What is Immunity?

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

THE knowledge is at least as old as any record we have of the healing art that a single attack of measles, scarlet fever, mumps, or chickenpox makes the survivor at least probably, and in most cases absolutely, immune to further attacks of the particular disease suffered. That is why so many infections are recognized as childhood ailments.

This primitive knowledge has been at the bottom of the search for immunizing agents, which humankind has ever been making. To-day we use antivenines, substances extracted from snake bodies, just as Galen, Nero's doctor (yes, that same Nero who fiddled while Rome burned)—quite as Galen gave his patients viper flesh and viper blood for the same purpose.

That wonderful Shakespeare, whose knowledge was so encyclopedic and whose discernment was so true, has one of his characters say:

Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.

Those bitten by rabid dogs were advised by mediæval doctors to eat of the liver and drink of the blood of the guilty canines; and the Pasteur treatment for hydrophobia is but a modern and less repugnant refinement based on the same principle. The idea is identical with that expressed in the saying, "Eat a hair of the dog that bit you." And herein lies the basis of the only hydrophobia cure there is to-day.

Doctor Jenner, a little before the time of our American Revolution, observed how dairy folk who got the matter from the udder sores of cows (cowpox) into cuts or bruises of their hands were immune to smallpox. By his inoculations, then, of such cow virus (vaccine) he assured protection against the much more dreadful and fatal smallpox. Thus began immunization in the modern sense. For Pasteur developed into a scientific working principle Jenner's demonstration of a mild form protecting against a severe form of a given infection.

In precise terms, then, immunity is the individual's resistance to an infectious disease to which his kind in general is susceptible. Such immunity depends on the reaction of the body's defensive forces to the poison either of the disease itself or the poison in the immunizing agents.

Immunity may be acquired or natural, or active or passive. Negroes are practically safe as to yellow fever; theirs is a natural immunity, resulting from their race having through countless generations, in their native Africa, been "up against" yellow-jack.

The horse is actively immunized against diphtheria when he has injected into him the toxins of that disease. Then, after a goodly incubation, the serum from the horse's blood is abstracted and used to confer passive immunity on people in danger of contracting diphtheria. We have now, also, anti-toxins (immunizing agents) against tetanus (lock-jaw), meningitis, typhoid and typhus fevers, cholera, and other infections.

What About Rigg's Disease?

RIGG'S disease (or, in highbrow parlance, pyorrhœa alveolaris) is a chronic process very destructive of human teeth. How does it come about? The proper hygiene of the teeth and mouth have been neglected. Or the "contacts" between the upper and lower teeth are not right. Or the teeth have grown very irregularly (as in children with adenoids and enlarged tonsils). Or there has been mercurial, lead, phosphorous, arsenic, or other metallic poisoning in dangerous trades. We have to think also of rickets in children, and of diabetes in adults. Or there is lodgment of decaying food in the spaces between the teeth; and so the mouth becomes unclean, there is bad breath and bad taste, auto-intoxication, and in consequence general ill health. Worst of all, various disease germs deposited in tooth cavities, or in decayed roots, pass thence through the lymph and blood channels of the body, setting up rheumatism and other affections.

Dr. A.W. Lescohier relates in the Journal of the American Medical Association how he has found in and about teeth the suppuration germ, the pneumonia germ, and many other varieties; and that, although this bacterial (germ) element produces the most destructive changes in the tissues, the other causes, mentioned above, must not be overlooked if a cure is to be hoped for.

The hygiene of the teeth, begun in early childhood, will prevent most cases of Rigg's disease. And as an element in the cure Dr. Lescohier places much stress on vaccine inoculations, beneath the skin, at five-day intervals.

Get a Hobby Before It's Too Late

IN an article on "Work for the Aged," in the Medical Review of Reviews, Dr. Malford Thewlis shows how work and moderate exercise correct the auto-toxemias (self-poisonings) to which the elderly are prone, especially those auto-intoxications that have their origin in the kidneys. Work also improves the mental state of elderly people by keeping their minds engaged and preventing their thinking about "old age." And money in their pockets is in many cases better than medicine; they should be made to feel independent. Attention, work, and money would solve many problems of old age.

