Is There a "Best" Way in Business?

By JAMES H. COLLINS

"WHAT is the best way of buying stock for a retail store?"

"What is the correct selling cost for a grocery business of twenty thousand dollars a year?

"What is the right percentage to spend on advertising?"

These are typical questions asked of an efficiency expert by business men seeking information on vital problems in their work as proprietors, managers, and salaried employees. It is easier to ask such questions than to answer them. But the man who asks them shows that he is anxious to improve his methods, and if he can follow the comprehensive answers given him by an efficiency man who goes into the problem in detail, he ought to get even broader information than he expected.

You see, the answers must be general and comparative.

The man who asks such a question believes that somewhere in the world there must be an absolutely correct selling cost or advertising expenditure, and that his business will be more profitable if he can find and follow it.

The efficiency man knows, however, that these things are all relative—not fixed percentages, but constantly shifting ratios, depending on the amount of business done, the season, the times, the human equation in employees and public.

The Batting Average

THE inquirer expects a percentage in figures. An honest answer will give him only a ratio, an average, an ideal to strive for.

Instead of a percentage, he gets a batting average. But, if he can follow that, it will take him further than any percentage. For all the results in these matters, and most of the fun, depend on keeping the ratios fluid and shifting—not trying to solidify them into percentages at all.

A hardware merchant had a prosperous business, but had never advertised. The advertising manager of the leading newspaper in his city got him to make special offerings of seasonable goods, developing the feminine appeal in hardware; and results were so good that in six months the hardware man was spending about two per cent. of his gross receipts for space in that newspaper. His interest in advertising was aroused He wanted to know what other merchants in his line spent for advertising. That newspaper was the blue-stocking sheet of the town. Should he use space in the two yellow newspapers? If so, how much?

"How much can a clerk sell in your store?" asked the efficiency man to whom he put these questions.

"Why, that all depends!" said the hardware man, in surprise. "It depends on what sort of a clerk he is, and on the kind of goods he is handling. It depends on the times and the season—even on the weather."

"Well, advertising is the same," answered the efficiency man. "It is just a printed clerk, and will never sell goods at the same percentage twice alike. You pick and watch your clerks, help them with attractive goods, work for good sales averages. Advertising must be bossed the same way, and the proper percentage to spend is all that you can use to increase your turnover, build up patronage, reduce selling costs."

Stocking a General Store

ANOTHER merchant had a general store, with stock divided into half a dozen lines of staple goods—groceries, hardware, clothing, shoes, and so on. He believed that there must be some scheme on which he could arrange his purchase of stock, investing so much money in groceries, so much in clothing, so much in shoes; and that these percentages, once calculated and followed, would automatically make his capital work to better advantage, reduce stale stcck, give him a larger turn-over.

So he took a trip and gathered percentages from other merchants. But, after visiting a dozen stores, he stopped. For he had discovered that there was no "correct" percentage.

One man had fifteen per cent. of his capital invested in the shoe department, but did less business than another merchant who had about five per cent. in that line.

The first merchant just carried so much shoe stock, and let his customers come around when they needed shoes. If they came, perhaps they found nothing that pleased them, and so took the trolley to the nearest city, or sent an order to a mail-order house.

The other merchant, however, had so little money to invest in his shoe business that he had to keep it working; and he carried smart styles that won and held trade.

In groceries it was the same way. The best grocery trade found on his trip was that of a merchant who had hardly twenty per cent. of his money in this department, against from thirty to fifty per cent. in other stores.

Before he left home this investigator believed that he would learn how many of his dollars ought to be assigned to each of his half dozen different departments. When he got back home, he said:

"Here, you dollars! No matter what part of the store you work in, I want you to get busy!"

With selling cost, and practically all other vital items in business, it is just the same. The big department store, with every apparent advantage in capital, stock, employees, location, advertising, may be trying to overcome as high a ratio as thirty or forty per cent.; while the small merchant around the corner, limited in all these resources, has to work so hard and watch everything so closely that he does business on less than twenty per cent.

"What is the best percentage?" can only be answered by asking other questions of the questioner:

"What time do you get down to business every morning?"

"How well do your employees like you?"

"What is the size of your hat?"

Does the Uniform Make the Soldier?

WHY does a soldier wear a uniform?

There are some very obvious answers, of course. Men must be able to recognize their comrades at a glance: the rules of warfare prescribe that the men who fight ununiformed may be treated as outlaws instead of as prisoners of war.

But the value of the uniform goes deeper: it has to do with some very elemental principles of psychology.

Our brains are organized by means of what psychologists call the "association of ideas."

Every idea that we have is not isolated from every other idea in our brains, but is so pigeonholed that, when it is called up, it brings with it other ideas that naturally have to do with it.

A certain bit of melody will bring with it a whole train of associated memories. The scent of a flower, a few lines of verse, a certain dress of your wife's—every influence that touches our senses awakes its own particular "reaction."

So the civilian, laying off his business suit, which is associated with all the activities of peace, puts on a uniform, which has always been associated in his mind with courage and obedience and discipline.

And by his very change of clothes he calls up a new stream of associations, which actually help to make him a different man.

Psychologists tell us another thing that is wonderfully interesting. They say that every idea that enters the human mind will immediately produce some kind of physical action, unless it is stopped, or "inhibited," by some stronger idea.

You can prove that from your own experience, as William James shows. Some morning you are lying in bed, thinking of nothing in particular; and suddenly the thought enters your mind that you will be late for breakfast. Before you know it, you have jumped out of bed.

You can not remember "making up your mind" to get up. There was no act of will: simply the idea came, and, finding nothing in your mind to stop it, got itself immediately executed.

A door is open, and you rise and close it. No real decision—just the idea of the open door, and the immediate action brought forth by the idea.

There is a plate of candy on the table, and you put out your hand and take a piece. Or perhaps a stronger idea —the thought that your doctor has forbidden it—comes to you, and your hand stops half way. In either case, there has been no making up of your mind. Simply one idea starting to produce action, and then a stronger idea stopping the action half way.

It is the business of army commanders to build up an atmosphere of ideas that will overcome the ideas of fear and cowardice which are natural to men in battle—to produce what is known as "morale."

So men are put into uniform, and drilled. And the uniform and the drill are constantly sending impulses into the man's mind—constantly saying to him: "You're dressed just like every other man; you must act just like every other man; that's discipline. You're wearing the clothes of courage: you must be courageous."

The uniform helps to make the soldier.

And, in the same sense, clothes help to make the man.

There is a certain rescue mission in an Eastern city. When a man is converted in it, the first thing that they do is to take his shoes and build up the heels.

Because run-down heels constantly telegraph to a man's mind the idea of sloppiness and failure: and if a man is to succeed he must lose those ideas first of all.

Wear uncomfortable clothes, and they set up an irritation that insistently prompts your mind to discomfort and uneasiness. Wear poor clothes, and they produce the idea of avoiding those who have better clothes.

I would have no man a dude, forever thinking of his clothes. Indeed, the ideal is that a man should be so well dressed that he never has to think of his clothes at all.

Comfortably dressed—and so mentally composed. Wearing the clothes associated in his mind with success, and so finding it easier to be successful.

Just as soldiers are put into the clothes associated with courage, that they may find it easier to be courageous.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

TURN ABOUT

By HOLWORTHY HALL

Illustrations by

IT must stand as one of the irrefragable axioms of business that a young man just out of college, a young man highly trained in the liberal and useless arts, and wholly ignorant of the commonest commercial principles, is handicapped if he also happens to be sensitive.

And the worst of it was that when Leonard Carter's great-uncle—who was his nearest living relative both in point of genealogy and in the colloquial sense—exerted his influence to get Carter a place in a great wholesale house, he not only admitted that the candidate was abnormally thin-skinned: he also said, in a futile attempt to nullify the weakness, that he was very modest.

Whereupon Mr. Willis, the office manager, grinned and inquired: "Well, what's he ever done to be modest about?"

Mr. Willis had begun as a messenger boy and worked his way to a managership at twenty-nine, and his philosophy had seeped through a fine strainer.

"Anyway," said Carter's great-uncle, who had been one of the most important clients of the house, "give him a chance."

"I'll give him a job," retorted Mr.Willis, with emphasis. "But he'll have to make the chance—and you can tell him not to forget it! No—I'll tell him!"

SO that presently Carter went to work for ten dollars a week; and from June to January his consciousness of inefficiency kept his cheeks flushed until the tints of shame were almost a part of his natural complexion.

Carter was a big, bulky youth, who had been born with many of the gentler attributes of his mother, and all of the physical qualities of his father.

With men of his own age he was at ease, and most companionable; but in the presence of older men he was painfully abashed. For example, he felt toward Mr. Willis almost exactly as he had felt, in his freshman year, toward the coach of the University team. The coach had understood this emotion, and jockeyed Carter into first-string material as a result of it; Mr. Willis, lacking the more delicate perceptions, saw Carter only as a husky, genial, and diligent slow-wit, and unconsciously laughed two thirds of the ambition out of him in six months.

Purely by accident, Carter chose that month of January to fall in love. He had recently been raised to twelve dollars a week; but the minor triumph served only to accentuate his gloom when he recalled that Alice Kingsford's butler got double the money. Nevertheless, he fell tumultuously in love with the daughter of his supreme chief; and for once his self-depreciation had a value. Although Alice wasn't yet in love with Carter, she did like him immensely, and she casually told this to her most persistent suitor, who was Mr. Willis.

Mr. Willis, never remotely considering Carter in the light of a rival, smilingly conceded that he was a very pleasant young fellow.

"And he's certainly a hard worker, too," said Mr. Willis. "There's no doubt whatsoever about that—and it's too bad he hasn't more head. Just the same, I'm going to see that he gets another raise in April."

"Really?" Miss Kingsford was impersonally pleased.

"Up to fifteen," said Mr. Willis.

Miss Kingsford looked at him in vague discomfort. She was without data on the subject of masculine income.

"Fifteen what?" she asked.

"Dollars a week," said Mr. Willis, astonished.

Miss Kingsford gasped.

"Is that all!" Her tone rang like an accusation.

"I call it pretty good progress," said Mr. Willis. "Of course, he isn't a high-grade man, or anywhere near it, but I'm taking his energy into consideration."

"Fifteen dollars a week!" she echoed faintly.

"And before he's been with us a year!" said Mr. Willis. "Why, if he keeps on, and stops making silly blunders, he ought to be getting at least four or five thousand by the time he's thirty. And then he'll marry some nice little girl, and have an apartment up in Harlem, and be ours for life."

MISS KINGSFORD made no further comment, but that evening she asked her father the amount of Mr. Willis's salary, and learned, to her amazement, that it was ten thousand dollars.

"He's a mighty intelligent man," said Alice's father, secretly delighted. "He saves most of his money and buys stock with it. Altogether he must own five or six hundred shares. He's a corner. In another season he'll be a vice-president."

Alice was mentally occupied with a comparison.

"He'll be president some day, then, won't he?"

"Just as soon as I say so," declared Mr. Kingsford.

Alice visualized the big, deferential, impulsive boy who, by virtue of the favor of this paragon, was shortly to be honored by an advancement to fifteen dollars a week.

"Well—when are you going to say so?"

"Oh, that depends," said Mr. Kingsford, smiling meaningly at her.

THERE was one phase of business on which Mr. Willis laid the greatest stress, and that concerned his relationship toward the younger men in the office. Mr. Willis had formulated a diplomatic code intended to combine a certain cameraderie with a certain aloofness; he praised his men briefly but on the slightest provocation; and when it was necessary to reprimand them, his idea wasn't to stun them by heavy blame, but to sting them with raillery.

Carter was super-sensitive. He couldn't endure to be laughed at: he took Mr. Willis's jocular corrections as so many affronts. Also, he was abnormally reserved: lie took Mr. Willis's commendations as so many patronizing familiarities. Firm impartiality was what would have developed his latent powers; instead, he was losing confidence. He became discouraged; he began to loathe Mr. Willis with unlimited loathing.

Carter was gregarious, but he couldn't afford a club, not even the inexpensive local club of his university. So he joined a crack militia regiment. He reacted strongly to the military stimulus and the military discipline. Business was cold-blooded; the Guard was a living inspiration.

Mr. Willis didn't know that Carter was in the Guard; so that it was by pure fortuitousness that he fell into the habit of addressing Carter by military titles. The origin of the jest lay in the appointment of Carter to the duty of marshal in charge of fire drills in the shipping department. In due course the drills were discontinued, but Mr. Willis preserved the memory of them, and even brevetted Carter major. To Carter, who had won his corporal's chevrons within a year, this was galling.

CARTER went to Miss Kingsford, told her exactly what his prospects were, omitting all references to Mr. Willis, and asked her point-blank what were the odds against him. She explained so sweetly and so logically that Carter hadn't a syllable to utter in refutation. She said that she was extremely fond of him, but that the calendar must be the standard of her ultimate decision. Suppose, indeed, that he loved her as no man had ever previously loved, could he conceivably support her? Wouldn't it be much better for them to go on as friends until there were more practical premises for his pleading?

"What I want to know," said Carter, "is if there's a fighting chance? That's all. I know I haven't any right to mortgage your fun for three or four years—I'm not even going to ask you to wait for me. But, as things are now, have I a chance?"

Alice looked at him without affectation or alarm, and nodded.

"As much as any one," she told him.

Carter leaned forward. His expression was suddenly resolute.

"Then will you promise not to believe anything you hear about me before you hear from me about it?"

"Why, what do you mean?"

"Just that. Will you?"

"Surely," she said. "You ought to—"

"The solemnest promise you can make?"

"No; but—what is it, Leonard? You frighten me!"

"I'm sorry," said Carter. "Oh, I'm sorry! But you've promised—and I'm not going to let you forget!"

It was a fortnight before the crisis came.

---

Mr. Willis, who felt his vice-presidency in the air, was exhilarated; and in the loftiness of his mood he was more than customarily buoyant. At length, after he had insensibly harried Carter through half a morning, he addressed him briskly:

"Major, I'll ask you to do a job for me, please. Present my compliments to the commandant of the scavenger department, and tell him if he doesn't have this litter cleaned up around my headquarters and police it better from now on, I'll court-martial him!"

Carter started and turned white. He stepped forward, quaking in ungovernable anger.

"You can take your choice," he said under his breath. "You can apologize to me darned quick, or you can have your face smashed. Personally, I hope you don't apologize."

