Two Very Good Words to Drop into the Discard Are "They Say"

THE first steamboats built in America wooden boxes with pointed ends.

Colonel John Stevens, their designer, concentrated his attepntion on his engines.

One day his son Robert conceived the notion that the boats would make better time if their bows were longer and more sloping. He designed a false bow of this sort, built it on to a ship called the New Philadelphia, which slipped through the water so much more easily thereafter that it attained the great speed of thirteen and a half miles an hour.

Robert had to build his bow almost with his own hands.

He took it to his ship-builders, Messrs. Brown & Bell, and asked them to do it for him. But Mr. Bell declined.

"That bow will be called Bell's nose," he said, "and I shall be a general laughing-stock."

So a man who might have played a worthy part in the development of a great industry in America lost one big chance because he was afraid of the possible ridicule of people whose opinion, one way or the other, was worthless.

How many utterly drab and uninteresting people are there in the world who might have developed real personalities if they had only had courage to do and be something different from the crowd.

Every single forward step in history has been taken over the bodies of empty-headed fools who giggled and snickered.

Fulton, needing a paltry $1000 to complete the building of his first steamboat, at length managed to secure it. But the friends who lent it asked that their names be withheld from the public lest it should be known that they had any connection with so foolhardy an enterprise.

As I had occasion daily to pass to and from the ship-yard where my boat was in progress [he says], I often loitered near the groups of strangers, and heard various inquiries as to the object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh often rose at thy expense; the dry jest; the wise calculation of losses or expenditures; the dull but endless repetition of "Fulton's Folly." Never did a single encouraging remark, a bright hope, a warm wish cross my path.

Governor De Witt Clinton, pushing through the construction of the Erie Canal, which was so important a factor in the early upbuilding of the country, was hooted with cries of "Clinton's Big Ditch" and "Clinton's Folly."

Alaska, which has paid for itself so many hundred time over, was derisively referred to as "Seward's Ice-Box" when that courageous statesman negotiated for its purchase from Russia.

Remember this if you would accomplish anything worth while: The crowd is generally good-natured, but its judgments are seldom the judgments of history.

If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world, it will come through the expression of your own personality—that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.

A noted English schoolmaster used to have as his motto:

Never explain, never retract, never apologize. Get it done and let them howl.

It is a motto not altogether to be commended. He who governs his life according to it will not be an agreeable companion or accomplish the largest service under government where the will of the majority must finally prevail.

But there is a rugged spirit of independence embedded in it that many men would do well to adopt.

You can afford to have a decent regard for public opinion: but you can never afford to let yourself get into the pathetic condition where what they say or may say will keep you from doing what ought to be done.

It's a hopeless condition to be in, because what they say to-day is not what they said yesterday or will say to-morrow.

"For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine," said Jesus, "and ye say, He hath a devil.

"The Son of Man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners."

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE MOST INTERESTING MAN I KNOW

Baron Shibusawa—Japan's Morgan

By RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD

HE is the most interesting man I know. The moment I saw his face, I knew that I was looking at something worth a long journey to see. I had been told by some of my own countrymen that he would endeavor to deceive me; but, with me, he dealt in good faith and without pretense. His own nation of people love him because he understands, as many of his kind understand, that "one man is no man"—that service to state and humanity come first, above all things—and because he has the courage to keep a course, once taken.

Do you see any flinching in that face?

He is the most interesting man I know because within three quarters of a century he has been a part of an age, a system, a tradition that have gone. Stepping into modern times, he has gained distinction by an endeavor which his own generation considered unworthy. Once a knight, the retainer of a feudal lord, wearing a dress, arms, and armor that came down from the middle ages, to-day he is a powerful figure in the foreground of the world's latest advance.

Because he saw honor in commerce, and in industry the future of his race, he turned away from the official distinction which might have been his, and when business was dishonored he began a life work of making business serve his nation.

They call him the Morgan of his country. Few industries in his land are strangers to his influence; no board of directors has its proper distinction without him. And yet, he is not among the richest men of his land.

Once he walked under a shaved head and a helmet, and represented the virile virtues of a stern and formal feudal system. Now, having lived beyond his threescore years and ten, he returns home at evening to walk in his garden under a derby hat, bridging with his reflections modern times and the age of chivalry. He knows the latest London exchange, and remembers days when not a regiment of his countrymen had ever seen a foreigner or a steam-engine.

He can walk miles without fatigue; he sees almost every day a ceaseless stream of his country's business men who seek his cooperation and counsel.

I sat with him in his office, and I said to him:

"I thought you had announced your retirement."

"Yes, I did. But retirement is the most difficult task I have ever undertaken."

He is a short little man measured by the foot-rule. Measured by the eye, he is a giant with a granite face. I think this effect is produced by a life-time of restraint, rigorous self-discipline, and following one ideal—hard.

They say that even the Emperor seeks his advice. I would. He is the essence of the progress of his own people, and there is about him not one whiff of dancing-pump or pacifist civilization. Perverted individualism is a stranger to him.

He is Baron Shibusawa—of Japan.

A Sixty Man-Power Man

By ELLIS PARKER BUTLER

THE most interesting man I know, or have ever known, is Clarence M. Lowes, who lives right here in Flushing, Long Island. He always has between six and four hundred memoranda tucked inside the sweat-band of his hat, or in his watch-case, or in his fourteen or twenty pockets. If he ever got separated by ten feet from a pencil and pieces of paper, he would drop dead. I think his motto is:

Count that day lost whose low descending sun
Sees by thy hand less than 462 things done.

Lowes has so much to do that we call him "the late Mr. Lowes." If his own funeral were set for 4 P. M., he would keep the hearse waiting half an hour while he attended to a few vitally important matters. The minute he landed on the other side of the Styx, he would start a movement to buy Charon a new ferry-boat or to eliminate the Stygian mosquitos.

Lowes was born in Brooklyn, and for many years has been treasurer of the Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburg. He moved to Flushing just about the time when the local hospital was going to close forever for lack of funds. He grabbed the institution just back of the neck, set it on its feet, and kicked it into prosperity. He got up a subscription, a monster fair, four big circuses, a campaign that built a new $125,000 building, and two subscription campaigns. We now have as fine a hospital as exists, and but for Lowes we would have none.

Ad interim, as the fellow says (but there is no such word as interim in Lowes' word-book), Lowes put life into the Flushing Association, created the Flushing Associated Charities, held nearly every office in the Niantic Club, staged half a dozen amateur shows, acted in four or five amateur comic operas, made the Flushing Hospital Aid Association, played poker and golf, took hold of the Tuscarora Hunting and Fishing Club, and then, just to avoid ennui, picked up the Flushing National Bank, remade it into a successful financial institution, and is running it as president. He is the most interesting man I know because he is the busiest and the least self-seeking, and because he is so durned human!

THE POTATO SOLDIER

By GRACE SARTWELL MASON

Illustrations by S. J. Woolf

IT was at a dance of the Friendly Hand Club in the Henry Street Settlement House that Nicholas Cooley first met Zilla Kiralsky. In a soft moment he had allowed his mother to lure him there with promise of free amusement, and he had spent the first half hour of the evening leaning against a wall, bored and resentful. Then one of the young lady settlement workers had shepherded him, most unwillingly, to the first girl in a row of waiting maidens.

"Miss Kiralsky, Mr. Cooley," chanted the young lady. "Now, have a good time, you two," she added, and went away.

Then it was that Nicholas looked down into a pair of eyes that were to haunt him, waking and sleeping, for many months to come. They were as black and mysterious as the East River under its bridges at night; in their long narrow corners there was a hint of the Orient. Her hair, too, was midnight black. It was soaped and plastered in scallops against the floury white of her cheeks.

She had made for herself a prim scarlet Cupid's bow of a mouth; but the one that was natural to her was as Eastern as her eyes. It matched her broad cheek-bones and her low forehead and the swing of her hips. It was a cruel mouth in a curly, primitive way. But Nicholas Cooley was no reader of mouths. He only knew that a feeling of wonder and delight grew in him. His eyes clung fascinated to her eyes, and left them only to fasten on her scarlet lips.

"Dance?" he managed to jerk out.

She melted into his arms, and they one-stepped down the room. At the second circling of the hall she lifted her thick white lids and addressed him for the first time.

"Bum party, this is," she murmured.

His heart lifted out of the depression that the constricted atmosphere of the Friendly Handers had plunged it into.

"You're on, kiddo. Let's beat it," he returned daringly.

She laughed with the throaty giggle he was to come to know so well.

"Ain't you the limit?" she wanted to know.

He looked over her sleek black head at his mother, primly accepting cocoa and cakes from one of the aides.

"Come on; be a sport," he urged. "We'll go down to Jack and Joe's and have a regular dance. This place is as cheerful as the morgue. Come on, girlie—will you?"

A moment later they had slipped unobserved out of the door and were strolling north toward the glitter of Grand Street. They walked very slowly, arm tightly linked in arm, fingers intertwined, eyes bent adoringly upon each other. It developed, to his profound astonishment, that she worked in a tobacco factory not three doors from Keefer's Alleys, where he was a billiard-marker. It seemed incredible that up to this time he had missed a being so conspicuously different from the ordinary run of femininity.

"I ain't been there long," she explained. "Me fer change and plenty of it! What's the use of livin', if you gotta stay in one place all the time? I'm going to have all the fun I can in this life—me!"

"You said somethin', girlie," he agreed, tucking her arm more closely to his side. "We're goin' to have as good a time as we can without gettin' pinched for it—eh?"

"Sure!" she murmured in her indolent, caressing voice, that seemed to him like a warm hand stroking his heart. "You're a live one; I knew that the minute I seen you come in to-night."

"Sure, I'm a live one," he responded, swaggering lightly along on the balls of his feet.

THREE hours later his mother's voice demanded to know, from the black depths of the cubby-hole where she slept, where he had been and what he meant by shaming her before the Friendly Hands by his untimely departure.

"Spendin' your wages the minute you get 'em every week," the voice wailed. "Lord knows what's goin' to become of you, Nicholas Cooley. I've done my best, an' you've been nothing but a trouble to me since you could walk. First the truant officer, an' the neighbors complainin' of your tricks, an' you always changin' your job, an'—"

"Aw, cut it out, ma. Ain't I got to work to-morra? You're keepin' me awake!" Nicholas stemmed the tide.

But he appeared to be far from the need of sleep. Sitting on the side of his cot under the kitchen windows, he dreamily contemplated the shoe he had taken off. For a long time he sat there, full of delicious reminiscences. When he finally rolled over on to the pillow, it was not to sleep, but to stare up at the dark blue oblong of the window with a vague sense that life was fat and rich and satisfying. And he was going to have just all the fun he could get out of it—without getting pinched.

HE was born on Avenue A. His father was a teamster, of mixed Irish and Danish blood, and his mother was a product of a New England factory town: therefore Nicholas was American. When he was about twelve he had used his American blood as an excuse to indulge in the joys of fighting young aliens in the swarming alleys off Houston Street. But his America was a sliver of land bounded by the East River and the Hudson, by Twenty-third Street on the north and Beekman Street on the south.

A few times in his adventurous teens he had braved the unknown of Harlem; and once he had traveled as far north as Van Cortlandt Park, when the Avenue A Gophers crossed bats with the Bronx Rockets. A mighty journey this, and not to be undertaken lightly.

Once, when very young and strangely imaginative, Nicholas had made his way to Central Park. But this adventure left behind it a depressing memory of a vast green loneliness, and he had never repeated it. Brooklyn Bridge he had crossed once; but, as he came home from this foray with a black eye and two teeth missing, for him Brooklyn became a wilderness to be sneered at and avoided.

By the time he was eighteen—when he met Zilla Kiralsky—he stood balanced just on the brink of hoodlumism. A slight push either way would make him a good citizen or a waster on the down grade. He was tall and thin for his height, with black hair sleeked back from his forehead, much given to pinch-back coats and the neckties of a dandy; and he walked lightly on the balls of his feet, like the born fox-trotter.

NICHOLAS had always been rather scornful of girls, even when making love to them. But Zilla Kiralsky changed all that. From the first moment, she could make him grovel or swagger, according as her mood was cruel or kind. She had the nose of Cleopatra, the swagger of Carmen, and the brain of a woolly sheep; but from the first she held him completely in thrall. She persuaded him to give up his job in Keefer's Alleys and get one in the tobacco factory where she worked. Sundays they spent in the moving-picture places, and nights they danced at Jack and Joe's until one in the morning. She was tireless and insatiable; but he would come out with his week's wages gone, shivering and coughing in the raw night air. But he was happy.

Then, one day toward spring, she acquired an idea—a dangerous happening in her sort of brain.

"Say, Nicky, when you goin' to join this here army?" she asked him one noon, in the hallway of the factory.

He stared at her uncomprehendingly.

"What d'you mean—this here army?"

"When you goin' to be a soldier and have a uniform?"

Nicholas laughed.

"Me? Oh, I guess next week, mebbe—if they'll make me a colonel or major."

She drew her dark eyebrows together in a frown.

"I ain't foolin'. When you goin' to be a soldier?"

He sobered and stared at her puzzled, with the vague beginning of alarm in his eyes.

"What's bitin' you, Zilla? What do I want to be a soldier for?"

---

Her eyes strayed over him, growing warm and dusky with a new imagining.

"You'd look swell in a uniform," she said.

In spite of this hint, it was some time before he could understand that she wanted him to enlist. Even enamoured as he was, he retained enough shrewdness to know that it was not because of any patriotic fire that she wanted a soldier lover. She never read a newspaper. Of the state of war and its causes she knew as much as a cat knows of Mars. But there was one thing she did know: the one girl she hated and envied most in the factory had a lover in uniform.

The first night she saw them walking along Grand Street, the girl hanging on the man's khaki-clad arm, a fierce new desire was aroused in her that burned and rankled in the shallows of her elementary soul. From that moment she concentrated all the force of her new obsession on the attainment of her ambition. Day by day she dropped into Nicholas's bewildered mind the one suggestion—enlist and get a uniform! One bit of dialogue became chronic between them:

"Aw, Zilla, can't you let up on a fellow? See what a good time we're havin'. Do you want to spoil everything?"