It is most necessary that the venerable should have, if not vocations, avocations. We should begin in middle life the cultivation of hobbies that we shall be able to ride comfortably in our advancing years. Nothing so ages an elderly man who has laid down his life's, vocation as the lack of some equivalent occupation. Consider the examples furnished by great men in the recent past: Gladstone was a Homer scholar; Salisbury an adept in electricity; Joe Chamberlain a cultivator of orchids; Billroth, the great surgeon, a fine pianist. Of all the hobbies one can think of, surely the most satisfying and the most comforting in old age is an interest in music. How happy would old age be could it enjoy and appreciate what Emerson called "one of humankind's most inestimable blessings"!

Where Will You Be Ten Years from Now?

SOME years ago a large public utilities concern in which a friend of mine is interested look over the gas company of an Eastern city.

My friend went out to look over the office and plant.

Away up on the top floor he found an old gentleman who had been sitting at a table, testing one meter after another, for thirty-five years.

And in all that time he had never once seen the inside of a meter: he had no idea what its mechanism looked like.

Thirty-five years on one job—and not enough curiosity about his work to ask the simplest question.

Thirty-five years without reading a book or seeking the companionship of any one who might have added to his knowledge. Thirty-five years—and not one inch of mental progress.

We hear a great deal about the different types of minds in the world: but there are, after all, only two types—the open and the shut. Only last week I saw the two types beautifully illustrated.

I lunched with a man who was an applicant for a job with the organization to which I belong.

He talked to me about a good many things. But in the whole hour he did not ask me one single question.

Coming away from that luncheon, I met a reporter who had just interviewed Lord Northcliffe.

"What kind of an interview did you have with him?" I asked.

"You had better say, 'What kind of an interview did he have with me?' my friend replied. "I didn't get a chance to ask him anything: he filled up the whole time with questions of his own."

And I thought to myself, as I walked back to the office, what a wonderful lesson in failure and success. On the one hand, a fifty-dollar-a-week man, his mind already closing. On the other hand, one of the wisest men of his generation, his mind still so hungry that it grasps eagerly even at the little store of knowledge in the brain of a mere reporter.

Look around you and you will see those two types of minds nakedly revealed in the fierce light of the war.

The man to whom the war is an excuse for a mental slump.

"Things are so confused," he says, "that I can't seem to concentrate. I'm just doing the day's work and not trying to make any progress until after the war."

And, standing close beside him, behold the other, thinking in terms somewhat like these:

"Sooner or later, after the war, we shall have very serious times in this country. Millions of men in Europe will be sent back into industry: and every nation will begin feverishly to compete for the trade of the world.

"In that competition the United States will stand at a certain disadvantage because our costs of labor and production are high. Only the more than ordinary man will be sure of a job—only the man who by study and work has fitted himself for a place of unique usefulness.

"While the war lasts, with its forced prosperity, what can I do to put myself into that indispensable class?"

Looking over an old book recently, I came upon these two entries in the diary of Edward Irving:

Six o'clock A. M. I, Edward Irving, promise, by the grace of God, to have mastered all the [Greek] words under Alpha and Beta before eight o'clock.

Eight o'clock A. M. I, Edward Irving, by the grace of God, have done it.

In these days of war, when it is so easy to make excuses for mental slackness, I commend to you the spirit of Northcliffe and of Edward Irving.

The combination of the open mind and unalterable purpose.

The spirit that does not say: "I am not interested in it: it is not my job."

But the spirit that says: "Every job that requires more knowledge than mine, and pays better than mine, is my job." And that asks itself seriously once in a while: "Where shall I be ten years from now?"

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE WAR NURSE AS THE SOLDIER SEES HER

By CAPTAIN A. P. CORCORAN

IT was a badly equipped hospital at best. Nurses were few, supplies inadequate. Just now the enemy were bombarding the town of B—, on the principal street of which it stood.

The wards, every hole and corner, even the morgue itself, were crammed tight with wounded men. The corridors into which the stretchers had been carried were slippery underfoot with human blood. Corpses had to be dumped in the courtyard. The dead, for the moment, had no claim.

Past the window, hissing like so many serpents, spent bullets from exploding shrapnel whizzed by. All around roared the thunder of artillery.

Indoors, the nurses were working at top speed, easing the pain of those who could wait, picking out the men who must have instant treatment.