Mr. Willis, who had recoiled sharply, stiffened. He was no physical coward, but he had ethics of his own; and there were a number of reasons, moral, social, and financial, which prevented him from quarreling openly with a junior employee. He laughed, and leaned back against his desk. He was still ignorant of the cause of Carter's explosion; he imagined that it was due to the nature of the errand.

"Calm down, Major, calm down! You're never asked to do anything I haven't—"

"I'll give you ten seconds," said Carter.

Mr. Willis had stopped laughing, but his lips still curled. He was dumfounded and baffled, but he was also sure of himself and of his dignity. He lifted his hand to a bit of mechanism on the wall.

"Take a look at this handle! See? It's a police call. Now go ahead! What's got into you, Carter? You don't think it's worth a trip to the cooler to have the pleasure of assaulting me, do you? Your salary doesn't give you such a devil of a leeway for fines, does it?"

"Come out in the shipping yard, then," said Carter contemptuously.

"You go to the cashier and get your time," said Mr. Willis bluntly. "Understand? Pack up your things and get out of here!"

Carter, who had been seeing queer visions of himself paying ever so dearly for his trifling revenge, shook himself.

"All right. That's your privilege. You've guessed it. It isn't worth the price. But take a hint, Willis—you watch yourself! One of these days—"

"Cut it short!"

"I will. I'm going to get you if it takes a thousand years!"

He wheeled and strode away; and Mr. Willis, suddenly thoughtful, went over and stood at the window.

What perplexed Mr. Willis was what he should do next. He compromised, after some deliberation, on a prompt report to the president.

"It wasn't the personal side of it, Mr. Kingsford," said Mr. Willis in conclusion; "but if he flared up like that, and I didn't jump on him then and there, think what a snarl we'd have got into."

"True, true," agreed the president. "Well—it's too bad. He was a likable young chap. And old Mr. Carter'll be terribly distressed. The unfortunate part of it is that—"

"I know," said Mr. Willis. "He's enjoyed your hospitality; he's been admitted into your house. And that does make it rather a mess. But—"

"It's a very awkward thing," said the president slowly—"an unusually awkward thing. I wish you'd come up pretty soon and talk it over. Come up to-morrow."

ACCORDINGLY, the manager appeared at half past eight, and related his version of the occurrence with such repression that Miss Kingsford couldn't find a flaw in it, notwithstanding the fact that twenty-four hours earlier she had listened to Carter's own account.

"I can't make it out," said Mr. Willis. "I can't make head nor tail of it. I simply told him— Oh, well, there's no use going all over it again. You'd have thought a major's another name for a criminal. But that reminds me, Alice! Some of my old friends are in the Sixth, and they've persuaded me to go along in with 'em. I went through the formalities last night. There's nothing in this rumor of troops to the border, and—"

"What!" said Alice, her eyes sparkling. "Nothing in it! Haven't you heard?"

"Heard what?"

"They're going! Father had a wire from Washington to-day about supplies!"

"No! I wasn't in the office to-day, but—"

"But they are! And the Sixth—why, that's Leonard's regiment!"

"Leonard who? Not Carter!"

"Of course! They promoted him- to a sergeant this morning—he's the youngest sergeant in the regiment!"

Mr. Willis was gulping steadily. There was only one chance in twelve. Still, a horrible intuition was gnawing at him.

"Wha-what company?" he managed.

"He said C."

Mr. Willis relaxed limply.

"That's the company they—they assigned me to!" he said.

On the threshold the Kingsford butler was bowing suavely.

"Beg pardon. Mr. Willis was called on the telephone. He's to ring up the Sixth Regiment armory directly."

From the moment that he realized

his ludicrously grim predicament, Mr. Willis occupied himself mainly with study and deep reflection. His simplest defensive move would have been to apply promptly for transfer. But Mr. Willis scorned this action as a weakness.

He decided that his manliest and his most creditable course would be to pattern himself after the orderly buckers: to demonstrate to Carter that it was perfectly possible for a man to maintain his self-respect even in a lowly station.

In the meantime Willis promised himself that he would quietly prepare for the worst, and hone for a commission. He had received previous training, and he had a number of influential friends who could pull the wires for him. Thus fortified, Mr. Willis appeared for duty.

As he had anticipated, Carter was in turn thunder-struck at the strange coincidence. As Carter first perceived Mr. Willis, his jaw dropped; and Mr. Willis, seizing the precise second that was most fitted to contain a further shock, saluted stiffly and reported.

The meeting was strictly on official terms; but in the circumstances Mr. Willis wasn't astonished when shortly afterward Carter came to segregate him, and, having drawn him safely aside, addressed him somewhat unsteadily.

"Mr.—er—Willis," said Carter.

"Yes—Sergeant," said Mr. Willis. He had planned to be rigidly respectful, but his ceremoniousness was a trifle exaggerated. Carter reddened.

"I want you," said Carter, speaking slowly, "to apply for your discharge for business reasons. You're only twenty- four hours on the rolls—you can do it now, and maybe you can't later. I'll see that it goes through."

"Thank you—Sergeant," said Mr. Willis, unblinking. "But I think I'll stick."

"Then if you want to be transferred to some other—"

"But I'd rather stay in C Company."

"If we go to the border, and you—"

"Pardon me—Sergeant," said Mr. Willis, "but were not going to the border. That scare's all over. It was newspaper talk. We'll go into camp for a while, and then go home."

"What makes you think that?"

Mr. Willis smiled inwardly at his initial triumph; he had put Carter back in his old niche as one fitted to receive information but not to dispense it.

"I've had private advice from my, Congressman—Sergeant," said Mr. Willis humbly. "We belong to the same club."

"Still," said Carter, without great force, "I think it would be better for both of us if you got your discharge. You could claim business reasons, you know."

Mr. Willis declined politely to embrace a subterfuge.

"But—Sergeant—my business doesn't need- me. It can get along perfectly well without me. No, sir; I'm here, to stay! And I'm not married, and I haven't any dependents."

"Well—" said Carter. "I just want to tell you—you'll get fair treatment, anyway."

"Thank you—Sergeant. I knew that."

"I hope," said Carter, lowering his voice, "I'll treat you as fairly as you'd treat me if the situation were reversed. This private affair of ours can wait."

Mr. Willis was conscious of a momentary chill down his spine.

"Yes—of course."

"That's all," said Carter. "You needn't salute—this time."

THE Sixth went into camp at Van Cortlandt Park, and Alice Kingsford motored out daily, carrying various substances nowhere mentioned in the quartermaster's manual. She was strictly neutral, but Mr. Willis was restive because a sergeant had far greater freedom than a private.

Carter was somehow altering his attitude toward Mr. Willis, an alteration due perhaps to Mr. Willis's unswerving attention to duty. All things considered, Mr. Willis was, in his own opinion, getting along tolerably well. And then, without warning, the Sixth was ordered to the Southwest, and that was a different story.

As soon as Mr. Willis had absorbed the fatal news, he fled precipitately to write his plea for discharge. He swore that he was imperatively needed in the home office; and for his pains he had his own words returned to him. When the Sixth Regiment entrained, Mr. Willis was among those present.

Then Texas; and Mr. Willis, who had once been a jovial tyrant with Carter as his servitor, was now a repairer and a manicurer of highways, with Carter as his foreman. He helped to uproot cactus, and to construct drains; he labored as he had never labored before. He was a composite street-cleaner and policeman.

As his resentment against the system grew, so did his blind resentment against Carter. Their understanding seemed an impossibility. Carter couldn't treat Mr. Willis with any regularity of government; he was afraid to be too strict, and he was afraid that he wouldn't be strict enough.

In the course of a few months Carter, notably competent as far as the rest of his unit was concerned, was thinking of Mr. Willis as his sole bugaboo. Mr. Willis was hectoring him as he had hectored him in the office, but indirectly, subserviently, maddeningly. Mr. Willis had a way of drawling out that title "Sergeant" which made Carter flinch.

MR. WILLIS was adroit, and he was subtle. He also had friends to pull the wires. It was not long before Mr. Willis was abruptly chosen to fill the shoes of a fever-stricken corporal. In this position he had a wider field of operation; and he devoted every minute of his spare time—save those in which he wrote to Alice—to intensive study. And his friends pulled and pulled. There was a miniature upheaval in the regiment, and Mr. Willis added another stripe to his chevrons and threw a dash of vinegar into his communications with Carter.

There was a long interval of political intrigue, and more study on the part of Mr. Willis, and struggling justice on Carter's side. There were dreary examinations and the final tug on the very last of the wires, and, by one of those anomalies that occur even among the best regulated of regulars, Mr. Willis was Lieutenant Willis, and Carter was only top sergeant.

This time it was the lieutenant who sent for Carter.

"Turn about," said Mr. Willis pleasantly, "is fair play. Don't want to transfer, do you?"

"Yes, I do," said Carter wearily.

"Say 'sir,'" reprimanded Mr. Willis mildly. "Say it!"

"Yes, sir," said Carter.

Mr. Willis wasn't offensive, but he had none of Carter's scruples; and he had long been an office manager.

"Always say 'sir' to an officer—Sergeant. Well—I'll see what I can do about it."

Carter looked at him in silence.

"It's more than likely," said Mr. Willis, "that a change can't be made just now. If that's so—well, it isn't a bad company as it stands. I'll do what I can for you. That'll do now. Oh— Sergeant! One moment! Be a little careful, Sergeant! You forgot to salute!"

There were increasingly, trying days on the border—days when the skies opened their sluices and let the water down in solid sheets; and other days when the air itself was thick with a precipitate of alkali. The dispositions of men grew frayed and worn; and the ultra-refinements of civilization went into the discard.

And plodding relentlessly ahead went Carter, tight-lipped and incommunicative, subject once more to the manifest supremacy of Mr. Willis. He hadn't been able to get his transfer. As a lieutenant Mr. Willis was distinctly a martinet. He didn't specialize on Carter, but he wasn't a good officer. He made too much noise and created too much enmity.

Carter was incredibly depressed. It was at about this time that a pragmatic analysis of him would have shown that he had lost the very last vestige of his sensitiveness.

AND when he was at the very lowest depths, he had a tiny note from Alice Kingsford, and the torments of Texas became ridiculously insignificant. Alice was on the way to El Paso; and she wanted Carter to come to see her!

By the greatest good fortune he got three days' leave; and when Alice had been registered at the Paso del Norte for hardly an hour, Carter was walking impatiently about the lobby.

And then she was coming smilingly to meet him, and Carter, with a thousand incoherences in his throat and limitless yearning in his eyes, went toward her.

They were only a pace or two apart when he felt his elbow brushed by some one passing rapidly. The vision of Alice was

---

---

suddenly blotted out by a trim figure in khaki, and Carter stopped, paralyzed.

The next moment, when he was shaking hands with Alice and looking ineffable things at her, he was still shaken by the knowledge that Mr. Willis was standing beside them, smiling faintly.

"How's your father?" asked Mr. Willis, disregarding Carter. "How'd he stand the trip?"

"Much better," said Alice. "How did you—" She bit her lip and glanced perplexedly at Carter.

"He telegraphed me this morning," said Mr. Willis. A frown was gathering on his forehead; he was obviously ill at ease.

"Oh!" She cast about her for a trio of chairs. "Let's sit down somewhere and—"

"Er—that is—I'm sorry, Alice," said Mr. Willis, nodding toward the Sergeant. "But—I'm sure you know how it is."

"How what is?" she inquired blankly.

"I'm afraid," said Mr. Willis indulgently, "you don't understand the conventions of the service. Sergeant—"

Carter turned to Alice. He was impossibly angry, but his tone was level.

"He means," said Carter, "that a commissioned officer and a non-com can't sit in a hotel corridor—or even stand here—and talk to the same girl! So, if you'll pardon me—"

"But—why, how ridiculous! I—"

"Until later," said Carter, bowing. "I'll telephone you." And, with the customary leave-taking of a superior officer, he whirled and marched out into the street.

For thirty minutes he walked at top speed, crushing down an insane desire to rush back to the Paso del Norte, to take Mr. Willis by the neck, and to wring it for him once and for all.

CARTER paused on a street corner, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. His fingers encountered letters, and he remembered that he hadn't yet opened the mail he had received before leaving camp. Indifferently he ripped the flap of one thin envelop, and drew out a single sheet. He read a paragraph, exclaimed aloud, and laughed softly. He stopped laughing then, and gripped the paper tightly and brought it nearer to his eyes. He read it through twice. Then he started in the direction of the Paso del Norte. Twice he came to a standstill and allowed himself to be jostled by passers-by while he read through the document once more.

At the hotel he asked for Miss Kingsford, and, hearing that she was indisposed, he sent up his name to her father, and got a reply to the effect that Mr. Kingsford was in conference and could not be disturbed. Whereupon Carter scribbled a card which he inclosed in an envelop and left for Alice, and went straight out of his precious three days' leave and back to camp, where he sought for and obtained a speedy interview with his captain.

"I know it's practically out of the question, sir," he said; "but if you'll look at this letter— Do you suppose I could get my discharge somehow?"

The captain began to laugh.

"Yes, you can," he said cheerfully. "But not the way you mean. You'll get it about three weeks from next Thursday in our own armory. You'll be mustered out. We just got orders from Washington this afternoon the Sixth is going home." He laughed still more loudly at the expression on Carter's face. "What's the trouble?" he queried.

"Nothing—nothing," said Carter hastily. "Only I wish I'd known it sooner. I wouldn't have wasted so much carfare."

And at that the captain, who had read the greater portion of Carter's letter, laughed most immoderately.

AT the Paso del Norte the next morning Carter was lucky enough to catch the Kingsfords before they had breakfasted. Alice came down first, and as she saw him fretting in his incontinent eagerness, she smiled even as she had smiled yesterday. As he advanced to meet her he was mastered by impulses that stirred him perilously, and shaken by the fear that he had no right to the impulses. And then, just when he was opposite Miss Kingsford, he saw something in her eyes that settled everything.

Heedless of a knot of amused by-standers, they clasped each other's hands and kissed each other as instinctively as if that had been their habitual salutation. They drew apart at arm's length and gazed at each other, and then they both blushed furiously.

"Oh, you're so big and brown and strong!" said Alice irrelevantly. "You scare me! Oh, Leonard!"

"How have you done it?" he demanded with equal irrelevance.

"Done what?"

"Grown so much more lovely!"

Conscious of publicity, Carter hastened to ferret out a secluded spot.

"Alice!" said Carter abruptly. "Alice!"

"You see," she said, as if in explanation. "He wrote lots of letters to me, too—and that's what made me come!"

"His letters made you come?"

She nodded in the affirmative.

