investigation."

The surprising and highly significant result was that out of the hundred of such persons examined only about a third, or thirty-five cases, failed to hold jobs because of inadequate personality. Under this heading Dr. Adler placed all cases that had been shown by the psychological tests to be defective or feeble-minded. In other words, barely a third of the incompetents whose failure to hold a job had brought them under the observation of the Psychopathic Hospital were incompetents in the ordinary sense. Two men had proved unsatisfactory to themselves and to their employers for other reasons within themselves for every one who had failed on account of lack of ability.

The most important cause contributing to the employment difficulties of these hundred men was the possession of paranoid personality.

These, Dr. Adler says, are all who have shown by their conduct that "their reaction to the world is entirely egocentric. No matter what they experience, no matter what they desire, their own ego is the center of the plot and dominates everything. They are always ready to under take new schemes, they are usually working for the betterment of the rest of the world, and claim all sorts of altruistic motives, and even may be altruistic to some extent, seeking merely the satisfaction of being in the limelight. Or the emotion may be a depressed one, and the individuals are contentious, surly, suspicious, claim abuse, ill treatment, recognize no kindness that is done them, appreciate no favors, etc. This is by far the largest group in our table, comprising forty-three cases, or almost half."

Emotional instability was the cause of the failure of the remaining twenty-two individuals. Under this heading Dr. Adler included all the cases that showed "sufficient mental ability and judgment to satisfy the ordinary demands of life, and who had no marked tendency to the egocentric attitude or to enlarge upon their own significance, accomplishments, or the jealousies of others. These include individuals who show excessive emotional reactions, who are at times buoyant beyond all reason. . . Their minds are very active, they have many new ideas, they have a marvelous imagination, they undertake a dozen different obligations, none of which they can carry out. They tire of one thing before it is half begun, and go rapidly to another. In another mood they may show an interference with thought, a lack of initiative, a tendency to be unhappy, a brooding disposition. . . . They are extremely irascible, usually on account of some external provocation. The latter may be very slight. Impulsiveness, amounting often to an obsession, is frequently found."

Here is an astonishing and highly suggestive finding: among a hundred persons "for whom unemployment was a serious problem," two failed for temperamental faults to one who was found inadequate to do his work. One certainly would expect the percentage of "inadequates" among a hundred men drifting into the observation of a psychopathic hospital to be greater than the percentage among the whole mass of those who find employment a problem. Dr. Adler suggests that this is the case, saying that, as the emotionally unstable individual may be a very useful citizen, he is not likely to get into difficulties unless his trouble becomes more intense. Also, because these people are often popular, their friends and acquaintances will gather about them in times of need and will by united efforts keep them on the job. However, when the paranoid individual gets into difficulties, one is glad to get rid of him. When his abilities are such that the employers do not like to let him go, the other employees may force his dismissal, or he will of his own accord throw up his job for no real reason.

Same Traits, to Some Extent, in Normal People

ANY recognized abnormal trait is, of course, only an extreme of a tendency that normal persons possess to some extent. These findings, therefore, apply not only to the persons in such situation as the hundred studied, but to the "borderland" cases as well as those above the border. We form, therefore, a picture of two individuals above the failure line, still more or less frustrating their efforts because of an egocentric attitude or because of emotional instability, for one person who is baffled by inferior ability. Apply this to your own acquaintances and to those in your office. Dr. Adler gives another aid for classification. He found that the emotionally unstable group lasted fifty months to each job; the inadequate group, twenty-four months; and the egocentric, twenty months.

The figure of $831,030 which I have quoted as the waste due to the unnecessary engagement of 22,031 people is only the estimate of the cost to the employers. How much greater is the cost to the employees thus changing about!

"It is evident to every thinking man," says our President in his war-time appeal to the nation, "that our industries, in farms, in shipyards, in the mines, in the factories, must be made more prolific and more efficient than ever, and that they must be more economically managed and better adapted to the particular requirements of our task than they have been; and what I want to say is that the men who devote their thought and their energy to these things will be serving the country."

There is, to the thinking and to the informed, no greater preventable waste than the labor waste. There is no method by which our industries may be made more efficient than by reducing to the absolute minimum the labor loss. At this time it is more essential than ever before that employers may as fully as possible appreciate all the elements which make for that tremendous loss, and for the employees to consider those elements also. They will the better work for themselves and for the nation.

FEAR IS DANGEROUS

By WILLIAM G. SHEPHERD

OF all the menacing things we encounter in life, one is more dangerous than all the rest.

It can work more evil than all the other things that we should dread. This super-evil thing is fear.

Fear can work greater harm than anything else that can be feared.

Ghosts, for instance, can not injure a child or a man, because there are no ghosts. But fear of ghosts may be as real as a toothache, and what injury ghosts do not commit may be brought about by the fear of ghosts.

That French general knew how dangerous is fear when, in a tight corner, with even harder fighting ahead of him, he looked down at his trembling body and said: "Shake on, you fool! But you'd tremble even more if you knew into what greater danger I shall soon take you."

The bookkeeper, the clerk, the man with the little job who lets the fear of poverty or the fear of losing his job enter into his life and sway his career, is crippled for life. He is so thoroughly crippled that he can not move on to bigger and better things. There, in his little job, with the strong legs of his courage blown away by shots from the batteries of his enemy, fear, he remains all his life.

Mistakes, errors of judgment, the selection of wrong courses in life, are all to be feared. But the fear that prevents a young man from making decisions does him greater harm than any error in judgment he might make if he bravely threw aside fear and became his own man's man. To make mistakes may prove inconvenient; but the fear of making mistakes may so paralyze a young man as to render him useless for anything in life.

Napoleon's life abounded in mistakes; but he did not fear them: he used them to teach him how not to do things.

One idea that will help a young man to start out bravely in life is this: After our plans are all made, after we have bravely chosen our path, we must go ahead, leaving a little something to chance. With paralyzing fear in his heart, no young man can leave anything to chance. And yet, every great life is made in part by chance and opportunity. To be a "sure-thing" man is to fail; if the fear of trusting in part to chance and opportunity sways your life, you might as well, right now, give up trying to be a somebody.

Fear of criticism is deadly. Criticism can always be used to help oneself. Even Shakespeare, with all his wealth of thought, experience, and intuition, would have remained silent if he had feared controversy or criticism. There was no trace of fear in Shakespeare; there can be no trace of fear in any great man.

Nature has a curse of her own which she puts on her creatures when she discovers that fear is beginning to rule their lives. Biologists can point out to you at least a score of animals that are being punished by nature because of their fears.

The hermit-crab has paid a ghastly penalty.

One time, so the evolutionists read in the records of the past,a crab saw something in its environment which frightened it. It had its two great fighting claws, which nature had given it as means of defense; it had its hard shell as an armor. But fear crept into its heart, and, instead of standing up to the thing it feared and fighting it, and perhaps dying in the fight, it chose a course that was dictated by fear. It found an empty snail-shell. It couldn't get into the shell head first, because of its large claws; so it went in tail first, its lithe body following the winding turnings of the shell. Finally the crab found itself tucked away in the shell that nature had intended as a shelter for a weak, unarmored snail. Over the opening in the shell the routed crab folded its two big fighting claws, and there it remained until the danger had passed.

After that day, whenever danger approached, the crab took to the shell. Soon it rarely left the stony shelter. It taught its children how to live in snail- shells. And nature did the rest.

"Very well," nature seems to have said to the hermit-crab. "If you really want to live in a snail-shell instead of being out in the big open, I'll give you the sort of body that you need to have in your snail life."

One of the big fighting claws of the crab began to wither; to-day it is a shriveled, weak limb. The other claw was changed in shape; to-day it is only a circular disk which is used as a door to close the entrance to the shell.

The crab's own armor is gone. Its tail is almost as soft as an angleworm, and it is twisted and warped out of all resemblance to what it ought to be. It crawls about the beach, eating carrion. The rich, live foods which other crabs secure by fighting are not for it.

It never leaves the snail-shell until it outgrows it. Then it finds another, as quickly as possible. It is fearful of every sound. If it has a mind, it must live in a state of terror.

Any decent crab would rather be killed in a fight, or die of old age out in the open, than' be this crippled, warped, frightened thing that scientists call a hermit-crab. It would have been far better, that day, for the ancestor of these hermit-crabs to have bravely faced the thing he feared, and have died in the fight. Certainly the thing he feared could not have done as terrible things to him and his children as fear itself has done.

If things aren't going well with you in life, perhaps this one question may help to set you straight:

Have you been playing hermit-crab?

THE LEAK

ByBY CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND

Illustrations by W. C. Dexter

MR. POPPLE, " says Mrs. Handy to me one morning as I delivered her basket of groceries at her back door, "why do you drive your wagon and bring my things every little while yourself? I should think you, the proprietor of the store, would feel it was undignified."

"Mrs. Handy," says I, "dignity hain't causin' me many qualms, and I don't like my delivery boy to have no special advantages over me."

With that I piled her things on the kitchen table and walked out, not desiring special to continue conversing with her, so to speak. I never did take to her, anyhow. She's always listening to eggs to see if there hain't something moving around inside of them. Such wimmin is likely to call judgments down on themselves.

Well, that's neither here nor there. The thing that I was fetching out is that I like to drive my delivery wagon once in a while myself, just to git acquainted with my customers and to peek into their houses. Because the looks of a house tells a heap about the folks that live in it.

There was a time when I used to stop and visit 'most every place I went; but times has changed. Customers hain't personal friends any more, excepting some that's left over from old days before automobile' manufactur- ing made this town grow to be a regular city. But there's still some folks that calls me by my first name, and talks personal with me, and there's children and grandchildren of them that calls me Uncle Eli. Which is like it ought to be. Mind, I don't hanker to poke my nose into my customers' business; but, the way I'm used to doing business, a customer is something more than a person you sell goods to—he's somebody that's connected to you, sort of like a relative, and folks that don't like my idee of it kin buy their groceries somewheres else.

ONE afternoon a spell back, I took it into my head to leave the boy mind the store while I went out on the wagon. I drove up the alley behind what's got to be about our swellest street, and stopped at Mrs. Potter's back gate. She was one of them new rich ones that didn't dast carry home a pound of butter for fear of messing up her social well being, and this day I was delivering to her the whole of ten cents' worth of pepper. Honest.

While I was proceeding up her back walk, bowed under the burden of that pepper, I heard a funny kind of a sound over the stone wall that separated Mrs. Potter's back yard from the Sturgises' back yard. The Sturgis family is old- time customers of mine, that 1 knowed when Hank Sturgis was working for ninety dollars a month; and they keep right on acting toward me with them old ninety-dollar manners, which, say I, is the best kind. I'm Eli and Uncle Eli to the whole lot of them, sixty-horse-power automobiles and all.

I stopped and set my pepper down to rest me, and listened. That noise sounded kind of like a sick kitten miawing for its ma, or like a puppy that's been kicked, or like a young girl crying and trying hard not to let anybody hear it. Right off I knowed it was my business to find out, concerning the Sturgis family and me the way it did.

So I hauled a stylish bench across Mrs. Potter's grass, and put it ag'in' the wall, and got on top of it. I could look over into Sturgis's yard, which was all full of flowering bushes and roses and things. At first I couldn't see nothing; but in a minute, by following the sound, I picked out what looked like a big wad of cloth heaped up on the ground behind a syringa bush. I watched it a minute, and it moved. Then I knowed it wasn't any puppy or kitten that was caterwauling. It was a girl.

"Ps-sss-st!" says I, discreet and cautious.

A head with brown curly hair on it rose up out of the middle of that wad of cloth, and looked around. I'm doggoned if it wasn't Julie Sturgis.

"Say," I whispered as loud as was safe, "what's the idee, anyhow?"

"Oh, Uncle Eli!" she says, and ducked her head and began to make them sounds again.

"Jest a minute," says I, "till I stagger into Potter's with a load of pepper, and I'll be back."

HUSTLED back, and got on my bench again. It wasn't a high bench and it was a high wall. I was jest able to rest my chin on the top of it and look over, and there was Julie right where I left her. There must have been something sort of ridiculous about me resting my head on that wall like it was a punkin lantern, but Julie she didn't appear to notice it. No; she jest worked hard at her job of feeling miserable.

"Your ma spank you?" says I.

I figgered that would sort of stir her up, her being twenty year old and not subject to spankings. But it didn't, so I knowed something or other bad had really happened, which it hasn't any business doing to perty young girls with sweet ways about them.

"Julie," says I, "be I your Uncle Eli, or be I jest Old Man Popple?"

"You're my—Uncle Eli," she sniffled.

"All right, then," says I. "Uncle Elis is for use, not for ornament. What kin I do about it?"

"Nothing," says she, helpless.

"I'm awful intelligent," says I, "and handy at devisin' excuses."

"Excuses won't help me," says she.

"I can't fight much any more," says I, "but 1 got a delivery boy that's eager for a chance at a hunderd and fifty pounds."

She didn't even smile, so I started in to git worried.

"Well," says I, "doggone it all, what is the matter?"

"It's Vint," says she.

"The tall, thin feller," says I, with big feet, that I• see buyin' sody water for you frequent."

"He hasn't big feet," she says quick and defensive-like; so I knew he was the man.

"Um," says I. "We'll leave off discussin' the size of his shoes and go on to the next p'int. What's he guilty of?"

"I don't know," she says; "and that's the worst of it all."

"Oh," says I. "Was he found guilty by a reg'lar jury, or just by the old wimmin in the neighborhood?"

"By dad," she says, and commenced to sob all over again.

"Um," says I again, seeing right off that it was worse than ever I thought. By dad, eh? Well," says I, "your dad don't go off half cocked as a gen'ral custom. He's a perty patient and discernin' and reasonable man. He says this here young man was guilty of somethin'?"

"Yes—right before me. He came into the library, where Vint and I were—planning. He wasn't polite at all. Oh, Uncle Eli, I can remember every word he said, and how he looked, and how Vint looked! Dad says: 'Young man, when I told you you could have any daughter, I believed you were sound and square. I found out to-day that you were a slinking sneak. I guess I don't have to go into this any further.' And then ho just pointed to the door.

"Vint looked at dad with such an awful look in his eyes, and got up, and then turned to me and said, `Julie'—just like that: a sort of a groan.

"I—oh, I didn't know what to do. I just said, ' Dad!'

"It's—it's a crime, honey,' dad said, as gentle as could be. 'Poor little kid.' And then he turned with his fists all doubled, and looked at Vint like he wanted to kill him. `Grit!' he said. And Vint looked at me just once more—and went."

"And what," says I, "was it all about?"

"I—don't know. 1 just ran right up to my room, and mother tried to come in. but I wouldn't let her, and I haven't seen dad since, and—oh—I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"

"Huh," says I. "Do you b'lieve this here young man with the feet done whatever it was your dad says he done?"

"I don't believe it," she says, trembly like; "but dad was so—sure. It—frightens me."

"Darn it!" says I—"and right when I was mighty busy, too. But I s'pose I'll have to mix in. Why can't you girls have these here troubles when a man's got spare; time to monkey with them?"

She just sobbed sort of strangely.

"Where's this here young man with the feet?" says I. "And has he got any more name than Vint?"