Into the midst of this chaos plunged a shell, exploding right in the center of the house. I leave you to imagine the horrors in its wake as it tore through the hospital wards. But there was one result worse than all the rest:

A doctor, a chief surgeon, lost his nerve.

Now, there is nothing more infectious than fear. In this case, his spread quickly through his staff. They wanted to run—they didn't stop to reason. You might argue that in the circumstances it was as well. At any moment another of those high explosives might pitch in, and their patients would be past their pain. Not that they stopped to think about this contingency: they were simply beside themselves with panic.

And then the matron of nurses entered the room.

She said nothing. She didn't tell them about their duty to the men lying wounded all round. She simply stood there, looking as if nothing unusual had happened, as if she had come merely to look in on their work. And they? Well, they too said nothing. But, as if by magic, the pandemonium ceased. Following her lead, they resumed their work quite quietly. That woman's coolness had restored their courage and self-control.

I don't tell this story as a typical example of what a nurse may be called on to face—though of course, with Germans shelling the Red Cross hospitals, it is undoubtedly quite on the cards. But I tell it to prove a fact that has been brought home to me—that feminine timidity fades before real danger.

Women Cooler than Men

I HAVE watched women whom in normal times I would flatter myself I could protect, perform feats before which many a man would quail. In one of the worst street scraps we ever fought during the war—it was at Souchez, where we were advancing at the time—I saw the sisters methodically moving their charges out of a chapel that had become a target for enemy fire, moving them quickly and quietly to a place of safety. Two of them were badly wounded at the work.

But, to come nearer home, let me tell some of my own experiences in the various hospitals where it was my misfortune—or good fortune—to be sent.

Have you ever heard of the niggle-naggle? That's the name the Tommy christened her. She is the lady who administers his medicine, adjusts his bandages, and points out his transgressions with all the severity and superiority of a school-teacher. She is the most efficient, omniscient, industrious creature that has ever cumbered this earth. That she is a rare species we thank heaven, but that she exists we deplore.

This diatribe is dictated by no rancor. No niggle-naggle made miserable my days. But I have seen her depress the Tommies, thereby delaying their recovery to an extent that would have made even her shed tears. Efficiency may be an excellent thing in nurses; but, to my mind, humanity comes first. A soldier needs sympathy above all things. Don't mistake me—no Britisher wants to mingle his tears: but he does need some one who will understand him, who will chaff him, who will even scold him into health, if he threatens to get the blues.

Nurses, as you probably know, are not allowed at the trench dressing-stations. It is only when you get to the casualty clearing station that you first meet women. I can't explain just what that means.

To hear your own language again in a feminine mouth, to watch sisters moving about your room, seems to restore old life, to reduce things to the normal. It is extraordinary the way it relaxes trench nerves.

No nurse, of course, may talk war to a soldier. If she were heard inquiring about his work, she would probably be fired without delay. Her prime duty is to make him forget—and it's a very difficult duty for a time.

At first, particularly during sleep, the mind keeps reverting to the horrors of what it has experienced. It is a commonplace that the new arrivals are eternally disturbing the others with the nightmare of what they have gone through. And then it is up to the nurse to quiet them. Each has her own method.

Helping Soldiers to Forget

THERE was one, an Irish girl who had been trained in New York. When the newcomer began to disturb her ward with his shrieks, she used to go up to him and shake him by the shoulder.

"What do you mean," she would demand, opening her eyes wide at him, with an odd mixture of severity and kindly sympathy—"what do you mean by waking up all the other poor patients? —Think you're in a field, do you?"

And by thus ignoring the real trouble she usually got him back to terra firma. Sometimes she made her man indignant; and all the better. He forgot his nightmare the more readily. She had a very amusing experience with an Apache.

Her French, though fluent, was scarcely grammatical or idiomatic. As the soldiers told her, she spoke "nigger French." On this occasion it was her ignorance of the vernacular that caused the trouble.

The Parisian, a very touchy person, was making a horrible row, alternately groaning and snoring, much to the discomfiture of the rest. Finally she went up to him.

"Vous faire bruit comme une vache" ("You make as much noise as a cow"), she announced in her peculiar idiom; and was astounded at the storm of anger she evoked in his eyes and the howl of laughter that went up from the rest of the ward. It was two days later when she discovered that she had all but applied to him a name the most insulting that one Frenchman can call another.

