It's a Moving Picture World, and the Film Changes Every Few Minutes

IF some one had asked me on a certain day this spring to name three permanent human institutions, I might have answered:

The Papacy: the Bank of England: the Czar of Russia.

Maybe, on consideration, I could have given a better answer; but offhand that sounds fairly reasonable.

At nine o'clock that morning, so far as we knew, the Czar of all the Russias was as firm on his throne as Gibraltar. In my morning paper, at least, there was no slightest hint to the contrary.

And at six o'clock we opened our evening papers to discover him a prisoner, and Russia on the threshold of immediate democracy.

It was the kind of mental shock that is good for us: the war has been full of such shocks.

We have learned from it, in more dramatic fashion than ever before, this very necessary truth—that nothing is fixed, nothing is sure, nothing is changeless, in this whole wide world.

A man told me the other day about a conversation he once held with Jay Gould.

Gould got up from his desk, walked over to the wall, and, pointing to a map of the United States, put his finger on the Missouri Pacific Railroad.

"There," he said, "is the finest railroad property in the United States."

That conversation took place only about a quarter of a century ago. A few weeks ago the common stock of the Missouri Pacific sold down to something like four dollars, and the holders of it paid an assessment of fifty dollars a share to rehabilitate the road.

So confident were the shrewd investors of New England in the everlasting prosperity of the New York, New Haven & Hartford that they invested the funds of widows and orphans and institutions in its stock. Ten years ago there was not a banker in the United States who would have believed that stock could ever crumble away.

But the impossible happened: the change came.

Suppose a man graduating from college at any time in the past twenty-five years had wanted to pick out an absolutely safe profession,—one into which no unexpected change could possibly enter,—what profession would he have chosen?

Teaching in a college or university, probably.

University professors are almost never discharged: they are sure of work as long as children continue to be born into the world; and in old age they are taken care of by Carnegie pensions.

So he might have argued to himself.

And, behold, there comes a world war, taking away from a quarter to two thirds of the students of our colleges with their tuition fees. And dozens of institutions to-day do not know where the salaries of their professors are to come from in 1918.

When Darwin was making his studies in evolution, working out the law by which lower forms changed through the ages into higher, he came across certain forms of life that, for some reason or other, had been incapable of change:

Their environment shifted, but they failed to adapt themselves to the new environment.

So the tide of progress moved on and left them, stranded wrecks on the shore.

The business world is full of men of that sort. They say to themselves: "I know this job well enough to hold it the rest of my life. I can afford to take things a little easier. Nothing can happen now to change my life."

So, gradually, they lose the power of adaptation, which is the power of growth.

They are perfectly typified by the man described in the Bible, who said to his soul:

"Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years: take thine ease."

That night he died.

The one change which he had not foreseen came to him—and found him unprepared.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE HIGHROAD

By JOHN FLEMING WILSON

Illustrations by Gerald Leake

THE Virginia Capes were hidden by fog; and two men, standing on the deserted wharf at Old Point Comfort, listened to the staccato of the bells of invisible ships at anchor, the plangent blasts of steamers hunting their way up-channel, and occasionally nodded to each other as if they heard familiar voices.

The elder of the two presently indicated a shadow materializing in the obscurity, and his companion blinked at it, twisting his full lips under his ruddy mustache.

"A mine-planter," he remarked.

The shadow drifted, in toward them, slipped up with the tide, and vanished again, slinking about her deadly drudgery.

"That won't help us," the elder responded, with a note of distress in his voice. "I—I don't know what to do about all that cotton, Captain." He brushed his thin beard with a nervous hand. "It seems to lie with you and me whether the folks up country lose their all or not; and I'm bound to say they look to me to see them safe."

The other shot a keen glance into the murk, lifted one eyebrow in an habitual fashion, and said quietly:

"I guess a lot of people look to you, Colonel Lavallette. And this has been a hard two years."

"It has been hard," the Colonel admitted. "And when cotton dropped last month I saw a chance for all of us to pull through. I told them all to bring their money and buy cotton. Why not? I had the vessel to ship it on, I knew who would buy it in England, and there was a profit in sight of nearly a quarter of a million. You know," the elder man went on gently, "no kin of mine has ever been really well off in two generations—except me. I made a little. But they always looked to me sometime to pull the family through. I thought I had." He smiled. A schooner edging up with the tide sounded her air horn plaintively. "D'ye mind Mis' Emily's girl Mary, Captain Lloyd?"

"She's a kind of invalid, isn't she, Colonel?"

"Yes. Mis' Emily has been saving for fifteen years, so that when she's gone Mary can be looked after. Mis' Emily's money is on your ship."

CAPTAIN LLOYD seemed to muse, now and then emitting a strong exhalation as if his lungs could not fill themselves. But he said nothing.

"Then I gave my note of hand to old Major Eaton for twenty thousand dollars," the Colonel continued. "Major Eaton has a great regard for my business ability. When I pay the note he's going to send his boy to an electrical engineering school and set him up in business. Nice lad, young Eaton."

In a blunt, seamanlike voice the Captain responded:

"I guess if the Harley Wells doesn't arrive in Liverpool with the cargo she's got under decks, Colonel Lavallette and all his connections go to the wall."

"I hate to admit it," was the quiet reply. "It's the truth."

"The American government doesn't recognize that blockade," Lloyd suggested.

"It doesn't," said the Colonel. "The Harley Wells, as an American vessel carrying American goods for the profit of American citizens, is entitled to sail. And yet, Captain, as owner of the vessel I hesitate to order you to steam for Liverpool."

Lloyd nodded. "I appreciate your point, sir. We can let the ship lie to an anchor, and you and your friends will go broke; or I can take her to sea and do the best I can to get the cargo to market."

"That is part of the case," Colonel Lavallette answered, with some hesitation. "I have no assurance that you will not be torpedoed without warning. You are a married man and have a family dependent on you."

"I have," said the Captain. "But I am a seaman; I know no other business. My living depends on my taking ships to sea and running risks."

"I—I should be unable to provide for your family in case the Harley Wells were lost, sir."

Out of the fog a huge steamer emerged slowly, passed them without a sound, and disappeared.

"The Osterdijk," Lloyd murmured. "Sailed day before yesterday for Rotterdam. Turned back, by George!"

AND then, through the heavy curtain that hid the lower fairway to the sea, came a silent procession of freighters, all deeply laden, with their names spread in great white letters along their sides, with their national flags painted on their bows, and sometimes the name of a neutral country emphasized on long boards hung from their lower bridges. They steamed by like a dripping procession of ghosts.

"Scared!" muttered Captain Lloyd, in a curiously dull tone. "Look at 'em come back from the open sea after just sailing for home. See that Norwegian! Did you count the Hollanders?" The Captain drew a long breath. "Think of 'em, getting the wireless out there and turning back to run for shelter! I tell you, Colonel, there's something doing out there." He waved his hand vaguely toward the veiled sea.

Still another steamer fled in through the almost impenetrable mist, as if blindly intent on refuge from the unseen terror that haunted the Atlantic. At sight of her and the glaring flag painted on her flanks, Colonel Lavallette lifted his head.

"I shall let the Harley Wells berth and discharge her cargo, Captain. I can save

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my partners a little by doing that. I sha'n't consider sending ship and friend of mine to destruction."

Lloyd turned his head slightly toward the old man.

"And go broke yourself, sir? You'd lose even the steamer if you did that."

"What's a steamer to sending men to their death?" replied the Colonel in a firm voice.

Lloyd shook his head. "I'm master of the Harley Wells," he returned. "She's loaded out there with all a lot of Americans have in the world. She goes to sea this afternoon, sir. I cleared her for British ports yesterday."

He pulled his coat collar up about his big neck, and took a step toward the edge of the wharf.

"Wait," said the Colonel. "I'll go with you."

Captain Lloyd stopped and stared. He saw a faint flush illumine the old man's face.

"There's no fit quarters for you, sir," he remonstrated.

"I'll go," the Colonel answered firmly. "I've done all I can do here. The rest lies out there; and I'm going."

Carefully Lloyd said the brutal thing. Lavallette took the blow with a quiver.

"I know I'm old and in the way," he said. "But somebody has got to go, Captain. Somebody's got to keep the highroad open."

Captain Lloyd made a little final gesture.

"I can't wait for you to go home and pack up, sir. I've got to sail before sunset. Like as not they'll be closing the port after dark."

"Come on," said the old man. "We'll go now."

HALF an hour later a gasolene launch bumped alongside the deeply laden Harley Wells, and placed Captain Lloyd and his owner aboard. The chief officer leaned over the bridge-rail and stared down on them.

"Ring the engines, Mr. Seymor," Lloyd called to him. "Get the anchor on its way in."

"Newport News and the mud, sir?" the mate drawled.

"Liverpool," was the curt reply.

Mr. Seymor winked both eyes twice. His tone was unchanged.

"The bos'n is overside painting the American flag," he remarked. "I fancy he's not got all the stars in it yet."

His hand slipped behind him, and in the sullen depths of the freighter a gong crashed and rippled. Forward a shrill bell sounded imperiously, calling men to work. Blue-trousered and oil-jacketed seamen came out, pulling sou'westers over their ears and fumbling with buttons. The mate vanished.

"Come to my room, sir," said Lloyd, and led the way to the solidly built house abaft the wheel-house. He flung open the door and dived in, thrust his bare head out, and beckoned. Colonel Lavallette obeyed and entered.

"Make yourself at home," Lloyd said hastily. "I'll be off now, and get busy."

When he had changed into heavy clothes and cocked a brass-bound cap on his head, the Captain departed, humming. The Colonel watched him go, and then sedately sat down on the long lounge and leaned back with a serene and complacent air. He closed his eyes, his white hands clasped loosely between his angular knees. Outside the fog settled softly against the round air-ports, thickening, curdling, till the light in the cabin became dim and ghostly. But the old man did not stir.

Presently the engine-room gongs clanged again; a muffled cry from forward announced that the anchor was clear of the ground. A slight, almost imperceptible tremor went through the ship, increasing gradually into a steady throb. A signal halliard began to flap incessantly against the stays, a glass above the desk began to sing slenderly.

The Colonel opened his eyes. The Harley Wells had begun her voyage. He stared at a photograph pinned to the wall. It was a portrait of Captain Lloyd's wife. The old man closed his eyes again, as widowers do at the bright flash of memory.

Mr. Seymor, having seen to the stowing of the anchor, came to the bridge and joined his superior. Together and in silence they peered into the fog that flowed, eddied, and swirled about the steamer. A lighthouse, crouched knee- deep in brine, lifted its voice and hooted at them; an invisible buoy sucked in its breath and sobbed; a fumbling schooner blared sharply and her traveler block chuckled drunkenly out of the murk. Then, with shrill blasts of her whistle, a belated Dominion liner swept out of the blank gray, veered civilly to give the Harley Wells plenty of room, and swished on, calling for a clear road up the channel.

Mr. Seymor opened his firm lips for a single remark:

"They hoisted nor'west storm signals at Fortress Monroe just as we left, sir."

Lloyd nodded, and then said:

"She's loaded pretty deep this voyage, Mr. Seymor. It'll be a wet trip."

The chief mate snorted, as much as to say that he expected it.

"And nobody's done a tap to those bow-plates yet, sir."

FOR a few minutes the two men drew close together, their eyes set ahead, their voices rising and falling, while they discussed petty ship's business. Finally the Captain remarked:

"Tell your wife good-by yesterday?"

Mr. Seymor squinted thoughtfully and nodded toward a fishing-boat ding-donging affrightedly.

"Lucky for me I did. I didn't let on we mightn't sail a while yet. Best not to raise false hopes."

"I've got to send a wireless to my missus," Lloyd responded. "Always do, you know. Better send one yourself."

The mate dug a hand into his pocket for his pipe.

"What'll I say, sir?"

Captain Lloyd considered this question, and seemed to formulate fitting messages in his mind. It was a more difficult job than he had imagined. He started to speak several times, and gave it up. By common consent, the two agreed to give over thought of using a modern invention to tell an old story.

And the Harley Wells slipped on, nosing into the rising chop that tossed in the fog like water boiling in a pan.

Mr. Seymor retired to the chart-room and laboriously made out his fire and boat drill list, smudging the carbon copy with an uneasy thumb. A capable quartermaster set about examining the lights, testing the switches, and peering upward to see whether the masthead lights shone properly.

"Cres of old-timers, sir," remarked Mr. Seymor, after he had finished his writing.

"Who's that bos'n?" Lloyd demanded.

"Proper shellback," the mate returned. "Got discharges for forty years."

"By the way, Mr. Seymor," the Captain went on, "Colonel Lavallette is making the voyage with us. I'll let him have my room."

"The Colonel!" the mate exclaimed. "Now why—"

Lloyd waited till the steamer's whistle had given its due warning, and answered:

"All he has in the world is stowed under our hatches."

"Well," said Mr. Seymor, "I hope we have a good slant."

"You will have plenty to do this trip, Mr. Farr."

"I expect so," was the answer, "what with changing the course every watch, and hunting the holes in the blockade."

"The government has refused to acknowledge the German blockade," Lloyd responded calmly. "We shall take the usual course direct."

Mr. Farr's lips grew a trifle thinner, but he confined his expression of opinion to a curt "It will shorten the voyage, sir."

His commander seemed to feel a double meaning in this, and was on the point of answering it; but a series of hoarse blasts ahead took his attention, and no more was said till the Harley Wells had slogged by a big gray Norwegian freighter sounding her way inside the Capes.

"She sailed a week ago," Lloyd remarked. "They've had news out there."

The second mate nodded.

"Getting dark," he muttered. "Going to be a dirty night."

"It will blow from the nor'west," Lloyd returned. "That will clear away this fog."

Even as he spoke the air sharpened and the sea opened up before them as the vast curtain of mist was drawn up. Far to the south a single light glowed, winked, and went out. The fog settled down again, and then vanished before the onrush of the freshening gale. The steamer drew ahead more swiftly as the engines answered the signal for full speed.

Captain Lloyd turned and stared back over his ship, seeing each gray boat in the davits, the ventilator-cowls dressed like soldiers with their faces to the wind, the dull glow of the lighted engine-room skylight, the two ruddy ports in the after wheel-house. He sighed and set the course for the night, writing his blunt sentences in the order book by the dim radiance of a pocket lantern.

WHEN he entered his cabin he found Colonel Lavallette still seated on the lounge, white hands lying on his sharp knees, his old, finely wrinkled face calm and impassive.

"You'll have to make out with my wet- weather clothes," Lloyd remarked respectfully, "seeing you came aboard without your bags."

The Colonel gave his companion a single placid glance.

"I put my bags aboard two days ago," he said briefly. "The steward has them."

The Captain stared. Then he bent himself in embarrassment over his desk.

"I'd ha' taken her to Liverpool," he murmured.

The old man looked at the big, rounded back of his shipmaster, and straightened his own shoulders slightly.

"I've been sending my ships to sea for forty years," he responded. "My captains have always gone—and come back. I went to Washington last week to see about a convoy, and I found they depended on us to keep the road open ourselves. When, I was in the army, sir, I went with my regiment into battle."

Lloyd turned and nodded. "There's no need, sir."

Colonel Lavallette met his eyes haughtily.

"I informed Mis' Emily that her money was safe, sir. I held myself personally responsible that her daughter Mary should never be in want. The question is not an open one, sir."

"I believe your side lost during the late war," Captain Lloyd said in a curiously dry voice.

The Colonel scowled.

"The government sha'n't lose this time," he answered tartly. "I have waited almost a life-time, sir, to show the people in Washington that the men who fought for the Confederacy are never beaten. And I intend to see the Harley Wells safe in Liverpool, sir, blockade or no blockade."

"Couldn't you trust your Northern skipper?" Lloyd asked.

