Should Cousins Marry?

By JOHN B. HUBER, A. M., M. D.

FRANCIS GALTON, the founder of the science of eugenics, was sympathetically anxious that all humankind should become eugenized—that is, well born in the best meaning of the term. The fact that two wholesome human beings wish to spend their lives together is very likely to be based on traits that will mutually make for good inheritance; but Galton believed that love of itself, regardless of eugenic principles, "offers no more than an even chance." And such a fifty-fifty chance, when it comes to so momentous a matter as marriage, no one of us cares lightly to take.

Most of our ancestors mated well simply because they fell hopelessly in love with each other; and falling in love is the romantic phrase for the coldly scientific equivalent "natural selection." The great trouble is that frequently considerations other than natural affection enter into marriage engagements. Many matches are made for, and not by, the couple who are to marry. Wealth or social position often prevails despite a tainted body or great disparity in years.

That many people realize the importance of this whole subject is indicated by the inquiries that constantly come to physicians, especially for advice as to whether cousins should marry. The answer is that the marriage of cousins is not bad in itself if both families are of sound stock. But such marriages will, naturally, bring out any common untoward traits.

In any proposed union, if there has been cancer in both families, marriage should be forgone; if on only one side, there need be no hesitation. Epilepsy in either family should be a bar. Under any circumstances, if two epileptics marry, their children will all be epileptics; the same is true of all imbeciles. If an epileptic or one insane marries a normal individual, one half or one fourth of the progeny will usually inherit the parental abnormality. The others—according to the Mendelian theory, now well established in science—will probably be normal. The tuberculous should not marry until two years after they are entirely recovered; tuberculous cousins not at all.

Children born of blood relation—consanguineous—marriages tend, though not by any means always, to be abnormal in one way or another—to be perhaps deaf-mutes or albinos, or to have a cleft palate.

No one among us is entirely free from such adverse hereditary peculiarities. It is only when they are pronounced or numerous in the individual that they indicate much. Cousin parents are, however, apt to have the same physical and moral characteristics, which tend to become intensified in their children, because those traits are not balanced by diverse ones.

In conclusion we should say that, if the mutual stock is good, cousin marriages turn out well enough; but if the heredity has been poor they are likely to turn out unfortunately.

Can One Rest Without Sleeping?

DR. J. J. WALSH observes in International Clinics that "no one has ever been hurt by wakefulness alone, provided he or she has been in bed for eight hours. It seems to make no difference whether people sleep or not." Here is a much debated idea which, it appears to me, Dr. Crile settled once for all in his book on The Origin and Nature of the Emotions. Dr. Crile gives detailed experiments showing that if exhausted animals are allowed complete rest, but are not permitted to sleep, the characteristic microscopic evidence of exhaustion in the brain, the liver, and other organs is retained; whereas in exhausted animals allowed both to rest and to sleep undisturbed the microscopic evidence of fatigue in those organs disappears. There is certainly, then (and every insomnia victim will bear out this statement), a very real distinction between mere lying down and sleeping. The former simply does not restore the tired body.

Some people fall asleep readily; but shortly awake and are then wakeful the balance of the night. Others spend several hours trying to sleep, and may then sleep fairly well. Still others are disposed—quite unintentionally, no doubt—to exaggerate the amount of their insomnia. And so many people are rested who say (in all good faith) that they get no sleep.

Be Careful of the Children's Food

CEREALS, for children's eating, should he cooked not less than one hour, and better three hours, says the New York Department of Health. A double boiler or a fireless cooker may be used. Green vegetables should be cooked with very little water, and all vegetables should be thoroughly cooked. Potatoes should be boiled with the skins on and peeled afterard, thus saving least one sixth of this vegetable. Meats should be roasted, broiled, or boiled; meat, chicken, and fish should never be fried. Eggs should not be fried; certainly not on both sides.

Meat stews with potatoes and other vegetables are good, provided they are thoroughly cooked and the fat removed. Clear soups have almost no food value. Thick soups, especially those made with the addition of milk, are nutritious and cheap; and may in considerable measure replace meats and eggs in the dietary.

What Drink Costs a Worker

"SAFETY ENGINEERING" tells how a foundry company protested against the relicensing of saloons in its city, on the ground that the average loss of wages on account of drinking was $180 per man during eleven months; also that the total wage loss in that town could be estimated conservatively at $100,000 a year. Injuries were more frequent among the drinking workmen.

Managers of many railroads are now insisting on total abstinence. It is now known that the "moderate drinker" who is never seen to stagger is likely, in the long run, to be even more poisoned than the visibly drunk. Intemperate railway employees have been found who were unable to distinguish between green and red. Sometimes only an accident, with loss of life, reveals an engineer's inability to recognize signals. Such toxic amblyopia (which comes also from the excessive use of tobacco) begins with a slight dimness of vision, and progresses through the inability to recognize colors, through seeing everything gray, to total blindness.

"They Who Tarry by the Stuff"

LOOKING back over the history of some of the previous wars in the world, I came across the campaign which David waged against the Amalekites.

They had swarmed down upon his home district during his absence on important business, and had burned his city, Ziklag. When he returned, it was to find smoking ruins, and the women of the city gone, including even his own wives.

So he set out with six hundred men, to seek revenge. Four hundred men he kept with him to do the fighting, and two hundred he ordered to "tarry by the stuff."

The battle was fought, the Amalekites defeated, and the victors returned laden with their spoils.

They were flushed and greedy with their conquest: they looked with scorn upon the two hundred men who had not fought. Why should they who had risked their lives divide with those who had remained behind?

But David, looking at both groups of men,—those who had borne the burden of battle and those who at home had kept the country and its possessions safe,—replied:

"As his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff: they shall part alike."

And the account continues: "It was so from that day forward, that he made it a statute and an ordinance for Israel unto this day."

I am thinking on this New Year's day of those men who want to go to war and can't; of those who, by virtue of their obligations, are compelled to "tarry by the stuff."

I know how they feel: I have talked with dozens of them.

They read the stirring news of war in every paper: they hear the bands play and see the flags wave: one after another, their friends appear in uniform.

And inside themselves the fight goes on—the call to the colors against the call of the duty that lies at home.

I wish I might point out to those men this one great truth:

Wars are full of curious phenomena: and one of the most curious is this—that often the nation that wins a war really loses it.

Germany won the war with France in 1870. Her troops marched home triumphant: out of Paris rolled a great train loaded with the indemnity of millions of marks.

And what happened?

The prosperity that followed that indemnity corrupted the moral fiber of Germany. The flush of conquest made militarism the national god. Out of that ill gotten victory grew all the crassness that has had its final fruitage in the present war.

And France, shorn of her egotism by defeat, forced by her indemnity to practise thrift, grew stronger and firmer and finer than she had ever been before.

The years that followed our Civil War make up the least attractive period of our history.

Go through the country and you can pick out almost unerringly the houses that were constructed in that period—ugly architecture, mirroring ugly thoughts.

Politically it was the period of the bloody shirt: spiritually it was noisy with agnosticism: financially it saw speculation and corruption, ending in the panic of '73.

We shall win this war on the battle-field. It may be long drawn out and very bitter; but we shall win.

The question is, shall we win it also at home?

Shall there emerge from the war a thriftier nation, living more simply and more wholesomely; a more unselfish nation, trained to sacrifice; a more spiritual nation, dedicated to a great ideal?

The man who can not go to war, but who devotes himself unselfishly to service here at home, need not feel that he has had no part in the great conflict.

Let him not for one moment forget that he is helping to make America's military victory a moral and a spiritual victory as well.

Helping even while he "tarries by the stuff."

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE MOST INTERESTING MAN I KNOW

MYSELF—By Dr. Frank Crane

THE most interesting person I know is myself.

This is not a matter of egotism, but a matter of fact. That is to say, I am interesting to me, not because I am grand and noble, not because I am famous or rich or clever, but because I am the one person upon whom I have spent the most time and thought; the one person whose success most pleases and whose failure most discomfits me; the one person whose career has been to me the most surprising; the one whose faults and excellencies are the most absurd mixture; the one whom my wife seems to like best; the one my friends are always asking about; the one whose life expectancy concerns me most; and the one who is to me the most inexplicable mystery.

I make a living writing about myself, what I think and want, hate and admire. And this, not because I am an extraordinary being, but because I am perhaps—if I may be pardoned for boasting—the most ordinary person in the world.

The earth is so crowded with distinguished people that I gain considerable conspicuousness by being common. In the ranks of the common people I am grade A.

I like what most people like, do what most people do, sin about like the common run, and am good just about as the average man is good.

I am so, not because I care for votes for anything, and not to gain popularity, but

because I like it. I do not want to be elected to any office; I do not want to sit on the platform at any meeting; I do not want my family to be invited to important social affairs; and I like to see my name in print only when (as in this instance) I get money for it.

I do not crave to belong to any exclusive set, to any lodge, club, church, association, esoteric cult, or anything else where everybody can not come in. I like the crowd on the sidewalk.

I like folks, and hate a class of any kind. I work for a living, but refuse to call myself a member of the working class. I read books and know a few languages, and can argue a bit, but am not of the intellectual or cultured class. I go in at times for painting, sculpture, and music, but am not of the artistic class. I have a few dollars in the bank, and own some Liberty Bonds, but am not of the capitalistic class.

I am just a plain, ordinary human being; and I make my living, and have achieved whatever distinction I may have, by writing for plain, ordinary human beings.

I am the apostle of the obvious—which, as it is the last thing most people look for in print, induces the newspapers to keep on printing my stuff.

Sometimes you see a dog that is so ugly he's pretty, or a man who is so excruciatingly moral that he is immoral, or a woman who is so proper that she is improper, or a light so bright that it is darkness.

I am so darned uninteresting that I am interesting.

He Has a Soft Heart and a Hard Head

By CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND

THE most interesting man I know is in the most interesting business I know in the most interesting city in the world. He is E. G. Pipp, Big Chief of the Detroit News. Once a large man dropped in to abuse E. G., and I saw what happened to that person; but that's aside from the point. E. G. appeared in the office of the News one day a dozen or so years ago. Nobody knew him, and the fellows felt sort of sorry for the whaling big rube that kept so quiet and didn't appear to know what everything was all about.

But presently E. G. unloaded a big note-book full of facts about a Public Works Commissioner that he had dug up,—literally dug up by taking a pick by night and examining into what the pavements were made of,—and then the Commissioner was no more at large. In about two jerks of a lamb's tail the boys who had been sorry for E. G. were running errands for him, for he became managing editor of the biggest paper in Michigan in a space of time [?] racked all rec- [?] and now E. G. [?] a de luxe of- [?] a Chinese [?] floor, and [?] whole works.

He's interesting because the things that go on inside his head and his heart are interesting. For instance, he has an idea that it's a good policy to be fair to the other fellow. Absurd, of course, but he actually believes it. For example: three or four years ago the News was fighting for municipal ownership of street railways, and was bombing and being bombed by the Detroit United. Two months before the campaign started, I dropped into E. G.'s office, and found him writing bales of manuscript. I asked wherefore and what, and he said, "We're going to be in a hot fight with the D. U. R. pretty soon, and they're going to say nasty things about me and the News—and I'll get mad. So I'm writing my campaign editorials now, when I'm cool, and won't say anything I'd be sorry for."

That's E. G.—the whole six feet and a half of him.

Right now a good many folks in Detroit are cussing E. G. and calling him a pacifist. E. G. has a son, and there is a closeness of relation between that father and son that is rare and beautiful. Gaylord was drafted.

"I presume," says E. G., "that I could have landed him a job running a motor-boat on the Detroit River. It's been done. But the boy and I talked it over, and we decided if he was to go he'd go. If his country needed him he'd go where he'd do the most good. And I saw him march away. I saw thousands of boys march away—and because I tell folks that war is a hellish thing, and that it's a damnable crime to murder our boys, they say I'm a pacifist."

GERMAN PRISONERS I HAVE KNOWN

By CAPTAIN A. P. CORCORAN

Photographs by the French Official Press Bureau; from Paul Thompson

"OCH, the poor angashore—shure 'tis starving he is. Larry, give him some more bully beef. When did they feed ye last, Jerry?"

Thus an Irish captor to his German captive. Pat, be it known, has his own name for the Boche. He disdains the conventional "Fritz." This particular "Jerry" of his happened to be little more than a boy; he was showing every evidence of an advanced stage of hunger.

"I had some black bread and three ounces of meat at twelve o'clock yesterday," he announced in perfect English, between mouthfuls.

It was now two o'clock in the morning. He had availed himself of the darkness to make his way across No Man's Land. How he had contrived to elude the sentries Heaven only knows; but here he was, safe and sound, a self-made and satisfied prisoner. The Irishman, however, was by no means finished with his catechism.

"Tell me now," he began, "how came ye to desert on yer friends? Wouldn't ye be better off to stay where you were?"

"I would not," replied the German, promptly and decisively. "And if you fellows were not quite so quick with that gun, there would be many glad to follow my example."

AT this juncture I thought it might be profitable to make my presence felt, so I stepped out of the surrounding shadows. Instantly the German saw me, and stiffened to attention after the rigid fashion of his kind.

The Irishman, pointing a finger at him, announced jocosely:

"More gun-meat we've got for you, sir."

Whereupon such a look of terror came into the prisoner's eyes as it is not good to see on the face of any man. With the intention of reassuring him as much as anything else, I asked him what was the matter. No one could help seeing that he was in a panic of fear.

"They told us," he said, "that if the British caught us alive, they'd shoot us; but I didn't believe it."

He had evidently taken the Irishman's words as proof that "they" were right.

"Well, why come over, if you thought there was a chance of being shot?" I asked him, after our evident amusement had allayed his fears.

"I couldn't stand it any longer," he said. Then he told me his story.

He was a Saxon; and, as is well known, neither he nor his countrymen have much heart in the fight they are forced to make. They have no hatred for the English, but they have a great deal for their brothers in arms.

"And now," he went on, "they have given us Prussian and Bavarian officers and non-coms."