It is a nurse like that, however, who puts some personality into her work, who is the real success with the soldiers. For about the worst phase of hospital life, after the agony of pain has been relieved, is the boredom of being confined to one's bed.

A shattered arm or an infected leg can keep a man confined for months without his feeling terribly sick, and his main problem is how to get through the day. Any nurse who can help him is a treasure from heaven, and nearly all of them work hard to do it.

Watch a nurse coming in after her few hours off, and almost invariably she carries some parcel—a pack of cards, a puzzle, books, a new record. The nurses I met spent a great deal more than they could afford in buying these odds and ends for the men.

But still better than those was a faculty for chatting brightly, a power of stirring up the men themselves, of making them forget what was behind and probably again before them. Not one of us, you know, but is very willing to forget.

Am I a Slacker?

I AM not telling this as an apology or explanation. I am stating facts and asking a question. That is all.

In the first place, I am a magazine writer, twenty-three years of age, unmarried, and in good physical condition. I believe that I am as loyal to my country as any man can be. Yet I have not enlisted, and I have been called a slacker.

When war was declared, a great number of my friends joined the colors. I ached to go with them; but I did not—and for one reason.

That reason was my mother. She has had more than the usual amount of trouble during her span of years, and it has wrecked her nervously. When I told her that I intended to enlist, it nearly killed her. The fact stands literally as I state it.

In the night I spent at her bedside I thrashed the matter out. Unless I did something to place myself outside of the probability of military service, I felt that she would die.

What would you have done in my place? I love my mother too much to cause her the agony I knew she would experience if I went away; and yet, I wanted to do my "bit." The heroes of fiction—even those I have created— are willing to sacrifice their loved ones for the common good; but I am not made of that Spartan stuff. I say without bravado that I would go into the trenches and fight the good fight of democracy,—yes, and die if need be,—but I could not place the burden on my mother.

I know that a lot of you will sneer, but those who have had a similar experience will understand. It was a situation such as I hope never to be placed in again.

This is what I did: I gave up my profession temporarily, donned overalls, and went to work in a munitions plant—in bald terms, because the munitions workers are exempt from military duty. I am there now, sweating away ten hours a day at work that is loathsome to me, and at wages that do not approximate a third of what I formerly made.

I have stated the situation rawly. It took a bitter fight to do what I did for my mother.

Was I justified?

Am I a slacker?

From a Reader.

Unconquered Belgium

"THE Germans in Belgium, including the Governor himself, know very well that they are hated with the silent hatred of the helpless captive," says Odon Halasi in Belgium Under the German Heel (Funk & Wagnalls). Mr. Halasi is a Hungarian journalist who received permission to travel through Belgium, and his book is a great epic of a people devastated but still unconquered.

"At every step they become conscious of the clenched hand and grinding teeth. But it never goes beyond silent hatred, for—as the Belgians themselves say—it would only make their lives more miserable if they gave audible expression to their feelings. They know that they can do nothing; so, with admirable restraint, they behave in a dignified way, giving one the impression of princes in the garb of slaves, their heads held high. One can not get rid of the thought that when the war once comes to an end everything will burst into flame, the long suppressed hatred will burst into vengeance, and then woe to the traitors and cowards who now enjoy the German smile and the contempt of their compatriots, and woe to the petty bargaining tradesmen who for present advantage have fallen in with German wishes. These are objects of contempt, and when the war is over they will have to leave Belgium if they wish to make a living. No Belgian will enter their shops or shake hands with them; they are branded as traitors, and their life is miserable even now while they are under the special protection of the Germans. I heard of one such renegade whose shop caught fire six times in a month, and who could not get even a German company to insure his property against fire risks. The others lived a life of terror until the Governor issued a proclamation announcing that arson would be punished with death."

WHY THEY ARE CALLED HUNS

THE Kaiser's speech to the German soldiers on the eve of their departure for China, July 27, 1900:

"As soon as you come to blows with the enemy he will be beaten. No mercy will be shown! No prisoners will be taken! As the Huns, under King Attila, made a name for themselves which is still mighty in traditions and legends to-day, may the name of German be so fixed in China by your deeds that no Chinese shall ever again dare even to look at a German askance. Open the way for Kultur once for all."