The Colonel smiled benignly. "We are together, sir," he said.

AS if all had been said, there was no more mention among the officers of the steamer of the perils of submarines and mines. The Harley Wells was simply a heavily laden freighter,, drudging her way across the wintry Atlantic, meeting the innumerable small vicissitudes of a voyage, turning dusty, sooty coal continuously into miles gained through the blank sea, always yielding to the caprice of the element she traveled, and always headed on her course; struggling noisily and vaguely; wearing down the finite endurance of the men who commanded her, and yet marking each day two hundred miles of casting. Day by day she proclaimed in her own language that she was old and too deeply laden. And Captain Lloyd paid no attention to her whining, but marked the parallels of longitude with a blunt pencil as they were crossed.

"The longest distance is behind us," he remarked to Mr. Seymor one blowy night.

"The glass is going down in a way I don't fancy," the mate made answer. "She's done pretty well, but there's a lurch and a kick to her I don't like. If it

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comes on to blow hard, we shall have our hands full."

"She's weathered the worst this part of the world has to offer for twenty years now," Lloyd responded curtly. "But the Harley Wells is too old for this kind of work. Coast and Gulf is her place now. Those plates for'a'd—"

A shrill blast of wind swept far above them, making the stars flicker. The steamer rolled heavily, caught the flank of a swell, and ripped it into shining foam. The spray hailed against the bridge-dodgers and hissed on the funnel. Far to the south a faint glow told of heat lightning. The two men instinctively glanced to the north.

"We'll run out of it, maybe," Lloyd remarked.

Mr. Seymor laughed contemptuously, as if he were suddenly overtaken with a conviction of the silliness of men who counted their profits under the eye of God.

"Such things have happened," he said.

But by morning the crew of the Harley Wells were made aware that they were to have battle with other powers than those of vociferous governments. The barometer was falling lower and lower, with occasional upward leaps that told of aërial turmoil.

THE sea had got up slowly and sullenly, coming out of the north with an onrush, burying the bows of the freighter in angry spume, lapping her black bulwarks and choking the thundering propeller into silence. The vessel's gait became slower and slower. Her boilers hummed and her fires roared as the black watch strove to give her power to overcome the steadily increasing thrust of the storm. Yet she fell behind, lifting her bows sluggishly out of the smothering brine, hammering them down again as if to break her way through, rolling uneasily, stiffening at times till her commander hung to the quivering rail, tight-lipped.

In the forward alleyway the crew huddled about the old bos'n, waiting to be summoned to their work.

At last Captain Lloyd said simply: "It's going to blow like the devil."

Mr. Farr heard, and scanned a sun-dog critically. Mr. Seymor stopped on his way about the ship, and made an entry in the log. When he had shut the book and shoved it back under the shelf, he stood a moment behind his superior and studied the seas that were rushing aboard with growing violence. His keen eyes caught the yield of a cargo boom in its crutches, and he blew his whistle.

The bos'n showed himself forward, stared up, and interpreted the mate's gesture. A couple of men ran out in response to an unheard call, and rushed for the guys. They had no sooner reached the pin-rail than the deck filled, and a faint shout rose from them—a hoarse exclamation of anger that they should be assailed in the performance of their duty.

The water slumped overside, and the bos'n scurried about and cast a new lashing over the wavering spar. In a jiffy the job was done, and the men ran back, diving under the break of the forecastle as a hundred tons of water swept down.

"I don't like to think of those plates that are buckled," said the mate in Lloyd's ear. "With this hammering they're like to give."

"Can't help it—keep an eye out!" the Captain cried back.

Mr. Farr sidled along the tilting bridge and offered reassurance.

"It'll only fill the forepeak," he remarked. "I had a look at that bulkhead myself. And there's a thousand tons of cotton stowed against it."

"That's it—cotton," Captain Lloyd said savagely. "I've been shipmates with cotton before."

"Oh, well," answered the second mate. "If you insist on being discouraged!"

He went back to leeward with little skipping steps as the steamer lurched over. Behind the dodger, he smiled to himself bitterly.

"They're all sick of the sea and daren't say so," he muttered to himself. "They blame it on cotton!"

But Colonel Lavallette and Captain Lloyd spoke briefly and to the point down in the big cabin, where a breakfast tray slid back and forth on the rug with erratic jerkings that rocked a rotund cream pitcher.

"Two plates for'a'd are leaking," the Captain said. "The pumps can't keep the forepeak free. The bulkhead is all right, mostly. It's braced with cotton."

The Colonel frowned.

"I never like to think of wet cotton," he murmured.

"It's stowed all right," was the reply. "But the leak will put us by the head. That means the ship will make bad weather of this."

"Decks tight?"

"So far," Lloyd answered curtly. "The seas are beginning to strain her, though."

"An old packet," the Colonel said quietly.

The Captain seemed touched on a tender point.

"She'll do," he responded, with a tightening of the muscles in his cheeks. "What I was thinking of was—"

They met each other's eyes and were silent.

SO the day wore on. At noon Captain Lloyd pursed his lips over the figures for the twenty-four hours, and shook his head. The Harley Wells was down to work at last. Her funnel spouted heavy smoke that even the gale could not dilute; the engines were using the last pound of steam her roaring boilers could supply; and yet she was barely holding up on her course.

At times her sinking bows would swerve slowly and refuse to meet the onset of the sea. These times Mr. Seymor would stop about his work and swear softly. He paid constant visits to the wheel-house aft, where he would peer at the drumming rudder quadrants and glower at the greasy water-tender on duty over the sputtering steering engine.

That night the steamer's forepeak filled, and the old bos'n brought his men into the alleyway on the port side of the engine-house.

"She can't stand up to this any longer," Captain Lloyd said in the chart-room.

"Humph!" said Mr. Seymor. "What'll you do?"

"The best we can till this gale quits," was the answer.

"If it quits in time," the mate remarked. "We're a submarine now. And if the for'a'd deck should open or a hatch be torn off—well!"

"I've thought of that," Lloyd replied quietly. "Make sure that everything is all right, Mr. Seymor."

MR. FARR, clinging to his perch far up on the flying-bridge, watched Mr. Seymor and a dozen men rush forth in the intermittent moonlight, and struggle waist-deep in water over ventilator-cowls and hatch, and did his best to direct the wheelsman so that the Harley Wells would give the desperate men a chance. But Mr. Farr seemed secretly resigned. His thin face had an acrid expression of distaste for the whole affair. Even when he saw the men return to safety, he did not answer Lloyd's ejaculation of relief.

His prescience was justified when a sea came aboard an hour later, and departed only after smashing the bulwarks and ripping a long sliver of soft steel out of the starboard waterway. The canvas tarpaulin over Number One hatch was gone, and an oblong gap waited for the next sea.

"Lucky it's moonlight," Mr. Farr remarked to the shrilling blast of the wind. "There they go!"

Headed by Mr. Seymor, half a dozen men ran out from the alleyway, dragging a roll of canvas with them. Behind them the bos'n and another man hauled by a rope a wooden hatch-cover, to replace the one that was gone.

"They'll make it!" Captain Lloyd cried.

BUT the Harley Wells had been caught by a twisting surge under her counter just as a whooping comber rose out of the spindrift. ahead. Her sodden bows sank instead of rising.

Lloyd pulled the whistle lever, and a warning blast bellowed out. Mr. Seymor waved his arms, stumbled, and appeared to be driving his men back to shelter.

But Mr. Farr had been right. The sea mounted over the bows and rushed in an unbroken mass straight at the scrambling men. It overtook them and swallowed them up. They vanished utterly, and Captain Lloyd and Mr. Farr grasped stanchions and curled their legs around steel rails and held on. The sea licked upward, broke, and buried them.

The moon shone through the cloud wrack and illumined the swamped vessel. Mr. Farr, finding himself still alive and with planks under his feet, stared upward into the refulgence, and saw it as through a prism, because of the water in his eyes. He winked and shook himself. Then he darted his head over the bent rail of the bridge, and scanned the torn, empty deck.

A glance sufficed. He twisted and looked aft. Boats, awning stanchions, ventilator-cowls, and sun-decks were gone completely. The Harley Wells had been swept clean.

A heavy hand struck his shoulder. It was Captain Lloyd.

"The mate and his watch are gone," he croaked. "Get what men you can and stop that hole for'a'd."

The second mate stared down at the half submerged hulk, and shook his head.

"She'll founder in a minute," he said. And, having thus predicted the event, he swung himself off the bridge by a dangling rail, dropped to the deck below, and vanished.

THE Harley Wells survived the night. The sea, having done the supreme thing, and being foiled by the accident of the indomitable perseverance of overworked and weary men, ceased to attack them. The gale blew itself out in a wild glory of sunrise, and left the steamer to wallow amid hills and valleys, fuming blackly to the sky, bellowing with the agony of straining boilers and rushing pumps, now and then yielding a human cry as her depleted crew toiled about their labor of restoration.

"Too bad about Seymor," Lloyd remarked to the old gentleman seated stiffly in the sodden cabin. "His family, you know."

"Where?" Colonel Lavallette rasped.

"Camden," Lloyd answered. "I better write his wife a letter." He fumbled among the damp papers in his desk. "I have the address somewhere."

"What will you say?" demanded the old man.

"Say?" repeated Lloyd. He considered what he should write as a fit close to Mr. Seymor's career. He frowned slightly. "There's nothing else to do," he went on. "I must be plain. The shorter the better," he concluded.

"You'll mail it in Liverpool?"

"In two weeks," was the reply.

So the Harley Wells continued her slow voyage, steering wildly because of her deep bows, but each day leaving a hundred and fifty miles behind her. She was

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alone in her misery. No other vessels came up over the sea-line to view her desolation or to ask how she fared. Her wireless, awkwardly repaired, was quiet.

The Atlantic was deserted.

"We wouldn't know if there was war," the Colonel remarked one day.

"No," Lloyd answered. "We'll not get the news till we reach the English coast."

Later Mr. Farr remarked on the strangeness of meeting no craft. "Not even an Allied cruiser scouting," he said.

His commander attempted an explanation:

"Most vessels are keeping out of the regular lanes. We're sticking to them."

"H-m-m," responded Mr. Farr contemplatively. "I'll bet we will have all our trouble for nothing."

But the growing strain became torturing as the days passed and the Harley Wells drew up to the dark line on the chart which Germany had marked as the bounds beyond which none go safely. The horizon was always clear. The wireless heard nothing. The operators gave as their opinion that none dared use the radio.

"Anyway, we sha'n't need it," said Lloyd, and ordered it dismantled.

"Somebody might send us orders," Mr. Farr remonstrated. "And we wouldn't pick them up."

"Our orders are for Liverpool," the Captain replied curtly.

IT was a fine, rather misty night when the steamer nosed her way into the barred zone. Mr. Farr stared at the chart and shook his head. Captain Lloyd went down and informed his owner.

Colonel Lavallette lifted his bright eyes and nodded in silence. He maintained his invariable attitude, seated on the lounge with hands folded loosely between his knees. He seemed—so Lloyd thought—to be waiting with infinite patience for something to happen. There was a certainty in his manner that spoke of decision and resignation.

"Another three days and we'll be safe," Lloyd muttered to himself.

The second day within the zone passed. Nothing was seen till midnight. Then Mr. Farr came down from the bridge and called his commander. Together they went up and peered over the rail.

"One of them," said Mr. Farr.

Captain Lloyd stared down at the oily patch heaving in the moonlight, and sighed. The Harley Wells was lit from a dozen ports; her masthead and side lights gleamed brightly. Mr. Farr threw some switches in the chart-room, and the steamer became a part of the darkness.

"No," said Captain Lloyd, and turned the circuits on.

"But—" said Mr. Farr.

"We have a right to be here," was the answer. "I've sailed this course for thirty years. It's against the law to run with lights out."

Mr. Farr smiled cynically, and his eyes traveled back to the oily patch that glimmered silkenly astern.

The dawn came slowly and with a bite in the air. The sky grew overcast, and a little white showed here and there on the waves.

"We'll be in to-morrow," said Captain Lloyd.

But Mr. Farr, leaning out over the bridge-rail, did not answer. His eyes were fixed on a queer ripple through the water to port. It slithered on directly toward the low flank of the steamer. Satisfied, he drew swiftly back and cried out:

"They've got us!"

THE torpedo struck just forward of the bridge-deck as the Harley Wells rolled deeply to port. A column of water shot up; there was a thud that boomed along every beam and plate; a triangle of decking spouted fanwise, and Mr. Farr, caught in the downrush of the geyser, vanished.

Captain Lloyd brought himself up on the edge of the wrecked bridge and stared down. A few gray bales of cotton bobbed in the swirl. The steamer surged on.

Back at the engine-room telegraph, Lloyd thrust it over to "Stand By," then back to "Full Speed Ahead." Answering clangs announced that all was well below.

A seamed and wrinkled visage was upturned, and Lloyd added calmly, "Bos'n."

"East by no'th half no'th, sir."

"Keep her so," said the Captain.

The steamer rolled again, and a few more heavy bales swept out of the gap in her side and floated by. But that was all.

Down in the cabin, Captain Lloyd told his news.

"She was deep in the water on that side when the torpedo struck," he explained to the Colonel. "So it didn't hit her vitally. Lost a few bales of cotton that were stowed in the 'tween-decks."

"And Mr. Farr, you say—" queried the old man, moving his clasped hands a little on his knees.

"I've got to write another letter," Lloyd answered. "He was going to be married. I must tell his mother."

"I would have given that young man a ship in time," said the Colonel mildly.

The Captain drew out a soiled book from a pigeonhole and made an entry.

"Mother lives in Colorado," he remarked. "I'll mail the letter in Liverpool. I wonder if she's—"

He shook his head as if to abolish foolish surmise as to whether Mrs. Farr was able to live lacking her bread-winner.

"That submarine fetched away the flag painted on the port side," he murmured. "Must get the bos'n to paint a new one."

That night a single white beam of dazzling light shot across the dark sea and picked out the Harley Wells. Stolidly Captain Lloyd acknowledged it by ringing his engines to standstill. A small destroyer silently drove alongside, and an indistinguishable figure on the bridge interrogated him sharply. Briefly the news was given.

"Coming aboard," said the voice.

Over the steamer's papers the young, worried-looking officer shot shrewd eyes. Then he scanned the face of the Captain. But he seemed astonished to see the old man on the lounge.

"Hah!" he said, when Lloyd had explained that Colonel Lavallette was the owner of ship and cargo. "All right, sir!"

With a few brief directions the officer departed. The destroyer departed, snapping off her searchlight, and the freighter resumed her laborious course.

No more alarms disturbed the night, and the next morning Captain Lloyd ordered soundings to be taken. The horizon was still empty. He nodded with satisfaction at the leadsman's cry. The east was thickening, shadow of the land.

"We're all right now," thought Lloyd, rubbing his burning eyes. "I'll be able to sleep to-morrow."

BUT in mid-afternoon the old steamer shook to the impact of a four-inch shell exploding in her cargo. A submarine slipped along a mile distant.

"That means fire in the cotton," said Lloyd to his much promoted third mate.

"There they go again," said that worthy savagely.

A second shell whistled above them and to seaward.

The bos'n stuck his head over the temporary bulwarks hastily built above the gap the torpedo had made. He scrambled up out of the swinging chair in which he had been working overside; and cursed loudly.

"That shot spilled a whole bucket of paint,'" he growled. "And I still got all the stars to put in the flag. He went off, without a glance at the submarine, for more material.

A third shell banged through the funnel, and exploded in the air harmlessly. A fourth into the cargo. A wisp of brown vapor eddied through a crack in the deck.

"They'll get us!" croaked the mate.

But his commander pointed to a blob of smoke on the horizon, and shook his head. Even as he did so the submarine slowly sank from sight. For a long five minutes Lloyd stared overside for sight of a torpedo. None came. He turned to see the bos'n standing respectfully before him, paint-bucket in hand.