And he related how one Prussian sergeant had so ill-treated his particular chum that the chap one day lost control of himself and beat his superior's brains out with the butt of a gun. Naturally, he paid the penalty with his life.

After you have been in the war for some time, you learn to distinguish even between enemies; and we had long come to know the Saxons for our friends. To be placed opposite one of their regiments was to get a pretty soft job. In fact, it was looked on as a sort of rest cure. I remember, on one part of the line that they had held for some time, scarcely three shells had come over in two months. It was for this reason, probably, that the new officers had been placed in charge. They by no means shared the Saxons' feelings.

During the Loos scrap we took a very considerable number of prisoners, and I had a chance of observing their different ways. I should say that fully ninety-nine per cent of them were very glad to be quit of the fight. But there were some who thought it necessary to hide their relief. To do so, they resorted to bad manners.

There was one fellow to whom a kindly Cockney offered a cigarette by way of sympathy.

Englisches Schwein!" was his thanks; and he fairly spat the words in his would-be friend's face.

"'Ere, stow that," ordered the Londoner, "or I'll put one of yer eyes in mourning for t'other."

I was surprised that he thought it necessary to give the warning.

BUT, in contrast to this gentleman, I came on one bunch of prisoners, evidently chums, who were all busy congratulating one another on their good luck in being taken alive.

"My wife and children are still in Sheffield," one explained, "and I have lived there about half my life."

Another I found on his knees thanking God that he had been taken captive by the man on whom he had waited at table for twelve years!

The officers, being men of different caliber, were somewhat more subtle in the expression of their feelings. But, in their finer way, they were strangely reminiscent of their men.

The first of this class with whom I came in contact was a patient in the same hospital as myself. He was a Prussian, and, like most of his kind, spoke English with but a slight accent. It was some time before we made this discovery, for he rarely indulged in the exercise. At first we thought him unable to speak our language. We tried him in his own, but with no better effect. It was not until the doctor who was trying to diagnose his trouble—it was internal—put to him some questions concerning his wound that he condescended to make use of his vocal organs.

"That's your business to find out," he snapped rudely in answer, then relapsed into his sullen silence. He never thanked us, even when we brought him books.

But quite the reverse was another, a young fellow from Leipzig, who did not speak a word of our tongue. These men, of course, were always put in the same hospitals as our officers, occupying separate rooms; but we made it a practice to visit them,—partly, I suppose, out of curiosity—provided always that they were willing to receive us. This youngster obviously was. Indeed, he seemed most anxious to be pleasant. After a while we induced him to talk about the war.

"What do you think," we asked him one day, "of your chances of victory now?"

"Not much," he said frankly. "It was a pretty big blow when you came in, but we thought it would be easy to clean up your small army. When we couldn't do that, it was pretty generally acknowledged that things wouldn't go so sweetly after that."

"So you didn't like Britain's taking a hand in the game?"

He smiled.

"I was in Berlin," he said, "when the storm broke loose. Up to August fourth the enthusiasm of the people was something tremendous. They evidently thought they were going to clean the world up right away. But when the announcement came, "England declares war!" well, there was dead silence on the street for just a moment. Then a chorus of hisses broke out, and you could hear the cry of "God punish England!" They have been shouting it ever since. France, Russia, all the rest, were forgotten. "No," he laughed; "you're not popular in Berlin."

And, as far as we could see, Berlin was not popular with him.

SOME EXTRACTS FROM GERMAN DIARIES

"THE captain summoned us together and said: 'In the fort which is to be taken there are apparently Englishmen. I wish to see no Englishman taken prisoner by the company.' A universal Bravo of agreement was the answer." Göttsche, now an officer 85 Infantry Regiment, 9 Army Corps.

"A woman was shot because she did not stop at the command word Halt, but kept running away. Thereupon we burned the whole place." From the diary of Reservist Heinrich Bissinger, Second Company, First Bavarian Pioneers, August 25, 1914.

"They [the French troops] lay heaped up 8 to 10 in a heap, wounded and dead, always one on top of the other. Those who could still walk were made prisoners and brought with us. The severely wounded, with a shot in the head or lungs, and so forth, who could not make further effort, received one more bullet which ended their life. That is indeed what we were ordered to do." From the diary of Private Fahlenstein, reservist of the 34 Fusiliers, 2 Army Corps, August 28, 1914.

Quoted, with other German diaries, in Our Part in the Great War, by Arthur Gleason, published by Frederick A. Stokes Company.

HIS FIRST NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES

SELECT a flat ten-acre plowed field, so sited that all the surface water of the surrounding country drains into it; cut a zigzag slot about four feet deep and three feet wide diagonally across it; drain off as much water as you can, so as to leave about one hundred yards of squelchy mud; then dig a hole in one side of the slot, and try to live in this hole for a month, while a friend has instructions to fire at you with his Winchester every time you put your head above the surface; and you will have some idea of life in the trenches in the early days of the war, says Bruce Bairnsfather in Bullets and Billets (G. P. Putnam's Son's).

When the writer arrived on the scene with his battalion of men, it was night, and raining. After disposing his men, he and his sergeant scooped out two caves in the clay bank, and retired to sleep.

"My little place was about four feet long, three feet wide, and three feet high. Here I was, in this horrible clay cavity, somewhere in Belgium, miles and miles from home, cold, wet through, and covered with mud. I gave an indignant, hopeless glare at my flickering candle, and pinched the wick, curled up, and went to sreep. A sudden cold sort of peppermint sensation awoke me. I heard a muttering of voices and a curse or two in the outer cavern, and presently the sergeant entered my sanctum on all fours.

"'We're bein' flooded out, sir; there's water a foot deep in this place of ours.'

"I crawled out of the pool in which I was lying, and the whole lot of us dived through the rapidly rising water and scrambled up on the top of the bank. There we sat in the silent, steady rain, the whole party being occasionally illuminated by a German star shell—more like a family sitting for a flashlight photograph than anything else."

After an hour's struggle Bairnsfather and his men succeeded in making a temporary dam and starting a fire in a bucket. Then, wet, sleepless, "cold as polar bears," they watched the dawn come in.

It was his first night in the trenches.

HATRED OF THE GERMAN OFFICER

IS there a distinction between the German people and their rulers, as President Wilson would like to believe?

Some deny it: but the man in the front-line trenches does not. He sees in the German officer a being wholly different from the common soldier—a devil, pitiless, brutal, inhuman.

"I've killed some Boches," says a member of Henri Barbusse's squad, quoted in Under Fire (E. P. Dutton & Company). "Yes, I've killed some. But it's always the Boche officer that I'm after."

"Ah, mon vieux," says Tirloir, "we talk about the dirty Boche race; but as for the common soldier I don't know if it's true, or whether at the bottom they're not pretty much like us."

"Probably they're men like us," says Eudore.

"Anyway," Tirloir goes on, "we've not got a dead set on the men, but on the German officers; non, non, non, they're not men, they're monsters."

"I'm not spiteful myself," says Blaire, "I've got kiddies. And it worries me to kill a pig that I know. But those—I shall run 'em through-bing-full in the linen-cupboard."

WHY THEY DO NOT COMPLAIN

PERHAPS the following story, related by D. Thomas Curtin in the Land of Deepening Shadow (GeorgeH. Doran Company), may answer a question that many of us are asking: Why do the German people not overthrow the Hohenzollerns?

Mr. Curtin was visiting the Berlin East End. One night, in one of the cafés frequented by workmen, he heard a shabby old man make the following remark:

"I'm tired," he complained, "of reading in the newspaper how nice the war is. Even the Vorwaerts (then a Socialist paper) lies to us. I am tired of walking home night after night and finding restaurants turned into hospitals for the wounded."

A few nights later Mr. Curtin went to the same place, and was received with obvious hostility.

"We thought," some one told him later, "that you had told the government about that little free speaking we had here a few nights ago. You know that old man who was complaining about the restaurants being turned into hospitals has been arrested?"

Spirited away and held in jail indefinitely! And there are hundreds sharing his fate for similar trivial reasons. A former monarch of Europe used similar methods for some time. Now he, not his subjects, is in jail. Perhaps all Germany will some day speak at once.

A LETTER FROM A SOLDIER'S MOTHER

I AM an old woman, living in St. Louis. The most severe trial of my life came this year, when my youngest son was called to the colors in this world war.

I had hoped he might be spared me, but one night I dreamed of seeing him standing before me in khaki, saying, "Mother, I must go; good-by."

I awoke and found myself crying; I said to myself: "Thank God, it was a dream!"

That very day, when looking over the list of drafted men, I found my boy's name in it. For a time we heard nothing further. But there came a fatal morning when the postman brought the news that my son must go to be examined. All the while he was gone, as the clock ticked the slow hours, I kept hoping and praying that he, the child of my old age, might not be taken. When he came home, I saw by his face he had no good news; and soon he said:

"I'm sorry for you and father, for I don't know what you're going to do; but I've passed the physical examination, mother, and have got to go."

Before my boy went he tried to busy himself in all the little ways of helpfulness, so as to leave us as comfortable as possible. Then arrived the last morning of his stay with us. The leave-taking was the hardest thing I ever faced.

The mob of people were lined up outside iron railings. I held my ground and stood, with tears rolling down my cheeks, and watched for my boy to pass.

When I stood in front of my own door, I could not bear to enter the empty house, so turned and went back into the street. That day I frequented the shops and markets until so weary I could scarcely stand.

When my husband came home that night, he could not eat, and for days we went about dazed and unhappy. Then came the turn of the tide, and I realized that I belonged to the great company of mothers who were sacrificing their dearest treasures to uphold the honor of their country.

So I sit at home knitting, and watch for the postman to bring letters from my boy, and feel in touch with the world around me; and when my heart aches for the sight of my boy in camp, my needles fly the faster, as I sit with tear-dimmed eyes and do my bit.

THE SNOB

By WILBUR HALL

Illustrations by H. Fisk

WHITTIER presented the letter that had summoned him, and gave his name.

"Oh, yes, Mr. Whittier," the clerk said at once; "Mr. Thornhill has been expecting you. Will you sit down a moment?"

"Thanks." Whittier found a place, and relaxed, admiring the massive appearance of the suite—impressed by it, too—and wondering for the thousandth time why Thornhill had sent half way across the continent for him.

What would Thornhill be like—how changed since the days when they had been at Blake? Filled out, yes; but with the same self-satisfied manner, probably; the same thinly veiled consciousness of caste distinction between himself, son of the head of the Western power trust, and Whittier, for example, son of a carpenter. Thornhill had never quite fooled him with that studied hail-fellow pose of his—underneath Whittier had always discerned the snob.

They had been out of college now six years. Thornhill was assistant general manager of the California Electrical Power Corporation, probably at ten or fifteen thousand a year; Whittier, with an invalid wife and a delicate baby, was a reporter at fifteen hundred. Except for this occasion,—and now on money and railroad transportation provided him,—Whittier had never taken a day off from the paper. He had seen and heard little of the old crowd; but he knew that Thornhill, of them all, would have changed the least. Would he remember the fight they had had for the 'varsity tackle position, and some things that Whittier had said to him? Thornhill had been pretty hot over that fight and Whittier's treatment of him. Well, he had needed straight talk—and got it, for once in his life, at least!

And now, again, what on earth did Thornhill want?

Whittier rose, hearing his name, and in another moment was confronting his old classmate. Behind the big mahogany desk Thornhill looked at his visitor appraisingly, though with nothing more than a glance, nodded, and then jerked his head in dismissal of the clerk.

"Hello, Mr. Whittier," he said curtly. "I got your wire. Sit down."

Instinctively Whittier stiffened. His years of newspaper work had accustomed him to the exaltation of business executives and the soundingness of their titles; and the brusque front they showed the world had ceased to overawe him. "Thanks, Thornhill," he answered easily; "I won't have much time if I make tonight's Overland back. What was it?"

Thornhill threw him a keen glance.

"Same old independent radical, I see," he said impersonally. "Better have a chair—excuse me a minute." He turned to a desk telephone, pushed a button, and spoke into the instrument: "Tell Bridge I'll be busy for an hour with Mr. Whittier. Don't want to be interrupted. And 'phone Armitage that I'll have to put him off until two. . . . That's right."

He wheeled around, still unwelcoming, imperturbable. "Can you spare me an hour, Whittier?"

"Of course. I'm planning to start back to-night; but I have to-day. My wife is in the hospital—I couldn't take much time for this sort of junketing. And the paper kicked up a row about my coming at all."

Thornhill was listening, but he did not show more than a shade of interest.

"Doing pretty well at newspaper work, I suppose?" he asked perfunctorily.

"Twenty-eight a week," Whittier flashed. "Why?"

"Excuse me. I didn't mean to ask that, of course."

"What did you mean, Thornhill?"

"Do you like it?"

"Yes—well enough."

"I'll try not to keep you more than an hour, Whittier. That's right—no, drag up the big one; it's easier. Mind if I talk a little? What you newspaper men would call a human-interest story, I think."

"Go ahead."

Whittier was on the defensive—even inclined to belligerence. Thornhill was cold, businesslike, unbending. So they sat opposite the wide polished table like adversaries at some game. They were both big men: Thornhill groomed, tailored, a trifle overweight; Whittier somewhat stooped, with lines beginning to show on his face and a touch of gray in his hair—almost a gaunt figure in a ready-made suit that fitted none too well. Yet, at a test of wits or resourcefulness they would have been well matched. Whittier thought of the antipathy of their college days, watching the business man and scowling a little in puzzlement.

Thornhill moved a tray of letters aside and leaned back in his heavy desk chair. Then, in a deliberate fashion, but without hesitation, he began:

I NEVER had your viewpoint, Whittier, and I never will have it. Perhaps we inherit viewpoints—or is it environment? I was born and brought up to the idea that commercial supremacy is the biggest thing in America. I have never been able to get up any sympathy for the man in the ditch, as long as he stays in the ditch. Sometimes I've tried—but the only use I can see for the laboring classes is to work, to be instruments in the hands of their betters. Don't be offended: you know that I feel this way, and I know you don't agree with me. I'm merely stating facts. Presently you'll understand why.