"His name is Vincent Drew," she says, "and he—he worked for dad."

"Oh," says I. "And where does he live? 'Cause I hain't apt to see him around your dad's factory much—considerin'."

She told me, and I says to her that I'd seen sicker dogs git well, and not to held no funeral till there was somebody on hand to bury, and to go in and wash her face and eat some candy or something to uplift her spirits, while I looked into things. Then I got down off my bench and moseyed out to my wagon.

QUITE a lot of experience in the gro- eery business has taught me that if I want to find out something, the first and best way is to ask. The worst that can happen is to get told to mind your own business. So 1 drove to the factory where Sturgis makes automobile axles and money, and went in.

"Sturgis in?" says I to the boy at the desk.

"State your business, please," says he.

"Curiosity," says I, "and it's a bad attack. You tell him it's Eli Pepple that's sufferin' from it."

So in a minute out come Sturgis, and took me in.

"Well, Eli?" says he.

"Nice day," says I.

"Fine," says he. "Have a cigar." I done so, and lighted it.

"Speakin' of marriage," says I, "it's a perilous enterprise. Gosh, I'm glad I hain't got any girls. A feller 'u'd always be worryin' for fear they'd up and marry some scalawag that wasn't any good. And you can't never tell. Some of the most promisin'-lookin' boys gits to beat their wives or smokes cigarettes or goes to burlesque shows."

Sturgis he slammed his desk with his fist, and says as savage as a wolf:

"You bet your life, Eli! and I'm the man that knows it."

"Go on," says I.

"To my sorrow," says he., "I've had a young mail here with me for five years.

Page 6

My right-hand man he ws, too. I'd have sworn by him. So much so that, when Julie and he took a shine to each other, I was tickled to death and let them get engaged. Why, Eli, I'd have trusted Vint with anything."

"You trusted him some," says I, "when you give your daughter to him."

"Yes," says he; "and then—the darn sneak!"

"Who?" says I.

"This plant is too small," says he, "and I've been planning for a year to build a new and larger one. Picked out the land for it and have my plans all ready. Now, nobody knew where I was going to build but Vint. The worst of it is, that site I have in mind is not only the best, but about the only practicable place for me to build, and I could have bought it for about fifty thousand dollars. Vint knew all about it, but nobody else."

"Uh-hum," says I.

"Yesterday afternoon a man I don't like any came in here and sat down and exploded his bomb.

"'Hear you're going to move,' says he.

"I didn't answer him at all."

"'Needn't be so secret about it,' says he. 'I got it straight from inside, and I know where you're going to move, and I've got an option on that ground. I'll tell you what it cost me, too, just to make you a little happier. It was forty-nine thousand dollars. It's for sale. You can have it for just exactly seventy-five thousand. And here's the option, to prove I'm not talking through my hat. I've had a bone to pick with you ever since that deal in 1912 when you trimmed me, and here's where I break even.'

"I'll pay your price,' I told him, ' if you'll tell me where you got your information.'

"'Nix,' said he; 'because it may come handy to me again, and it'll worry you some thinking about it. But, it was a good source, wasn't it? And close to you. Not cheap, though. I paid exactly five thousand dollars for the tidings.'

"There was just one thing for me to do, and I did it. I chased that man out of the office. But I'll have to come to him in the end. That hurts, but it doesn't hurt so bad as waking up to the kind of fool I've been making of myself over Vint."

"Um," says I. "Sure it was him?" "Absolutely. Nobody but Vint and I knew."

"Bad," says I. "What's the man's name that got the option?"

"Gooding," says he.

"Not Richard P.?" says I.

"The same," says he.

"He used to sneak around and tell ma on me when I done somethin' I hadn't ought to," says I. "Good afternoon to you."

"But you came for something, didn't you?"

"I got it," says I, and went out with what you might call speed.

THERE was no denying it looked as if Julie Sturgis had got some damaged goods worked off on her in the shape of this young man; but I don't take nobody's word for such things, so I went to the place where he boarded and asked for him. The landlady she says he's in, but she don't know if she dast ask him to see me, because he acts like a dog that's been made faces at by a cat up a tree. But she did it, me following right on her heels.

"Gentleman to see you, Mr. Drew," says she.

"Tell him I don't want to see him," says a voice inside the door.

"You do, too," says I; "that is, if you got what some folks calls judgment." "Who are you?" says he.

"Eli Popple," says I.

"Who the devil is Eli Popple?" says he, "and what do you want?"

"I'm a grocer," says I, "and a good one, and I want to see you. I hain't never seen you yet, and I aim to see everything once; so jest poke your head out."

"Git out and quit bothering me, "says he, "or I'll come and chuck you downstairs."

"What'd I tell you?" says the landlady.

"Whatever it was," says I, "you was right about it. Wimmin always are. Good mornin', Mr. Drew. I'm goin' after reinforcements, and I'll bet a dozen bananas you'll .see me then."

"Git," says he. And I got.

I WENT right back to Sturgis's house, and there was Julie in the back yard, not improved to any extent.

"Your runabout workin'?" says I. "Yes," says she.

"Git it out," says I, "and we'll run a chance of callin' your father's wrath down on us."

So I made her drive me back to Vint's, because I was bound I'd get a look at that young feller. The landlady she let us in, and we went up to his door and knocked.

"What is it?" he snapped, cross-like.

I nudged Julie.

"Me," she says.

Well, sir, you could hear him make one jump across the room and grab open the door. He was making for Julie like a hungry bass for a minnow, when I sort of warded him off.

"Lemme git a look at you," says I, "before there's any demonstrations of affection," I says. And he stopped and scowled at me, and looked surprised, and asks what I got to do with it.

"Consid'able," says I. "There; stand where the light's good, so's I can bring my judgment to bear on this here extremity. "

"Do as he says, Vint," says Julie. And Vint he stands still, not comprehending what was going on, till I looked him over thorough. Then I turned my back.

"Go ahead," says I, "with what you got on your mind. My back's turned."

After a while I got tired of waiting, and so notified them.

"What's the idea?" says Vint.

"This is Uncle Eli," says Julie.

"And I wanted to see if you done what Sturgis claims you done. Havin' satisfied myself you didn't," says I, "I'm prepared to undertake the necessary trouble of clearin' matters up."

He shook his head.

"No use," says he. "Mr. Sturgis has proved it. I can't prove it wasn't so."

"To be sure," says I; "but then, you hain't never been in the grocery business. Somebody give the thing away, didn't they?"

"Yes," says he.

"Who do you figger it was?"

"Nobody knew it but Mr. Sturgis and myself."

"That you know of," says I.

"Nobody else knew it," says he.

"All right; but Richard P. Gooding found it out, and paid somebody five thousand dollars for the news," says I.

He shook his head.

"Now," says I, "I'm in this on Julie's account. It looks like she wants you, so she's got to have you. But she can't till you've done two things. First, you got to prove you didn't do it; and second, you got to git that option away from Gooding, and maybe gouge him a little to boot."

He laughed sort of hard-like and contemptuous.

"Don't forgit," says I, "that Julie and I are helpin' you, and that I got a grudge ag'in' Gooding these forty years back. Julie'Il furnish the brains, you'll furnish the hustlin' around, and I'll sort of set in the shade and put in my oar when it's needed. We'll start now."

"I knew you didn't do it, Vint," says Julie, not with reference to anything that had been said, that I could see.

"Huh!" says I. "You, Vint, go downtown and find out all you can about Gooding, and what deals he's in, and sichlike. And hustle it up. I'll scout around a little, too. Julie, you go home and make fudge or try on a hat or somethin' till needed. Now scatter!"

We put Julie in her automobile, and then I says to Vint:

"Got any money?"

"Five thousand dollars," says he.

"What!" says I. "That's a darned suspicious sum."

"And I just got it, too," says he, discouraged-like. "It came from the sale of some property dad left me up-State."

"You'll probably need it," says I, "and more; but I kin supply that, I calc'late. Now git, as you said to me a while back."

That night Vint come into my store to report; but it didn't look like he had discovered much that was useful. He had found out that Gooding was regarded generally as a pretty shifty customer, that was liked better in writing than orally, so to speak.

"He was out Grosse Point Way all day," says Vint, "looking over some property. I scouted out after him to see what he was up to, but I guess it didn't amount to much for us. Nothing there to take hold of."

"Where was it at?" says I.

"He walked all over a big tract back from the lake on the road that branches up past Richmond's big new house. He went all over that carefully, as if he were planning to lay out something; and then he scrambled over the wire fence that separated that piece from the land that runs down to the lake, and he and another man measured it out with a tape. Looked like they planned to run a broad road or boulevard up through it to the bigger piece."

"Um," says I. "Got a real estate friend that would have an atlas of the county?"

"Yes," says he.

"Go look it over, and locate them pieces, and see who owns 'em. Then find out at the County Building if Gooding has bought 'em."

HE was back before noon next day, hay' ing found out that the back piece was the old Wicker Farm, with a hundred and ten acres in it. The front piece, which stretched along the lake all across the front of the Wicker Farm,—a strip five hundred feet deep,—belonged to Newton Baxter, who had bought it a couple of years back, intending to build him a home on it, but hadn't ever got around to it. The records showed that Gooding had bought the Wicker Farm for one dollar and other valuable consideration, as the lawyers say.

I had him draw me a little map of it, and we sat on the counter and ate crackers and cheese and studied over it, to see if there was a chance to get at Gooding that way. I couldn't see none, and he couldn't.

"1 wish Julie was here," says Vint. "She's got more brains than both of us put together."

"Speak for yourself," says I; "I ain't in love with her. But I'll call her up," I says, "and most likely she'll come over, thus deceivin' a trustin' parent."

Which I did. Pretty soon Julie hove in view in her runabout, and we told her about them farms and showed her the map. She looked it over quite a spell, and then says, thoughtful-like:

"There isn't a place in the Point where people can buy reasonably small lots—say fifty or seventy-five feet of frontage. I know, because when Dolly Burrage was married she and her husband tried to find one. And I've heard other people speak about it. Now, if somebody would start a subdivision like that, lots would sell like hot cakes."

"Um," says I.

"But they'd have to have lake privileges. Maybe a yacht basin and a pier and things like that," she says.

"For the idle rich to up and disport themselves," says I.

"I'd like to live there myself," says she, looking at Vint.

"But," says Vint, "Gooding doesn't own the lake frontage, and couldn't build a basin or pier or anything else."

"You said he was measuring up Mr. Baxter's land, didn't you?"

"He sure was—carefully," says Vint. "Then," says Julie, "he intends to buy it."

She took a pencil and began to draw on our map. She drew in a basin and a pier on the lake, and made some big lots along the shore, facing the lake, and cut a big boulevard up the middle and sort of wound it through the Wicker Farm.

"That," she says, "is the way I'd fix it up if I had anything to do with it."

"But you'd have to own that lake frontage," says I.

Vint hauled off and whacked me on the back so's I almost bit off my tongue.

Page 7

"Uncle Eli," says he, "you've got the idea. That's the game. He's got to have the lake frontage, and, according to the records, he hasn't got it."

"But he wouldn't go into this," says I, "without knowin' he could get it."

That put a damper on him for a while; but pretty soon he grabbed his bat and says he was going downtown to see if he could find out anything about it.

"Poor Vint," says Julie, when he was gone. "He's a darling."

"He hain't got no job," says I, "and his references hain't first class."

"What do I care?" she says. "I guess I know him, don't I? And we'll make dad eat humble pie before we're through with this. You see."

"You're a lot cheerfuller than you was the other day," says I.

"Yes," says she—"it hit me so suddenly. But," she says, "a girl that don't love a man well enough to stick by him when he's in rough weather doesn't amount to much."

"But," says I to myself, "them kind that does is rare."

VINT didn't show up again until nearly noon next day, but he'd been busy. He found out, for one thing, that Gooding had paid a thousand dollars an acre for the Wicker Farm, half real cash and half mortgage. He found out that Newton Baxter was in California motoring, and he found out that Baxter was willing to sell his piece of property. It wasn't in any real estate man's hands for sale, but a friend of Vint's, who was a real estate man, had tried to buy it for a client, and Baxter said he'd sell if he got his price, which was a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Too much for Vint's friend's client. It looked a little mite high to me. Lots for nine hundred dollars was more in my line.

"Gooding hasn't bought," Vint says, "and he can't buy till Baxter gets home."

"When'll that be?" says I.

"I'm going to find out," says lie.

It wasn't more than an hour after when who should come into the store for a pound of sugar and a dozen eggs and a nickel's worth of dill pickles, but Ralph Baxter, a nephew of old Newton's.

"Howdy," says I. "When you expectin' your uncle back from criticizin' the State of Californy?"

"He'll be in Chicago to-morrow night," says he. "What are you interested in him for, Eli? A lot of folks seem to be, lately. R. P. Gooding's been bothering the life out of me for two weeks past to find out when the old gentleman was due. Seemed kind of excited when I told him this morning."

"Um," says I. "I was int'rested jest because the town seems sort of lonesome With sich an eminent citizen away," I says; and he went out, leaving me to deliver his bundles, thus cutting the profits to nothing.

That afternoon Julie came snooping in to see if there was any news of Vint, and Vint he came prowling in to see if Julie was anywheres about; and when they saw each other they clean neglected me to talk over important things, like did they still love each other, and how much, and how long would they keep on doing it. I hated to listen, so I sneaked back and sat on a salt barrel.

WELL, right in the middle of them billings and cooings, in came Sturgis, big as life and twice as natural. He took one look at Julie and Vint, and began to boiler like a bull with a busted leg. I seen right away that I'd better leave my salt barrel and step to the front.

"Howdy," says I to him, placid as if nothing was happening.

"You're in this thing, Eli Popple," says he. "After all the years we've been friends, you go and let my daughter and this young crook meet in your store—and encourage them. Well, it won't happen again. I'm going to fix him now so he won't meet anybody for a week or two."

He was that mad that physical exercise was the only way he could express himself real coherent. Right belligerent, he started for Vint.

"Hey," says I, stepping in between. "I don't want to see you git licked, Sturgis, and my bets is down on Vint. Also you'd better take your head under your arm and walk home with it, for it hain't working first class these days. Better to carry it and be led, than to wear it in the usual place and use it like you've been lately. There hain't goin' to be no warfare nor strife in this store," I says, "and the first feller that tries it gits a full quart of molasses poured over his head."

I said it like I meant it, and I guess the idee of sich a terrible vengeance kind of held Sturgis back. It would of held me.

"You come with me," says he to Julie. "And as for you," he says, turning to Vint—But there he left it, and stamped out, not able to think up anything disagreeable enough to warrant saying it.

When they was gone, I turned to Vint and grinned and says:

"You're goin' to Chicago as quick as you kin git there. Baxter's goin' to be there to-morrow sometime, and he always stops to the Blackstone. Take all the money you got, and if you need more wire me."

He wanted to stop and discuss the hard-heartedness and onreasonableness of fathers; but I wouldn't listen to it, and sicked him off; and the following narrative, so to speak, in my own words and phrases, is what happened to him.

IT seems like Vint got on the Chicago sleeper, and who does he see in the smoking-room but Gooding. Right there he knew he had a job cut out for him, because Gooding probably had the ready money to plunk down for Baxter's land, while Vint didn't have anything but five thousand dollars and an argument. Also it would be a race to see who got to Baxter first. Vint had the advantage, because he knew there was a race, and Gooding didn't.