"Yes—when I compared them with yours. That's what brought me, Leonard. I'd have come sooner, but father was ill—"

"I hated to run away yesterday—but it was a critical time, dear. And then— Oh, wait! Let me show you!"

He gave her the missive that had so profoundly affected him, and watched her thrill to its contents.

"So," he went on, "I got back to camp as fast as I could to try to get my discharge—and they told me we're ordered. home! We leave in two or three weeks. And after that—"

Alice regarded him rapturously.

"After that—dear?"

Carter told her, palpitating.

"Provided your father approves, of course," he finished.

"I think he will," she hazarded. "He's old and tired—and that was one of the things he came down here to discuss. Only he was going to discuss it with—

with Mr. Willis instead. But there's one sure way to find out—let's go ask him!"

THE Kingsfords unexpectedly left El Paso, whose climate wasn't agreeing with Mr. Kingsford, for a swing around the Pacific loop; so that Mr. Willis didn't see them again, but he had a long communication from Mr. Kingsford which simply advised him that the matters they had discussed so recently had better be held in abeyance until the Sixth was mustered out of the Federal service and Mr. Willis was at complete leisure. Mr. Willis grinned sagely to himself, and wrote another flaming epistle to Alice.

During these last few days he was extraordinarily kind to Carter. He was really sorry for the man who had so signally failed thrice running—in business, in the army, and in love.

And in due course the Sixth tramped again the pavements of Manhattan, and presently the regiment shouted itself hoarse and shook off the bonds of its oath. And as soon as he was once in citizens' clothes again, Mr. Willis betook himself to the familiar office downtown, and steeled himself for the felicitations.

BUT the congratulations of the staff were somewhat tempered by an excitement that Mr. Willis was slow to analyze. He had put it down as a tribute to his own achievements; but he was rudely awakened when he asked the head bookkeeper if there had been many changes in the force.

"Not exactly in the force," said the head bookkeeper cautiously. "There'll be some in the executive office, though."

"Oh, yes—I know that."

"They say the old man's through."

"Yes—he told me so in El Paso."

"You know who's succeeding him?"

"I don't know officially." Mr. Willis didn't know how much Mr. Kingsford wanted published.

"That so? Well—" And the head bookkeeper became reticent.

Mr. Willis went on to the sales manager, who hailed him with divided interest.

"Hello, Willis! Glad to see you! You're looking great! Lieutenant, aren't you? Good work! Say, wasn't that a scream about young Carter?"

"What's that?" Mr. Willis wasn't informed. "What about him?"

"Good Lord, didn't you know it? All the newspapers had it! Along about a month ago some old fossil—great-uncle, I think—died and left him heaven knows how much money! You remember—the old chap that got him in here. And say, I hear he's engaged to Mr. K's daughter, too! How's that for luck?"

"No!" said Mr. Willis, wide-eyed. "No!"

"Well—that's what they say!"

Mr. Willis proceeded agitatedly to the advertising director.

"Howdy, Willis! Glad you're back! Say—Carter fell in a soft spot, didn't he! Better behave yourself—I understand he's buying out Kingsford!"

"Where'd you hear that?" demanded Mr. Willis in an abnormally dry voice.

"Oh, just talk around the office."

Mr. Willis walked swiftly to the door of the president's office, and knocked. Bidden to enter, he saw Mr. Kingsford and Carter—still in his sergeant's uniform—seated behind the big mahogany desk which for years Mr. Willis had looked upon as certain some day to be his own. Mr. Willis stumbled, and caught himself. There was electric silence in the room.

"Perhaps," said Mr. Kingsford at length, "I'd better leave you two together."

"Thank you," said Carter soberly.

Mr. Kingsford went out.

FOR the space of possibly half a minute Carter drummed on the blotter, while Mr. Willis, sickly white, stared and stared.

"Sit down—please," said Carter.

Mr. Willis, against his will, sat down.

"Willis," Carter said almost inaudibly, "I wish you'd tell me why you always had it in for me."

Mr. Willis shook his head.

"You see," said Carter awkwardly, "I rather liked you—right from the start. I liked the way you acted toward everybody but me. I looked up to you. And then you began to jump on me—"

"You don't need to rub it in," said Mr. Willis, rising. "I know when I'm licked! But I never had it in for you."

Carter had also risen.

"How do you make that out? I don't suppose you'll deny preventing my transfer, will you?"

"That?" Mr. Willis breathed heavily. "Ask the captain. Evidently you haven't."

"No; I took your word for it."

"I recommended it," said Mr. Willis, "but he said you were too good to lose."

Carter's brows lifted sharply.

"Well—when I was here in the office—"

"Never mind," said Mr. Willis. "What's the use? Only you misjudged something—I never insulted you."

"There is some use! You've probably heard a rumor about me and Mr. Kingsford. Well, it's true. I liked this business; I believe in it. I couldn't imagine a better investment. So I'm buying him out. But I don't pretend I'm capable of conducting it—I know I'm not. Now—I suppose you knew our engagement is announced to-day—"

"I—heard of it," said Mr. Willis thickly.

"Well—" Carter looked down at the desk. "Willis, Mr. Kingsford's been talking to me about you. He's told me how many years you've worked here—oh, he told me everything; and I understand pretty well how you must have felt, and—" He stepped quickly from behind the desk, and put his hand on Mr. Willis's shoulder. "Hang it," he said, "I'm not trying to rub it in, Willis—I'm convinced you're a better man than you've ever let me believe, that's all! The point is—are you willing to be president of this outfit?"

Mr. Willis froze to immobility.

"President?"

"That's what I said. Mr. Kingsford's out, and I can't run the plant. I sort of figure that anybody who'd fight against me as you have would fight pretty well for me. Will you begin all over again?"

Mr. Willis's mouth worked queerly.

"You can't mean that."

"I do mean it," said Carter. "Mr. Kingsford thinks you'll be a whirlwind. So do I. Perhaps we'll get along better as equals—that's about the only thing we haven't tried. Call it off, Willis—come on in and begin all over again. Will you?"

Mr. Willis turned sharply away. His thoughts were chaos. This was the house he had hoped to direct; and Carter was offering to insure him of that ambition.

Mr. Willis turned back to Carter, and held out his hand.

"Will you?" he said.

"Certainly." They shook hands.

"I'm with you," said Mr. Willis emphatically, and there was moisture in his eyes. "But—oh, Carter! You didn't need to make it quite so sudden, did you?" He laughed off the moisture, and pulled himself together. "Didn't you realize you'd nine hundred and ninety-nine years to spare?"

The Human Nature Limit

By WILLIAM G. SHEPHERD

SUGAR is so much a necessity of life that men in the trenches who have been without it for weeks demand it instead of tobacco.

One night, after a sugarless week in Przemysl during the Russian attack on the forts, I said to an Austrian officer, expressing the deepest yearning of my soul:

"I'd give a week of my life for some candy."

"So?" he said simply.

An hour later, in the officers' crowded casino, he took me gently by the arm and said:

"Come with me."

We went out into the pitch-dark streets, and, at the risk of our necks, made our way over the slippery mud-covered sidewalks. We turned into a side street; then into an alley; then into a back yard, and he led me to a door in the rear of a little shop. He knocked gently three times. The door opened, and a timid little woman thrust forth her gray head.

"It's only I, with a friend," said the officer.

"Ah! Come in," said the woman.

It was the kitchen of a little home bakery. One oil-lamp stood on the big brick stove. A dozen officers sat about, chatting.

"Have you bonbons to-night?" asked the officer.

"You see what I have," said the old woman, turning and pointing to a shelf that bore an array of chocolate drops neatly set out in rows on strips of oiled paper.

"Behold!" said the officer to me triumphantly.

All the yearning of a drug fiend for his cocaine was in my soul for sugar.

"You may have only four to-night," said the old woman. "They didn't bring me much sugar to-day."

The officer and I paid thirty cents for four little chocolate drops, and we sat down at the kitchen table with the other officers, to eat them slowly, and to talk as we ate.

Drinking at Risk of Court Martial

WE were breaking a strict military law of Przemysl. The place might have been "pulled" at any time, so the officers told me, and they spoke low, like men in a Kansas "speak-easy."

But human nature was triumphing over the rules of war. Even so simple a thing as the craving for sugar was overriding the wishes and the plans of the Austrian military leaders.

I have sat in a big café in Paris, in days that were dark for the French, when the military teetotal law was almost inexorably strict and when cafés were supposed to be closed at eight o'clock, and seen half a hundred people drinking until early morning.

"Care! Care! Care!" the waiters would say. The proprietor stood around with watchful eyes, ready to rebuke any noisemakers.

It would not be a policeman who would come to the door. It would be a soldier with a rifle, perhaps twenty of them—Gallieni's soldiers, who would drag offenders off to a grim court martial instead of to a police court. But human nature, in Paris, was demanding alcohol, and the love of the Frenchman for his café was not to be overridden by even Gallieni's iron-clad orders.

When the Zepps Come

THE coming of Zeppelins toward London is, by military and naval order, a secret. One of those highly interesting occasions moves somewhat like this:

Guards on the English coast sight a Zeppelin coming over the North Sea. They immediately telephone to their nearest superior, and he, in turn, telephones to his superior in some near-by town. This last official telephones to London, and before long the telephone and telegraph wires are buzzing with the news.

From the aviation headquarters in London go orders to the various aëroplane stations to "take the air" at a cer-fain hour, and to "remain at such-and-such a level." A program of "welcome" is arranged. Civilian guards are called out to their posts. Occasionally messages come in from towns which the Zeppelin has crossed, telling of the movements of the sky-ship.

Moment by moment, the Zeppelin comes nearer to London. An hour or more elapses while the huge menace continues its Londonward journey. In the meantime, in London, civilians are supposed to know nothing of what is going on. They are expected to fulfil their evening engagements in ignorance of the danger. The official mind has decided that what the civilian mind doesn't know won't hurt it.

But human nature has taken hold of things in London. In spite of all the secrecy which the military and naval authorities try to exert in regard to Zeppelin raids, civilians in London do know when Zeppelins are on the way. And who tells them the secret?

The telephone girl, for one. Do you suppose that she can sit there and listen to all this whispering of the coming menace and not let her family and friends know of the danger? Do you suppose, if you have been friendly with her over the line and she has learned to know your voice, that she won't count you in among her friends?

You take the receiver off your telephone, before you start for the theater some evening in good Zeppelin weather, and say to your telephone girl:

"Anything doing this evening?"

She knows what you're asking about.

If a single whisper about Zeppelins has reached her ears, she'll say something that sounds like:

"They're around here somewhere, sir."

If you live in a big hotel like the Savoy or the Cecil, your chamber-maid, your waiter, your valet, your elevator-man, all the good folk who wait on you, will tell you if Zeppelins have been sighted anywhere. It's part of a good hotel servant's job, these days in London, to be able to give the latest Zeppelin news as a portion of his or her service. They get the news from the hotel switchboard.

If you know any clubman in London, just ask him, of an evening, whether the Zeppelins are expected. If they are, he'll know it, because in his club many members are civilian guards, and as soon as a Zeppelin rumor reaches London, they are called out, by telephone, to do patrol duty in the London streets. With the clubman it's a matter of pride to be able to give his friends advance information on Zeppelin rumors.

Human nature has upset all the ironclad orders of officialdom. The telephone girl out of sheer goodness of heart, the hotel servants out of a desire to render remunerative service, and the clubman out of a spirit of pride, have all prepared London for the first big "boom" of the Zeppelin bombs.

During the latest Zeppelin raids in London, everybody, it is safe to say, knew that the Zeppelins were on the way toward London long before they arrived.

Human Nature in the Trenches

HUMAN nature triumphs over the laws and plans of war in the trenches as well as in the capitals of Europe.

At the beginning of the war, when the men had settled down into trenches for the first time, there were so many night raids from one trench to another that white lights were invented which might be fired into the sky to illuminate a large area.

Whenever, in the night, a rifle fire began in one trench, the enemy sent up a white light to discover whether or not the rifle fire meant that a charge was under way. There was, of course, a highly excusable nervousness on both sides, and it was a common occurrence for a trench sentry to fire his rifle at imaginary objects across the way. One rifle shot like this was a signal for all the men in the sentry's trench to .grasp their rifles and fire at random toward the enemy, whether they saw anything or not, on the chance that the enemy had climbed out of his trench and was charging. Then, in the course of time, the following strange arrangement worked out:

If the enemy sent up a white light, it meant that he was not charging. As time went on, these white lights became tacitly a signal which said to the nervous enemy:

"What are you fellows firing for? We're not going to charge. Go on to sleep again, and let us sleep too."

Then the nervous firing would die down, the scare would be over, and quiet would settle down over the trenches again.

Human nature had twisted the meaning of the white light from a question-mark to a declaration-point.

"How good it was to see the Germans send up one of those white lights," said an Englishman to me. "It meant that they were telling us that they weren't planning any devilment."

Men have been executed in this war for giving the enemy less comfort than the English and German soldiers have given each other by the signal of the white light. And yet, there was no way for the military authorities on either side to prevent this form of signaling. Human nature had outwitted them.

The Point Where Man Rebels

WHEREVER I have gone in the Great War, I have seen human nature triumphant. This war, like all wars, is being fought by the rules of human nature.

The great leaders on both sides can not carry the warfare beyond the point where human nature rebels. That is a point which even the great leaders are afraid to approach. With one eye on the enemy, the statesmen and military leaders of both sides must keep the other on their countrymen, to see that none of the rules of human nature are being violated, to see that none of them are even being strained. Violated human nature would rise and rend kings and emperors and overthrow thrones; and the kings and emperors of Europe know it.

This war will end when human nature in Europe will no longer endure it. Which means, in practical talk, when the leaders on one side or the other see that they are straining human nature of their own folk too greatly, and when they become as fearful of the harm their own folk may do to them as they are of what the enemy may do.

The signs are many that this limit is being approached on both sides.

What Ten Years' Experience as a Wife Has Taught Me

THAT, whatever men may be in business, they are just big boys at home.

That blessed is the woman who is adaptable. Men seldom change; it is practically useless to try and change a husband; better to adjust yourself.

That an older and younger married woman should never live together. Mother and I tried it for several years, with unrest on both sides. Now she is housekeeping in three rooms not too far from me. She is growing younger in enjoying the freedom of her own home, and we love to visit each other.

That it never pays to tell any one your own or your husband's business. If it seems as if you must tell some one, keep a diary.

That it is not fair to ask a husband to do errands. He can not be expected to keep his mind on two businesses—if he is to succeed, he must concentrate on his own.