"How many stars in our flag, sir?" he inquired. "I want to do the job right."

The Captain stared at him, and then broke out harshly:

"Put 'em all in, you fool!"

"That's what I was wanting to do, sir," said the old sailor. "I didn't want to leave any of 'em out."

A new figure appeared on the bridge for the first time.

"I smell cotton burning," snapped Colonel Lavallette.

"And we'll be in port in sixteen hours, with plenty of help," returned Lloyd "There conies a British cruiser now."

In an hour a businesslike but sympathetic lieutenant was quitting the smoky deck of the Harley Wells.

"I'll see that you have assistance in a couple of hours," he called back from his launch. "You're all right now."

He turned to a companion and lowered his voice.

"Silly old tub to be lucky enough to run the zone," he said. "Pure luck, of course. Trust a Yankee to do his best when it's a million dollars in his pocket!"

The launch shot away. The bos'n, sitting in his little chair wielding his brush with judgment, added a forty-ninth star to the field in glaring white. "That job is done," he croaked, and gazed at his work with satisfaction. Beneath him a wave, lit by the pale radiance of the declining sun, reflected for a moment the American emblem.

High on the bridge, eyes smarting from the acrid fumes of the smoldering cargo, Captain Lloyd studied over in his mind what he should say in his letters to Mrs. Seymor and Mrs. Farr.

"I think I'll just say they did their work like good men," he thought: "Now, if they were soldiers or navy men, there'd be more to say. Being only American seamen, I suppose their women-folk will understand when I say they helped get the ship towards port."

He sighed heavily.

THE sun set, and a faint haze over the bows darkened into a solid shadow. The Harley Wells steamed on along the deserted highroad, her bright lights shining defiantly across the unlit sea.

Colonel Lavallette sat on the lounge in the Captain's cabin, his white hands loosely folded on his angular knees; and his old, serene face obscurely illumined by an expression of triumph. Lloyd, dropping down for a fill of his pipe, interpreted that look to mean that Miss Emily's sick daughter Mary was provided for; that back in the United States there should be no dearth in the homes of the Colonel's kinfolk.

He yielded for a moment to a feeling of seamanlike pride that the Harvey Wells had saved her owner's honor.

How My Insurance Policy Made Me

WHEN I was a girl just out of school, and making only four hundred dollars a year in a small school, one of my former teachers came to me and insisted that I take out a thousand dollar endowment policy. The very idea seemed absurd to me at the time, for the payments would take one eighth of my yearly salary. My friend insisted, saying how thankful I would be at the end of twenty years, when the thousand dollars would be paid back to me. Twenty years looked like a life-time to me then, but I finally consented to take out the policy. The first year or two the payments were a great burden; but as time passed I began to take them as a matter no more to be worried over than my board bill.

After I had been paying on my policy about three years I secured a more lucrative position; but I was not satisfied. Many of the women with whom I came in contact seemed to be getting so much more out of life than I was. Their work was lighter and their pay better. Many of them had traveled aid had seen much of the world.

The crisis of my life came one afternoon after I went to a meeting of our Magazine Club. A timid little woman had given a talk on English cathedrals. I learned that I was one of the few members of the club who had not seen those cathedrals. I left the meeting in a very gloomy mood, thinking how little I had seen of the world.

I was boarding at the time in the home of the principal of my school. I walked into the sitting-room that afternoon, and dropped listlessly into a chair.

"Well, how was the Magazine Club this afternoon?" he asked, putting down his book.

"It was very interesting," I answered. "They talked about the English cathedrals. Do you know, almost every woman in that club has seen those cathedrals except me. Oh, I do so want to go abroad! But I suppose I shall never be able to save enough money."

There was a moment's pause, and then the principal said: "Haven't you an insurance policy?"

I gasped out an astonished "Yes." But what in the world did he mean? I could see no connection between insurance policies and English cathedrals.

"I will lend you the money to go abroad," he said. 'Your insurance policy is all the security I want. You can leave that in my hands, with the proper instructions. Then, if you die abroad, my money is safe," he ended laughingly.

"Do you really mean it?" I said. "Then I can study at Oxford and fulfil the dream of my life!"

"Oh! So you want to study too. Then I shall raise your salary when you return, and you can pay back the borrowed money at your leisure during the year."

That was the beginning. I came back from Europe very happy, even with the prospect of having to sacrifice all winter to pay for my trip. The memory of that summer abroad would be with me always, for I dared not hope ever to go again.

But I was mistaken; for that first trip, which was made possible by my insurance policy, was the key that opened the way to many other European trips.

Early the next spring the principal's wife began making preparations to escort a party abroad. Just before time to leave, she came to me in great trouble. She was nervous at the thought of having sole charge of the party, and she wanted me to go with her. She offered to pay my way. I gladly consented to go. When I returned that fall, I felt myself quite an experienced globe-trotter.

The next winter my health failed and I was compelled to give up my work and go West. Again I borrowed money on my insurance to defray my expenses. I didn't worry at all while unable to work, for I knew that if I died all my debts could be paid out of that thousand dollars.

The next summer I was well again. One day some one put the notion into my head of chaperoning parties abroad. That fall, when I returned from Europe, I deposited three hundred dollars in the bank.

Since that day when the little lady talked on English cathedrals, I have been to Europe nine times and to the Orient once. The last three trips were made in one year. Of course, I gave up my school work during the time. When I returned at the outbreak 'of the war, I deposited twenty-nine hundred dollars in the bank, which was a net profit after all my personal expenses of the year had been paid. Besides this, I had saved six thousand dollars from my other trips. And I am earning now at teaching more than twice as much as I earned before I made my first trip abroad.

And it all started when I found that I could borrow money on my insurance policy.

THE POWER THAT IS IN US

By H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

IN Boston some years ago there lived a man of forty, an immigrant from southeastern Europe. He could speak English only moderately well, could scarcely read, and had much difficulty in earning a living. He kept a tailor-shop, but the tailoring he did was mostly confined to cleaning, pressing, and repairing garments.

Among his patrons was a friend of mine, an eminent psychologist, who held unusual views regarding the possibilities of mental development. Talking with the tailor, he found him to be an ignorant and somewhat stupid man, but of a kind disposition. He found also that the tailor realized that he was not making as much of his life as he should, and was stirred by vague longings to be of greater service to his fellow men.

To my friend the psychologist it seemed that here was material for an important scientific experiment. He made it a point frequently to drop into the little shop for a few minutes' conversation with its owner. In these talks he deftly used the subtle influence of suggestion to fan to greater intensity the tailor's altruistic aspirations. He lent him books to read, books that made the man long more ardently to render social service. Then he explained that the better educated a man was, the more useful he could make himself; and he promised to help the tailor to become better educated.

"Come to my house to-morrow evening," invited the psychologist, "and I will map out a course of study for you."

Remember that this immigrant tailor read with difficulty, and was markedly deficient in spoken English. But, encouraged by my friend's reassuring words, he plunged earnestly and enthusiastically into the work of self-improvement. Night after night, though perhaps obliged to toil far into the evening at his tailoring, he studied the books recommended to him. Often, before beginning his night's study, he visited my friend in order to discuss some problem in philosophy or sociology or political economy.

The stupidity formerly characteristic of him vanished as by magic. He showed himself the possessor of a really keen intellect. He displayed unsuspected powers of physical endurance. Though he studied late at night, he was always fresh and ready for work the next day.

After a while, at my friend's suggestion, he joined a workingmen's organization, in order to find scope for exercise of the altruistic sentiments that now were almost an obsession with him. In this organization he surprised himself, and surprised all who had formerly known him, by his ability to debate and deal with problems of special importance to the organization.

Tapping Unsuspected Sources

HE was no longer an obscure, inefficient, struggling atom, completely lost to sight in the great mass of humanity: he had become a leader.

Observe how this transformation had been wrought.

There was nothing occult, nothing mysterious about it. An ideal had been set before the tailor; an ardent longing to realize this ideal had been kindled in him; he had been shown the way to realize it, and he had joyfully labored to that end. The impulse to work had been an impulse of intense interest, and under that impulse accomplishment had become

possible. It was as if, simply because of the intensity of his interest, this man had been able to tap hidden, unsuspected sources of power within him.

Now, modern psychologists are coming more and more to the belief that there actually is in all men a fund of latent energy, which the average man uses not at all or uses only on rare occasions, but which, through the instrumentality of ardent and sustained interest, he could habitually use, to his great advantage. In this way the modern psychologist would explain, for example, the amazing vigor of such men as Thomas A. Edison, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Sunday.

Day after day, and for many hours a day, these men have kept at work, with no untoward results. Other men, seemingly of more robust constitution to begin with, have broken down in health by forcing themselves, for even a comparatively short period, to work at, a rate higher than that to which they are accustomed.

Are We All Latent Geniuses?

ON the present theory, their breakdown resulted from their having lacked sufficient real interest in their work. Had they felt for their work the enthusiasm which Mr. Edison, Mr. Roosevelt, and Mr. Sunday feel for theirs, they too could have worked hard without injury. And in their particular fields of endeavor they would have obtained results fairly comparable with the results obtained by these men.

My own belief is that we are all of us potential men of genius, but that most of us fall short in achievement simply because we never attain in relation to our work enough energy-releasing interest to enable us to work to our maximum.

In other words, I believe that the man of genius is no freak in nature, no supernormal being at whom we can only gape in admiring awe. I believe, on the contrary, that the man of genius differs from the ordinary man merely in point of drawing more freely on powers common to all men, and that he should be regarded as an example of achievement possible to all men. Indeed, I deem it justifiable to affirm that, lacking the stimulus of exceptional interest, the man of genius would be and would remain an ordinary man. To take a single case, consider Charles Darwin's experience.

Darwin is rated one of the greatest scientists the world has ever known. His work in natural history, culminating in the doctrine of evolution, has stupendously influenced all subsequent thought. But Darwin as a boy and as a young man showed no remarkable intellectual capacity. In fact, he was accounted almost a dullard, and his love of idling was notorious.

He could not seem to concentrate attention on his school-books, and repeatedly played truant to go roaming in woods and fields, gun in hand. "You care for nothing but dogs, shooting, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family," was his father's bitter prophecy. At the University of Glasgow, where he went to study for a physician's career, it was found that he would not, or could not, do the required work.

"It is no use," Darwin himself confessed, in a letter home. "I hate the work here, and I can not possibly be a physician."

Still, he had to be something. He could not go through life idling away his time. In desperation his father proposed that he become a clergyman. To this Darwin consented, and was transferred to Cambridge University. There he continued to distinguish himself for colossal dislike of work until he became a member of the natural history class of a certain Professor Henslow, who was an enthusiast in his subject.

Luckily for Darwin and for the world, Professor Henslow sent his students outdoors to discover things for themselves.

Here was something in which Darwin, always a lover of outdoor life, could take a real and intense interest. Guided and inspired by Professor Henslow, he hunted eagerly for natural history specimens, collected and classified, read and thought. Soon a real passion for achievement seized him. He longed to know, and he toiled to know, all that he could discover about the ways of nature. In his enthusiasm, he journeyed to far-away regions to add to his collections and increase his knowledge. Thus, exploring, studying, thinking, he gradually arrived at scientific and philosophic truths that won for him a foremost place among the world's scientists.

It is all very well to say, "Oh, but Darwin, of course, must have been born with a special aptitude for the study of natural history!" He possibly was born with such an aptitude. If only because of individual differences in physical constitution, there are bound to be differences in natural fitness for this or that kind of work.

But the point is that, no matter how naturally fitted a man may be for a particular vocation, he will never excel in that vocation, and may not even adopt it, unless and .until his attention is strongly directed to it and his interest in it roused to an extraordinary degree. And, on the other hand, there is reason to suspect that in many cases interest itself actually creates aptitude.

As I write I am reminded of that extraordinary young man, William James Sidis, so much talked about since early boyhood on account of his intellectual precocity.

The Case of Young Sidis

I HAVE known this young man since he was a child. His father is a friend of mine, and I am familiar with the manner of the son's upbringing. Doctor Boris Sidis believes, as I do, that intensity of interest means power of accomplishment. Also that the sooner interest in things worth while is awakened, the greater will be the ease of accomplishment.

In this belief, he began to educate his son while the latter still was toddling around the nursery, scarcely able to walk. As a result, the little fellow, entering public school at the age of six, was able to pass through seven grades in half a year!

There was one subject, however, which greatly troubled him. He could not add, subtract, or divide correctly. He seemed unable to learn even the multiplication table. This being reported to him, Doctor Sidis at once said:

"It is not the boy's fault. The trouble is with his teachers. If William is dull at mathematics, it is because they have not got him sufficiently interested in mathematics."

Forthwith, employing several ingenious devices, he himself started to interest his son in mathematics. What was the result? At eleven years of age the boy delivered before the mathematical club of Harvard University a lecture on the fourth dimension, that most abstruse of mathematical conceptions. And throughout his career as a Harvard undergraduate he excelled in mathematical study.

This shows, you say, that he undoubtedly had a natural aptitude for mathematics, despite his stupidity at the subject when he first went to school. I must confess that I am not at all sure of this. For, excelling in mathematics while in college, he also excelled in astronomy and other subjects. And it now is his intention to take up as his life-work, not mathematics or astronomy, but law. To me this strongly suggests that aptitude is not an indispensable element in achievement.

Achievement the Result of Intense Interest

BUT to return to Darwin. Conceding that Darwin did have an inborn aptitude for the study of natural history, the fact remains that his interest in natural history had to be definitely awakened and profoundly stimulated. This, I repeat, is what we find in the case of all men who achieve.

Lacking intensity of interest, there can be no great achievement. But when intensity of interest is present, behold what happens! Men who have hitherto been idlers, like Darwin, or who have experienced more or less difficulty in buckling down to work steadily, become models of productive industry. If they accomplish far more than the ordinary man, it is equally true that they work far harder than the ordinary man. Often their devotion to work and their ability to work are almost incredible.

Of Bismarck, for example, we know that "his power of work was marvelous. His physical and intellectual vigor seemed inexhaustible." Napoleon busied his mind incessantly with problems of military strategy and civic administration. Mohammed "worked continuously, allowing himself no day of rest." "Nobody," Mozart has recorded of himself, " takes so much pains in the study of composition as I. You could not easily name a famous master in music whom I have not industriously studied, often going through his works several times." Schiller "felt that without diligence no mastery can be won." Asked how he had managed to solve so many scientific problems, Newton answered in words that have become proverbial: "By always thinking about them." So with men of genius in general.

And, hard workers though they have been, these men of genius have not suffered in health as a result of hard work. Nor is this because they began life with powerful physiques. On the opposite, in countless instances men of genius have been conspicuously frail in childhood, boyhood, and even manhood. Yet, oddly enough, the average life-span for the man of genius, notwithstanding his gluttony for work, is considerably longer than the life-span of the ordinary man. All this seems incomprehensible, seems quite inexplicable.

But it no longer seems either incomprehensible or inexplicable if we recognize that all men possess more energy than most men credit themselves with possessing, and that ability to work hard and effectively without undue strain increases in proportion to the interest felt in one's work.

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

ALL ABOUT CANNING

LARGE quantities of fruits and vegetables go to waste every years simply because they are not up to. the special requirements of a canning factory. These ought to be preserved for home use, instead of being allowed to rot in freight-yards and store-houses. The Home and Farm Canning circular of the University of California tells how:

When vegetable matters ferment, decay, or turn sour, it means that certain germs have grown. These belong to the vegetable kingdom, and are divided into molds, yeasts, and bacteria. Their activities cause the molding of jellies, the swelling and souring of canned fruits. and vegetables, and the ptomaines of canned meats.