When they got to Chicago, Vint hustled right up to the Blackstone. Baxter hadn't got there yet, so he just camped, and every ten minutes he raced up and looked

"Say," says the hotel clerk, "what's wrong with this man Baxter, that everybody's so impatient for him to come? Another fellow's been camping on this register since morning."

"Has, eh?" snapped Gooding. "Well, I'm the man that gets to see him first. See? And here's a five-spot to keep you from forgetting it. I know him by sight, but I've got to eat and I've got to drink now and then. Get the idea?"

"I do," says the clerk, poking the bill into his pocket.

WELL, Vint kept his eye on the desk and on the door, and in a couple of. hours in came an old fellow with a white beard that looked like he could own real estate if he wanted to. Gooding was having one of his drinks. So Vint took a chance. Before the old gentleman could get to the desk, Vint pounced on him.

"Beg pardon," says he, "but is this Mr. Baxter?" he says.

"It is," says Baxter; "and what of it?"

And then—right at this minute—Gooding came in. He saw Baxter, and made for him like a hawk for a chicken.

"Mr. Baxter," says he, butting right in, "I want to have a minute's talk with you about important business."

Vint -turned quick and says:

"I'm- talking to Mr. Baxter just now, and my temper gets bad when I'm interrupted."

And he took hold of the surprised old gentleman's arm and began steering him to the elevator. Gooding lie made a grab for the other arm, and missed; and before he knew it Newton Baxter was pushed inside that car. Gooding tried to ram in, but Vint gave him a real severe shove, so that he went back on his heels and almost onto the seat of his pants, and waved a dollar bill in the elevator-man's face and says, "Up. Quick!"

The elevator-man grabbed the dollar and shut the door, and up they went, Newton Baxter panting for breath with the suddenness of it all.

"What's this? What's the meaning of this?" says he.

"It means," says Vint, "that I'm after a reputation I dropped, and a girl I've pretty nearly lost, and that anybody who interferes with the machinery gets his finger pinched. I'm sorry to be so abrupt with you, because I want you to think pretty well of me; but I couldn't waste time with that gentleman hanging around. Fifth floor, please," says he.

"But—hold on," says Baxter.

"I won't take but a few minutes of your time, and it means all the whole of my life is worth, Mr. Baxter," says Vint. "From your point of view this will be just business, but from mine it's life or death, or, what's more, a chance to prove I'm fit for the girl to marry or not."

"H'm," says Baxter, beginning to get interested.

"This is my room," says Vint, and in they went.

"Now," says Baxter.

"I want to buy that piece of Grosse Point land of yours. What's your price?"

"Steady," says Baxter. "What's this about girl, and life or death, and reputation, and such-like? Sounds exciting, and I haven't had any excitement in years."

"I'll tell you the whole thing as. soon as we get this deal closed."

"You're some rapid, son," says Baxter. "What deal?"

"For your Grosse Point land," says Vint.

"Story first, deal afterward," says Baxter. "No story, no deal. I haven't been interested in anything specially since the Spanish War. Somehow, you interest me. It looks as if you were a sort of tempestuous young man—it surely does."

"Who wouldn't be?" says Vint, and jumped right into the middle of his story, when a pounding came on the door.

"Go away!" Vint yelled. "I'm busy."

"It's the house detective," says a voice. "Let me in!"

"Nothing doing," says Vint; and Baxter looked some younger, and anxious to see what would happen.

"I'll bust in the door," says the detective. "What's going on in there? You can't start nothin' in this hotel."

Vint just rolled a dresser in front of the door, and calls for the detective to bust ahead; and Baxter grinned like a kid.

"Go on with your story," says he— which Vint did, expecting to hear the detective batter in the door, but hearing nothing of the kind—only voices outside talking excited and wondering what to do about it.

VINT made his story short and pointed, but kept in all the necessary parts so as not to disappoint Baxter, and when he was done lie says:

"Now, how much for that land?" "Hundred and twenty-five thousand— to you."

"Take it," says Vint. "Thirty-day option. Here's five thousand dollars." Baxter he wagged his head.

"This is swift," says he, "but attractive. I'll go you, though I've a preference for ready cash."

"You'll get that—maybe to-day," says Vint. "Will you write out an option while I haul away the dresser and get the detective to witness it?"

Baxter chuckled, and sat down to write.

Vint he moved the dresser and threw open the door. There stood the detective and Gooding and another man that turned out to be the manager of the hotel, and they all came rushing in. When they saw old man Baxter peaceful and quiet, writing at the desk, they sort of turned green, like a banana that hain't ripe, and gawped.

Baxter he turned around and nodded.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," says he, like he's surprised to see them. "Would

Continued on page 20

THE MELTING POT

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

OUR FORTS WILL NOT PROTECT US

TO patrol the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts will require 44 aeroplanes, costing with their equipment $400,000. Not counting privately owned craft, Germany now has 600 aeroplanes, Russia 800, and France 1200. Aeroplanes are invaluable for scouting work, but their attacking power is equally formidable. In Europe, when it is thought that an aerial scout has spied out an emplacement, the battery is moved two or three hundred yards to one side. Germany has several emplacements for each battery.

Our coast forts were built to protect the towns and cities that lie behind them from bombardment. They were planned without any consideration of submarine attacks. We shall have to learn from Europe how to meet this modern danger. England does not disclose in detail how she protects her transports and her fleet; but we know that she carries millions of men from the Channel to the Dardanelles, that her great fleet lies unhurt in its harbors when it is not exploring the North Sea. They use nets, we are told—great nets of heavy wire fencing, with large meshes, stretched across her ports. These nets are kept submerged by wooden blocks and anchors. When a submarine strikes them, its fins and propellers are entangled in the wire, and it is forced to rise to the surface. Then an electrical connection flashes a signal to the shore batteries to open fire, at the same time giving the position where the submarine has stuck.

HE INCREASED HIS EFFICIENCY 500 PER CENT

"I KNOW a man who has increased about 500 per cent. his daily output of work, his optimism and will power, his health reserve and his financial resourcefulness," says E. E. Purinton in Efficient Living (McBride).

First. He analyzed himself. He discovered what he most wanted to do in life. He was not dismayed by the fact that his desires looked to be as unattainable as the moon. He said nothing, and took the next step.

Second. By consulting authorities on athletics, higher metaphysics, vocational training, and experimental psychology, he learned that his ambitions lay within reach of his natural gifts.

Third. He read the lives of the world's great men who had been leaders in his chosen field. He formed the acquaintance of living leaders through mutual friends. He saw that he was out of gear in certain ways—and he proceeded to repair his faulty machinery of body, brain, equipment, and environment.

Fourth. He resigned his position in a dignified profession, and got a menial, trivial job that paid him next to nothing. But it was in line with his goal: the profession was not.

Fifth. He made the most of his job. The men who look for a job are so many because the men who look into a job are so few. He learned to save two hours and day, which he spent in talking with men higher up, in reading trade books and magazines, in experimenting on ways to improves his work, and in planning his line of advance.

Sixth. He observed that he was handicapped by the presence of chronic ailments and disorders, which resulted in fatigue, headache, irritability, auto-intoxication, and other hindrances to good work. He studied hygiene, discovered that no such trouble is incurable, stopped the use of drugs, changed his methods of eating, began to take regular exercise, and increased his daily output of energy at least 200 per cent.

Seventh. He changed his mind. He had been naturally a pessimist and a grumbler, harsh, cruel, hasty, blunt, surrounding himself with enemies and worries. Gaining sense enough to see what a fool he had been, he applied himself to the systematic cultivation of optimism, faith, tact, patience, tolerance, courtesy, and other mental factors in efficiency. Having grown friendly-minded, he attracted friends. And his work prospered accordingly.

FORESTRY—A PROFESSION FOR RED-BLOODED MEN

TO the man not fully adapted for it,forestry must be punishment pure and simple," quotes Frederick F. Moon in The Book of Forestry (Appletons). "Many young men have taken up forestry thinking it a profession suited to them because they were undeveloped or had weak lungs. Therein they made a great mistake; for a forester's life is too hard for a semi-invalid. A sound body is absolutely indispensable."

Next to a sound body, definite scientific training is the most important requisite. "At present there are two distinct lines of

Once given his training, the forester steps into a career that offers plenty of field for the exercise of all his executive ability. He must know the law of mining claims and homestead settlement. He is in charge of 125,000 acres of government property—as against the average of 200 acres under the charge of the German forester; and must constantly settle big questions on his own initiative, his nearest colleague being miles away.

For all of which the forester receives a salary which at the beginning is only $1100 a year. He need never expect to get rich: he must live much of his time in the open, far away from associates. It is no job for a weakling, but to strong, red-blooded men, in spite of the hardships and the comparatively small pay, it has a lure such as no other life provides.

TO BE READ ON MONDAY MORNING

THE first step for the good laundress who sorts her clothes the night before wash-day is to search for stained garments, to be laid aside so that the fruit, grass, or ink stain can be removed with boiling water, naphtha, soap, or fresh I milk. The next step is to soak the remaining clothes in soapy water to loosen the dirt. The third step, next morning, is to wring out the clothes, wash the tubs, and fill them nearly full of hot water and the boiler half full of cold water and dissolved soap. Then, says Mabel Hyde Kittredge in The Home and Its Management (Century Company), she is ready for real work.

The cleanest clothes, like the cleanest dishes, should be washed first. These are table and bed linen.

"Put them in one tub of water; use soap freely. As each piece is washed, wring it with the hands and drop it in the next tub of water. When all this first lot are in the second tub, wash them again with soap and drop in the boiler of cold water. When the boiler is full, put it over a hot fire and press the clothes down with the stick.

"While the first tubful of clothes is scalding in the boiler, rub out the second tubful of underclothes, which are the next cleanest, in the same manner. When the second lot is ready for the boiler, put the first, which should have finished boiling, in a tub of clear water.

"While the second lot is in the boiler, wash the third lot, which will be the more soiled clothes and towels. Take the second lot from the boiling water and put them in the tub with the first clothes, then put the third washing in the boiler.

"It is now time to rinse the first and second clothes. Wash out the tubs, fill them with clear cold water, rinse and wring from one tub into the other, then wring out into bluing water. The last boiler of clothes should be rinsed in the same way and blued. As the clothes are wrung out from the bluing water, separate those that require starching."

For bluing, use clean cold water, and have the bluing ball tied in a cloth to prevent specks on the clothes. Never allow the clothes to stand in bluing water, nor to rest on the bottom of the tub, or they will become streaked.

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.

Page 9

WHY YOU HAVE TO MAINTAIN A BANK BALANCE

WHY should a bank require you to maintain a balance of $100 or $200 in your checking account? Why shouldn't you be allowed to put your money in, and draw your account down to the last dollar? The answer is in the following table compiled by System, which shows what becomes of a dollar of interest earned by the bank on your money:

This leaves a net profit to the bank of forty-three cents.

If you maintain a steady balance of one hundred dollars all through the year, never checking below that amount, the bank earns enough to cover the cost of conducting your financial business, plus about one dollar and seven cents net profit.

The slightest irregularity in your financial habits may destroy the bank's profit.

If you draw your account down below the reasonable personal reserve of one hundred dollars, the bank loses its profit and you become a source of expense in the matter of costs.

THE INDEPENDENT BABY

THE child who is taught to turn on a water faucet for himself before he is two years old will not be turning to his father for a check when he is twenty-one. Most of his later problems could be solved if he were taught as a baby to stand on his own feet, says Dorothy Canfield Fisher in Self-Reliance (Bobbs-Merrill Company). Yet at fourteen or fifteen months, when his instinct for helping himself begins to be as strong as his instinct for getting his own way, he has to fight just as hard for one as for the other. "If you will spend one day in watching a healthy child of eighteen months," says the author, "you will come to the conclusion that he is straining every nerve to learn how to do for himself; and his mother is straining every nerve to prevent him."

A year-old baby may not be able to speak intelligible English, but lie can train his eyes and muscles in being exact. Give him an oil-cloth apron, put his high chair before the sink or a wash-bowl, and let him pour water from one cup to another. Then six months later you will not have to hold water to his lips as if he were a bed-ridden invalid. He can get his own d rink without spilling it on the front of his dress.

If you find him trying to shut a bureau drawer, don't say, "Bad drawer. Baby pinch fingers. Mother do it for him."

"The mother painstakingly repeats the word the child is trying to pronounce," writes Mrs. Fisher. "She never dreams of saying, Kitty is too hard a word for baby to say. Let mama say it for him.' But she says, 'Does baby want to get into papa's chair? Mama lift him in.' And then mama must lift him out, of course. It is quite a bother to show him over and over how to climb up on his stool, to watch over the first experiments, to safeguard the first upsets. But if she is looking out for the best interest of the small person, rather than for a good excuse to give him a hug, she will patiently insist upon the use of the stool whenever it is possible."

The outward result of such teaching' would be his mastery of one more piece of household machinery; the inward result would be- the strengthening of his self-confidence.

"Any human being who him once tasted the pleasure of competent activity, will never lack the Instinct to do for 'himself. There, is no surer beginning for the habit of self-help thin the consistent training of the capacity for it. What people know how to do well, they like to do."

BUILDING A RAILROAD FOR ABRAHAM LINCOLN

THE railway company didn't serve four o'clock tea in the chair car to the passengers on its first transcontinental trains fifty years ago. But it did serve more robust enjoyments in the shape of an occasional grizzly bear or an equally grizzly Indian. The lightning express of those days was so slow that the passengers could even shoot buffaloes from the windows.

It was Abraham Lincoln who ordered the construction of a railroad to the Pacific coast in 1863. The Union Pacific was organized to start from Omaha. The Central (now the Southern) Pacific was to start from Sacramento. Its president was Leland Stanford, who founded the university of his name in memory of his son. Each line was to build as far as it could to meet the other.

Omaha, then a small frontier town, had no shops, no tools. The engine installed there had to he hauled 175 miles by mules. Two miles of track were laid each day, which was considered rapid work then. The workmen lived in trains, which were pushed ahead as fast as the road advanced. Rifles were the most important item in their kit. For Indians hovered about like vultures. The worst massacre was one in which a scouting telegrapher, who had been shot, stabbed, and scalped, lived to see his train wrecked and burned and his comrades killed, and could not warn them.

As the "iron trail" progressed the official terminus moved on. In some cases it left behind it a permanent town like Cheyenne. In others it left nothing but empty bottles and abandoned dugouts.

When Platte City, in the wilds of Nebraska, was reached, the company took 150 guests over the road. There were bands, photographers, senators, even an earl. There were speeches at every town, and hunting parties on the plains. One man wrote to his home paper: "It is marvelous to drive on at twenty miles an hour; but the perfection with which the work is done makes it safe."

All this time the Central Pacific was working its way, over the Sierra Nevadas. It met the Union Pacific in Utah. On May 10, 1869, the two engines from the east and from the west moved close to each other. The two superintendents placed under, the rails the last ties It was of California laurel, beautifully polished and silver-mounted.