The Story of a Signalman

THERE is no man in the army more important than the signalman. Great Britain recognizes the preeminence of this branch of the service by allowing the Engineers alone to claim the royal motto as theirs. Kitchener chose to enter their ranks. "The nerves of the army," some one has called them, for they serve to keep all parts of the big body in conjunction and make them work as a corporate whole.

In an attack the signalman goes over with the infantry; but he carries no weapon, only a wireless or telephone pack. Suppose that reinforcements are needed; that there is danger of being cut off; that ammunition is giving out, or there is need for a closer barrage—it is up to the signalman to get the message through. If he doesn't—

Here is the story of Cleary: At Loos, where the fighting was so terrific that the communications had in many places been cut, Cleary was one of the linemen sent to repair the broken wires. Some failed to do the work—killed, of course, in the effort. He succeeded, but the communication he reëstablished was so jerky that it proved to be all but useless. So another man was sent to find the cause. He found this:

Lying on the ground, with both legs and an arm blown off, the signalman was holding the severed pieces of wire in contact with his remaining—his left—hand. A shell had hit him just as he reached the spot. Only sheer force of will had enabled him to keep conscious and do the job he was sent to do. But he promptly collapsed when he was found, and died before they could take him to a hospital.

He is typical of the Royal Engineers.

He Waved at Him, Then Shot Him

SUPPOSING—for the sake of comparisons—you were an aviator, scooting along one hundred miles an hour and 15,000 feet up, and out of the tail of the cloud from which you had just emerged there appeared, not more than fifty feet away, a German. What would you do? If he waved his hand friendly-like, would you wave back? Or would you turn and try to smash him?

Here's what Lieutenant E. M. Roberts, an American from Parkersburg, West Virginia, but an ace in the British flying corps, did:

"I was about twenty miles behind the German lines, and flying fast, when I saw the Hun come out of the cloud," relates the lieutenant. "I guess he was just as much surprised as I was. He heard the roar of my engine, and while the tips of our wings were almost touching he waved a friendly hand.

"I waved back. But I did not relax my vigilance. Once or twice he shouted out a welcome. I did not answer him. We jockeyed for position through a race of fifty miles. Finally he became convinced that I was younger and fresher. He suddenly twisted his machine, dove, and tried to come back up in under me.

"I heard the snapping of his machine-gun. Several bullets punctured my wings.

"Dropping into a nose dive, I started shooting. I saw his upturned white face, his wide-staring blue eyes, the half cynical smile on his mouth. I saw my stream of bullets cut his legs completely off at the hips.

"His machine, slowly turning, twisted, slid off, and plunged to destruction."

Roberts brought down eight enemy planes in France and seven in England. He won the Military Cross, and fought in three branches of the service—infantry, transportation corps, and aviation.

Cooks the Dirtiest Soldiers

WAR brings out all sorts of deeply buried characteristics and qualities in men.

What men, should you suppose, would break down first under the nervous strain of war—farmer boys or clerks and bookkeepers? The Civil War proved that clerks showed up better in respect to nervous resistance than sturdy sons of the soil.

What class of men should you think would make the cleanest soldiers? Cooks—whose whole training and daily work have demanded cleanliness?

"Down here in the earth the cooks are the dirtiest of men," says Henri Barbusse, in Under Fire (E. P. Dutton & Company). "If you see a chap with his skin and toggery so smeared and stained that you wouldn't touch him with a barge-pole, you can say to yourself, 'Probably he's a cook.' And the dirtier he is, the more likely to be a cook."

The Censorship Has Enriched England

PEOPLE who have been accustomed to thinking of the British Postal Censorship simply as an irritating agency for prying into private letters may be surprised to learn that one of its chief functions is earning half a million dollars for the British government. Eric Fisher Wood, in The Notebook of an Intelligence Officer (Century Company), says that in one average working day it returned to the country a sum almost as great as its entire yearly cost.

The censorship did not start as a money-making institution. It began in a humble way to prevent military secrets from slipping out of the country, and German propaganda from slipping in. But gradually it built up a trade department that keeps under its eye the entire commercial correspondence of the world. In this department are assembled highly skilled trade experts from all over the Empire. The information that they collect and tabulate is made the basis of practically all the buying by the joint commissions of the Allies.