These "germs" which cause spoiling come from the air. They can not develop from non-living matter. We can kill these germs in two ways: by heat, or by making conditions so unfavorable to the germs that they can not grow. The latter way we accomplish by impregnating meat with so much salt that bacteria can not grow, or by adding so much sugar to jam that yeast can not multiply.

The high temperatures and repeated heatings that must be given to vegetables to kill the bacteria are not only troublesome, but injurious to the flavor. A new method has been discovered. This consists of adding a little acid to the liquid in which they are canned. It was found that peas, heated to 212° F. in a brine acidified by lemon juice, kept perfectly, and had a better flavor than peas heated in brine without the lemon juice.

In the "hot-pack" method, the material is cooked in open pots and poured while hot into the cans, together with hot brine or syrup. The cans are sealed immediately and sterilized. In the "cold-pack" method. the freshly prepared material is placed cold in the cans, then covered with hot syrup or brine, sealed and sterilized. For home use the latter is the better method. Glass jars are preferable to tin cans.

TAKING DICTATION FROM HENRY JAMES

WHEN Henry James wrote his early novels, an adult of average intelligence could understand them. But in later life his style became more and more involved. Every one agreed that it required a stern intellect and strong will to pursue his sentences to the end; but no one knew what had happened. Now his typist, to whom he dictated his latest works, says in the Fortnightly Review that the very habit of dictation had something to do with the fact that, as the years went on, his writing became more like "copious, involved, labyrinthine talk. He himself acknowledged it when he said, 'I tend to be too diffuse when I'm dictating: But it seems to be so much more effectively and unceasingly pulled out of me in speech than in writing.'"

He was so attached to the Remington that his typist divided her struggles between the mechanism of his sentences and the mechanism of his favorite machine. The click of the keys was a positive spur to him. He could hardly write without this responsive sound.

"If he were ill and in bed," says his secretary, "I might take down a note in handwriting; but he preferred to have the typewriter moved into his room."

When he wrote a novel, he first "broke ground" by talking to himself day after day until his characters lived and worked out their destinies. All this preliminary talk his secretary took down on the typewriter. This served as a kind of a scenario. The next dictation was the story itself.

"I was desperately afraid of misspelling the words. he dictated, and was by no means at my ease with the new pattern of Remington machine he had just bought," says the secretary, who had studied stenography only because she had learned that the great author needed a typist. "But his patience during my struggles with the baffling mechanism was unfailing, and he was as easy to spell from as an open dictionary. Years of dictation had apparently taught him that it was unsafe to leave the spelling of any polysyllabic word to chance; and he never left any punctuation-mark unuttered."

WHAT WILL THE WAR DO TO BUSINESS?

WE are still in the period of transition from peace to war, when every one is wondering what will be the effect of the new taxation as against the influence of the government's enormous purchases. The air is full of rumors. We meet a man who has just heard that a certain factory has discharged a thousand, men because the move for war economy has cut down the sale of its product: a second man has heard that the department-stores in Chicago are half empty: a third that the silk business has gone to rack and ruin.

Meanwhile England, having had two years of war and much heavier taxation than we are likely to encounter for some time, is doing business not only "as usual," but, in most lines, better than usual.

"A long list of retail stores in London increased their profits last year," says System.

"Here before us is an abstract of the annual report of the English Velvet and Cord Dyers Association, Ltd., for 1916. Notwithstanding 'the cutting off of dyeing supplies proved a very considerable handicap,' it states, 'the last year has proved the most successful that this association has ever had, and the result is that the shareholders receive the highest dividend in, the history of the company.'

"A similar report from Carreras, Ltd., a tobacco company, shows that its net profits, after an increase from £28,000 in 1914 to £56,000 in 1915, jumped up £39,000 more in 1916.

"The truth is that the war has released dormant, even unsuspected capacities for production in the English people, and as a result millions of them—working-people especially—have more to spend than ever before. It is a characteristic effect of necessity; there are such dormant capacities in every people.

"To avail himself of the new conditions, however, the British business man has had to do two things. First, he has had to make his workers more productive. Second, he has had to adjust his business to the changed demands. That is, instead of insisting that people buy tennis rackets when they want rubber trench boots, he has had to stock the boots."

The lesson for the American business man is plain. He ought to fight, not to maintain conditions as they have been, but to adjust his business to things as they are. And he ought to do it with the "enthusiasm born of a new and stirring opportunity."

HOW FRANCE TRAINS AVIATORS

AN infantryman can be made ready for active service in three or four months; but it takes nine months at least to make an aviator fit to fight in the air.

James R. McConnell describes the training process in his book, Flying for France (Doubleday, Page & Company). Between the writing of his book and its appearance in this country, Sergeant McConnell met his death in an encounter with enemy machines in the air—another name added to the honor roll of Americans who died for France.

"First of all the student is put on what is called a roller. It is a low-powered

machine with very small wings, and no matter how much one might try it could not leave the ground. A student makes a few trips up and down the field and learns to steer with his feet. The slightest mistake will send the machine skidding off to the right or left, and sometimes, if the motor is not stopped in time, over on. its side or back."

From this machine the student passes to another one which travels at a faster rate, but also on the ground, where lie learns to keep the tail at a proper angle by means of the elevating lever, and to make a perfectly straight line. Then comes a machine that will leave the ground, but only for a height of three feet or so.

A dozen or more machines, all of different kinds, are required to complete the educational process: and when the day comes that the flyer is presented with his own fighting machine, he accepts it with the knowledge that, even if nothing happens, the machine will be his for only a couple of months. Fifty hours of flying—an hour a day for fifty days—and then a new machine. write without this responsive sound.

TOLSTOY ON PATRIOTISM

TOLSTOY thought patriotism was stupid and immoral. He said it was stupid because it made every country think itself superior to other countries, and immoral because it made one country take advantage of another. No patriot in the accepted sense, he said, could be a Christian.

"If patriotism is as innate as is generally claimed," said Tolstoy to Francis B. Reeves in Russia Then and Now (G. P. Putnam's Sons), "why do nations go to such trouble in inculcating it?"

When a Frenchman called on Tolstoy to urge a Franco-Russian alliance for protection against Germany, Tolstoy led his visitor into the fields, where they met a peasant. Calling him by name, Tolstoy told him that his guest wanted him and all the Russians to help France fight Germany.

"Fight for what?" asked the peasant. "To get two provinces back," answered Tolstoy, "which France lost a quarter of a century ago."

The peasant stared at the stranger, and finally, turning to Tolstoy, asked: "Is he a fool, or does he think we are fools?"

"Who was the wiser of the two?" asked Tolstoy when he told this- story to Mr. Reeves—"the simple-minded, simply clothed, labor-bronzed, unlettered moujik, or the well fed, well groomed, white-skinned politician, with a silk hat, long coat of latest cut, and patent-leather shoes? That peasant's answer was the voice of the people; the politician's was the serpent's voice. As the peasant spoke, so think the people in their hearts, until the serpent's tongue beguiles them into doing what they would never think of doing were they following the bidding of their conscience."

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WHAT TO DO IN YOUR GARDEN THE FOURTH WEEK IN AUGUST

The information given in these articles is furnished by a research agriculturist at the New Jersey Experiment Station.

PLANT spinach. All your other crops are in the ground: your legumes, that are going to furnish you with protein foods at less expense than the purchase of meat and more efficiently economically (since the "meat" itself must have fed once upon a time on vegetable proteins); your starchy "middle-class" vegetables; and the plants you grow for fun and because you like them, lettuce and celery and tomatoes and the like.

Now you can spend a part of the 'Past week of the second planting in putting into the ground a plant that will give you the food which is, of all fresh fruits or vegetables, the highest in mineral ash.

Dried beans, dried figs, lentils, and dried peas may contain as much or more iron, and several other foods may contain more phosphorus and calcium salts; but spinach is conceded to be the best balanced mineral-containing vegetable. It has a place in every war garden.

Plant the "Savoy". variety of spinach, in rows twelve inches apart, putting the plants into the ground two inches apart in the row, and one half inch deep. Fertilize as for beans, with bone meal or "2-9-1" commercial fertilizer.

Begin this week to dig down and see how your potatoes are getting along. This week or next they should be ready to "lift."

Your beets and carrots should be coming out of the ground. You remember that you: planted them in eighteen-inch rows, two inches apart? Thin them now to about four or five inches apart. Do not be afraid to sacrifice the young shoots to their comrade plants.

Watch your beans, and cultivate them assiduously—but not when the ground is wet. Otherwise you expose them to a dangerous fungus disease known as anthracnose.

If you have planted the "Cos" variety of lettuce, you will have to tie the leaves together, so that the hearts develop properly. Cool-weather varieties will have to be protected from the heat. We warned you not to plant lettuce. It is a pleasant plant, like. Celery, but—again like celery—in food value it is not worth the unusual care it demands.

Keep watering, and, top your lima beans. And you should be able very soon to show your neighbors that, your second crop is a success; that you are an efficient gardener, and that you are doing your bit to the, government fight its food battles.

WILL THERE EVER BE ANOTHER PASSION PLAY?

FROM its population of eighteen hundred, Oberammergau has sent five hundred and fifty men to the trenches. Not a man under forty-five is left. Some of the players have lost an arm or a leg. Others are dead. Anton Lang, whom hundreds of Americans have seen in the part of Christ, has just been drafted as a Bavarian soldier.

"Oberammergau seemed to be going to seed," wrote Madeline Z. Doty in the Atlantic Monthly. "The great wooden structure used as a theater was locked. There were no horses or cows in evidence. In one yard a few carefully guarded ducks quacked, and in another some chickens strutted up and down; otherwise there was no sign of animate life. The little gardens were already dry and barren. In the two small stores there was little for sale. The food supply consisted chiefly of apples, grapes, and green vegetables. Nowhere did I see potatoes, meat, bread, butter, or. cheese. Small portions of these were rationed out on certain days in the week, on the presentation of food cards, but displayed."

In a shop she bought some cakes and sweet chocolate. The German chocolate was nauseating. The Swiss chocolate cost forty-three cents a package. There was only one lump of sugar for lemonade.

The visitors went into a hotel and ordered lunch:

"The house was weirdly still. A young woman came from the kitchen. She was grim and sullen. She seemed loath to give us food. We sat patiently at the table.

"Finally it came—black bread, tea, and marmalade. It was unappetizing. The marmalade was probably made from carrots. Our stomachs were far from satisfied. We begged for an egg. She hesitated.

"'If you have your egg now, you can't have another for a week,' she said. We were reckless. The future seemed remote. We ordered eggs and ate ravenously.

"We pushed back our chairs and went out into the golden sunshine. No one moved about the streets. It was like a village swept by plague and deserted. But the buildings were as before. There were the fascinating, gayly decorated houses, each possessing a unique painting

or design, as though an artist had strayed by and, having no canvas, had used the house-fronts. And, whichever way one turned, there were wooden crosses bearing the image of a suspended Christ. They stood out on the walls of the houses. They occupied crevices and niches. At the town fountain, water flowed from the bleeding hands of a Christ."

Babies in the town were starving for lack of milk.

"Wives are better cared for than mothers," says the writer, speaking of defects in the German organization. "A mother draws a pension only if the son is living at home and supporting the mother at the time he goes to war. Occasionally an increase of a dollar and a half a month goes with every additional son. That is all. Pensions are sometimes not paid.

"Pensions come from two sources, the national government and the town. Oberammergau is bankrupt. It hasn't a penny for pensions. One old woman's total income was six dollars a month from the kingdom of Bavaria for one son. On that she lived. Six sons serving the fatherland—and in return she and her grandchildren were starving."

THE POOR MAN'S WIFE

THE wife of a poor man generally has a more dignified position in the economic scheme than the rich man's wife, says Mary Simkhovitch in The City Worker's World (Macmillan Company). She is the manager of the house. She disburses the family income. Unable to be as economical as those who buy and store in large quantities, she reckons on the basis of spending the weekly wage. Her first reservation is for insurance, the second for rent, the third for food, including lunch and carfare money for her husband: for, if he is a "good husband," he hands over to his wife, on the night that he receives it, the envelop containing his weekly wage. Next come clothing money and provision for other expenses.

Around her the machinery of the family revolves. Without her everything falls to pieces. The mother of the family has no right to die. Her occasional sicknesses are a warning of the demoralization that sets in when she ceases to grasp the wheel The wife of the rich man is often simply a beneficiary of the husband. But in this humbler status the woman's portion, though laborious, is thoroughly dignified. She is recognized as a co-worker on an equal plane in upbuilding the family.

PERILS OF THE DEEP

From Punch

MAKING THE MOST OF CHILDREN

IF people would study their children, the everlasting struggle, to make a boy or girl become something he doesn't want to be would be ended, says Daniel Wolford La Rue in Making the Most of the Children (Educational Book Company). First, study your child's observation. What things excite and please him?

"To a baby, the world must be like a runaway picture show with the machine out of focus. His mother's face, his milk bottle, and a few other objects constitute his little world, and stand out against a background of cloudy confusion. Gradually he discriminates, learns that 'papa' is just one man and not all of them.

"The taking in process of the mind is commonly known as Observation. The splitting-up process may be called Discrimination; the building process, Construction."

The best minds are sort of three-story affairs. They observe, discriminate, and then construct. A keen and imaginative person has a three-story mind, which constructs from a great variety of observations.

"He is the general who can tell what the enemy is doing on the other side of the hill."

All of us have this constructive ability, but in different things. The dyer and artist respond to colors. In the same way, if your girl responds to music, perhaps music will be her career; or if your boy is persistently excited and pleased by a toy steam engine, perhaps he will be an inventor.

"One reason men struggle so painfully into their vocations is, their abilities are not sufficiently probed during youth, Daniel Defoe flitted through a half dozen occupations before he wrote 'Robinson Crusoe.' Cowper failed as a lawyer. Grant was a farmer, tanner, a soldier and statesman. Such wandering experimentation is costly."

What we must do, then, is: "Stretch our child's brain-cells with wonder at the marvels of earth, sea, and sky, stimulate him with such a range of fact that he can not fail to find something to which he will respond."

A Ringer from Bedelia

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by F. Vaux Wilson

IT didn't promise to be a dull summer, at that. But when the Merritys blew in from Bedelia, Colorado, leased the Mott place for the season, and sprung their plans about Jean on us—well, it did speed things up a bit, even with the war and all.

"I think it's perfectly absurd of them, Shorty," says Sadie.

"Yes; they're that kind, bless 'em!" says I, chucklin' easy.

Maybe you don't remember my mentionin' the Merritys before. I don't wonder. It was a long time back, the first year I ran the Physical Culture Studio, and that's almost gettin' into ancient hist'ry, ain't it? Anyway, it seems so to me.

But my meetin' up with Hank and Reney dated further back than that, to the old ring days when I had a trainin' camp just out of Bedelia and not far from Merrity's ranch. We got to be quite chummy that summer, me and Hank, what with havin' our pictures printed together on the sportin' pages 'and Hank winnin' a nice little wad on me when the match come off.

Then there was that time, a few years later, when - they showed up in New York, after Hank's grub-stake interest in the Jayhawker mine had turned out such a winner; and, instead of findin' him wearin' a leather-trimmed hat and his pants tucked into his boot-tops, I discovers that he's had himself tailored like a collar, ad. youth and was takin' a course at a skinologist's. Also, Reney had been up against the beauty doctors until you could hardly tell her from a movie star, and she could look at you through a gold lorgnette as calm as if she'd never juggled crockery behind a railroad lunch-counter.

BUT after a couple of months in Peacock Alley they suddenly quit the game. They'd made the grade all right, and as far as looks went they was the real thing. But they was lonesome.