When the golden spike was driven that completed the first railroad to the Pacific coast, "Hats off" was clicked over the wires to waiting crowds all over the country. In New York a salute of one hundred gulls announced the event. Chicago had a procession four miles long. San Francisco celebrated for days.

SEE YOUR DENTIST TWICE A YEAR

WHAT causes more evil than alcohol?" they asked that wise and conservative physician, Sir William Osier. "Decayed teeth," he answered without hesitation.

"Bad teeth are an unnecessary evil, a sin of omission," writes Mary L. Read, of the New York School of Mothercraft, in the Chicago Examiner. "And most of the damage is done in the first six years. Prevention begins before birth."

The teeth formed in the jaws of the unborn child need lime; and this must come from the daily food of the mother. Therefore her diet should include milk, whole wheat, cereals, eggs, and many fruits and vegetables. Meat, white flour,barley flour, and soda crackers are almost without lime.

"A clean tooth never decays." Therefore, mothers, be alert! After the first year, when the child begins to eat more solid food, brush his teeth and gums every day with a little soft brush, which must be sterilized at least once a week by a ten minutes' boiling. A dime's worth 'of precipitated chalk of fine quality is as good as any expensive powder under a patent name.

If regular visits to the dentist are begun at the age of one and continued every six months, a child has every- chance of sound health—not to mention a dazzling white smile.

WESTERN FARMERS, PLANT COTTONWOOD TREES !

WHAT one tree has done, other trees can do," said Mr. A. N. Abbott, when he found one giant cottonwood living in the sand beds of the Mississippi River, where everything else had died. And he turned a desert into a shady forest. Mr. Abbott is president of the Illinois Farmers' Institute, and director of one of the State demonstration farms. His own farm, near Morrison, Illinois, lies a few miles east of the Mississippi. The only living thing on the stretch of sand was a solitary cottonwood of gigantic size. How did it get there? Mr. Abbott didn't know. But he did know that if one tree, and such a fine tree at that, could grow there, others could.

He began to experiment. He found that cottonwood and black locust—which, through the bacteria in their roots, can store away the nitrogen in the soil—were best adapted to sandy ground. So the first year he planted 5000 yearling trees. In a little more than a year they were three or four feet high, and grass was creeping in between. In another year they had checked the blowing of sand in their vicinity. This protected the near-by crops and increased the value of neighboring fields. So Mr. Abbott kept on planting until he had about 70,000 trees on seventy acres of land.

The trees not only reclaimed worthless ground and protected fertile soil, but reduced the temperature. For, while in the unplanted "blow holes" of sand during the summer the temperature reaches 150 degrees, in the timbered sections it never goes over 100 degrees.

Back With Clara Belle

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Arthur W. Brown

AND me kiddin' myself I was fairly well parlor-broke. It seems not. You'd 'most think, though, I'd had enough front-room trainin' to stand me through in a place like Harbor Hills. I had a wild idea, too, that when we moved into the country we'd tagged the reg'lar social stuff good-by.

That was a poor hunch. I'm just discoverin' that there's more tea fights and dinner dances and such goin's on out here in the commuter zone than in any five blocks of Fifth Avenue you can name. And it seems that anywhere within ten miles of this Piping Rock Club brings you into the most active sector. So here we are, right in the thick of things.

At that, I expect it might nave been quite some time before we was bothered any if it hadn't been for our bein' sort of backed by the Robert Ellinses. As their friends we're counted in right off the reel. I've been joshed into lettin' my name.go on the waitin' list at the to Club; I'm allowed to subscribe to this and that; some of the neighbors have begun payin' first calls on Vee.

So I might have had sense enough to watch my step. Yet, here the other afternoon, when I makes an early getaway from the Corrugated and hops off the 5:17, I dashes across the back lots and comes into our place by the rear instead of the front drive." You see., I'd been watchin' a row of string-beans we had comin' along, and I wanted to :spring the first ones on Vee. Sure enough, I finds three or four pods 'most big enough to eat; so I picks 'em and goes breezin' into the house, wavin' -'em gleeful.

"Oh, Vee!" I sings out, openin' the terrace door. "Come have a.look."

And, as she don't appear on the jump, I keeps on into the livin'-room and calls:

"Hey! What do you know about these? Beans! Perfectly good—"

Well, that's as far as I gets, for there's Vee, sittin' behind the silver tea-urn, all dolled up; and Leon, in his black coat, holdin' a plate of dinky little cakes; and a couple of strange ladies starin' at me button-eyed. I'd crashed right into the midst of tea and callers.

Do I pull some easy johndrew lines and exit graceful? Not me. My feet was glued to the rug.

"Beans!" says I, grinnin' simple and danglin' the specimens. "Perfectly good string—"

THEN I catches the eye of this stiff- necked dame with the straight nose and the gun-metal hair. No, both eyes, it was; and a cold, suspicious, stabby look is what they shoots my way. No wonder I chokes off the feeble-minded remarks and turns sort of panicky to Vee, half ex- pectin' to find her blushin' painful or signalin' me to clear out. Nothing like that from Vee, though.

"Not ours, Torchy?" says she, slidin' out from behind the tea-table and rushin' over. "Not our very own?"

"Uh-huh!" says I. "Just picked 'em."

At which the other caller joins in unexpected.

"From your own garden?" says she. "How interesting! Oh, do show them to me."

"Why, sure," says I. "Guess we're doin' our bit, ain't we?"

She's a wide, dumpy-built old girl, and dressed sort of freaky. Also her line of talk is a kind of purry, throaty gush that's almost too soothin' to be true. But anybody who makes only half a bluff at being interested in our garden wins us. And not until she's inspected our first string-beans through her gold lorgnette, and remarked twice more how wonderful it was for us to raise anything like that, does it occur to Vee to introduce me proper to both ladies.

The tall, stiff-necked dame turns out to be Mrs. Pemberton Foote. Honest! Could you blame her for bein' jarred when I come bouncin' in with garden truck?

Think of it! Why, she's one of the super-tax brigade and moves among the smartest of the smart-setters. And Pemmy, he's on the polo team, you know.

Oh, reg'lar people, the Pembroke Footes are. And the very fact that Mrs. Foote is here callin' on Vee ought to have me thrilled to the bone.

Yet all I got sense enough to do is wave half-grown string-beans at her, and then sit by gawpy, balancin' a cup of tea on my knee, and watch her apply the refrigeratin' 'process to the dumpy old girl whose name I didn't quite catch. Say, but she does it thorough and artistic. Only two or three times did the dumpy One try to kick in on the chat, and when she does, Mrs. Pemmy rolls them glittery eyes towards her slow, givin' her the up- and-down like she was some kind of fat worm that had-strayed in from the cucumber bed.

CAN'T these women throw the harpoon into each other ruthless, though? Why; You could see that old girl fairly squirm when she got one of them assault-and-battery glances. Her under lip would quiver a bit, she'd wink hard three, or four times, and then she'd sort of collapse, smotherin' a sigh and not finishin' what she'd started out to say. She did want to be so folksy, too.

Course, she is an odd-lookin' party, with that bucket-shaped lid decorated with pale green satin fruit, and the piles of thick blondine hair that was turnin' gray, and her foolish big eyes with the puffy rolls underneath and the crows'-feet in the corners. And of course anybody with ankles suggestin' piano legs really shouldn't go in for high-tide skirts and white silk stcckin's with black butterflies worked on 'em. Should they?

Still, she'd raved over our string-beans, so when she makes a last fluttery try at jimmyin' her way into the conversation, and Mrs. Foote squelches her prompt again, and she gives up for good, it's me jumpin' snappy to tow her out and tuck her in the limousine. Havin' made my escape, I stays outside until after Mrs. Pemmy has gone too, which don't happen for near half an hour later. But when I hears the front door shut on her, I slides in at the back.

"Zowie!" says I. "You must have made more of a hit with our swell neigh- her than I did, Vee."

Vee smiles quizzin' and shrugs her shoulders.

"I'm not so sure," says she. "I almost feel as though we had been visited by the Probation Officer, or some one like that."

"How do you mean?" says I.

"Of course," she goes on, "Mrs. Foote did not actually say that we were on trial socially, but she hinted as much. And she made it quite plain that unless we got started in the right set our case would be utterly hopeless."

"Just think of that!" says I. "Real sweet of her, eh? Sort of inspector general, is she? You should have asked her to show her badge, though."

"Oh, there's no doubt that she speaks with authority," says Vee. "She wasn't snippy about it, either. And chiefly she was trying to warn me against Mrs. Ben Tupper."

"The old girl with the pelican chin and the rovin' eyes?" I asks. "What's the matter with her besides her looks?"

Well, accordin' to Mrs. Pemmy Foote, there was a lot. She had a past, for one thing. She was a pushing, presumptuous person, for another. And, besides, this Benjamin Tupper party—the male of the species—was wholly impossible.

"You know who he is," adds Vee. "The tablet man."

"What!" says I. "` Tupper's Tablets for Indigestion—on Everybody's Tongue.' Him?"

Vee nods. "And they live in that barny stucco house just as you turn off Sagamore Boulevard—the one with the hideous red-tiled roof and the concrete lions in front."

"Goodness Agnes!" says I. "Folks have been indicted for less than that. I've seen Tupper, too; some one pointed him out goin' in on the express only the other mornin'. Looks like a returned Nihilist who'd been nominated in one of the back wards of Petrograd to run for the Duma on a free-vodka platform. He's got wiry whiskers that he must trim with a pair of tin shears, tufts in his ears, and the general build of a performin' chimpanzee. Oh, he's a rare one, Tupper."

"Then," says Vee, sort of draggy, "I—I suppose Mrs. Foote is right. It's too bad, for that Mrs. Tupper did seem such a friendly old soul. And I shall feel so snobbish if I don't return her call."

"Huh!" says. I. "I don't see why Mrs. Pemmy couldn't let you find out about her for yourself. Even if the old girl .don't belong, what's the use bein' so rough with her?"

"Do you know, Torchy," says Vee, "I felt just that way about it when Mrs. Foote was snubbing her. And yet—well, I wish I knew just what to do."

"Clean out of my line," says I.

I expect it was the roses that set me muffin' the case over again. They was sent over for Vee a couple of days later— half a dozen great busters, like young cabbages, with stems a yard long. They come with the compliments of Mrs. Ben Tupper.

"I simply couldn't send them back," says Vee; "and yet—"

"I get you," says I. "But don't worry. Let the thing ride a while. I got an idea."

It wasn't anything staggerin'. It had just struck me that if Vee had to hand out any social smears she ought to do it on her own dope, and not accordin' to Mrs. Pemmy Foote's say-so. Which is why I begins pumpin' information out of anybody that came handy. Goin' into town next mornin', I tackled three or four on the 8:03 in an offhand way.

Oh, yes, the Ben Tuppers! Business of hunchin' the shoulders. No, they didn't belong to the Country Club, nor the Hunt Association, nor figure on the Library or Hospital boards, or anything else. In fact, they don't mingle much. Hadn't made the grade. Barred? We-e-ell, in a way, perhaps. Why? Oh, there was Mrs. Ben. Wasn't she enough ? An ex-actress with two or three hubbys in the discard! Could she expect people to swallow that?

Only one gent, though, had anything definite to offer. He's a middle-aged sport that _seems to make a specialty of wearin' checked suits and yellow gloves. He chuckles when I mentions Mrs. Tupper.

"Grand old girl, Clara says he.

"Eh?" says I. "Shoot the rest."

"Couldn't think of it, son," says he. "You're too young. But in my day Clara Belle Kinney was some queen."

And that's all- I can get out of him except more chuckles. I files away the name, though; and that afternoon,

"Mr. Ellins," says I, "did you ever know of a Clara Belle Kinney?"

"Wha-a-at?" he gasps, almost swallowin' his cigar. "Listen to that, Mason. Here's a young innocent asking if we ever knew Clara Belle Kinney. Did we?"

And old K. W. Mason, what does he do but throw back his shiny dome, open his mouth, and roar out:

After which them two old cut-ups wink at each other rakish and slap their knees. All of which ain't so illuminatin'. But they keep on, mentionin' Koster and Bial's and the Cork Room, until I can patch together quite a sketch of Mrs. Tupper's early career.

SEEMS she'd made her first hit in this old-time concert-hall when she was a sweet young thing in her teens. One of her naughty stunts was kickin' her slipper into an upper box, and gettin' it tossed back with a mash note in it, or maybe a twenty-dollar bill. Then she'd graduated into comic opera.

"Was there ever a Katishaw like her?" demands Old Hickory of K. W., who responds by hummin' husky:

And, while they don't go into details, I gathered that they'd been Clara Belle fans—had sent her orchids on openin' nights, and maybe had set up wine suppers for her and her friends. They knew

Continued on page 15

PIGS IS PIGS

IN AND OUT OF THE MOVIES

Page 13

WHAT HOME RUNNERS RUN HOME TO

Back With Clara Belle

Continued from page 10

about a couple of her matrimonial splurges. One was with her manager, of course; the next was a young broker whose fam'ly got him to break it off. After that they'd lost track of her.

"It seems to me," says Old Hickory, "that I heard she had married some one in Buffalo, or Rochester, and had quit the stage. A patent medicine chap, I think he was, who'd made a lot of money out of something or other. I wonder what has become of her?"

That was my cue, all right, but I passes it up. I wasn't talkin' just then; 1 was listenin'.

"Ah-h-h!" goes on Mr. Mason, foldin' his hands over his forward sponson and rollin' his eyes sentimental. "Dear Clara Belle! I say, Ellins, wouldn't you like to hear her sing that MacFadden song once more?"

"I'd give fifty dollars," says Old Hickory.

"I'd make it a hundred if she'd follow it with '0 Promise Me,'" says K. W. "What was her record—six hundred nights on Broadway, wasn't it?"

SAY, they went on reminiscin' so long, L it's a wonder the monthly meetin' ever got started at all. I might have forgot them hot-air bids of theirs, too, if it hadn't been for something Vee announces that night across the dinner-table.

Seems that Mrs. Robert Ellins had been rung into managin' one of these war benefit stunts, and she's decided to use their new east terrace for an outdoor stage and the big drawin'-room it opens off from as an auditorium. You know, Mrs. Robert used to give violin recitals and do concert work herself, so she ain't satisfied with amateur talent. Besides, she knows so many professional people.

"And who do you think she is to have on the program?" demands Vee. "Farrar!"

"Aw, come!" says I.

"And perhaps Mischa Elman," adds Vee. "Isn't that thrilling?"

I admits that it is.

"But say," I goes on, "with them big names on the bill, what does she expect to tax people for the best seats?"

Vee says how they'd figured they might ask. ten dollars for a few choice chairs.

"Huh!" says I. "That won't get you far. Why don't you soak 'em proper?"

"But how?" asks Vee.

"You put in a bald-headed row," says I, "and I'll find you a party who'll fill it at a hundred a throw."

Vee stares at me like she thought I'd been touched with the heat, and wants to know who.

"Clara Belle Kinney," says I.

"Why, I never heard of any such per-son," says she.

"Oh, yes, you have," says I. "Alias Mrs. Ben Tupper."

Course, I had some job convincin' her I wasn't joshin'; and even after I'd sketched out the whole story, and showed her that Clara Belle's past wasn't anything to really shudder over, Vee is still doubtful.