"Sophie Goldberg's fellow is the swellest fellow I ever saw. A uniform's awful becoming. A girl would be proud to go with a fellow like that—"

"Yes, and what good'll the fellow be to Sophie Goldberg when he has to go away to war? I guess she won't care much about him when he's had a leg shot off and his nose mashed in—"

"But listen, Nick. The forewoman said only yesterday the' wouldn't be any war. You can just enlist and get a uniform, can't you?"

"Aw, Zilla, a girl don't know anything about it. Do you want me to go away, Zilla, and get shot to pieces? I seen pictures of 'em—"

He stopped with a shudder, the scarlet spot, that always burned high on his cheek-bones at the end of a day in the factory, paling. He tried to draw her arm into his with:

"Aw, Zilla, ain't we havin' a good enough time the way we are?"

But she pushed him away contemptuously.

"You're a coward, that's what's the matter with you. And I'm through with you. I don't want anything but live ones around me. You needn't speak to me or look at me again."

And she walked off with the Carmen swagger that had always melted his very bones. He stood staring after her miserably, and then went home, to toss half the wretched night.

FROM that time life became for Nicholas a thing filled with a new and horrible perplexity. How to keep Zilla, and yet save himself? For he did not want to be a soldier—most intensely and passionately he did not want to be a soldier. He wanted life to go on as it had always done.

There was nothing to arouse the sleeping man in him. He had sometimes boasted of being an American; but of America as a whole he had not the vaguest picture. And of the causes of his country's war he knew as little as did Zilla Kiralsky. He was hardly aware that the United States was "in" it. He saw the guards on the bridges, the flags, tag-ends of parades. And on one glorious occasion he and his gang forcibly assisted a Teutonic saloonkeeper to change the name of his place.

They all felt a fine glow of satisfaction after this deed; but it could scarcely be called patriotism. For, as a matter of fact, his country was only a few teeming streets whose inhabitants were so busy paying the rent and keeping one meal ahead of hunger that they had little time for patriotism. For none of them was there any connection between their lives and the life of their country. Living in the heart of the greatest American city, they never felt the beat of it, much less the surging pulse of the world outside.

And yet there was now forced upon Nicholas, for the first time, the necessity to think about something besides having a good time. Fiercely and blindly he struck out against it. What was this war that was threatening with its shadow even his familiar streets? What did he have to do with it? Why couldn't it let him alone? It was coming between him and Zilla, and he hated it.

Morning, noon, and night his thoughts milled around the subject. He could never get away from it; for Zilla now had become a gadfly. Finding that not even her most seductive wiles could drive him to the enlistment station, she bethought herself of primitive feminine means of torture. Whenever she had occasion to pass behind him where he sat at work, she brushed him with her shoulder; and when he turned around, quivering, with hope springing in his eyes, she would laugh and whisper:

"Better run home to momma, dearie. Somethin' might hurt you!"

WHEN the rumor first began to seep through the East Side that "they" were going to take you, whether you volunteered or not, Zilla had a new weapon. A definite fear now began to haunt Nicholas—a fear that waked him at night, drenched in sweat. His self-respect began to crumble; and, to hide from himself, he swaggered and bullied, plunging into what dissipation his week's wages would allow.

Then the climax came. For two days Zilla had made herself adorable. She had danced with him at night, she had allowed him to buy her a gold-plated bracelet incrusted with red and green stones, and she had hung on his arm, pressing close to him, as they walked home. He walked lightly and sang. Life was full and satisfying again.

Then, in her doorway, she murmured, with her lips close to his:

"To-morra you'll enlist and get a uniform, won't you, Nick? Eh? Won't you, Nick?"

"God, Zilla! I can't!"

Then she pushed him away, while her eyes became hard and cruel.

"Then I'm goin' to get another fella. I've wasted enough time on you, you piker! You just watch me to-morra night."

He knew that she would keep her word. That morning, just before dawn, he awakened from a brief sleep with a strange new sense of utter resignation. He had, somehow, in his sleep, given up. He was going to enlist.

One night a week later his mother sat on the lowest step of the tenement stairs waiting for him, with a shawl over her head and accusing eyes in her wan face. When at last she heard his step, she scarcely recognized it, for there was no spring or swagger in it. As he came in at the door, she complained:

"Nick, you promised me you'd quit stayin' out and spendin' your money. And I've been waitin' and waitin' here. Your father he's come home as ugly as a bear. Nick, don't you sass him back—just go to bed quiet, an' mebbe he won't hear you."

Nicholas did not answer. He leaned against the wall at the foot of the stairs in a silence so strange that the mother moved quickly nearer, all her anger gone.

"Nick, what's the matter? You ain't—you be'n drinkin'."

He started to pass her. Then suddenly he put up an arm over his eyes, with a strangled sound that the mother knew was a sob. She flew at him, got an arm around his shoulders, drew him away from the wall.

"Why, Nick—Nicky, what's the matter? Tell your mother, Nicky."

He tried to brush her away.

"Aw, let me alone, won't you? 'Tain't anything, 'tain't—"

But his voice broke, and the next instant the mother had him down on the stairs beside her, holding him with the tightness of an unknown fear. Then words poured out of him in a hoarse whisper. He had tried to enlist. He had lied about his age, and got away with it. And then he had gone back for the doctor to look him over. And they wouldn't have him—they wouldn't have him at any price.

"I'm a goner," he rasped, clenching his hand over her arm. "There's a rotten spot in my right lung. T. B.—that's what's got me. It ain't gone very far, the doc said—but he was trying to let me down easy. I'm done for—finished—a goner!"

"No, no, Nicky—no!"

The mother's arms tightened around him frantically. She ran her hand over his sleek black head, and then pressed it down against her shoulder. Around and above them the house slept; that moment was the nearest approach to privacy they had had together since Nicholas was a baby. He let his head fall unashamed against her breast.

Both of them knew—they had seen it in the sweat-shops and tenements—the grim thing that was waiting for Nicholas. They clung to each other, and the mother rocked him back and forth, her "No, no, Nicky—not you, Nicky!" like a moaned lullaby.

At last they were both quiet, as if they accepted something—as if they gave up. As they climbed the stairs they did not touch each other; but at the top Nicholas caught his mother's arm in a hot grip.

"Don't you tell nobody," he whispered urgently. "Nobody."

He was thinking of Zilla.

NEXT day he did not go back to work in the tobacco factory. From that time on he spent long hours lying on his cot in the kitchen, staring up at the ceiling, with thoughts drifting through his brain like slow vague clouds across a sky. His father swore at him for an idle loafer, not knowing anything of what Nicholas and his mother knew; and to avoid him Nicholas generally went into the streets to spend the evenings.

He often walked uncertainly, like a stranger to the neighborhood; for, in fact, a queer thing had happened to him. All the familiar streets had become suddenly strange. Already, because of the secret he carried, he had become an outsider, a ghost.

But he was not always so passive. More often he spent his nights in the hall on Hester Street, or rollicked with the gang in the haunts that had become associated with their less law-abiding hours. The rumor began to circulate—just as gossip circulates in the smallest country town—that the oldest Cooley boy was going to the dogs as fast as he could.

The rumor percolated, finally, back to the headquarters of the Friendly Hands. It reached the ears of the young woman who had introduced him to Zilla, and she at once bestirred herself. She had taken a liking to Nicholas that night, in spite of his abrupt departure with Zilla Kiralsky. A few days later she met him coming home, as she was leaving the Cooley apartment.

"Ah, Nicholas, this is lucky," she exclaimed. "I'm rounding up all you Avenue A boys who are too young to enlist. You know, we've got to feed the soldiers this summer. Next thing to being a soldier is to help feed one. I've been asking your mother if you won't join our farm battalion."

She went on to explain the need of the farmers of the country for extra hands, and the system that her school was adopting to meet the demand. She painted the outdoor life, the wholesome food and good wages, and the opportunity to see the country.

"Aw, I haven't got no use for the country," Nicholas sneered.

But the young woman was undaunted. She tried an appeal to Nicholas's patriotism, which left him unmoved.

"I don't know nothing about farming," he protested. "I'd make a phony rube."

"Maybe," she laughed, "but you'd look awfully nice in our uniform."

"Uniform? Gee, do farmers wear uniforms too?" He tried to laugh as casually as she had laughed.

"The farm battalion does. All our boys are in khaki. Come around and see us, won't you, Nicholas? Come to-night and see them drill."

"Aw, I dunno; mebbe I will. But nix on the farm for me," returned Nicholas.

However, he swaggered into the courtyard where twenty boys were drilling that evening. And when he left he was a member of the farm reserves. Not that he had any definite intention of being a farmer,—he sneered at the very thought,—but he wanted a uniform. He had a crafty plan to possess himself of a suit of khaki, and then, dressed in it, to make one more effort to melt the heart of Zilla Kiralsky.

WITH the aid of his mother he realized the khaki. That evening, looking very slim and tall and quite military, he stationed himself at the corner near which Zilla lived. He knew her habits well. At seven-thirty she would come out, on her way to the diversions of Grand Street. So he waited in the light of a drug-store window until he saw the familiar indolent swing of her walk. She approached, stared at him, and then stopped, her face lighting with recognition. His heart turned over with joy and suspense.

"Hello, Zilla—girlie!" he said eagerly.

"Hello, Nick! Where'd you get the—"

In the middle of the question she stopped abruptly. In her eyes the surprised admiration gave way to amusement; the corners of her primitive curly mouth twitched upward. She took a step forward, the better to look him over from head to foot. Under that merciless scrutiny he felt himself growing cold.

"Want to go to a movie, Zilla? There's a dandy picture on at—"

She interrupted him with a laugh that shook her round bosom and showed him her strong white teeth.

"Huh, I like your nerve! Do you think I'd go anywhere with—with a potato soldier?"

He winced back as if she had struck his face. The street whirled before his eyes in a queer mist, out of which the girl's bared teeth gleamed for an instant and then were gone. Blind with a rage and despair such as he had never known before, he slunk away down a side street.

"I've gotta get out of this," he thought. "I don't care what becomes of me, only so she never sees me again."

IT was a New England farmer to whom Nicholas was assigned. And at the end of the first week it would be hard to say which was the more dissatisfied, Nicholas or his employer.

That week was the longest Nick had ever dragged himself through. He did not know which he hated most—the clammy dawns, when the Thompsons' hired man wakened him by thumping on the stairs that led up to his room over the woodshed, or the awful stillness of the late twilights, when there was nothing to be heard but the lonesome ker-chugging of the frogs in the pond back of the barn.

He hated the monotony of dropping potatoes, stumbling through the clogging soil, and the long afternoons when he wobbled along behind the hand cultivator. But worse than these tasks were the ignoble ones that were shuffled on to him when farmer Thompson discovered he was better at cleaning out the chicken-house than he was at a man-sized job.

In those first two weeks he got so tired that he could scarcely keep awake during supper. Upstairs in the "woodshed chamber" he often threw himself on his bed, determined to revel in self-pity, only to discover at dawn that he had fallen asleep in his clothes. He felt quite certain that the life was going to kill him. He ached in every bone and muscle, and worse than any physical ache was the heavy thing inside of him where once his care-free heart had been.

He had always heard that the farmer's life was a lonely one, but the reality went beyond any imaginings. That bare, clean chamber over the woodshed scared him with its privacy and spaciousness. Here at night, for the first time in his life, he was alone. For the familiar breathings of the Cooley family he had the soft tapping of an elm tree's fingers against the roof; and for the sociable roar of the

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elevated there was nothing but a stillness that pressed upon his ear-drums and filled his soul with fear.

It was not conscience or any sense of obligation that kept him at the job. In fact, about twice a day he considered running away and going back to the city. But on the heels of that determination always came the remembrance of Zilla's taunting voice, and something the doctor had said about not going back to the factory to work. He might as well die here in this horrible spot as anywhere.

And then, one day when farmer Thompson had got to the end of his patience with the sullen awkwardness of his new boy, there appeared in the doorway of the kitchen where they were eating the midday meal a freckled, reddish-haired young fellow with a kind of duffle-bag over his shoulder and a friendly gleam in his eyes.

"Got a job for me, friend Thompson?" he inquired.

The farmer whirled around.

"Well, I'll be darned! Hello, Andy! Come in and eat. Job? Well, I should say so. Work's three jumps ahead of us now. Where'd you blow in from?"

"New York. Hoofed it," said Andy, helping himself to potatoes. "Can't stand a city when it begins to stink. Can't stand it anyway after the first of April. Been in Chicago, New Orleans, St. Augustine, and Newport News since I saw you last. Say, how's everybody?"

Nicholas stared in disgust and astonishment. How could anybody who had just come from New York be so cheerful? He began to learn a hymn of hate for this scorner of cities. But he listened. He had never heard anything like the list of towns, counties, roads, and mountains that fell from Andrew's tongue. The farmer, his hired man, and even industrious Mrs. Thompson sat long after the meal was finished, listening and laughing. A high wind of adventure seemed to sweep through the hot kitchen.

When he had finished his slice of rhubarb pie, Andrew sprang up.

"Wait till I get on my blue jeans," he cried, "and then lead me to it."

THE next three days Nicholas watched the stranger covertly, polishing up his new hymn of hate. The fact that Andrew, wiry and strong like a young Scotch terrier, did so easily all the things that Nicholas was so painfully learning to do, and did them joyously, added a touch of morbid envy to his temper.

The inevitable flare-up came one night after supper, when the two boys were finishing the chores. It was precipitated by Andrew's pitchforking a young mountain of hay down upon the head of Nicholas in the stall below, and then laughing uproariously at the sight of Nicholas pawing the chaff and hay out of his hair. But his laughter stopped short as Nicholas began to swear. All the pent-up misery of the past month came pouring out of Nicholas. He cursed Andrew and the life of a farmer; and Andrew said nothing. But when Nicholas began on his employer, Andrew slid down the hay into the manger, and leaped from there to the floor.

"My friend, I'm going to lick you good and plenty," he said in a businesslike tone. "As a gob of gloom I've stood you for three days, but I don't stand for any rough stuff about the boss. There's something eatin' you. I don't know what it is, but there's nothing like a good fight to get the poison out of your system. Come on, now. After I've licked you we'll go in swimming."

"Aw, we wilt, will we—cutie?" Nicholas sneered.