"Never again!" Hank had told me, then. Yet here he is once more, with a new crop of freckles, his carroty hair a little thin in front, and his belt let out a few notches. He's raised another set of blond lip-whiskers, and has gone back to wearin' one of them biscuit-colored felt hats with a high crown and a six-inch brim. So there's no mistakin' him for anything but an alfalfa delegate.

And Reney she's given up the struggle to keep under a hundred and eighty, or have her hair done like Mrs. Vernon Castle's. Substantial and motherly, Mrs. Merrity looks, with no frills about her whatever. So I'm a little puzzled at this splurge of theirs in takin' a house down on the Point among a lot of swells.

"I thought you'd gone back to the simple life for good," says I. "You're goin' to find it quite a change from Bedelia, you know."

"Oh, yes—some," says Hank. "But then, Bedelia's a lot different from what it was when you were out there, Shorty."

"Don't tell me you got a bank and a trolley line," says I.

"Hank's president of both," puts in Mrs. Merrity. "He's had a term in Congress too, and could have—"

"Now, Reney!" protests Hank. "Let's stick to public improvements. What do you think has become of the old ranch, Shorty?"

"Turned it into a truck garden?"

They smiles at each other.

"It's Ward Five," says Hank, "and has fourteen miles of paved streets. Course, we don't live there any longer. We bought the Judge Bickens house, on Colorado Avenue."

"But we had it all done over," adds Reney, "and put on the sun-room and pergolas, and built the double garage, and laid out our Italian garden. Hank, you must show him those pictures. We think it quite a nice place—for Bedelia."

"Listens like it might be Newport," says I. "What I don't get, though, is why you should leave all that, and your good friends and all your interestin' enemies, and come on East again, to camp down among as frosty a set of near-plutes as you could find anywhere along the Sound. You ain't never meanin' to take another crack at the social game, are you?"

"Not us," says Hank prompt. "Do we look that simple?"

"Then what's the big idea?" I insists.

"It's for Jean," says Mrs. Merrity, sighin' a bit. "You know, the is almost twenty-five now."

"Oh!" says I.

Course, I hadn't seen Jean then; but that smothered sigh and the item about her age told the whole story.

"What's the matter with the local Romeos out there?" says I.

"Gosh!" groans Hank. "There was candidates enough; only none of 'em seemed to last long."

"Somehow," says Mrs. Merrity, "they seemed afraid of Jean."

I got the picture. She'd been sent East to a flossy boardin' school, I remember hearin', when ma and pa was makin' their big splurge here. And the fact that she comes from Bedelia don't throw me off at all. I'd known of cases like that before—young lady highbrows bloomin' in little tank stations where young gents of the first fam'lies still had their hair cut round in the back and the general idea was that a demi-tasse was some kind of a mixed drink.

YOU know how it is out in the mailorder zone. You can have two banks, and maybe a branch bucket-shop, and a Bohemian grill in the basement of the Plaza Hotel, and still fail to qualify with a dame fresh from University Heights or Copley Square—specially when she turns the veranda chat towards those clever things of Lord Dunsany's, or asks what you think of Amy Lowell.

Yes, I could see 'em shyin' off after the first call or so, and then huntin' up some congenial young thing who'd quit botherin' her intellect about the third year of high school, but had learned how to wear her hair over her ears and could tickle the ukelele something grand.

Still, if the Merritys couldn't see that for themselves, who was I, to advise a strange young lady to ditch the deep stuff? I thought I might hint as much later on, if I saw it was goin' to do any good. But now I only shakes my head.

"With most of the young college hicks off trainin' to be colonels and major-generals," says I, "it's apt to be a poor season for midsummer romances."

"I'm afraid you don't understand what we mean about Jean," says Mrs. Merrity.

Course, bein' so sure I did, I smiles and lets it go at that. And then, a couple of days later, I met Jean. She hadn't any more'n given me the up-and-down in that calm, steady way of hers than I saw my dope-sheet was about as accurate as a left-handed drawin' of a pig made blindfolded.

"Hello, Professor!" says she, steppin' up brisk and givin' me a five-fingered grip. "I've heard a lot about you."

Talk about your lady husks! Why, say, this Jean person looked like she might be as well muscled as any trapeze performer you ever saw do the giant swing. You know, Hank is quite sizable, specially across the shoulders; and Mrs. Merrity in her younger days was considerable of a; wild rose. Well, Jean takes after 'em both, in a way. She's big without bein' awkward; and, while she has her mother's dark hair and eyes, she has sort of a heavy face, like Hank's. So she ain't a handsome girl, by any means; but, at the same time; she's kind of stunnin'.

THAT don't begin to describe Jean, though; for she's about the oddest combination I ever ran across, Don't get the idea she's just one of the cow-girl type. Nothing as crude as that. As we found out afterward, she could sit in at a dinner-party without usin' the wrong forks, and could carry her end of the table chat with the best 'em. She danced, could take a hand at bridge, or would sit around listenin' to polite gossip.

Yet there was something odd about this whaling big girl who moved around so restless and had so little to say. It wasn't that she was just bored. Seemed to be deeper than that: something she was choking down, keeping back. I'd noticed it most when she was sizin' up people, specially the Watrouses.

They're our real head-liners, you know, when it comes to countin' old fam'ly jewels and country estates and coats-of- arms. Course, Mrs. Theobald Chandler Watrous only married into all this; but she was long on the ancestor stuff herself, so I understand. And as for Miss Cornelia, why, she goes 'way back to the days when the Stuyvesants were newcomers.

They look enough alike to be sisters, with their long, straight noses, thin lips, and pointed chins; and, believe me, when they sweep into a room majestic they're some pair to draw to. Me, I dive for the discards about then; for, although we've been neighbors quite some years now, and they've been here on and off to see Sadie, I don't suppose I've ever been officially recognized, or ever will be.

They're too busy, for one thing, runnin' the church and regulatin' society. They take both jobs mighty serious, too. I expect Sadie had to pull some wires before she got 'em to notice that Jean existed. I understand Jean had to be exhibited on neutral ground and, looked over thorough before she could even be introduced to 'em. As for Hank and Mrs. Merrity, they wasn't so much as mentioned. But that was all right. They didn't want to be.

"You see," explains Mrs. Merrity, "she thinks even Bedelia is too artificial, too civilized. But of course we have only the imitation. If she could know the real thing once, without waiting as long as I did; she might like it better. And perhaps—oh, who knows!"

"You see," explains Mrs. Merrity, "she thinks even Bedelia is too artificial, too civilized. But of course we have only the imitation. If she could know the real thing once, without waiting as long as I did; she might like it better. And perhaps—oh, who knows!"

WHETHER she was wise to all this or not, I can't say. Sadie insists that she didn't tell her a word. But it was weird to see Jean size up the Watrouses when she thought nobody was lookin'. Almost creepy. Honest! And yet, as a matter of fact, they seemed to take quite a fancy to her. Anyway, Sadie was almost chesty over the notice they took of her candidate.

"Just think, Shorty!" says she. "They've asked Jean for luncheon. She will meet Courtney."

"Then tell her to take along some crochet work," says I, "so she can have a real sociable time with him."

"Now, Shorty!" protests Sadie. "I wouldn't be so mean."

Maybe Courtney don't do crochetin', but he looks it. He's 'most as tall and slim and sallow as his mother, and just as ladylike. Course, he was sickly as a boy, and always had nurses and tutors around, which may account for his Lizzie ways. Then, bein' brought up by them two women, with no man around,—Mrs. Watrous bein' a widow,—no wonder he wears a wrist-watch and takes his most violent exercise when he's playin' the violin.

If Jean had looked slant-eyed at the ladies Watrous, what would she do when she saw Courtney? Or what would happen to them slim fingers of his after Jean had given him one of her Rocky Mountain grips? If the young hicks out in Bedelia, was leery of her, I could see where Courtney would take one glance and dive behind a sofa.

Takes me to frame 'em up, eh? The Merritys would tow Jean around a few years more, with her gettin' huskier and huskier and the men growin' shyer and shyer, until Hank and Reney would finally give up all hope of ever marryin' her off, and she'd go back to Colorado and settle down to runnin' a mine or get herself elected to the legislature.

Well, it seems the luncheon party was a success, though Sadie couldn't get

Continued on page 15

GIFTS WE DO NOT CARE FOR

BE SURE THE MATCH IS REALLY OUT

---

IT CAN'T BE DONE

—Continued from page 10

anything but a sketchy report from Jean. Yes, she did meet Courtney. He hadn't made any window exit, either. He'd said some very clever things, Jean thought, and afterwards he'd played the violin for her. Yes, she did think him rather an odd person, but somewhat interesting. He had asked if he might call. As for the Watrous ladies—Jean would only shrug her shoulders.

"Now, I wonder what she meant by that?" demands Sadie.

"By me!" says I. "Perhaps she was tryin' to scratch a mosquito bite."

When Sadie gets curious, though, she don't take it out-in guessin'. So I ain't surprised when she announces this garden party in honor of Miss Jean Merrity. I saw the scheme. She meant to get 'em together where she could see for herself. I was a bit staggered, though, when I hears Courtney is comin' too, for I never knew of his goin' much of anywhere before.

As a rule I plan to duck affairs like that; but this bein' set for Saturday afternoon, and me gettin' sick of stickin' around town with the mercury climbin' towards ninety, I does land out home in time to make myself useful.

I'd lugged out chairs, and set up tables, and squeezed lemons for the fruit punch, and tried to keep little Sully from snitchin' enough cake to feed his whole baseball team.

Sadie hadn't asked a mob this time—only fifteen or twenty hand-picked guests. The Watrouses were the first to arrive, all draped in black and jet, as usual, and with every window of the limousine shut tight.

At four-thirty Jean hadn't shown up, although we was lookin' for her to boom in any minute in her gray roadster with the cut-out wide open.

TRUST Jean, though! At four-thirty-five something rolls in through the driveway gates. It's the two-wheeled basket-bodied cart that the Motts' governess used to use. And between the shafts is a buckskin colored mustang, with Jean drivin'.

"I couldn't resist," says she, "when I saw that cart stored in the old carriage-house. I always did want to ride in one. So I sent back to Bedelia for Ginger. It's an experience for him, too."

Ginger looked it. Seemed sort of dazed over the whole business, and the way he'd twist his neck around to gaze at that contraption behind him was curious.

Then, too, everybody has to swarm around and inspect the outfit. Even the ladies Watrous peered through their shell stick-glasses at it from a safe distance while they made Jean tell all about how she came to be driving around in such a queer rig.

"What an original idea!" says Mrs. Watrous.

"Yes, quite unusual," echoes Miss Cornelia.

They're that kind, you know. Why, most likely they'd been brought up in such carts; but, now they've gone out of style, they has to let on they don't know anything about 'em. Minds like rubber stamps, they have. And I caught an odd flicker in Jean's eyes as she listens to 'em purr on.

About then, though, I'm chased off to the back of the house on some errand, and when I gets around front again Jean is continuin' the exhibition by givin' little Sully a ride out to the gates and back.

Next she picks up some of the older folks; and the first thing I know, she's stopped in front of where the Watrouses are sittin' prim and stately, and seems to be invitin' them to take a trip.

Why they should ever do it I can't imagine. Maybe they'd gone temporarily nutty, or perhaps Jean could be more enticin' than I'd ever given her credit for. Anyway, while I'm grinnin' at the nerve of her, in they climbs.

Up to that minute both Ginger and Miss Jean had behaved as meek and respectable as if they'd come from West Newton, Massachusetts. And I don't know but Jean would have kept right on if the mustang hadn't broken the spell. I wouldn't want to say he knew what kind of parties was bein' loaded in behind him, or that he didn't. Anyway, Mrs. Watrous and Miss Cornelia had no sooner settled themselves on the cushions than he lays his ears flat and promptly proceeds to back.

"Whoa now, Ginger!" says Jean, gentle but firm.

Nothing doing in the whoa line from Ginger. Right through a five-foot privet hedge he backs, across two rows of bush beans, and bang into a hot-bed where I was coaxin' along a couple of hundred celery plants. It was some crash as the wheels broke through the glass. He wasn't satisfied, though, until he had his hind feet in and had kicked out all the panes he could reach. And you should have heard the squeals that came from the ladies Watrous.

AS I dashed to the rescue, Jean jerked a whip from the socket and laced it around Ginger's middle. He didn't like that a little bit. With two jumps he clears the hot-bed, breaks through the hedge in a new place, and lands in the drive again, headed towards the Sound. By that time, though, Jean has got a firm hold on the reins, and is standin' up with her knees braced against the high front of the cart.

One good pull, and she had Ginger back on his haunches with his ears almost in her lap. Mrs. Watrous and Cornelia tries panicky to climb out; but they was so scared they couldn't undo the door at the back.

"Sit still, both of you," commands Jean.

"Oh, p-p-p-please let us out!" begs Miss Cornelia.

"Not yet," says Jean. "I promised you a ride behind Ginger, and you're going to get it."

With that she slacks up on the reins, drops the mustang on to all four feet, whirls him around sudden, and gives him another taste of the whip. Once more they was off in a bunch.

Now, that drive of mine, you know, has two loops in it—one in front of the garage, and the other out by the gates. I didn't lay it out for any vest-pocket kite-track when I built it, but that's what it makes—about ten laps to the mile, I should say.

It don't take Jean Merrity long to discover the possibilities of it.

"We-e-e-ough!" says she, cuttin' loose with a reg'lar cow-puncher yell you could have heard half way to the station.

She's standin' up, her feet well spread,

arm taut on the lines, and swingin' the whip with the other hand.

As he took the, sharp curves he had his neck arched like a high-school stallion, his wicked little eyes seemed to blaze with excitement, and his nostrils was the color of a red-flannel shirt.

Bumpety-bump, bump! they went around the corners, sparks flyin' as his shoes hit the gravel, and only one wheel touchin' at times. He sure could hump himself, Ginger, when he was properly urged.

And Jean was 'tendin' to that. I'd always thought that heavy face of hers never could light up. But it did then. Blamed if she don't look almost handsome. Anyhow, as she leaned to the sway of the cart and straightened up on the free stretches, she was more or less graceful.

As for the ladies Watrous, they was havin' the ride of their lives, all right. Each had a desperate grip on the cart-sides and a panicky look in her eyes. Mrs. Watrous's black lid has jiggled over her left ear, while Miss Cornelia's was down over her eyebrows and her back hair was comin' loose.

Two, three, four times around the double loop Jean jumped that lively little mustang before she finally brought him up all standin', and vaulted over the front to grab him by the bits.

"You would, would you, you little imp?" says she, pattin' him on the nose soothin'.

MEANWHILE, willin' and reverent hands was unloadin' what was left of the ladies Watrous and helpin' 'em into the house, where smellin' salts and extra hair-pins could be applied.

I was on the spot when Sadie hurries back to where Jean is still pettin' the mustang.

"Why, Jean!" says she. "Whatever made you do such a thing as that?"

"I'm sure I don't know," says Jean, smilin' satisfied, "unless—unless I knew they needed it so badly. The silly old frumps! If you only knew how I have ached to jar them out of their stupid, complacent arrogance! How they have got on my nerves with their peacock manners, their fussy ways, and their stereotyped speeches! I stood it all until I simply couldn't stand another moment of it; and then—" Jean breaks off with a chuckle. "I don't care a rap," she adds.

"But what about Courtney?" asks Sadie. "What will he think?"

"Look!" says I, pointin' over to a bench. "I'll give you two guesses as to what Courtney thinks."

Honest, I never thought that long, sallow face of his could wear such a grin. And he's wipin' tears out of his eyes, like he'd been laughin' until he had cried. He is just startin' over towards us.

"Really," says he, "I never saw anything so funny in my life! If you could have seen mother's face as she went around those curves! And Aunt Cornelia, with her hat over her eyes! Oh, it was rich! And you, Jean, you were splendid, Junoesque—no, like Diana. That's it; you were the goddess. Diana. And I—I think you are a wonderful girl. I—I wish I could always—"

Then he breaks off, right in the middle of what he's sayin', and blushes until he's pink clear down the back of his neck.