"But can she sing now?" she asks.

"What's the odds," says I, "if a lot of them old-timers are willin' to pay to hear her try?"

Vee shakes her head and suggests that we go up and talk it over with Mr. and Mrs. Robert. Which we does.

"But if she has been off the stage for twenty years," suggests Mrs. Robert, "perhaps she wouldn't attempt it."

"I'll bet she would for Vee," says I. "Anyway, she wouldn't feel sore at being asked. And if you could sting a bunch of twenty or thirty fora hundred apiece—"

"Just fancy!" says Mrs. Robert, draw in' in a long breath (loin' rapid-fire mental arithmetic. "Verona, let's drive right over and see her at once."

They're some hustlers, that pair. All I has to do is map out the scheme, and they goes after it with a rush.

And say, I want to tell you that was a perfectly good charity concert, judged by the box-office receipts or any way you want to size it up. Bein' the official press-agent, who's got a better right to admit it?

True, Elman didn't show up, but his alibi was sound. And not until the last minute was we sure whether the fair Geraldine would get there or not. But my contribution to the head-liners was there from the first tap of the bell.

Vee says she actually wept on her shoulder when the proposition was sprung on her. Seems she'd been livin' in Harbor Hills for nearly three years without havin' been let in on a thing—with no-body callin' on her, or even noddin' as she drove by. Most of her neighbors was a lot younger, folks who barely remembered that there had been such a party as Clara Belle Kinney, and who couldn't have told whether she'd been a singer or a bareback rider. They only knew- her as a dumpy old girl who dressed freakish and whose drugged hair was turnin' gray.

"Of course," she says, sort of timid and trembly, "I have kept up my singing as well as I could. Mr. Tupper likes to have me. But I know my voice isn't what it was once. It's dear of you to ask me, though, and—and I'll do my best."

I DON'T take any credit for fillin' that double row of wicker chairs we put down front and had the nerve to ask that hold-up price for. When the word was passed around that Clara Belle Kinney was to be among the performers, they almost mobbed me for tickets. Why, I collected from two thirds of the Corrugated directors without turnin' a hand, and for two days there about all I (lid was answer 'phone calls from Broad Street and the clubs—brokers, bank presidents, and so on, who wanted to know if there was any left.

A fine bunch of silver-tops they was, too, when Ave got 'em all lined up. You wouldn't have suspected it of some of them dignified old scouts, either. Back of 'em, fillin' every corner of the long room and spillin' out into the big hall, was the top crust of our local smart set, come to hear Farrar at close range.

Yep, Geraldine made quite a hit. Nothing strange about that. And that piece from "Madame Butterfly" she gave just brought 'em right up on their toes. But say, you should hear what breaks loose when it's announced that the third number will be an old favorite revival by Clara Belle Kinney. That's all the name we gave. What if most of the audience was simply starin' puzzled and stretchin' their necks to see who was comin'? Them old boys down front seemed to know what they was howlin' about.

Yes, Clara Belle does show up a bit husky in evenin' dress. Talk about elbow dimples! And I was wishin' she'd forgot to do her hair that antique way, all piled up on her head, with a few coy ringlets over one ear. But she'd land- seaped her facial scenery artistic, and she sure does know how to roll them big eyes of hers.

I didn't much enjoy listenin' through them first few bars, though. There wasn't merely a crack here and there. Her voice went to a complete smash at times, besides bein' weak and wabbly. It's like listenin' to the ghost of a voice. I heard a few titters from the hack rows.

But them old boys don't seem to mind. It was a voice comin' to them from 'way back in the '90's. And when she struggles through the first verse of "0 Promise Me," and pauses to get her second wind, maybe they don't give her a hand. That seemed to pep her up a lot. She gets a better grip on the high notes, the tremolo effect wears off, and she goes to it like a winner. Begins to get the crowd with her, too. Why, say, even Farrar stands up and leads in the call for an encore. She ain't alone.

"MacFadden! MacFadden!" K. W. Mason is shoutin'.

So in a minute more Clara Belle, her eyes shinin', has swung into that raggy old tune, and when she gets to the chorus she beckons to the front rows and says: "Now, all together, boys!

DID they come in on it? Say, they roared it out like so many young college hicks riotin' around the campus after a session at a rathskeller. You should have seen Old Hickory standin' out front with his arms wavin' and his face red.

Then they demands some of the Katishaw stuff, and "Comrades," and "Little Annie Rooney." And with every encore Clara Belle seems to shake off five or ten years, until you could almost see what a footlight charmer she must have been.

In the midst of it all Vee gives me the nudge.

"Do look at Mr. Tupper, will you?"

Yes, he's sit tin' over in a corner, with his white shirt-front bulgin', his neck stretched forward eager, and his big hairy paws grippin' the chair-back in front. And hanged if a drop of brine ain't tricklin' clown one side of his nose.

"Gosh!" says I. "His emotions are leakin' into his whiskers. Maybe the old boy is human, after all."

A minute later, as I slides easy out of my end seat, We asks:

"Where are you going, Torchy?"

"I want a glimpse of Mrs. Pemmy Foote's face, that's all," says I.

Home-Made Snakes

NO, the collie did not kill the snake. As a matter of fact, the reptile looked so lifelike that the dog showed great reluctance to lie down near it. A clever North Carolina woman, whose large strawberry patch was so depredated by the birds that the fruit was ruined before it became pink, conceived the idea of garden snakes; and now her berries ripen unmolested.

To make a scarecrow snake, take two old stocking legs and stitch the tops together; then stitch twice down the middle of the length. When cut, two slim snakes result. They should be filled with sand or sawdust and placed in the garden, coiled or in any natural pose. If the snake's position is changed every day, the birds will not bother fruits and vegetables.

PEOPLE WE LIKE

Out of your own experience what is the most interesting or worth-while thing you can remember? Write us about it.

We will pay regular rates for every letter that we print. Letters we can not use will not be returned.

Her Children Needed Her, So ..

DEAR SIR: In the spring of 1589 I was left alone to support myself and three small children. My husband was a periodical drunkard, and at this time was seized with a desire to salt his little business and "Go West to grow up with the country." He handed me fifty dollars, and, with the balance of a hundred dollars which he received for his share in his business, said good-by to me and the children. We watched him down the street with tearful faces and aching hearts, trusting and hopeful of the future.

But the days lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months without any communication from him, and I to the realization that I must do some-thing to support myself and children.

I had been educated for a teacher, but my children needed a home and my care. I concluded to take up dressmaking, an occupation my mother had followed, but which I had always hated. I had always refused to try and understand how to make clothes; now 1 regretted I had not at least learned to make my own; however, I determined to try, and with many forebodings placed a fashion sheet in my window.

The fact that my mother had been in the business gave the impression that I had been trained in it. In a few days a lady with her daughter brought me a maroon-colored cashmere dress, to be trimmed with black satin. I was almost panic-stricken. When I looked at the beautiful goods and realized its value, it seemed to me that I must give up. I had made an appointment for the first fitting, which was to be the following day. I went to bed, but not to sleep; some kind of a pat-tern I must have, and one I could put together; how should I get it? Suddenly I had an inspiration. I jumped out of bed and from a closet I dragged a rag-bag. Pouring its con-tents upon the floor, I eagerly grabbed a "polonnaise," which I had worn and was still in fashion. In feverish haste, I began ripping the seams, after which I carefully pressed the pieces, and by daylight I had the lining of the new dress all cut and basted.

As luck would have it, the girl was about my size, which helped me a great deal. I was getting along swimmingly when the mother and daughter came for the final fitting, and—horror of horrors—they wanted two dozen buttonholes down the front of the "polonnaise." My mother had tried once to teach me to make buttonholes, but I made such a botch of it that I had given it up in disgust.

I began at once to practise making buttonholes. It took me one week to make those buttonholes, and when they were finished, while they were the same size and the stitches even, I could see that the corners had not been turned correctly. But the lady and her daughter were pleased and quite satisfied, paying me $4.50 for my work.

This was the beginning of my fifteen years of successful dressmaking.

Two and a Baby's Company

DEAR EDITOR: All my life I had evaded obstacles; no one ever expected me to shoulder any burden or responsibility, and I thought of trouble as something remote, which would not touch me. When I was married, I knew nothing of cooking, sewing, or managing a }louse, and our income was just large enough to allow me to employ competent help.

After I had been married three years, my husband gave up a lucrative position in another country, and we, with our two-year-old baby, came to the United States.

I was anticipating with keenest delight a new home, new friends, and new experiences, when the blow fell! My husband consulted a

But how wonderful is human nature! In two days we had packed our old clothes, and the third saw us cozily settled in a tent on the top of a high mountain. No sign of human life or activity could be seen from our cliff, just mountain after mountain, and day and night we drank deep of the cool, pine-laden air. Gradually I began to recognize the warmth in my heart at the consciousness that I was at last indispensable. I was helping. My husband never allowed me to forget the comfort of my cooperation, and encour- aged and appreciated me to such an extent that I experienced the deepest joy in the duties of my new life. Besides all the other work, I learned even to wash our clothes, so that there would be as little expense as possible to our enforced vacation, and I was prouder of those washings than of any social honor which had been mine.

When we had spent two months in our tent, the cold of the coining winter forced us to move into a log cabin on a neighboring mountain-top, and there we were able to have our little son with us.

By this time, my husband's health had so improved that he could work out of doors all day, and alone he cut all the firewood we used that long, cold win-ter. Every beautiful day saw the three of us out working, the erstwhile invalid cutting down trees and sawing logs, I wheeling wood in a wheelbarrow, and our little son wheeling the splinters and chips in his small barrow.

After six months had passed, my husband spent the morffings in an office in a neighboring town, leaving be-fore it was light, and returning in the middle of the afternoon My baby and I guarded the mountain-top. I was often lonely and afraid; but I schooled myself to be in a measure self-sufficient and courageous, so that no drooping spirits might drag on the health we were so jealously piling up.

At the end of that year, my husband was in better health than he had ever been; she who before that time had never cooked anything but a rare-bit, who had never kept house without a servant, and had never known the meaning of trouble—she, the parasite, was gone. In her place was ,a wife who could cook, who could keep house, who could make her own and her child's clothing, and who could stand by her husband's side, look trouble in the face and call it almost, blessed. We speak of that year as the best in our life.

Now He's an Optimist

DEAR EDITOR: I was once a young grouch. I am still young, but now I am an optimist. Because I made this journey from one to the other, I think I know more about the causes of each than a man who has always been cheerful, or always grouchy.

I was grouchy for years because I was unhealthy. My moth or, and other relatives with whom I lived the first twenty-seven years of my life, were not good cooks. I do not say this with any ill feeling toward my relatives. They simply did not know. They were excellent needle-women. My wife can not sew; but she and all her race can cook.

All through boyhood I had been afflicted at times with periods of depression and low vitality, during which it would seem that nobody was my friend, everything was wrong, and that nothing was worth while. There were times when everything about me seemed to be wrong. My clothes looked out of press. My hair would not lie right, and, as I entered the business world, I had moods of suspicion, of doubt, of unreasonable jealousy.

After losing one girl who, I know now, was afraid to link her future with mine because of my disposition, I gradually made a little improvement. But I was still a grouch at times, when I met the girl I later married. She did not understand my spells of grouchiness. Nevertheless, she married me.

I had given up breakfast a long time ago, hoping to benefit thereby. My wife insisted, as a first reform, that I eat at least a small breakfast. Two weeks' trial convinced me that the "no-breakfast" plan had been upsetting my digestive system, instead of aiding it. Then I formed the habit of drinking water.

My wife saw that I got three good meals a day, and for the first time I began to take on strength and weight. I began to have a smile for everybody, and began to take an interest in everything.

To-day I laugh at the little irritations I used to curse. In the old grouchy days I had one job, and a mean little salary. To-day I manage to laugh through four different writing jobs, and feel as full of pep when I leave the machine at night as when I started in the morning.

Our Best Girl This Week

DEAR EVERY WEEK: This determined-looking little schoolgirl, Beulah Schnitz, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, is one of a very large family for whom the luxuries of life are pretty remote. For the past four years, in all weathers, she has bravely put in a couple of hours every morning, before school, dish-washing. She charges 20 cents an hour, and is most punctual coining and going. She could have every hour of her time taken, but wisely limits it to two hours in the morning. Out of her earnings she pays for her music, dancing, and art-needlework lessons, and has bought herself a bicycle, roller-skates, kodak, and other things too numerous to mention. Her customers collect three meals' dishes and kettles, which she washes all at once—cleaning the sink, too. Beulah is very particular about her working implements—boiling water, soap-shaker, a rough scouring rag in addition to the dish-rag, and clean, dry towels. When she grows up she will never need to be down-hearted at her start in life, for her pluck (God bless her! I can see her from my bedroom window, trudging through the snow to the back door) will make her accomplish anything she sets her mind on.

The Flag of Lolonnois

By ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

Illustration by George Gibbs

A LURCHING motion that was dizzying; the sensation of being lifted to great heights and then being ruthlessly hurled into great abysses; and a choking sensation that came and went, leaving me weaker each time; an icy wetness that was eating into my very vitals, numbing my soul; a knife across my stomach, cutting into the flesh. These were the first things of which I was conscious.

I stirred feebly: the knife across my stomach cut deeper. 1 put out my hand to push it away. As I did so a wall of water rushed over me, half strangling me. I choked, spluttered, spat out the chill brine, and lifted my head. 1 saw a field of green hillocks, each capped with white. I fell back in inarticulate anguish. I had been prepared to suffer death; I had thought that death was with me when Barron's blow had descended, and I knew that 1 had not cried out in fear.

But this—to be set adrift in the merciless ocean, to die of thirst, of pain, of madness. I lay inert, too dulled of senses oven to wish for vengeance upon Ran-some and his crew, too hopeless and dazed to think of prayer, until a second wave washed over me. Then the instinct for self-preservation asserted itself.

I raised my head again, and found that what I had supposed to be a knife was a cord across my middle, binding me upon the life-raft on which I lay. The water had shrunk it until it had sunk deeply into my flesh. But, though it hurt, its pain was preferable to the half drowning that 1 endured when one of those white-capped hillocks broke over me. I put a chilled hand beneath me and held my mouth above the next wave. Then, as I darted down into a hollow, I struggled desperately to loose the rope.

But it was tough, and the wetting had made it tougher. Another wave broke about my shoulders, knocking me over. Something that had been attached to my left wrist flirted about and struck against my elbow. As 1 sat up again 1 saw that it was a sheath-knife, and had time, before the next wave struck me, to wonder at its presence there. But I wasted little time on thought. When the water had sunk to my arm-pits 1 was working at the knife, tearing my nails in the effort to open it. And, despite my numbed fingers, I did so. One more wave, and I leaned forward and parted the line that cut so cruelly into my stomach.

No sooner done than regretted; for the rope had been merciful, after all. It had held me on my raft. With the next wave came a desperate fight to keep from being swept overboard. Indeed, for one moment I was separated from my clumsy craft; but I caught the loose end of the rope, and hung on for life itself. And, almost by a miracle, considering my weakened and chilled condition, I managed to haul myself aboard the raft again.