He put up his fists. He had been considered something of a boxer in the Hester Street club. But in less than two minutes he knew that there was something wrong with his technique, or else this Scotch terrier that was dancing around him was a marvel the like of which he had never seen before. In three minutes he was beaten, and knew it. Three times he had been sent reeling against the side of the stall. Gasping for breath, he lowered his head and made a last blind rush. In the despairing rage of defeat, his knee went up in preparation for an Apache kick he had seen used more than once in an extremity.

"You young pup!" cried Andrew. "For that you get an extra one."

He made a movement almost too quick to follow with the eye, and the next instant Nicholas was biting the straw on the floor of the stall, with a terrific stinging pain in his left jaw. From somewhere above him he heard the voice of the conqueror.

"You're going to learn to be a regular feller," said the voice. "I'm going to learn you. Gotta do it." A sigh. "It'll be kind of a nuisance. But you're around under foot—and I gotta do it."

HE then went away to finish up their interrupted chores.

Nicholas lay still, with a sense of awful humiliation flooding hotly over him.

"Down and out," he thought. "Takin' the count from a yap."

But presently he heard the yap coming back, whistling. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on, old gob of gloom," he heard the friendly voice. "Come on in—the water's fine."

Nicholas sat up with averted eyes. "G'wan, what do I care?"

"But I know you can swim."

"How d'you know it?" growled Nicholas.

"Because I used to see you off Heney's wharf."

Nicholas looked up sharply, a gleam coming into his eyes that had not been there since he left the city.

"What d'you know about Heney's wharf?"

Andrew laughed.

"Thought I was a rube, didn't you? Humph! I was born on Cherry Street. Say, did you ever see Larry, the one-legged chap, swim around the old Lulu G. that used to tie up at Heney's wharf?"

Nicholas sat up eagerly, his eyes shining.

"I guess yes! Did you know Crooked Arm Mike, the night watchman on Heney's wharf?"

FROM that day—from the hour when he rose, brushed the dust of defeat from his clothes, and walked beside Andrew down to the river that edged the farm—there began the real education of Nicholas.

To begin with, he acquired a hero. In the world of the teeming city streets, which is sometimes as narrow as the remotest village, he had never known a being like Andrew. Now and then he had brushed up against the born hobo, and felt a wondering contempt for him. Andrew was a hobo, a tramp; but he had a purpose, and that was what made him different from all other tramps. Like Nicholas, he was an American of the East River districts; but he had been born with a thirst for knowledge that was Yiddish in its intensity.

"I wasn't more than twelve years old when I made up my mind I was going to see the whole of this country," he told Nicholas. "I was going to see how it was put together and how all kinds of folks lived. So I lit out, and I've been moving ever since—except when I've stopped to go to school."

"School! What does a fellow want with school?"

"That's the way I talked when I was twelve; but I've changed my mind since. It's the expert that's got the edge on us, my boy. I made up my mind I was going to be an expert. For a long time I didn't know what I wanted. I only knew that my feet itched; I had to keep going. But after a while I knew what I wanted. I wanted to know more about soil than any other fellow in this country. I worked my way through an agricultural college two winters. I got all there was to get out of that place, and then I went out on my own.

"You watch me. Two years from now, maybe sooner, I'll have a government position. I know more now about what this country can grow than two thirds of their experts. But I've got to go to college some more. I know—but I've got to learn to put it in their lingo. I tell you, Nick, this is a whale of a country, and half of it nobody's using because nobody knows how. But I'm going to help to learn 'em how. One of these days I'm going to have an office in Washington, and I'm going to sit there and tell thousands of folks how to use the soil. I'm going to India and Russia."

Lying on his back on the bank of the river with the night growing dusky around them, his voice ran on and on exultantly. Nicholas had never heard such talk. He tried to sneer a little, to tell himself that Andrew was merely a "nut"; but deep within him curiosity was slowly but surely awakening. He began to argue in favor of the life of Avenue A, and Andrew answered with tales of the Northwest, of the cotton belt, of the Imperial Valley.

"Why, Nick," he cried, "you're the worst kind of a rube—a city rube. You think you're wise to 'most everything, and you're the most ignorant cuss I ever saw."

This was a new viewpoint; but Nicholas took it without resentment—wasn't Andrew from Cherry Street? He began to admire him as he had never admired any human being. In fact, along with

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

ARE MEN UNHAPPIER THAN WOMEN?

IS life more worth living to a woman than to a man? Or is there in man some special sensitiveness that makes him more easily crushed by disappointment and loss?

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company recently completed an investigation among its very large number of policyholders that brought out some very interesting data. According to this study, there has been a very marked decrease in the number of suicides in the last few years—the percentage among white men insured by the company falling from 19.6 per 100,000 in 1915 to 15.3 in 1916. But the rate for men is higher than for women at every period of life, except the four years between the ages of 15 and 19. At this special period, when boys and girls are being transformed into men and women, the strain and upset is harder on the girls than on the boys; and parents will do well to have this fact in mind.

After adolescence the percentage of suicides among women remains practically stationary; but it increases among men with every added year, reaching its high-water mark in the years between sixty-five and seventy. There is something very pathetic in this—the thought of old men, worn out in the service of the world, finding life so hard and unremunerative in old age that even death seems preferable. Will old-age pensions make a difference in this depressing condition?

Men prefer firearms as a means of exit from the troubles of the world; while women, by a great majority, tend to poison. Another interesting fact brought out in the investigation is that colored men commit suicide much less frequently than white; and colored women even less often. Apparently, life seldom becomes so gloomy that the happy-spirited black man can not laugh his way through.

A DAY WITH LLOYD-GEORGE

LLOYD GEORGE does not breakfast until a quarter before nine; but long before that—at half past seven—he is up and busy with the long black despatch box which contains reports from the various government departments. Penciled notes initialed "L. G." indicate his decisions to his subordinates, says a writer in Answers.

Breakfast consists of porridge or eggs, bread and butter, and tea. Lloyd-George eats sparingly, never drinking more than one cup of tea. Indeed, the complaint of his family is that he eats hardly at all, since even breakfast is broken into by the arrival of Cabinet members and others. Sometimes the meal is extended until ten o'clock, in which case the Premier lights his first cigar or fills his favorite briar pipe.

At ten he is in the Cabinet Room at Number 10 Downing Street, where his secretaries have already sorted over the morning mail consisting of from 700 to 1000 letters, telegrams, and private despatches, reserving for him only those that are absolutely essential. On these he pencils rapid memoranda, or, dictating very rapidly, outlines the substance of the reply. He remains in the Cabinet Room, meeting important visitors, until two; and at two-forty-five he is back on the job again.

At three-thirty the regular daily meeting of the Cabinet occurs, and until seven-thirty, when it breaks up, there is a steady procession of officials and experts in and out of the big room. Distinguished foreigners, diplomats, etc., find half-past seven a good time to catch the Premier, there being an hour before dinner. At nine-thirty members of Parliament or

Ministerial colleagues whom he has not seen during the day drop in; and between them and the contents of the black despatch box—which fills faster than it can be emptied—he is busy until ten-thirty, when he promptly closes the day and goes to bed.

It is a strenuous program, and would be impossible but for the abounding physical energy of the Premier, and his quiet weekend with his family from Saturday noon until Monday morning. The theater has no place in his life. If the Premier can be said to have any recreation at all aside from golf, it is in hearing a good sermon.

IF YOU HAVE TUBERCULOSIS—FIGHT

MOST of the people who die of tuberculosis would get well if they knew how to fight it, and persevered up to the last trench, says D. Macdougall King in his book, The Battle with Tuberculosis and How to Win It (J. B. Lippincott Company). Tuberculosis is not a terribly virulent disease; but it is a long, treacherous, persistent, and very tiresome disease: and it takes not only patience but brains and pluck to overcome it.

Rest, sunshine, fresh air, and nourishing food are the four things a tubercular patient must have regularly, at any cost. If possible, the patient should be moved out of the dusty, smoky city, where he probably contracted the disease, into the clean air of the country, or a suburb. No pains or ingenuity should be spared in fitting up for him a comfortable, cheerful out-of-door room or porch where he can live day and night, winter and summer. Here, warmly wrapped from the cold, he should lie for hours together, with every muscle relaxed, breathing in the life-giving outer air, giving nature a chance to build up the broken-down tissues.

Food is the thing on which economy can least afford to be exercised. The most important item is milk.

A patient on a general diet should drink from three to four pints of milk daily, and many patients are able to consume daily as much as a gallon, or even one gallon and a half. It is important that the milk should be fresh. If possible, it should be consumed within twelve hours, or at most twenty-four hours, after the milking. It need hardly be pointed out that the milk should come from healthy, well fed cattle, and that it should be kept scrupulously clean and well chilled.

Eggs come next in importance. From two to thirty a day may be taken. Six a day is probably a safe limit. They are more easily digested when raw than when cooked, and when raw are readily swallowed with a sprinkling of salt or a squeeze of lemon juice.

The third article of importance on the list is meat. Good red meat is best, and should be prepared by broiling or roasting in such a way that the juices are retained.

The more fat a tuberculosis patient can assimilate, the better the outlook for his recovery. Generally speaking, the lower the temperature at which a fat remains fluid, the more easily is it absorbed. Thus, oils and cream come first, then butter, and, finally, meat fats. Cod-liver oil has for many years been an outstanding food for the tuberculous, and, provided it does not upset the stomach, there is none better.

ASKED BY AMATEUR EXEMPTION BOARD

What is your name?

What is your full name?

What was your great-grandfather's full name?

What was his name when he wasn't full?

How great was your grandfather?

What would you like your name to be?

What number would your house number be if your house were numbered?

Were you born in the United States?

In what other countries were you born?

Are you a spy?

If so, are you a mince-spy?

Have you attended (a) kindergarten; (b) Sunday-school; (c) old ladies' home; (d) clam-bake?

Do you claim exemption?

Do you own any of the following, and if so, how many: (a) meat grinders; (b) ash-sifters; (c) electric fans; (d) baby carriages?

Can you operate: (a) peanut vender's stand; (b) corkscrew; (c) blacking-brush; (d) spaghetti?

The Mill.

WRITE TO YOUR FAMILY ONCE A WEEK

"WRITE home," says Lieutenant Hector Macquarrie, who has just published a book, How to Live at the Front (J. B. Lippincott Company), full of good advice for young American soldiers. Write once a week. It doesn't so much matter whether you write to your sweetheart regularly; there will be plenty of men to console her, if you neglect her: But write to your mother. She is the one who is going to do the worrying about you. She will see you every night with a bandage around your head, or lying wounded and thirsty on the battle-field.

"You may be having a perfectly horrible time; but at home they will be having even worse. You have something to do—something to occupy your thoughts. They have nothing, except to worry. Now, if you can get a letter off as often as possible, it is going to help an awful lot. Put in something for the mother and something for the father each time. She'll want to hear about your food; about the socks she sent you; whether you wear the cholera belt. You may use the cholera belt as a knee-pad, or for cleaning your rifle; but don't tell her that. I remember in the winter, once, seeing a Highland soldier with a cholera belt around each knee. They are nice and elastic. As a matter of fact, during the winter you'll appreciate anything woolly. It is difficult, however, to carry much. Things get lost or pinched. Tell her about the little things—about your food, about Madame, and how the Frenchwoman washes your things.

"If possible, make a point of writing one letter a week to your home, and remember that each week forgotten will cause extra pain. Women have such wonderful imaginations, and until you return your family will have decided at least a hundred times to buy mourning.

"Find out, if possible, what arrangements are made in the event of casualties, whether a cable is sent, or what happens. Then let the family know accurately and clearly what will happen in the way of communicating the fact of your being killed or wounded. Then assure them that until this communication reaches them you are absolutely safe. Rub this fact in, about ten times, in capitals."

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DO GREAT MEN HAVE GREAT CHILDREN?

THE accepted opinion among biologists, according to the Journal of Heredity, is that "the child inherits only the inborn, germinal traits of his father and mother, and is unaffected by those which his parents acquired, whether they be physical, as scars or sunburn, or mental, as a knowledge of Sanskrit."

Mr. C. L. Redfield, a Chicago engineer, disputed this, and claimed that most of the great men of the world have been born late in the life of their parents. From this he drew the conclusion that they must have inherited a certain amount of the ability which their parents had developed by work and study—in other words, so-called "acquired characteristics." To aid in the proof of this, he offered rewards for the pedigrees of great men, believing that they would show that almost all great men have been born of mature parents who, in most cases, had come from mature ancestors.

Many pedigrees were submitted, including those of Lincoln, Napoleon, Frederick the Great, the Kaiser, John Stuart Mill, William the Conqueror, Herbert Spencer, and Michael Farraday.

In general these great men seem to have come from a succession of ordinarily young marriages. Julius Cæsar's ancestry apparently represented an average of twenty-nine years each. Christopher Columbus's father was twenty-five at the time the explorer was born. "But perhaps no ease is more surprising than that of John Napier, inventor of logarithms, whose father was seventeen and his grandfather twenty-four."

In other words, the search through the ancestry of great men fails to furnish any evidence that their greatness was due to their being born late in the life of their parents. Mr. Redfield's belief that "educating the grandfather helps to make the grandson a superior person" does not meet the test of scientific investigation. Great men, coming usually from parents of more than average intelligence, have the advantage of the conversation and training of those parents in their childhood: but that they inherit at birth the results of their parents' self-training is a supposition that would be pleasant to accept, but that, unfortunately, does not hold water.

WHERE NO MEANS YES

IN Egypt people shake their heads sideways when they agree with you heartily, and make an outward gesture when they desire you to come closer. It's rather confusing to the average western stranger.

"A friend of mine"—an English diplomat who has lived thirty-five years in the East writes in the Quarterly Review—"who was a very acute observer of Eastern ways, told me that on one occasion, in order to test the intelligence of an Egyptian, he asked him to indicate his left ear. The most uneducated member of a European nation, supposing he understood the difference between right and left, would certainly have seized the lobe of his left ear with his left hand. The Egyptian, however, passed his right hand over the top of his head and, with that hand, took hold of the top of his left ear.

"Why, in the East, should the men wear flowing robes and the women trousers? Why should a Western, if he folds up a wet umbrella, always put it against the wall or in a rack with the point downwards, whereas the Eastern, with much greater reason, will always put it point upwards against the wall with the handle on the floor?" With every chance for serious mutual misunderstanding, is it possible for one half of the world ever to appreciate the other? With patience and practice, says the diplomat, it can be done.