The poor fish had just remembered that he wasn't talkin' to Jean alone in the moonlight; that is, if he knew he was talkin' at all. My guess is that he'd been rushed off his feet and had simply babbled right out.

ANYWAY, it seems to make a hit with Jean. She pinks up grateful. Here was some one she hadn't scared to death, at least. Also some one who was strong for her, big as she was.

"Thank you, Courtney," says she, takin' him gentle by the arm and leadin' him off to one side. "You were saying that you wished—I'll tell you! Perhaps I should understand if you played it to me on the violin."

"H-m-m-m!" says Sadie, as we watches 'em stroll off arm in arm.

"Can you beat that?" says I. "She wants him to play it to her on the violin! O you Susie Sourdimple fryin' the mush! I'll bet, though, she's as good as got him roped and branded."

Which was my first straight hunch about Jean.

It was all settled before they came back from that stroll.

"Just imagine!" says Sadie. "Those two!"

"I expect it's a case," says I, "of likin' what you ain't. Oh, yes; old stuff, I know, but always surprisin'. And I hope I'm around when Reney hears. Ruh, ruh for Reney! She's pulled the impossible."

The Abandoned Room

By WADSWORTH CAMP

Illustration by Robert McCaig

GRAHAM'S idea of a search, logical as it was, impressed Bobby as quite futile. Silas Blackburn had died in this ancient, melancholy room behind locked doors. This afternoon they had been drawn there by the same mysterious sounds heard at the time of his death—to find that, behind locked doors again, the position of the body had changed incredibly, as if to expose the tiny fatal wound at the base of the brain. Now, for the third time, those stealthy movements had aroused Katherine; and they had found—once more behind locked doors—the detective murdered precisely as old Blackburn had been.

Of course, by every rational argument, the murderer must still be in the room. Yet Bobby foresaw that, as always, no one would be found. Again and again he asked himself whether he could be responsible for these murders, committed with an inhuman ingenuity. He knew only that he had wandered, unconscious, in the vicinity of the Cedars last night, that he had been asleep when his grandfather's body had altered its position, that he had fallen profoundly asleep a little while ago, brooding over Howells' challenge to the murderer to invade the room of death and kill him if he could. He had fallen into that deep rest hating the detective, telling himself that the man's death might save him from arrest.

"Recurrent aphasia—" The doctor's expression came back to him. In such a state a man could overcome locked doors, could accomplish miracles—and retain no recollection.

Dully he saw Katherine go out, at Graham's request. As one in a dream he moved toward the door they had had to break down.

"Stand close to it," Graham said. "We'll cover everything."

"You'll find no one," Bobby answered with a perfect assurance.

He saw Graham take the candle and explore the closets. He watched him examine the spaces behind the window curtains. He almost smiled as Graham stooped to peer beneath the bed, as he moved each piece of furniture large enough to secrete a man.

"You see, Hartley, it's no use."

"Then," Graham said, "there must be some hiding-place in the walls. Such devices are common in houses as old as this."

Bobby indicated the silent form of the detective.

"Don't you suppose he looked for a hiding-place or a secret entrance the first thing?"

But Graham's savage determination increased. He sounded each panel. None gave the slightest response. He got a tape from Katherine, and measured the dimensions of the room, the private hall, and the corridor. At last he turned to Bobby, his anger dead, his face white.

"Everything checks," he admitted. "There's no secret room, no way in or out. Logically, Groom's right. We're fighting the dead."

He laughed mirthlessly.

"After all, we can't surrender to that. There must be another answer."

"From the first, Howells believed I did it," Bobby said.

Graham flung up his hands.

"Then tell me how you got in without disturbing those locks. I grant you, Bobby, you had motive for both murders; but I do not believe you have two personalities—one decent and lovable, the other cruel and cunning to the point of magic. I don't believe that, if a man had two such personalities, the actions of one would be totally closed to the memory of the other."

Bobby smiled wanly.

"It isn't pleasant to confess it, Hartley, but I have read of such cases."

"Fiction!"

"Scientific fact."

"I wish I had shared your room with you to-night," Graham muttered. "I might have furnished you an alibi."

"Either that," Bobby answered frankly, "or you might have followed me and learned the whole secret. Honestly, isn't that what you were thinking of, Hartley? And I did go to, sleep telling myself it would help me if something of the sort happened to Howells. Now I'm not so sure that it will."

Graham held up his hand.

"What's that? In the corridor!"

There were quiet footsteps in the corridor. Bobby turned quickly. Paredes strolled slowly through the passage. Bobby stared at him, remembering his surprise a few minutes before that the Panamanian should have sat up so late, should have been, probably in the court when they had followed Katherine to the discovery of this new crime.

PAREDES paused in the doorway. He took in the tragic picture framed by the sinister room without displaying the slightest interest. Then he crossed the threshold. Gracefully he raised his finger and pointed to the bed. When he spoke his voice was low and pleasant:

"Appalling! I feared something of the kind when I heard you come to this room."

He glanced at the broken door.

"The same unbelievable circumstances!" he drawled. "I see you had to break in."

The color flashed back to Graham's face.

"You have taken plenty of time to solve your misgivings."

"It hasn't been so long. I fancied everything was all right, and I was immersed in my solitaire. Then I heard a stirring upstairs. As I've told you, the house frightens me. It is an old place. So I came up to investigate, and there was Miss Katherine in the hall. She told me what had happened."

Graham faced him with undisguised enmity.

"Immersed in your solitaire! When we looked down just now were not there, and the front door was open."

Paredes yawned.

"When Howells died, precisely as Mr. Blackburn did," Graham hurried on, "you alone were awake about the house. Weren't you that moment in the court?"

Paredes laughed tolerantly.

"It is clear, in spite of my apologies, that we are not friends, Graham; but, may I ask, are you accusing me of this strange—accident?"

"I should like to know what you were doing in the court."

"Perhaps," Paredes answered, "I was drawn there by the same sounds that aroused Miss Katherine."

Graham shook his head.

"From her description I doubt if you could have heard those sounds in the hall."

"No matter," Paredes said. "I merely suggest that it's a case for Groom. His hint of a spiritual enmity may be saner than you think."

Katherine, appeared in the doorway. She had evidently overheard Paredes' comment, for she nodded.

"At least, Hartley," she said, "you must send for Dr. Groom before you notify the police."

Graham waved his hand.

"Why?" he asked. "The man is dead."

With a movement unseen by Paredes, she indicated Bobby.

"Last time, was a good deal of delay before the doctor came. If we get him right away he may be able to do something for this poor fellow."

BOBBY realized that she was fighting for time for him. Any delay would be useful that would give them time to plan before the police should invade the house. Graham caught her point.

"Maybe it's better," he said. "Then, Bobby, telephone Groom to be ready for you, and take my runabout. It's in the stable. You'll get him here much faster than he could come in his carriage."

"While I'm gone," Bobby asked, "what will you do?"

"Watch this room," Graham jerked out.

"You've plenty of courage," Paredes drawled. "I shouldn't care to watch alone in this room."

He followed Katherine into the corridor, Bobby looked at Graham.

"You'll take no chances Hartley?"

Graham's smile was not pleasant.

"According to you and the dead detective, there's no risk while you're out of the house. I don't believe that, and I'll be careful; so don't worry."

Bobby joined the others before they had reached the hall.

"Of course Hartley found nothing in his search," Katherine said to him.

"Nothing," Paredes answered, "except a very bad temper."

Katherine no longer veiled her distaste for the man.

"You don't like Mr. Graham," she said; "but he is our friend, and he is in this house to help us."

Paredes bowed.

"I regret that the amusement Mr. Graham causes me sometimes finds expression. He is so earnest and materialistic in his relation to the world that he refuses to see anything psychic in the situation."

Paredes' easy contempt acted like a tonic upon Katherine. She turned with determination to Bobby, ignoring the Panamanian.

"I will watch with Hartley," she said.

Bobby was ashamed that jealousy should creep into such a moment, but the prospect of Graham and her watching alone, drawn to each other by their nervous uncertainty, was unbearable to him. It placed him, to a degree, on Paredes' side. It urged him, when Paredes had gone downstairs, to spring to his defense.

"As Hartley says," Katherine began, "he makes you think of a snake. He must see that we dislike him and resent his presence here."

"You and Hartley, perhaps," Bobby said. "Carlos says he is here to help me; I've no reason to disbelieve him."

A little color came into Katherine's face.

"We are wasting time," she said. "You had better go."

---

"I am sorry we disagree about Carlos—" he began.

She turned deliberately away from him.

"You must hurry," she said. "Hurry!"

He saw her enter the corridor to join Graham. Slowly he walked downstairs, and went to the telephone, to send a message for the doctor to be dressed and ready to accompany him in twenty minutes. Paredes got his hat and coat.

"I'll go with you," he announced.

Bobby was glad enough to have him. He didn't want to be alone. As he started Graham's car, he noticed that the servants' quarters were dark. So Jenkins and the two women hadn't been aroused and remained still ignorant of this latest crime. They drove smoothly past the house.

PRESENTLY Paredes said softly, staring at the glow of his cigarette:

"Have you noticed anything significant about the discovery of each mystery at the Cedars?"

"Many things," Bobby muttered.

"Think," Paredes urged him.

Bobby answered angrily:

"You've already suggested that to me once to-day, Carlos. You mean that each time I have been asleep or unconscious."

"I mean something quite different," Paredes said. He hesitated. When he continued, his drawl was more pronounced:

"Then you haven't remarked that each time it has been Miss Katherine who has made the discovery?"

The car swerved sharply.

"That's the rottenest thing I've ever known you to say, Carlos. Take it back."

Paredes shrugged his shoulders.

"There is nothing to take back. I accuse no one. I merely call attention to a chain of exceptional coincidences."

"You make me wonder," Bobby said, "if Hartley isn't justified in his dislike of you. Please drop such a ridiculous suspicion."

"Oh," Paredes drawled. "Very well. It seems my fate recently to offend people I like. I merely thought that any theory leading away from you would be welcome."

"Any theory," Bobby answered, "involving Katherine is unthinkable."

Paredes smiled.

"I didn't understand exactly how you felt. I rather took it for granted that Graham— Never mind; I take it back."

"Then drop it," Bobby answered sullenly, annoyed that his resentment could take no other form.

THE automobile took a sharp curve in the road. Bobby started. The headlights had caught in their glare the deserted farm-house in which he had awakened the morning after his grandfather's death. In the white light the frame of the house, from which the paint had flaked, seemed ghastly, unreal, like something seen in a nightmare. The light left the building. As the car tore past, Bobby could barely make out the black mass in the midst of the thicket.

Paredes had observed it, too.

"I dare say," he remarked casually, "the Cedars will become as deserted as that. This entire neighborhood impresses one as unfriendly to life."

"Have you ever seen that house before?" Bobby asked quickly.

"I have never seen it before. I never care to see it again."

It was a relief when the forest thinned and fields stretched, flat and pleasant, like barriers against the stunted growth. Bobby stopped the car in front of one of a group of houses at a cross-roads. Dr. Groom himself opened the door.

"What's the matter now?" he demanded in his gruff voice. "Fortunately, I hadn't gone to bed. I was reading some books on psychic manifestations. Who's sick? Or—"

Bobby's face must have told him a good deal, for he broke off.

"Get your things on," Bobby said, "and I will tell you as we drive back, for you must come. Howells has been killed precisely as my grandfather was."

For a moment Dr. Groom's bulky frame remained motionless in the doorway. Instead of the surprise and horror Bobby had expected, the old man expressed only a mute wonder. He got his hat and coat and entered the runabout.

Bobby had told all he knew before they had reached the forest. Then the doctor grunted:

"The wound at the back of the head is the same as your grandfather's?"

"Exactly."

"Then what good am I? Why do you rout me out?"

"A formality," Bobby answered. "Katherine thought if we got you quickly you might do something."

The woods closed about them. Again the lights seemed to push back a palpable barrier.

"I can't work miracles," the doctor was murmuring. "I can't bring men back from death. Such a wound leaves no ground for hope. You'd better have sent for the police at once. Hello!" He strained forward, peering around the windshield.

"Funny!" Paredes called.

Bobby's eyes were on the road.

"What do you see?"

"The house, Bobby!" Paredes cried.

"To my certain knowledge," the doctor said, "no one has lived in that house for ten years. You say it was empty and falling to pieces when you woke up there?"

Bobby knew what they meant then; and, reducing the speed of the car, he looked ahead to the right. A pallid glow sifted through the trees from the direction of the deserted house.

GUIDING the car to the side of the road, Bobby stopped it and shut off the engine. Even when he had extinguished the headlights, the glow failed to brighten. Its pallid quality persisted. It seemed to radiate from a point near the ground.

"It comes from the front of the house," Bobby murmured.

He stepped from the automobile.

"What are you going to do?" Paredes wanted to know.

"Find out who is in that house!"

For Bobby had experienced a quick hope. If there was a man or a woman secreted in the building, the explanation of his own presence there last night might not be so difficult to find, after all.

The strange, pallid quality of the light made him pause by the broken fence. Although it came from the lower part of the front of the house, it was so faint that it failed to outline the aperture through which it escaped. The doctor and Paredes joined him.

"When I was here," he said, "all the shutters were closed. We must see what this is."

As he started forward Paredes grasped his arm.

"There are too many of us—we would make a noise. Suppose I investigate?"

"There is one way in—at the back," Bobby told the doctor. "Let us go there. We'll have whoever's inside trapped. Meantime Carlos can steal up to the front and find out where the light comes from."

"That's the best plan," Paredes agreed.

But they had scarcely turned the corner of the house, beyond reach of the glow,

---

when Paredes rejoined them. His feet were no longer careful in the underbrush. He came up running. For the first time in their acquaintance, Bobby detected a break in the man's suave manner.

"The light!" the Panamanian gasped. "It's gone! Before I could get near, it faded out."

Bobby called to the doctor and ran toward the door at the rear. It was unhinged and half open, as it had been the last time he had seen it. He went through, fumbling in his pocket for matches. The damp chill of the hall nauseated him, seemed to draw about his throat an intangible band that made breathing difficult. Before he could find his match-safe the doctor had struck a wax vesta. Its strong flame played across the walls.

"There's a flash-light, Carlos," Bobby said, "in the door-flap of the automobile."

Paredes started across the yard with, it seemed to Bobby, almost eager haste.

STRIKING matches as they went, the doctor and Bobby hurried to the front of the house. The rooms were undisturbed in their decay. The shutters were closed; the front door barred; and the broken walls seemed to leer at them.

Suddenly Bobby grasped the doctor's arm.

"Did you hear anything?"

The doctor shook his head.

"Or feel anything?"

"No."

"I thought," Bobby cried excitedly, "that there was some one in the hall. I—I simply got that impression. I didn't see anything. My back was turned."

Paredes came in quietly.

"It may have been Mr. Paredes," the doctor said.

But Bobby wasn't convinced.

"Did you see or hear anything coming through the hall, Carlos?"

"No," Paredes said.

He had brought the light. With its help they explored the tiny cellar and the upper floor. There was no sign of recent occupancy. A vagrant wind sighed about the place. They looked at one another with startled eyes. They filed out with an incongruous stealth.

"Then there are ghosts here too!" Paredes whispered.

"Who knows?" Doctor Groom mused.

At the doctor's suggestion, they sat in the automobile for some time, watching the house. When the light failed to reappear, Bobby set his gears.

"Graham and Katherine will be worried," he said.

They drove quickly away from the abandoned building. The woods were lonelier than ever—as if, Bobby thought, they were guarding something.

As they entered the Cedars, Katherine came running to the head of the stairs.