Besides this, says Major Wood, "it sends the fleet advance information of the ultimate destination of every important cargo crossing the seas. The total value of cargoes already condemned in prize courts amounts to many billions of dollars; and the censorship has not only furnished evidence in ninety per cent of all convictions, but has nearly always discovered the existence and value of contraband cargoes in time to forewarn the Admiralty of their approach days or even weeks before they enter the war zone."

SOMETHING NEW IN SHORT STORIES

Comments from Our Writers

WHEN you know that I am the very worst procrastinator in the world about answering letters, you will know that your idea of very short stories in EVERY WEEK must have a wonderful pulling force to secure this immediate reply.

Not particularly because I think I might have some special idea that could be better expressed in a short story of the type you mention, but because I sincerely believe that it is a form of fiction that has been outrageously neglected in America, do I arise to declare that you should be accoladed for giving to writers an opportunity to express themselves in this form. The French and the Scandinavians have done so magnificently in it that I feel certain that American writers will find it a great medium. As a nation we are so hurried that the very short story seems a fitter mode of national expression than does the longer and more laboriously built type. Then, too, there are stories that can not be expressed in any other way without a sacrifice of artistic value.

MARY SYNON.

I HAVE always missed just this thing in our magazines—the story that is a sort of kernel, a vital story made short—the fifth act of the drama. Your taking up the idea seems in line with the same trend of modern thought that is producing such wonderful one-act plays nowadays, and shall be greatly interested to see how it works out.

SARAH COMSTOCK.

I AM exceedingly interested in your new plan for very short stories, and my whole interest begins from the point in your letter at which you (very welcomely) speak of the idea as an experiment for both authors and publisher and the point at which you propose that the stories limit themselves to a single—to use a very affected phrase—a single movement. In those two suggestions you have eliminated the elements that have made American writers less than half-hearted about the idea up to this time.

Speaking for myself certainly, and probably for many other writers, I am almost pathetically touched at the idea that a magazine is willing to coöperate in any such laboratory work, that it will recognize certain work purely as experimental, and that only partially successful efforts will not be charged against the writer's established line.

Although, as you say, the very short story has been perfected abroad as it has never been perfected here, yet the cry of American editors ever since I have been in the game has been for shortness, shortness, and still more shortness. I have rebelled against this a great many times, but by force of circumstances I have constantly bent myself to it, and at last I am obliged to admit that it was very much in the right direction. Against my own will I have been forced to better my style by cutting; and, the same thing having happened to every American writer, I think that we have developed here a very finished and very wonderful form of short story.

PHILIP CURTISS.

I SHALL be so greatly interested to see whether you can make it "go." Personally, I don't think it will, with our American audience—but of course I may be much mistaken, and I'll be the first to congratulate you if you do. The French can do it, of course; but the French are an artistic nation and we are not. They have such a tremendous sense of form—everywhere in life! It takes, I think, an old race to have such a sense of values, of proportion; and America is still so young—stumbling along with its eyes full of dreams! Once, many years ago, I saw a bit of a thing like what you mean, done by Mary Wilkins, and it was a gem.

MABEL NELSON THURSTON.

YOUR new departure in the hue of the two-thousand-word story is very clever. Of course there is an "if"—if you can get stories of that length that are really artistic and worth while. As you probably know, that is the hardest length to handle, and it sometimes requires a more finished technique and entails more hard work than the more discursive form. In fact, my opinion is that the perfect two-thousand-word story is the sort of thing a good craftsman achieves once in a lifetime, and forever after adores as he never adores any of his bigger children. And if the two-thousand-word story does not nearly approach perfection (and it may be as light as thistledown and yet be perfect), then it is likely to be either trivial or forced.

However, I didn't start out to sound discouraging. I am genuinely pleased that EVERY WEEK has the ingenuity and freshness to give us a chance to try our hand at a new length of story.

GRACE SARTWELL MASON.

I THINK your suggested policy one that will appeal to story writers, to story readers, and—speaking for myself—surely to story-writing teachers.

As I understand, you want something better and a trifle longer than the old "storiette" things; something not quite so much of the tour de force type as the narratives appearing a year ago in Life. You really wish, in my opinion, the real "short-story," as Professor Matthews has written the term. You wish the single incident "played up." I'm right with you! If my people will only take to the idea, I hope you will have something from my class within the year.

BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, PH.D.,
Columbia University.