THE BILLY SUNDAY OF 1740

A HUNDRED and seventy-six years ago Boston was visited by an earlier Billy Sunday, who, considering the population and the wealth, of that day as compared with this, did very well indeed. George Whitefield was his name, and the Boston Globe recalls how he drove into Boston late one September day, an itinerant preacher with little standing, and how, at the conclusion of his campaign, thousands gathered around him, and "Governor Beecher could not help following him out of the city for fifty miles, and kissed him good-by."

He preached sixteen times a week, his congregations often including 8000 people: and his trail-hitters, according to an ancient chronicler, "were taken over very suddenly, one after another, and were to all appearances savingly converted and some of them wrought upon in a very remarkable manner." His first sermon "drove 15 persons mad," and, despite the fact that his discourses were from two to three hours long, rich and poor seemed ready to "pluck out their eyes for him."

As it was, they "plucked out" their purses to the tune of $10,830.

THE WORST PLAGUE OF MODERN TIMES

TO most of us there is something peculiarly horrible in the thought of a rat. And, as with most of our instinctive repulsions, there are the best of reasons for this. There is probably no animal in the world, as Edward W. Nelson in the National Geographic Magazine points out, that has caused such misery and harm to the human race.

"The history of the house rat—the most common of the species—is an extraordinary one, unequaled by that of any other animal," writes Mr. Nelson. "It was unknown in Europe until 1727, when vast hordes of them swam the Volga River. A year or two later it arrived in England, on ships from the Orient. Since that time it has steadily extended its distribution, until it shares with mankind nearly all parts of the earth."

The story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin pales before some of the modern statistics of rat plagues. During the four-year campaign against bubonic plague in San Francisco, more than 800,000 rats were killed; and in New Orleans, in two years, 500,000. In the winter and spring of a single year more than 17,000 rats were killed on one rice plantation of 500 acres in Georgia; and on another of 1200 acres, by actual count, 30,000 rats were killed. In the Hawaiian Islands the rats became such a pest that the mongoose was introduced to exterminate them; but the rats then took refuge in the trees, where they lived in nests, like squirrels.

It is impossible to estimate the total damage caused by rats. Denmark in 1907 estimated her losses from rats at $3,000,000. The same year the losses in the rural districts alone of Great Britain and Ireland amounted to $73,000,000. In 1904 the losses in France were computed at $40,000,000. In the United States the losses from rats every year amount to $200,000,000—enough to feed the whole Belgian nation.

The remedies against rats are comparatively simple, but must be applied with persistence. All buildings harboring food of any kind should be rat-proofed with concrete, wire netting, and sheet iron; all food should itself be kept in rat-proof containers; and ceaseless war with traps and poison should be waged against the tribe. In addition, all harboring

places of rats, such as old sheds, piles of trash, etc., should be abolished; all garbage should be protected; and every ship—for ships are the great carriers and distributors of rats—should be fumigated at regular intervals.

GETTING MARRIED

THE American principal of a school for Armenian girls in Turkey received a great many applications for wives from the Armenian men of the neighborhood," writes Hester Donaldson Jenkins in World Outlook. Here is one of the letters:

Your Nobleness.

Mademoiselle: I wish to marry one of the girls in your school. Will you get me little Aznif, her of the curly braids and strong eyebrows? Or if you can not obtain her for me, then I will take Mariam, with the big, black eyes and the shining teeth; or, if I can not have her, I wish Zaroohee, with the straight features and white skin. But do not offer me any other, for I love only these three.

HAVE YOU BOUGHT YOUR AËRO POSTAGE STAMP?

THE mails used to be carried by relays of post-horses. In the future they will be carried by relays of aëroplanes. The first scheduled aëro-mail service will probably be established between New York and Chicago, writes Francis A. Collins in The Air Man (Century Company).

"The mail route between the two cities, measured as the crow flies, will be seven hundred and twenty miles in length, instead of one thousand miles by rail. The mail aëroplanes will cover the distance in from six to fourteen hours, with an average time of about eight hours. A letter mailed before six o'clock in the afternoon in either city would thus be delivered before nine o'clock the following morning.

"The best route for the aëro-mail service has been selected with great care. It is planned to establish three relay stations, one near Williamsport, Pennsylvania, another at Niles, Ohio, and the third at Napoleon, Ohio. Extra machines will be held in readiness at these stations, with their propellers spinning, so that, the moment a mail aëroplane arrives, the pouches will be transferred instantly to a new machine, and be in the air again with only a few seconds' delay."

Youth Challenges

By CLARENCE B. KELLAND

Illustration by Lucius W. Hitchcock

HILDA LIGHTENER had found Ruth strangely quiet, with a manner that was not indifference to her imminent marriage, but that seemed to Hilda more like numbness.

"You act as if you were going to be hanged instead of married," Hilda told her; and found no smile answering her own.

"Whatever you want me to do I will do, only get it over with," seemed to be Ruth's attitude. She seemed to be communing with herself. A dozen times Hilda had to repeat a question or a statement that Ruth had not heard, though her eyes were on Hilda's and she seemed to be listening.

All the while she was saying to herself:

"I must go through with it. I can't draw back. What I am doing is right—right."

She obeyed Hilda not so much through pliancy as through listlessness. And presently Hilda was going ahead with matters and acting as a sort of specially appointed general manager of the marriage. She told Ruth what to wear; saw that it was put on; almost bundled Ruth and her mother into the carriage and convoyed them to the church where Bonbright awaited them.

She could not prevent a feeling of exasperation, especially toward Mrs. Frazer, who had moved from chair to chair, uttering words of self-pity and pronouncing a constant jeremiad.

Such preliminaries to a wedding Hilda had never expected to witness, and she witnessed them with awakened foreboding.

A DOZEN or more young folks and Malcolm Lightener and his wife witnessed the brief ceremony. Until Ruth's appearance there had been the usual chattering and gaiety; but even the giddiest of the young people were restrained and subdued by her white, tense face, and big, unseeing eyes.

"I don't like it," Lightener whispered to his wife.

"Poor child! poor child!" she whispered back, not taking her eyes from Ruth's face.

After the rector pronounced the final words of the ceremony, Ruth stood motionless. Then she turned slowly toward Bonbright, swaying a trifle, and said in a half whisper, audible to those about: "It's over? It's all over?"

"Yes, dear."

"It can't be undone," she said—not to her husband, but to herself. "We are—married."

Hilda, fearing some inauspicious act or word, bustled forward her bevy of young folks to offer their babble of congratulations.

As she presented them, one by one, Ruth mustered a wan smile, let them take her cold, limp hand. But her mind was not on them. All the while she was thinking: "This is my husband. I belong to this man. I am his wife." Once in a while she would glance at Bonbright. He seemed more like a stranger to her than he had the first time her eyes had ever rested on him—a stranger endowed with odious potentialities.

Mrs. Lightener took Ruth into her arms and whispered, "He's a dear, good boy." There was comfort in Mrs. Lightener's arms, but scant comfort in her words—yet they would remain with Ruth and she would find comfort in them later.

Now she heard Malcolm Lightener speaking to her husband. "You be good to that little girl, young man," he said. "Be mighty patient and gentle with her."

She waited for Bonbright's reply. "I love her," she heard him say in a low voice.

It was a good answera reassuring answer, but it stabbed Ruth with a new pang, for she had traded on that love: she was a cheat.

PRESENTLY Bonbright and Ruth were being driven to their hotel. The thought of wedding breakfast or of festivities of any sort had been repugnant to Ruth, and Hilda had not insisted. They were alone. Ruth lay back against the soft upholstery of Malcolm Lightener's limousine, colorless, eyes closed. Bonbright watched her face, scrutinizing it for some sign of happiness, for some vestige of feeling that reciprocated his own. He saw nothing but pallor and weariness.

"Dear," he whispered, and touched her hand almost timorously.

Her hand trembled to his touch, and involuntarily she drew away from him. Her eyes opened, and in them his own eager eyes read fear. Being only a boy with a boy's understanding and a boy's pride, he was piqued, and himself drew back.

This was not what he had expected, not what the romances he had read had led him to believe would take place. In stories the bride was timid, yet loving, yielding, happy. She clung to her husband, her heart beating against his heart, whispering her adoration and demanding whispered adoration from him. All of this was lacking, and something that crouched at the opposite pole of human emotion was present—fear.

"You must be patient and gentle with her," Malcolm Lightener had said; and Bonbright was wise enough to know that there spoke experience. In this moment Bonbright took thought, and it was given him to understand that now, as at no other moment in his life with Ruth, was the time to exercise patience and gentleness.

"Ruth," he said, taking her hand and holding it with both his own, "you mustn't be afraid of me. You are afraid! You're my wife," he said boyishly. "It's my job to make you happy,—the most important job I've got,—and to look after you and to keep away from you everything that might make you afraid." He lifted her

Continued on page 16

WOMEN WHOM THE WAR HAS RE-DRESSED

ONE DAY'S CALLERS

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THEY FELL INTO FORTUNES

My Two Weeks in Jail

By ABBY SCOTT BAKER

SUCH time as I can get free from surveillance while I am in jail I shall use to make a record of my daily experiences; for somewhere must be found those who are interested in what befalls those willing to risk their convenience and liberty for the good they understand.

The other prisoners at Occoquan (located at Lorton, Virginia) tell us that conditions here are very much changed for the better since we have been coming down. There is nothing here now that can not be borne with the aid of courage, determination, and a sense of humor. If a woman did not have these I think she would not be a picket!

Our first experience at Occoquan was to be lined up in the superintendent's office—twelve of us, one forlorn old white woman, and two colored girls—to receive our numbers, at the same time surrendering our money, jewelry, watches, hat-pins, and even our wedding rings. My number is 6155. Then we went to the dormitory, where we were stripped, one by one, and bathed, and every article of our clothing taken away from us.

Our dress is a large dark blue cotton Mother Hubbard wrapper girded round our forms by a big light blue gingham apron. Underneath we wear a voluminous chemise of unbleached cotton cloth which has not even been washed, and a little short petticoat of striped blue and white bed-ticking. On our feet are the thickest of gray cotton stockings and huge shoes. We have no corsets, and no garters. And we simply can not keep our stockings up!

Tucked in the belt of our apron is a square of brown cotton crash, a little larger than a table doily, which serves as towel and table napkin. Under our aprons we wear what we call our "comfort kits"—strips of cloth begged from the officer in charge of the sewing-room and divided into compartments. In these we carry our comb and brush, tooth-brush and paste, a cake of soap, two handkerchiefs. That is all we are supposed to have; but we have all managed to secrete pencils and scraps of envelop backs and so forth for writing. The other prisoners tell us they are not allowed comfort kits, soap, or handkerchiefs. I do not know whether this is true, but at any rate they have none. I succeeded in smuggling a small camera into the prison.

Effect of Prison Clothes and Food

THE dress I have described has a curious effect on us. Most of us are quite submerged by it. Some personalities rise more triumphant than ever, even from a dark blue cotton Mother Hubbard. Lucy Burns, with her glorious red head, is one of these, and Lucy Branham, the little Carnegie Hero Medal girl, who postponed her postgraduate work at Columbia to go to jail, is another whose delicate beauty nothing can obscure.

The food served is astonishingly coarse. I am reminded of the parts of strange animals Dora Copperfield used to buy of the butchers, when I look at the meat. It does not resemble anything I ever saw before. It usually tastes and smells as if not very fresh. We have for dinner every day this meat, boiled potatoes, and corn bread. One day we have boiled cabbage (I used to think I liked it). The next day we have stewed tomatoes. A typical breakfast is corn bread and molasses, with black coffee. Supper is always soup and corn bread. The corn bread is unbelievably bad. Some days we have white bread, and it is quite good. We have no butter, milk, or sugar.

But the fare at Occoquan is better than at the District Jail. There the stew is served in a battered old iron dish-pan and looks precisely like dish-water. The loaves of bread come up in the arms of a very untidy-looking man, and the coffee or tea (you can't tell which it is) is served in a huge watering-pot.

The doctor has ordered special diet for some of our women. They have buttered toast and sour skimmed milk. One poor, old colored woman to-day asked me, "Does you-all pay board?" That was the explanation she had worked out to account for our luxuries.

A Plea for Exercise

WE do not ask or want special privileges. When we ask for anything we ask that all may have it. For instance, we have asked exercise for everybody. There has been frost here and it has been bitterly cold; yet there is no heat in the sewing-room or the dining-room. We could keep ourselves warm if we could only move about in the delicious crisp air. But instead we sit from 7:30 to 12, from 12:30 to 5, from 5:30 to 8. If we walk to and fro near our chairs, we are ordered to sit down. Our food contains no heat-producing elements. We are shuddering with the cold today.

We get up at 6:30, scurry down the long dormitory (we have no slippers or dressing-gowns), and bathe standing at two long troughs with all the other white prisoners. Then we slip into our costumes. Their simplicity is a recommendation and a time-saver! Then we try to arrange our hair without a mirror.

At 7:30 we form in procession, each carrying a heavy wooden chair, and march in to breakfast. Our group of twelve sits at two of the bare wooden tables. We have an iron tablespoon, knife, and fork. The other prisoners have only the spoon. Then come the other white prisoners, and at the last table of that row the group of six suffragists who were here when we came.

The negroes, who outnumber the whites two to one, sit close up all around us. Poor creatures, the majority of them are the most handicapped of their race. Their general appearance and their table manners are in general quite indescribable.

But here and there among them is a very pleasant looking woman.

One of the officers says grace at each meal. We have silence at table. And we remain half an hour, whether we have finished or not. At the word of command we all solemnly rise and take up our chairs and march—after breakfast and dinner to the sewing-room, after supper to the recreation-room.

We Entertain Each Other

WE sit in the recreation-room until bedtime. There is a piano which we are allowed to use. The other prisoners say it was never opened until we came. Miss Mary Winsor recites seventeenth-century lyrics. Miss Lucy Burns reads aloud. Miss Lucy Branham tells fairy stories. I have no accomplishments, so I bring out some cold cream that has been smuggled in to me, pass it around, and give a lesson in facial massage. I am a succès fou!