I was sent to Blake College because my father and grandfather had given the institution money—endowment and all that sort of thing. You know what I had there—allowance and my bills paid by cash from home, a car, clothes, big parties. If I ever have a son, he won't be sent through college that way. You told me once that I was a snob, and I know now that you were right. I still am; that's the difficulty. I pick my friends and associates from my own class, and I can't bring myself to understand any of the other kind. Don't get hot under the collar, Whittier—let me finish.

I only had one hero in my freshman days: Bull Whitney, the old 'varsity fullback. He was a junior when we arrived, remember?—and for some reason or other he took a fancy to me. His people knew mine, or something, I suppose.

"Bull," I said to him, one night in my study, "I'm going out for the team next year.

"All right," Bull said. "Why make a speech about it? Pass me those cigarettes of yours."

I answered him a little hotly, I know.

"I wasn't making a speech," I said. "But if you mean that there's nothing surprising about my wanting to play football, I guess you don't know me.

"Oh," he said, laughing; "I guess I don't, then. Have you got a glass leg or something?"

"I didn't come here to mix up with a lot of immigrants' sons waiting on the table for a living!" I retorted. "I don't want anything to do with most of these common swine here! If I go out for the team, it will not be for the glory of our dear old Alma Mater or any of that rot—it will be for the glory of Theodore Thornhill III. I just happen to want to be the biggest half-back the university ever had. That's all."

"Oh, that's all, is it?" Bull said, and laughed loudly. "Go ahead, then, young demigod. Only don't write home if some of these common swine put a foot in your face in a scrimmage—that's my advice to you. The half-back next year at Yale may turn out to be some coal-miner's son. You can't be so damned aristocratic unless you confine yourself to solitaire or polo, sonny."

That was about what Bull Whitney said to me; but I didn't take it as a warning. I've noticed that very few people ever warn me, when you come to that. You did—and so I hated you cordially. Listen!

I went out for spring practice that year. Folk was coach. I soon found that I wasn't heady enough for a back-field position. Witherspoon and Folk talked me over, and finally gave me a try at tackle—opposite you. It was your second year in the scrub team. I despised you, on the field and off, because I'd heard your democratic-socialistic platform—that seemed to me all rot and impertinence. And, because of the clash between your ideas and mine, I wanted to take a crack at you. So I had my chance.

YOU haven't forgotten that year, I guess. I haven't.

You took up the gauntlet the first time I bumped you, if you remember. It was in one of the early practice workouts in our sophomore year.

"Oh, you're a bad man as well as an aristocrat, are you, Mister Thornhill?" you said to me. "Well, look out for your million-dollar neck, because this is going to be the French Revolution!"

"I don't even know your name," I said,—although I did well enough, Whittier,—" but you'll never live to keep your bricklaying father out of the poorhouse if you mix it with me!"

That was the way it started—maybe you've forgotten. I went for you, and I got the worst of it for two seasons.

"What's the matter with you two fellows?" Witherspoon, the assistant coach, asked me one day. "You and Whittier, I mean? You act like two strange dogs with one bone!"

"Do we?" I answered. "I hadn't even noticed it."

Witherspoon laughed.

"Hammer away," he said; "only save some of your fighting spirit for the games—and try not to get all crippled up."

I DON'T want you to think I was such an ass in those days, Whittier, as not to see that I had to hide a lot of my aristocratic notions. I thought I succeeded pretty well. But you seemed to sense a difference between the sort of person I showed the college and the sort of person I was. I did my best against you, but you had football instinct—I only had beef. And, because I was mad, I couldn't handle you nor myself. In the middle of our junior year you made the 'varsity at left tackle. I was only a sub. I hated you more than ever.

It was after your first big game that we had a talk. You see that I'm going all though the thing to make you understand, not because I suppose that you've forgotten. Towards you, personally, Whittier, I've changed—I don't hate you now; in fact, I think I might rather like you. But for your ideas, if they're the same old radical notions, I have the same intolerance that I used to have. I can't help it—I don't think I try to. It's a matter of viewpoint, as I said at the beginning.

Your first big game was against the Navy. I was on the side-lines, listening to Witherspoon and Folk discuss it, play by play. At the end of the first half we had one touchdown to Navy's nothing. Between the halves Folk told you that you weren't holding your man on defense.

"Imagine Thornhill is their right half, Whittier," he said. "You're letting that back make a fool of you. If you don't fight, I'll put Thornhill in and take you out. Remember!"

Of course I'd been watching you before—in the second half I didn't take my eyes off you. I saw that you could play ball, and that you were game. But you didn't have the weight. Time after time they hit your side of the line, and time after time you went back and down. They were hammering you to beat the devil—and I was hoping they would get you. Ten minutes before the half was over, they did.

I went in, and they began hammering me. I sized up that right half who was tearing into me, and I made up my mind that he was some back-woods farmer boy. He looked it. He was a great distance gainer—I've forgotten his name, but you remember him. At any rate, I thought that if my blood and aristocratic ideas were going to get me anywhere, they ought to begin; and I lay for that half. It gave me a thrill to see that I was the better man. I stopped him. They couldn't gain through me, and they tried the other side of the line.

Then they switched back to our side with a run outside tackle. Dickinson, left guard, saw the play coming. "Drive him in, sub!" he shouted to me. "Drive him in, and we'll grind him up between us!"

When the ball was downed, I snarled at Dickinson.

"You play your own position, and I'll play mine!" I said.

Captain Warburton heard us.

"Shut up, you there in the line!" he growled. "Play low and shut up!"

I knew that I was putting up a stronger defensive game than you had. We were still one touchdown to the good—Warburton had failed to kick goal. If Navy made

---

a touchdown and a goal they'd win. I knew that I could hold that farmer boy at right half; but when they sent over a cross-tackle play they caught me napping. My right half didn't hit me at all—he cut in and took Dickinson.

Two or three of them charged me in a bunch. I made a grab for the man with the ball, but their interference was perfect, and shunted me off. I came about in time to see Navy's left tackle clearing our secondary defense and driving for little Walsh in the back-field. I started to run—of course, without any hope of catching them. But Walsh made a dive. The man with the ball stumbled and almost went down.

He cleared away somehow, delayed by the attempted tackle, and got going again. But by that time I was on his heels with our right end—little red-headed chap: what the deuce was his name? Used to do gardening around the fraternity houses to help himself through. Metz—yes, that was the man. I was thinking about myself and my superiority of ideals and blood—and when Metz came up with me I was determined to beat him or kill myself. We were gaining, because the runner had hurt a tendon dodging Walsh.

"Keep over!" I shouted to Metz. "I've got him!"

Metz flashed me a look.

"Run, you damn snob!" he gasped. "Run, and don't brag!"

I made up my mind to humiliate Metz. It was all in two or three seconds, you understand—but it was as clear to me as if we were playing checkers. We came up close, and dove together. I made Metz miss. He was a better tackle than I was. Yes, he missed—and it was my fault. Navy scored and kicked goal—and beat us!

NO one said anything to me about it. But Metz told you: he confessed as much to me later. I was all puffed up because the college was praising me for my try, and it looked as if I might make the tackle position, after all. Then you stopped me in the gym one evening, about a week after the Navy game.

"Are you satisfied with the limelight, Thornhill?" you asked.

"Perfectly," I answered. "And I have an engagement with my tailor. Good night."

"Wait a shake," you said, or something like that. "I want to talk to you a minute—and it will do your soul more good than your tailor can."

"I don't want to talk to you," I retorted.

"You'd better," you said.

"I'd better! See here, you anarchist, what do you mean by getting familiar? Off the field I don't know you from the janitors!"

"That's the reason you should listen," you said. "The trouble with you is that there is too much blue in your blood and too much money in your bank. You want to play on the team, and you ought to. You're learning fast, and next year we're going to need you—the college is, see? But you'll be sidetracked for some man who isn't as good a football-player if you don't learn a little economics."

"Economics?"

"Exactly. The economics of football. A football eleven is a democracy. So is this country. It's a parallel. In a democracy—country or football team—you've got to play with the rest, and for them. And you can't play with the rest, whether it's on the team or in business or in politics or anywhere else, unless you like them and understand them and try to get next to them. You can't just pretend to like them! You've got to start all over again. You've got to forget caste and class and be democratic."

"The hell I have!" I said. "You've talked all you're going to to me, young fellow. I'll make the 'varsity, and I'll make it my own way; and, except for the coaches and the captain, I don't listen to any one. That's all. And if I play against you in practice, you want to look out, because I'm going to think more of my caste and yours than I ever have!"

You didn't lose your temper. You only said:

"I don't mind telling you that my concern is not for you; it's for the college and for next year's line. If you could forget yourself long enough you would agree with me."

But I turned and walked away, and those were about the last words we had in the university, as nearly as I can remember.

WELL, from the time of our conversation on, you fought me every time we met in practice. In our senior year you held your position at left tackle, but I substituted for you more than once. And I was getting better all the time—while you were just holding your own. It was because I was playing for everything you were, and more—I was playing for myself and my pride. You had notions about the honor of the college and team-work, and all that, that I confess I couldn't get. I thought I saw that every man on the team was doing his best for himself, just as I was. You were the only one—or you and Metz, perhaps—who knew that I was a snob.

Toward the end of our last season we had three hard games running—we won one and lost two. I don't remember much about them, except that in one I prevented a winning touchdown against us by a spectacular sort of tackle in the open field in spite of strong interference, and you went out in another game because you muffed a bounding kick. I remember trotting by you that time to take your place, and snarling at you. I think I called you a yellow anarchist, or something like that.

But all this time it was growing on me that you were one of the idols of the university. That's important. Every one liked you, and in the stands they'd pull for you and cheer you when they didn't know that I was alive. That was the situation the week before the big conference game. You know what the rivalry was between the 'varsity and Camden—no need to comment on that. It was our football crisis, and we all knew it. My own people were to be there with a lot of their kind, and I wanted to make a showing. I can admit now—though I never did before—that my heart stood still when Folk stood up in the gym to announce the names of the men who would go out at the whistle on Saturday.

He read the list—and you were at left tackle. I was to substitute. I had a hard time keeping myself in hand while the squad was there; but I later confronted Folk.

"I don't get my chance, then?" I said.

"Sub-tackle," he replied. You remember how short he was.

"Why Whittier?" I asked.

"Whittier is the better man. You're a good tackle—when you can forget how great your father is. I can't trust you to play with the team, and so I leave you on the side-lines. That's the whole story."

"My father hasn't anything to do with it!" I snapped.

"No, Thornhill," Folk said. "That's just the trouble. He hasn't—but you don't know it."

"What do you mean?"

Then Folk surprised me by using almost exactly your words, Whittier. He said:

"Thornhill, a football team is a perfect little democracy. It's a unit—of the people, for the people, and by the people. You've got the class-consciousness sticking out,—even though you try to hide it,—and I can't play eleven castes on my team Saturday, because I've got to beat Camden. If I use you Saturday, you try to show me that you can forget your father. Good night!"

That was a jolt. But I was too proud to let any one see it. I went out Saturday and sat on the side-lines. I saw one of the finest first halves that was ever played in the history of football. I saw Camden fight us down the field twice to within striking distance of our goal, and then pile up. Finally I saw them go over—by inches. When the teams got up, Baxter, our right guard, was stretched cold. Folk took him out, shoved Dickinson over into his place, and put me in at left guard, next to you.

"For heaven's sake, play with Whittier and Sterne!" he whispered to me, as I pulled down my head harness. "Forget everything—everything I've said and everything you ever knew and thought—but that Blake needs you!"

"I'll do it or come in on a stretcher, Folk!" I said, and ran on to the field.

The first half was over almost immediately. I came the nearest then I ever did to having real school spirit, a real love for the university. I went out with that feeling uppermost. But when we trotted on from the gym, they cheered you and some of the others twice—and me last. It made me sore and angry.

"The peasants!" I said to myself, as we lined up to receive the kick. "I'll show them I'm better than all their tin gods!"

THE ball went down somewhere behind me—I think Walsh ran it in; then we fell into place and started. I knew right

away that we had the fight of the season on our hands. Camden was on its toes, not only determined to keep us from scoring up to that touchdown and goal of theirs, but to add more points to their victory. At the end of the third quarter we were tired; at least I was, and I had only just started. I broke my nose then. Have you ever done that, Whittier? It hurts. I wiped off the blood with the back of my hand, and borrowed a guard, and went on. I didn't dare tell any one, for fear of being put out of the game. I kept going.

It was our ball on their forty-yard line. Captain Warburton, at left half, began hammering through the line. We needed help from somewhere; for we were up against the stubbornest fighters in the conference. And before we'd gone twelve yards we began to sag. Then the stands came up, to a man! I remember the sight they made from the field—thousands of them, all in purple and gold streamers, and the band couldn't be heard above their steady rooting. If I had caught their spirit, I might have picked up speed, but instead I couldn't help thinking of my father and sister up there somewhere, and a lot of our friends from the city, and what it would mean to them to see me in the game and in the newspaper afterwards—and I went in spurts. There were some downs when I would be able to tear a hole in their defense that the backs could drive a truck through. And the next time I'd hit something hard—and I'd bury myself underneath to keep my folks from seeing me.

I'm telling you the truth, Whittier—I was playing to my particular crowd in the stands. And the rooters made me worse. Once in a while I'd hear my name, but most of the time it was the team, or the line, or some of you others! And the yells for me seemed to "peter out," as the miners say. The crowd was behind you,—it came to me finally,—and behind me there was nobody but my family! And money, and all that! I hadn't liked the mob, and I hadn't understood them, and I hadn't wanted to—until now!

AS I was saying, we were going down the field on bucks towards the close of the game. We failed to make distance twice, then were thrown back, and Camden took the ball and kicked. Walsh, in the backfield, returned the kick. Camden tried a fake play, was blocked, and lost the ball on a fumble. We were on the thirty-yard line, and it was our chance. Warburton called the signal for a fake. Frizelle, the substitute right half, got away clear—and the score was tied—with eight minutes to play.