"Is the doctor with you?" she called softly.

Bobby answered her. As Paredes lighted a cigarette and settled himself in an easy chair, Bobby and Dr. Groom hurried upstairs and followed Katherine down the old corridor. Graham arose from a chair in the broken doorway, and greeted the doctor.

"Nothing has happened since I left?" Bobby asked.

Graham shook his head. "Katherine and I have watched every minute."

Dr. Groom walked to the bed and for a long time looked down at Howells.

"There's nothing I can do for this poor fellow," he said. Death must have been instantaneous. At any rate, Robert, this isn't altogether bad for you. I don't see how any one could accuse you of aphasia to-night."

"You've not forgotten," Bobby said slowly, "that you spoke of a recurrent aphasia."

"That's the trouble," Graham put in under his breath. "He has no more alibi now than he had when his grandfather was murdered."

Bobby told the doctor of his heavy sleep, and of the delay in Katherine's arousing him.

The doctor's voice was disapproving.

"You shouldn't have drunk that medicine. It had stood too long. It would only have approximated its intended effect."

"You mean," Bobby asked, "that I wasn't sleeping as soundly as I thought?"

"Probably not; but, while men do unaccountable things in somnambulistic states, they haven't wings, any more than they have when awake. Now, Mr. Graham, we must comply with the law. Call in the police."

They went downstairs. From the depths of the easy chair in which Paredes lounged smoke curled lazily.

WHILE Graham and the doctor walked to the back of the hall to telephone, Katherine, an anxious figure, beckoned Bobby to the library. He went with her, wondering what she could want.

It was quite dark in the library. Even before Bobby lighted the lamp, Katherine was speaking with a feverish haste:

"Before the police come, you've a chance, Bobby—the last chance. You must do whatever's to be done before the police arrive."

He replaced the shade and glanced at her, astonished by her intensity.

"What do you mean?"

She pointed to the door of the private staircase.

"Just what Howells told you before he went up there to his death. The cast and the handkerchief—the strongest evidence against you—are still in Howells' pocket."

Bobby drew back a little.

"You want me to go there—and—

and take from his pocket those things?"

She nodded.

"You remember, he said that he hadn't sent his report. That may be there too."

Bobby shook his head.

"He must have said that as a bait."

"At the worst," she urged, "a report without evidence could only turn suspicion against you. It wouldn't convict you, as those other things may. You must get them! You must destroy them."

Graham slipped quietly in and closed the door.

"The district attorney is coming himself with another detective," he said. "I can guess what Katherine has been talking about. She's right. I'm a lawyer, and I know the penalty of tampering with evidence. But I don't believe you're a murderer; and I tell you, as long as that evidence exists, they can convict you. They can send you to the chair. You're justified in protecting yourself, Bobby, in the only way you can. No one will see you go in the room. We'll arrange it so no one can testify against you."

BOBBY felt himself at a cross-roads. During the commission of those crimes he had been unconscious. If he had had, in fact, anything to do with them, his personality, his real self, had known nothing, had done no wrong. To tamper with evidence would be a conscious crime. All the more because of his doubt of himself, he shrank from that. Katherine saw his hesitation.

"It's a matter of your life or death."

But, although Katherine decided him, it wasn't with that. She came closer. She looked straight at him; and in her eyes was an affection that stirred him.

"For my sake, Bobby—"

He squared his shoulders.

"All right," he said. "Howells never gave me a chance while he was alive. He'll have to, now he's dead."

Katherine relaxed. Graham gave his instructions in a cold, even tone:

"We'll go to the hall now. Katherine will go on upstairs. She mustn't see you enter the room, but she will watch in the corridor while you are there, to be sure you aren't disturbed. You and I will chat for a while with the others, then you will go up. You understand? I'll keep Paredes and Groom downstairs."

He opened the door. Katherine gave Bobby's hand a quick pressure.

"Take the stuff to my room," Graham whispered. "The first chance, we'll destroy it, so no trace will be left."

They went to the hall. Without speaking, Katherine climbed the stairs. Graham drew a chair between Paredes and the doctor. Bobby lounged against the mantel. Paredes' eyes were closed.

"Asleep," Graham whispered.

Without opening his eyes, Paredes spoke:

"No. I feel curiously awake."

Dr. Groom glanced at his watch.

"The powers of prosecution," he grumbled, "ought to be here within the next fifteen or twenty minutes."

Bobby glanced at Graham. It wasn't safe to delay too long. More and more, as he waited, he shrank from the invasion of the room of death. He was about to make some formal comment to the others before embarking on his distasteful adventure, when Paredes, as if he had read his mind, opened his eyes, languidly left his chair, and walked to the foot of the stairs.

"Where are you going?" Graham asked sharply.

Paredes waved his hand aimlessly and started upstairs.

Graham and Bobby stared after him, unable to meet this new situation openly, because of Groom's presence. Yet five minutes had gone. There was no time to be lost. Paredes mustn't rob Bobby of his chance. With a sort of desperation, Bobby started for the stairs. He had his foot on the first step when Katherine's cry reached them. Bobby and Graham ran up the stairs.

A candle burned on the table in the upper hall. Katherine and Paredes stood near the entrance to the old corridor. Katherine's attitude was defensive, as if she wished to hold the corridor against him. Paredes was laughing lightly.

"Sorry to have given the household one more shock. Fortunately, no harm's done."

"What is it, Katherine?" Graham demanded.

"I don't know," she answered. "He startled me. He entered the corridor."

Paredes nodded.

"Quite right. I was on my way to my room. If your house had electricity, Bobby, this would have been avoided. I saw something dark in the corridor."

"You may not know," Graham said, "that, ever since we found Howells, one of us has tried more or less to keep the entrance of that room under observation."

"Yet you were all downstairs a little while ago," Paredes yawned. "It's too bad. I might have taken my turn then. At any rate, I overcame my natural fear, and, for Bobby's sake, slipped in. I am afraid I startled Miss Katherine."

"Yes," she said.

His explanation was reasonable. But Bobby's doubt of Paredes, instilled by Graham, was materially strengthened.

"If," Graham was saying, "you really want to help Bobby, there is something you can do. Will you come downstairs with me for a moment? I'd like to suggest one or two things before the police arrive."

Without hesitation Paredes followed Graham down the stairs.

Katherine turned to Bobby.

"Now, Bobby!" she whispered. "And there's no time to waste: they may be here any minute. I won't see you go, but I'll be back at once to guard you against Paredes if he slips up again."

BOBBY took the candle from the table. Through the stair-well the murmur of Graham's voice, occasionally interrupted by Groom's heavy bass or the languid accents of Paredes, drifted reassuringly. Bobby pushed open the door, and paused on the threshold.

Through its wide spaces the light of the candle scarcely penetrated. No more than an indefinite radiance thrust back the obscurity and outlined the bed. He could barely define the stark, black form outstretched there.

The dim, vast room, as he advanced, imposed upon him a sense of isolation. Katherine in the upper hall, the others downstairs, whose voices no longer reached him, seemed all at once far away. The wind caught the flame of the candle, making it flicker. Tenuous shadows danced across the walls. He paused with a tightening throat; for the form on the bed seemed to be moving with a scarcely perceptible motion. Then he understood. It was the effect of the shaking candle.

He raised the candle and stared at the dead man. The cast was undoubtedly there. The dead man's coat, stretched tightly across the breast, outlined it. He had only to bend and place his hand in the pocket which the cast filled awkwardly.

He thought of Katherine, guarding the corridor; of Paredes and Dr. Groom, held downstairs by Graham; of the county authorities hurrying to seize this evidence that would convict him; and he realized that his duty and his excuse were clear. He reached impulsively out to the body. He was about to place his fingers in the pocket which, after all was said and done, held his life.

IN the light of the candle the face seemed alive, and more menacing than it had ever done in life. The straight smile held a triumphant quality.

The candle flickered sharply—went out. The conquering blackness took his breath.

He told himself it was the draft from the window; which was strong; but all about him he seemed to feel the companionship of mocking presences.

In an agony of revolt against these incorporeal and fanciful horrors, he reached in the pocket.

He sprang back with a choked, inaudible cry; for the dead thing beneath his hand was stirring. The dead, cold thing, with a languid and impossible rebuke, moved beneath his touch. And the pocket he had felt was empty! The coat, a moment ago bulging and awkward, was flat. There sprang to his mind the mad thought that the detective, malevolent in life, had long after death snatched from his hand the carefully gathered evidence on which, for him, depended everything.

To be continued next week

Was It the Oldest Living Creature?

THIS turtle was captured off the coast of Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico, and is said, by those in a position to know, to be two thousand years of age, and therefore likely to be the oldest living creature. It weighs 920 pounds, is 8 feet wide from tip to tip, and is 9 feet long. It will make enough soup for five thousand men. It was shipped to a St. Louis fish market, and seven men were required to handle it.

You Were Born Too Late

THE cost of living problem is no, new thing under the sun. For centuries food and clothing and shelter prices have been crawling gradually up: to beat the process one should have been born at least seven hundred years ago.

"In the fourteenth century," according to the Scrap Book, "two cents would buy a pair of chickens, and a nickel a goose fit to grace any Christmas dinner-table, and a penny would purchase a dozen new-laid eggs; while for two cents the brewer was compelled by law to sell three gallons of beer, the equivalent of forty-eight glasses.

"Wheat sometimes fell as low as forty cents a quarter, though after a great storm, or in a time of 'grievous famine,' it would rise as high as four and five dollars a quarter. Still, at these prices a good many pounds of bread could be bought for a penny.

"Pasture and arable lands were ridiculously cheap—two cents an acre for the former and twelve cents an acre for the latter being considered a fair annual rental. Draft-horses were a drug on the market at seventy-two cents each, and oxen at one dollar and twenty cents. In the days of the second Henry fifty dollars would have equipped a farm with three draft-horses, half a dozen oxen, twenty cows, and two hundred sheep, leaving a balance of two dollars toward the payment of the rent—about five dollars a year.

"As for labor, three cents a day was deemed good wages for an ordinary laborer, and even at harvest-time four cents a day was the highest sum expected.

"House rent was so absurdly small that the Lord Mayor of London paid only four dollars and eighty cents a year to his landlord; and the Chancellor, with an annual salary of one hundred and ninety-two dollars, seemed poorer than many a cook of our own time. When a father sent his son to a university six centuries ago, four cents a day was considered a comfortable allowance, with a margin for such luxuries as wine at eight or twelve cents a gallon.

"Twenty-four dollars a year was a munificent salary in those days. It was the exact sum paid to the assistant clerk of Parliament, and more than the average priest, with cure of souls, received; while the pension allowed by Edward III to his apothecary was only twelve cents a day, and King Edward IV's allowance to his daughter was but four dollars and eighty cents a week, with an additional two hundred and forty-seven dollars and sixty cents a year for the maintenance of her eight servants.

"In the reign of Queen Elizabeth prices were still exceedingly modest, and, it is only fair to add, wages low in proportion. From a household book of 1589 we take the following typical prices: Beef, two and a half cents a pound; a neck of mutton, twelve cents; twenty-eight pounds of veal and a shoulder of mutton, fifty-six cents; cheese, four cents a pound; wheat, three dollars and eighty-four cents a quarter ton."

A Tree that Is a Grove

THE beautiful, shady grove that covers the hillside in this picture is a single banyan tree, native to the tropical lands of Asia. The branches of this peculiar tree, which is a member of the fig family, push out rapidly and throw down shoots that take root in the soil. These stems become trunks in themselves, and in course of time grow to be so large that it is impossible to tell which is the original trunk and which are the offshoots. The tree rarely grows to be more than thirty or forty feet in height; but it may come to cover an acre or more.

He Has Cared for 1000 Ball-Players

IT is the ninth inning—the score is tied—the home team is at bat. Two men are out. Off third base there dances a tantalizing, purposeful form. It is Ty Cobb.

Ten thousand spectators, standing on their toes, are screaming in a wild chant of "Steal, Ty—steal!"

The opposing pitcher watches the runner. He fears the consequences of a wild pitch or a passed ball. He poises for the pitch, glances toward third and then back to the plate, catching his signal. In that instant of inattention there comes a roar from the multitude.

Cobb has stopped dodging. His feet are flying down the base path: The pitcher, hurried and rattled, throws high and wide.

Cobb, tearing in, swings his body around, and in a tremendous cloud of dust rides by, one toe hooking the rubber while he slips out of the catcher's reach.

Above tangled forms stands the blue-clad figure of an umpire. His palms are held to earth. Cobb is safe! The game is won!

Thousands press toward the exits, then pause in their jam.

"Cobb is hurt!"

He is seen to gather himself to his feet and limp painfully toward the players' bench.

Out runs a stranger. A towel is flung across his shoulders, and in a professional way he takes the injured player under the arm and assists him off the field. In the club-house he renders first aid.

This man is Harry Tuthill. He is the best known trainer of ball-players in the country. For years he was with the New York Giants, serving under John McGraw in the old régime of John T. Brush.

Those were days when he looked after the mighty arms of Mathewson, McGinnity, Taylor, Wiltse. Before that Tuthill trained prize-fighters. He handled Young Corbett, Mysterious Billy Smith, Young Griffo, Jim Corbett, Jim Jeffries, Tom Sharkey, and a dozen others whose names are familiar even though there is only the record hook to remind one of their deeds. Those were the fighters who waded in, fists swinging from waists, eager to give, and careless of punishment.

In 1913, 1914, and 1915 Tuthill was trainer of the football squad at West Point. In 1916 he was with Michigan.

Tuthill became trainer of the Detroit Tigers in 1908. He came directly from the Giants, having been with the New York Club in 1904, 1905, 1906, and 1907.

He is almost as much of an institution with Detroit as is Hughie Jennings or Ty Cobb.

"Ball-players," says Tuthill, "are 'mollycoddled' too much.' There is no royal road to getting in shape. I prescribe hard work, and plenty of it. There is little need for sickness unless a man has exposed himself.

"The aim of life is health, so I believe, and the way to get it and to hold it is to be temperate in habits.

"A trainer's life is not an easy one. There are few ball-players who know how to take care of themselves. But if all players were like Cobb they would have but little use for a man like me.

"The spectator who watches Cobb flashing around the bases, hitting the dirt in the long slide for safety, performing circus stunts in the outfield, or lacing out a hit to win the game, little realizes what often goes on behind the scenes.

"Cobb may carry half a dozen spike wounds in his legs, or he may have sliding sores on his hips; but these never stop him in his mad ambition to outmanœuver the opposition.

"I have known of times when Cobb has been unable to sleep on his back or sides for weeks at a time because of bruises, cuts, and sores on his lower limbs."

Tuthill has taken care of the bodily ills of more than a thousand ball-players, including on his list such famous names as Cobb, Mathewson, "Wild Bill" Donovan, Mertes, Wiltse, Bowerman, Crawford, McGraw, Jennings, Keeler, Strang, Delehanty, Coughlin, Coveleskie, Bush, Mullin, Schmidt, Spencer, and Moriarty.

He has even prescribed for a President of the United States.

Back in 1912, when Mr. Taft was in the White House, Tuthill, with a number of Tigers, was formally presented. In the midst of the introductions Tuthill rammed a forefinger into the President's stomach and casually remarked:

"What you should wear is a rubber shirt."

Half a dozen secretaries and government attachés gasped; but Mr. Taft laughed and said:

"Perhaps you're right."

Tuthill is a fixed opponent to late hours. He is the last man to bed when the Detroit team is on the road, and he knows to a minute when each player gets in of an evening.

His respect is regarded quite as highly as that of the manager, Hughie Jennings, and a drab future is painted for the recruit who crosses him.

A year ago there was a young pitcher on the team who took violently to dancing, staying out night after night at parties. This kept up for a few days (or nights), and then Tuthill remonstrated.