The officer looks scandalized, but it is an emergency; there is no rule to fit. No prison official knows how to deal with an emergency. I know almost nothing about facial massage, but never mind, my slightest movement is observed, and copied. One old lady with a skin like shoe leather is especially interested. She has lost one eye, but she is not discouraged. She wears her few gray hairs in curl-papers all week. On Sunday, when we all have white aprons and are marched over to the men's side to church, she has crimps!

In spite of all our efforts, the recreation hours drag. We are thankful to go to bed at eight o'clock.

The work is a farce. None of the women seem to have any to do—though on the men's side I am told they work very hard on the farm. I have made seven buttonholes in ten days.

The other day we were all called to the laundry to wash the clothes that we wore when we came in. I wish we would be allowed to wash our prison clothes. We have worn the same set for ten days.

The laundry was really delightful. It was a change, it was occupation, it was exercise. The day was bitter cold and the suds nice and hot. Afterward we had a chance for a few breaths in the open while we hung out the clothes.

To-day two negro women had a quarrel in the sewing-room, rushing at each other with the long scissors. It was a shocking fight. We were locked and barred into the room with them: it was like being in a cage with wild beasts. We really did think there would be murder. Officers hurried in and separated the women.

We have made a layette for one of the chocolate-drop babies born at the hospital here, whose mother is taking it away to-morrow. We have made a little cloak of canton flannel and feather-stitched it around with pink cotton.

The Stupidity of Prisons

NOTHING could surpass the kindness and consideration of the other prisoners toward us. They call us "the strange ladies."

They have special names for us. Miss Branham is the "pretty little one." Miss Burns is "the red-headed one." I am "the sick lady," which mortifies me very much, especially as I have been quite ill ever since I came. The women slip single flowers and little bunches of leaves under my pillow: I do not know where they get them, poor souls.

Our official title is "girls." All the prisoners are called that—"You girls, sit down there," or, "You girls, hush your noise."

Prisons are stupid. Everything here tends to quench the smoking flax. The ugly dress, the lack of exercise, the repeated terms of the women who are taught no trade, neither reading nor writing. The monotony is frightful.

Youth Challenges—

Continued from page 10

fingers to his lips; they were cold. "I want to take you in my arms and hold you, but not until you want me to. I can wait. I can do anything that you want me to do. Both of us have just gone through unpleasant things, and they've tired and worried you. I wish I might comfort you, dear." His voice yearned.

She let her hand remain in his, and with eyes from which the terror was fading she looked into his eyes, to find them clear, honest, filled with love for her. They were good eyes, such as any bride might rejoice to find looking upon her from her husband's face.

"You're so good," she whispered. Then: "I'm tired, Bonbright—so tired—and—Oh, you don't understand; you can't understand. I'll be different presently; I know I shall. Don't be angry."

"Angry!"

"I'll be a good wife to you, Bonbright," she said tremulously, a bit wildly. "I—you sha'n't be disappointed in me. I'll not cheat. But wait—wait. Let me rest and think. It's all been so quick."

"You asked that," he said, hurt and puzzled.

"Yes. It had to be. And now I'm your wife, and I feel as if I didn't know you—as if you were a stranger. Don't you understand? It's because I'm so helpless now—just as if you owned me. And it makes me afraid."

"I—I don't understand very well," he said slowly. "Maybe it's because I'm a man—but it doesn't seem as if it ought to be that way." He stopped and regarded her a moment, then he said: "Ruth you've never told me you loved me."

SHE sensed the sudden fear in his voice, and saw the question that had to be answered; but she could not answer it. To-day she could not bring herself to the lie—neither to the spoken lie nor to the more difficult lying action.

"Not now," she said hysterically. "Not to-day. Wait. I've married you—I've given myself to you. Isn't that enough for now? Give me time."

He pressed her hand—and released it. "It will be all right, dear. You needn't be afraid of me."

The car was stopping before the hotel. The doorman opened the door, and Bonbright helped his bride to alight. She tottered as her feet touched the sidewalk, and he took her arm to support her as he might have helped an invalid. The elevator carried them up to their rooms. On the threshold she halted, swept by a wave of terror; but, clenching her hands and pressing shut her eyes, she stepped within.

Bonbright was helping her to rid herself of her wraps, leading her to a sofa.

"Lie down," he said gently. "You're tired and bothered. Just lie down and rest."

"Are we going away?" she asked presently. "Have I got to get ready?"

He had promised her they would go away—and had not seen her since that moment to tell her what had happened. She was in ignorance of his break with his family, and of the fact that he was nothing but a boy with a job, dependent upon his wages. Until this moment he had not thought how it might affect her—of her disappointment, of the fact that she might have expected and looked forward to the position he could give her as the wife of the heir apparent to the Foote Dynasty.

She was in no condition to bear disappointments.

"I promised you we should go away," he said haltingly; "but—but I can't manage it. Things have happened. I've got to be at work in the morning. Maybe I should have told you. Maybe I should have come last night, after it happened."

She opened her eyes, and at the expression of his face she sat up, alarmed. It told her that no ordinary mishap had befallen, but something that might affect him—and her—tremendously.

"What is it? What has happened?"

"I went home last night," he said slowly. "After you promised to marry me, I went home to tell father. Mother was there. There was a row; mother was worse than father. She was—rather bad."

"Rather bad—how, Bonbright?"

"She—didn't like my marrying you. Of course we knew neither of them would like it; but I didn't think anything like this would happen. You know, father and I had a fuss the other day, and I left the office. I'm through with them for good. The family and the ancestors can go hang." His voice grew angry as recollection of that scene presented itself. "Mother said I shouldn't marry you."

"You—you don't mean you're not going to—to have anything to do with Bonbright Foote Incorporated—and all those thousands of men?"

"That's it. I couldn't do anything else. I had to break with them. On your account, I'm sorry. I can't give you so much, and I can't do the things for you that I expected to be able to do. We'll be quite poor. But I've got a job. Mr. Lightener gave me a job, and I've got to go to work in the morning. That's why we can't go away."

---

"You mean," Ruth said dully, trying to sense this calamity, "that you will never go back? Never own—that—business?"

"It was a choice of giving you up or that. Mother made that clear. If I married you, I should never have anything from them."

She had given herself for the cause. She was here, this young man's wife, because she loved the cause. She had martyred herself for it. Her influence was to ameliorate the conditions of thousands of the Bonbright Foote laborers. And now, having bound herself forever to this boy whom she did not love,—loving another man,—the possibility of achievement was snatched from her and her immolation made futile.

She stood up and clutched his arm.

"You're joking," she said in a tense, metallic voice.

"I'm sorry, dear. It's true."

"Oh,"—her voice was a wail,—"it can't be—it can't be! I couldn't bear that—not that!"

Bonbright seized her by the arms and peered into her face.

"Ruth," he said, "what do you mean? Was that why you married me? You're not like those women I've heard about who marry—for money!"

"No—no!" she cried. "Not that. Oh, don't believe that. I'm not so despicable as that. Say you don't think that!"

She spoke the truth, and Bonbright could not doubt it. Truth was in her words, her tone, her face. He drew her to him and kissed her. A surge of happiness filled him. She had been dismayed because of him. There was no other interpretation of her words and actions. She was conscience-stricken because she had brought misfortune upon him.

He laughed boyishly.

"Don't worry about me. I don't care," he said gaily, "so long as I have you. You're worth it a dozen times. I'm glad, Ruth—I'm glad I had to pay for you dearly. Somehow it makes me seem worthier. You understand what I mean."

She understood—understood, too, the interpretation he had put on her words. It brought a flush to her white cheeks. She disengaged herself gently.

"If we're not going away," she said, "I can lie down—and rest."

"Of course."

"In the next room."

He opened the door for her. "I'll be as quiet as a mouse," he said. "Have a good sleep. I'll sit here and read."

Ruth went into the adjoining room and shut the door after her. Then she stood there silently regarding the door. If she should lock it, he could not come in.

Her hand went to the key, but came away without turning it. No; she had no right. She had made her bargain and must abide by it. Bonbright was her husband.

THE luncheon hour had passed when Bonbright, in the next room, heard Ruth moving about within.

"Hungry?" he called to her. His voice reassured her. It was comradely.

The sleep and the rest had helped her. She was less tense. She had marshaled her will—had set it to bear her up and to compel her to carry on bravely and without hysteria the part of a wife.

"I am hungry," she said: and presently she appeared in the door.

"You don't mind being poor for a while?" he asked.

"I've always been poor," she said, with something that approached her old smile.

"Because," he said, "we are poor. I am going to earn thirty dollars a week. So, you see, we can't afford to live here. We've got to find a little house or flat."

"Let's begin," she cried. It was not the delight of a woman at the thought of hunting for her first home, but the idea of having something to do, of escaping from these rooms. "Let's go right out after luncheon to look."

Ruth found an interest in the search. She forgot. Her mind was taken from morbid broodings as they climbed stairs and explored rooms and questioned agents. Bonbright was very happy—happier because he was openly and without shame adapting his circumstances to his purse. They found a tiny flat to be had for a fourth of their income. Ruth said that was the highest proportion of their earnings it was safe to pay for rent, and Bonbright marveled at her wisdom in such matters.

Then there were the furnishings to select. Bonbright left the selection and the chaffering wholly to Ruth—and she enjoyed it. The business rested, refreshed, stimulated her. It pushed her fears into the background, and brought again to the light of day her old self that Bonbright loved. More than once she turned the light of her famous grin upon him or upon some thrice lucky salesman.

BUT the end was reached at last. Everything was done that could be done, and there was nothing to do but to return to the hotel. Ruth did her best to keep up her spirits; but, by every block that they approached the hotel, by so much her lightness vanished, by so much her apprehension, her heartache, the black disappointment or the failure of her great plan returned.

Bonbright saw the change, and when they reached their rooms he drew her over to the sofa.

"Let's sit here together, dear," he said. "We haven't had a decent talk, and there are a heap of things to talk about, aren't there?"

She forced herself to sit down close to him, and waited icily.

"I've an idea," he said. "I—I hope you'll like it. It'll be sort of—fun. Sort of a game, you know. I've been thinking about us, and how I want to make you happy. We were married—suddenly. I didn't grow to love you gradually. I don't know how it was with you. But, anyhow, we missed our courtship. My idea was that maybe we could—have our courtship now—after we are married. Mayn't we?"

"What—what do you mean?" she asked fearfully, hopefully.

"We'll pretend we aren't married at all," he said. "We'll make believe we're at a house-party or something, and I just met you. I'm no end interested in you right off, of course. I haven't any idea how you feel about me. We'll start off as if we just met, and it's up to me to make you fall in love with me. I'll bring out the whole bag of tricks—flowers and candy and walks and rides. After a while you'll—maybe—get so far as to call me by my first name." He laughed like a boy. "And some day you'll let me hold your hand—pretending you don't know I'm holding it at all. Regular crush I'll have on you. What do you think?"

"You mean really? You mean we'll live like that? That we won't be married, but do as you said?"

She was staring at him with big, unbelieving eyes.

"That's the idea exactly. We won't be married till I win you."

There was something pleading, pathetic in his voice, that went to her heart.

"Oh," she said breathlessly, "that's dear of you. You're good—so good. I—I hate myself. I didn't—know anybody—could be—so—so—good."

She swayed toward him in a storm of tears, and he drew her face down on his shoulder while with awkward hand he patted her shoulder.

"There—there," he said clumsily, happily.

She did not draw away from him, but lay there, wetting his coat with her tears, her heart swelling with thanksgiving, fear vanished, and something born in her breast that would never die. The thing that was born was a perfect trust in this man she had married.

"Now—er—Miss Frazer," Bonbright said briskly, at last, "I don't want to appear forward for a new acquaintance, but if I suggested that there was a bully play in town,—sort of tentatively,—what would happen to me?"

"Why, Mr. Foote," she replied, able to enter into the spirit of the pretense, "I think you'd find yourself in the awkward position of a young man compelled to buy two seats."

"And we'll go some place after the play. I want to make the most of my

---

opportunity, because I've got to work all day to-morrow. It's a shame, too, because I have a feeling that I'd like to monopolize you."

So they dined and walked to the theater. On the way, Bonbright insisted upon buying her violets. Fortunately, it was a bright play, brimming with laughter and gaiety. They enjoyed it. Ruth enjoyed it.

WHEN the curtain descended they moved toward the exits, waiting for the crowd to clear the way. Bonbright's attention was all for Ruth; but her eyes glanced about curiously.

Suddenly her fingers tightened on her husband's arm. He heard her draw a quick, startled breath, and looked up to see his father and mother approaching. Bonbright had not expected this. It was the last place in the world he had thought to encounter his parents—but there they were, not to be avoided. Ruth knew the moment Mrs. Foote saw Bonbright, for the stately woman bit her lip and spoke hurriedly to Bonbright's father, who glanced at Bonbright and then at her uncertainly. Mrs. Foote held her husband's arm. She did not allow him to turn aside, but led him straight toward them.

Bonbright's eyes moved from one face to the other as they approached. Mrs. Foote's eyes encountered Ruth's, moved away from the girl to her son, moved on, giving no sign of recognition. Mr. Foote looked stonily before him. And so they passed, refusing even a bow to their son. That others had seen the episode Ruth knew, for she saw astonished glances.

She looked up at her husband. He had not turned to look after his parents, but was staring before him, his face white. She pressed his arm gently and heard his quick intake of breath—so like a sob.

"Come," he said harshly. "Come."

"It was cruel—heartless," she said fiercely, quickly partizan, making his quarrel her own with no thought that the slight had been for her as well as for him.

"Come," he repeated.

They went out into the street, Bonbright quivering with shame and anger, Ruth not daring to speak, so white, so hurt was his face, so fierce the smolder in his eyes.

"You see," he said presently. "You see."

"I've cost you that," she said.

"That," he said slowly, as if he could not believe his words, "that was my father and—my mother."

As Ruth watched his face she became all woman; revolutionist and martyr disappeared. Her heart ached for him, her sympathy went out to him.

"Poor boy!" she said, and pressed his arm again.

"It was to—be expected," he said slowly. "I'm glad it's over. Ruth, the Foote tradition is ended. It ended with me. Such things have no right to exist. Six generations of it."

She did not speak, but she was resolving silently:

"I'll be good to him. I'll make him happy. I'll make up to him for this."

AS the days went by, and they were settled in their little flat, living the exotic life that temporarily solved their problem, Ruth knew it could not last. And her dread returned. Even Bonbright was able to see that his plan was not a perfect success.