I didn't think I could keep going. I felt as if my nose was broken up back of my eyes somewhere, and it hurt like the devil. I had no feeling, for a while, except a sense of that broken nose.

"Play up, play up, Thornhill!" Warburton growled in my ear, as we came out of the first scrimmage after the kick.

"Play up?" I growled. "Aren't you satisfied?"

"Don't talk back!" the captain cried aloud. "Lean on 'em, man! You're not counting cash or reading the stock ticker out here, y' know!"

I wanted to stop then,

Continued on page 22

Would a Little Sales Spirit Help Me?

By JAMES H. COLLINS

WHAT the hotel clerk said to the meek little man who asked for a dollar-and-a-half room was about like this:

"We don't have rooms at such low rates! No, I can't tell when one will be vacant. Maybe you did telegraph for a reservation, but that don't entitle you to any consideration—you have to take your chances with other people. What did you say your name was? Well, I won't bother putting it down, because it will be easier for you to come back later. What do you want a room for, anyway?"

And the meek little man went out, fully conscious that he was asking a favor when he tried to spend his money at that hotel.

The average hotel clerk is typical of a class of people who imagine that sales spirit has no bearing on their work. Many hotels advertise for guests, dwell on their comforts and courtesies, clutter up their rooms with printed "personality talks," and then nullify it all by lack of a little sales spirit behind the desk.

If that clerk had answered the meek little man like a salesman, he would have said:

"The house happens to be full this morning, Mr. Meek, but I'm glad you wired for a reservation, because it gives us a chance to take care of you with the first vacancy. We appreciate your selection of this hotel. We have no rooms at one-fifty, but all our two-dollar rooms have a private bath, and I believe you'll find them good value. Will you leave me a telephone number, so I can call you when a room is ready? Just let the boy take care of your grips until we can make you more comfortable."

Surely that sounds different!

All through the business world there are people who have never taken the trouble to deal with the public as salesmen, thinking out standard statements in the terms of salesmanship. Instead of taking the salesman's attitude toward the people they deal with, making an effort to be pleasant, to create good feeling, and give service, they assume that their work involves no selling and that sales tactics would be wasted.

It is easy enough to find these folk—they not only run trains, render bills, make collections and deliveries, and do countless other kinds of work for corporations, stores, and factories, but are familiar in professional and technical lines.

Their opportunities for selling are really greater than in lines where selling is already known to be necessary, just because the sales spirit is so rare in their kind of work.

Late one night a passenger boarded a Western train at a small station, and went into the sleeping-car, asking for his berth. The Pullman conductor said that every berth was taken. When the passenger protested that he had wired for a reservation, the conductor laughed and said that his name was not on the car plan, and that telegraphing didn't entitle him to a berth, anyway—the railroad agent had probably forgotten to send the message. The passenger went to the railroad conductor, who might have dismissed him with a curt statement that he had nothing to do with the sleeping-car. But that conductor had a little sales spirit.

"We want you to be comfortable every minute you're on this road," said he genially. "Let's go back and see what's wrong."

Ten minutes later the passenger was in a berth. His name had been misspelled on the car plan, that was all, and the Pullman conductor lacked sales spirit to investigate.

Two months later this passenger had the routing of a special train that was to take a party of business men to the Pacific coast; and that road was chosen from several competitors, because one conductor had handled a difficulty like a salesman—and the conductor was taken along to look after the party.

A certain corporation engaged a technical expert to carry on a campaign of instruction among sportsmen's clubs, with a view to popularizing its products. The expert lacked selling spirit, and insisted on technicalities to such a degree that he antagonized everybody with whom he came in contact. After he had gone over the territory and thoroughly ruffled everybody, the sales manager of a competing company got the business in that territory by adding the sales spirit in a novel way. He did not try to make a salesman out of the expert, but he hired him to write a technical treatise on his specialty. Then he added sufficient selling argument to give the treatise geniality. That did the trick.

Sales spirit, and the salesman's way of thinking and talking, are needed in thousands of places throughout the business world. They can be adapted to work and situations never regarded from that standpoint, and utilized to reduce business costs, eliminate friction, increase turnover. It was not until a certain large public service corporation stopped handling customers' complaints through a cheap clerk, and gave that detail to an efficient salesman, for instance, that it began to create genuine good will in its community.

Sales spirit can be made a means of promotion to many a man who apparently does not need it in his work, but who will take the trouble to study and apply it. And that may be as interesting as invention. For it is largely applying a new point of view to the daily routine.

Who Borrows Money—and Why?

IN two and a half years 44,866 persons borrowed money from a New York credit bank that specializes in small loans. The average loan was $125, average weekly wages of borrowers $26, of whom 42,436 were men, 2,430 women, 33,125 married, 11,741 single. Each borrower had more than two other people dependent upon him on the average, and 4,090 owned real estate. The total involved in the loans was $5,565,070, and the favorite sums were from $25 to $50 (13,140 loans) and from $75 to $100 (17,367). Only eighty-two borrowers wanted $1,000 and upward.

Who these borrowers were is shown in exact figures of their occupations, published in the Morris Plan Bulletin. Business men led—owners and managers, 5,499. Then came clerks, 4,947. Then printers, 3,250. The post-office employees headed a great procession of people with public positions who have to manage on a rigid and usually meager wage—3,019 postal employees, 2,699 policemen, 2,696 city employees, 2,519 firemen, 1,058 United States Government employees, and 668 in state and county and court jobs. Street-car and public service employees made up a large number, 1,835, and salesmen 2,705, book-keepers 1,220, factory workers 1,188, managers 1,141. Other classes represented by several hundred borrowers were stenographers, foremen, telegraphers, mechanics, tailors, and school-teachers, while professional men and women were slenderly represented with 177 doctors and 134 writers.

Why did they all want money? Debt was the motive in 7,548 loans, illness and births 7,556, business expansion 4,645, personal expenses 4,127, household expenses 3,759, helping relatives 2,204, vacations 1,616, paying taxes 993, pawnshop and chattel mortgage loans 979, buying furniture 945, education 943, beginning business 888, paying mortgage or mortgage interest 860, improvements 634, deaths 570, weddings 497.

A Bargain Room for Employees

A CHICAGO electrical company had a good many things slightly shop-worn by display. It was not willing to sell the public anything not absolutely new: so a sale of these shop-worn articles was held, disposing of them to employees at about one third off regular prices. This led to a regular bargain sales-room for employees, according to the Electrical World; and finally, as the business grew, there was enough such stock to justify admitting the public to the bargain room.

Dare You Measure Your Efficiency?

SOME advertising men were on the way to a convention. To pass the hours on the train, they tested themselves by a set of questions, each rating himself privately and announcing only the result. They were all pretty able men, but they allowed themselves only an average of thirty per cent, according to one of the party who reported the incident for Printer's Ink. Here are some of the questions. How do you rate?

Do you like your work?

Have you learned the best, quickest, and easiest way of doing it?

Are you thoroughly informed on "scientific management."

Do you know where your greatest power lies?

Have you a fixed goal, in the line with your supreme talent?

Have you learned how to get well and keep well?

Can you be optimistic under all circumstances?

Do you realize which of your habits, thoughts, or emotions make you efficient?

Are you correcting your known weaknesses—mental, financial, social, or spiritual?

Do you breathe deeply and hold an erect posture?

Are you independent, fearless, positive?

Are you tactful, cautious, courteous?

Have you secured the best posiible advisers and associates?

Do you wish your rivals well and never speak ill of them?

Do you work harder than anybody else in the business?

Have you learned the science of planning your day ahead?

Can you relax entirely in your leisure hours?

Are you saving money systematically?

Do you enjoy art, music, literature, and the presence of little children?

Does your highest ambition include some real services to humanity?

Have you a great love in your life, to steady, cheer, and empower you?

A Telephone on Every Table

NO more crowding up around the soda fountain and risking a collision in carrying your glass back to the table. J. George Smith of Indianapolis conceived the idea of putting a telephone on every table in his ice-cream emporium.

You enter, glance over the menu, and then, lifting the receiver, say: "No. 15, No. 2, and a plate of No. 17." And a few minutes later the waiter appears with it all on a tray.

The customer is pleased with the new idea: Mr. Smith is pleased: and every one is pleased except the tailors, who used to be able to count on a pretty steady revenue sponging the ice-cream spots off new dresses.

A Grocer's Good Idea

BETWEEN his corner windows a grocer in the Middle West had a brick pillar. A neat terra-cotta drinking fountain was installed there, with faucet and cup offering free ice water to anybody who wanted to stop in the street for a drink; and this has attracted hundreds of persons daily, says the National Grocer, each of whom has a chance to look over the goods displayed in the windows while he pauses. The terra-cotta fixture is easily kept clean. The water supply is taken from the city mains, so that contamination in a tank is avoided, and cooling is done by ice put into the fountain daily when the iceman fills the refrigerator.

Late Returns on Rupert

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Arthur William Brown

VEE and I were goin' over some old snap-shots the other night. It's done now and then, you know. Not deliberate. I'll admit that's a pastime you wouldn't get all worked up over plannin' ahead for. Tuesday mornin', say, you don't remark breathless: "I'll tell you: Saturday night at nine-thirty let's get out them last year's prints and give 'em the comp'ny front."

It don't happen that way—not with our sketch. What I was grapplin' for in the bottom of the window-seat locker was something different—maybe a marshmallow fork, or a corn-popper, or a catalogue of bath-room fixtures. Anyway, it was something we thought we wanted a lot, when I digs up this album of views that Vee took durin' that treasure-huntin' cruise of ours last winter on the old Agnes, with Auntie and Old Hickory and Captain Rupert Killam and the rest of the bunch. I was just tossin' the book one side when a picture slips out, and of course I has to take a squint. Then I chuckles.

"Look!" says I, luggin' it over to where Vee is curled up on the davenport in front of the fireplace. "Remember that?"

A giggle from Vee.

"'Auntie enjoying a half-hour eulogy of the dear departed, by Mrs. Mumford,' should be the title," says she. "She'd been sound asleep for twenty minutes."

"Which is what you might call good defensive," says I. But who's this gazin' over the rail beyond—J. Dudley Simms, or is that a ventilator?"

"Let's see," says Vee, reachin' for the readin' glass. "Why, you silly! That's Captain Killam."

"Oh!" says I. "Reckless Rupert, the great mind-play hero."

"I wonder what has become of him?" puts in Vee, restin' her chin on the knuckle of her forefinger and starin' into the fire.

"Him?" says I. "Most likely he's back in St. Petersburg, Florida, all dolled in white flannels, givin' the tin-can tourists a treat. That would be Rupert's game."

I don't know as you remember; but, in spite of Killam's havin' got balled up on the location of this pirate island, and Vee and me havin' to find it for him, he came in for his share of the loot. Must have been quite a nice little pot for Rupert, too—enough to keep him costumed for his mysterious hero act for a long time, providin' he don't overdress the part.

WEIRD combination—Rupert: about 60 per cent camouflage and the rest solemn boob. An ex-school-teacher from some little flag station in middle Illinois, who'd drifted down to the West Coast, and got to be a captain by ownin' an old cruiser that he took fishin' parties out to the grouper banks on. Them was the real facts in the life story of Rupert.

But the picture he threw on the screen of himself must have been something else again—seasoned sailor, hardy adventurer, daredevil explorer, and who knows what else? Catch him in one of his silent, starey moods, with them buttermilk blue eyes of his opened wide and vacant, and you had the outline. But that's as far as you'd get. I always thought Rupert himself was a little vague about it, but he would insist on takin' himself so serious. That's why we never got along well, I expect. To me Rupert was a walkin' joke, except when he got to sleuthin' around Vee and me and made a nuisance of himself.

"How completely people like that drop out of sight sometimes," says Vee, shuttin up the album.

"Yes," says I. "Contrary to old ladies who meet at summer resorts and in department-stores, it's a sizable world we live in. Thanks be for that, too."

But you never can tell. It ain't more'n three days later, as I'm breezin' through a cross street down in the cloak-and-suit and publishin'-house district, when a taxi rolls up to the curb just ahead, and out piles a wide-shouldered gent with freckles on the back of his neck. Course, I don't let on I can spot anybody I've ever known just by a sectional glimpse like that. But this was no common case of freckles. This was a splotchy, spattery system of rust marks, like a bird's-eye view of the enemy's trenches after a week of drum fire. Besides, there was the pale carroty hair.

Even then, the braid-bound cutaway and the biscuit-colored spats had me buffaloed. So I slows up until I can get a front view of the party who's almost tripped himself with the horn-handled walkin'-stick and is havin' a few last words with some one in the cab. Then I sees the washed out blue eyes, and I know there can't be any mistake. About then, too, he turns and recognizes me.

"Well, for the love of beans!" says I. "Rupert!"

The funny part of it is that I gets it off as cordial as if I was discoverin' an old trench mate. You know how you will. And, while I can't say Captain Killam registered any wild joy in his greetin', still he seemed pleased enough. He gives me a real hearty shake.

"And here is some one else you know," says he, wavin' to the cab: "Mrs. Mumford."

Blamed if it ain't the cooin' widow. She's right there with the old familiar purry gush, too, squeezin' my fingers kittenish and askin' me how "dear, sweet Verona" is. I was just noticin' that she'd ditched the half mournin' for some real zippy raiment when she leans back so as to exhibit a third party in the taxi—a young gent with one of these dead-white faces and a cute little black mustache—reg'lar lounge-lizard type.

"Oh, and you must meet my dear friend, Mr. Vinton Bartley," she purrs. "Vinton, this is the Torchy I've spoken about so often."

"Ah, ya-a-as," drawls Vinton, blowin' out a whiff of scented cigarette smoke lazy. "Quite so. But—er—hadn't we best be getting on, Lorina?"

"Yes, yes," coos Mrs. Mumford. "By-by, Captain. Good-by, Torchy."

