Would You be Great? Then Expect Suffering: for It is the Stuff Greatness is Made Of

I HAVE been reading the tragic, inspiring story of a great man.

His work has enriched the life of every generation since his own: but his life was a long, dark day of suffering.

The man was Ludwig van Beethoven.

He was born in a humble cottage in Bonn in the year 1770. His parents were poor, but that is a minor matter. The parents of most great men have been poor.

Tragedy entered Beethoven's life not by reason of his parents' poverty, but because they were utterly incapable of appreciating the fine spiritual gift that was in the boy.

His father had no thought but to exploit the son's musical talent. At the age of eleven he was playing in theater orchestras and carrying burdens far too heavy for his young shoulders to bear.

His health was poor: there were none to appreciate his genius: and in the glory of his young manhood, when he was just beginning to feel his power, his life was clouded by an irremediable calamity. He began to lose his hearing.

Think of it!

A musician, dependent on the fine harmony of sounds for his success—and deaf at twenty-six.

Poverty-stricken, unloved, betrayed and flouted by the nephew for whom he had sacrificed everything, this unconquerable spirit yet gave to the world music that has gladdened the hearts of millions of men and women in every land.

I have no friend; I must live alone [he said]. But I know that in my heart God is nearer to me than to others. I approach him without fear; I have always known him. Neither am I anxious about my music, which no adverse fate will overtake, and which will free him who understands it from the misery which afflicts others.

And at another time:

I want to prove that whoever acts rightly and nobly can by that alone bear misfortune.

No man can read these words, remembering Beethoven's life, without feeling his own soul enriched and strengthened.

It is a significant thing that a large proportion of the great lives of history have been conceived in suffering and nurtured on disappointment and pain.

We think of Lincoln as the great story-teller. But if you would know the real Lincoln, look at the deep lines in his face.

Napoleon conquered the world; yet he almost never laughed. He was never really well; never rose from his bed feeling rested; he was so depressed as a young man that he seriously contemplated ending his life.

It was a famous writer who said: "What has been well written has been well suffered."

"The lives of the great heroes were lives of long martyrdom," says Romain Rolland in the Life of Beethoven from which I have quoted. "A tragic destiny willed their souls to be forged on the anvil of physical and moral grief, of misery and ill health."

There is this consolation to you in your hours of disappointment and distress—that suffering is the stuff out of which true greatness grows.

Yield to it weakly, and it will destroy you. Rise a conqueror of it, and by that act you become a finer spirit, a greater man or woman.

"I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me," said Jesus of Nazareth.

By "lifted up" he meant "lifted up on the cross"—crucified. Only by his suffering and death could he become the Cure and Saviour of the world.

There was no short cut, no easier way, to greatness and glory for Him: and there will never be for any man.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

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THE LAST OF THE LINE

By BERNICE BROWN

Illustrations by Robert McCaig

MR. MARVIN poked the fire with more strength than purpose, reread the headlines of the evening paper, rewound his watch, and walked aimlessly to the window. The early twilight of a misty April night already half obscured the birch grove and the summer house. If it were not for five o'clock the days might be bearable, Mr. Marvin mused. Two years ago he had liked the half light before the candles were brought in and while the family still dallied over tea and scones. For a second his stolid British imagination repeopled the comfortable library with the three Marvin boys and Doris Haverly and Colonel Jarvis Marvin, his only brother, who was now in the Dardanelles, sick with fever. Two years ago this spring they had all been there, hungry and noisy, after a half dozen hard-fought sets of tennis. The Marvins were good fighters and good winners. Mr. Marvin was proud of his family—his wife and his three sons—and of Doris Haverly, the girl he expected David would marry.

He turned to his paper, but it was too dark to read, and anyway, after he had searched a certain page with eyes like those of a frightened child who stares into the dark, he didn't care much for the rest. He read it, of course: one must have something to talk about at the club; but at five o'clock on a rainy night, what did the garrulous comments of a half dozen journalists matter? He cared only for the three Marvin boys—two of them "somewhere in France," and David Marvin, the oldest, arriving that evening from a London hospital. Mr. Marvin studied his watch again and wondered with annoyance why Mrs. Marvin and Doris didn't come downstairs. Doris had brought over a damp armful of half-opened lilacs, which she and Mrs. Marvin were arranging in David's room. It was rotten of them to leave him all alone before the lights were turned on. He had wanted to go with them, but women have a subtle way of making a man feel that he is intruding. Anyway, he was meeting David at the station. He was driving Stumbler, the last horse in the Marvin stables, to the cart. It would be a tight squeeze to get three in the cart, and for a second Mr. Marvin was vexed with his son for "bringing somebody home" with him. He wondered who it could be; the Marvins were deucedly poor letter-writers.

"We had enough lilacs for the guest's room, too," Mrs. Marvin announced as she parted the curtain at the library door.

"But we put only the scraggly branches in there. All the sweet-smelling ones are in David's room," Doris confessed. "Don't you think the heat will help to open the buds?"

"You keep a man waiting a long time for his tea," Mr. Marvin complained.

"Oh, I thought we weren't to have it until David came," Doris objected.

Mr. Marvin knew that too, but one must talk about something, and tea is a national institution.

"Don't you think it's time to go?" Doris was standing close to Mr. Marvin's chair. He drew her down to him with a tenderness that astonished himself.

"It's good to have you here when he comes." His voice was husky, and he cleared his throat with the determination of a public speaker. "Very good," he concluded lamely. For a moment the touch of her warm young body next to him brought back the memories of his own youth. He rejoiced in her slenderness, her wistfulness. She belonged to him in part, for she loved his son.

"Do you think he'll be glad I'm here?" she questioned. "It's been such a long time since I saw him, and you know what David's letters are like."

"But you saw him in London, dear," Mrs. Marvin observed.

"Yes, but it wasn't very satisfactory. There were lots of people around, doctors and nurses, you know. David never says much anyway." She did not confess that his eyes had not welcomed her as she had longed to be welcomed.

Mr. Marvin patted her shoulder. "A good half hour's talk will set everything straight," he encouraged gaily. "You two haven't grown. up side by side for nothing, and you haven't been the best tennis player and dancer and prettiest girl in the county for nothing, either. The Marvins have taste, ladies, taste and judgment," he finished with a grandiloquent flourish.

"I do think it would have been nice if David had been sent to your hospital," Mrs. Marvin said as she knitted. She always knitted now, bulky gray things that piled up high in her lap and shook gently like a gelatine pudding when she rocked. At first Mr. Marvin had hated to see her knit: finally he had realized he was only jealous. Five o'clock seemed much less awful to those whose hands were busy. "It would have made him dependent on you, and a man never quite overcomes that leaning attitude." She smiled at her husband, who grunted contradictorily and scowled at the fire.

"I wasn't much of a nurse," Doris confessed ruefully, "but I am useful in the office. I learned the 'touch system' right off, and I can add faster than the superintendent."

"CURIOUS that Mary Andrews should have been David's nurse." Mrs. Marvin mentioned a subject that had been in all their minds. Each had wondered who would first mention this, and each had relegated the responsibility to the other. "She is most capable, they told me," Mrs. Marvin continued, without lifting her eyes from her knitting. "When she first came to the hospital, she scrubbed floors and bath-tubs and ran errands. Now she is an assistant nurse. I have always thought she had nice hands."

"Does she still drop her h's?" Mr. Marvin asked viciously.

"Of course, dear, but she doesn't talk much." She looked her husband straight in the eyes. "You must remember always how indebted we are to her. Because her father keeps the village grog shop and because we have not always quite approved of her grammar shouldn't make us blind to what we owe her."

Mr. Marvin shifted uneasily. He had met Simon Andrews in the village that morning, and something he had said still rankled. "My girl's coming home to-day. I understand your boy's coming along."

"Of course, of course, I'm grateful," Mr. Marvin expostulated, "but"—his hand closed over Doris' slender one—"it's a great safeguard for a fellow to be in love with a girl like Doris."

Doris slipped her hand from his and walked to the window. She stared out into the dripping twilight as she spoke: "If David shouldn't feel the same way when he comes back as you expect him to feel, remember it's all right, it's all right. The war has changed lots of things, it's made us want different things. Don't you see, Uncle Douglas, I'm not as real as Mary Andrews." She was facing them now, a slender silhouette against the gray light of the window. "Before the war I could play tennis and be nice and agreeable, but now all I'm good for is the 'touch system'—while Mary Andrews is an assistant nurse."

"Nonsense," Mr. Marvin blustered, "stuff and nonsense. The Marvins have taste, I tell you." He scowled at his watch and rose briskly. "Why doesn't Whitehead drive around?" he grumbled. "I shall be late for the train, and David is bringing a guest. Nice English hospitality!"

"I can hear the wheels on the gravel now." Mrs. Marvin walked to her husband and put her hand on his arm. "You'll hurry back, dear, won't you?"

"As fast as my spirited steed will bring me." They both smiled at this reference to the once discarded Stumbler.

It was a long mile from Birchwood to the station, and Mr. Marvin mused in a disconnected way over the times he had ridden and walked and driven that mile; of the times he had met his brother Jarvis, who had spent many an Indian furlough with them; of the time David had first gone away to school; of the time, a year and a half ago, when David had gone to join his regiment. Two months ago he had driven Donald in the creaking old cart, and last week Stephen had left.

A spasm of anger passed through him, anger at this thing which had robbed his house, which had deepened the lines in his wife's face until she looked like an old woman, which had made his own steady hand tremble so that he could scarcely see the list of wounded, missing, and dead in his London paper. With unwinking eyes he watched the lines flop up and down on Stumbler's wet back as he groped for some ray of justification for this thing which had caught his family and dragged it across the Channel to mangle the beautiful bodies of his sons, this thing which was suffocating his mind with fruitless questionings. He felt like a man returning from a hypnotic trance. Even this stretch of road was unreal, uncanny. He shivered. "I wish David had come in the morning," he thought. "I distrust this time of day."

SIMON ANDREWS, looking unnecessarily shabby in his winter overcoat with the collar turned up, stood on the platform beneath a dripping umbrella some patron of his shop would be searching for before the afternoon was over. Mr. Marvin's mind reverted to Doris Haverly, and he was angry with himself because of this trick the law of association was playing on him. Heedless of the danger signal, his mind dashed on to the sinister suggestion he had been smothering all day. What if this companion of David's were not a wounded comrade he was bringing to Birchwood to recuperate?

"Not a very good day for the travelers' return, is it?" Simon Andrews chatted as he watched Mr. Marvin tie Stumbler with flattering security to the station post.

Mr. Marvin forced himself to remember what he owed Mary Andrews and replied, "No, it isn't. It's been a slow spring for us farmers."

"Slow in my business too," Mr. Andrews continued sociably. "No patrons to drink my beer and soon no beer to drink. This government's got no affair interfering with the rights of a self-respecting business man."

Mr. Marvin shrugged his shoulders and stared down the track.

"How long do you reckon David will have?" Mr. Andrews persisted.

This familiar use of his son's name angered Mr. Marvin almost to the point of a retort, but he found himself answering calmly: "Only a week at the most. This train is always late, isn't it?"