MORNING

By ELIZABETH GAINES WILCOXSON

Illustrations by W. T. Benda

A MORNING lark was Alma's alarm-clock. He was the earliest lark of them all. His first clear note brought her awakening. Not that she ever consciously heard him: her mind was always ploddingly preoccupied from the moment her eyes flew open—wide open at once, like a young animal's—until she dropped asleep again at night.

Awake, she turned her head slightly and looked at Nels lying flat on his back in heavy morning sleep, his mouth open, his breathing deep and regular, beads of moisture on his forehead drawn by the airless warmth of the close-shut room. Then she threw herself up with a sort of plunging haste, and swung her feet out of bed.

She was tall and her limbs were firm-fleshed and strong, with the easy strength of tough muscles not yet stiffened by daily toil. Her face—the smooth fair skin burned by days in the field under the hot sun—was comely with the charm of contented youngness of twenty years.

The thin curtain over the small window let in a shaded light. In an upper corner near the ceiling two cracks admitted two narrow blades of sunshine that fenced with each other with quivering sportiveness. The rest of the room was dull and bare.

Alma loosened her thick yellow hair and retwisted it into a compact roll. She had slept in all her undergarments, so she needed only to draw together several tapes and tie them. Her dress hung across the footboard of the bed. She put it on, mechanically buttoning it with one hand, while with the other she sought under the edge of the bed for her heavy- soled shoes. She put them on without stockings which would have been both a discomfort to her and an extravagance.

Being dressed, she walked heavily across the room and opened the door into the little kitchen. In a tin basin on the end of a home-made rough board table she fin-ished her morning toilet, drying her face and hands on a long roller towel hanging on the outer door.

She took two big pails and went out to the barnyard. The birds rendered a morning concert as she walked along, but Alma was not aware that she heard them. Her thoughts were absorbed with the necessary details of life. This morning she was calculating the possible number of eggs from the day's laying. Seventeen eggs more were needed to finish filling the boxes; then Nels would take them to town. All day the birds might sing, but Alma would consciously hear only the hens as each one might noisily celebrate the achievement of her own particular egg.

Alma milked the two cows in an incredibly brief time, handling the calves with strong-armed, dextrous skill when they rebelled at being turned away while still hungry. She carried the milk to the house, and strained it. Then she skimmed four pans of old milk, putting the cream into a churn, and carried the skimmed milk out to the calves. While on this trip she fed the poultry, and drove the stock hither and thither to places allotted to them during the day. She never hastened nervously over her tasks, but went quickly and evenly and quietly from one thing to another. There scarcely differed five minutes one day from another in the length of time occupied by each task; and every morning at almost the same minute she was back in the kitchen, beginning breakfast.

Breakfast was a simple, unvaried meal, and soon prepared. When it was ready, she opened the door into the bed-chamber and summoned Nels, who still lay sleeping soundly, his mouth laxly open. Habit assisted him to waken the instant the door opened, even before Alma could say in her high, throaty voice:

"Sta upp, Nels. Frukost." ("Stand up, Nels. Breakfast.")

Nels' toilet was as simple and quickly -performed as Alma's; for, like her, he slept half dressed and he washed and combed with careless haste.

He was a big, strong man, thirty years of age, and well favored of countenance. His skin was weather-reddened and his hair sun-bleached. He had powerful arms and shoulders. The muscles of his back would gather into great iron-hard bunches under enormous strain.

But he was already becoming stiffened with hewing and plowing and lifting huge loads, and sweating under hot suns.

He had toiled fifteen years longer than had Alma, whose people were well-to-do and kept her in school till she was fifteen. Four years then she worked for her father, and a year she had been the wife of Nels, working for him, going with him to a distant State where land was abundant and cheap, though hard to till.

But Alma did not mind hard work. She was young and strong and always well, and loved Nels as a wife should love her husband; and Nels loved her and was always kind; and both were proud of her unusual strength and endurance.

Breakfast was on the table and Alma had already poured the coffee when Nels took his place. They ate in preoccupied wordlessness. Alma was calculating the day's eggs, and Nels' mind was upon the plowing and seeding that must be done

---

before the setting sun. Such problems belonged equally to them both; but each knew equally well how many eggs were needed to fill the boxes, and what must be purchased in exchange for the week's produce of butter and eggs: it had already been settled between them. And each knew equally well the work in the field that the day held for them. It was not their custom to chatter over such matters.