And off they whirls, leavin' me with my mouth open and Rupert starin' after 'em gloomy.

"Lorina, eh?" says I. "How touchin'!"

Killam only grunts, but it struck me he has tinted up a bit under the eyes.

"Say, Rupert," I goes on, "who's your languid friend with the cream-of-cabbage complexion?"

"Bartley?" says he. "Oh, he's a friend of Mrs. Mumford; a drama-tist—so he says."

NOW, I might have let it ride at that and gone along about my own affairs, which ain't so pressin' just then. Yes, I might. But I don't. Maybe it was hornin' in where there was no welcome sign on the mat, and then again perhaps it was only a natural folksy feelin' for an old friend I hadn't seen for a long time. Anyway, I'm prompted sudden to take Rupert by the arm and insist that he must come and have lunch with me.

"Why—er—thanks," says the Captain; "but I have a little business to attend to in here." And he nods to an office buildin'.

"That'll be all right, too," says I. "I'll wait."

"Will you?" says Rupert, beamin'. "I shall be pleased."

So in less'n half an hour I have Rupert planted cozy at a corner table with a mixed grill in front of him, and I'm givin' him the cue for openin' any confidential chat he may have on hand. He's a good deal of a clam, though, Rupert. And suspicious! He must have been born lookin' over his shoulder. But in my own crude way I can sometimes josh 'em along.

"Excuse me for mentionin' it, Rupert," says I, "but there's lots of class to you these days."

"Eh?" says he. "You mean—"

"The whole effect," says I, "from the gaiters to the new-model lid. Just like you'd strolled out from some Fifth Avenue club and was goin' to 'phone your brokers to buy another block of Bethlehem at the market. Honest!"

He pinks up and shakes his head, but I can see I've got the range.

"And here Vee and I had doped it out," I goes on, "how you'd be down on the West Coast by this time, investin' your pile in orange groves and corner lots.

"No," says Rupert; "I've been here all the while. You see, I—I've grown rather fond of New York."

You needn't apologize," says I. "There's a few million others with the same weakness, not countin' the ones that sleep in New Jersey but always register from here. Gone into some kind of business, have you?"

Rupert does some fancy side-steppin' about then; but all of a sudden he changes his mind, and, after glancin' around to see that no one has an ear out, he starts his confession.

"The fact is," says he, "I've been doing a little literary work."

"Writin' ads," says I, "or solicitin' magazine subscriptions?"

"I am getting out a book of poems," says Rupert, dignified.

"Wh-a-a-at?" I gasps. "Not—not reg'lar limerick stuff?"

I can see now that was a bad break. But Rupert is patient with me. He explains that these are all poems about sailors and ships and so on; real salt, tarry stuff. Also, he points out how it's built the new style way, with no foolish rhymes at the end, and with long lines or short, just as they happen to come. To make it clear, he digs up a roll of galley proofs he's just collected from the publishers. And say, he had the goods. There it was; yards of it, all printed neat in big fat type. "Sea Songs" is what he calls 'em, and each one has a separate tag of its own, such as "Kittywakes," "Close Hauled," and "Scuppers Under."

"Looks like the real stuff," says I. "Let's hear how it listens. Ah, come on! Some of that last one, about scuppers, now."

With a little more urgin', Rupert reads it to me. I should call him a good reader, too. Anyway, he can untie one of them deep, boomin' voices, and with that long, serious face of his helpin' out the general effect—well, it's kind of impressive. He spiels off two or three stickfuls and then stops.

"Which way was you readin' that, backwards or forwards?" says I.

Rupert begins to stiffen up, and I hurries on with the apology. "My mistake," says I. "I thought maybe you might have got mixed at the start. No offense. But say, Cap'n, what's the big idea? What does it all mean?"

In some ways Rupert is good-natured. He was then. He explains how in this brand of verse you don't try to tell a story or anything like that. "I am merely giving my impressions," says he. "That is

Continued on page 15

THE CAPITOL

IN 1783 Congress was forced by mutinous troops to leave Philadelphia, and establish itself in Trenton, later in York, Lancaster, and finally in Baltimore. Eventually Congress wearied of this nomad existence, and for seven years discussed the site of a "federal city" which would not be so transient. Characteristically, every senator wanted it located in his "home town."

Fortunately for us, George Washington was a skilled surveyor as well as a shrewd statesman. He chose ten square miles of beautiful country near the obscure village of Georgetown, for two reasons—because of its haunting natural beauty, and because he was determined that the affairs of this nation should never be dominated by the mob spirit of any one great city. The Paris mob had made and unmade the destinies of France, and the London rabble had dictated the affairs of the British Empire. The new "federal city" should be neutral. Major L'Enfant, a talented French engineer, was selected to draw up the plans.

During the gray days of our early struggle, when we had neither credit nor friends, neither experience nor self-confidence, Major L'Enfant dreamed of a city magnificent. No one believed in his plan—except Washington; but now the whole world knows how wisely he dreamed. "I know of no great city in Europe, except Constantinople," said James Bryce, "that has in its very environs such beautiful scenery as has Washington in Rock Creek Park and the many woods that stretch along the Potomac."

In 1812 the British burned the Capitol. So confident were Madison and Monroe that our troops, far superior in numbers, would defeat the smaller British force at Bladensburg, that they rode out to see the battle, and left a dinner all spread for the officers in the White House. But the British won the fight and ate the dinner.

Their outrage upon the Capitol proved, in the long run, a blessing: for Washington came back more beautiful than ever, even as Paris, after the capture of 1870, came back gloriously with the Paris Exposition less than a decade later.

WHEN LION MEETS LION

---

HOW DO YOU STAND WITH THEM?

all. Interpreting my own feelings, as it were."

"Oh!" says I. "Then there's no goin' behind the returns. Who's to say you don't feel that way? I get you now. But that ain't the kind of stuff you can wish onto the magazines, is it?"

Which shows just how far behind the bass-drum I am. Rupert tells me the different places where he's unloaded his pieces, most of 'em for real money. Also, I pumps out of him how he came to get into the game. Seems he'd been roomin down in old Greenwich Village; just happened to drift in among them long-haired men, and short-haired girls. It turns out that the book was a little enterprise that was being backed by Mrs. Mumford. Yes, it's that kind of a book—so much down in advance to the Grafter Press. You know, Mrs. Mumford always did fall for Rupert, and after she's read one of his sea spasms in a magazine she don't lose any time huntin' him out and renewin' their cruise acquaintance. A real poet! Say, I can just see her playin' that up among her friends. And when she finds he's mixin' in with all those dear, delightful Bohemians, she insists that Rupert tow her along too.

FROM then on it was a common thing for her and Rupert to go browsin' around among them garlic and red-ink joints, defyin' ptomaines and learnin' to braid spaghetti on a fork. That was her idea of life. She hires an apartment right off Washington Square and moves in from Montclair for the winter. She begun to have what she called her "salon evenings," when she collected any kind of near-celebrity she could get.

Mr. Vinton Bartley was generally one of the favored guests. I didn't need any second sight, either, to suspect that Vinton was sort of crowdin' in on this little romance of Rupert's. And by eggin' Rupert along judicious I got the whole tale.

Seems it had been one of Mrs. Mumford's ambitions to spring Rupert on an unsuspectin' public. Her idea is to have Rupert called on, some night at the Purple Pup, to step up to the head of the long table and give one of his sea songs. She'd picked Vinton to do the callin'. And Vinton had balked.

"But say," says I, "is this Vinton gent the only one of her friends that's got a voice? Why not pick another announcer?"

"I'm sure I don't know," says Rupert. "She—she hasn't mentioned the subject recently."

"Oh!" says I. "Too busy listenin' to the voice of the viper, eh?"

Rupert nods and stares sad into his empty demi-tasse. And say, when Rupert gets that way he's an appealin' cuss.

"See here, Rupert," says I; "if you got a call of that kind, would you come to the front and make a noise like a real poet?"

"Why," says he, "I suppose I ought to. It would help the sale of the book, and perhaps—"

"One alibi is enough," I breaks in. "Now, another thing: How'd you like to have me stage-manage this début of yours?"

"Oh, would you?" says he, beamin'.

"Providin' you'll follow directions," says I.

"Why, certainly," says Rupert. "Any suggestions that you may make—"

"Then we'll begin right now," says I. "You are to ditch that flossy, floor-walker outfit of yours from this on."

"You mean," says Rupert, "that I am not to wear these clothes?"

"Just that," says I. "When you get to givin' mornin' readin's at the Plaza for the benefit of the Red Cross, you can dig 'em out again; but for the Purple Pup you got to be costumed different. Who ever heard of a goulash poet in a braid-bound cutaway and spats? Say, it's a wonder they let you live south of the Arch."

"But—but what ought I to wear?" asks Rupert.

"Foolish question!" says I. "Who are you, anyway? Answer: the Sailor Poet. There you are! Sea captain's togs for you—double-breasted blue coat, baggy-kneed blue trousers, and a yachtin' cap.

"Very well," says Rupert. "But about my being asked to read. Just how—"

"Leave it to me, Rupert," says I. "Leave everything to me."

Which was a lot simpler than tellin' him I didn't know.

YOU should have seen Vee's face when I tells her about Rupert's new line.

"Captain Killam a poet!" says she. "Oh, really now, Torchy!"

"Eh-huh!" says I. "He's done enough for a book. Read me some of it, too."

"But—but what is it like?" asks Vee. "How does it sound?"

"Why," says I, "it sounds batty to me—like a record made by a sailor who was simple in the head and talked a lot in his sleep. Course, I'm no judge. What's the difference, though? Rupert wants to spout it in public."

"But the people in the restaurant," protests Vee. "Suppose they should laugh, or do something worse?"

"That's where Rupert is takin' a chance," says I. "Personally, I think he'll be lucky if they don't throw plates at him. But we ain't underwritin' any accident policy; we're just bookin' him for part he claims he can play. Are you on?"

Vee gets that eye twinkle of hers workin'. "I think it will be perfectly lovely."

I got to admit, too, that she's quite a help.

"We must be sure Mrs. Mumford and that Bartley person are both there," says she. "And we ought to have as many of Captain Killam's friends as possible. I'll tell you. Let's give a dinner-party."

"Must we?" says I. "You know we ain't introducin' any London success. This is Rupert's first stab, remember."

"We set the date for the day the book was to be out, which gives Rupert an excuse for celebratin'. He'd invited Mrs. Mumford and Vinton to be his guests, and they'd promised to be on hand. As for us, we'd rounded up Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ellins and J. Dudley Simms.

WELL, everybody showed up. And, as it happens, it's one of the big nights at the Purple Pup. The long center table is surrounded by a gay bunch of assorted artists who are bein' financed by an out-of-town buyer who seems to be openin' Chianti reckless. We were over in one corner, as far away from the ukulele torturers as we could get, while at the other end of the room is Rupert with his two. I thought he looked kind of pallid, but it might have been only on account of the cigarette smoke.

Is it time yet, Torchy?" asks Mr. Robert, when we gets through to the striped ice cream and chicory essence.

"Let's hold off," says I, "and see if some one else don't pull a curtain-raiser."

Sure enough, they did. A bald-headed, red-faced old boy with a Liberty Bond button in his coat-lapel insists on everybody's drinkin' to our boys at the front. Followin' that, some one leads a slim, big-eyed young female to the piano and announces that she will do a couple of Serbian folk-songs. Maybe she did. I hope the Serbs forgive her.

"If they can take that without squirmin'," says I, "I guess they can stand for Rupert. Go on, Mr. Robert. Shoot."

Course, he's no spellbinder, but he can say what he wants to in a few words and make himself heard. And then, bein' in naval uniform helped.

"I think we have with us to-night," says he, "Captain Rupert Killam, the sailor poet. I should like, if it pleases the company, to ask Captain Killam to read for us some of his popular verses. Does any one second the motion?"

"Killam! Killam!" roars out the sporty wine-opener.

Others took up the chorus, and in the midst of it I dashes over to drag Rupert from his chair if necessary.

But I wasn't needed. As a matter of fact, he beat me to it. Before I could get half way to him, he is standin' at the end of the long table, his eyes dropped modest, and a brand-new volume of "Sea Songs" held conspicuous over his chest.

"This is indeed an unexpected honor," says Rupert, lyin' fluent. "I am a plain sailor-man, as you know, but if you insist—"

And, before they could hedge, he has squared his shoulders, thrown his head well back, and has cut loose with that boomin' voice of his. Does he put it over? Say, honest, I finds myself listenin' with my mouth open, just as though I understood every word. And the first thing I know he's carryin' the house with him. Even some of the Hungarian waiters stopped to see what it's all about.

Tides!
Little, rushing, hurrying tides
Along the sloping deck.
And the bobstay smashing the big deep blue,
While under my hand
The kicking tiller groans
Its oaken soul out in a gray despair.

That's part of it I copied down afterward. Yet that crowd just lapped it up.

"Wow!" "Brava! Brava!" "What's the matter with Killam?" they yells. "More!"

Rupert was flushin' clear up the back of his neck now. Also he was fumblin' with the book, hesitatin' what to give 'em next, when I pushes in and begins pumpin' his hand.

"Shall—shall I—" he starts to ask.

"No, you boob," I whispers. "Quit while the quittin's good. You got 'em buffaloed, all right. Let it ride."

And I fairly shoves him over to his table, where Sister Mumford has already split out a new pair of gloves and is beamin' joyous, while Vinton is sittin' there with his chin on his necktie, lookin' like some one had beaned him with a bung-starter.

BUT we wasn't wise just how strong Rupert had scored until we saw the half page Whitey Weeks had gotten out of it for the Sunday paper. "New Poet Captures Greenwich Village" is the top headline, and there's a three-column cut showin' Rupert spoutin' his "Sea Songs" through the cigarette smoke. Also, I gather from a casual remark Rupert let drop yesterday that the prospects of him and Mrs. Mumford enterin' the mixed doubles class soon are good. And, with her ownin' a big retail coal business over in Jersey, I expect Rupert can go on writin' his pomes as free as he likes.