A DISTANT whistle belied this aspersion, and a puff of yellow smoke hung over the tree-tops where the track curved. For a few minutes every day this station played at the cosmopolitan bustle and importance of Charing Cross. Mr. Marvin stumbled against the station agent in his haste to reach the end carriages. In the next to the last compartment David stood in the doorway. The world suddenly became real and tangible to Mr. Marvin; for here was David, thin and white-faced, to be sure, but his David, his boy.

They gripped each other's hands with a clasp that hurt.

"Davy!"

"Father!"

They smiled at each other like little children who are happy without being able to analyze or express their joy.

"Beastly weather for you to come out in," David said.

"No trouble at all in the limousine—and the roads are fairly good too, despite the rain."

Mr. Andrews jostled Mr. Marvin with his borrowed umbrella in an effort to reach the girl who stood behind David.

David turned around abruptly and took her arm with awkward determination. "Father, here is Mary."

"How do you do, Miss Andrews?" said Mr. Marvin, and tried to muster a welcoming smile.

"No," David said; "Mary Marvin, my wife.

Oh, yes, of course," Mr. Marvin heard himself saying, "of course." This stupid reiteration maddened him, but he could think of nothing more appropriate.

Simon Andrews included his daughter beneath the dripping umbrella. "Come along, girl," he ordered brusquely.

"No," David interposed; "Mary is coming to Birchwood with us. There is room in the limousine, isn't there, father?"

"Of course," Mr. Marvin replied. Were there no other words in the English language? "Bring along the luggage, David; your mother is waiting for us."

"What about me?" Mr. Andrews whined. "Ain't she my girl? Ain't I spared her for eight months now?"

"Sh, dad," David's wife cautioned. "Don't make a scene."

"We should be glad if you would dine with us this evening, Mr. Andrews," Mr. Marvin said. "We have place for only three in the cart."

"Oh, thank ye, Mr. Marvin," Mr. Andrews smirked. "War's a great leveler, ain't it? To think o' my dining at Birchwood with my son-in-law. Curious, ain't it?"

During the drive home Mr. Marvin was glad David sat between him and his

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daughter-in-law. Each time he caught an occasional glimpse of her determined, unbeautiful profile, he tried to strangle a wave of resentment. The world was not going at all as he had planned it should. He was angry, too, at his own petty nature. Was it not enough to have David there beside him, white-faced and happy, even though he were married to a dozen Mary Andrewses? Someway this girl was the epitome of all the change and disaster which war had brought to his home.

"Father, could you use us on the farm at ten pence ha'-penny an hour? I'm going to be home for ages—till Saturday."

"The hero of Mons may plant potatoes if he wishes," Mr. Marvin promised. "Only, mind you, they must be well planted. Whitehead is severe; he made me replant a whole acre."

"I'm still a bit afraid of Whitehead. Are you, Mary?"

"Well, rather not; he chucked me once." Mr. Marvin knew she was not trying to be funny.

"But that was before you knew me," David protested with mock earnestness.

"Oh, no; that was just before the war. I never thought of you romantic like in those days," she explained.

At Birchwood Mrs. Marvin stood in the open doorway. In a second David had leaped over the wheel of the cart and was holding his mother in his arms.

"My boy, my boy," she kept repeating. "Everything is all right, now that you are here."

WITHOUT a word Mr. Marvin and Mary collected the luggage and followed David up the steps.

"Mother, here is my wife." Perhaps Mr. Marvin only imagined that David's eyes pleaded for mercy.

No one but Mr. Marvin noticed that Mrs. Marvin's pale face became even whiter; for, just as though Mary Andrews were the one girl of her choice, she put her arms about David's wife and kissed her on the cheek. "You and David must make each other happy." She looked questioningly into Mary's steady gray-blue eyes.

"I love him, ma'am," Mary replied.

Through the open door Mr. Marvin knew that Doris could hear their conversation. He was glad she was alone those first few moments. He could not have endured to have any one witness her suffering.

"Guess who is waiting in the library?" Mrs. Marvin demanded.

David pushed aside the worn velvet curtain at the doorway.

"Doris!"

"David!"

He took both her hands with a hearty friendliness that belied all romantic affection. "You were a brick to come, and in the rain, too." There was no doubting his sincerity.

"You know I always used to trudge after the winning team—and we are winning, aren't we?"

"Of course, if it takes everybody, including the goal-keeper." He stood her off from him. "You're thin," he commented.

"Thin yourself," she retorted. "And to think I used to worry for fear you would look like those cartoons of John Bull the Americans draw." She turned to Mary. "He looks much better than when I saw him in London. The War Office ought to give you a conspicuous gold medal for piecing him together so neatly."

"They gave me him." There was no bravado in her tone.

"If you want to remove a bit of the London smoke from your hands and faces before tea, you must hurry," Mrs. Marvin coaxed. "Doris brought you some lilacs, David, branches and branches of them. We put a few in the tower room, too—for your guest."

"Come along, mother." David slipped his arm through hers. "We'll bunch them all in my room, and make it look like Kitchener's birthday."

In the empty library, Mr. Marvin and Doris faced each other silently.

"She scrubbed the floor in his room once when we were short of servants." Mr. Marvin did not attempt to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Doris went over to him and touched his sleeve. "Can't you see, it's all right?" Her voice caught for a second. "The hunger that was in his eyes I could never satisfy. He belongs to her because she is strong and simple and primitive."

She picked up her hat and coat.

"I'll drive you home, Doris," Mr. Marvin offered.

She shook her head. "I think I would rather walk. It's easier to accept things out-of-doors. Good-by, Uncle Douglas."

He took her hand in both of his. "I wish I were as game as you; but I'm old, and it's hard for old men to change their minds. "

LATE that evening Mr. Marvin and David still sat before the burned-out fire. In curious, furtive glances, Mr. Marvin studied his son. He loved him unreasoningly, better than the other two sons, but now he gazed at him as a man puzzles over the chart of a hidden treasure which he cannot decipher."

David stirred uneasily. "It was good of you, pater, to have Simon Andrews here for dinner. Mary and I both appreciated it." Mr. Marvin knew that David was waiting for him to say something, but he remained silent. "Don't think I was a cad for not consulting you about my marriage. I'm not sure I can explain it to you even now. It's like trying to explain why the sun comes up every morning, it is so natural and so inexplicable. Do you mind if I go back a long way first?"

Mr. Marvin nodded his consent.

"Men who haven't been in the trenches don't know how we feel," David began. "We go out there full of political phrases about international law and humanity, and all the things one reads about in the papers; and then we get there. We're cold and hungry; we wallow in the mud for days. We are dirty and bored, and

then something happens. We charge, or the enemy does, and the boys I have drilled with for months drop down beside me or lunge forward or stagger on, whining like a dog that has been struck by a motor." He pressed his hand against his eyes. "It doesn't seem to matter who falls, your friends or your enemies; suffering has a common language. All the reasons we had for coming to fight don't exist. I can't remember suddenly why I am there or what I am doing, it is all so ghastly, so unreal. If we could only understand; but the mud is so deep, it's so hard to move, and they make such a noise."

Mr. Marvin patted his son's shoulder. "There, Davy, finish this to-morrow."

"No, I want you to understand, only I tell it so stupidly. I've never put it in words before." He was silent a minute. "Once I didn't even get out of the trench. I was struck here." He touched his shoulder. "I don't know when they got me afterward or how I happened to be hustled on to England so soon. It seemed like a lot of unnecessary fuss to make over a dying man. I was irritated with them for bothering with me, until I saw Mary in the hospital. She had her arms around me and I was leaning against her; I could feel her breathe. Her arms were warm, and she knew just what to do with her hands. I was comfortable and sleepy, just like a kid. Later you and mother and Doris came to see me, and I was glad, of course, but not so satisfied. Mary was the only person in the world I felt at home with. When I got better, I married her, just as naturally as she had made me comfortable that first time. Anyway, there wasn't much time to analyze. Can you understand it a little?"

"Don't worry, boy, even though I don't understand. It's difficult to put aside preconceived notions." Mr. Marvin was determined not to show David how bitter this was for him to accept. "Let's go to bed now."

"Until Saturday" David and Mary plowed at ten pence ha'-penny an hour. The weather cleared and the wind rolled billowy white summer clouds across the sky. Mr. Marvin struggled to work beside them, but he could not keep their pace. With youthful chivalry, they slackened their speed, but Mr. Marvin detected their subterfuge.

"I'm not getting my money's worth," he objected. "Remember, I'm your overseer, and I shall report this sloth to Whitehead."

With hungry eyes he watched them labor across the field. The wind blew ragged strands of hair about Mary's face; she was bare-headed and flushed with exertion. Once he saw David leave his plow and seize her in his arms. Mr. Marvin wondered what nightmare remnant of torture he was putting to rout by holding fast to her strong young body.

At dinner no one talked much. Mr. Marvin forgot for whole minutes that Donald and Stephen were out there struggling in the mud of Flanders. When the lights were dim in the library, he tricked himself into believing that Doris Haverly leaned against David's shoulder, and he was contented.

Friday was a radiant day, that opened the lilac buds so that the garden was drowsy with perfume. A black speck against the noonday sky, a lark circled.

"Listen, David," Mary commanded.

With blinded eyes they stared into the sky. Hand in hand, like children, they waited even after the high, sweet notes had ceased. Mr. Marvin saw Mary flinch with the pain of David's hand clasp.

"Shall I remember that," he demanded, "after I've gone back?"

She looked hard into his face. "Not always," she replied truthfully, "but it will come to you unexpected like—it will come to me, too."

That day brought a letter from Donald. He was on three days' leave in a village back of the lines, and he had had a bath.

"It's his second one in a month," Mrs. Marvin jubilated.

"Don was always lucky," David explained.

AFTER dinner that evening David and Mary left the library. Mr. Marvin made a movement to follow, then dropped back into his chair.

"We must not intrude, must we?" Mrs. Marvin did not look up from her knitting.

The moments seemed interminable to Mr. Marvin. What right did that girl have to take David from him? He wondered if he would be so resentful if it were Doris Haverly.

"My new yarn is in the wicker basket on the porch; will you get it for me, dear?"

Grateful for this trivial mission, Mr. Marvin went out into the balmy twilight. David and Mary were coming up from the garden. Mary had a branch of lilacs in her hand. Mr. Marvin knew they had not seen him.

"You ought to go in," Mary said dully. "I'll stay out here, I guess." She sat down on the steps.

For a moment David looked down at her, then with an impetuous movement he knelt on the step in front of her and drew her toward him. She put her arms about his shoulders and bent her head over his. It seemed to Mr. Marvin she was humming a bit of a tune he had heard often in the village. Stealthily he crept back into the doorway. In an exhibition once he had puzzled over a group by Rodin; he understood it now, and in a vague way he was grateful to a very plain-looking Frenchman.

"I couldn't find it," Mr. Marvin replied to his wife's questioning glance. He sat down on the sofa very close to her and buried his head in his hands. "Oh, Gertrude, what if none of them should come back, none of them!" he moaned.

She stroked his hair as though he were a child. "But we have them all now," she comforted. "Donald and David are safe to-night, anyway. I don't think anything could happen to Stephen, he's much too quick."

Mr. Marvin smiled wanly at the thought that his son could be quicker than

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shrapnel and rapid fire. He was ashamed to be comforted so easily; women hadn't much logic—but they helped exceedingly.