Swiftly I wound the rope about one arm; and then began a battle that seemed to last for hours, but that I am certain could not have continued for more than five minutes. A wave would come aboard; I would try madly to keep footing on the raft, clinging to a built-in chest at one end or a securely fastened water-cask at the other, only to have my strength yield be-fore the weight and pull of the water, to be swept overboard, to be rescued by the cord around my arm, to regain the raft with the mightiest of exertions—to go through it all again.

But the fight came to an end at last. The waves grew smaller; less foam, gleaming like the teeth of animals, men-aced me. At last came a wave over which the raft rode, and another and another. I crawled to the cask at one end, and found that the spigot at the bottom was easily withdrawn. I lay down, face up-ward, and let the contents of the cask stream upon my face and down my throat.

Strength came to me with the first swallow. 1 replaced the spigot after a moment, rolled over, and crawled to the chest at the other end. Fastened with hasp and staple, the padlock that secured time former was not locked. I opened the chest.

It was the plainest sort of food that I found, but it was ,food! Repressing my hunger, I selected only a few crackers and ate them. I had no idea how long I had been tossing about upon the raft, but I did know that the sun told me that it was high noon; so, at the lowest, almost twenty-four hours had elapsed since Barron had struck me down; and in the weakness engendered by that second blow upon my head, and the subsequent exposure, too much food would be bad for me. I closed the chest upon the tins of meat and resolutely sat upon it.

IN the midst of a dreary expanse of ocean, at the mercy of the wind, 1 was suddenly buoyed up. I think that perhaps I was undergoing the reaction from my terrible struggles; for I remember that I stood suddenly upright upon my raft, shook my fist at the waves, and cried:

"Thought you had me, eh? Thought I was a rat ready for the drowning! And you're fooled, fooled, fooled!"

Then I was suddenly dizzy. A second reaction, following the elation at finding food and water, overcame me. I sank upon the chest and began to weep like a child. But they were the tears of weakness, not of hopelessness. Somehow, even in that moment when physical, or rather nervous, self-control was gone, my brain was steady enough; I knew, was certain, that I had not been spared thus far to perish on my raft. Hope animated me.

Soon the period of weeping had passed. Another drink of water and the contents of an easily opened meat tin, and my nervous strength was regained. And it was then that I began to take stock of things.

There was water enough to last me for weeks, if I was sparing of its use. The biscuits and tins of meat were plentiful. Death by starvation or thirst was far enough off not to be considered. Remained the question of how I was to navigate my craft.

But, though there was a socket for the insertion of a mast, there was no mast; though there were row-locks, there were no oars. The best I could do was to hope that the wind and current would bring me to land before my provisions were exhausted. For a moment I was de-pressed; but the moment passed.

We had been off the Delaware Capes when I had been struck down. Although the sea had been deserted save for the on-coming Comet at the time, it was not natural that more than a day or so should elapse before ships traversed these seas. All the coastwise traffic of America must pass near me; sooner or later I should be picked up.

I became cheerful, and then, absently exploring my pockets, I came across a rubber pouch of tobacco and my pipe. The former was dry and the latter soon became so under the soothing rays of the sun. I had water, food, smoking material, and the sea was becoming calmer every moment. I took off my clothes and spread them out to dry. Walking briskly around my raft, dancing up and down, I kept warm enough, though I was not far enough south to escape a tang in the air. However, I got no chill, and the clothes soon dried. Then, with a fresh pipeful of tobacco, warm and fed, my thoughts turned from myself to Ransome and his gang, to the Comet and her treacherously assailed crew.

Had they been assailed? Had Ransome's wicked scheme prevailed? Was the hunchback already started on his career of crime? Thinking along these lines made me consider what, in my gratitude and elation for my good fortune, I had neglected. How came it that I was fastened aboard a life-raft, instead of floating, face downward, in the sea? Had Ransome at the last moment repented of his treatment of me and given me a chance for my life?

It didn't seem reasonable. It would have been dangerous, I should have thought. The Comet would have been too likely to pick me up. And yet—here I was, in a way, looked after, provided for. Ransome would callously hurl a man overboard for being drunk, be-cause drunkenness might mean a loose tongue and betrayal. Yet he had spared me, taken some pains to see that 1 had a fighting chance for my life, when, rescued, he must know that I would inform the whole. world of his plans. Why had he done it? I gave it up. But not until the short afternoon had waned and darkness was upon me.

For then I had other things to do; I must look after my safety. Another meal, this one less stinted than my previous two, and I lay down by the chest, knotting together the two pieces of the cord which had held me while 1 was unconscious, and passing them around my waist, lest any sudden sea precipitate me to the watery death I had thus far escaped. Then I prayed in gratitude to Him who had pre-served me thus far. But neither then nor ever have 1 been as religiously minded as I should be. One promises much to God if certain things shall come to pass. When they have arrived, one forgets the thanks due, so busy is one in framing requests for further favors. In the middle of my prayer I fell asleep.

"AHOY, there! On board the good craft Scow—what-ho!"

I sat up with a start. There against the raft's side, a boat-hook holding her close, was a small boat, manned by two men at the oars and a third in the stern, who plied the boat-hook.

1 stared. Beyond them, bulking enormously from my sea-level view, a tramp, with barely enough steam to give her steerageway, loomed up, near enough for me to see a group at her rail peering toward me, among them a woman. Then 1 looked back at the men in the boat. The two men at the oars were grinning kindly, and the man in the stern, with true British hiding of what feelings must have moved him, poured forth a line of chaff that I knew was inspired also by the generous wish to help me avoid breaking down at my sudden rescue.

"Like a bloody lamb," he cried, "warm and comfortable! Bli' me if I don't think your quarters is snugger than mine. Get up when you please, go to bed when you want—what price an exchange of berths, matey? Are we disturbin' your bloomin' 'ighness? Beg pawdon, sir, if we've broke your rest. Cradled in the deep! Blast me if you ain't the 'ealthiest, best fed, 'appiest-lookin' castaway ever I see. 'Ow about it, matey? Does you come aboard the Beeston, out, o' Liverpool for Norfolk, and Britannia rules the waves and to 'ell with the Germans and their mines and submarines, or does you stay aboard this 'ere palatial craft, the—now wot might you be callin' this 'ere liner o' yours, anyhow?"

"Any old name at all that suits you," I laughed. "And, if it's all the same to you, 1'11 exchange courtesies with your skipper."

"One captain to another. Right-o! With the crew piped to the gang-plank to show the respect which is only proper, captain. And maybe, you being attached to your craft and not knowing how soon you'll get tired of the Beeston, you'll want her aboard the Beeston, too. Right-o! A turn of a rope around that row-lock—"

Five minutes later we edged alongside the Beeston, towing roy clumsy raft be-hind us, and 1 went up a rope ladder to the deck. But the raft was cut loose—for, called the captain of the tramp to the sailors, he'd lost time enough already, with a German raider close at hand, and there was little profit in salving a raft and losing one's ship. Then he turned to me and gave me his hand.

"BUT, my dear man, it's too utterly absurd," said Captain Richley. "I'd be a most proper ass if I sent any such message broadcast. There are real dangers enough these days without my imagining one."

"You aren't imagining anything; I'm telling it to you," I said angrily.

"You just have another little drink—you need it," he said. "Then you get a good rest, and when you've slept you'll be clear of the cobwebs in your brain and can tell me just how your yacht was lost. Go on now; there's a good man. Drink it down and you'll feel better."

I could have struck the Beeston's skip-per with the glass; instead, with a shrug of my shoulders, I lifted it to my lips and drank. It was the second small drink Richley had given me, and served to loosen again the arguments to which he had thus far turned a deaf ear. For the second time I told him of my adventures aboard the Corinna, and begged him to send broadcast a wireless message warning the world of the danger that suddenly beset all commerce. He heard me through patiently enough, but when I had finished he smiled quizzically.

"You're tired and you have a fixed idea, Mr. Fitch," he said. "When you're rested youu'll feel differently about it. You'll have a clearer remembrance of happenings."

"In other words, I'm off my head now," I cried. "Very well; but it doesn't cost much to send a wireless, does it? Suppose I am crazy? What harm does it do to tell the world of my insanity? I can stand it."

"Just this," he retorted. "We picked up a wireless early this morning. It was from some French ship. It said that it had sighted the hull of a ship that had burned almost to the water-line—a British

Page 18

vessel, the Annabel Johnson. The Frenchman said there were bodies floating near by with wounds that must have been caused by fragments of shells. Also, there were traces of gun-fire on the Annabel's hull. The Frenchman naturally didn't hang around long. She sent out her warning and hurried away, I reckon. Now then, if a German raider sunk the Annabel—and who else could have?—you can see that I am not anxious to send out any wireless messages that may attract the raider's attention to the Beeston."

"You've told me all this before," I snapped.

"And you've repeated your story, too, please remember," he countered. "Listen, Mr. Fitch—"

"Listen nothing!" I cried. "You yourself state that you have knowledge of the sinking of a British craft either last night or early this morning—last night, most likely, if the Frenchman saw no signs of the ship that had done the sinking. Well, I tell you that the Comet must have been captured by the gang that held me in mid-afternoon yesterday. Plenty of time for them to have got started on their career. I warn you—I warn you—"

Unaccountably, considering that I had slept all nigth on the raft, and had felt fresh enough when I climbed aboard the Beeston, I felt a heaviness in my head and was conscious of a thickness in my speech. I gripped my thoughts, that had begun to wander. From far away the captain's words seemed to come.

"Be sensible, my dear man," he was saying. "We found you aboard a well supplied raft. According to your own tale, you were fastened aboard her. Does that fit in with your account of a murderous assault and all the rest of it? We'll make Norfolk to-morrow. If you want to tell your story to the shore authorities, you're welcome, though it's my idea that after a sound sleep you'll— Peters," he called. "Peters!"

I heard someone running into the cabin where we sat, heard Richley say something about an opiate acting quicker than he had expected, realized that the good-hearted but slow-witted skipper of the Beeston, thinking me temporarily insane from my sufferings, had drugged me, tried to rise, fell back into some one's arms, and knew no more.

THE sound of a shot awakened me. At least, it made me fully conscious. I think that I had been half awake for some little time. But now I leaped from the berth where I was lying, and began drawing on the clothing that was neatly piled upon a chair. Somehow that shot revived all the terrors that had been mine aboard the Corinna. In these times of war, when any merchant vessel, no matter what flag she flew, was liable to be peremptorily halted by a war-ship's shot, and held until the detainer had been satisfied as to the presence or non-presence of contraband of war or the nationality of the merchant-man, the mere sound of a gun-shot should not have occasioned me any alarm.

Still, I was not a sailor, and I was so filled with remembrance of Ransome that I could hardly admit the possibility of any craft save the one he sailed firing a cannon.

Dressed, I opened the door of the cabin and made my way to the deck. And the first glance to port was enough. There, less than a quarter of a mile away, was a ship whose lines told me, landsman that I was, that she was a war-craft of the destroyer type. Amazingly, she flew no flag.

A sailor accosted me, with a touch of his hat.

"Just goin' for you, sir," he said. "The captain's compliments, and would you join him on the bridge, sir?"

Along the rail of the Beeston the sailors hung. Also, apart from any of the men, the woman whom I had seen yesterday, but whom I had not noticed particularly in my press to tell the Beeston's skipper my tale, leaned over the side. As I passed her she looked up with a friendly smile, though a little pucker between her eyebrows seemed to indicate worry. She fell into stride with me.

"Going to see uncle?"

"Captain Richley has sent for me," I replied.

"That's uncle. I think he's beginning to believe your story. I told him this morning that I didn't think you were hysterical. If he had called for help—But I'm not criticizing him. It—it did sound—strange."

"I don't doubt it," I answered.

She ascended to the bridge with me without further talk. Captain Richley handed me his glass.

"No flag," he said, "and don't look like any of our British war-vessels, nor like a Frenchy, either. Can you tell what she is? Mr. Jenner"—and I learned soon that he referred to his first officer—"says she's a Yankee. What do you know about her?"

I LIFTED the glass to my eyes without answering. The destroyer seemed to leap at me, so powerful were the lenses. A boat was being lowered into the water. by the davits stood an undersized man, and his back was humped! My fingers shook and my eyes blurred so that i looked as through a mist. Then they cleared, and I could make out clearly Ransome, Pelletier, and just getting into the boat, Barron.

I handed the glasses back to Richley.

"Captain," I said, "if you'd sent that wireless this morning you'd have done well. That vessel, though she flies no flag and seems to have no name, must be the Comet, for aboard her are the men I told you of."

Richley stared at me. His dull face lost its lines of heavy good nature. It blanched and grew strained.

"You mean—my God, it's piracy!"

"Exactly," I said. "What has she signaled?"

"To heave to. I've done that. Fired a shot across my bows when I didn't obey the first signal. Came up on me hand over foot. Piracy! Piracy!" He seemed dazed. "My God, it isn't possible; it can't be done," he said helplessly.

"Nevertheless, it's being done," I snapped. "Here, you ahve wireless. Sned a warning now."

"And have them blow the Beeston out of the water?"

"They'll do it anyhow. Remember the Annabel, that you were telling me about this morning! The bodies floating in the sea, torn by shell fire! Send off a warning, Captain."

"I have my niece—a woman aboard," he stammered.

The girl spoke up.

"If you consider me now I—I'd hate you and myself, too!" she blazed.

But Richley could only shake his head in a daze fashion, while he stared dully at the boart now dancing merrily toward us. From the deck below came low growls, as if the sailors there had some inkling of the situation. Indeed they had, for a steward had overheard much of my tale to Richley and had spread it over the ship. But at these breaches of marine discipline Richley recovered his self-control in a measure. He bawled a harsh command, and the men were silent. He bawled another order, and a ladder was thrown overside. In a moment Barron was on the deck, and Richley had left the bridge to receive him.

HIS niece had I went with him. For my part, I at first thought it wiser for me to remain hidden, lest my presence notify Barron that the plot was known, at least to those aboard the Beeston. But I realized almost at once that this was the same sort of wisdom that causes the ostrich, on the approach of danger, to bury his head in the sand. the crew of the Beeston would know in a few minutes that piracy stalked the seas.

Certainly Barron would not spare the Beeston, not if he acted according to the plans he had outlined to me. He would

Page 19

destroy it and every soul aboard. Therefore, the fact that the Beeston had rescued me would not cause its crew to suffer any more punishment than they would suffer anyway. So I went along, and Barron picked me out at once, with a start of surprise.

He gave me a long stare that wound up with a malicious grin. He turned to Richley, while he pointed at me.

"There ain't much use for explanation, is there?" he said. "I guess this gentleman has given you a pretty good line on our business. So let's get down to cases. I'll have a look at your ship papers and see what I want."

"Do you realize that Mr. Fitch has accused you of piracy?" demanded Richley.

He didn't rise at all to the occasion; and yet, what else was there for him to say? he was helpless, and he knew it.

Barron jerked a thumb at the Comet.

"That was a United States ship two days ago," he sneered. "Do you see what she's flying now?"

AND, as he spoke, the ball of bunting that had been climbing to the Comet's mast-head was broken out, and there, for the first time in a hundred years, floated the black flag—the flag, unless Neumayer had lied, of Lolonnois.