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

INCREASING CROPS BY ELECTRICITY

THE British government has recently taken over Huntington Court Farm, near Hereford, according to Chambers's Journal. Over the whole farm a system of thin wires has been spread, and a current will be constantly discharged into the soil. The experiment is to be continued for three years and careful records kept.

In a similar experiment last year, just reported by the British Board of Agriculture, an acre of soil near Dumfries was taken and sown to oats. It was subjected to electric treatment for a total of 848 hours during the season, while a similar acre near by received exactly the same attention, with the exception of the electricity. The crop from the electrically treated acre was forty-nine per cent greater than that from the other acre—much more than enough to pay for the cost of the current.

DON'T OVERWORK YOUR HUSBAND

"DON'T overwork the husbands after they get home from a day of arduous toil in the factories," advises Dr. L. P. Kuhn, chief surgeon of the Illinois Manufacturers' Casualty Association, in Safety Engineering.

"A man who has worked steadily all day in a plant is not in condition to work three or four hours longer about the house," said Dr. Kuhn. "He needs his rest, that he may recuperate for next day. If a wife is inconsiderate enough to make him wash the dishes, clean the house, or look after the children, she is impairing the efficiency of her husband and producing a state of fatigue which may result in some unfortunate accident the next day, for it is when a man is fatigued that accidents are most likely to occur."

FIGHTING STARVATION

"THE Allies are at liberty to feed the Belgians. If they don't they are responsible for anything that may happen. If there are bread riots, the natural thing would be for us to drive the whole civil population into some restricted area, like the Province of Luxemburg, build a barbed-wire fence around them, and leave them to starve."

This was the opinion of General von Luttwitz, which he expressed with "some show of feeling" to Mr. Hugh Gibson of the American Legation in Brussels, as reported in the World's Work. In another place in the same magazine Vernon Kellogg tells how the Relief Commission took up the German challenge.

The most difficult problem of the relief was the internal transportation of food. Next to that came the problem of flour-making, baking, and bread rationing. The entire business of milling and baking in Belgium was carried out under the direction of the relief organization.

The ration finally established by the Commission contained, besides bread, a little bacon, lard, rice, dried beans and peas, cerealine, potatoes, and brown sugar. It cost about eight cents a day. Many Belgians lived on it almost exclusively for three long years. But many, on the other hand, could not afford all of this. At the end of last year more than a million and a half people were living altogether on charity—standing in line every day for the pint of soup and the ten ounces of bread that enabled them to go on existing.

The long privation and semi-starvation is having its effect [writes Mr. Kellogg]. The people exist; yes, but how many are wasting away! Everywhere over Belgium, and among all ages, there is an alarming increase of tuberculosis.

The Commission to-day is struggling harder than ever before to obtain and transport overseas and into Belgium the needed food.

The ever-increasing demands from the Allies and our own nation for ships for military purposes is making the "relief of Belgium" more and more difficult. The real relief that the Belgians and the civilized world are praying for is the early rescue of the Belgian land and people from German occupation. That alone will really save Belgium; and even that must not be too long delayed.

ANOTHER SPY STORY

THE Austrians have had their share of trouble with the ingenuity of their enemies. "When I came to leave Vienna, I was forced to abandon all my books," says Wolf von Schierbrand in his book on Austria-Hungary (Frederick A. Stokes Company). "I went to the chief of the censorship, and found him a charming old gentleman replete with courtesy. But to my remonstrance he replied: 'Consider, my dear sir, that espionage against us has been carried on very largely by books leaving the country. Needle-pricks may mean all sorts of things. We lately found a few such pricks in the title-page of a book. They meant, in an agreed code: "Turn to page 65." On page 65 we found one word designated by a prick, and another set of pricks to carry the reader on to page 115, where a second word in the message was marked; and so on. Merely innocent looking pin-pricks—but how can we tell? Your edition of Thackeray, for instance. Each small volume, 850-900 pages. Why, it would take an assistant of mine a fortnight merely to go through your Thackeray and Dickens and make sure there is no secret information in them. No, no; the books must remain in Vienna. Have a cigarette, my dear sir?'"

HE POPULARIZES FISH

THE yearly consumption of fish per person in the United States is about twenty pounds, while the consumption of meat approaches one hundred and seventy pounds. Moreover, every housewife knows that the price of meat is practically double that of fish. Confronted by these facts, Mr. Arthur Williams, food comptroller for New York City, decided something had to be done to popularize the fish; so he appointed Mr. Kenneth Fowler, of New York, as advance publicity agent. Mr. Fowler's business is to better market conditions, establish distribution centers, and increase cold-storage transportation arrangements. Even fishermen, he thinks, are unfamiliar with the food value of their "catch." Sturgeon, for instance, used to be tossed back in disgust. Now it sells for eighteen cents a pound, and, as the sturgeon weighs from one hundred to three hundred pounds, it becomes a valuable asset. The old laws forbidding seining for fish within the three-mile limit are to be restricted to migratory fish only.

Mr. Fowler intends to encourage the fisherman in intelligent and strenuous activity and the housewife in increased buying and experimenting with different kinds of fish. "Whiting," Mr. Fowler tells us, costs from two to three cents a pound, and tastes like crab meat. Why not "whiting à la Neuberg"?

THEY DON'T BURY THEIR HEADS

BUT otherwise one can not hand the ostrich a very high mark for all-round intelligence, says Dr. J. E. Duerdon of South Africa in the American Museum Journal.

Yet the stupid ostrich is probably the most pampered animal in domestic service. The ostrich farmer has no option in the matter, because if the quality of the bird's food falls off his blood pressure begins to vary and his feathers deteriorate.

"With care," the writer says, "the normal character of the plumage may be preserved year after year, maybe for fifty or more years. The first clipping occurs when the chicks are six months old." Another crop is ready in another six months. The third clipping usually represents the best crop the bird will produce. But with care little depreciation follows for some time.

The domesticated ostrich breeds at from two to three years, and the six-week period of incubation is undertaken in the nest by the cock at night and the hen by day, unless an incubator is employed.

PICKING MEN FOR AN ARCTIC EXPEDITION

THE worst strain of polar travel is not cold, but darkness, says Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary in The Secrets of Polar Travel (Century Company). Any healthy man can keep warm if he is properly dressed and fed; but no one, however healthy and cheerful, can ignore the four months of polar night. All men feel it and dread it; a nervous man would go insane under it. Admiral Peary has found that the effect is increased in the case of brunettes. Whenever possible, he chooses blondes for his expeditions.

He is careful to pick men who are not only young, cheerful, and strong, but thoroughly educated as well—believing that a man who is able to take an intelligent interest in the scientific results of an expedition has resources within himself that carry him far through the polar night.

Fat men may keep warm with greater ease, but they take up more room in the igloo, eat more, use more material for their clothes, and are far more likely to fall through the ice.

Most important of all, no man is worth his rations who spends his time wondering whether or not he will get home, and who feels a hero because he is enduring the rigors of the arctic. If a mistake is made in choosing men, it appears promptly. Admiral Peary says: "I know of no better test of character than a season spent in the polar regions. There is something about the life which very soon shows the true caliber of a man. If he is a cur, or has a yellow streak, it is sure to come out."

THE GOLDEN SNARE

By JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

Illustrations by George Giguère

"KOGMOLLOCKS—the blackest-hearted little devils alive when it comes to trading wives and fighting," said Philip, a little ashamed of the suddenness with which he had jumped back from the window. "Excuse my abruptness, dear. But I'd recognize that death thing on the other side of the earth. I've seen them throw it like an arrow for a hundred yards—and I have a notion they're watching the window!"

At sight of the dead wolf and the protruding javelin, Celie's face had gone as white as ash. Snatching up one of the pictures from the table, she thrust it into Philip's hand. It was one of the fighting pictures.

"So it's you?" he said, smiling at her and trying to keep the tremble of excitement out of his voice. "It's you they want, eh? I understand those pictures now—and I think we're in a hell of a fix. The Eskimos have followed you and Bram down from the north, and I'm laying a wager with myself that Bram won't return from the caribou hunt. If Bram hasn't got a spear through him this minute I'll never guess again!"

He withdrew his hands from her face, still smiling at her as he talked. She made a movement as if to approach the window. He detained her. And in the same moment there came a fierce and snarling outcry from the wolves in the corral. Making Celie understand that she was to remain where he almost forcibly placed her near the table, Philip went to the window.

The pack had gathered close to the gate, and two or three of the wolves were leaping excitedly against the sapling bars of their prison. Between the cabin and the gate a second body lay in the snow. Philip's mind leaped to a swift conclusion. The Eskimos had ambushed Bram, and they believed that only the girl was in the cabin. One by one, they were picking them off with their javelins from outside the corral.

Philip heard a low cry behind him. Celie had returned to the window. A vivid flush had gathered in each of her cheeks and her eyes blazed with a dark fire. She was thrusting into his hand a revolver.

It was a toy affair. The weight and size of the weapon told him that before he broke it and looked at the caliber. It was what they called in the service a "stocking" gun, fully loaded with .22 caliber shorts. But it would shoot as far as the stockade, and it would make a noise.

"They must not see you," he made Celie understand. "It won't do any good; and—"

"Se! Se!"

The warning came in a low cry from Celie's lips. A dark head was appearing slowly above the top of the stockade. Philip darted suddenly out into the open. The Eskimo did not see him, and Philip waited until he was on the point of hurling his javelin before be made a sound. Then he gave a roar that almost split his throat. In the same instant he began firing. The crack of his pistol and the ferocious outcry he made sent the Eskimo off the stockade like a ball hit by a club. The wolves, maddened by their inability to reach their enemies, turned swiftly. Philip hustled Celie into the cabin. They were scarcely over the threshold when the wolves were at the door.

"We're sure up against a nice bunch," he laughed, standing for a moment with his arm around Celie's waist. "A regular hell of a bunch, little girl! Now, if those wolves only had sense enough to know that we're a little brother and sister to Bram we'd be able to put up a fight that would be some circus. Did you see that fellow topple off the fence? Don't believe I hit him—at least, I hope I didn't. If they ever find out the size of this pea-shooter's sting they'll sit up there like a row of crows and laugh at us. But—what a bully noise it made!"

Slowly he drew his arm from her.

"I guess I've pulled off a rotten deal on that fellow in the picture," he said, turning to the window. "That is, if you belong to him. And if you didn't why would you stand there with your arms about his neck and he hugging you like that?"

A FEW minutes before he had crumpled the picture in his hand and dropped it on the floor. He picked it up now and mechanically smoothed it out as he made his observation through the window. The pack had returned to the stockade.

Celie had not moved. She was watching him earnestly. It seemed to him, as he went to her with the picture, that a new and anxious questioning had come into her eyes. It was as if she had discovered something in him that she had not observed before. He felt, for the first time, a sense of embarrassment.

He held out the picture. Celie took it, and for a space regarded it steadily without raising her gaze to meet his. If she had not understood him, she at least had guessed.

"Min fader," she said quietly, with the tip of her little forefinger on the man in the picture. "Min fader."

For a moment he thought she had spoken in English.

"Your—father?" he cried.

She nodded.

"Oo-ee—min fader!"

"Thank the Lord," gasped Philip. And then he suddenly added:

"Celie, have you any more cartridges? I feel like licking the world!"

There were no more cartridges. Celie made him understand that. But the discovery did not disturb him greatly. At close quarters he would prefer a good club to the pop-gun. He thought of the sapling cross-pieces in Bram's bunk against the wall, and tore one out. It was four feet in length, and as big around as his fist.

Something came up into his throat as she stood there looking at him. He had never seen any one quite so beautiful. He dropped his club, and held out his hand.

"Let's shake, Celie," he said. "I'm mighty glad you understand—we're pals."

Unhesitatingly she gave him her hand, and, in spite of the fact that death lurked

outside, they smiled into each other's eyes. After that she went into her room. For half an hour Philip did not see her again.

THE world outside was turning dark. The sky was growing thick and low. In half an hour a storm would break. The Eskimos had foreseen that storm. They knew that the trail taken in their flight, after they had possessed themselves of the girl, would very soon be hidden from the eyes of Bram and the keen scent of his wolves. So they had taken the chance—the chance to make Celie their prisoner before Bram returned.

And why, Philip asked himself, did these savage little barbarians of the north want her? It was not difficult to understand why the Eskimos had attacked Celie Armin's father and those who had come ashore with him from the ship. It was merely a question of lust for white men's blood and white men's plunder, and strangers in their country would naturally be regarded as easy victims. The mysterious and inexplicable part of the affair was their pursuit of the girl. Philip was sufficiently acquainted with the Eskimos to know that in their veins run very little of the red-blooded passion of the white man.

His attention turned to the gathering of the storm. The amazing swiftness with which the gray day was turning into the dark gloom of night fascinated him. It was piling in from the vast barrens to the north and east, and for a time it was accompanied by a stillness that was oppressive. He could no longer distinguish a movement in the tops of the cedars and banskian pines beyond the corral. In the corral itself he caught now and then the shadowy flitting movement of the wolves.

He did not hear Celie when she came out of her room. There was something in the awesome darkening of the world that brought them closer in that moment, and without speaking Philip found her hand and held it in his own. Then they both heard a low whispering sound; a sound that came creeping up out of the end of the world like a living thing; a whisper so vast that after a little it seemed to fill the universe, growing louder and louder until it was no longer a whisper, but a moaning, shrieking wail.

And now the storm swept over the cabin, and in Celie's throat there rose a little sob. Philip put out his arms. His soul rose in a wild ecstasy and rode on the wings of the storm. He held her closely against his breast, and he said:

"Nothing can hurt you, dear. Nothing—nothing—"

Suddenly there came a blast of the storm that rocked the cabin like the butt of a battering-ram; and in that same moment there came from just outside the window a shrieking cry such as Philip had never heard in all his life before. And following the cry there rose above the tumult of the storm the howling of Bram Johnson's wolves.