SATURDAY David was to go back to London on the 12:10 express, but Mary would not return to the hospital until Monday. She was to spend Sunday in Simon Andrews' rooms above the now almost deserted grog shop.

Though Mr. Marvin had not left his son's side all morning, he discovered an imperious errand when it came time for David to say good-by to his mother. "I better find out what Whitehead is doing," he mumbled, and hastened from the little group on the porch. For a minute he wished he were not driving David to the station. He wondered how Mary would behave. He had seen women of her class say good-by to their sweethearts and husbands, and the spectacle disgusted him. It would be a thousand times easier if Doris Haverly were sharing this fateful mile beside him.

"Stumbler seems to have gone a bit lame," Whitehead apologized.

"The weather," Mr. Marvin explained, and he was terrified at the thin quality of his voice. He toyed with the harness until he was sure David had kissed his mother, then he cleared his throat with determination. "Come on," he ordered, with a gesture toward the drooping Stumbler, "my steed is impatient." Everybody smiled wanly, and David and Mary climbed into the cart.

"Always wear two pairs of socks," Mrs. Marvin admonished, "the weather is still so uncertain." Mr. Marvin's eyes were fastened on Stumbler's ears; one half glance at the martyr's smile on his wife's face had sickened him.

"Don't you worry, mater," David shouted back. "I'll wear so many I'll make the Esquimos green with envy."

"The mater is awfully sensible." David's voice was warm with admiration.

Then he hadn't seen the agony in her eyes, Mr. Marvin mused. Her tactics had won, she was sending him away with the memory of her cheer. "Your mother is a gentlewoman," he answered.

"She's a brick," David asserted.

The last part of the way the road ran along a ridge overlooking Birchwood and Haverly Manor. The noonday sun glistened on the delicate yellow green of the half-opened leaves and coaxed the scampering wild things out into the dust of the road.

Mr. Marvin watched David as he strained his eyes for a last look. "It's that you are fighting for," he said.

"I hope so." There was no fire in David's reply. "It makes it easier to think so, anyway."

"We planted that brown splotch behind the stables." There was something majestic in Mary's gesture.

"Maybe it sounds silly," David said slowly, "but it's a satisfaction to have put back a little life in the place of all I've taken, even if it's nothing but potatoes."

"The Irish potato is going to decide this war," Mr. Marvin blustered. He thought best not to understand what David had attempted to say.

AT the station, Mr. Marvin was glad David and Mary seemed to have forgotten about such minor details as luggage and tickets. Often David had appeared strangely helpless or absent-minded; now even Mary was preoccupied. As they stood at the end of the platform, Mr. Marvin remembered a picture in an old child's "reader" of the shades waiting on the banks of the River Styx for the white-haired boatman to ferry them across. He had always disliked that picture.

"Here is your ticket, Davy."

David turned it senselessly in his fingers. "Father,"—his voice was firm, but his eyes had the same pleading look Mr. Marvin had noticed that first day,—"you'll remember that Mary is one of the family, won't you? If anything should happen to me, you won't forget that she is a Marvin?"

"Of course not, lad," Mr. Marvin reassured him. "Don't you worry a minute."

"And, father, you'll write me about our field, Mary's and mine?"

"I'll keep you informed," he promised, "if I have to engage a secretary."

They all saw the puff of yellow smoke above the tree-tops. The vicious shriek of the engine startled Mr. Marvin, but David turned dead white and grasped Mary's arm with hands that trembled. "That noise!" he chattered. "It makes me feel all queer again."

Mr. Marvin felt embarrassed for his son, but Mary quieted him with easy casualness; there had been dozens like that in the hospital.

"It's the blighty locomotive, laddie," she said, and Mr. Marvin thought he heard her humming that bit of a tune he had crept away from the night before. When the train stopped, he was again grateful for the luggage. As he lifted the bags into the rack, he hoped David had said good-by to his wife.

"All aboard!" the guard shouted.

Mr. Marvin faced them in the doorway. Mary was not crying—that made it easier,, He put his hands on David's shoulders. "Good-by," he whispered.

David tried to speak, but no sound came.

"All aboard!" the guard insisted. David stumbled into the carriage. The guard banged the door, and the train jerked into motion. David's face was expressionless, then a spasm of pain contorted his features. "Mary!" he called, and struggled to open the door. "Mary!"

"It's for me and for England." Her voice did not tremble. "Good-by."

And he was gone.

Mr. Marvin was the first to move. "Let me drive you home," he said.

She looked at him as though she had not heard. He repeated his offer, but she shook her head. "I think I had rather walk."

They crossed the platform together in silence; the few stragglers about the station eyed them curiously. Suddenly Mr. Marvin turned to Mary and held out his hand. She took it questioningly.

"The promise I made David was a promise," he said. "You are always welcome at Birchwood."

Mary avoided his eyes with embarrassment. "You and Mrs. Marvin have been very good, but I won't trouble you any more, unless—"

"You must write us from London," Mr. Marvin insisted, "and if we can ever help you, you must let us know."

"I'll remember, for David's sake," she promised. "Good-by."

As he watched her walk toward the village with awkward haste, he remembered David's voice when he had called to her. He had appealed to her to justify his existence, and she had answered him.

MAY saw the last of the lilacs and the first of the tea-roses. With a guilty conscience, Mrs. Marvin and Whitehead used to meet in the rose garden for a stolen half hour of pruning and trimming.

"Of course we have more important

Continued on page 22

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

HOW SHAW TAUGHT HIMSELF TO SPEAK

"HOW I envy him his ability to express himself," you say of some great public speaker. "What a wonderful gift it is!"

As a matter of fact it probably is not a gift at all. The chances are that the speaker whom you admire so much was born with all of the ordinary tendency to panic in the face of an audience. But the way to learn to talk in public is to talk in public. That is proved by the example of George Bernard Shaw.

"The platform orator of to-day—easy, nonchalant, resourceful, sublime in audacity—Shaw was once a trembling, shrinking novice," says Archibald Henderson in his life of Shaw (Stewart & Kidd). And he continues, quoting Shaw's own words:

"I had an air of impudence, of course, but was really an arrant coward, nervous and self-conscious to a heartrending degree. Yet I could not hold my tongue. At the first meeting of the debating society I attended, I started up and said something, and then felt I had made such a fool of myself (mere vanity; for I had probably done nothing in the least noteworthy) that I vowed I would join the society, go every week, speak every week, and become a speaker or perish in the attempt. And I carried out this resolution.

"I suffered agonies that no one suspected. During the speech of the debater I expected to follow, my heart used to beat as painfully as a recruit's going under fire for the first time. I could not use notes; when I looked at the paper in my hand I could not collect myself enough to decipher a word. And of the four or five wretched points that were my pretext for this ghastly practice of mine, I invariably forgot three—the best three."

Yet he refused to give up. Every week he attended the meeting, and every week he spoke. And out of such constant, unconquerable persistence one of the most effective public speakers of his generation was born.

THEY HAVE THEM EVEN IN JAPAN

HER name is Kimura Komako. And when she is at home in Japan she is under the strictest supervision. Just now she is abroad in America.

Last January Mme. Kimura was told by the government that she would have to stop holding suffrage meetings in the streets of Tokyo, and that, since her appearances in public usually resulted in a riot, she had better keep indoors anyway. Straightway after that Mme. K. sat down and wrote a play called "Ignorance;" then she got herself up in the costume in which she is shown below, and acted it.

In the character of "Ignorance" Mme. Kimura said and did things that caused the conservative government of Japan the acutest consternation, and was told that unless she went back to playing Juliet and Ophelia and Tosca rôles, her theater in Tokyo would be closed. Mme. Kimura responded to this by opening the playhouse to the public without fee. When she was arrested for this and put on trial, she defended herself, and her arguments

were given so much publicity that the word "suffrage" was carried into the remotest districts of the empire.

When Mme. Kimura was fourteen her parents arranged a conventional marriage for her with a young man whom she had never seen. On the way to the marriage Miss Komako jumped out of the carriage and hid herself in the bazaar. There she sold her wedding finery, and took the train to the city of Nagoya, where she apprenticed herself as a geisha.

Mme. Kimura worked hard in the house of the dancers for three years, after which she upset Japanese etiquette by eloping with a young doctor and marrying him without a religious service.

Mme. Kimura then published a volume of verse which became a sensation, and a novel followed. Soon she was editing a woman's magazine in Tokyo—the first publication in Japan to dare to assert woman's right to stand on a mental, social, and political level with man. This magazine was recently suppressed.

A TABLET TO PURIFY WATER

GERMS cause disease, and water causes germs. Ever since these twin discoveries were made, human beings have been much more interested in the purity of the water they drink. But on automobile trips and in camp it isn't always possible to "boil the water." What's to be done when one simply has to have a cooling drink and has no way of learning the water's pedigree?

Dr. H. D. Dakin, an American chemist, has an answer to that question in a newly made discovery. He is the same man who invented "Dakin's solution," otherwise known as chlorozene.

The new discovery is a modification of chlorozene, and is called halazone. A single tablet in a pitcher of water and, presto! all the germs are slain and the water rendered quite harmless without becoming less palatable.

In a dilution ranging from 1/200,000 to 1/500,000 halazone will destroy such water-borne germs as the colon bacillus and the typhoid bacillus and the deadly cholera vibrio, and a tablet containing no more than one sixteenth of a grain will kill every germ in a quart of water.

The tablets can be put on the market at a cost not to exceed one tenth of a cent per tablet.

IF YOU WANT A JOB IN A BANK

THE best time to look for a job in the banking business is early spring, says Frederick J. Allen in Business Employments (Ginn & Company).

"About March first each year banks begin to increase their force on account of the coming summer vacations of their employees. Of the new employees thus added annually, those who show marked ability are retained. Banks also employ boys from the public schools as messengers during the summer vacation.

"You should know, if possible, upon entering a bank, the names, nature, and principal features of ordinary business documents, such as notes, checks, and bills, and something of commercial law. Language requirements are simple, extending only to the ordinary use of English.

"In the lowest position in banking, that of errand boy, very young boys receive $4 and $5 a week. For regular messenger service the pay begins at $6 a week, or $300 a year, increasing, on an average, at the rate of $100 a year. Young men as check tellers, clerks, bookkeepers, and bond salesmen receive from $800 to $1000 a year. Tellers, who must be responsible and able men, usually of thirty years or over, have salaries ranging from $2200 upwards."

Savings banks, being comparatively free from competition and more conservative in form, pay somewhat higher salaries.

THE "CAVE CHILDREN" OF FRANCE

DURING the bombardment of the Belgian and French towns, hundreds of children, ragged, hungry, some of them half imbecile from shock, all of them physically disordered, began to come into Paris on every train. They were tagged like post-office packages—for even the older ones were too dazed to give a coherent account of themselves.

After the older ones began to recover a little, they all told the same bitter, monotonous stories, writes Gertrude Atherton in The Living Present (Frederick A. Stokes Company).

"Many of these children were in cellars, not for weeks, but for months, without seeing the light of day, with their hunger never satisfied, their ear-drums splitting with raucous sounds; the stenches enough to poison what red blood they had."

The first thing that was done with these waifs was to feed them. The next was to wash and disinfect them, clip their hair to the skull, burn the rags they were wearing, dress them in clean clothes, and install them in a beautiful château which was taken over for the purpose by a group of Americans calling themselves "the Committee for the Protection of the Children of the Frontier."