That fear is one of the greatest home-destroyers. It makes the wife nag the husband for fear he'll be late or catch cold or forget the bills. It makes the mother worry the children with constant admonitions for fear they'll break their necks or tear their clothes. It keeps a woman from a concert or lecture because she is afraid to go out alone; it keeps a husband tied to his wife's apron-strings because she is afraid to stay home alone. Fear is a terrible habit—but it can be cured.

That it pays to take a chance if you are willing to accept the worst it can offer. Fight for the best, if you take a chance; but know that the worst is bearable and will not injure others. Once we took a chance and bought a house oil a very small salary, knowing that if we could not pay for it, we could sell it easily. Several years later we sold it and made money on it. If one does not dare, one will never do.

That marriage need not mean a rest- cure for the brain. Happy is the wife who does not bury her talent. Blessed is the mother who, after the children 'are tucked away, can turn to her writing; her music, or some loved work, and receive refreshment and inspiration. There are nights when her husband must be at the office; there are evenings when he is silent at home. There are dull days, hard times, nervous hours when the only cure is a loved work. Why the married woman should stop studying I do not see. In these days of correspondence schools, evening schools, and special classes, every married woman who feels the need of it should have her own work for which to slave, sacrifice, and study. A. L. L.

THE MELTING POT

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

THE RUSSIAN AS A BUSINESS MAN

"ON the wharves at Archangel are thousands of crates from America, scores of them stenciled in red, 'This side up,' 'Glass,' 'Use no hooks,' 'Handle with care.' Imagine the bewilderment of the moujik longshoreman at such signs! He hasn't the slightest notion what they are all about; so he wields his hook valiantly and tumbles the case upside down, and laughs at the funny tinkle the crate makes inside." And this, says Richardson Wright in The Russians (Frederick A. Stokes Company), is one of the main reasons that the beforehanded German merchants have captured the bulk of trade with Russia. They have been to Russia, and they know what a strange thing is Russian business.

"In dealing with Russian merchants, an American must remember there are methods of business widely differing from his own. The Russian merchant is accustomed to the interminably slow methods of the East, to haggling, and to having a thoroughly good time.

"Enter a Russian bank, for example. You step up to the cash window and present your checks. A bit languidly, the teller receives your papers and asks you to wait. You retire to a corner. Fifteen minutes pass, twenty, half an hour. You step up to the window. The teller and the other clerks are drinking tea and nibbling snacks of luncheon. You go back to your seat, wondering what it is all about. Finally, when tea is over, the matter of your checks is taken up.

"I am often tempted to think that one reason why the Russian merchant is such a poor business man is that he is too fond of enjoying himself.

"There is another way of looking at the same situation. The Russian has learned a salient truth that Americans utterly lack. He believes—and acts accordingly—that it is far more important to make a life than to make a living."

THINGS EVERY OFFICER SHOULD KNOW

TO be a member of the bombing squad is an honorable but not an enviable position. Only the very best men in each platoon are chosen.

In Trench War-fare (E. P. Dutton) J. S. Smith tells how an officer must train them.

The first step is to overcome a man's natural fear of the grenade itself. Dummy grenades with fuses attached can be introduced and the men taught to light them, counting the seconds while the fuse burns out. They develop accuracy in throwing. Men should be taught to throw standing, kneeling, prone. It should be known that if a grenade with a time fuse is dropped in the act of throwing, there is time to pick it up and throw it out of the trench before it explodes.

During an attack three grenades per man are issued to each unit of men detailed to open the attack. When out of grenades themselves, the men take over the casualty's; and it is the duty of a casualty, when he is so able, to leave his grenades and ammunition to the care of some other man before "going down."

Here are some of the questions an officer should ask himself when taking over a trench, and keep in mind during his stay:

I am here for two purposes—to do as much damage as possible to the enemy, and to hold my part of the line at all costs. Am I doing everything possible to insure this?

Does every man know his firing position?

Do I do my best to prevent men from exposing themselves?

Have I always got a man ready to take messages to company headquarters?

Are my listening patrols properly detailed?

Have my men always got their gas helmets on their persons?

Am I doing all I can to drain my trenches?

Are the trenches as clean and sanitary as they might be?

Am I doing all I can to prevent my men from getting trench feet? Have they greased their feet before entering the trenches, and have they a pair of spare dry socks?

Are my men drinking water from any but authorized sources?

Do I know the name of every non-commissioned officer and man in my platoon, and do they know mine?

Do my men get sufficient sleep?

HUMAN ANIMALS

THE belief that man can change into animals is as old as life itself, writes Frank Hamel in Human Animals (Frederick A. Stokes Company), a book containing stories and legends from all races.

And because there are so many stories about it, scholars believe that these fables had their origin in spiritual truths.

The prehistoric horse, for instance, instead of hoofs, had hairy fingers separated by membranes; yet, when ancient authors have spoken of men that have been turned into horses because the hoofs bore some resemblance to the hands and feet of man, they have been accused of imposture.

From the Middle Ages have come down countless stories of wer-wolves—men who transformed themselves into wild animals, that they might attack and devour their fellow townsmen.

"Greed, cruelty, and cannibalism are the accusations brought against those who were tried in the Middle Ages for this crime.

"The desire to taste human flesh is a horrible but not improbable reason for the offense. And to superstitious people in the Middle Ages it was an easy thing for a man to impersonate a wild and fearsome animal without necessarily transforming his actual flesh.

"Savage races do not connect the idea of transformation with any thought of evil.

"Thus the Cherokee Indian, when starting on a winter's journey, endeavors by singing and other mimetic actions to identify himself with the wolf, the fox, and other wild animals, of which the feet are regarded by him as impervious to frostbite.

"The words he chants mean, 'I become a real wolf, a real fox, a real deer!'

"Then he gives a long howl to imitate the wolf, or barks like a fox, and paws and scratches the ground.

"Thus he establishes a belief in transformation, and starts forth on his difficult journey in perfect confidence, the power of auto-suggestion aiding him on his way."

MAKING CONVERSATION

A BOOK has been written for the sake of bashful or reticent people who long, secretly, to take a vigorous, clear-voiced, tireless part in polite conversation.

Say you are at a dinner-party. "What author made one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year by her pen?" you say, breaking into a brief lull in the talk. Immediately the attention of the table is focused on you. The system laid out by the book, which gives One Thousand Literary Questions, is enough to keep even a rapid talker busy for a year of dinners.

The Nation's comment on the book is:

"Here are a thousand enemies of social intercourse marshaled in a solid battalion of boredom. Facts are the death of conversation. They are immodest and blatant. They will not be denied. You're another is their only answer, which at once transfers the struggle into physical realms. Facts awe us. What is more, they are contagious. Their use leads to reprisal.

"If, on mere mention of Dr. Johnson, a Fact-Hun Unexpectedly lands a shell in your conversational dugout, to the effect that 'Dr. J. is supposed to have written 'Rasselas' in a single night to defray the funeral expenses of his mother,' you can silence him with a shower of bombs, true or untrue, about all the other poets who did as much and more for their parents. The only satisfaction in having a fact to utter consists in its being exclusive."

A NURSE'S FIRST DAYS AT THE FRONT

WHEN the Germans came pouring into Belgium,—when, one after another, each Belgian city made its short, wild struggle to stem the tide,—women were much closer to the war than they are now. In A Nurse at the War (McBride Company) Grace McDougall describes the frantic excitement of those days.

"What hurt one most were the evacuations," she writes. "An evacuation means to empty the hospital, and it was done when news came that the Germans were coming very near. Then men's faces would turn white with horror and with fear; women would tremble and turn faint; and we, who had to work, would spend every ounce of our ,strength in dressing those poor fellows—pulling shirts over their shattered bodies, wrapping dressing gowns or coats or what we could round them in their weakness and suffering. We carried them down long stairs on stretchers, even on camp-beds if there were not enough stretchers. We ran downstairs with mattresses, and lifted them off the stretchers on to the mattresses; for we had to take the stretchers to bring down others. And to some of these men each movement meant agony. This used to happen once a week at least! And then, very often, after having been taken to the station on a tram-car, the men would all be brought back, and have to be carried upstairs again and put back to bed."

Returning to Antwerp one night, after a day of strenuous ambulance work, she had just retired in a hospitable friend's cellar, when the first German shells began to burst over the city.

"That was a terrible night. For two and a half hours we worked carrying men downstairs—the top floor first, with its sixty-nine beds in the corridor, then the second floor, and lastly the fracture wards on the first floor. It was down slowly with a heavy stretcher, and up rapidly with an empty one. I made slings for myself with a bandage, but even then my wrists and legs ached after the first ten men.

"Next day orders came that the wounded were to be moved out of Antwerp. The sick men were packed into 'buses, and, accompanied by the doctors and nurses, joined the great procession of refugees.

"Gradually the night darkened, and the cold became bitter to a degree. I ached with cold and with sitting erect on my little narrow seat.

"One nurse broke into helpless sobbing. She was a brave and splendid woman; but this was our second night without sleep, and the days had been filled with hard work.

"What that night of hell meant to some of the nurses and to the wounded God alone could witness. To me, in the past, war had meant romance and heroic deeds, not the awful hell of agony it is."

---

WILL THE WAR MEAN GOOD TEETH FOR ALL?

WHAT work can crippled soldiers do? What profession can they undertake that will have real dignity and usefulness—that will secure them a decent living?

The Trained Nurse and Hospital Review suggests that a new occupation, dental nursing, be created for the sake of men who have still the use of at least one arm.

A dental nurse would clean people's teeth, scrape them, scour and polish them as a dentist does at the annual visit of his patient. He would perform this service, however, at a price that even poor people could afford. For his profession, unlike that of a dentist, would need only a short, inexpensive training, and inexpensive materials. His work with each patient would last only half an hour.

The world is almost completely ignorant of how much decaying and loosening teeth impair the health. Indigestion, rheumatism, nervousness, and many other of those sicknesses that are always fretting the majority of people can be traced to unsound teeth.

Because dentists are necessarily so expensive, they are quite outside the world of poor people, and the average individual can afford to go only once a year. Consequently, it is generally believed that teeth will decay in spite of us; that it is a rare person who has sound teeth.

"Careful records of teeth that have been cleaned by a dentist once a month regularly for a long period of years show beyond the slightest doubt that the number of cavities that occur are very few, and can be filled when of small size, with little injury to the teeth and with no pain to the patient. The bacteria that cause decay adhere to the surface of the tooth, then cover themselves with a film that is jellylike at first, and if not soon removed becomes a hard covering, under which the bacteria proceed to attack the tooth. 'Decay' follows. Scrape the bacteria off before they attack the tooth, and there is no decay."

The question is raised: Can the dentist afford to give up this branch of his work?

It will bring more rather than less work to the dentist. Barbers were aroused at the popularity of the safety razor. Yet the barber was never more prosperous than he is to-day. Shaving was a luxury in the days of Benjamin Franklin. It is now a necessity for most men. When working-people can afford to have their teeth cleaned by a dental nurse every month, many thousand people will learn to feel concern for their teeth, and will patronize the dentists.

SMELL, THE FALLEN ANGEL

HELEN KELLER, deaf, dumb, and blind, is living a completer and a richer life than most of us. We have the use of all our senses, but we have forgotten the fact. The sense of smell, for instance. Polite people will mention it in relation to perfumery and gardens, but to do so in other instances is not quite nice.

"In my experience, smell is most important," she writes in The World I Live in (Century Company).

"I know by smell the kind of house we enter. I have recognized an old-fashioned country house because it has several layers of odors, left by a succession of families, of plants, perfumes, and draperies.

"From exhalations I learn much about people. I often know the work they are engaged in. I can distinguish the carpenter from the iron-worker, the artist from the mason or the chemist. I gain pleasurable ideas of freshness and good taste from the odors of soap, toilet water, clean garments, woolen and silk stuffs, and gloves.

"The dear odors of those I love are so definite that nothing can obliterate them.

"Some people have a vague, unsubstantial odor that floats about, mocking every effort to identify it. Sometimes I meet one who lacks a distinctive person-scent, and I seldom find such a one lively or entertaining. On the other hand, one who has a pungent odor often possesses great vitality and vigor of mind.

"In the odor of young men there is something elemental, as of fire, storm, and salt sea. It pulsates with buoyancy and desire. It suggests all things strong and beautiful and joyous, and gives me a sense of physical happiness. It is not until the age of six or seven that children begin to have perceptible individual odors. These develop and mature along with their mental and bodily powers.

"Without a sense of smell," she concludes, "the objects dear to my hands would become formless, dead things, and I should walk among them as among invisible ghosts."

HE KNOWS MORE ABOUT SALT—

UNDERSTAND any one thing more thoroughly than does any one else in the world, and your fortune is made. Because Sir Richard Dane knows so well the salt trade in the Orient, he can't even take a vacation. When he resigned his position as Inspector General of the Salt Excise in India, he was not allowed to take a two years' hunting trip in Africa, but had to take charge of the salt administration in China.

So much does the salt revenue mean to the Chinese government that without it the Republic could not have paid the loans that terminated as a result of the war at a critical moment. Sir Richard has increased the yield of this industry in the three years that he has had control from $13,600,000 to $42,000,000 a year.

Every reform in the business has been fought. When one official attempted to send a quantity of salt up the river by steam, the 40,000 people engaged in the junk trade on the Yangtse arose in riot, mobbed him, and forced him to flee for his life. Sir Richard must deal with the prejudices of a hundred million of the most prejudiced persons in the world.

In the old times one half the salt consumed in China was illicit smuggled salt. The boatmen and the carters often made a comfortable living on the side by their smuggling, with the cognizance of the inspectors, of course, who shared the profits. Sir Richard ventured to remove such inspectors, replacing them with responsible men. And instead of many confusing taxes he has introduced one consolidated duty—the salt administration has been placed upon a bookkeeping basis.

The Chinese coolie does not love the new efficiency. He does not love any ordinance that tends to make him work any harder. One can't blame him very much, since, after all, for a day's labor he earns only a place to sleep, one meal, and the equivalent in cash of a cent and two thirds. If it were not, however, for the cheapness of the labor, no company could afford the initial expense of getting the salt.

The salt-wells, often three thousand feet in depth, take from six to twenty years to drill. Ten years is the average length of time before a well becomes a producer.

ON DISH-WASHING

ALTHOUGH people recognize that public drinking cups are germ-carriers, for some strange reason the dish-washing in restaurants has gone on uninvestigated. Not long ago a number of restaurants in New York City were inspected, and the conclusions of the investigators printed in the American Journal of Public Health.