FOR a space Philip thought that the cry must have come from Bram Johnson himself—that the wolf-man had returned in the pit of the storm. Against his breast Celie had apparently ceased to breathe.

"It was only the wind, dear," he said. "Shall we light some of Bram's candles?"

He held her hand as he groped his way to where he had seen Bram's supply of bear-dips. She held two of the candles while he lighted them, and their yellow flare illumined her face while his own was still in shadow.

She had braided her hair in that interval while she was in her room, and the braid had fallen over her breast, and lay there shimmering softly in the candle-glow. He wanted to take her in his arms—he wanted to kiss her. But, instead, he took the silken braid gently in his two hands and crushed it against his lips.

"I love you," he cried softly. "I love you."

And the wind was wailing over them in a wild orgy of almost human tumult. He could see its swift effect on Celie, and again he was inspired by thought of his pocket atlas.

"I'll show you why the wind does that," he said to her, drawing her to the table and opening his atlas at the map of Canada. "See, here is the cabin." He made a little black dot with the pencil, and, turning to the four walls of Bram's stronghold, made her understand what it meant. "Up here, you see, is the Arctic Ocean, and away over there the Roes Welcome and Hudson's Bay. That's where the storm starts and when it gets out on the barren, without a tree or a rock to break its way for five hundred miles—"

The map told Celie where she was, and possibly how she had arrived there. Straight down to that dot from the blue space of the ocean far to the north the map-makers had trailed the course of the Coppermine River. Celie gave an excited little cry and caught Philip's arm. Then she placed a forefinger on the river.

She pointed to the mouth of the Coppermine where it emptied into Coronation Gulf.

He repeated the name of the river:

"Coppermine."

She nodded, her breath breaking a little in an increasing excitement. She seized the pencil, and a third of the distance down the Coppermine made a cross. In a low, eager voice she was telling him that where she had put the cross the treacherous Kogmollocks had attacked them. She described with the pencil their flight away from the river, and after that their return—and a second fight. It was then that Bram Johnson had come into the scene. And back there, at the point from which the wolf-man had fled with her, was her father. And she believed he was alive, for

---

it was excitement, instead of hopelessness or grief, that possessed her as she talked to him. It gave him a sort of shock. He wanted to tell her that it was impossible, and that it was his duty to make her realize the truth. It was inconceivable to think of him as still being alive, even if there had been armed men with him.

Was it conceivable, he asked himself, that the Eskimos had some reason for not killing Paul Armin, and that Celie was aware of the fact? If so, he failed to discover it. Again and again he made Celie understand that he wanted to know why the Eskimos wanted her; and each time she answered him with a hopeless little gesture. He did not learn that there were two other white men with Paul Armin.

ONLY by looking at his watch did he know when the night closed in. It was seven o'clock when he led Celie to her room and urged her to go to bed. An hour later he believed that she was asleep. He had waited for that, and quietly he prepared for the hazardous undertaking he had set for himself. He put on his cap and coat, and seized the club he had taken from Bram's bed. Then, very cautiously, he opened the outer door. A moment later he stood outside. The door closed behind him, and the storm pounded in his face.

Fifty yards away he could not have heard the shout of a man. And yet he listened, gripping his club hard, every nerve in his body strained to a snapping tension. Somewhere within that small circle of the corral were Bram Johnson's wolves; and as he hesitated, with his back to the door, he prayed that there would come no lull in the storm for the next few minutes. They could not see him or hear him or even smell him in that tumult of wind, unless on his way to the gate he ran into them. He did not run, but went as cautiously as if the night were a dead calm, the club half poised in his hands. He had a good idea of the distance and the direction of the gate, and when at last he touched the saplings of the stockade he knew that he could not be far off in his reckoning. Half a minute more, and the gate was open. He propped it securely against the beat of the storm with the club he had taken from Bram Johnson's bed.

Then he turned back to the cabin, and his face was strained and haggard when he found the door and returned again into the glow of the candlelight. In the center of the room, her face as white as his own, stood Celie.

"The wolves will be gone in the morning," he said, a ring of triumph in his voice. "I have opened the gate. There is nothing in our way now."

She understood. Her eyes were a glory to look into then. Her fingers unclenched at her breast, and she gave a short, quick breath and a little cry—and her arms almost reached out to him. He bent down, slowly so that she might draw away from him if she desired, and kissed her upturned lips. And then, with a strange little cry that was like the soft note of a bird, she turned from him and disappeared into the darkness of her room.

A great deal of that night's storm passed over his head unheard after that. It was late when he crowded Bram's long box-stove with wood, extinguished the last candle, and went to bed.

In the next hour he made the plans of a lifetime. Then he fell into sleep—a restless, uneasy slumber filled with many visions. For a time there had come a lull in the gale, but now it broke over the cabin in increased fury. A volley of wind and snow shot suddenly down the chimney, forcing open the stove door, so that a shaft of ruddy light cut like a red knife through the dense gloom of the cabin. In varying ways the sounds played a part in Philip's dreams. In all those dreams and segments of dreams the girl was present. He was back home, and Celie was with him. Once they went for wild flowers, and were caught in a thunder-storm. Then there came to him a vision of early autumn nights when they went corn-roasting with other young people. He had always been afflicted with a slight nasal trouble, and smoke irritated him. It set him sneezing, and he woke.

In that moment his dazed senses adjusted themselves. The cabin was full of smoke. It partly blinded him, but through it he could see tongues of fire shooting toward the ceiling. Then he heard the crackling of burning pitch, and with a stifled cry he leaped from his bunk and stood on his feet. Shouting Celie's name, he ran to her door. His first cry had awakened her, and she was facing the lurid glow of the flame as he rushed in. Almost before she could comprehend what was happening, he had wrapped one of the heavy bearskins about her and had swept her into his arms. The cabin with its pitch-filled logs was like a box made of tinder, and a score of men could not have beat out the fire that was raging now. The wind beating from the west had kept it from reaching the door opening into the corral; but the pitch was hissing and smoking at the threshold as Philip plunged through the blinding pall and fumbled for the latch.

NOT ten seconds too soon did he stagger out into the night with his burden. The cabin was a pillar of flame, and in it was everything that had made life possible for them. Food, shelter, clothing—all were gone. He did not think of himself, but only of the girl in his arms; and he strained her closer and kissed her lips and her eyes and her tumbled hair there in the storm-swept darkness, telling her—what he knew now was a lie—that she was safe, that nothing would harm her:

"It's all right, little sweetheart. We'll come out right—we sure will!"

In the short space that Philip stood there helplessly in the red heat of the fire, the desperateness of their situation seared itself like the hot flame itself in his brain. As prisoners in Bram's cabin, guarded by the wolves and attacked by the Eskimos, they still had shelter, food, clothing—a chance to live, at least the chance to fight. And now—

He put a hand to his bare head and faced the direction of the storm. With the dying away of the wind snow had begun to fall, and with this snow he knew there would come a rising temperature. His mind worked swiftly after that. There was, after all, a tremendous thrill in the thought of fighting the odds against him, and in the thought of the girl whose life depended upon him utterly now. Without him she could not walk unless her naked feet buried themselves in the snow. If anything happened to him, she would die. In his arms she would find life—or death.

He was braced for the fight. His mind rode over its first fears and began to shape itself for action as he turned back toward the edge of the forest. Then he remembered the cabin that Bram and he had passed on their way in from the barren. It was not more than eight or ten miles away, and he was positive that he could find it.

As he listened to the crackling of the flames and stared into the heart of the red glow of the burning cabin, there smote him with sudden and sickening force a realization of their deadliest peril. In that twisting inferno of burning pitch was his coat, and in the left-hand pocket of that coat were his matches!

Their one chance lay in finding the other cabin quickly. When it came to the point of absolute necessity, he could at least try to make fire as he had seen an Indian make it once.

The storm was at an end—and it was almost dawn. In a quarter of an hour the shotlike snow of the blizzard had changed to big soft flakes that dropped straight out of the clouds in a white deluge. By the time day came their trail would be completely hidden from the eyes of the Eskimos.

Because of that Philip, carrying the girl, traveled as swiftly as the darkness and the roughness of the forest would allow him. As nearly as he could judge, he kept due east. For a considerable time he did not feel the weight of the precious burden in his arms. He believed that they were at least half a mile from the burned cabin before he paused to rest. Even then he spoke to Celie in a low voice.

TWICE in the next half mile he stopped. The third time, a full mile from the cabin, was in a dense growth of spruce through the tops of which snow and wind did not penetrate. Here he made a nest of spruce boughs for Celie, and they waited for the day. In the black interval that precedes the Arctic dawn they listened for sounds that might come to them. Just once came the wailing howl of one of Bram's wolves, and twice Philip fancied that he heard the distant cry of a human voice. The second time, Celie's fingers tightened about his own to tell him that she, too, had heard.

A little later, leaving Celie alone, Philip went back to the edge of the spruce thicket and examined closely their trail where it had crossed a bit of open. It was not half an hour old, yet the deluge of snow had almost obliterated the signs of their passing. His one hope was that the snowfall would continue for another hour. But he knew that he was not dealing

---

with white men or Indians now. The Eskimos were night-trackers and night-hunters. For five months out of every twelve their existence depended upon their ability to stalk and kill in darkness. If they had returned to the burning cabin, it was possible, even probable, that they were close on their heels now.

For a second time he found himself a stout club.

HE waited, listening and training his eyes to penetrate the thick gloom; and then, as his own heart-beats came to him audibly, he felt creeping over him a slow and irresistible foreboding. His muscles grew tense, and he clutched the club, ready for action.

It seemed to Philip, as he stood with the club ready in his hand, that the world had ceased to breathe in its anticipation of the thing for which he was waiting—and listening. The wind had dropped dead. There was not a rustle in the tree-tops, not a sound to break the stillness.

Still, as the twilight of dawn took the place of night, he did not move, except to draw himself a little closer into the shelter of the scrub spruce behind which he had hidden himself. He wondered if Celie would be frightened by his absence. But he could not compel himself to go on—or back. Something was coming! Yet he could see nothing—hear nothing. It was light enough now for him to see movement fifty yards away, and he kept his eyes fastened on the little open across which their trail had come.

But it was the trail that Philip watched; and as he kept his vigil—that inexplicable mental undercurrent telling him that his enemies were coming—his mind went back sharply to the girl a hundred yards behind him. He was possessed of the strength of one about to fight for his own. And with that strength the questions pounded again in his head: Who was she? And for what reason were mysterious enemies coming after her through the gray dawn?

In that moment he heard a sound. His heart stood suddenly still. He held his breath. It was a sound almost indistinguishable from the whisper of the air and the trees, and yet it smote upon his senses like the detonation of a thunder-clap. It was more of a presence than a sound. The trail was clear.

He turned his head—slowly and without movement of his body; and in that instant a gasp rose to his lips, and died there. Scarcely a dozen paces from him stood a poised and hooded figure, a squat, fire-eyed apparition that looked more like a monster than a man. Something acted within him that was swifter than reason—the strange poise of the hooded creature, the uplifted arm, the cold, streaky gleam of something in the dawnlight: and in response to that impression Philip crumpled down in the snow as a javelin hissed through the space where his head and shoulders had been.

So infinitesimal was the space of time between the throwing of the javelin and Philip's movement that the Eskimo believed he had transfixed his victim. A scream of triumph rose in his throat. It was the Kogmollock sakootwow, the blood-cry, a single shriek that split the air for a mile. It died in another sort of cry. From where he had dropped, Philip was up like a shot. His club swung through the air, and before the amazed hooded creature could dart either to one side or the other it had fallen with crushing force.

The force of the blow carried Philip half off his feet, and before he could recover himself two other figures had rushed upon him from out of the gloom. Their cries, as they came at him, were like the cries of beasts. Philip had no time to use his club. From his unbalanced position he flung himself upward and at the nearest of his enemies, saving himself from the upraised javelin by clinching. His fist shot out and caught the Eskimo squarely in the mouth. He struck again—and the javelin dropped from the Kogmollock's hand. In that moment, every vein in his body pounding with the rage and excitement of battle, Philip let out a yell. The end of it was stifled by a pair of furry arms. His head snapped back—and he was down.

A thrill of horror shot through him. It was the one unconquerable fighting trick of the Eskimo—that neck hold. Caught from behind, there was no escape from it. It was the age-old sasaki-wechikun, or sacrifice-hold, an inheritance that came down from father to son—the Arctic jiu-jitsu.

Philip heard the shrill command of the Eskimos over him—an exhortation for the other to hurry up with the knife. And then, even as he heard a grunting reply, his hand came in contact with the pocket which held Celie's little revolver. He drew it quickly, cocked it under his back, and, twisting his arm until the elbow-joint cracked, fired. It was a chance shot. The powder-flash burned the murderous, thick-lipped face in the sealskin hood. There was no cry, no sound that Philip heard. But the arms around his neck relaxed. He rolled over and sprang to his feet. Three or four paces from him was the Eskimo he had struck, crawling toward him on his hands and knees, still dazed by the blow he had received. In the snow Philip saw his club. He picked it up, replacing the revolver in his pocket. A single blow as the groggy Eskimo staggered to his feet, and the fight was over.

IT had taken perhaps three or four minutes—no longer than that. His enemies lay in three dark and motionless heaps in the snow. Fate had played a strong hand with him. Almost by a miracle he had escaped, and at least two of the Eskimos were dead.

"Philip—Philip!"

He sprang toward the sound, a choking cry on his own lips. This, after all, was the last proof: when she had thought that their enemies were killing him, she had come to him. He was sobbing her name like a boy as he ran back with her in his arms. Almost fiercely he wrapped the bearskin closely about her, and crushed her in his arms. In that wild and glorious moment he listened.

It was the sakootwow—the savage, shrieking blood-cry of the Kogmollocks, a scream that demanded an answer from the three hooded creatures who, a few minutes before, had attacked Philip in the edge of the open. The cry came from perhaps a mile away. And then, faintly, it was answered far to the west. For a moment Philip pressed his face down to Celie's. In his heart was a prayer: for he knew that the fight had only begun.