Even after many weeks of careful feeding, rest, and fresh air, many of the children were still too weak to play. They would lie about in deck chairs, languidly gazing out at the fields and woods, indifferent to what went on about them.

As moving, in its way, as this picture of bewildered, passive suffering is the heroism of one French child whose story Mrs. Atherton tells here.

In one of the little villages outside Paris, the only baker of the place was called suddenly to the front. His wife had died a few weeks before. He left one child, a little girl of about twelve.

"This man's bakery had supplied all the bread in the village. Bread-making in France is a science—the work of the expert, not of a casual housewife. Consequently, the whole village was in despair. A Frenchman will go without meat, but life without bread is unthinkable. No one thought of the child.

"But the second day after mobilization her shop window was piled high with loaves, as usual. The inn was supplied. The village was supplied. This little girl worked steadily and unaided at her task, until her father, a year later, returned, minus a leg, to give her assistance of a sort.

"The business of the bakery was nearly doubled during that time. Foot-weary marching regiments, with no time to stop for a meal, halted a moment and bought the stock on hand. But, with only a few hours' sleep, the girl toiled on valiantly, and no applicant for bread was turned away empty-handed.

"How she kept up her childish strength and courage, without a moment's change in her routine and on insufficient sleep, can only be explained by the twin facts that she came of hardy peasant stock, and, like all French children, no matter how individual, was too thoroughly imbued with the discipline of 'the family' to shirk for a moment the particular task that war had brought her."

This child has recently been decorated by the French government.

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"SHOOT, SAY, SIXTY PERSONS"

ABSOLUTE power has a curiously deteriorating effect on the man who wields it. Nero, for example, was looked upon as a model young man when he ascended the throne: yet he wound up by murdering his own mother and burning Rome. Napoleon began his career as the champion of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and ended defending his throne against the peoples whom his rule had oppressed.

"There could be no more fearful revelation of the tyranny engendered by unlimited power than Napoleon's letters," says Andrew D. White in Seven Great Statesmen (Century Company). "In these letters we find the great conqueror treating his brothers, whom he had placed on thrones, as mere lackeys—with utter contempt, and with not the slightest recognition of their duties toward the people whom he had called them to govern. His letters to them are frequently in terms such as no self-respecting man ought to use toward a lackey. Among the letters also appear simple offhand instructions to his commanders in various parts of Germany, which are really orders to commit murder.

"As a rule, at the moment the spies of the Emperor report any person as troublesome, there comes back a virtual order to punish the offender with death. Orders to shoot this or that troublesome patriot in Germany or Spain are frequent. But perhaps the climax is reached in a despatch to Junot, to whom Napoleon writes that no doubt the General has disarmed Lisbon, and adds:

"'Shoot, say, sixty persons.'"

ROOSEVELTS AND PADEREWSKIS NEEDED AS SCHOOL-TEACHERS

THE favorite method of attacking President Wilson is to refer to him as "the schoolmaster." Yet "schoolmaster," instead of being a term of disparagement, should immediately suggest success, power, force, a big salary, and an enviable social position. It should rank with "bank president" and "captain of industry," says Mr. Stephen Leacock in The Lot of the Schoolmaster (Essays and Literary Studies; John Lane Company).

"The whole status of the schoolmaster on this continent is wrong," says Mr. Leacock. "The pay of all the younger teachers is far too high. The pay of all the older ones is far too low. The insane idea is abroad that a young teacher, a mere beginner, is as good, or practically so, as a man of experience. No difference is made: or none that corresponds at all with the vast gulf that lies in every other profession between the tried and successful man and the youth who is only beginning.

"To get and keep the right man it is necessary to pay him an income that will enable him to live with the same comfort and dignity as others of his endowment. There is no need to pay him this at the start. No man with a future before him cares a rush about the initial pay. But the thing must be there as a future, as to something to work toward, so that, from the first day of his work, the man feels that his life is sealed to his chosen profession forever."

As it is, says Mr. Leacock, not one young man in a hundred goes into the teaching profession with the intention of staying. The idea of the average beginner is that he will stay long enough to save enough money to get out of it. It is to serve as a stepping-stone to law or medicine or something real. Yet who would wish to be treated by a doctor who was saving up money to become a sea-captain?

We need Roosevelts, Kitcheners, Morgans, Kiplings, and Paderewskis in our teaching profession—men with as much force and enthusiasm and personality and genius as we find in other careers.

"Any jackass can learn up enough algebra or geometry to teach it to a class of boys. But the ideal schoolmaster has got to be the kind of man who can instinctively lead his fellow men; who can kindle and keep alight in a boy's heart a determination to make of himself something that counts." A school-teacher deals with the most important material a nation produces—more important than its steel or copper or wheat or railroads.

Make the requirements as high and the rewards as great as in railroading or law—make it as hard for the incompetents and slackers, as inspiring for the ambitious and able, and teaching will become what it should be—one of the greatest careers.

WHEN JIM HILL ACTED AS SURGEON

NO easy years lay at the foundation of Jim Hill's fortune. Winter after winter he traveled through the uncharted wilds of the great Northwest, gaining a knowledge of the country, taking his chances with the Indians and icy rivers, risking his life every mile of the way.

"I remember any first trip out of North Dakota," he is quoted as saying in his Life by James G. Pyle (Doubleday, Page & Company). "I was on horseback, and had a half-breed for a guide, and he had a cart and an extra pony. I know that I fell asleep on horseback, and the horse woke me up by snorting. I looked ahead, and in the fog, sitting on a knoll, was a wolf. I thought that wolf was bigger than a horse. He got up, looked over his shoulder at me, loped away, and I haven't seen him since.

"In getting across a stream late that afternoon, my half-breed had to lift on a cart wheel.

"I got over all right with the saddle horse, and went back and took hold of the bridle of the black mare hitched to the cart, and he put his shoulder in under the spoke of the wheel, made an extra effort, and the wheel came around and struck his arm and dislocated it; just knocked it out.

"The next day I had to set the man's arm, and I did it. I took an ax and cut a box elder stick about five or six inches in diameter, with a crotch or fork at one end. I took my underclothes and bound them in a roll, and put it under the man's arm, and got him under the cart with a stick between his legs. I put the fork against this, cut a notch in the end, and let the rope twist in through the notch and back to the wheel. Then I got a stick out of the cart and took a twist on the rope, so that the same power that hauled his arm ahead pressed through the fork on the notches and pushed the end of the stick down tight. I took care to sit across him. I had his head under the cart. I felt reasonably sure that there would come a time when it would be necessary for me to keep him in that position. When I got a good strain on him he began to yell; but I kept going until I felt that the bone pressed into its place. I got him out from under. He found that his joint was back. Through the night he was a little delirious: but I had set his arm, and that is about the only successful surgical operation I ever performed."

HAVE YOU DONE YOUR WINTER GARDENING?

It is only the half-hearted gardener who feels that his work ends when the summer ends. The true honest-to-goodness gardener goes on and on, gardening all the year. Here is a program of the late fall and early winter:

OCTOBER

Plant hardy perennials, especially spring-blooming sorts.

Plant spring-flowering bulbs.

Pot bulbs and store for indoor blooming.

Take up annuals from the garden for the window garden.

After the 15th, plant trees (deciduous).

Best time for planting roses.

NOVEMBER

Take up and store all tender plants, if not already out of harm's way (fuchsias, hydrangeas (pot grown), dahlias, caladiums, gladioli, etc.).

Plant trees until the ground is frozen (if you will mulch them).

Set out bulbs for spring blooming (though October is better).

DECEMBER

Protect roses and other slightly tender plants.

Give the garden a mulch of manure or stable litter.

Bulbs may be planted if the ground is open, also potted for indoor bloom.

REST WHILE YOU WORK

"FANCY what it would mean if, where only ten muscles are required and most people habitually use twenty, they could learn to use only the ten," says Eustace Miles in the Contemporary Review.

Most of the men and women of the world, he points out, never organize their physical and mental selves so as to use the minimum of energy. On every operation they pour out far more strength than is needed.

The Greeks were masters of energy-saving. They studied the matter of posture, endeavoring to determine exactly what attitude of the body made possible the largest amount of work with the least effort. Have you ever made any such study of your body in relation to your job?

Have you ever practised the habit of consciously breathing deeply while at your desk—taking in full breaths that you feel around your belt, not merely in the upper lung?

Have you ever made it a point to rest your eyes at regular intervals by turning them away from their close-up work and looking into the distance?

Have you ever taken the time to stop and measure the immensely fatiguing influence of anger, or worry, or the feeling of being rushed?

Another and final point is this: never continue work beyond the point of reasonable fatigue.

"Mosso has proved that, when we begin to feel tired, exactly the same work uses up far more energy than when we were fresh. With his ergograph he measured with curves and tracings the results of lifting a little weight with a finger so many times."

Any one who could see those charts, showing how much more energy was required to accomplish the task when the finger became tired, would never again make the mistake of trying by forcing to do the task from which the tired mind and body rebel.

YOUTH CHALLENGES

By CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND

Illustration by Lucius W. Hitchcock

BONBRIGHT had disobeyed the physician's orders to stay in bed all day; but when he arose he discovered that there were times when even a restless and impatient young man is more comfortable with his head on a pillow. So, until evening, he occupied a lounge with what patience he could muster. So it was that Rangar had no news of him during the day and was unable to relieve his father's increasing anxiety. Mr. Foote was not anxious now, but frightened—frightened as any potentate might be who perceived that the succession was threatened, that extinction impended over his line.

Bonbright scarcely tasted the food that was brought him on a tray at six o'clock. He was afire with eagerness, for the hour was almost there when he could go to Ruth for her answer. He arose somewhat dizzily, and demanded his hat, which was given him with protests. It was still too early to make his call; but he could not stay away from the neighborhood, so he took a taxicab to Ruth's corner and there alighted. For half an hour he paced slowly up and down. He saw Dulac leave the house, waited another half hour, and then rang the door-bell.

Mrs. Frazer opened the door.

"Evening, Mr. Foote," she said without enthusiasm.

"Miss Frazer is expecting me," he said.

"In the parlor," said she, "and no help with the dishes, which is to be expected at her age, with first one young man and then another, which, if she gets any pleasure out of it, I'm not one to deny her, though not consulted. If I was starting over again, I'd wish it was a son to be traipsing after some other woman's daughter, and not a daughter to have other women's sons traipsing after. That door, Mr. Foote. Go right in."

Bonbright closed the door after him mechanically.

"You know why I've come, Ruth," he said. "It has seemed a long time to wait since last night. You know why I've come?"

"Yes."

He stepped toward her eagerly.

"You look so unhappy. It hasn't been worrying you like this? Ruth, you haven't been out of my mind since last night—since yesterday morning. Every day I shall love you more than I did the day before—if your answer can be yes. I'm afraid to ask."

"I will marry you," she said in a dead voice.

His face showed glad, relieved surprise. The shine of his eyes accused her. She was making capital of his love—for a great purpose—but none the less making capital of it. She was sorry for him, bitterly sorry for herself. He came toward her eagerly, with arms outstretched to receive her.