It was hardly necessary for tests to prove the presence of thousands of bacteria after the dishes had been washed.

The glasses used at the drinking fountains of the average quick-lunch restaurant are not washed at all. After use, they are rinsed off and placed upside down to drain.

The dish-washing process is substantially the same in all places. The dishes are placed in large dish-pans containing warm soap-water, are rubbed with a dishcloth, then rinsed in another dish-pan containing warm water.

There should be a law requiring that all dishes be subjected to water at a temperature of 80 degrees for one minute before they are served to the next patron. In large eating places mechanical dishwashers should be used. Because the dishes are put first into swiftly circulating soap-water, then into boiling clean water several times, then set on edge to dry in the air, they are almost completely sterilized.

LARGE FAMILIES DO NOT MEAN WEAK CHILDREN

PEOPLE who preach birth control are responsible for the widespread idea that large families sap the strength and shorten the life of the mother; that the children of such families are weak and short-lived.

This idea is a mistaken one, according to the Journal of Heredity. It is all right to spread the idea in the slums to poor parents deficient in intelligence, with inferior physique. In that family it would be much better if only a few children were born into it.

But among sound, intelligent stocks, with good physique and average prosperity, the reverse is true. In making a study of the published genealogy of the Hyde family, which flourished before the days of birth control, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell found that, in a normal healthy population, the child with nine brothers and sisters had just about twice as good a chance of living to old age as the child with only a single brother or sister.

This does not mean that a small family must necessarily have weak members; nor that all superior women should bear ten children apiece.

Dr. Bell's message to modern parents is: if you are well enough off, strong and intelligent, and you want a large family, don't be disturbed by the new theory that every child beyond the third is likely to be handicapped. Large families in superior stock will produce superior children.

Your Landlord and Your Lease

By WILLIAM HAMILTON OSBORNE

IN my home town the other day—a city of a quarter million population—the tenant proprietor of a large department-store paid his counsel $3000 for drawing a ten-years' lease of the premises occupied by his Green Store. The tenant paid this, mind you—not the landlord. It is not such a very large store, and it does not cover such a large piece of ground; but it was worth $3000 to the tenant just to have his ten-years' lease drawn right.

Young Mr. Bently Hartshorne didn't pay out any such amount ten years ago to have his lease drawn—he didn't pay a cent. Why should he? Can there be anything simpler than the lease for a little cottage house? Besides, his landlord had one already drawn and ready for him. Mr. Bently Hartshorne signed it. Young Mr. Bently Hartshorne hasn't forgotten the time when he was earning $35 a week and got married on it, and he and young Mrs. Hartshorne moved into the little house on Highland Terrace.

He took the house for a year. At the end of seven months a young man of the name of Smith sued young Mr. Hartshorne for $10,000 damages because he had fallen through Mr. Hartshorne's inside cellar steps. He was the helper on an ice wagon. The steps were pretty rotten—a fact that young Mr. Hartshorne had known for months, and had protested to his landlord about, but without success.

Young Mr. Hartshorne went to his lawyer with the Smith summons and complaint. The lawyer heard the tale.

"Let me see your lease," said the lawyer, evidently dodging all the points that Hartshorne considered most important.

"It's just an ordinary twenty-five-dollar-a-month lease," said the young tenant. "I left it home."

Get it," said his lawyer.

Hartshorne got it. The lawyer looked it over.

"Now," said the lawyer, "under this lease you're bound to make repairs. More than that, if you fail to make repairs, your landlord can sue you for damages—in addition to your rent. More than that, since it was and is your duty to make repairs, you're going to have trouble with this young man Smith who broke his leg."

Young Mr. Hartshorne gulped. "Let me see the lease," he said.

Truth to tell, it was the first time he had really looked it over carefully. He read it through. Then he smiled in pity at his lawyer.

"Why, you boob," he exclaimed, "this lease doesn't say a blooming word about repairs."

"Exactly," returned his lawyer; "and that's just the reason you've got to make 'em. If nothing's said about the repairs, the tenant's bound to make 'em."

"But—but—" spluttered Hartshorne, "I know a dozen fellows—their landlords all make repairs. Why, my landlord made some not three months ago—"

His lawyer twirled his nose-glasses about his fingers, as professional men are wont to do.

"Of course," he returned, "you make the same mistake that lots of people are apt to make—that, because a thing is frequently done, therefore it must invariably be done. It so happens that in the case of many small houses, my poor, unfortunate young friend,—I won't call you a boob, seeing that's a term that you apply to a high order of intelligence,—it so happens that landlords frequently are willing to make repairs. There is a good reason for this—tenants usually insist upon it. There is another good reason for it. Landlords often make repairs because they don't want their houses to go to rack and ruin. It often happens, therefore, that landlords actually do make repairs. But they are not bound to do so unless they have agreed to do so—and in the face of no agreement the tenant must make repairs. That's the law, you—poor unfortunate young man."

When the Lease Doesn't Mention Repairs.

NOW, no one, not even Mr. Hartshorne's lawyer, can blame Mr. Hartshorne for. his belief—which is a popular one; nor can he be blamed for not going to a lawyer in the first instance, in the matter of a $300 yearly lease. He assumed that he was renting the usual small house, in the usual way, at $25 a month. Could anything be simpler? And of course, since the lease said nothing about repairs—why, of course, he didn't have to make 'em. Simple enough. We don't know just how Mr. Hartshorne got along with the $10,000 claim of young Smith, but—whereas the proprietor of the Green Store paid his lawyer $3000 for drawing a ten-years' lease on a big piece of property, it might even have paid Mr. Hartshorne (in view of the Smith claim) to pay his lawyer a few dollars for drawing up his one-year lease.

However, the purpose of this article is not so much to send laymen to lawyers—particularly in the small routine everyday matters—as it is to give the layman some inkling as to his own rights; but always with the warning to consult counsel in any and every case of doubt.

Let us see, for instance, how the wool might have been pulled over young Mr. Hartshorne's eyes, even after the above conversation with his counsel. Mr. Hartshorne, his mind upon repairs and his salary grown to $2500, moves into another house and takes another lease. This lease provides:

The landlord shall have permission, at all reasonable times, and during working hours, to enter the premises, by his agents, servants, etc., for the purpose of making repairs.

"Aha," agree young Mr. Hartshorne and wife, "this man's got to make repairs."

Has he? Let's go back to the proposition laid down by Mr. Hartshorne's lawyer. Unless the landlord agrees to make repairs, the tenant is bound to make them. Now re-read the short clause just quoted. It merely gives the landlord permission to enter to make repairs. It is exactly in line with the lawyer's argument—the landlord may want to make repairs himself. His tenant may be slow about making them. He may want to make certain repairs that please his own fancy, in his own way. The property is his—he wants to take care of it, if the whim suits him. But he is not bound to make repairs.

Of course these principles are frequently well understood by tenants who pay big rents. Mr. Hartshorne to-day, with his $18,000 salary, pays a rental of $2500 a year. He is careful. Sometimes he consults a lawyer, sometimes not. But, just the other day, a new landlord handed him a new lease. It contained a clause as follows (there had been a verbal dicker between the new landlord and the old tenant as to the amount of the rent. A new steam-heater was necessary, some other trifles, all footing to about $1000):

The tenant hereby agrees to make the following improvements and repairs, to the extent of $1000.

Mr. Hartshorne assumed, of course, that his agreement to repair was limited to $1000. He overlooked the fact that, there being no agreement by the landlord to repair, the tenant had failed to limit his own liability merely by agreeing to make $1000 worth of repairs. The exact legal situation was this: The tenant was bound to make all repairs anyway, whether he agreed to it expressly, if the lease was silent. The tenant's express agreement to make $1000 worth of repairs was merely a part of his implied agreement to make all repairs. The proper clause, from the tenant's standpoint, would be this:

The landlord agrees to make all necessary repairs, except to the extent of $1000, which shall be paid by the tenant in making the following specific improvements and repairs.

So much for repairs—which, as we have seen, in the case of Mr. Hartshorne, the young $25-a-month tenant, may assume

the shape of a problem of formidable proportions.

Let it be parenthetically remarked, however, that in the case of tenements and apartment-houses it is, as a matter of law, the duty of the landlord to care for and make repairs upon, and keep in order, all the portions of the building common to all tenants—hallways, staircases, area-way, etc. The reason is at once apparent, since no one tenant can, in fairness, be called upon to exert either himself or his pocketbook in the interests of any other tenant. But the same rule would apply to the interior of an apartment as would apply to Mr. Hartshorne's cottage house aforesaid.

Of course, it is not in every case that a written lease exists, or must exist. A multitude of tenants hold by word of mouth alone. In some States an oral lease is good for one year—in others for three years. But an oral lease is dangerous for both landlord and tenant, for the very good and sufficient reason that its exact terms depend upon the viewpoint of one or of the other. To illustrate:

Suppose young Mr. Hartshorne's $300-a-year lease had been oral, and nothing had been said as to repairs. Clearly Mr. Hartshorne would have had to make repairs. Yet note: suppose his landlord had exercised his right—not his duty—of coming in and making occasional repairs, such action would lend color to Mr. Hartshorne's totally unfounded claim that his landlord had agreed, by word of mouth, to make repairs.

Not Final Until Signed

FURTHER, the term of the lease is often in doubt. Rents are usually paid by the month. Both landlord and tenant are apt to figure rent by the month. The amount of rent is the one item uppermost in the minds of each. There may be a genuine mistake as to the term—and you, the tenant (having a secret passion for learning to play upon the flute), may move all your furniture into your flat on the first of May, and find yourself confronted on the first of June with a notice to move out on the first of July—on the landlord's claim that you are a monthly, not a yearly, tenant.

A further quirk and oddity in this connection may be of interest. It is a rule of law that where two parties agree generally upon the terms of their contract, but that such contract is to be reduced to writing, nothing is binding until the writing is signed. A young man and his bride looked at an apartment uptown in New York. They agreed to take it for two years at a certain figure. The agent was anxious to dispose of the apartment, and he told them nothing of the other tenants and they made no inquiry.

"I'll send you," said the agent, after the usual terms had been agreed upon, "our form of lease to sign. When you get it, sign it and return." He sent it by mail, with a confirmatory letter. Meantime the young man and his bride had discovered that the apartment-house was filled to overflowing with the demi-monde. Of course they couldn't prove this fact—the

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JOKE-SMITHS

IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER?

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SERVANTS OF FAMOUS FOLK

Continued from page 10

demi-monde have a way of looking like other people.

They had agreed to take the flat for two years. The rent was considerable. They appealed to the agent and his principal, who were adamant.

The young man faced a loss of $2500, provided the flat remained empty meantime. But he didn't sign the lease—he went to a lawyer. The lawyer told him to let the owner go ahead and sue. The young man did this in face of the fact that he himself had actually written a letter agreeing to take the flat at the figure named and had agreed to sign a lease. The owner sued.

The court held that, since the parties had arranged to sign a formal lease, which had not yet been signed, there was no meeting of the minds and hence no lease. An oral lease would have been perfectly good for a year at least; but the parties had agreed to sign a lease in writing, and the oral lease—or, rather, the oral negotiations, as well as the tea- ant's written letter above mentioned— therefore went for nothing.

So far we have dealt with desirable tenants, and tenants who pay their rent. With those who do not pay their rent we shall have but little to do, save to leave them to the tender mercies of the landlord. Rent usually is payable on the first of the month, and failure to pay it affords the landlord a remedy by which he can dispossess his tenant, by means of notices and inexpensive court proceedings, in about ten days.

A notice to quit premises for non-payment of rent must not be confounded with a notice to quit for other reasons. If you have entered the premises with practically no arrangement, except, for instance, the statement of the agent or the landlord that the rent will be, say, thirty dollars a month, and nothing said about the term, you are then a monthly tenant. You go in, say, on May 1. In May the landlord decides that you are undesirable, or that he can get more money for his house. His privilege is to serve you on June 1 with a month's notice to quit. This means that you get out on or before July 1, or be summarily ejected.

When the Tenant Is Asked to Quit

IT is not the intention of the writer to present in detail the provisions of the statutes of different States relating to notices to quit. But a tenant frequently is notified to quit who prefers not to do so. Hence it is advisable for him to determine in his own mind for just what term he rented the premises. If he hired them for one year—as, for instance, where the landlord says, "The rent of these premises is $360 a year"; and the tenant says, "All right, I'll take them"—then it may fairly be inferred that the letting was for a year. In that event, it is the duty of the tenant to move at the end of the year.

It often happens, however, that after the expiration of the year the tenant keeps on in the occupancy of the premises, and the landlord keeps on taking rent, monthly as before. It has frequently been held, and is probably the rule in all States, that where the letting is for one year, and the tenant holds over, by the tacit consent of the landlord, there is an implied letting for another year, in which case the tenant becomes a tenant from year to year. His tenancy, therefore, is always good until the end of the year, though the landlord may (in some States) terminate the tenancy at the end of any given year by a three months' notice served to expire at the end of such year.

Can the Tenant Break a Lease?

THIS is a matter of importance, for the reason that in a multitude of cases the only lease ever made or signed is that at the commencement of the tenancy, the landlord and tenant deeming it unimportant to sign renewals as the years pass by. But the tenancy becomes, not a tenancy from month to month, but a tenancy from year to year.

A landlord might serve a month's notice to quit upon his tenant, suddenly become somehow undesirable to him, only to find that he can not remove him until the end of the fiscal year. The tenant ditto—though there is a popular saying—a sort of layman's fiction—that, while a landlord can never break a lease, a tenant always can. This old saw had its rise in the fact that, the landlord being responsible and his house being stable, the tenant has the landlord at his mercy; while the tenant, if the notion seizes him, can fold up his tents, like the Arab, and silently steal away. Legally, a tenant has no more right to break a lease or evade his legal obligations than has the landlord. One duty that each owes the other is to have a clear understanding of the terms and conditions of the letting.

For the benefit of the gentle reader in general, and of several Bently Hartshornes in particular, let us, by way of conclusion, cite a brief form of lease that ought in general to be satisfactory to landlord and tenant of a moderate priced house. Forms may differ in different States—they differ with reference to apartment-houses and the like. Forms may be had at almost any stationery store. But they must be scrutinized with care. There is an all too prevalent idea that because a form is printed it must be correct; and another all too prevalent idea that printed matter is merely a matter of form. When you see a printed form, knock it on the head and see what's inside of it. Here is a fair form of lease:

John Doe rents to Richard Roe the house and lot No. 1 Stiles Street, Harlem, New York City, for the term of one year, to commence October 1, 1917, at the yearly rental of three hundred dollars, payable in monthly instalments of $25 in advance on the first day of each month, beginning with this date; and further agrees to make any and all necessary and reasonable repairs upon said premises during said term; and said Richard Roe, on his part, hires and takes said premises at the aforesaid rent, which he agrees to pay as above; and promises to quit and surrender said premises at the expiration of said term in as good condition as reasonable use will permit, damages by the elements excepted.