(To be continued next week)

Could a Machine Do Your Work Better Than You?

THEY are trying out this mail-sorting machine at the Chicago post office. The operator sits at a keyboard much like that of the typewriter. He reads an address, pushes a key to correspond, and the letter is whisked away and dropped into the proper box. The machine has ninety carriers, but one is to be built with 256; and it is possible, the inventor says, to construct one to handle parcel post.

A lot of good jobs gone glimmering? Probably; but who wants to do work that a machine can do better?

THE EDITOR ANSWERS

SOMETIMES I wish the mail were delivered the last thing in the afternoon instead of the first thing in the morning. Then I would have it to look forward to all day.

The hour when I am opening my mail is the pleasantest period of the whole day, and to have it come the first thing is somehow like having the ice cream before the soup.

I like to get letters. To me every day's mail is a new adventure—anew excursion into the lives of folks whom yesterday I did not even know.

For instance, this morning a woman writes me that she read to her husband something we published about the inefficiency of Sunday work—as proved by recent medical investigations. For ten years, she says, her husband, who is a civil engineer, has worked all Sunday long. Last Sunday, for the first time, he knocked off and spent the day with her and the children. She thinks that little paragraph is going to make a big difference in the happiness of her household, and she's glad we printed it.

The Five-Cent Price

I don't know how many readers have written in the last two years asking: "Why don't you make your price a nickel instead of three cents?" Well, now we've gone and done it. There's a bit more in it for the news-dealers, and they'll help us more; and a bit more for us, which will mean a bigger book before long. And the five-cent price is going to be a success. You'll continue to boost in the same old loyal way and make it a success, won't you?

A Joke about Job

Dear Editor:

While spending a vacation in Springfield, Ohio, two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the Crowell Publishing Company's plant. Went through from top to bottom, and cercainly did enjoy seeing my friend "Every Week" coming through those big presses.

A. C. H.

Those big presses have given us some bad nights this winter. We undertook to move them from New York to Springfield; and the railroads were congested, and when we set the presses up at last they were homesick and just moped around and wouldn't work—and all that.

Job was the most patient man who ever lived. It is said that no business requires the same amount of patience as the printing business. Hence the sign over printeries—Job Printer.

When to Wear a Black Vest

Dear Editor:

To settle a dispute, when should a black vest be worn with a dress coat, and when should a white vest be worn?

G. B.

All questions like this about men's dress are answered in Mr. Oliphant's hook, "How to Be Better Dressed at Less Expense." As long as they last you can have them at five cents a copy. Send your nickel to me at 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City.

Kind Words Can Never Die

Dear Editor:

I must tell you how much I enjoy your Melting Pot pages. I am so busy that I get almost no time for either books or magazines. You have done a real service to me in those pages.

E. R. L.

The Only Thing that Doesn't Cost More

Dear Sir:

Where can I send to get your book of editorials? What is the price?

A. W. C.

Send to 381 Fourth Avenue, New York. The price is $1: no increase on account of war, income tax, or shortage of labor or raw materials.

In Justice to Florida

Dear Editor:

You published on your picture pages a few weeks ago a picture of a section of Florida as it used to be, and printed under it were some words about the "impenetrable Florida Everglades." The picture is too old: the spot it represents now supports a fine modern factory. Be just to Florida: if you want to publish a picture of something really impenetrable, get a photograph of our Governor's head.

A. J. C.

The Snob—

Continued from page 8

and fight. But the play was on. The ball fell into our hands on downs. I was called back for a cross-buck over Brown. I made three yards, but just as I was falling, their secondary line hit me and bent me backwards. There were two or three men at my knees, and I went over like a hinge, with my feet under me. Something snapped. I couldn't get up.

A Camden man was lying in the pile, with his face against my neck; and as he pulled himself away to rise, he grinned at me.

"Too rough for you, sonny?" he asked.

I rolled over, and let them drag me to my feet. I didn't know what was wrong—found out later that it was my knee-cap. I still walk a little stiff from it—the injury never entirely disappeared. On top of my broken nose, it seemed to me that I couldn't stand the pain. But neither could I quit. Warburton dropped a hand on my shoulder and asked me if I could make it.

"Of course," I said. "Do you think I'm yellow?"

I was playing for my family and my friends—and myself. Warburton went back to his place, slapping the men and calling to them. We played two more downs, and I spilled two linemen and let our runner through for eight yards.

"Is that good enough for you?" I snarled at Warburton.

"Low!" he roared in answer. "Go on into them!"—and began snapping the signals for that three-man plunge over the tackles: four, eighteen, four, eighteen, sixty-one, three—and then the key. You remember! The ball went back. The play was over my side of the line. I went into Camden's half-back, and caught him in the middle with my shoulder. He spun off to the side, and some one else charged me. But then I saw the ball go flying into the air out of Gore's hands!

It came towards me,—the full-back must have been hit by one of our men from behind, I suppose,—and I reached for it. You were nearest me—I saw your face as the ball caught in the curve of my arm. You jerked me out of the ruck by the arm, and we started for the goal, twenty-five yards away—one chance in a thousand of making it, and me with a wrenched knee and a head that was simply bursting with pain.

Then it was that I wished that I were a democrat—actually one of the mob! They couldn't see at first who had the ball, but they knew you. And how they yelled! I caught your name above the uproar—even when I was straining all my faculties to get me on towards that goal.

Those last twelve or fifteen yards are a nightmare to me yet. Every stride jolted me until I could have screamed aloud. I was exactly like a man who dreams of trying to run—all I could do was to lift my knees and put them out stiffly in the same spot. Now that I look back on it, I am sure I was conscious also of the cheering democracy in the stands, and you—because they seemed to be helping you. They seemed to carry you along. And I needed their help.

It was one of the times when I've needed the mob. Up to then I'd never needed them. If I could have felt that they were bearing me along, I could have made it. I could have stretched out my weak knee and forgotten it was sore. I could have forgotten my battered nose. Literally, I believe now that the stands—your democracy, your mob—could have lifted me over.

THORNHILL stopped speaking, and rose abruptly. He was trembling. He whipped a hand across his forehead, which was damp, looked at the wet palm curiously, and moved away to a window.

Whittier, too, was breathing hard.

"My God, Thornhill!" he cried tensely; "it's like playing the thing over again! I remember now—you stumbled on the five-yard line. How you fell! And Bruce and that big end of theirs—what was his name?—Salisbury!—on top of you. I heard you grunt!"

Thornhill turned, calmer already.

"Yes," he said, in a lowered voice; "I went down. The ball bounded clear—and you carried it over!"

"It was your touchdown, though! I always said that."

Thornhill dropped into his seat a little wearily.

"Yes, I know you did. But no one else said so. Remember that! Your democracy was for you. It always was. I didn't care so much after a few days. And if I care now, it's because I see changes in the men about me—and in their ways of dealing with people. I've tried to change my viewpoint, as I've intimated—but it's born in me. Do you see?"

WHITTIER made a quick gesture of dissent.

"That's all nonsense, Thornhill," he cried. "Don't you like people—I mean the common run of people? Don't you miss them now? Aren't they human? And so are you. You need them now, just as you did then—in that run for a touchdown!"

"Well, but—" Thornhill began. But Whittier interrupted, carried along by his enthusiasm:

"But nothing! I'm not thinking of the mob, Thornhill: I'm thinking of you. Most of you—your class, business men, corporation officials—are beginning to understand—"

"I am," Thornhill broke in. "That's what I just told you, Whittier. I see the purely business advantage of taking the people into partnership, in a manner of speaking. But my trouble is that I can't change my viewpoint; I can't follow the advice you gave me—sympathize with the mob, and like them, and play for them. I'm still a snob. And when I try to pretend to them, they are suspicious. They see through me—as you did—and Metz—and Folk!"

Whittier frowned.

"Oh," he said thoughtfully; "that's it?"

Thornhill cleared his throat.

"The wife is in a hospital, you said, Whittier?"

"Yes."

"I've been watching your work on that frowsy little rag in Denver. Excuse me! I only mean that it doesn't appeal to me. But it appeals to the people—I know all about its circulation, that sort of thing, and what they think of you. I suppose you've been wondering why I sent for you. It was because, of all the men I know, you're nearest to the mob. And this corporation has to have such a man. I've just taken charge here, and I find that the people—our consumers—are solidly and unanimously against us. We're the worst hated public utility in California, bar none. When a cartoonist referred to us a while ago as the "great snob company," I thought of you."

Whittier laughed nervously.

"But what on earth could I do for you?"

"Well, for one thing, you could teach us economics—the economics of football, Whittier. Publicity—a campaign of friendliness—a course in the nob spirit for our employees—I'm just hinting at the fringe of what you could do. You'll have a free hand. I'm behind you strong. I tell you that I want the mob, but that I can't reach them. There—is that clear?"

"It's beginning to be."

Whittier's shoulders straightened, and his cheeks took on a new color. There was almost a catch in his voice as he added:

"You're not asking me to go back on my mob at all, are you, Thornhill?"

"Good Lord, no!" Thornhill fairly shouted it. "That's just what I'm not asking." He broke into a laugh—the first Whittier had heard from him. "Do you suppose I want you to throw my proposition into my face and go stamping out of here? Not much, I don't! I want you to coach us for team-work with the rest of the eleven, Whittier. That's what I want. And we'll play the game, believe me! Where will I send transportation for your wife, now?"

Will the Prices of Securities Rebound?

By CHARLES R. BROWN

WITH our entrance into the war prices of stocks and bonds began to tumble: and it is not surprising that many men and women who see the value of their savings melting away should be considering the wisdom of selling out because of the possibility of an even greater decline. The common-sense view—the long-range investment view—is, don't.

Look back for a moment and consider the varying influence of the war on securities. When the declaration came so unexpectedly in 1914, complete demoralization ensued. Prices declined so rapidly that, to avoid panic, the stock exchanges of the world closed down. German bankers who enjoyed the confidences of the military caste at Berlin had at that time already been selling securities without regard to price for several months. Only long afterward did the world understand the source of and reason for this selling.

Let us see how a few interesting statistics can indicate what really happened. In February, 1914, five months before the war started, New York Stock Exchange quotations for twenty representative railroad stocks averaged 109. By the middle of March this average selling price had fallen to 103. Then followed a recovery to 106 by March 23, then another collapse to 99 on April 25, a recovery to 104 by May 27, and finally a smash to 89 just before the Stock Exchange closed on July 30.

Here we have the first shock of the war expressed in figures. When the Exchange finally reopened at the close of the year 1914, the average price for practical purposes was unchanged—it was 90. After more or less active fluctuation 88 was reached on July 9, which for practical purposes was the close of the first year of the struggle.

Then the technical position suddenly changed. Up to that time the war had held by professional traders. Should the little investor—should you—sell under the influence of this sentiment?

operated as a "bearish" influence on prices of investment securities in this country. But our manufacturers began to book huge orders for war materials at prices indicating fabulous profits. A period of national prosperity and activity set in on a scale without precedent, and at the close of 1915 the average quotation of the twenty railroad stocks had risen to 108.

Another brief rebound, owing to the temporary improvement of our relations with Germany; then war; and the steady bearish sentiment that is now everywhere.

If you do sell, you will be selling something at a price that temporarily is below its intrinsic value. Should any one ask you if you were afraid your country was about to be defeated in the war, you would scorn to reply.

That our own government views the current price level as abnormally low is indicated in an official order of the Comptroller of the Currency, Mr. Williams, to bank examiners. Mr. Williams instructed these examiners "that they need not require banks holding high-grade bonds of unquestioned intrinsic value and merit to charge such investments down in their official statements of condition to present abnormal figures, but that intelligent and conservative discretion should be exercised as to the prices at which the banks could safely and reasonably be permitted to carry such high class securities."

Prices of securities may, it is quite true, fall still lower. They certainly will do so if everybody gets thoroughly frightened and rushes to sell indiscriminately. But it is to be hoped that common sense and calmness will prevail.

The old saying that the present rain is the only one that has not stopped is applicable to the war. The current world conflict is the only war that has not been succeeded by peace. But peace will come. Then will there be a reconstruction and return to prosperity, with prices certainly higher than the present ones.

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

If you are interested in the investment of your savings in sound securities, write to John Muir & Co. Ask for their booklet entitled "The Partial Payment Plan." A copy will be sent upon application to their main office, 61 Broadway, New York City.

"Practical Thrift for Millions of Practical Men" is the title of an interesting article in the "American Investor" for December, which should be read by every one interested in the nation-wide thrift movement. Free copies may be obtained on request for "American Investor" N-12, from E. F. Coombs & Co., 120 Broadway, New York.

Prices of all securities have declined to so low a level that many good investments can be bought at the lowest prices for years, and such purchases will produce a high interest return. A recent number of the Bache Review contains a selective list of such investments showing present price, dividends, and yields compared with the high price since 1906. Copy sent on application to J. S. Bache & Co., members of the New York Stock Exchange, 42 Broadway, New York City.

Four per cent interest and absolute safety for your savings is the plan of banking by mail offered by the Citizens Savings and Trust Company, Cleveland, Ohio. This institution has been in business forty-nine years. Write for their free booklet "P."

When confronted with a mass of technical and statistical information concerning stocks and bonds, have you ever wanted a terse and readable publication with honesty and ability in which you could have confidence? The Odd Lot Review, published weekly, aims to fill this field. Sample copies will be sent on request to the Odd Lot Review, Inc., 61 Broadway, New York City.

In these days of disturbed investment conditions the discriminating investor particularly appreciates the safety and liberal interest furnished by first farm mortgages. The Oklahoma Farm Mortgage Company of Oklahoma City specializes in mortgages of this kind and will furnish detailed information on request. Ask for list No. 208.

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 & Company, 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 investment bargain possibilities in sound public-utility securities are described in literature which will be sent upon request by H. M. Byllesby & Company, 218 South La Salle Street, Chicago, and 1219 Trinity Building, New York.