Dulac complicated the thing unendurably. She felt a duty toward Dulac—she had promised to hold him always in her thoughts, and felt that he was entitled to a sort of spiritual loyalty from her. Deprived of him, she fancied her love for him was as deep as the sea and as enduring as time.

Long days alone, with only light labor to occupy her hands and mind, gave her idle time—fertile soil for the raising of a dark crop of morbid thoughts. She brooded much, and brooding became restless, unhappy. And she could not conceal it from Bonbright when he came home eagerly for his dinner, ready to take up with boyish hope the absurd game he had invented.

She allowed herself to think of Dulac— indeed, she forced herself to think of him.

She had been married five days when, going to the door in answer to the bell, she opened it, to find Dulac standing there. She uttered a little cry of fright, and half closed the door. He held it open with his knee.

Sudden terror, not of him but of herself, caused her to thrust against the door with all her strength; but he forced it open slowly and entered.

"Go away," she said, shrinking from him and standing with her back against the wall. "Go away!"

"I stayed away as long as I could," he said. "Now I'm not going away—until we've had a talk."

"There's nothing for us to—say," she whispered. "You must be crazy—to come here."

He was laboring under excitement. She could see the smoldering fire in his black eyes. It was plain that he was worn, tired, a man fighting in the last ditch. His hold upon himself was not secure. But she could not be sorry for him now. His presence terrified her.

He stood with his burning eyes upon her face, not speaking, staring.

"Go away," she begged again. But he shook his head.

"You've been cheated," he said hoarsely. "It doesn't matter if you gave yourself to him for the reason you said you didor for his money. You're cheated. His kind always cheats. You're getting nothing. Are you going to stand it? That's what I came to find out. Are you going to stand it?"

She could not reply.

"What are you going to do about it?" he demanded.

"I married him," she said. "It isn't his fault if his family put him out. It was my fault. They did it because he married me. I've got to make it up to him some way. I—I don't hate him. He's been good. Oh, he's been wonderfully good!"

"Do you want to live with him?"

"No," she said—"no."

"Listen," he said feverishly. "I love you. This fellow you've married doesn't know what love is. What does he know about it? What would he do for you?"

HE leaned forward, his face working, his body quivering with passion. Her eyes fell, unable to support his gaze, and she trembled. His old fascination was upon her; the glamour of him was drawing her.

"I'd have left you alone," he said, "if you'd got what you paid for. But when you didn't—when you got nothing—there was no reason for me to stay away. You belonged to me. You do belong to me. Why should you stick to him? Why?"

She could not answer him. The only reason she should cling to her husband was because he was her husband; but she knew that would be no reason to Dulac.

"There's been a marriage ceremony," he said scornfully. "What of it? It isn't marriage ceremonies that unite men and women. It's love—nothing else. When you told me you loved me, you married me more really than any minister can marry you. That was a real marriage. But you didn't think you were breaking any law or violating any morals when you left me and married him. Just because we hadn't gone to a church— You're married to me and living with him—that's what it amounts to. Now I'm here demanding you. I'm after my wife."

"No," she said weakly.

"Yes, my wife. I want you back, and I'm going to have you back. With the bringing up you've had, you're not going to let this convention—this word-marriage—hold you. You're coming with me."

The thing was possible. She saw it—the danger that she might yield. The man's power drew her. She wanted to go; she wanted to believe his sophistry. But there was a staunchness of soul in her that continued to resist.

"No," she repeated.

His arms were reaching out for her now. In an instant his hands would touch her; he would clutch her to him—and she would be lost.

Her back was against the wall. In that supreme instant, the instant that stood between her and the thing that might be, the virtue of her recoiled, the staunchness asserted itself, the command to choose the better from the worse course made itself heard to her will. She cried out inarticulately, thrust out with terrified arms, and pushed him from her.

"Don't touch me!" she cried. "I'm his wife—and—you must go. You must—never come back. I'll do what I've got to do. I sha'n't listen to you. Go—please. Oh, please go—now."

THE moment had come to Dulac, and he had not been swift enough to grasp it. He realized it—realized that he had failed, that nothing he could do or say would avail him now. He backed toward the door, never moving his eyes from her face.

"You're my wife," he said. "You won't come now, but you'll come. I'll make you come." He stopped a moment in the door, gazing at her with haggard eyes. "And you know it," he added.

Then he closed the door, and she was alone.

She sank to the floor and covered her face with her hands, not to hide her tears, for there were no tears to flow, but because she was ashamed, and because she was afraid. She knew how close she had been to yielding, how narrow had been the margin of her rescue—and she was afraid of what might happen next time, of what might happen when her life with Bonbright became unbearable, as she knew it must become unbearable.

Before she arose from her pitiful posture she considered many plans, and discarded them all. There was no plan. It must all be left to the future. First, she believed it was required that she should tell Bonbright she had married him without love, and beg of him to be patient and to wait, for she was trying to turn her love to him. But that, she saw, would not serve. He was being patient now—wonderfully, unbelievably patient. What more could she ask of him? It would only wound him, who had suffered such wounds through her. She could not do that. She could do nothing but wait and hope—and meet her problems as best she could when they arose. It was not an encouraging outlook.

Resolve as she would, she could not quiet her fears. Dulac would come again. He might find her in a weaker moment. Now, instead of one terror, she harbored two.

Continued next week

How Can I Collect These Old Bills?

By JAMES H. COLLINS

Illustrations by Jessie Gillespie

THE sudden cold snap had frozen water-pipes all over town, and the electric light company was thawing out its equipment with a storage battery truck. A saloonkeeper pleaded with the foreman to help him get water—plumbers were unobtainable and he was losing business. The foreman was touched. He made connections from the truck batteries to the saloon pipes, turned on the electric current, and in a minute or two the water was running again.

"Five dollars," said the foreman. But the saloon man hesitated. That seemed a lot of money for five minutes' work—now that he had water once more.

The foreman was a born collector.

"Just reverse that current," he said to an assistant, "and freeze him up again."

"Hey! hold on!" shouted the saloon man. "Here's your money—I was only foolin'!" And he paid eagerly, not knowing that the foreman had ordered an electrical impossibility.

To persons outside the collection department of a business it often seems as if the granting of credit and securing payment of bills might be full of difficulties and uncertainties. But, really, this department of a business can be conducted on definite principles to secure definite results.

The first thing in prompt, clean collections is to use judgment in extending credit. Customers can be gaged by classes, lines of business, residence localities, wealth, and other indications, and the trustworthy separated from the doubtful.

The next thing is to be prompt and systematic in mailing bills and asking for payment.

Third, have some way of punishing the tardy debtor.

That covers about all the elements of skilful collecting.

Add a collection man whose heart is in his work, and the money will come in.

Bad collections can always be traced, first of all, to careless granting of credit. Customers' standing is not studied carefully to separate the sheep from the goats; and probably the business itself is being run on wrong lines, with too large a proportion of charge accounts to cash customers. This indicates careless salesmanship, and too many bad debts, which make high prices and short profits—foundation of the business all wrong.

Wise credit arrangements mean a better selection of customers, and also a better system in dealing with them. They are given to understand that bills are due on a certain day, and all the terms are clear, and the collection man asks for payment promptly on that day, with maybe a reminder several days in advance. Promptness and clear understanding lead to payment in three fourths of the cases; for even debtors instinctively respond to straightforward dealing on the part of creditors, paying the concern that is businesslike, and putting off settlement with the one that is careless and tardy.

Sometimes a very little improvement in collecting methods will make all the difference in the world in prompt payment. A large instalment house sent bills to customers every month, and got a fair proportion of collections. When the collection man adopted the device of sending a printed return envelop with each bill, making it easier for customers to mail back money, the collections improved twenty-five per cent.

Punishment of a tardy debtor does not mean a lawsuit for the money due, or browbeating through attorneys, or other unpleasant practices. It may be enough to show him that slow payment is hurting his own business standing—if he does not pay promptly he will not be entitled to discounts, or it will not be advisable to sell him such quantities on credit. The old-time way of collecting hard accounts was to turn them over to attorneys, on the assumption that debtors were dead beats, and get the money by hook or crook, along with the lasting enmity of the debtor. But the present-day method is to take the whole question up with the debtor, learn all the facts, make such business adjustment as will enable him to pay, and hold his friendship and trade.

All the Way with Anna

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Arthur William Brown

BELIEVE me, Belinda, this havin' a boss who's apt to stack you up casual against stuff that would worry a secret service corps recruited from seventh sons is a grand little cure for monotonous moments. Just because I happen to get a few easy breaks on my first special details seems to give Old Hickory the merry idea that when he wants some one to do the wizard act, all he has to do is press the button for me. I don't know whether my wearin' the khaki uniform helps out the notion or not. I shouldn't wonder.

Now, here a week or ten days ago, when I leaves Vee and my peaceful little home after a week-end swing, I expects to be shot up to Amesbury, Mass., to inspect a gun-limber factory. Am I? Not at all. By 3 P. M. I'm in Bridgeport, Conn., wanderin' about sort of aimless, and tryin' to size up a proposition that I'm about as well qualified to handle as a plumber's helper called in to tune a pipe organ.

Why was it that some three thousand hands in one of our sub-contractin' plants was bent on gettin' stirred up and messy about every so often, in spite of all that has been done to soothe 'em?

Does that listen simple, or excitin', or even interestin'? It didn't to me. Specially after I'd given the once-over to this giddy mob of Wops and Hunkies and Sneezowskis.

The office people didn't know how many brands of Czechs or Magyars or Polacks they had in the shops. What they was real sure of was that a third of the bunch had walked out twice within the last month, and if they quit again, as there was signs of their doin', we stood to drop about $200,000 in bonuses on shell contracts.

It wasn't a matter of wage scales, either. Honest, some of them ginks with three z's in their names was runnin' up, with over-time and all, pay envelops that averaged as much as twelve a day. Why, some of the women and girls were pullin' down twenty-five a week. And they couldn't kick on the workin' conditions, either. Here was a brand-new concrete plant, clean as a new dish-pan, with half the sides swingin' glass sashes, and flower beds outside.

"And still they threaten another strike," says the general manager. "If it comes, we might as well scrap this whole plant

and transfer the equipment to Pennsylvania or somewhere else. Unless"—here he grins sarcastic—"you can find out what ails 'em, Lieutenant. But you are only the third bright young man the Corrugated has sent out to tell us what's what, you know."

"Oh, well!" says I. "There's luck in odd numbers. Cheer up."

IT was after this little chat that I sheds the army costume and wanders out disguised as a horny-handed workingman.

Not that I'd decided to get a job right away. After my last stab I ain't so strong for this ten-hour cold-lunch trick as I was when I was new to the patriotic sleuthin' act. Besides, bein' no linguist, I couldn't see how workin' with such a mixed lot was goin' to get me anywhere. If I could only run across a good ambidextrous interpreter, now, one who could listen in ten languages and talk in six, it might help. And who was it I once knew that had moved to Bridgeport?

I'd been mullin' on that mystery ever since I struck the town. Just a glimmer, somewhere in the back of my nut, that there had been such a party some time or other. I'll admit that wasn't much of a clue to start out trailin' in a place of this size, but it's all I had.

I must have walked miles, readin' the signs on the stores, pushin' my way through the crowds, and finally droppin' into a fairly clean-lookin' restaurant for dinner. Half way through the goulash and noodles, I had this bright thought about consultin' the 'phone book. The cashier that let me have it eyed me suspicious as I props it up against the sugar bowl and starts in with the A's.

Ever try readin' a telephone directory straight through? By the time I'd got through the M's I'd had to order another cup of coffee and a second piece of lemon pie. At that, the waitress was gettin' uneasy. She'd just shoved my check at me for the third time, and was addin' a glass of wooden tooth-picks, when I lets out this excited stage whisper.

"Sobowski!" says I, grabbin' the book.

The young lady in the frilled apron rests her thumbs on her hips dignified and shoots me a haughty glance. "Ring off, young feller," says she. "You got the wrong number."

"Not so, Clarice," says I. "His first

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name is Anton, and he used to run a shine parlor in the arcade of the Corrugated buildin', New York, N. Y."

"It's a small world, ain't it?" says she. "You can pay me or at the desk, just as you like."

Clarice got her tip all right, and loaned me her pencil to write down Anton's street number.

A STOCKY, bow-legged son of Kosciuszko, built close to the ground, and with a neck on him like a truck-horse, as I remembered Anton. But the hottest kind of a sport. Used to run a pool on the ball-games, and made a book on the ponies now and then. Always had a roll with him. He'd take a nickel tip from me and then bet a guy in the next chair fifty to thirty-five the Giants would score more'n three runs against the Red Sox's new pitcher in to-morrow's game. That kind.

Must have been two or three years back that Anton had told me about some openin' he had to go in with a brother-in-law up in Bridgeport. Likely I didn't pay much attention at the time. Anyway, he was missin' soon after; and if I hadn't been in the habit of callin' him Old Sob-stuff I'd have forgotten that name of his entirely. But seein' it there in the book brought back the whole thing.

"Anton Sobowski, saloon," was the way it was listed. So he was runnin' a suds parlor, eh? Well, it wasn't likely he'd know much about labor troubles, but it wouldn't do any harm to look him up. When I came to trail down the street number, though, blamed if it ain't within half a block of our branch works.

And, sure enough, in a little office beyond the bar, leanin' back luxurious in a swivel-chair, and displayin' a pair of baby-blue armlets over his shirt sleeves, I discovers Mr. Sobowski himself. It ain't any brewery-staked hole-in-the-wall he's boss of, either. It's the Warsaw Café, bar and restaurant, all glittery and gorgeous, with lace curtains in the front windows, red, white, and blue mosquito nettin' draped artistic over the frosted mirrors, and three busy mixers behind the mahogany bar.

Anton has fleshed up considerable since he quit jugglin' the brushes, and he's lost a little of the good-natured twinkle from his wide-set eyes. He glances up at me sort of surly when I first steps into the office; but the minute I takes off the straw lid and ducks my head at him, he lets loose a rumbly chuckle.

"It is that Torchy, hey?" says he. "Well, well! It don't fade any, does it?"

"Not that kind of dye," says I. "How's the boy?"

"Me," says Anton. "Oh, fine like silk. How you like the place, hey?"