"Not now," she said, holding up her hand as if to ward him off. "You mustn't—"

His face fell, and he stopped short.

"Wait," she said pitifully. "Oh, be patient with me! I will marry you. But you must be patient with me."

"Don't you love me?" he asked.

"I've said I would marry you," she replied. Then she could restrain herself no longer. "But let it be soon," she cried, and, throwing herself on the sofa, she burst into tears.

Bonbright did not know what to do. He had never seen a woman cry so before. Did girls always act this way when they became engaged? Was it the usual thing, or was something wrong with Ruth?

He wanted to pick her up and comfort her in his arms. He could do it, he could hold her close and safe, for she was so small. But he dared not touch her. She had forbidden it.

"Ruth," he said. "Ruth!"

Suddenly she sat up.

"I'm—ashamed," she said, irrepressible sobs interrupting her. "It's silly, isn't it? But it's hard to know. It's for so long—so long!"

"Yes," he said; "that's the best part of it. I shall have you always."

ALWAYS. He should have her always! It was no sentence for a month or a year; but for life. She was tying herself to this boy until death should free her. She looked at him, and thanked God that he was as he was, young, decent, clean, capable of loving her and cherishing her.

"You want me? You're very, very sure you want me? How do you know? I may not be what you think I am. Maybe I'm different. Are you sure, Bonbright?"

"It's the only thing in the world I am sure of," he said.

"And you'll be good to me? You'll be patient with me? Oh, I needn't ask! I know you will. I know you're good."

"I love you," was his reply.

"Then," she said, "let's not wait. Can't it be right away?"

"To-morrow? You couldn't? You don't mean—to-morrow?"

She nodded, unable to speak.

"Sweetheart!" he cried, and again held out his arms.

She shook her head and drew back.

Continued on page 15

SHERMAN WAS WRONG

GOD SAID, "I AM TIRED OF KINGS"

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THEY CAN KEEP SECRETS

—Continued from page 10

"It's been so—so quick," she said. "And to-morrow comes so soon. Not till then. I'll be your wife then—your wife."

"I—I will see to everything. We'll be married, and then we will go away—somewhere. Where would you like to go, Ruth?"

"Anywhere. I don't care."

"It'll be my secret," he said in his young blindness. "We'll start out, and you won't know where we're going. I sha'n't tell you. I'll pick out the best place in the world, and you won't know where we're going till we get there. Won't that be bully? I hate to go now, dear; but you're all out of sorts—and I'll have a heap of things to do to get ready. So will you."

He stopped and looked at her pleadingly; but she could not give him what his eyes asked; she could not give him her lips to-night. He waited a moment; then very gently he took her hand and touched it with his lips.

"I'm patient," he said softly. "You see how patient I am! I can wait when waiting will bring me so much. At twelve o'clock? That's the swell hour," he laughed. "Shall I drag along a bishop, or will an ordinary minister do?"

She tried to smile in response.

"Good night—dear," she said.

"It's true. I'm not dreaming it. Noon to-morrow?"

"Noon to-morrow," she repeated.

He walked to the door, stopped, turned, hesitated as if to come back. Then he smiled at her boyishly, happily, wagged his head gaily as though admonishing himself to be about his business and to stop philandering, and went out. He did not see her drag herself to the sofa wearily; he did not see her sink upon it and bury her face again in the cushions; he did not hear the sobs that wrenched and shook her. He would then have understood that this was not the usual way for a girl to enter her engagement. He would have understood that something was very wrong.

After waiting a long time for her daughter to come out, Mrs. Frazer opened the door determinedly and went in. Ruth sat up and, wiping her eyes on a tear-soggy handkerchief, said:

"I'm going to marry Bonbright Foote to-morrow noon, mother."

Mrs. Frazer sat down very suddenly and stared at her daughter.

"Of all things!" she said weakly.

ARRIVING home, Bonbright stopped in the library door; for he saw there not only his father, whom he had expected to see, but his mother also. She was first to see him.

"Bonbright," she said, rising.

He walked to her and kissed her, not speaking.

"Where have you been? Your father and I have been terribly worried. Why did you stay away like this, without sending us any word?"

"I'm sorry if I've worried you, mother," he said, but found himself dumb when he tried to offer an explanation.

"You have worried us," said his father sharply. "You had no business to do such a thing. How were we to know something hadn't happened to you—with the strike going on?"

"It was very inconsiderate," said his mother.

There fell a silence awkward for Bonbright.

There had never been that close confidence between Mrs. Foote and Bonbright which should exist between mother and son. He had never before given much thought to his relations with her. She was a very busy woman, busy with extra-family concerns. Servants had carried on the affairs of the household. Nurses, governesses, and such kittle-cattle had given to Bonbright their sort of substitute for mother-care. Not that Mrs. Foote had neglected her son in a material sense; but in that highest and sweetest sense of pouring out her affection on him in childhood, of giving him her companionship, of making her love compel his love—there she had been neglectful.

"Have you nothing to say?" his father demanded, and, when Bonbright made no reply, he continued:

"Your mother and I have been unable to understand your conduct. Even in our alarm we have been discussing your actions and your attitude. It is not one we expected from a son of ours. You have not filled our hopes and expectations. I, especially, have been dissatisfied with you ever since you left college. You have not behaved like a Foote. You have made more trouble for me in these few months than I made for my father in my life. For months you have been sullen and restless—and then openly rebellious. And, worse, you have been compromising yourself with a girl not of your class."

"I could not believe my ears," said Mrs. Foote coldly.

"However," said his father, "I shall overlook what has passed."

NOW came the sop he had planned to throw to Bonbright:

"You have been in the office long enough to learn something of the business, so I shall give you work of greater interest and responsibility. You say, ridiculously enough, that you have been a rubber stamp. Common sense should have told you you were competent to carry no great responsibilities at first. But you shall take over a part of my burden now. However, one thing must come first. Before we go any farther, your mother and I must have your promise that you will discontinue whatever relations you have with this boarding-house-keeper's daughter, this companion of anarchists."

"I have insisted upon that," said Mrs. Foote: "I will not tolerate such an affair."

"There is no affair," said Bonbright, finding his voice. His young eyes began to glow angrily.

"Oh, undoubtedly she's worthy enough," said Mr. Foote, who had exchanged a glance with his wife during Bonbright's outburst.

"Stop!" said Bonbright hoarsely. "That's what I came home to tell you. You tried to pick out a wife for me. Well, I've picked out my own. Whether you approve or not doesn't change it. Nobody, nothing can change it. I love Ruth Frazer and I'm going to marry her. That's what I came home to tell you."

"What?" said his father, in the tone of one who listens to blasphemy.

Bonbright did not waver. He was strong enough now, in his anger and in his love.

"I'm going to marry Ruth Frazer," he repeated.

"Nonsense," said his mother.

"My son—" began Mr. Foote.

But his wife silenced him. She had taken command of the family ship. From this moment, in this matter, Bonbright Foote VI did not figure. This was her affair. It touched her in a vital spot. It threatened her with ridicule; it threatened to affect that most precious of her possessions—the deference of the social world. She knew how to protect herself, and would attend to the matter without assistance.

"You're a silly boy and this girl has schemed to catch you and has caught you. You don't flatter yourself that she cares for you beyond your money and your position. Those are the things she had her eye on."

"Georgia," said Mr. Foote warningly.

"If you please, Bonbright," she put him back in his place, "I will settle this matter with our son—now."

"It is settled, mother," said Bonbright quietly.

"Suppose you should be insane enough to marry her," said Mrs. Foote, "do you suppose I should tolerate her? Do you suppose I should admit her to this house?. Do you suppose your friends—people of your own class—would receive her—or you?"

"Do you mean, mother," said Bonbright, his voice curiously quiet and calm, "that you would not receive my wife here?"

"More than that,—I know I am speaking for your father when I say it,—if you persist in this, we shall wash our hands of

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you utterly. Think a moment what that means. You will not have a penny. We shall not give you one penny. You have never worked. And you would find yourself out in the world, with a wife to support and no means of supporting her. How long do you suppose she would stay with you? The moment she found she couldn't get what she had schemed for, you would see the last of her. Think of all that."

"I've thought of all that—except that Ruth would care for the money. Yesterday I left the office, deter mined never to go into it again. I made up my mind to look for a job—any job—that would give me a living. I was ready to do that without Ruth. But the family has some claims to me—I could see that. And so I came back. I was going to tell father I would go ahead and do my best. But not because I wanted to, nor because I was afraid."

"You see," his mother said bitingly, "it lasted a whole day with you."

"Mother!"

"I'd see the business ended and the family extinct before I would tolerate that girl. If you marry her, you do it knowing how I feel and how I shall act. She shall never step a foot in this house while I live—nor afterward if I can prevent it. Nor shall you."

"Is that final, mother? Are you sure it is your final decision?"

"Absolutely," she said, her voice as cold as steel.

"Very well," said Bonbright; and, turning, he walked steadily toward the door.

"Where are you going?" his father said, taking an anxious step after his son.

"I don't know," said Bonbright; "but I'm not coming back."

He walked out of the door. But his mother did not call after him, did not relent and follow her only son to bring him back. Her face was set, her lips a thin white line.

"Let him go," said she. "He'll come back when he's eaten enough husks."

"He's got to come back. We've got to stop this marriage. He's our only son, Georgia—he's necessary to the family. His son is necessary."

"And hers?" his wife asked with bitter irony.

"Better hers than none," said Mr. Foote.

"You would give in. Oh, I know you would. You haven't a thought outside of family. I wasn't born in your family, remember. I married into it. I have my own rights in this matter, and, family or no family, Bonbright, that girl shall never be received where I am received. Never!"

Mr. Foote walked to the window and looked out. He saw his son's tall form pass down the walk and out into the street—going he did not know where, to return he did not know when. He felt an ache in his heart such as he had never felt before. He felt a yearning after his son such as he had never before known. In that moment of loss he perceived that Bonbright was something more to him than Bonbright Foote VII—he was flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. The stifled, cramped, almost eliminated human father that remained in him cried out after his son.

WALKING away from his father's house, Bonbright came into possession for the first time of the word responsibility. It was defined for him as no dictionary could define it. Every young man meets a day when responsibility becomes to him something more than a combination of letters; and when it comes he can never be the same again. It marks definitely the arrival of manhood, the dropping behind of youth.

Realization of his condition threw him into panic. In his panic he allowed his feet to carry him to the man whose help had come readily and willingly in another moment of need—to Malcolm Lightener.

The hour was still early. Lights shone in the Lightener home, and Bonbright approached the door. Mr. Lightener was in, and would see him in his office. It was characteristic of Lightener that the room in the house that was peculiarly his own was called by him his office.

For the second time that evening Bonbright stood hesitating in a doorway.

"Well, young fellow?" said Lightener. Then, seeing the boy's hesitation: "Come in, come in. What's happened now?"

"Mr. Lightener," said Bonbright, "I want a job. I've got to have a job."

"Why?"

"I'm going to be married to-morrow—"

"What?"

"I'm going to be married to-morrow—and I've got to support my wife—decently."

"It's that little Frazer girl who was crying all over my office to-day," said Lightener. "How long have you been going to marry this girl?"

"She said she would marry me to-night."

"Engaged to-night—and you're going to marry to-morrow?"