Up to then, up to that flaunting signal of wickedness, that flagrant boast of evil, Richley had been trembling, white. Now his manhood asserted itself.

"You have a battle-ship," he said; you have cannon. You can blow me out of the water. But you are a pirate, and, by heaven, no pirate can give me orders. You may search the ship because I am powerless to prevent you; but if you expect me to aid you, to hand over my papers myself, you are mistaken, Mr. Buccaneer."

He turned his back and walked toward the bridge. Barron's hand went to the holster on his hip. But he did not draw his revolver; instead he grinned nastily, and gave an order to one of his men. That ruffian went directly to the wireless room, and in a moment we heard the sound of an ax as he smashed the instrument. Not a sailor ventured a protest. The menace of the destroyer, lying now within a couple of hundred yards, her guns trained upon us, was enough to cow the hardiest.

Without the slightest signs of apprehension, as if aboard his own pirate craft, Barron, leaving two men on deck, went below, followed by two others. Even though one hated and despised him as I did, one was forced to yield reluctant tribute to his courage; for it would have been easy to overpower his small band, and desperation, wild anger, miight have caused Richley to give orders that would have meant Barron's death.

But Richley, of course, had his ship to think of, and the lives of all aboard; and it was on this that Barron must have counted. Though he and his immediate companions might be killed, the Comet would exact an instant vengeance. Yet, when he had gone below, and the sailors of the Beeston stared open-mouthed at the two men he had left behind, it occurred to me that Barron might be held as a hostage. And as the thought came to me the girl spoke softly in my ear:

"Why not seize them and threaten to kill them if we are fired at?" she whispered.

I nodded and walked forawrd to where Richley stood staring gloomily over the side. Hurriedly I explained the idea. A concerted, determined movement now, and we'd hold, in a way, the whip-hand over the pirate.

But he shook his head.

"They'd swarm aboard us," he replied. "Then we'd make terms; and they'd break the terms as soon as we let their men go. They couldn't afford to let us get away with any of their men. I doubt if they can afford to let us go anyway."

"Well, isn't it better to die fighting than to be slaughtered?" I protested.

"There's a chance," he said. "But if we attack their men and imprison them, we'd surely be sunk, whether or not we released them, and whether or not their men went down with us. Men taking the risks they're taking, within a hundred miles or so of the American coast—"

The calamity seemed to have aged him suddenly. His finger trembled and his lips twiched. A storm, with death imminent, would, I have no doubt, have found him courageaous and capable. A legitimate enemy attack, whether by cruiser, submarine, or mine, would have found him all that a British seaman should be. But this attack, this peremptory halting by a craft of no nation, by a pirate, when he, like all the world, hat thought pirace existed only in the legends of history, had knocked the props from under him. He had not imagination enough to meet it.

Jenner, the mate, had overheard my plea for action, and I thought that he felt as I did; but that habit of discipline was too firmly ingrained in him for him to venture any protest against the decision of his superior officer. As for the men, they were elods. The forecastle of a British tramp—aye, of an American, for that matter—did not, in the early nineteenth century, breed the fashion of men that were found in the days of sails. One sometimes wonders if our great inventions which little by little do away with the need for manual labor, do not work an evil to the race.

It was useless to appeal to the men; so, perforce, bowing to the will of the majority, or rather to their lack of will, I too leaned gloomily against the rail, staring at the Comet.

THE girl stood beside me, a fine erectness to her figure that proved that courage was in her. Yet she offered no further protest. Reason seemed to be with her uncle, and so, in what patience we could find, we waited.

Nor had we long. In fifteen minutes Barron came out on deck. He carried a money-box, rifled from the captain's desk. One of his men carried the ship's papers, stolen from the same place. He came directly to the captain.

"You have two hundred barrels of oil," he said. "Break them out at once; we'll come alongside and transfer them."

"Break them outyourself," said Richley.

"Stow that," snarled Barron. "I put up with your impertinence about the ship's papers. I could find them easily. But this—I'll give you one minute to give your men orders to break out those barrels."

His hand dropped suggestively to his hip, and Richley stared at him bravely enough. But his niece threw her arms about her uncle.

"Please," she begged. "Oh, uncle, he'd— Please!"

For a moment stubbornness contended with Barron's mastery fo the situation. Then Richley called out some sharp orders to his crew, and they, doubtless relieved to be doing something, disappeared down hatchways. Without a word, barron, followed by his men, went overside to their boat, and we watched them rowing to the Comet.

Richley turned to me.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Fitch," he said simply. "I should have known you weren't the kind to be hysterical."

LITTLE more was said. In the minds of all of us the question burned: What would happen to us? Would the pirates be content with the ship's moneys and the barrels of oil? It didn't seem reasonable. Yet the idea that they would sink a five thousand ton vessel with all hands aboard was unthinkable. Somehow, the very atrociousness of such a thing made it—even to me who knew something of their bloodthirstiness—seemed impossible.

Then, while we stood there at the rail, Barron regained his ship, and the Comet drew near to us. Soon she was alongside, and I met the eyes of Ransome. A gang-plank was laid from one vessel to the other, across which Ransome trotted. He addressed himself civilly enough to Richley.

"How many women aboard?" he demanded.

"One; my niece here," said Richley.

"The young lady will have to go aboard my ship," said Ransome.

"Why?" cried the girl.

"It is better," he answered enigmatically.

She turned to her uncle. "Uncle, must I?"

Richley stroked his chin with a trembling hand. He looked at Ransome.

"You're a pirate," he said, "and certain to be hanged. If my girl isn't going to be—I'd rather shoot her down myself—"

Ransome laughed. "We don't harm women, captain. It's merely that—well, with your niece aboard my craft I'll feel surer that you'll obey orders. I'm afraid i must insist, Miss—er—"

"Richley," she said coldly. "May I bring some things?"

"Certainly."

He spoke to one of his followers, who put himself at the disposal of the girl.

Half an hour later, as the last of the barrels of oil was being trundled across the gang-plank, the girl reappeared on deck, followed by the man, who bore a small steamer-trunk in his arms. Barron waved her across the gang-plank. She kissed her uncle, and then walked across to the Comet. I saw Pelletier direct her below.

Then Ransome spoke to me, for the first time since he had come aboard."

"Fate has directed, it seems, that you and I shall not part so soon," he said. "How does it happen that you are—alive?"

I knew at once that he had not been responsible for the precautions that had assured that I should stay aboard the raft and not starve or be thirsty while there. His manner was too innocent. Nor was he the sort to hid his light; if at the last moment he had been the one to show mercy toward me, he would have plumed himself on the act and certainly mentioned it to me.

Therefore, if he hadn't done it, and didn't know about it, some one else aboard the Corinna—and now aboard the Comet—had shown himself capable of pity, had acted as my friend. And to tell Ransome about the raft meant that he would try to discover that unknown friend and punish him. So I lied—nor have I ever been ashamed of the falsehood.

"I'm hard to kill," I answered. "Men drowning catch at straws; I caught at a grating. The Beeston picked me up this morning."

"I see, he said, fixing me with his keen eyes. "Funny; I know something about the human body. I could have sworn that you would remain unconscous for an hour, long enough after the Corinna was blown up, to drown several times."

"You didn't calculate on the revivifying effect of cold water," I said, with a shrug of my shoulders. "However, you can finish the job now, I suppose."

"When there is no need of it—when I already possess the Comet and betrayal is impossible? You have forgotten my fancy for you, Mr. Fitch. Go aboard the Comet," he ended suddenly.

I hesitated. In my heart I felt that only those of the Beeston's crew who crossed to the Comet's deck had a chance for their lives. It seemed cowardly to desert those who had saved me, to avoid their fate. Yet, what else was there for me to do?

"Never mind getting you things. But I forgot; castaways do not have many personal belongings, Mr. Fitch. Cross over, please."

I looked at Richley. I think he understood my glance—knew that I was willing to remain behind and share whatever should betide the Beeston and her men. But that phlegmatic, dull, but brave gentleman nodded to me to go ahead. Resistance would have been a futile, silly thing, anyway. I crossed the gang-plank and stood upon the deck of the destroyer.

THERE was scant ceremony employed by Ransome. The barrels of oil aboard, and the Beeston having no other items in her cargo of interest to Ransome, he returned to his own craft. The rest came so suddenly that even now, when I have had opportunity for perspective,—when I have lived, in memory, that scene over and over again—I still cannot narrate what happened with any clearness.

I can only tell that we drifted apart perhaps a hundred pards, when suddenly our bow gun spoke. The Beeston lurched as a prize-fighter, struck in a vital spot,—yet not struck hard enough to lose his senses,—reels about the ring. Another gun roared. Into the very vitals of the Beeston the shell tore its way. There came a cloud of steam, a muffled roar from an internal explosion, more lurchings, reelings, rollings. Above the crash of another shot from the Comet came the screams of the Beeston's men.

Then another scream, closer at hand, made me forget the horrible, wicked slaughter on the tramp's decks. I turned to see Mary Rickley runnign across the deck. She reached the rail, and in a frenzy of madness started to climb over it. I gained her side in time, and pulled her back. A moment she struggled, then her body lost its rigidity. As the Beeston lurched for the last time, she fainted.

To be continued next week

The Estate of J. P. Jones

By JOHN M. OSKISON

BECAUSE I was his friend, and knew his financial affairs better than any one else, I have undertaken to appraise his estate. Whose? Oh, J. P. Jones's; he was an average American citizen who died the other day at the age of sixty-four. During the forty-seven years of his working life his earnings ran about $20 a week—in all, they approached close to $49,000.

It is regrettable that Jones left no will from which I might quote. It was a characteristic oversight, an evidence of the man's large indifference to the future.

His instructions as to his estate were delivered from his bedside by word of mouth. To his wife and son he left in equal shares all his possessions, real and personal. Though his words were not exnetly lawyer-like, I gathered that he wanted his wife and son to esrve as executors of his estate.

Now for the schedule of property left by this average American.

Real estate:

Personal property:

Gross estate totaled $1,601.80. To avoid too much detail, I have included in the $1,350 valuation of the Nutacres home all furniture, clothes, and personal effects left by the decedent. From the gross estate certain deductions had to be made.

For instance, $900 was still due the building and loan association on the home. Jones was past sixty when the desire to own his own home gripped him, and he had really just started to pay for it when death overtook him. Out of the cash resources of the estate—$251.80—some personal debts had to be met, the bill for his own funeral paid, the money taken to pay for the widow's and Henry's black clothes. Also, there was the gravestone to be paid for.

Net estate, therefore, is represented by a minus sign. Just what the figures are I do not know yet; Mrs. Joens hopes to secure certain reductions in some bills rendered after the funeral.

Reviewing Jones's financial career, I find that he was a consistent enemy of Wall Street. Also, he was against those "robber corporations," the old-line of legal-reseve life insurance companies. For his first life insurance he joined a fraternal order which offered rates only about a third of the old-established companies.

That was whne he was thirty years old. When he was forty, the assessments against the members brought the cost up to that of a policy in a regular company; and when he was fifty, members were dying so much faster than young men were joining that Jones gave up his policy. Something went wrong, but Jones never knew exactly why.

In Jones's mind, all banks were in league with the pirates of Wall Street to take the people's money. What nonsense, he used to say, this Wall Street theory that 4% or 5% or 6% at most is all you can get with safety! Once a well meaning but possibly stupid friend showed Jones some figures of compound interest earnings. He proved that if Jones would save ten cents a day for twenty-five years, and allow his savings to accumulate in a bank which paid 4%, his pile would then amount to $1,543. Or if he saved $1 a week during that time, the totaly would be $2,300. Further, this friend proved that after 17 1/2 years of such thrift practice the saved money would be earning as much as he himself was putting by.

Jones listened with imatience. That was no way for an enterprising man to make his fortune! Jones scorned the method of attrition—that is, the method of wearing out adversity by a succession of small savings blows. As he said, "Seventeen years is a darn long time to wait for results!"

It surely is; yet, as I went over the J. P. Jones estate, I could not help thinking that this is only about one third the span of Jones's working life.

If he had been content to save even a very little money regularly every week, he would have been a comparatively "well fixed" individual. Instead he spent all his substance in the chase for a quick and easy fortune. He died leaving nothing but a bunch of gaudy "certificates" not fit for wall paper.

I wondered, as I thumbed them over, how many million J. P. Joneses there are in this land of the free.

The Leak

Continued from page 7

two of you mind signing this paper as witnesses?"

Well, that hotel manager knew Baxter, and there was an end to the trouble right away. .Gooding fidgeted and squirmed and kicked up a fuss; but nobody paid any attention to him til Vint says to the detective and the manager that he guessed he could get along without them now, but he'd like Gooding to hang around for a spell.

"Mr. Gooding," says he, when they were gone, "I've just bought a piece of Grosse Point land from Mr. Baxter. You know the piece. I guess you need it in your business."

"You—you—" Gooding sort of ran dry of appropriate designations.

"That's the way Mr. Sturgis felt when you gobbled the land he wanted to build his new factory on," says Vint.

"Is Sturgis back of this thing? yelled Gooding.

"No; I am—back of it and on top and underneath. I'm the fellow who got blamed for leaking to you. I lost my job, and stand to lose my girl. So I don't admire you—not what you could call heartily. Now, how about this land I've bought?"

Gooding wouldn't make any answer.

"I'll tell you then, says Vint. "This land is worth all I paid for it to me. The Wicker Farm is worth what you paid for it—if you have my land, and maybe it will be in ten years if you don't. But the deal you have framed goes smash, doesn't it? You stand to make a sweet profit on that subdivision scheme—if it goes through. But, as I said in the beginning, you've got to have my land. How about it?"

"I came to Chicago to get it," says Gooding.

"This is no hold-up," says Vint. "You can have that land for what I paid for it."

"What?" says Gooding.

"Plus the option you hold on the land Mr. Sturgis wants. That makes the dal cost you only five thousand more than it would—the five you paid somebody in our office. How about it?"

"He's letting you down easy, Gooding," says Mr. Baxter. "If I were in his place I'd trim you for all the tariff would bear. Better take him up."

"I sha'n't ask you who took your five thousand," says Vint, "but I want you to state before Mr. Baxter that I'm not that man."

"I'll take you," says Gooding in a minute, "and—you're not the man."

"Good. Now put it in writing—because, while your voice is pleasant, it isn't as reliable as paper and ink."

WELL, that finished with Gooding, and he left some considerable ruffled up, but happier than he might have been.

Old man Baxter says to Vint:

"Young man, you're out of a job. I need a man. How does five thousand a year sound to you?"

"Fine," says Vint; "but I want to give father-in-law a chance to be satisfied with himself."

"Right," says Baxter, "but the job with me is always open. Now, young man, do you mind if I get a room and have some lunch and take a bath?"

"Mr. Baxter," says Vint, "I can't thank you, but I'll bring Julie around to do it for me properly."

Vint he wired me that he'd managed

Page 21

to wiggle through with the scheme, and I telephoned Julie. When he got back to Detroit next day, I met him at the depot in Julie's runabout, and we drove as rapid as the police would allow to Mr. Sturgis's office.