Dated October 1, 1917.

Having made and entered into his lease, a word in the tenant's ear: There is one duty that lie owes his landlord above all others. Let him do his bit—let him pay his rent on the first of each month, as agreed. The performance or non-performance of this duty almost invariably spells the difference between a good tenant and a bad one.

Of Interest to Fans

THE act of a batsman in hefting two bats together around a few times before he takes his place to strike with a single bat is now considered an event of deep psychological significance. As all the world knows, the reason the batter does this is to make the single heavy bat feel lighter, and to fool his arm into believing that it can make the single bat gambol through the atmosphere with great speed, having been freed of the incubus of the other bat.

Psychology has found out that it is actually possible to fool the muscles as if they were people—almost. This is demonstrated in the laboratory by making the arm, say, go through certain rhythmic movements for a short while, and then running in a variation on it. For instance, a person is told to lift and put down in succession a comparatively heavy weight, then a light weight, etc. He goes through this for several times, and then the light weight is changed for one somewhat heavier. Of course it is the same size as all the others, so that the person's mind will not be prejudiced beforehand. When the hand goes to lift this one it rises as spontaneously as with the very light weight used before.

Ordinarily it is shown in the laboratory that weights are lifted by the subject at different rates of speed, the heavier the slower. This takes place unconsciously.

The Abandoned Room

By Wadsworth Camp

Illustration by Robert McCaig

(Continued)

BOBBY returned to his bed. He lay there, still shivering beneath the heavy blankets.

"I don't dare," he echoed Graham's words. "There's nothing else any one can say. I must decide what to do. I must think it over."

But, as before, thought brought no release. At last he had been seen slipping unconsciously from his room—and at the same hour of the night that both murders took place. All that remained was to learn how he had accomplished them; then no excuse would remain for not going to Robinson and confessing.

At last he slept again. He was aroused by the tramping of men around the house, and by strange, harsh voices. He raised himself on his elbow and glanced from the window. It had long been daylight. Two burly fellows in over-alls, carrying pick and spade across their shoulders, pushed through the underbrush at the edge of the clearing. He turned.

Graham stood beside the bed.

"Those men?" Bobby asked wearily.

"The grave-diggers," Graham answered. "They are going to work in the old cemetery to prepare a place with his fathers for Silas Blackburn. That's why I've come to wake you up. The minister telephoned Katherine that he will be here before noon, and it's after ten now."

For some time Bobby stared through the window at the desolate landscape.

"A funereal day!"

"When your grandfather's buried," Graham answered softly, "we'll all feel happier."

Bobby glanced at him, flushing.

"You mean you've decided to stand by me after what happened last night?"

Graham smiled.

"I've thought it all over. I slept like a top last night. I heard nothing. I saw nothing."

"Ought I to want you to stand by me?" Bobby said. "Oughtn't I to make a clean breast of it? At least, I must do something about Paredes."

Graham frowned.

"It's hard to believe he had any connection with your sleep-walking last night, yet it's as clear as ever that Maria and he are up to some game in which you figure."

"He shouldn't be in jail," Bobby persisted.

"Get up," Graham advised. "Bathe, and have some breakfast; then we can decide. There's no use talking of the other thing. I've forgotten it. As far as possible, you must."

Bobby sprang upright.

"How can I forget it? If it was hard to face sleep before, what do you think it is now? Have I any right—"

"Don't," Graham said. "I'll he with you again to-night. If I were satisfied beyond the shadow of a doubt, I'd advise you to confess; but I can't be until I know what Maria and Paredes are doing."

WHEN Bobby had bathed and dressed, he found that, in spite of his mental turmoil, his sleep had done him good. While he breakfasted, Graham tried to drive from his brain the morbid aftermath of last night's revelation.

"The manager took my advice, but Maria's still missing. Her pictures are in most of the papers."

Bobby looked up.

"Isn't that an automobile coming through the woods?" he asked.

"May be Rawlins back from Smithtown, or the minister."

The front door bell tinkled, and Jenkins went through to open the door.

To their astonishment, Paredes walked in, unbuttoning his overcoat. He appeared to have slept pleasantly. His eyes showed no weariness, his clothing no disarrangement. He spoke at once, quite as if nothing disagreeable had shadowed his departure:

"Good morning. If I had dreamed of this change in the weather, I should have brought a heavier overcoat. I've nearly frozen driving from Smithtown."

Before either man could grope for a suitable greeting, he faced Bobby. He felt in his pockets with a whimsical discouragement.

"Fact is, Bobby, I left New York too suddenly. I didn't realize it until a little while ago. You see, I spent a good deal of money in Smithtown yesterday—"

Graham interrupted with a flat demand for an explanation:

"How did you get away?"

Paredes waved his hand.

"Later, Mr. Graham. There is a hack-driver outside who is even more suspicious

than you. He wants to be paid. I asked Rawlins to drive me back, but he rushed from the court-house, probably to telephone his rotund superior. Fact is, this fellow wants five dollars—an outrageous rate. I've told him so, but it doesn't do any good. So will you lend me, Bobby—"

Bobby handed him a banknote. He didn't miss Graham's meaning glance. Paredes gave the money to the butler.

"Pay him, will you, Jenkins? Thanks."

He surveyed the remains of Bobby's breakfast and sat down.

"May I? My breakfast was early; and prison food, when you're not broken in, is incredible."

That Paredes should express no resentment for his treatment yesterday, that he should come back at all, could only mean that it was necessary for the Panamanian to return to the Cedars. His purpose, whatever it was, compelled him to remain for the present in the mournful, tragic house. He would make it practically impossible for Bobby, to refuse his hospitality.

"We took it for granted you would find it necessary to stay in Smithtown for a while," said Graham.

PAREDES sipped the coffee that Jenkins had poured.

"Splendid coffee! You should have tasted what I had this morning. Simple enough, Mr. Graham. I telephoned as soon as Rawlins got me to the Bastille. I communicated with the lawyer who represents the company for which I once worked—a prominent and brilliant man. He planned my release with some local fellow. When I was arraigned at the opening of court this morning, the judge could hold me only as a material witness. He, fixed a pretty stiff bail; but the local lawyer was there with a bondsman, and I came back. My clothes are here. You don't mind, Bobby?"

That moment in the hall when Graham had awakened him urged Bobby to reply with a genuine warmth:

"I don't mind; I'm glad you're out of it."

Paredes smiled. He put down his coffee-cup and lighted a cigarette, smoking with a vast contentment.

"That's better, Bobby."

Graham moved closer.

"Perhaps you'll tell us now what you were doing in the private staircase."

Paredes blew a wreath of smoke. His eyes still smiled, but his voice was harder.

"Bygones are bygones. Isn't that so, Bobby?"

"Since you wish it," Bobby said.

Robinson entered the room. The flesh around his eyes was puffier than it had been yesterday. Worry had increased the incongruous discontent of his round face. Clearly, he had slept little.

"I saw you arrive," he said. "Rawlins warned me. But, I must say, I didn't think you'd use your freedom to come to us."

Paredes laughed.

"Since the law won't hold me at your convenience in Smithtown, I keep myself at your service here—if Bobby permits it. Could you ask more?"

Bobby found himself shrinking from this man with whom he had idled away so much time and money. That fleeting impression of yesterday came back, sharper, more alarming. Paredes' clear challenge to the district attorney was the measure of his strength. His mind was subtler than theirs.

Robinson jerked his head toward the window.

"I've been watching the preparations out there. I guess, when he's laid away, you'll be thinking about having the will read."

"No hurry," Bobby answered, with a quick intake of breath.

"I suppose not," Robinson sneered, "since everybody knows well enough what's in it."

Bobby walked from the room, put on his coat and hat, and left the house. The raw cold, the year's first omen of winter, made his blood run quicker, stimulated his mind. He walked into the forest.

Suddenly he became aware of twigs hastily lopped off, of bushes bent and torn, of the uncovering, through these careless means, of an old path, Simultaneously there reached his ears the scraping of metal implements in the soft earth. A harsh voice came to him:

"Deep enough!"

Bobby turned and hurried back along the roughly restored path. He could picture the fresh oblong excavation in the soil of the family burial ground. He could see where the men had had to tear bushes from among the graves in order to insert their tools. Like everything about the Cedars, Silas Blackburn had delivered the old cemetery to the swift, obliterating fingers of time. If the old man had paused in his selfishness to gaze beyond the inevitable fact of death, Bobby reflected, he would have guarded with a more precious interest the scene of his final sleep.

AS Bobby walked back, he forecast with a keen apprehension the approaching ordeal of the burial. It would doubtless be more difficult to endure than Howells' experiment over Silas Blackburn's body in the old room.

As he neared the house, Graham came out and hurried toward him.

"The minister's arrived. So has Dr. Groom. Everything's about ready."

"Dr. Groom?"

"Yes. He used to see a good deal of your grandfather; it's natural enough he should be here."

Bobby assented indifferently. They walked slowly back to the house. Graham made it plain that his mind was far from the sad business ahead.

"What do you think of Paredes coming back as if nothing was wrong?" he asked. "He ignores what happened yesterday."

"I don't know what to think of it," Bobby answered. "This morning he gave me the creeps."

"Gave me the creeps, too. Makes me surer than ever that he has an abominably deep purpose in using his wits to hang on here. You'll confess, Bobby, he's had a good deal of influence over you—an influence for evil?"

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"I've liked to go around with him, if that's what you mean."

"Isn't he the cause of the last two or three months' nonsense in New York?"

"I won't blame Carlos for that," Bobby muttered.

"He influenced you against your better judgment," Graham persisted, "to refuse to leave with me, the night of your grandfather's death."

"Maria did her share," Bobby said.

He broke off, looking at Graham.

"What are you driving at?"

"I've been asking myself since he came back," Graham answered, "if there's any queer power behind his quiet manner. Maybe he is psychic. Maybe he can do things we don't understand. I've wondered if he had, without your knowing it, acquired sufficient influence to direct your body when your mind no longer controlled it. It's a nasty thought, but I've heard of such things."

"You mean, Carlos may have made me go to the hall last night—perhaps sent me to the old room those other times?"

NOW that another had expressed the idea, Bobby fought it with all his might.

"No! I won't believe it. I've been weak, Hartley, but not that weak. And, I tell you, I did feel Howells' body move under my hand."

"Don't misunderstand me," Graham said gently. "I must consider every possibility. You were excited and imaginative when you went to the old room to take the evidence. It was a shock to have your candle go out. Your own hand, reaching out to Howells, might have moved spasmodically. I mean, you may have been responsible for the thing without realizing it."

"And the disappearance of the evidence?" Bobby defended himself.

"If it had been stolen earlier, the coat pocket might have retained its bulging shape. We know now that Paredes is capable of sneaking around the house."

"No, no," Bobby said hotly. "You're trying to take away my one hope. But I was there, and you weren't. I know with my own senses what happened, and you don't. Paredes has no such influence over me—I won't think of it."

"If it's so far-fetched," Graham asked quietly, "why do you revolt from the idea?"

Bobby turned on him.

"And why do you fill my mind with such thoughts? If you think I'm guilty, say so. Go tell Robinson so!"

He glanced away while the angry color left his face. He was a little dazed by the realization that he had spoken to Graham as he might have done to an enemy—as he had spoken to Howells. He felt the touch of Graham's hand on his shoulder.

"I'm only working in your service," Graham said gently. "I'm sorry if I've troubled you. You want the truth, don't you?"

"Yes," Bobby said, "even if it does for me. But I want it quickly. I can't go on this way indefinitely."

Yet that flash of temper had given him courage to face the ordeal. A lingering resentment at Graham's suggestion lessened the difficulty of his position. Entering the court, he scarcely glanced at the black wagon.

There was a little group of dark-clothed men in the hall. Dr. Groom stood at the foot of the stairs, talking with the clergyman, who shook hands with Bobby.

"We need not delay. Your cousin is upstairs."

He included the company in his circling turn of the head.

"Any one who cares to go—"

Bobby forced himself to walk up the staircase, facing the first phase of his ordeal. He saw that the district attorney realized that, too; for he sprang from his chair, and, followed by Rawlins, started upward. The entire company crowded the stairs.

At the top, Bobby found Paredes at his side.

"Carlos! Why do you come?"

"I would like to be of some comfort," Paredes answered gravely.

Graham summoned Katherine. One of the black-clothed men opened the door of

Silas Blackburn's room. He stepped aside, beckoning. He had the air of a showman craving approbation for the surprise he had arranged.

Bobby went in with the others. Automatically, in the dim light, he catalogued remembered objects, all intimate to his grandfather, each oddly entangled in Bobby's mind with his dislike of the old man: the iron bed; the chest of drawers, scratched and with broken handles; the closed colonial desk; the miserly rag carpet.

Reluctantly Bobby's glance went to the center of the floor, where the casket rested on trestles. From the chest of drawers two candles, the only light, played wanly over the still figure and the ashen face. He kept repeating to himself:

"I didn't do this thing! I didn't do this thing!"

And he searched the face of the dead man for a confirmation. A chill thought, not without excuse under the circumstances and in this vague light, raced along his nerves. Silas Blackburn had moved once since his death. If the power to move and speak should miraculously return to him now! In this house there appeared to be no impossibilities. The cold control of death had been twice broken.

KATHERINE'S entrance swung his thoughts. He found he could turn from the wrinkled face that had fascinated him, that had seemed to question him with a calm and complete knowledge, to the lovely one with her little smile of encouragement. He was grateful for that. Even Graham's quick movement to her side couldn't make her presence less helpful to Bobby. He looked at his grandfather again. He glanced at Robinson. As in a dream he heard the clergyman say:

"The service will be read at the grave."

Almost indifferently he saw the dark- clothed men sidle forward, lift a grotesquely shaped plate of metal from the floor, and fit it in place, hiding from his eyes the closed eyes of the dead man.

Robinson touched his arm and whispered:

"Make way, Mr. Blackburn."

He watched the somber men carry their heavy burden across the hall, down the stairs, and into the dull autumn air. He followed at Katherine's side across the clearing and into the overgrown path. He was aware of the others drifting behind.