"G'wan, mind yer own business," snarled the youngster.

Exactly thirty-six hours later the recruit was on his way back to the minors.

Tuthill is forty-seven years old. His eye is clear. His step is brisk. He doesn't believe in medicines.

He insists that he is just as good physically as a man twenty years his junior.

"Clean living, right living, fresh air, and work"—there's his formula for physical fitness. N. B. Beasley..

A Better Selling Slant

By JAMES H. COLLINS

'GENE was a newspaper photographer who had put his savings into a portrait studio and gone into business for himself, only to find that people came to have their pictures made mainly at two short seasons—just before Christmas, and in the spring-bride period.

Sam was a newspaper reporter who had worked with 'Gene and who took an interest in his success. Out of his journalistic experience Sam furnished 'Gene something very effective in promoting success—a fresh selling slant.

"One of the hardest things to get, in reporting," said Sam, "is a photograph of the average well known man of affairs. Big men, who are constantly in the news, have their portraits taken regularly for this purpose. But average men do not—the merchant, manufacturer, manager, chemist, professional expert, and so on. Such people are likely to get into the news almost any day in connection with their interests, or organizations, or achievements. They are constantly in the trade journals of their industries. But, because they do not see the genuine interest of the public, which wants to know how they look, it is seldom that a reporter gets a good photo for illustration purposes. All men of that kind ought to follow the big business man's practice of having an 'official' portrait made each year, and keep copies handy for the editor and reporter who want them. I believe that, if you canvassed business men and explained this need to them, you could get plenty of work to fill in your dull seasons."

With that interesting new selling slant, aided by some advertising to explain the value of the "official" portrait for business men, 'Gene has made Christmas and bride patronage a secondary matter in his studio; for he now, specializes in portraits of business men.

War brought a new selling slant to one very live industry—that of the electric light company. When the problem of guarding factories, warehouses, piers, bridges, ships, and other property vital to the country was forced upon business men, they faced two difficulties—that of the high cost of maintaining human guards night and day, and also the scarcity of men for such work. The electric light men stepped in immediately with "flood lighting" as an automatic and economical substitute for human guards at night.

A New Idea in Guarding Property

WITH the big incandescent lamps of invention now on the market, furnishing blinding light at low cost, and special projecting apparatus for bathing an entire locality in light, many plants were so illuminated that nobody could approach them unseen. This selling slant increased the demand for such apparatus more than five hundred per cent. in a few weeks after war was declared, and the necessity furnished another, selling slant of the same nature for wire fence manufacturers, who offered unclimbable types of wire protection, as a way of reducing the cost of guarding property in the day-time.

Who would ever suspect that there were undiscovered selling slants for such an age-old tool as the shovel? Spades and shovels have been sold so long by the dozen and the hundred, on competitive price bids, to contractors and other large employers, that it would seem, as if there was no new field of development for them. But some years ago a shovel manufacturer demonstrated that there were many undeveloped selling slants in such tools, just because they were so old.

During the centuries men had quite forgotten the original purpose of shoveling, or were using old shovels for new purposes. A difference in area of a shovel used for coal, when you have fifty laborers at work and an increase in shovel capacity means several more pounds of coal in each shovelful, greatly reduced the cost of coal handling. The selling slant was to find out first how much coal the average laborer could lift on a shovel, without fatigue, working all day, and then adapt the shovel to the work.

When it was found that contractors used the same shovels indiscriminately for handling earth, rock, concrete, sand, clay, and other materials, and that careful figuring of the proper shovel gave increased capacity, this shovel manufacturer had plenty of new selling slants for his products.

Rejuvenating the Wheelbarrow

A LITTLE later, the same line of thought was applied to wheelbarrows, which are also capable of the widest adaptations in contract work—the shallow type fit for hauling earth being wasteful for wet concrete, and other materials requiring pushcarts instead of wheelbarrows. Then the wagon-builders began to take up this movement, and offered dumping types, that gave the greatest efficiency with different materials; and the power shovel-makers followed with special types of bucket for lifting various materials. And so the odd selling slant, that started with an extra inch or two on a coal shovel, went echoing down several industries, making sales and production; and is echoing yet.

Simple enough, the philosophy of the fresh selling slant.

Business gets into ruts. Commodities are made for people. But people change, outgrow things, want them in new forms, for new purposes. Have you measured people lately and made your product or service fit them as they are? If not, do so. You will probably find numerous fresh selling slants.

Do Men Fear Death in Battle?

By ROBERT W. MacKENNA, M. D.

THE fear of death is very widely disseminated among men. It is not a deep-rooted instinct, or it would not be so readily overcome. It is the least of the fears. It gives way before many sudden emotions or impulses, such as love, the excitement of battle, the call of duty, religious devotion, and the maternal instinct. When a sudden and imperious call comes to men or women to risk their lives for some tender object of their affection, the fear of death is thrown roughly to the wall.

After the South African War, I had many opportunities of talking the matter over with some of the men who fought through it, and I obtained ample confirmation of the opinion—which I had already formed from my reading—that in the heat of battle the fear of death is absolutely obliterated. These men told me that the most testing time was the five minutes before the action began. Then there was tense anxiety, and a curious sense of uncertainty, sometimes accompanied by a feeling of thirst; but, once the heavy guns had commenced to roar their challenge, all fear of death was forgotten, swallowed up in the excitement of battle.

The conditions of warfare on the Continent at the present moment differ considerably from those that have prevailed in any preceding war. The fighting is more continuous, and the shell-fire more deadly, and attended by more terror-provoking accompaniments than any to which soldiers have hitherto been exposed. But these circumstances have failed to blast the courage of men with the fear of death. I have questioned many of them closely, immediately after their return from the front, while the impressions of battle were still lurid in their memory, and in no case have I discovered that the fear of death ever crossed their mind once they were in the thick of the fight.

A young Welsh officer told me quite frankly that when he first came under shell-fire he felt tempted to turn and run; but he was arrested by the thought that he must set his men a good example.

How this traditional spirit of the British officer reacts upon his men was made clear to me by a Gordon Highlander who was inured to battle on the retreat from Mons. He confessed to a feeling of extreme uneasiness until he noticed how calmly and collectedly the officers were going about their duties. He drew immediate encouragement from this observation, and made up his mind that, come what might, no action of his should tarnish the honor of his regiment. At a later date he received promotion for consistently brave conduct in the field, and, though many times in very dangerous situations, he assured me that no fear of death or anxiety for his personal safety ever worried him after his first baptism of fire. He was severely wounded by machine-gun fire at Neuve Chapelle, and as he lay in the "No-Man's-Land" between the opposing trenches he had so little thought of danger that he raised himself on his elbow to admire and applaud the magnificent charge of a Territorial battalion of his regiment. His movements apparently attracted the attention of an enemy sniper, and the arm on which he had raised himself was shattered; but even then he felt no fear of death.

An artillery officer, whose battery was hopelessly outranged, told me his feelings, when he saw his friends and gunners being blown to pieces by the high-explosive shells that were raining upon them, were not those of anxiety for himself or regret at the fate of his friends. That came later, when he missed them at the mess-table. So far as he could analyze his emotions, he believed that his one feeling was that of furious anger at being unable to retaliate.

One soldier, a dark-haired Celt, had a very lively recollection of all the events which immediately preceded his first entry into the fire-trench. The prospect of facing danger had the effect of quickening

all his faculties of perception, and he told me that, as he marched to the trenches, every blade of grass seemed to have become a more vivid green; every wayside flower was clothed with a fresh beauty; the warbling of the birds was sweeter than he had ever heard it before, and the little fleecy clouds in the sky were as white as driven snow. He wondered, as he went, if he should live to see and hear these things on the morrow. He hoped that, if he were to be killed, his death would be instantaneous.

He visualized himself dead. He thought of his friends at home, of incidents of his boyhood and his early manhood. Then, as he walked, he prayed; and he found that the prayer he was repeating in a whisper was not a prayer specially formulated for the occasion, but was a simple string of petitions which he had learned as a little child.

We can well imagine that, to a man with such an introspective and sensitive mind, the actual experience of being under fire would be trying in the extreme; but, as a matter of fact, he found it less formidable than he expected; and, in analyzing his feelings after his first spell of duty in the trenches, he could not recall any memory of fear. His chief feeling seems to have been one of acute irritation at the nerve-racking noise of shell-fire. Not a few soldiers have assured me that the noise of an artillery bombardment has caused them more distress than any other experience they have gone through; and one hardy Tyneside collier, who had been through much of the severe fighting on the peninsula of Gallipoli, told me that he had never had the least fear of death, but he always dreaded and shuddered at the noise of the big naval guns, and the reverberating concussion of exploding shells.

On thinking his statement over, I came to the conclusion that, in all probability, his distress of mind on hearing a shell burst was due to the fact that in the life of a collier an explosion all too often means the entombment and death, by fire or asphyxiation, of many brave men. An explosion in a coal-pit is a danger which a collier faces daily. Though, probably, the fear of such explosions is not perpetually before him, the possibility of such an occurrence, with its hideous train of casualities, is always lurking in his subconscious mind. We are all prone to measure new experiences by old standards. From his boyhood this man had been accustomed -to regard an explosion as a frightful calamity, and explosions on the field of battle awakened in him precisely the same feelings as would the thought of such a catastrophe in his coal-pit.

The truth seems to be that, as the danger of death increases, the fear of it recedes. As in other paths of life, familiarity breeds contempt, and the anxiety which a young soldier feels on his first visit to the trenches gives way to stolid indifference. Men become so inured to the hazards of war that they can actually play practical jokes on each other and on their enemies in the shell-torn, bullet-swept trenches.

Whatever apprehensions a soldier may confess to having experienced on the way to battle, there is but one verdict as to the effect of the ordeal, and that is that every element of fear for one's personal safety is completely obliterated. To wait in the reserve trenches would seem to be much more nerve-racking than to be in the forefront of the fight. The fact seems to be that the mind is so occupied with the business in hand that there is no room for any thought of fear to obtrude itself.

I have quoted this article from "The Adventure of Death," by Dr. MacKenna (Putnams). It is one of the most interesting little books I have read in some time.

THE EDITOR.

Saving at the Source

By B. C. FORBES

THE best way to save is not to get the money.

Once money gets into our pockets, it is easy to spend it, hard not to spend it.

If we can solve the problem of keeping the money from getting into our pockets, half the battle of systematic saving will be won.

This problem is going to be solved. Some men and women have solved it.

These men and women have asked their employers to take $1 or $2 or $5 or $10 every week or every month from the pay envelop—or, rather, not to put this amount into the pay envelop at all, but to deposit it in a trustworthy savings bank to the credit of the individual. The money is in the worker's own name, and he is at liberty to take part or all of it out at any time he wishes.

One of the greatest corporations in the United States is now considering the adoption of this system on a very large scale. Men have been "sounded" on the proposal by the ex-laborer who now has charge of all work aimed at improving the conditions and increasing the happiness of employees. And this ex-laborer, now a responsible, highly paid official, tells me that the response has been so encouraging that the matter will go before the board of directors with cordial indorsement.

Let Your Boss Save for You

THE company for years has had a plan for helping workers to buy shares of its stock through small payments held out of the weekly pay envelops, and the arrangement has worked so satisfactorily that the employees now own millions of dollars of the company's shares.

The management has found that, as a class, the workmen who save are distinctly more valuable, more dependable, and more desirable in every way than those who spend every cent they earn.

There is nothing revolutionary, nothing startling, about this new method of encouraging thrift. Indeed, a promising start has already been made by means of the machinery devised throughout the country for enabling employees of all kinds to buy Liberty bonds through weekly or monthly deductions from their earnings. Nearly two thirds of the $2,000,000,000 war bonds were subscribed for by small investors, and it is safe to conclude that this plan of buying on the instalment system through cooperation between employers and employees was responsible for a goodly proportion of the $50 and $100 and even $1000 purchases.

There is no reason why workers should stop this simple method of saving and investing money the moment they finish paying for their Liberty bonds. Under the cooperative plan, scores if not hundreds of millions of dollars will be saved that otherwise would have been frittered away. Why should not this movement continue in times of peace?

If you have not already arranged with your employer to have him take a few dollars from your pay for the purchase of Liberty bonds, my suggestion and urgent advice would be that you talk this whole matter over—first, with the men or women who work alongside of you. Get them interested and enthusiastic. And then speak to your superintendent or manager or other official who could take it up for consideration with the heads of your concern.

Most of us are inclined to spend all that comes into our hands. We may have been getting along well enough on a certain rate of pay; yet as soon as we got a "raise" we found we could spend it also, apparently without any great effort. Suppose, instead of having the additional money handed to us, we had said to the boss: "Will you take this extra $2 or $5 or $10 every pay day and deposit it in such-and-such a bank for me?" Don't you think, if you had done this, you could have managed somehow to get along on the old basis? At least, the chances all are that you would have saved some part of the increase, withdrawing a little sum, perhaps, for vacation time or in case of sickness.

Human nature being what it is, the important thing is to adopt some plan whereby the saving will be done without our having to take any active steps. Have the arrangement automatic, have it done for us, and we are much more likely to make real headway.

Could You Get Along on 10 Cents Less a Day?

DO you think you could, by a little effort and self-sacrifice, save ten cents each day? If you could, your daily dime, invested at five per cent. compound interest, would mount up to $1206.81 in twenty years, and would then draw interest alone of $55.73 a year. If you could make it a dollar a week your savings would amount to $1724.01, and your interest would bring you $79.61 a year. Two dollars weekly would mean $3448.02 saved, earning $159.22 in interest in one year.

Start that $1 or $2 a week now. If you need help to do it, get your employer to open the savings bank account for you and have him deposit the dollar regularly. You will never regret it.

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

Partial-Payment Combinations, a circular which gives definite suggestions for the purchase of time-tested stocks on the partial-payment plan, has been issued by John Muir & Co. Copies may be had on application to the main office of the firm, 61 Broadway, New York City.

McClave & Co., members of the New York Stock Exchange and New York Cotton Exchange, 67 Exchange Place, New York, have prepared for free distribution a mid-year calendar of approximate dividend dates. This calendar details dividend meetings, ex-dividend dates, dates when dividends are payable, etc. A copy of this calendar will be sent to any one upon request.

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.

The American public has received its first great lesson in learning to put its savings into sound investments. This has been effected through the widespread campaign to place the Liberty Loan issue. To those who wish to pursue the subject further the Bache Review, issued weekly, will assist them, as it keeps its readers informed about the financial effect of important events happening every day. A copy sent without charge by applying to J. S. Bache & Co., 42 Broadway, New York City.

Phelps-Eastman Company, McKnight Building, Minneapolis, specialities in high-grade 6 per cent. farm mortgages in convenient denominations, secured by carefully selected Montana farm property. Those interested in the highest class of investment are invited to write for free booklet and detailed information.

The Odd Lot Review, published every Saturday, aims to reflect in brief and comprehensive style the principal developments affecting values in standard securities. Sample copies will be sent 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.

Their booklet, "We're Right on the Ground," outlining in a comprehensive way the advantage of farm mortgages as a safe investment, won for E. J. Lander & Co., Grand Forks, North Dakota, third prize in the contest at the recent St. Louis Convention of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the world. Offered free to readers of this magazine.

Magnificent water powers serving Minneapolis, St. Paul, and the Central Northwest are illustrates in the new booklet "Back of the Investment," issued by Northern States Power Company, which will be sent upon request to H. M. Byllesby & Company, 218 South La Salle Street, Chicago, and 1219 Trinity Building, New York City.

Bond Messenger, an unusually interesting and "meaty" magazine, and "Systematic Saving," a timely and valuable booklet for large and small investors—both sent on request by writing Liggett & Drexel, members New York Stock Exchange, 61 Broadway; New York City. Ask for booklet E-16.