"Yes. And I went home to tell father. Mother was there—"

Lightener could appreciate what Bonbright's mother's presence would contribute to the episode.

"And she was worse than father. She—it was rotten, Mr. Lightener—rotten. There wasn't anything for me to do but get out. I didn't begin to wonder how I was going to support Ruth till it was all over with."

"That's the time folks generally begin to wonder."

"So I came right here—because you can give me a job if you will—and I've got to have one to-night. I've got to know to-night how I'm going to get food and a place to live for Ruth.

"Um. We'll come to that." Lightener got up and went to the door. From there he shouted—the word is used advisedly—for his wife and daughter:

"Mama! Hilda! Come here right off!" He had decided that Bonbright's affairs stood in need of woman's counsel.

Mrs. Lightener appeared first.

"Why, Bonbright!" she exclaimed.

"Where's Hilda?" asked Lightener. "Need her, too."

"She's coming, dear."

THERE are people whose mere presence brings relief. Perhaps it is because their sympathy is sure; perhaps it is because their souls were given them, strong and simple, for other souls to lean upon. Mrs. Lightener was one of these. Before she knew why Bonbright was there, before she uttered a word, he felt a sense of deliverance. His necessities seemed less gnawing; there was a slackening of taut nerves.

"Good evening, Bonbright," she said.

"Let's get down to business," Lightener said. "Tell 'em, Bonbright."

"I'm going to marry Ruth Frazer to-morrow noon," he said baldly.

Mrs. Lightener was amazed, and disappointed; for she had come to hope strongly that she would have this boy for a son. She liked him.

Hilda felt a momentary shock of surprise, but it passed quickly.

"So you've decided to throw me over," she said, with a smile. "I don't blame you, Bonbright. She's a dear."

"But who is she?" asked Mrs. Lightener. "I seem to have heard the name, but I don't remember meeting her."

"She was my secretary," said Bonbright. "She's a stenographer in Mr. Lightener's office now."

"Oh," said Mrs. Lightener.

"Exactly," said Lightener.

"Mother!" exclaimed Hilda. "Weren't you a stenographer in the office where dad worked?"

"It isn't that," said Mrs. Lightener. "I wasn't thinking about the girl, nor about Bonbright. I was thinking of his mother."

"That's why he's here," said Lightener. "The family touched off a mess of fireworks. Mrs. Foote refuses to have anything to do with the girl if Bonbright marries her. Promised to see nobody else did, too. Isn't that it, Bonbright?"

"They turned you out?" Hilda asked.

"I turned myself out," he said.

She nodded understandingly.

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"You would," she said approvingly. "What kind of a job can you give him, dad?"

"H'm. That's settled, is it? What do you think, mother?"

"Why, dear, he's got to support his wife," said Mrs. Lightener.

Malcolm Lightener permitted the granite of his face to relax in a rueful smile.

"I called you folks in to get your advice—not to have you run the whole shebang."

"We're going to run it, dad. Don't you like Ruth Frazer?"

"I like her. She seems to be a nice, intelligent girl. Cries all over a man's office."

"I like her, too, and so will mother when she meets Ruth. I like her a heap, Bon. She's a dear. Now that the job for you is settled—"

"Eh?" said Lightener.

Hilda smiled at him and amended herself:

"Now that a very good job for you is settled, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. First thing, I'm invited to the wedding, and so is mother, and so are some other folks. I'll see to that. It isn't going to be any justice-of-the-peace wedding, either. It's going to be in the church, and there'll be enough folks there to make it read right in the paper."

"I'm afraid Ruth wouldn't care for that," said Bonbright dubiously.

"She's got to start off right as your wife, Bon. The start's everything. You want your friends to know her and receive her, don't you? Of course you do. I'll round up the folks and have them there. It will be sort of romantic and interesting, and a bully send-off for Ruth, if it's done right. It'll make her quite the rage. You'll see. That's what I'm going to do—in spite of your mother. Maybe your mother can run the dowagers, but I'll bet that I can handle the young folks."

IN that moment Hilda looked exceedingly like her father.

"Hilda!" her mother exclaimed. "You must consider Mrs. Foote. We don't want to have any unpleasantness over this."

"We've got it already," said Hilda; "and the only way is to—go the limit."

Lightener slammed the desk with his fist.

"Right," he said. "If we meddle at all, we've got to go the whole distance. Either stay out altogether or go in over our heads. But how about this girl, Hilda? Does she belong?"

"She's decently educated. She has sweet manners. She's brighter than two thirds of us. She'll fit in all right. Don't worry about her."

"You're—mighty good," said Bonbright chokingly.

"I'm going to see her the first thing in the morning. You see—I'll fix things with her. When I explain everything to her, she'll do just as I want her to."

Mrs. Lightener was troubled; tears stood in her eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Bonbright. I—I suppose a boy has the right to pick out his own wife, but it's too bad you couldn't have pleased your mother. Her heart must ache to-night."

"I'm afraid," said Bonbright slowly, "that is doesn't ache the way you mean, Mrs. Lightener."

"It's a hard place to put us. We're meddling. It doesn't seem the right thing, to come between mother and son."

"You'd never feel like Mrs. Foote, mother. If I made up my mind to marry a man out of dad's office,—no matter what his job was, if he was all right himself,—you wouldn't throw me out of the house and set out to make him and me as unhappy as you could. You aren't a snob."

"No," said Mrs. Lightener; "I should not."

Malcolm Lightener interrupted.

"Now you've both had your say," he said, "and you seem to have decided the thing between you. I felt kind of that way myself, but I wanted to know about you folks. What you say goes. Now clear out; I want to talk business with Bonbright."

BONBRIGHT waited.

"I'm going to give you a job, but it won't be any private office job. I don't know what you're good for. Probably not much. Don't get it into your head I'm handing you a snap, because I'm not. If you're not worth what I pay you, you'll get fired. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"If you stick, you'll learn something. Not the kind of rubbish you've been sopping up in your own place. I run a business, not a museum of antiquity. You'll have to work. Think you can?"

"I've wanted to. They wouldn't let me."

"Um. You'll get dirt on your hands. Most likely you'll be running Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, one of these days. This thing won't last; your father'll have to come around. I only hope he lets you stay with me long enough to teach you some business sense and something about running a plant. I'll pay you enough to support you and this girl of yours—but you'll earn it. When you earn more you'll get it. Sound reasonable?"

"I—I can't thank you enough."

"Report for work day after to-morrow, then. You're a man out of a job; you can't afford honeymoons. I'll let you have the day off to-morrow, but next morning you be in my office when the whistle blows. I always am."

"Yes, sir."

Lightener moved awkwardly and showed signs of embarrassment.

"And listen here," he said gruffly. "A young girl's a pretty delicate piece of business. They're mighty easy to hurt, and the hurt lasts a long time. You want to be married a long time, I expect, and you want your wife to—er—love you right along. Well, be darn careful, young fellow. Start the thing right. More marriages are smashed in the first few days than in the next twenty years. You be gentle and considerate of that little girl."

"I—I hope I shall, Mr. Lightener."

"Go on, now. I'll tell Hilda where you are. Probably she'll want to call you up in the morning. Good night."

"Good night and thank you."

"Huh," said Malcolm Lightener; and, without paying the slightest bit of attention to whether Bonbright stayed or went away, he took up the papers on his desk and lost himself in the figures that covered them.

Bonbright went out quietly, thankfully, his heart glad with its own song.

To be continued next week

The Youngest Queen Bee

OTHERS may dread an intimate association with the busy little bees: not so little Miss Daisy Thornton Stewart, aged five, of Brooklyn, New York, who has no hesitation in assuming control of a swarm of these industrious insects at their swarmiest. The little miss formed her acquaintance with bees on occasional visits to the country, and despite frequent round-ups at which she has assisted, she has never been stung. In the accompanying picture little Miss Stewart is shown holding a section, alive with bees, which she has just lifted from a hive.

Don't Work Long Hours

By BURTON J. HENDRICK

HERE is a valuable tip, based upon England's experience, for American manufacturers who are producing munitions of war. It is a tip also for every employer of labor, including the individual who employs no labor but his own. The best way to secure a large output is not, as you may believe, by sweating the life out of yourself or your employees. You who are urging your workers, under the plea of patriotism, to work ten or twelve or fourteen hours a day, are really doing your country a disservice. For that is the best way human ingenuity has discovered of decreasing the output.

Other ways of making your men turn out a smaller amount of work than usual are the employment of night shifts and making everybody work Sundays and holidays. The manufacturer who insists upon working conditions of this kind is really fighting, consciously or not, in the interest of the Kaiser.

England has learned this lesson from experience. The message that she sends across the water is this: Unhealthy "speeding up" leads to a loss in efficiency and a reduced output. One way to strike a terrific blow at Germany is by adopting an eight-hour day, with no Sunday work and as little as possible of "night shifts."

What America Expects of Labor

THE discussion of working conditions in this country now reminds one of that which took place in England three years ago.

This nation, we are told, will strain its resources to the utmost. The coöperation of labor and capital is everywhere commended. Expedients that have fallen into disrepute in peace times—such as "overtime," "night shifts," Sunday labor, and work days composed of twelve or fourteen hours—are now being generally advocated as a patriotic duty. We are told that the safety of the nation is at stake, and that the workingman and workingwoman must submit to all manner of sacrifices in the interest of victory. We must have an enormous output; and of what account are our personal conveniences, and even our health, compared to the supreme end of defeating Germany? That system of labor which will give us the largest number of warships, merchant-vessels, submarines, aëroplanes, heavy guns, rifles, shells, and other indispensable munitions is clearly the one that the highest patriotism should force us to adopt.

This great experience through which the world is passing has already taught us many things. Europe and America, we are constantly told, can never be the same places that they were three years ago. Socially and economically, all nations are at present in flux. Perhaps the war's most useful lesson, so far as the relation of the workingman to society is concerned, is the light it has shed upon conditions of labor.

Three years ago England occupied precisely the position that we do now. She was suddenly faced with the necessity of reorganizing all her industries for battle. The safety of civilization depended upon the volume in which she could produce shells and cannon, tanks and warships. The obvious way to obtain this huge output was by speeding up. She called into conference all the leaders of England's working forces, and laid the necessities of the case before them.

England's Eighteen-Hour Day

AS a patriotic duty they all decided to spur on the workers to the limit of their endurance. The large bonuses that the government stood ready to pay quieted any remonstrances that might have arisen among the laborers. All working schedules were abandoned. Men and women began to work twelve, fifteen, sixteen, and in some cases eighteen hours a day. Night shifts became the universal scheme. Sunday was regularly devoted to the manufacture of war munitions.

Men, women, and in many cases children, began their day's labor at six in the morning, and did not stop until nine in the evening, with very little time for meals or rest. Perhaps the most exaggerated instance of speeding was that offered by one industry where the workers stayed on the job from Friday morning until Saturday noon.

No one needed to be told that this sort of thing, if kept up for any long period, would be exceedingly harmful to the workers. But there was a widespread

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belief that the war was to last for only a few months, and surely the people could be depended upon to submit to these hours when the safety of the empire was at stake.

But now the government has discovered a new fact—a fact that the United States, about to speed up its industries for the production of war material, may well take to heart. The pace set was destructive not only to the worker, but also to the work.