Katherine slipped her hand in his.

"It is dreadful we shouldn't feel more sorrow, more regret," she said. "Perhaps we never understood him. That is dreadful, too; for no one understood him. We are the only mourners."

Bobby, as they threaded the path behind the stumbling bearers, found a grim justice in that also. He clung to Katherine's hand.

"If I could only know!" he whispered.

She pressed his hand without replying.

The bearers set their burden down beside the grave.

A voice droned, seeming to take pleasure in the terrible words it loosed, to stray eternally through the decayed forest.

Bobby glanced at bent tomb-stones strangled by the underbrush; at other slabs, cracked and brown, which lay prone, half covered by creeping vines. The tones of the clergyman were no longer

---

revolting in his ears. He scarcely heard them. He imagined a fantasy. He pictured the inhabitants of these forgotten narrow houses straying to the great dwelling where they had lived, punishing this one, bringing him to suffer with them the degradation of their neglect. So Robinson became less important in his mind. Through such fancies the ordeal was made bearable.

The dark-clothed men strained at ropes now. They glanced at Katherine and Bobby as at those most to be impressed by their skill. They lowered Silas Blackburn's grimly shaped casing into the sorrel pit. It passed from Bobby's sight. Two laborers came from the thicket where they had hidden, and with their spades approached the grave. The sound that Bobby had dreaded rattled in his ears.

Katherine pulled at Bobby's hand. He started and glanced up. One of the black-clothed men was speaking to him with a professional gentleness:

"You needn't wait, Mr. Blackburn. Everything is finished."

He saw now that Robinson stood across the grave, and that he still stared at him. The professional mourner smiled sympathetically and moved away. Katherine, Robinson, the two grave-diggers, and Bobby alone were left of the little company; and Bobby, staring back at the district attorney, took a somber pride in facing it out until even the men with the spades had gone.

The ordeal, he reflected, had lost its poignancy. His mind was intent on the empty trappings he had witnessed. He wondered if there was, after all, no justice against his grandfather in this unkempt burial.

THEN Dr. Groom returned. His huge hairy figure dominated the cemetery. His infused eyes, beneath the thick black brows, were far-seeing. They seemed to penetrate Bobby's thought.

"There's no use your staying here."

The resonance of the deep voice jarred through the woods. The broad shoulders twitched. One of the hairy hands made a half circle.

"I hope you'll clean this up, my boy. You ought to replace the stones and trim the graves. You couldn't blame them, could you, if these old people were restless and tried to go abroad?"

"Come," Katherine whispered.

But Bobby lingered, oddly fascinated, supporting the ordeal to its final moment. The blows of the backs of the spades on the completed mound beat into his brain.

The workmen wandered off through the woods. From a distance the harsh voice of one of them came back:

"I don't want to dig again in such a place. People don't seem dead here."

Robinson tried to laugh.

"That man's wise," he said to the doctor. "If Paredes spoke of this cemetery being full of ghosts, I could understand him."

The doctor's deep bass answered thoughtfully:

"Paredes is probably right. I have felt it myself. The Cedars and the forest are full of things that seem to whisper things that one never sees."

"Let's get out of it," Robinson replied gruffly.

Katherine withdrew her hand. Bobby reached for it again, but she seemed not to notice. She walked ahead of him along the path, her shoulders a trifle bent. Bobby caught up with her.

"Katherine!" he said.

"Don't talk now, Bobby."

He looked closer. He saw that she was crying at last. He slackened his pace and let her walk ahead, awed that any one should feel grief for Silas Blackburn.

WHEN they reached the house, they found Paredes, Graham, and Rawlins waiting for them in the hall. Paredes placed fresh logs on the fire, and the flames leaped up, throwing an evanescent brilliancy about the dusky hall. They all welcomed Jenkins' announcement that luncheon was ready; but they scarcely disturbed the hurriedly prepared dishes, and afterward they gathered again in the hall, silent and depressed, appalled by the long, dreary afternoon, which, however, was better than the night they had learned to fear.

For long periods the district attorney and the detective were closeted in the library. Now and then they passed upstairs, and could be heard moving about; but no one, save Graham, seemed to care. Already the officers had had every opportunity to search the house.

Finally Graham wandered off, and Paredes, who had been smoking cigarette after cigarette, arose and brought his card-table. Drawing it close to him, he arranged the cards in neat piles, although the uncertain firelight made it barely possible to identify their numbers. Dr. Groom made a gesture of disgust. Katherine stooped forward, placing her hands on the table.

"Is it kind," she asked, "so soon after he has left his house?"

Paredes started.

"Wait!" he said softly.

Puzzled, she glanced at him.

"Stay just as you are," he directed.

Languidly he placed his fingers on the edge of the table opposite hers.

"What are you doing?" Groom asked hoarsely.

"Wait!" Paredes said again.

Then Bobby, scarcely aware of what was going on, saw the cards glide softly across the face of the table and flutter to the floor. The table had lifted slowly toward the Panamanian, and stood on two legs.

"What is it?" Katherine said. "It's moving. I can feel it beneath my fingers!"

Her words recalled to Bobby his experience in the old room upstairs.

"Don't do that!" the doctor cried.

Paredes smiled.

"If," he answered, "the source of these crimes is, as you think, spiritual, why not ask the spirits for a solution? You see how quickly the table responds. It is as I thought: there is something in this hall. Haven't you a feeling that the dead are in this dark hall with us? They may wish to speak. See!"

The table settled softly down without any noise. Then it began to rise again.

KATHERINE lifted her hands with a visible effort, as if the table had tried to hold them against her will. She covered her face and sat trembling.

"I won't! I—"

Paredes shrugged his shoulders, appealing to the doctor. The shaggy head shook determinedly.

"I'm not so sure I don't agree with you; I'm not so sure the dead aren't in this hall. That is why I'll have nothing to do with such dangerous play. It has shown us, at least, that you are psychic, Mr. Paredes."

"I have a gift," Paredes murmured. "It would be useful to speak with them; they see so much more than we do."

He lifted his hands—waved them dejectedly. He stooped and began to pick up the cards. The doctor arose. "I must go. I don't know why I have stayed."

Bobby got his coat and hat.

"I'll walk to the stable with you."

He was glad to escape from the dismal hall.

"No more sleep-walking?" the doctor asked, when he had taken the blanket from his horse and climbed into the buggy.

Bobby leaned against the wall of the stable and told how Graham had brought him back the previous night from the stair-head.

The doctor shook his head.

"You shouldn't tell me that. You shouldn't tell any one. You place yourself too much in my hands, as you are already in Graham's hands. Maybe that is all right; but the district attorney? You're sure he knows nothing of this habit which seems to have started the night of the first murder?"

"No; and I think Paredes alone, of those who know about that first night, would be likely to tell him."

"See that he doesn't," the doctor said shortly. "I've been watching Robinson.

---

If he doesn't make an arrest pretty soon, he'll lose his mind."

"How shall I find the courage to sleep to-night?" Bobby asked.

The doctor thought for a moment.

"Suppose I come back?" he suggested. "I've only one or two unimportant cases to look after. I'll take Graham's place for to-night. It's time your reactions were better diagnosed. I'll share your room, and you can go to sleep, assured that you'll come to no harm, that harm will come to no one through you. I'll bring some books on the subject. I'll read them while you sleep. Perhaps I can learn the impulse that makes your body active while your mind's a blank."

The idea of the influence of Paredes, which Graham had put into words, slipped back to Bobby. He was, nevertheless, strengthened by the doctor's promise. To an extent, the dread of the night fell from him. This old man, who had always filled him with discomfort, had become a capable support in his difficult hour.

He didn't care to go back to the hall. It would do him good to walk. Besides, he might accomplish something useful. Suppose he should succeed where Graham had failed?

So he walked toward the stagnant lake. Flakes of snow were falling. Already they had gathered in white patches on the floor of the forest. As he neared the cemetery he walked faster. Many yards of underbrush separated him from the place, but its mere proximity forced on him, as the old room had done, a feeling of stealthy and intangible companionship.

HE stepped from the fringe of trees around the open space in the center of which the lake brooded. The water received with a destructive indifference the fluttering caresses of the snowflakes. Bobby paused with quick expectancy. He saw nothing of the woman who had startled him that first evening, but he heard from the thicket a sound like muffled sobbing.

He hid himself among the trees, and in their shelter skirted the lake. The sobbing had faded into nothing. For a long time he heard only the whispers of the snow and the wind. When he had rounded the lake and was some distance beyond it, however, the moaning reached him again, and through the fast deepening twilight he saw, as indistinctly as he had before, a black feminine figure, flitting among the trees toward the lake.

He ran toward it, calling out:

"Stop! Who are you?"

But the dusk was too thick. The black figure disappeared.

His pursuit had led him back to the end of the lake nearest the Cedars. Suddenly he paused. His triumph was not unmixed with fear. A black figure stood in the open, quite close to him, gazing over the stagnant water. He knew now that the

woman was flesh and blood, for she did not glide away, and the snow made pale splashes on her black cloak.

He crept carefully forward, until he was close behind her.

"Now," he said quietly, "you'll tell me who you are and why you cry about the Cedars."

The woman swung around with a cry. He stepped back, abashed, not knowing what to say: for there was still enough light to disclose to him the troubled face of Katherine.

"You frightened me, Bobby."

Without calculation he spoke his swift thought:

"Was it you I saw here before? But surely you didn't cry in the house the other night, and afterward when we followed Carlos!"

The tranquil beauty of her face was disturbed. When she answered, her voice had lost something of its music:

"What do you mean?"

"It was you who cried just now? It was you I saw running?"

"What do you mean?" she asked again. "I did not run. I—I am not your woman in black, if that's what you think. I happened to pick up this cloak—you've seen it often enough before. And I haven't cried."

She brushed the tears angrily from her eyes.

"At least, I haven't cried so any one could hear me. I wanted to walk. I hoped I would find you. I thought you had come this way, so I came too. Why, Bobby, you're suspecting me of something!"

But the problem of the fugitive figure receded before the more intimate one of his heart. There was a thrill in her desire to find him in the solitude of the forest.

Only the faintest gray survived in the sky above the trees. The shadows were thick about them. The whispering snow urged him to use this moment for his happiness. It wasn't the thought of Graham that held him back. Last night, under an equal temptation, he might have spoken. To-night a new element silenced him and bound his eager hands—his sudden awakening at the head of the stairs.

"I'm sorry. Let us go back," he said.

She looked at him inquiringly.

"What is it, Bobby? You are more afraid to-day than you have been before. Has something happened that I know nothing of?"

He shook his head. He couldn't increase her trouble.

The woods seemed to receive an ashy illumination from the snowflakes. Katherine walked a little faster.

"Don't be discouraged, Bobby," she begged him. "Everything will come out straight. You must keep telling yourself that. You must fight until you believe it."

The nearness of her dusk-clothed, slender figure filled him with a new courage. He burst out impulsively:

"Don't worry. I'll fight. I'll make myself believe. If necessary, I'll tell everything I know, in order to find the guilty person."

She placed her hand on his arm. Her voice fell to a whisper:

"Don't fight that way. Uncle Silas is dead. Howells has been taken away. The police will find nothing. By and by they will leave. It will all be forgotten. Why should you keep it active and dangerous by trying to find who is guilty?"

"Katherine!" he cried, surprised. "Why do you say that?"

Her hand left his arm. She walked on without answering.

They left the thicket. In the open space about the house the snow had spread a white mantle. From it the heavy walls rose black and forbidding.

"I don't want to go in," Katherine said.

THEIR feet lagged as they followed the driveway to the entrance of the court. The curtains of the room of death, they saw, had been raised. A dim, unpleasant light slipped from the small-paned windows across the court, staining the snow. Robinson and Rawlins were probably searching again.

Suddenly Katherine stopped. She pointed.

"What's that?" she asked sharply.

Bobby followed the direction of her glance. Be saw a black patch against the wall of the wing opposite the lighted windows.

"It is a shadow," he said.

She relaxed, and they walked on. They entered the court. There she turned, and Bobby stopped too, with a sudden fear. For the thing he had called a shadow was moving. He stared at it with a hypnotic belief that the Cedars was at last disclosing its supernatural secret. He knew it could be no illusion, since Katherine swayed half fainting against him. The moving shadow assumed the shape of a stout figure, slightly bent at the shoulders. A pipe protruded from the bearded mouth. One hand waved a careless welcome.

Bobby's first instinct was to cry out, to command this old man they had seen buried that day to return to his grave. For there wasn't the slightest doubt. The candlelight from the room of death shone full on the gray and wrinkled face of Silas Blackburn!

To be continued next week

Shipwrecked—Triplets

HARDLY a foot of the "back side" of Cape Cod—meaning, curiously enough, the ocean side—has not been the scene of a wreck at some time. Vessels don't usually come ashore in triplets, however, even there. These three barges were piled up on the beach near Highland Light, North Truro, Massachusetts, by a violent gale. All three were being towed by a single tug, which explains the novel family group. Fortunately, no lives were lost.

Some Interesting Facts About Your Eyes

THE smallest object capable of being seen by the naked human eye at the normal distance of ten inches is 1/250 of an inch. The process of determining this is rather peculiar. It consists of nothing more or less than separating two black objects on a white paper until the paper may be seen between them. One might think that the paper space could he seen anyhow; but it is easily proved that no one recognizes the white space until it has grown to be at least this value.

A good microscope magnifies 200 times; so it would bring the limit of vision down to 1/200 of this naked eye minimum, or 1/50,000 of an inch. If a microscope much more powerful could be made, the limit of vision, on account of the particular light perceivable by the eye, has been proved to be a third of this; that is, 1/150,000 of an inch. Nothing smaller than this could be perceived, no matter how powerful the microscope, because the light waves would bend round such a small object, and the eyes would not even know that an obstacle had been placed in their way.

Of course, if the eye were sensitive to ultra-violet light, it could see smaller objects, and these are really photographed in the ultra-violet microscope. Then there is extreme ultra-violet light; no emulsion has been produced so far that will record a picture made by it.

The detection of very small objects may be accomplished by means of what is known as the ultramicroscope. In this the objects are not actually seen in the ordinary acceptation of the term; but their presence is made known by points of light. Objects 1/1,000,000 of an inch in diameter can he detected by this means. The principle is easily shown.