I went furst. Julie waited outside. When Sturgis saw me, he like to have flopped over in a fit; and when he saw Vint, I thought certain he was going to. But Vint stepped right to his desk, and planked down the paper tha Gooding had signed and Baxter witnessed, that transferred Gooding's opinion to Sturgis.

Sturgis looked at it, and sort of choked.

"What," says he—"what's this?"

"What it says it is," says Vint. "Besides, Gooding admitted before Newton Baxter that he'd never seen me before, and that I had nothing to do with the leak."

"Yes," says I; "and I do know who had somethin' to do with it," I says. For I'd used my eyes when we came in, and saw the seared look on the man in the next office when he saw Vint.

"Ask the gents in the next room to come in," says I.

"De Soto, you mean?"

"Disgusted-lookin' feller," says I, "and underfed."

Sturgis went to the door and called, and pretty soon in came the fellow, looking like he was invited to a cannibal dinner with him as the dessert.

"De Soto," says I, "where did you get on the fact that Sturgis was going to build a new plant—and where he was goin' to do it?"

"What do you mean?" says he. "Who are you?"

"Pinkerton's my name," say I, thinking that was one that probably would do most good in the circumstances; and it did, for he squashed down like a pound of butter on an August day, and give himself away in words and syllables and exclamations, ending up with begging that I wouldn't throw him into jail.

STURGIS acted like a man—I'll credit him with that. He begged Vint's pardon humble, and says he wished Julie was there to hear the good news, and I says she was. She come in in a second, and Sturgis kissed her took hold her her hand and shoved it into Vint's. Then he says to me: "There's two too many of us in this office for comfort." And out we went, leaving them alone to ask each other them questions about did they still love each other, and how much.

"Eli," says Sturgis, "that boy's a wonder."

"He had to work spry to make you see it," says I.

"For a wedding present," says he, "he gets a stock interest in this concern—and the office of secretary. We'll make a family affair of it."

"All right, says I; "but Julie'll like better what you just giver her back in the office," I says. "Money is alll right to some folks sometimes; but there hain't enough money in the world to buy the way them two childern feel this minute."

Which was darn close to the truth.

They Love Us—They Love Us Not

YOU know how we are. we are always just busting right out and saying things. We can't get over it. A while ago, we asked, apropos of a picture of a young woman who had been left money by an old gentleman on condition that she visit his grave regularly, "Where is the little girl who will agree not to forget us? Please write." Now look who's here!

Long Vive Viva!

I want to tell you taht you are my friend;

And shall be, I assure you, unto the end.

The times I have spent with you have been very happy indeed.

And of all my friends you are in the lead. I have always loved you, and I love you still;

I have never forgotten you, and I never will. I'll send you my picture, that you may see Just who your affectionate friend may be.

Adorned and Everything

Having read your statement that you are looking for a little girl who will agree not to forget you when you are dead and gone, would say that perhaps I am just the kind of girl you are looking for. I am an orphan and I visit my parents very often, so I think if you could compensate me with a sum of money I would be only to willing to visit your grave four times a month and adorn it with flowers.

And Well Lighted

I want to say here is the little girl who will agree not to forget you. I am a poor girl, but I have a good, kind, true heart. My mother and I will not forget you, my friend. She will be your guardian angel and I will be your beacon-light.

Also Dimples

You said in one of your verses that you wanted a little girl who would agree not to forget you. Well, I'm one. I can be the little girl if some other little girl has not written you ahead of me. I am sixteen years old, have dark brown hair (curly), and three dimples. I am not very pretty, but I hope I will do.

Worried

I notice what you say about not being forgotten. I can sincerely promise not to forget Every Week. But what puzzles me is, my promise will do me no good if I have to wait till you die, because I hope you will never die.

Why Not Hunt Pearls This Summer?

By TOM SHIRAS

IF you want to pit a summer's work against luck, with the chance of pulling down big stakes if you win, and bread and butter if you lose, there's a chance for you this summer in the fresh-water pearl-fishing game. You will not have to confine your operations to a limited territory, either, as there are numerous streams that contain pearl-bearing mussels. They belong to the government: you do not have to file a claim. There are no formalities, and you can start with such meager equipment as an old tow sack and a butcher-knife.

There are five hundred species of fresh-water mussels in the United States, in the fresh-water streams, and a considerable number of them yield pearls of greater or lesser value. The fresh-water mussels, like the oyster and other salt-water shellfish, are almost inanimate. They only movement they make is to open and close their shells. To catch them means only to pick them up. No skill is necessary. The success of the fisherman lies in his dogmatic persistency; for it is a game in which quantity counts. Every shell has a value, and the more that are gatherered, the more that can be marketed; and from each one, like a lottery ticket, there is a chance of picking a sudden fortune. The mussels lie in beds ranging in number from a few hundred shells to many thousands. These beds are found in teh gravel bars and in the sand and mud bottoms of rivers and sloughs. The mussels are not edible, and their only value is their shell and the pearls that they produce.

What Chance for Prizes?

ONE man can see as far into an unopened shell as another. The chance of finding a pearl worth several thousand dollars is about the same one would have in winning the grand prize in a big lottery with a single ticket. But in the pearl-fishing game there are other prizes besides the grand prize. A number of pearls, running in value from five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars, are found every year.

Pearls valued from one hundred to five hundred dollars are frequent, and those ranging from one jundred dollars down are quite common. There are few who follow the game consistently that do not come

out in the fall at the end fo the season with several hundred dollars' worth of pearls.

The backbone of the industry lies in the shells. The pearls that are found represent the profits.

Up to a decade ago, most of the mother-of-pearl used in this country for making buttons, fancy handles for toilet articles, and for other purposes was imported. The fresh-water pearl fisheries to a large extent now supply the demand, and many shells are exported. In every little river town where the industry thrives there is a cash market for shells, which are purchased by the ton. For the last ten years they have brought from fifteen to thirty dollars. During the 1916 season, however, they soared, bringing from forty to fifty dollars.

What You Need to Go Pearl-Fishing

ONE can start into the game with a tow sack and a butcher-knife, if he has the other necessary qualifications; but the average equipment is usually more elaborate than this. A good camp outfit and skiff are generally considered essential. The average tackle—if it may be called tackle—with which the mussels are taken, consists of a short-handled fork, much like a potato fork; a net three or four feet long, with the mouth stretched over a hoop ten or twelve inches in diameter; a pair of long-handled tongs; and a crow's-foot bar.

The fork is used in mussel beds where the mussels lie close together in shallow water. They are forked from the bed directly into the boat.

Where they lie more scattered they are gathered by hand and put into the net, which is filled and emptied into a boat or carried to the bank and piled up.

The tongs are used in deep-water fishing. They have long handles fastened together like scissors. The forks on the end resemble four-tine pitchforks. They are bent concave, so that when they are closed together they form a pocket. When used they are opened slightly, jammed down into the mussel bed, and closed, the mussels being caught in the pocket and lifted into the boat.

The crow's-foot bar is a round bar of iron or pipe, an inch and a half in diameter and eight or ten feet long, to which are attached stout pieces of cord three or four feet long, at intervals of several inches. To cach piece of cord are attached about a dozen small pieces of wire bent in the shape of a crow's foot. Mussels feed on the minute animal and vegetable life in the water, and lie with their shells open most of the time. If anything comes in contact with them or disturbs them, they immediately close their shells. The crow's-foot bar is dragged along in the water a few inches above the bottom of the river, with the tackle dragging behind on the bottom. As the little wire pieces come in contact with the open mussels, the mollusks close their shells on them and are lifted into the boat.

As the mussels are caught they are taken to camp, where they are put into a vat five or six feet square, under which is a small furnace covered with old wet sacks, and steamed. The shells pop open, and are then taken from the vat and thrown on a large canvas sheet. They are picked up one by one, the tough meat pulled from them, and thrown into the shell-bin, ready for market. During this process a careful search is made for pearls.

Each shell that is cleaned raises a hope of sudden fortune in the fisherman's breast. Hidden under the tough strip that fastens the meat to the interior of the shell may be a pearl worth several thousand dollars. If it isn't there, it may be in the next one. The element of luck is the lure. It is what keeps the industry alive.

Of the various groups of workers, the element of luck centers around the pearl-peeler.

Pearls are made layer by layer by the mussel, around any solid minute particle of foreign substance that finds its way into the shell. If the mussel can not throw it off, it envelops the substance in a smooth layer of mother-of-pearl, adding layer after layer as it grows older. These thin layers are more delicate than the shell of a humming-bird's egg.

A beautiful pearl may be found, regular in shape, of excellent size, but with a small portion of its beautiful exterior marred by a flaw. Here is where the peeler comes in. For an ordinary pocketknife manipulated by the steady hand of a pearl-peeler—the real artist of the industry—mau change the value of the marred pearl in a few hours from a few paltry dollars to many hundreds. The flaw may be only a few layers deep.

Pearl-peeling, like diamond-cutting, is an art. It takes a steady hand, keen eyes, and a delicate touch, besides years of experience, to be successful. Each layer must be removed in its entirety, and the underlying layer not marred or scratched.

Some pearl-buyers are so keenly acute that their selection of pearls that will peel out successfully seems intuitive. They are the wizards of the industry. Even they are led astray in their calculations many times, and the pearl is peeled completely away, the flaw extending clear to the core.

There is no general rule by which the exact value of a pearl can be determined. THe real factor that determines the price of any individual pearl is the greed of the seller and the avarice of the purchaser. The price of a pearl in a given locality may double in value in a few days, or decrease correspondingly. One of the largest ball pearls ever found was purchased from the man who found it by a local buyer for five hundred dollars. Three days later it changed hands again fro twenty-seven hundred dollars. To-day it is probably hanging in the pendant in a string of pearls from the neck of some society woman, who paid $10,000 for it in some Paris shop.

beware of Counterfeits

THE ratio of honest men in the industry corresponds with that in almost any other industry in which the element of luck enters. A man once gave a forty-dollar gold watch and twenty-five dollars in cash for an imitation pearl from the top of a fifty-cent hat-pin.

Some sell home manufactured pearls as real pearls. the contrivance for their manufacture is very crude but efficient. A hole half an inch in diameter is drilled in a piece of sand rock. A piece of mother-of-pearl is broken from a shell, rounded off with a file, and dropped in thi shole, and the rock set under a spring, from which a small stream of water is turned and allowed to trickle in the hole in the rock. The water keeps the piece of shell turning in the hole, and in the course of a day it becomes perfectly round and smooth. It is then taken out and polished. The nocive bites on it, but to the experienced pearl-buyer it is a crude imitation.

The fresh-water pearl-fishing game might be summarized as wet, dirty work in the open during the summer months, lucrative up to the point of daily wages, and a little more, with the added hope of a sudden fortune—a hope that is sometimes realized.

The Great Lesson in Finance

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

TO all the many readers of this magazine who have subscribed for a Liberty Loan government bond, I want to say that the bond represents not only a safe investment and a patriotic duty, but a valuable lesson in finance. This is just as true if you have bought one $50 bond as if your subscription ran up into the thousands.

John Skelton Williams, Controller of the Currency, says there are ten million people in this country rich enough to buy at least one $50 bond. Of course, no such number of persons ever bought government bonds at one time. But the more who do buy the wiser will the people of this country in regard to the investment of their surplus savings. In no field is elementary education so needed as in the practice of finance by persons of small means. That is why many authorities who otherwise would regret any addition the country's debt have welcomed the great government bond issue. Here is what the ownership of even the smallest United States government bond may do for you:

1. It will serve to make clear the difference between get-rich-quick investments and those that are safe. Hundreds of millions of dollars are lost each year in this country in worthless stocks, mainly because people at large do not know any better. The truth is that nine out of ten men and women with a few hundred dollars to invest do not know what is safe and what is dangerous. And the worst is that they do not have any way of finding out.

It is true that here are hundreds of reliable banks, trust companies, bankers and brokers that are quite willing to give honest advice and information; but hundreds of thousands of men and women with a few dollars to invest are afraid to go with their pitiful sums to a haughty-looking bank official; and, even if they are not afraid, they do not know where to go.

A Government Bond Speaks for Itself

IT is inconceivable that any person with money to invest should fail to recognize the safety of United States government bonds. No matter how humble one's station, or remote one's residence from the great centers of population and finance, or meager one's education, a government bond speaks for itself. And, having once learned that there are safe investments in small amounts, people will not so easily fall victims next time to the snare of the financial swindler.

2. It will teach people the facilities which banks afford for borrowing money. Tie and again I am asked how to raise a loan on a new invention or a chicken farm or a small two-story house in the suburbs. If I possessed all the wisdom of Solomon I could not answer most of these questions. But a man or woman who owns a United States bond always will be able to borrow. Banks welcome that form of collateral security where they are sure to turn down a new invention or a small plot of land. And t will not be only the one small loan that such collateral security will help. If you go to a banker with acceptable collateral he will form a higher opinion of your sense and business discretion, and the next time you ask for a loan he will be more willing to accommodate you. And willingness on his part may mean less collateral or lower interest rates on yours.

3. It will not decline radically or suddenly in price and frighten the wits out of investors. Of course, if this country is obliged to raise ten or twenty billion dollars more, the Liberty Loan bonds will not sell at 100 per cent.; nor will any other bonds, for that matter. But government bonds never suffer the way other investments do. They do not slump all at once. Even in war times any movement is gradual, and in peace times government bonds often rise or fall only 1/32 of 1 per cent. at a time. There is no danger of the traps and pitfalls of market fluctuation that are hidden in other securities.

4. It will familiarize many persons with all manner of partial-payment and instalment purchase plans.

Large Sums Not Needed for Good Investments

PEOPLE will learn that large sums are not needed to buy good investments, and that sound arrangements can be made with banks and employers to acquire the best of securities on easy terms.

5. It will take away much of the mystery that now veils financial operations. Every purchaser of even a $50 bond will be interested in the operations of the government and the banks that handle them. Newspapers have been explaining these subjects in simpler terms than ever before, and in greater detail. A great mass of what has heretofore been considered technical information should now be within the reach of all.

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

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

A number of booklets dealing with small denomination bonds have been prepared by the Committee of the Liberty Loan, of which Mr. John Muir is chairman. This committee has made a special study of partial-payment plans as applied to government bond investment. Copies may be had on application to the Committee, 61 Broadway, New York City.

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.

It is unusual for a financial periodical to interest every day business people. The Bache Review is full of sound common sense, describes the situation clearly and graphically, thereby making the subject of finance interesting to everybody. Issued weekly by J. S. Bache & Co., 42 Broadway, New York. Sent free on request.

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.

The Odd Lot Review, edited by P. M. Whelan, is a weekly financial publication which avoids technical financial terms or explains them when they are used. Copies may be had on application to the offices of the publication, 61 Broadway, New York City.

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.

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.

How Hard We Editors Have to Work

You have no idea what a nerve-racking business this is—editing. Here's H. H. Pease, for instance, a brother editor. His paper is the Times of Beemer,

In the six years that he has been catching roosters, the Nebraska editor has caught 458 fowls, losing only two. Last year he captured a total of eighty-one roosters, which meant an addition of eighty-one subscribers and many renewal to his list.

His family lives on chicken three times a day if they so desire, while the farmers derive considerable pleasure from watching the efforts of the editor to catch their fowls.