A government commission which has spent many months investigating conditions in the munitions factories has just finished its report. This commission has gone about its work in a methodical, almost cold-blooded fashion. It was not primarily its interest to learn whether the extra hours induced tuberculosis, high blood-pressure, and the occupational diseases: it was mainly interested in finding out how they affected output. Did overtime, Sunday work, and a fourteen-hour day produce more explosive shells and shrapnel than a more rational working system?

Practice of "Speeding Up" a Failure

THE net result of this investigation is a demonstration that England's great "speeding up" campaign has been a monstrous failure. It failed because it did not accomplish the purpose at which it was aimed. Had there been no overtime, no Sunday labor, no monstrously long working day, the factories would have turned out a larger output than they did.

These investigators, who included many of the greatest social experts in England, have discovered a new law regulating the industrial world—a law that is as important and as trustworthy in its sphere as is that of gravitation in the material universe.

The new theorem is this: that the way to increase output in a factory is to decrease working hours. Conversely, the way to decrease output—and this is the mistake that England made, and the one that we are in danger of making—is to increase disproportionately working hours. If you want your men and women to turn out more, make them work less!

The opinion of the most intelligent employers in England—the ones who have given the most careful study to scientific management and the problems of industrial fatigue—is that the most satisfactory results, from both the standpoint of efficiency and humanity, are obtained by the eight-hour day. No employer who has adopted these shorter hours has ever returned to the longer ones.

Such is the greatest industrial lesson that England has learned from three years of warfare.

The committee produces a wealth of illustration and detailed and complex statistical tables in substantiation of its case. A few examples will make the whole situation clear.

An Experiment to Discover a Proper Work Day

HERE, for example, is a group of women engaged in what is usually regarded as moderately heavy labor. They are occupied in turning aluminum fuse bodies, an operation requiring them to stand all day at capstan lathes and subject each fuse body to seven successive boring and cutting operations. The work demands considerable skill and a high degree of attention; the operative can not for a second relax her efforts during the actual turning.

Hard work for a woman, we should say, especially as she has to stand continuously. Most men would not enjoy this sort of thing even eight hours a day; yet these Englishwomen were keeping at it uncomplainingly for 77¼ hours a week, with only one Sunday off in the month. Such is the way in which Englishwomen have been giving to the war.

For the purpose of experiment, the commission selected one hundred of these women, taking pains to choose those who had been engaged on the work so long that they had reached their full limit of production, so that there could be no reason to believe that any increased efficiency they might show could be the result of increased experience. These hundred women were kept under observation for six months, from November to April.

For the first six weeks of this period these women worked 14 hours a day, 84 a week—and the amount turned out during this period was placed, for purposes of subsequent comparison, at 100. Then the weekly hours were cut down to 67. This reduction, however, did not produce any immediate increase in their output—a result that was probably discouraging to those investigators who had taken up the inquiry with the idea that such would be the result.

But from February 27 to April 23—a period of eight weeks—the working hours were still further reduced. In this whole period the women actually worked an average of only 59.7 hours a week. And this reduction in hours caused an increased production of twenty-three per cent.

That is, these women did just about one fourth more work under the shorter hours than they had under the longer ones!

For one week more the working hours were cut down to 49. And in this week the production showed an increase of twenty-five per cent over the former normal day.

A group of fourteen operatives were kept for five weeks upon a 72¼-hour-a-week basis. Another group of seventeen

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were worked from 51 to 62 hours during this same period. And the women who worked the fewer hours did eighteen per cent more work than their apparently more industrious sisters.

If necessary, I could quote an almost endless succession of experiments, all proving the same thing. The commission studied women working on all kinds of labor, heavy, light, moderately light; and on men and boys engaged in a series of occupations. All followed the course described above. At first there was no noticeable increase in product; but after several weeks the increases became marked and steady.

Effect of Long Hours on Boys

PERHAPS the most astounding results I were those furnished by boys of from fourteen to seventeen years. These youths had been normally engaged 70 hours a week. Yet reducing these hours to 57 caused them to increase their output nearly one half!

The commission also proved their point conversely. They took a group of men who were boring powder chambers of three-inch shrapnel shells and working only 48 hours a week. When this working period was increased to 59 hours, the output suffered a sudden diminution.

Probably to the average human being these revelations are not so surprising as they are to the strictly scientific mind. The conclusions are precisely those that ordinary human instinct would teach us that they should be. The idea of any human being working twelve or fifteen hours a day and producing the best that is in him is absurd.

In the first place, as these scientific observers discovered, people forcing themselves at this rate lose a considerable amount of time. They do not actually work fourteen or fifteen hours. Outraged nature insists on recuperation. Where the workers do not consciously lay off and rest, they do so unconsciously. Even though they may not know it, the hands and minds work more slowly and less attentively. And it is a commom experience that not only is the output diminished, but that its quality goes much below the standard.

Less Spoiled Work with Shorter Hours

DIMINISHING the hours of employment has resulted in fewer broken machines and much less spoiled work. These prodigious hours, when they do not cause actual sickness, enfeeble constitutions, particularly of the older men, and diminish working capacity. There is thus a large amount of lost time.

The old schedule also produces a heavy strain upon the executive staff and foremen, who can not take days off, like the ordinary workmen, and who have the added strain of overseeing men whose nerves and tempers are subjected to terrific strain. The commission found one manager who had worked 361 out of 365 days—and who looked it. Perhaps the most deplorable result of these long hours was that they led the exhausted workers to seek for surcease in that universal solvent—alcohol.

One curious outcome of the study was the discovery that men generally looked down upon as "slackers"—those who used every opportunity when the foreman was not looking to "loaf on the job"—were, in most cases, turning out an actually larger amount of work than the more conscientious employees. The point is, of course, that these "slackers," whether they intended it or not, so greatly improved their strength by these periods of stolen rest that they went at their work like fresh men.

Four O'Clock Tea Found Helpful

THE factories have taken these lessons to heart, and many have adopted the practice of letting the workers stop and rest for, say, ten or fifteen minutes each hour; and some even serve four o'clock tea and other refreshment. The result is that the workers are constantly fresh, and the output is increased.

Though the commission prefers shifts to overtime, the general verdict is against night work of any kind. It is uneconomical, because the men who work in the night shifts, and who get larger wages, do not render as good service as the day workers. The light is bad and causes a poorer grade of work. The workers have great difficulty in sleeping in the day; for the home surroundings of the average workingman are noisy. The fact that the meal hours are unusual leads to disturbances in digestion and general impairment of health.

Sunday work, under any conditions, is also condemned. The fact that Sunday is universally a day of rest influences the psychology of the situation, and makes both men and women take the most listless interest in their work. The fatigue accumulated lasts into the week, affecting unfavorably the amount and quality of output.

What Your Right Hand Does When You Telephone

EVERY day you go through a multitude of motions that are absolutely useless and merely waste your nervous energy.

And perhaps no other action is more utterly worthless than the way you litter a scratch-pad with an odd assortment of lines, figures, diagrams, and what not, when you have occasion to use the telephone.

Have you ever examined closely the scribbling contained upon a scratch-pad at any telephone pay station? You will find straight lines, crooked lines, vertical and slant lines; acute angles; right-hand triangles (and left-handed ones); Arabic figures and Roman figures; all the letters in the alphabet in every shape and form; Palmer's system of freehand penmanship; diagrams that show nothing; caricatures that represent nothing—in fact, everything that can be accomplished by means of paper and pencil is illustrated thereon.

This is a facsimile of a sheet of paper taken from the telephone pay station of a Cincinnati druggist. Now that you see how foolish it looks, why not save your energy for something more worth while?

PROMOTION—Can Its Long Arm Reach Me?

By JAMES H. COLLINS

PERHAPS your job is one in a big organization—public service, manufacturing, or mercantile. There are hundreds of employees, maybe thousands, all grouped in departments, having no apparent contact with the man higher up. Occasionally the long arm of promotion reaches out and lifts somebody into a better job, and that is a good thing for the fellow who is lifted, but it looks rather haphazard. How is he selected from the rank and file? Will the long arm ever reach you? Does it have eyes that really see? Is it worth while to work hard, and depend on the long arm to do the rest?

There is only one answer to these questions. If you are in an organization that is alive, the long arm sees as well as reaches, and is probably reaching in your direction now. The very growth of the organization depends on that. If you are in an organization where the long arm is not constantly reaching and touching and testing, better get out.

A recent census of one typical public service corporation showed that in three years sixty per cent. of its employees were shifted into better positions with increased earnings. And the proportion would have been larger but for the fact that this company employs many girls, who stay in the organization only four years on the average, earning a living until they marry. These girls have been figured down to a regular curvefirst year learning, second and third years improving, last year a seasoned worker, then marriage. Some stay and rise higher, and a few come back, after trouble or death, and make the finest workers of all.

Weeding Out the Drifters

THERE are many different kinds of work n that corporation, and its employees must have many qualifications. But the best qualification of all is the ability to climb. And the long arm promotes pretty much according to climbing ability.

Each candidate for a job is quietly tested, to sort out the poor climbers. The very office-boys must have ambitions as well as good references. Drifters and clock-watchers are headed off before they start with this company.

The first qualities sought for when a candidate goes to work are loyalty and stability. The man higher up can tell by the time-sheets whether Bill Jones is a sticker or a drifter, and, if he stays, will then begin to test him quietly in other ways.

Bill's duties at first seem to be purely routine. All the work in his department has apparently been standardized, eliminating the margin for initiative. "What is the use?" he may ask himself at the very moment when the man higher up is watching to see him develop initiative along the line of getting his eyes on a better job with that company and preparing himself for it.

One man in ten is a thinker. There will be definite tests to reveal the thinkers. Some day Bill's cut-and-dried work is varied a trifle. He is asked to undertake a job and make a report upon it, and his report will show how far he has gone in thinking about general principles in his work. Maybe he balks at making out a report at night, after work, or doesn't like "bookkeeping." That is a fair indication that he can not be promoted in certain directions—though there are plenty of other directions.

If his report displays knowledge, probably he will be tested further along this line. That corporation is constantly planning new projects, and one of the most satisfactory tests of subordinates is submitting memoranda of such projects to certain men, asking suggestions in carrying them out. The replies reveal everything from sound suggestions to absolute lack of interest, and indicate clear lines of promotion.

Do You Take Responsibility?

ANOTHER excellent guide to promotion is found in the studies that employees take up. The man or woman who asks for counsel as to reading or technical courses soon comes in reach of the long arm.

Willingness to shoulder responsibility is a valuable quality. Bill Jones may work several months under supervision, and then suddenly be handed a task that involves the direction of a couple of men for one afternoon, away off by himself, where he is thrown on his own resources.

Nine men in ten dislike responsibility. They side-step it, oozle out from under it, have no capacity for handling other people, or perhaps display a showy notion of authority. When the man higher up finds willingness to take charge of a job, coupled with common sense in "bossing," he may see the direction in which he can safely promote some fellow who is not very strong on book study reports.

Business organizations are so large nowadays, and the distance between the man higher up is so far from the man at the bottom, that it often seems as if they had no contacts. But the very size of the organization compels the man higher up to keep his eyes open and to devise tests of ability that are as effective as they are quiet. A very little observation by the fellow with climbing ability will reveal the way the long arm works, and if he can not see it working in the organization that he belongs to, that is too bad for the organization, and a plain hint to get out, and get in right elsewhere.