The motes discovered in a sunbeam are not seen ordinarily; yet they are always present in the air of a room. The sunlight strikes them laterally, and is reflected in all directions, thereby enabling us to see small points of light which we call dust motes. We can not see the shape or details of the motes, for all we see are the points of light; yet we know the motes are there. These same motes could not be seen in an ordinary microscope; for they average about 1/200,000 of an inch in diameter.

There is a maximum limit of vision also, as every one is aware, for we can not see a thing that takes up more than 180 degrees; but there is no maximum limit as to distance. The eye can see a planet several million miles away.

There is also a maximum wave length for the eye, just as the violet is the minimum. The longest wave seen by the eye is a deep red. If the eye could perceive longer waves, many objects would appear in many new colors, and all objects in some colors. For instance, all living animals are constantly giving off waves just, a little longer than the deep red, known as heat waves. They then would have a color all their own, as would each person. We could recognize our friends in the dark by their colors. A. L. Hodges.

No Wonder She Looks Tired

SINCE the world began, one egg has been the regular union day's work for a hen. From time to time there have been reports of records established in excess of this: there is, for instance, the celebrated case recited by the poet:

A great Congregational preacher
Said to a hen: "You're a beautiful creature."
The hen, just for that,
Laid three eggs in his hat;
And thus did the hen reward Beecher.

Mr. Beecher, however, never presented any evidence of the truth of this instance, and it is doubted by high poultry authorities.

The case of Betty; shown in the photograph, is different. She was entered in a duly watched and authenticated egg-laying contest, held under scientific auspices and presided over by Professor L. D. Graham, formerly of the Kansas Agricultural College. Betty, being determined to win, outdid herself; and produced six miniature but perfectly formed eggs in one day.

The picture shows her, somewhat fatigued, but none the less proud of her achievement. In the other hand, the eggs.

How I Improved My Memory

By WARREN EUGENE CRANE

SEVERAL years. ago I went to the office of a certain Mr. Albertson to sell him some advertising space in the newspaper with which I am connected. As he was passing me his order I said, "When shall I meet you to get the copy, Mr.——"

"Albertson," he said, with a smile. "You need some instructions in memory training. When you come in for the copy, I will tell you a few of the principles of remembering that ought to help you a good deal in your business. Come in to-morrow at 12:30."

I thanked him for his offer, and promised to meet him at the appointed time. My memory had always been bad: its weakness had put me into one uncomfortable position after another.

Only a day or two before, I had taken a friend in to introduce him to one of my heaviest advertisers, and said: "Mr.—— Pardon me, I can't remember your name."

"Long," said my advertiser testily.

"Mr. Long, meet Mr. Edwards, an old friend of mine. He expects to locate here in Seattle, and wants to rent a house. I thought that you might have a desirable one on your rental list."

I made the introduction, but I knew that Long thought it was very strange that I could not remember his name after I had been dealing with him nearly every day for several years.

Failure to remember names, faces, or figures is more than embarrassing: it is a positive detriment to business progress. I had bewailed my failures often enough; but, until the day when Mr. Albertson took me in hand, I seemed to make no improvement. The few minutes' talk that he gave me that day turned a bad memory into a very serviceable one: moreover, it showed me clearly that any man can teach himself to remember, if only he knows the trick and will set himself doggedly to master it.

I pass on my own experience for what it may be worth to other men and women.

"Good memory is a matter of proper association," Mr. Albertson said to me. "The trouble with most of us is that a name or a face or a date comes into our minds, and we allow it to drift out again immediately. What we should do is to anchor it to some other fact—associate it in such a way that it can be called up again. Tie a string to it, so that whenever that string is pulled the name or fact will pop up again instantly.

"For example, you meet a man named Pitman. How are you to remember his name when you see him again? You look closely at his face, and discover a deep dimple in one cheek. Fix that fact in your mind along with his name. Dimple—pit—Pitman. There you have his name so tied that the minute you see that dimple the name will leap into your mind."

I got the idea right away, and lost no time in beginning to apply it. Almost any man, I discovered, had in his appearance some little trait that would help to fix his name. Suppose, for example, I meet Mr. Brown, whom I have met several times before. When I met him the first time, I fixed in my mind the fact that he had a very imposing brow. Another glimpse of him serves at once to remind me of his brow and to set to work the association of ideas—brow, Brown—that calls up his name.

When I meet Mr. Smith, I associate his name in my mind with the fact that it is the most common name in the English language. Johnson is the second most common, and Jones is third. So that Mr. Jones is a number three man to me.

The difficulty in remembering names is not so great where the name is common and easily associated. The real trouble comes with a name like Earlington or Beckingham. The easiest way to master a name of this kind is to dissect it and visualize a part of it. I remember Earlington with a mental picture of an English earl with a cane and a monocle; Beckingham calls up to me a large Virginia ham.

I had always found it difficult to remember telephone numbers until Mr. Albertson explained his system to me. He told me that he visualizes his telephone number mentally by seeing four people eating at the largest or main table in a big café. One man rises from the table, leaving three still eating. The number is Main 4838: and his café picture calls it instantly to mind.

Following this plan, I can remember Queen Anne 400, my own telephone numbery, very easily. I visualize the historical queen of that name, and connect her with the idea of the New York Four Hundred.

I have found that figures may suggest acts, names, and historical dates. If I want to remember the sum $14.92, I tie it up in my mind with the fact that Columbus discovered America in 1492, and that the period in the sum comes in the middle of the four numerals. The figure 2157 in associated ideas equals twenty-one, the age of manhood, and fifty-seven, a certain slogan widely advertised. In 1248 the numbers double up with each successive digit, while in 1654 the last three numerals step down.

I have found it helpful to enlarge figures mentally—as if I saw them in figures four feet in height on an outdoor bill-board. My big imaginary sign conjures up numbers like Main 578 or Queen Anne 665, which are not easily subjected to historical or mathematical analysis.

In remembering a long list of names, such as the first fourteen Presidents, I would memorize the following sentence as an index: "Washington and Jefferson made many a joke. Van Buren had troubles plenty to find poor bank-notes." It sounds foolish enough, but the first letter in each word is the key to the names: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan. A system of this kind fixes lists of words in one's memory long after disassociated things are forgotten.

No angle of forgetfulness is more humiliating than the inability to remember faces. If a person can not recall faces, the probability is that he does not observe them carefully or photograph thorn clearly in his mind.

When talking with a stranger, I study his features—the color of his eyes, the formation of his nose, the angle of his jaw, the shape of his mouth, and the size of his ears. Often one distinguishing feature will indelibly fix the identity of a person. If one watches a lightning cartoonist draw a set of grinning teeth and a pair of eye-glasses, he can immediately recognize Colonel Roosevelt, whom they portray.

In case the face does not possess any characteristics that are easily remembered, one should study a person's height, weight, or bearing. For example, if I should meet Mr. Armstrong, and his face should seem ordinary to me, I might discover in his build and arms a strength—or the lack of it—that would fix his name for me.

By close observation and a little definite thought, I can catalog in my memory almost any fact, face, or photograph. At first the mind that is unaccustomed to form quick and striking associations may require a little time to cast about for comparisons or differences; but this soon becomes a habit. If we revolve a thing in our minds several times before dismissing it from our attention, the impression will be made deep and lasting, and we shall have taken an important step in reducing the high cost of forgetting.

I speak from experience, for I had one of the most discouraging memories in the world. My processes of association might not do for another man. Each individual must work out his own—and often enough they sound strange when put on paper. But they serve their purpose. No face or name ever comes before my eyes, these days, without, being at once tagged with some bit of quality or circum¬- stance that serves ever afterward to identify it instantly.

War Rations in the Zoo

IN England, even the animals in the zoölogical parks have gone on war rations. The monkeys get no more bananas. Instead, they eat boiled cattle beets. It is against the law to give them proper bread, and all they have now is old ship's biscuit that has been left over from one voyage and is not quite equal to another.

The birds, in place of oats and wheat, have paddy rice, split horse beans, with a little corn. Leaves and the dried grass clipped from the parks take the place of real hay for the elephants.

But the foxes and wolves and lions and tigers and hyenas are having the time of their lives—horse-flesh was never so plenty or so cheap as now.

The Way Napoleon Worked

IF Napoleon never had fought a battle, he would yet stand forth as one of the world's greatest statesmen.

He would rather toil for the nation than sleep or eat. He could work eighteen hours without resting. "I work all the time," he said to official sluggards—"at dinner and at the theater."

"Come, come," he chided his exhausted helpers far in the might, "let us bestir ourselves. It is only two o'clock, and we must earn the money the French people pay us."

If Bourrienne, his secretary, stole away to the theater, he had to come back to take up the day's duties again.

Napoleon, says James Morgan in In the Footsteps of Napoleon (Macmillan Company), did not take time properly to undress for bed, but tore off his clothes and flung them about the room—hat, watch, and all. He did not stop even to be shaved, but talked, read papers, and kept on the move while under the razor of Constant, his valet. He held audiences while in the bath-tub.

His servants had to go into conference and agree upon measures for getting him correctly dressed for state occasions. He refused to pause for sittings to the great Canova, whom he had summoned from Italy, but obliged the sculptor to study him while he lunched.

And he would not spare the time to eat. A glass of hot water in which he squeezed a lemon sufficed for his breakfast. The table bored him; and his chef, never knowing when he would yield to the need of nourishment, kept his luncheon ready and waiting for him hour after hour, replacing the food in the oven, as fast as it was cooked, with a new supply. When he came at last, he chose only one of nine or ten dishes and ignored the rest. He hardly knew what he ate.

Often, when he had stayed only ten minutes even at dinner, he pushed his chair back and left the family and his guests at the table. Once, when something troubled him, instead of springing up from the table as usual, he hurled it away from him, upsetting the dishes on the floor.

When he wrote, he did not take time to form the letters, but left half of them out of the longer words. "He writes like a cat scratching holes in a sheet of paper," his brother Joseph said. His thoughts out-raced his quill, which he wiped on his white breeches, necessitating a fresh pair every morning. He insisted that "a man occupied with business can not practise orthography. His ideas must flow faster than his hand can trace."

His dictation poured forth in a torrent, which brooked no interference and could not be turned back for the repetition of a sentence or a word. There was then no shorthand system, and to keep up with him his scribes had to invent one of their own. As he dictated he strode up and down the room like a caged lion. If he sat down, his tireless hand hacked at the arm of his chair with a penknife, or he dangled his legs from his secretary's table and rocked it so hard that the poor man had still greater difficulty in making his notes.

The infinite range of his interests and the tremendous display of his energies stagger the imagination and "surpassed human capacity," in the words of Taine, his severest critic in literature; while Emerson has said that "his achievement of business was immense, and enlarges the known powers of man."

His ministers, overwhelmed by his instructions and pumped dry by his questioning, went from the Tuileries to their offices, only to find on their desks a dozen more written inquiries from him. Lavellette said that "he governed more in three years than kings in one hundred years."

He boasted that he took more pleasure in reading official reports "than any young girl does in a novel." He once got up at two in the morning to study army reports while stretched on his sofa before the fire—and detected twenty mistakes in them!

His own explanation of the mechanics of his mind is as good as it is familiar:

"Various subjects and affairs are stowed away in my brain as in a chest of drawers. When I take up any special business, I shut one drawer and open another. None of them ever get mixed, and never does this incommode me or fatigue me. When I feel sleepy, I shut all the drawers and fall asleep."

Are All Nations Descended from the Same Ancestors?

THERE is in the British Museum an ancient Greek coin, minted in Crete previous to 200 B. C. On it is the outline of the mythical Cretan Labyrinth, in which, according to the story, Theseus slew the Minotaur, and then found his way out by means of the thread which he had unwound behind him.

The Pima Indian children of the Gila Valley, Arizona, have a game, a sort of "hop-scotch," in which they draw a curious outline in the sand which they call "the House of Tcuhu."

And the two figures are almost exactly alike! Now, the question is, where did the children get it?

Here's an Animal Made of Liquid

STRANGER than any form of life it has ever entered the mind of man to conceive, the amoeba seems to contradict every definite idea one has formed of an animal. Most of us, for instance, may find it difficult to imagine a living creature destitute of flesh and blood of some kind. Bones, to be sure, may be lacking, as they are often replaced by an external hard or tough covering of some sort, or at least by a hide or a skin.

An amœba, however, has nothing of the sort. It is, as one might say, a liquid animal. It flows! As for legs, it does not need them; that part of the creature nearest the destination aimed at pushes out toward it. Then, the whole fluid substance of the animal flows into the advanced portion; and by repetition of this process the movement advances. How it is able to do this is something not even guessed at by biologists.

But the amœba presents other and even more difficult problems. It not only has no limbs, but it has no head, and, though there are animals that possess something that answers for a brain in some other part of their physical organism than their heads, the amœba has no substitute for a brain, no heart, no stomach.

And yet, if we may believe the statements of careful specialists who have had it under observation, it performs all necessary life functions that make up the cycle of existence in animals more highly organized than itself. It sees without eyes,—well enough, at any rate, to distinguish light from darkness,—walks without feet, eats without a mouth, digests its food without visible trace of a digestive apparatus, and reproduces its kind.

When the amœba captures its prey, it does so simply by flowing round it and over it. The prey—when it is not of a vegetable nature—consists of some tiny creature which, since the amœba is at the very foot of its class, belongs to a more highly organized type of animal than itself. Then, having taken possession of its quarry, the amœba devours it by absorption into the liquid substance of its physical organism through any part of the body that happens to be in contact with it. All digestible parts are assimilated, the remains being rejected, as the food is taken in, through any part of the body.

The amœba of course has no particular configuration; for it is continually changing its shape.

At times, when surrounding conditions become unfavorable,—when, for instance, the water in which it lives dries up,—the amœba, first throwing out all particles of food and such remains of indigestible matter as may happen to be at the time incorporated in its substance, takes on a spherical shape and becomes encysted, as it is called; that is, a tough membrane forms about it. Thus protected, the animal may rest a long time, and then, as favorable conditions return, may break out and come forth unchanged.

On attaining its maximum size, the animal, drawing itself out, separates from itself a part constituting one half of its substance. So elastic and enduring is the life that animates the creature that where, as is often the case, the animal upon being encysted even breaks up into a number of pieces, death does not ensue; but each and every one of the granules that aided in making up the original retains its vitality, and all separately begin to carry on the life history they formerly pursued together in an undivided condition. Incredible as it seems, these tiny corpuscles frequently reunite and, lo! we have the "original Jacobs" again in the form of the reconstructed amœba.

And so the amœbas are endowed with the potency of eternal life: not that the animal can not be destroyed or killed, but that it never dies from decay or old age.

J. Carter Beard.