I enthused over the Warsaw Café; and when he found I was still with the Corrugated, and didn't want to touch him for any coin, but had just happened to be in town and thought I'd look him up for old times' sake—well, Anton opened up considerable.

"What !" says he. "They send you out? You must be comin' up?"

"Only private sec. to Mr. Ellins," says I, "but he chases me around a good deal. We're busy people these days, you know."

"The Corrugated Trust! I should say so," agrees Anton, waggin' his head earnest. "Big people, big money. I like to have my brother-in-law meet you. Wait."

SEEMED a good deal like wastin' time, but I spent the whole evenin' with Anton. I met not only the brother-in-law, but also Mrs. Sobowski, his wife; and another Mrs. Sobowski, an aunt or something; and Miss Anna Sobowski, his niece. Also I saw the three-story Sobowski boardin'-house that Anton conducted on the side; and the Alcazar movie joint, another Sobowski enterprise.

That's where this Anna party was sellin' tickets—a peachy-cheeked, high-chested young lady with big, rollin' eyes, and her mud-colored hair waved something wonderful. I was introduced reg'lar and impressive.

"Anna," says Anton, "take a good look at this young man. He's a friend of mine. Any time he comes by, pass him in free—any time at all. See?"

And Anna, she flashes them high-powered eyes of hers at me kittenish. "Aw ri'," says she. "I'm on, Mr. Torchy."

"That girl," confides Anton to me afterwards, "was eating black bread and cabbage soup in Poland less than three years ago. Now she buys high kid boots, two kinds of leather, at fourteen dollars. And makes goo-goo eyes at all the men. Yes, but never no mistakes with the change. Not Anna."

All of which was interestin' enough, but it didn't seem to help any. You never can tell, though, can you? You see, it was kind of hard, breakin' away from Anton once he'd started to get folksy and show me what an important party he'd come to be. He wanted me to see the Warsaw when it was really doin' business, about ten o'clock, after the early picture-show crowds had let out and the meetin' in the hall overhead was in full swing.

"What sort of meetin'?" I asks, just as a filler.

"Oh, some kind of labor meetin'," says he. "I d'know. They chin a lot. That's thirsty work. Good for business, hey?"

"Is it a labor union ?" I insists.

Anton shrugs his shoulders.

"You wait," says he. "Mr. Stukey, he'll tell you all about it. Yes, an ear-full. He's a good spender, Stukey. Hires the hall, too."

Somehow, that listened like it might be a lead. But an hour later, when I'd had a chance to look him over, I was for passin' Stukey up. For he sure was disappointin' to view. One of these thin, sallow, dyspeptic parties, with deep lines down either side of his mouth, a bristly, jutty little mustache, and ratty little eyes.

I EXPECT Anton meant well when he brings out strong, in introducin' me, how I'm connected with the Corrugated Trust. In fact, you might almost gather

I was the Corrugated. But it don't make any hit with Stukey.

"Hah!" says he, glarin' at me hostile. "A minion."

"Solid agate yourself," says I. "Wha'd'ye mean—minion?"

"Aren't you a hireling of the capitalistic class?" demands Stukey.

"Maybe," says I, "but I ain't above mixin' with lower-case minds now and then."

"Case?" says he. "I don't understand."

"Perhaps that's your trouble," says I.

"Bah!" says he, real peevish.

"Come, come, boys!" says Anton, clappin' us jovial on the shoulders. "What's this all about, hey? We are all friends here. Yes? Is it that the meetin' goes wrong, Mr. Stukey? Tell us, now."

Stukey shakes his head at him warnin'. "What meetin'?" says he. "Don't be foolish. What time is it? Ten-twenty! I have an engagement."

And with that he struts off important.

Anton hunches his shoulders and lets out a grunt.

"He has it bad—Stukey," says he. "It is that Anna. Every night he must walk home with her."

"She ain't particular, is she?" I suggests.

"Oh, I don't know," says Anton. "Yes, he is older, and not a strong, hearty man, like some of the young fellows. But he is educate; oh, like the devil. You should hear him talk once."

But Stukey had stirred up a stubborn streak in me.

"Is he, though," says I, "or do you kid yourself?"

I thought that would get a come-back out of Anton. And it does.

"If I am so foolish," says he, "would I be here, with my name in gold above the door, or back shining shoes in the Corrugated arcade yet? Hey? I will tell you this. Nobodies don't come and hire my hall from me, fifty a week, in advance."

"Cash or checks?" I puts in.

"If the bank takes the checks, why should I worry?" asks Anton.

"Oh, the first one might be all right," says I, "and the second; but—well, you know your own business, I expect."

Anton gazes at me stupid for a minute, then turns to his desk and fishes out a bunch of returned checks. He goes through 'em rapid until he has run across the one he's lookin' for.

"Maybe I do," says he, wavin' it under my nose triumphant.

Which gives me the glimpse I'd been jockeyin' for. The name of that bank was enough. From then on I was mighty interested in this Mortimer J. Stukey; and while I didn't exactly use the pressure pump on Anton, I may have asked a few leadin' questions. Who was Stukey, where did he come from, and what was his idea—hirin' halls and so on? While Anton could recognize a dollar a long way off, he wasn't such a keen observer of folks.

"I don't worry whether he's a Wilson man or not," says Anton, "or which movie star he likes best after Mary Pickford. If I did I should ask Anna."

"Eh?" says I, sort of eager.

"He tells her a lot he don't tell me," says Anton.

"That's reasonable, too," says I. "Ask Anna. Say, that ain't a bad hunch. Much obliged."

It wasn't so easy, though, with Stukey on the job, to get near enough to ask Anna anything. When they came in, and Anton invites me to join the fam'ly group in the boardin'-house dinin'-room while the cheese sandwiches and pickles was bein' passed around, I finds Stukey blockin' me off scientific.

As Anton had said, he had it bad. Never took his eyes off Anna for a second. I suppose he thought he was registerin' tender emotions, but it struck me as more of a hungry look than anything else. Miss Sobowski seemed to like it, though.

I expect a real lady's man wouldn't have had much trouble cuttin' in on Stukey and towin' Anna off into a corner. But that ain't my strong suit. The best I could do was to wait until next day, when there was no opposition. Meantime I'd been usin' the long-distance reckless; so by the time Anna shows up at the Alcazar to open the window for the evenin' sale, I was primed with a good many more facts about a certain party than I had been the night before. Stukey wasn't quite such a man of mystery as he had been.

COURSE, I might have gone straight to Anton; but, somehow, I wanted to try out a few hints on Anna. I couldn't say just why, either. The line of josh I opens with ain't a bit subtle. It don't have to be. Anna was tickled to pieces to be kidded about her feller. She invites me into the box-office, offers me chewin' gum, and proceeds to get quite frisky.

"Ah, who was tellin' you that?" says she. "Can't a girl have a gentleman frien' without everybody's askin' is she engaged? Wotcher think?"

"Tut-tut!" says I. "I suppose, when you two had your heads together so close, he was rehearsin' one of his speeches to you—the kind he makes up in the hall, eh ?"

"Mr. Stukey don't make no speeches there," says Anna. "He just tells the others what to say. You ought to hear him talk, though. My, sometimes he's just grand!"

"Urgin' 'em not to quit work, I suppose?" says I.

"Him?" says Anna. "Not much. He wants 'em to strike, all the time strike, until they own the shops. He's got no use for rich people. Calls 'em bloodsuckers and things like that. Oh, he's sump'n fierce when he talks about the rich."

"Is he?" says I. "I wonder why?"

"All the workers get like that," says Anna. "Mr. Stukey says that pretty soon everybody will join—all but the rich blood-suckers, and they'll be in jail. He was poor himself once. So was I, you know, in Poland. But we got along until the Germans came, and then— Ugh! I don't like to remember."

"Anton was tellin' me," says I. "You lost some of your folks."

"Lost!" says Anna, a panicky look comin' into her big eyes. "You call it that? I saw my father shot, my two brothers dragged off to work in the trenches, and my sister—oh, I can't! I can't say it!"

"Then don't tell Stukey," says I, "if you want to keep stringin' him along."

"But why?" demands Anna.

"Because," says I, "the money he's spendin' so free around here comes from them—the Germans."

"No, no!" says Anna, whisperin' husky. "That—that's a lie!"

"Sorry," says I; "but I got his number

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straight. He was workin' for a German insurance company up to 1915, bookkeepin' at ninety a month. Then he got the chuck. He came near starvin'. It was when he was almost in that he went crawlin' back to 'em, and they gave him this job. If you don't believe it's German money he's spendin', ask Anton to show you some of Stukey's canceled checks."

"But—but he's English," protests Anna. "Anyway, his father was."

"The Huns don't mind who they buy up," says I.

She's still starin' at me, sort of stunned.

"German money!" she repeats. "Him!"

"Anton will show you the checks," says I. "He don't care where they come from, so long as he can cash 'em. But you might hint to him that if another big strike is pulled it's apt to be a long one, and in that case the movie business will get a crimp put in it. The Warsaw receipts, too. I take it that Stukey's tryin' to work the hands up to a point where they'll vote for—"

"To-night they vote," breaks in Anna. "In two hours."

I lets out a whistle. "Zowie!" says I. "Guess I'm a little late. Say, you got a 'phone here. Would it do any good if you called Anton up and—"

"No" snaps Anna. "He thinks too slow. I must do this myself."

"You?" says I. "What could you do?"

"I don't know," says Anna. "But I must try. And quick. Hey, Marson! You—at the door. Come here and sell the tickets. Put an usher in your place."

With that she bounces down off the tall chair, shoves the substitute into her place, and goes streamin' out bare-headed. I decides to follow. But she leaves me behind as though I'd been standin' still.

At the Warsaw I finds Anton smokin' placid in his little office.

"Seen Anna?" I asks.

"Anna?" says he. "She should be selling tickets at the—"

"She was," says I; "but just now she's upstairs in the hall."

"At the meetin'?" gasps Anton. "Anna? Oh, no!"

"Come, take a look," says I.

AND, for once in his life, Anton got a quick move on. He don't ask me to follow, but I trails along; and just as we strikes the top stair we hears a rousin' cheer go up. I suppose any other time we'd been barred out, but there's nobody to hold us up as we pushes through, for every one has their eyes glued on the little stage at the far end of the hall.

No wonder. For there, standin' up before more than three hundred yellin' men, is this high-colored young woman.

Course, I couldn't get a word of it, my Polish education havin' been sadly neglected when I was young. But Anna seems to be tellin' some sort of story. My guess was that it's the one she'd hinted at to me—about her father and brothers and sister. But this time she seems to be throwin' in all the details.

There was nothin' frivolous about Anna's eyes now. It almost gave me a creepy feelin' to watch 'em—as if she was seein' things again that she'd like to forget—awful things. And she was makin' those three hundred men see the same things.

All of a sudden she breaks off, covers her face with her hands, and shivers. Then, quick as a flash, she turns and points to Stukey. I caught his name as she hisses it out. Stukey, turnin' a sickly yellow, slumps in his chair. Another second, and she's turned back to the men out front. She is puttin' something up to them—a question, straight from the shoulder.

The first to make a move is a squatty, thick-necked gent with one eye walled out. He jumps on a chair, shouts a few excited words, waves his long arms, and starts for the stage businesslike. The next thing I knew the riot was on, with Mortimer J. Stukey playin' the heavy lead and bein' tossed around like a rat.

It must have been Anton that switched off the lights and sent for the police. I didn't stop to ask. Bein' near the door, I felt my way downstairs and made a quick exit. Course, the ceremonies promised to continue interestin', but somehow this struck me as a swell time for me to quit. So I strolls back to the hotel and goes to bed.

YES, I was some curious to know how the muss ended, but I didn't hurry around next mornin'. As a matter of fact, I'd enjoyed the society of the Sobowskis quite a lot durin' the past two days, and I thought I'd better stay away for a while. They're a strenuous bunch when they're stirred up—even a kittenish young thing like Anna.

About noon I 'phoned the works, and found that all was serene there, with no signs of a strike yet.

"No, and I got a hunch there won't be any, either," says I.

I was plannin' to linger in Bridgeport another day or so; but when the afternoon paper came out I changed my mind. Accordin to the police-court reporter's account, there'd been some little disturbance in Warsaw Hall the night before. Seems a stranger by the name of Stukey had butted into a meetin' of the Pulaski Social Club, and had proceeded to get so messy that it had been found necessary to throw him out. Half a dozen witnesses had told how rude he'd been, includin' the well known citizen, Mr. Anton Sobowski, who owned the premises. The said Stukey had been a bit damaged; but after he'd been patched up at the City Hospital he'd been promised a nice long rest—thirty days, to be exact.

So I jumps the next train back to Broadway.

"Ah, Lieutenant!" says Mr. Ellins, glancin' up from his desk. "Find anything up there?"

"Uh-huh," says I. "His name was Stukey. Another case of drawin' his pay from Berlin."

"Hah!" grunts Old Hickory, bitin' into his cigar. "The long arm again. But can't you recommend something?"

"Sure!" says I. "If we could find a pair of gold boots about eighteen buttons high, we ought to send 'em to Anna Sobowski."

Spent on Rome's Great White Way

THE fortunes of our own country very much exceed any of ancient times: but the spenders of to-day are thrifty individuals compared to some of the young men who scattered gold along Rome's Great White Way.

Probably Antony and Caligula deserve the evil honor of heading this list, but with them stand a considerable group of profligates, according to figures compiled by the Scrap Book:

                  

Crassus' landed estate was valued at	$8,333,330
His house was valued at	400,000
Cæcilius Isidorus, after having lost much, left	5,235,800
Demetrius, a freedman of Pompey, was worth	3,875,000
Lentulus, the augur, no less than	16,666,666
Clodius, who was slain by Milo, paid for his house	700,000
He once swallowed a pearl worth	40,000
Apicius was worth more than	5,000,000
He poisoned himself after he had spent in his kitchen and otherwise squandered immense sums to the amount of	4,160,000
The establishment belonging to M. Scarus, and burned at Tusculum, was valued at	4,150,000
Gifts and bribes may be considered signs of great riches:
Cæsar presented Servilia, the mother of Brutus, with a pearl worth	200,000
Paulus, the consul, was bribed by Cæsar with the sum of	292,000
Curio contracted debts to the amount of	2,500,000
Milo contracted one debt of	2,915,000
Antony owed at the Ides of March, which he paid before the Calends of April	1,666,666
Seneca had a fortune of	17,500,000
Tiberius left at his death, and Caligula spent in less than twelve months	118,120,000

The Potato Soldier—

Continued from page 7

curiosity a new emotion was being born in him—respect.