I KNOW it is more agreeable to walk upon carpets than to lie upon dungeon floors; I know it is pleasant to have all the comforts and luxuries of civilization: but he who cares only for these things is worth no more than a butterfly, contented and thoughtless upon a morning flower; and who ever thought of rearing a tombstone to a last summer's butterfly?

Henry Ward Beecher.

The Last of the Line—

Continued from page 7

things to do," Mrs. Marvin used to explain to Whitehead, "but often I think a rose is better for a sick man than a potato or an onion."

"We sent some beauties to Miss Mary's hospital. Did she say anything about them?" Whitehead had not yet accepted Mary into the family.

Mrs. Marvin shook her head. She, too, had wondered often why they never heard from Mary.

They were in the rose garden when the telegram about Stephen arrived. This time Mr. Marvin, too, was helping, so Maggie brought the message out to them. Mr. Marvin took the telegram, and fumbled in his pocket for his glasses. He had never needed glasses before the war.

"Couldn't I read it?" Mrs. Marvin urged.

Mr. Marvin wanted Maggie to leave; he wished, too, that Whitehead were not eyeing that yellow message so intently. His common sense told him that the servants had a right to know; since the war they had become almost members of the family. For two years he had accepted their devotion with wondering gratitude, but now he fairly hated them. His fingers trembled so that he dropped his glasses in the dirt.

"Let me see, dear." Mrs. Marvin held out her hand.

"It's probably about the potato seed I wired for," he explained. But he was glad to have her unfold the message first. Why didn't she say something? "It is about the potatoes, isn't it?" he whispered.

She shook her head.

"Which one of them?"

"Stephen!" Mr. Marvin saw her sway, but he had lost the power of movement. It was Whitehead who steadied her and picked up the telegram, which had fluttered to the ground.

"What does it say, Whitehead?" Mr. Marvin gasped.

"He died, sir, in Flanders."

"Yes, in Flanders, in the mud of Flanders," Mr. Marvin repeated. "It has been very wet on the Continent, Whitehead, you know."

Mr. Marvin wondered why Whitehead looked at him so strangely.

In less than two weeks the news of Donald's death reached them. Mr. Marvin was alone in the library. Mrs. Marvin was in the village, attending the meeting of an orphans' home of which she was chairman. The servant ushered in a wry-necked lad of nineteen. Mr. Marvin looked at him and smiled grimly. The War Office hadn't been able to use this dullard; it had preferred Grant Haverly and the Marvin boys.

Until it had become only a blotch of white in his hand, Mr. Marvin gazed at the yellow sheet. So there was only one Marvin left now—it was like a horrible game of ten-pins. Some good player would roll them all down, and would laugh as they clattered to destruction. What was the matter with his world?

Mrs. Marvin came home just as Maggie was bringing in the tea things. She was white, and looked tired to exhaustion. "I'll wait until she has had tea," Mr. Marvin thought, and he avoided her glance. He even insisted upon her taking another cup with him.

"I think I'll spend a minute with the roses," she said at last.

"Yes; do, dear," and he followed her into the garden.

EARLY in July Doris Haverly came back from London. The afternoon of her first day at home she walked from the manor over to Birchwood. "The hedge has never quite grown together where we used to squeeze through," she laughed. "I don't think Whitehead entirely approves of me to this day, either."

"Have you heard the good news?" Mr. Marvin demanded. "David is a captain."

"I heard in London. Mary told me."

"You have seen her lately?"

Doris nodded. "I came over here to talk to you about her. She doesn't look well. She has been promoted to the head of a ward now, but she told me she was leaving soon. She didn't say much, but I think she is worrying about something." Doris smoothed out a thin, black-bordered handkerchief—Grant Haverly had been killed at Lens. "She did say, though, that she knew you were sorry David had married her. I think she appreciates your point of view, but I'm beginning to see hers. She has changed. She isn't lower middle class any more; she is the best type we have, the English woman who is winning this war for us. I'm glad she comes from our village—I'm glad she is David Marvin's wife."

For a second time Mr. Marvin wished he might accept the world with Doris Haverly's daring optimism. He shook his head slowly.

"I'm going up to London to-morrow," Mrs. Marvin said quietly, "and I shall bring her back to Birchwood with me."

MRS. MARVIN was true to her promise, and Friday evening Mr. Marvin drove them home through the late summer twilight.

Old Maggie, who had cared for all the Marvin boys, opened the door for them. "Miss Doris was just here with some roses," she said, "and she told me they were for Mrs. David. I put them all in David's room."

Mr. Marvin turned away from the group in the hall. Would Doris Haverly never cease to humble him?

After dinner that evening, Mary gave Mr. Marvin all the letters David had written her—all except one. Some were ridiculous, penciled scrawls, with unfinished sentences and a magnificent disregard of the rules for punctuation; some were long, detailed accounts of his everyday life and his friends, several of them boys whom Mary had cared for in the hospital. After Mary had gone to bed, Mr. Marvin still fingered the letters. Unsuited as she was to the Marvin household, she brought David nearer to them than he had been for two years. As Mr. Marvin went to his room, the crack of light under David's door was strangely comforting.

Sunday morning, Mr. and Mrs. Marvin and Mary walked to church in the village. The drowsy quiet of an English Sabbath belied the grim destruction that was laying waste the world at that very moment. In the whole congregation Mr. Marvin knew there was not a family that had not suffered. He wondered what was in the mind of each one of them when the pastor dismissed his little group with "that peace which the world can neither give nor take away." On the door-steps they met the children coming to Sunday-school. Mr. Marvin felt an unpleasant shock when, among the group of youngsters, his eyes fell on the awkward, wry-necked boy. He stared at Mr. Marvin now, a shabby prophet of evil, as he dug the toe of his Sunday-polished boot into the gravel path. Mr. Marvin looked away quickly.

When they returned, Maggie stood waiting on the steps. "I paid the man," she said.

"So it was a man this time," Mr. Marvin muttered, and wondered whether he were losing his mind.

Mary unfolded the message. Mr. Marvin watched her face as a wild creature watches its tormentor. He knew before she spoke: "It was yesterday."

"Well, you have rolled them all down now, and there is no one left to set them up." Mr. Marvin felt a strange, dizzy feeling; his voice sounded far away and so faint that he laughed.

"Don't take on so," Maggie urged.

Mr. Marvin laughed again at the terror in her face. He tried to open the door, but the knob eluded him. He staggered backwards. Mary caught him and held him firmly.

"If you could only open that door," he pleaded. "I can't seem to see very clearly."

She guided him into the library. He

---

was sorry he was leaning so heavily against her, but it was so difficult to walk. He was much more comfortable in his easy chair with a pillow behind his back.

"Mary," he gripped her wrist with fingers like a vise, "it means there aren't any more Marvins, doesn't it? Stephen and Donald and David—all gone. That's the end of my family—the last of the line."

Maggie appeared in the doorway and motioned to Mary.

"It's Mrs. Marvin, ma'am. I think she has fainted."

SEVERAL hours later Mary entered the silent library. The afternoon sun slanted across the floor to the arm-chair where Mr. Marvin still waited.. A tray of untouched food stood on the table beside him. For some time he took no notice of Mary; then he saw that she was trying to give him something.

"What is this?" he asked dully.

"A letter from David to me. Doris Haverly said I should give it to you. She is upstairs with Mrs. Marvin."

"Poor Gertrude."

"She is resting now; you needn't worry." Mary sat down on a foot-stool at his feet. "Please read it," she urged.

Mr. Marvin gazed curiously at the envelop.

"He was a peculiar writer. Look at that d, for instance."

Mary smiled up at him. "I like the way he makes his d's."

With hands that shook unmercifully, Mr. Marvin held the letter. "I can't see very well," he apologized. "Will you read it aloud?"

"I know it by heart," she answered. "You keep it in your hand and I will repeat the words." Her voice was vibrant, like the voice of one who repeats the lines of a holy service: "'All day I have thought of nothing but your letter. When I first got it I wanted to shout with joy, I wanted to tell every one; but I'm glad I didn't. Arnold Lawrence and Gilbert McDonald just poked their heads into the dugout and spoke to me. They think I'm just like any common Tommy who is chewing the end of his pencil in a vain effort to compose, but I'm not. I can forget now the times I have killed, the times I have trembled with fear, the ghastly moments when my soul has dried up and left me a skulking animal. I shall laugh at the Fritz who finally gets me, because I am going to live. There will be Marvins now, stronger and more intelligent than I, who shall live and work until things like this war shall become undreamed of.

"'Oh, my dear, if I am selfish, forgive me. I am not forgetting about you—you have humbled me as well as made me exalted. Give me your word that you will take care of yourself, for the sake of our son. You see, I have accepted your prediction.

"'I go on sentry duty now, but I shall think of you all night. Sometimes you are very near to me—once I thought you spoke to me. I must have been dreaming.

"'Good night, dearest.'"

MR. MARVIN looked from the penciled scrawl in his hand to the girl beside him. The sunlight had caught in her brown hair and changed it to gold. Why had he never noticed that she was beautiful?

"My daughter."

Mr. Marvin stretched out his hand and touched her shoulder.

She crept close to him, and he tightened his arms about her. For the first time that day she wept, but he knew it was without bitterness. As he stared into the sunlight, Mr. Marvin was praying.

Dressmaker to a Million Dolls

MAKING and selling a million doll dresses every year, with supervision of all the details incident thereto, is the modest "stunt" of Mrs. Kitty Rauser, of Chicago. Her doll-dress factory is the largest of its kind in the United States. And it all happened by accident, too. Mrs. Rauser was a mere "sales-person" in one of the large department-stores in Chicago back in 1902. She sold dolls, and did it with interest and enthusiasm. One day along came a merchant from New York. He sized Mrs. Rauser up as an A No. 1 saleswoman, and offered her a better place in his establishment at what she considered a fabulous salary.

Mrs. Rauser signed the contract, and, as she says, "With the agreement under my arm, I started for New York." But alas for vain human hopes! When she arrived in the city on March 15, 1903, she found that the firm was in the hands of a receiver—and she was stranded.

In this emergency she bethought herself of an experiment tried in the Chicago department-store. She had persuaded the manager to try dressing the dolls before selling them. As the dresses were cheaply made, the experiment failed. In her hour of need, however, Kitty Rauser purchased a dozen yards of good quality gingham, a few tiny pearl buttons, some bits of lace, a paper of needles, and a spool of thread. And, back in her little corner bedroom, she turned out a dozen well made doll dresses of the kind to capture the heart of any little girl.

She then started her career as a traveling saleswoman. The first buyer she called on gave her an order for three hundred dollars. Mrs. Rauser says she turned handsprings all the way back to her room. Whether that is so or not, she stayed in New York for eighteen months, making and selling doll dresses, and employing several girls to assist her.

Mrs. Rauser then returned to Chicago, and with her savings, amounting to five hundred dollars, opened her factory to make doll dresses. The business grew rapidly and now she has four buildings and employs a hundred women.

She still sells her own goods, going from coast to coast every year. In contrast to the time when the first three hundred dollar order looked big, she now considers an order for five thousand doll dresses quite a part of the ordinary day's work.

Mae McGuire Telford.