One night, coming home from a swim, he found himself telling Andrew about Zilla Kiralsky. The telling seemed to ease somewhat the bitterness and ache in his heart. After that it came naturally to tell Andrew about his failure to get into the army.

"Rough deal," said Andrew briefly. "But it's a fool notion that you're going to croak just because a doctor has given you the once-over. Why, boy, you've got more pep already than you had when I first came, and you're beginning to eat like a regular feller. What you want to do is to forget the girl and expand your chest, and you'll come out all right."

"Aw, it's easy to talk!"

But, little by little, his chest was expanding, his muscles were hardening, his unwholesome color giving way before a deep coat of tan.

One day he awoke to the fact that he had got a keen satisfaction out of weeding a despised onion bed. Thereupon he thought hard about Zilla and Avenue A and the club hall on Hester Street. But, somehow, he could not get back the deep luxury of self-pity that he had once been able to summon so readily. In spite of himself, as the blood moved more swiftly through his veins, he began to take an interest in the various processes of the farm. When he sneered now, it was halfheartedly. For days at a time, now, he forgot to think about what he would do when he got back to the city; he even forgot to think about Zilla.

THEN there came a day when he was paid off. He could have gone back to the city and swaggered for a week on his accumulated wages; but that night, lying awake in the airy room over the woodshed, he felt stirring in him a strange desire to see what Andrew had seen. Three days later the two boys started to "beat" their way to Chicago, en route to the wheat fields of the Northwest.

All the rest of that summer and during the golden autumn they lived under the open sky. Occasionally they herded with tramps, though mostly Andrew avoided his brethren of the road. They worked their way from one great wheat farm to the next, following a well known trail of Andrew's up through the Northwest. Winter found them high up on the Pacific slope, down which they made their way, rejoicing in adventures, to arrive in San Francisco a week or two before Christmas.

Here they separated, Andrew going on to a new experimental station in Arizona. Nicholas declared that he was homesick for Manhattan.

He was going home to round up the gang and paint the ward red. Gee, but it would be good to get back, to eat chow-main at the Oriental, to dance at Jack and Joe's, to box and drink beer in the club hall on Hester Street!

Andrew grinned and said nothing. But, having forced Nicholas to save his wages from the wheat fields, he was able to see him off in the grandeur of a tourist sleeper.

Some days later the passengers on a Manhattan elevated train stared at a young chap whose appearance formed a startling contrast to that of the other men in the car. He was deeply bronzed and muscular and bright-eyed, and when he darted down the stairs ahead of every one else he walked buoyantly, as if the blood danced in his veins. He turned east toward Avenue A, looking about him eagerly.

It was an afternoon of sunshine and belated warmth. The streets swarmed with children; bed-clothing flapped from all the windows. His footsteps slowed until finally, at a corner, he stopped.

Something was beginning to puzzle him profoundly. This was the moment he had thought about on the trail, in the wheat fields, bumping along "blind baggage" over hundreds of wide miles. He had got home. This was the only town; this was the life. He repeated these phrases over to himself; but the puzzlement remained.

"I'll be darned if it don't look exactly the same!" he thought ruefully. "Same kids, same racket. By jinks, if there ain't Blind Mike coming home from panning 'em uptown, same as ever. And there's Benny Goldberg holding up the doorway of Yeddo's pool parlor, like he's been doing ever since I can remember. And there's Kid MacCall, with the family can as usual."

He took a step toward intercepting the Kid, who had been a chum of his in past days. But the impulse wavered and died. In place of it there came a queer sensation of disdain.

Since last he stood on this corner he had seen wonders. He had seen a great land, like a tawny lion in the sun, supremely indifferent to the spawn of cities. And he had seen great cities where the Avenue A's were duplicated, and little villages whose manners and habits of life differed only in unimportant details from manners and habits of life around Tompkins Square. There were thousands and thousands of them, villages and cities, all set in the great golden crown of the land.

He had seen. And now he had come back to find everything as if he had left it yesterday. Queer and puzzling thing—to come home full of wonders, and to find

the neighbors sending out for beer in exactly the same old way.

He wandered on a few blocks, rather aimlessly now, feeling as if the great moment had turned a bit flat and stale. On another corner he stood for several minutes before he recognized the fact that across the way was the entrance to the Friendly Hand Club. His mind went drifting back to the night he had met Zilla Kiralsky there, and it followed along down to the day when he had become a potato soldier.

And all at once he knew what it was that had brought him back. He turned on his heel and walked rapidly downtown.

WHEN he reached the enlistment station of his district, he found a new sergeant in charge; but presently some one came out of the examining room, and he saw that it was the same doctor whose verdict had turned him into the street, a condemned man. He stepped up to him.

"Do you remember me, doc?"

The doctor stared, then smiled.

"Why, great Scott, boy, what you been doing to yourself? You look as if you could lick the ward with one hand. Where you been?"

Nicholas told him briefly.

"Well, I'll be darned!" was the doctor's comment. "So you want to try it again? All right. I was going home, but I'll look you over, just for luck."

The early dusk had fallen, and the garish lights were flaring out on Grand Street, when Nicholas came out and walked uptown to a certain familiar corner. This was the spot where he had waited for Zilla Kiralsky the last time he had seen her; and as he took up his stand he knew that he was waiting for her now. Crowds of girls from the shops began to scurry along the pavement toward home and supper. Two thirds of them gave him a second glance, standing there, brown, hard-muscled, alert, in a blue flannel shirt and an orange tie—something of the dandy surviving even in his rough clothes.

Presently he saw her coming along the street, linked with another girl, walking with the Carmen swagger, her lustrous black eyes glancing here and there, missing no male possibility in sight. His heart gave a lurch and a leap, then settled back to its normal beat. He had time to look at her, to appraise her as she advanced. And to himself he said, with wonder:

"I didn't think she was so short. I guess she's getting fat."

He did not know that he had got used to another type of girl—lean and boyish and upstanding. He was conscious only of a complete nonchalance as he put out a hand and touched her arm.

"Hello, Zilla; can't you see a fellow?"

SHE detached herself from the other girl, who went on alone. Her eyes took him in, puzzled for an instant, and then suddenly began to sparkle. Their hands met, and even as they did so her glance took him in from head to foot.

"Well, ain't this the limit—Nick Cooley! Have you gave up being a farmer?" She giggled. "You look like—like a—" A comparison failed her; she looked at him, puzzled by some new quality in him. Then her predatory instinct awakened. "You going to stay home now?"

His head went up elatedly. "No, not for long. I'm going to enlist to-morrow. I just passed my physical examination—a hundred per cent.

He crooked his right arm and ran his left hand up and down the swelling muscles lovingly.

"A hundred per cent," he repeated.

She stared at him, her mouth falling open, while a swift avidity crept into her eyes. She saw him in his uniform, and she saw herself walking up and down Grand Street, hanging on his arm. Her hand went out, to snuggle under the bend of his arm in the old way.

"Aw, Nick, you'll look swell in a uniform. I knew you'd do it sometime—for me."

He looked down at her in silence, and then he was aware of a strange thing. The luminous, enchanted glamour of her was gone. He saw her exactly as she was, and he moved his arm away from her hand.

"I didn't do it for you," he said calmly. "I done it because—because—"

He looked over her head, frowning, trying to find words, not so much for her as for himself. An idea, vague and big, struggled to voice itself.

"Get me, kiddo," he said at last. "This is a whale of a country."

That was all. But it was the credo of a man come at last to a consciousness of his birthright.

On that clamorous, garish corner, with a pale garment worker at his elbow buying a Yiddish newspaper, a Greek restaurant at his back, an Italian pastry shop across the way, a Syrian rug vender at his right, and a Zilla Kiralsky trying to snuggle a hand under his arm, was born an American.

"It's a whale of a country," he repeated dreamily. "If a fella don't want to fight for it, he ain't a regular man. Well—I gotta hike along. So long, Zilla."

Her eyes opened in alarm.

"But, Nick—wait a minute. Ain't I gonna see you to-night? There's a new dance place open on Hester Street. It's swell. Aw, Nick, what's the matter? Don't you—like me any more?"

Low at his side he moved his hand from the wrist, in Avenue A's immemorial gesture of renunciation.

"Cut it out—forget it," he said coldly. "Just remember one thing: you called me a potato soldier once, and I was. But I ain't now. I'm through with the soft stuff—and that goes."

Investing in Big Business

By CHARLES R. BROWN

WITH entire frankness I may say that through my association with this magazine I have learned a great deal of the human side of American finance. I have been writing technical articles for bankers, brokers, experienced business men, large investors, for years, but the letters that come to me from the readers of this magazine have given me a new conception of the essential thriftiness of the American people.

Prudence and caution are outstanding features in the numerous inquiries that have come regarding investments. But the inquiries indicate that many are in doubt as to the practical methods to pursue in making investments—a feature that requires personal initiative. This is a subject I propose to discuss this week, referring in this instance only to securities of corporations whose activities are representative of the industrial life of the nation. These classes of stocks and bonds seem better adapted to general investment purposes than those of small local enterprises that are not subject to supervision and in which the element of personal dishonesty too frequently is present.

The most necessary test for small corporations is age. New England, for instance, is well known for its large number of small corporations—textile mills, etc.—that admittedly are prosperous. They are well managed, and have been paying dividends year in and year out—which means, of course, that interest on bonds has in each case been promptly paid. With them, therefore, uninterrupted dividend records ranging over a period of years become a valuable safeguard.

But it is not so safe, regardless of business prospects, to tie up to new concerns. I have in mind, as an example of conditions that in this respect seem more or less general, some rather illustrative experiences of stockholders of one of the numerous forms of the motion-picture industry. Prospects concededly were alluring. Net results, when business had been running for a few months, more than justified the promises. But dividends were not forthcoming.

Finally, when patience no longer remained a virtue, an investigation disclosed the true story. The men who had organized the company controlled the stock. They had contributed at the beginning various small plants for which they had paid themselves in stock of the new enterprise on virtually their own terms, in this way coming into absolute control. As business increased it became a simple matter to vote themselves increased salaries as managers at the expense of minority stockholders.

This suggests one of the dangers of becoming a partner through stockholdings in a concern where no limits are placed upon the appraisement that managers may set upon the value of their own services. The personal element clearly is a menace that should never be forgotten when considering investments in comparatively small "home" corporations.

It appears safer, therefore, to put one's savings into the securities of large corporations representing our national life—for instance, high-grade railroads and industrials. How to make selections need not be a difficult matter. Suggestions without obligation may be sought simultaneously from a number of Stock Exchange brokers at the large centers. Then a little study will make the process of investigation a matter of the keenest interest and of comparative safety.

Par value of stocks, as is well known, usually is $100. On this basis a 5 per cent stock means $5 on $100. But if the stock is purchasable below par, then the $5 income remains, but the amount of money necessary to purchase a $100 share is smaller. Southern Pacific Railway pays 6 per cent. But, as the price per share at this writing is only about 92, the $6 becomes a dividend upon an investment of only $92, thus making the actual return slightly over 6½ per cent. This will illustrate how the "income value" (based on prices ruling toward the close of September) is figured on the following list of investment stocks.

              

RAILROADS	Earned last year, per cent	Dividends, per cent	Income, per cent	Price
Atchison	12.3	6	6.22	$96½
St. Paul	7.2	4	6.92	57¾
Chi. & Northwestern	14.1	7	6.64	105½
Del. & Hudson	9.8	9	9	100
Gt. Northern, pfd.	11.1	7	6.76	103½
N. Y. Central	18.3	5	6.40	78
Southern Pacific	12.6	6	6.52	92
INDUSTRIALS
Amer. Smelting, pfd.	39.3	7	6.45	108½
Amer. Sugar, pfd.	18.5	7	6.10	114⅞
Amer. Tel. & Tel.	9.5	8	6.77	118¼
Amer. Tobacco	22.7	20	10.20	196
Pressed Steel Car, pfd.	22.0	7	7.02	99⅞

The foregoing quotations are for shares. An additional factor necessarily enters into any compilation of the income from bonds—namely, the maturity. But the form of calculation still remains simple, if one does not wish to figure down to the very smallest technical fraction. Suppose you buy a four per cent bond, maturing in 1927, at, say, 80, which means $80 for a $100 bond (or $800 for a $1000 bond, etc.). Four per cent interest on this $100 would amount to $4 a year. But purchased at $80 it amounts to 5 per cent. When, however, the bond is paid at maturity, the holder will receive the full $100 instead of the $80 purchase price. Thus at the end of ten years yet to run he will receive an additional profit of $20, or at the rate of $2 a year, making a reasonably sure income per year of about 7 per cent. Incidentally it may be stated again, as was pointed out in a recent article, that there are many bonds yielding 6 and even 7 per cent under current conditions that have not for many years sold so low. Of course, if the purchase price of a bond is above par the reverse will be the case.

MAKE all you can; save all you can; give all you can.

JOHN WESLEY.

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

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

Without charge or obligation, the Citizens Savings and Trust Company, Cleveland, Ohio, will send on request a copy of their booklet "P," giving full details about this company's successful plan of banking by mail at 4 per cent interest.

Events of the time have more significance for the investor than for the general reader of news, for they often seriously affect financial interests. The meaning of what is happening is made clear in the Bache Review, the widely known publication, which also presents investment suggestions. Copies mailed free on application to J. S. Bache & Co., members of New York Stock Exchange, 42 Broadway, New York.

The Odd Lot Review, published every Saturday, aims to reflect in brief and comprehensive style the principal development affecting values in standard securities. Sample copies will be sent on application to the offices of the publication, 61 Broadway, New York City.

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

Perkins & Company, of Lawrence, Kansas, make their loans upon personal examination of security and guarantee titles perfect. They mail their interest drafts to their investors to reach them the first of the month, so that there are no delays in interest payments. Write for circular No. 721.

The value of first farm mortgages on Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana farm property is very well brought out in a booklet issued by the Oklahoma Farm Mortgage Company, of Oklahoma City, which will be furnished free on request. Write for list No. 205.