They rose together from the table. Alma followed Nels into the shed. She struck the damper shut as she passed the cook-stove. The dishes would stand till she came to the house at noon to get the midday meal. While it cooked she would wash the dishes for use again. The important thing now was to get into the field.

She stood by him while Nels selected the sack of grain he wanted for seed. It was a big sack and full. His muscles stretched tautly as he swung it clear and dropped it on the hard dirt floor. Then he took down a seed-sifter. It was for Alma to carry the seed to the field.

She was boastfully strong. Hitherto she had encountered no task too great. But after two attempts to swing the sack to her shoulders, she desisted and shook her head, her blue eyes raised to Nels', mutely apologetic. Surprised, he waited for her to try again; but she shook her head, a deep color flooding her face and neck. Still more surprised, Nels put forth his hand and lifted the sack. True, it was heavy, but not so heavy as burdens she had often carried without difficulty.

The circumstance was occasion for audible comment:

"You have lifted heavier."

Then Alma divulged a secret not yet told.

"Jag bar barn,"she said softly. ("I carry child.")

For a moment there was no response in Nels' stolid face; then it slowly filmed with a vivifying exultation. He was gripped with a powerful, inarticulate emotion. The glow of his countenance was reflected in Alma's. Neither spoke, but their eyes met in wordless understanding.

The glow subsided in Alma's face first. The knowledge had been hers the longer. Her eyes returned to the sack at her feet, bulging and weighty. Nels' eyes followed hers. Immediately he stooped and lifted the sack to her shoulders, then marched off ahead with the seed-sifter under his arm, Alma following, ably carrying the seed.

Half way across the intervening twenty acres, a fatuous grin overspread Nels' face. He looked back at Alma, trudging some ten yards behind him. The grin deepened with his enjoyment of the thought that evoked it. He stopped and waited for her; then said slyly: "Fader."

Alma responded with a fainter smile. "Fader," she repeated. Her eyes kindled, and she added softly, "Och moder," and smiled again.

She stumbled slightly. Nels, with newborn chivalry, stopped her and took the sack on his own back, walking sturdily ahead.

Alma's heart beat high; her eyes grew mistily soft. She murmured tenderly, "Fader." And more softly still, "Och moder." Then—so softly that her lips moved without a sound—"Och min lillen.' ("And my baby.")

What is Your Present Worth?

EVERY good business man takes an annual inventory of the resources and liabilities of his business. He must do this in order to know how to conduct his business from year to year. These items of resources and liabilities he arranges in the form of a statement, and from it he determines his Present Worth.

Such a statement would be of great value to the clerk or professional man who has nothing invested in his work or business except his own time and skill, but who tries to reap a profit from them each year.

What is a profit? To the business man it is the difference between the net resources at two different times. If the difference between resources and liabilities on January 1, 1917, was $10,000, and on January 1, 1916, it was $9,000, he has made a profit of a thousand dollars in the year 1917. Income does not mean profit to him. If he is taking in twice as much this year as last, but spending it all, he considers that he is not making any profit at all.

An example will help to make this point clear. A bookkeeper in a certain city has prepared such statements for several years now. He makes out his statement on the first day of January of each year, just as he makes out the statement for his employer. The statement for January 1, 1916, was as follows:

Resources

     

Cash, Checking Account	$50.00
Cash, Savings Account	125.00
Life Insurance	90.00
Real Estate, House and Lot in which he lives	3,500.00
Total Resources	$3,765.00

Liabilities

    

Current Bills	$75.00
Mortgage on Real Estate	2,000.00
Total Liabilities	2,075.00
Present Worth	$1,690.00

A year later, on January 1, 1917, the statement was as follows:

Resources

       

Cash, Checking Account	$176.50
Cash, Savings Account	75.00
Life Insurance	130.00
Real Estate, House and Lot	3,500.00
Real Estate, Lot Powell Place	20.00
Building and Loan Association stock	15.00
Total Resources	$3,916.50

Liabilities

    

Current Bills	$125.00
Mortgage on Real Estate	2,000.00
Total Liabilities	2,125.00
Present Worth	$1,791.50

The Present Worth had increased $101.50, which represented his net profit for the year.

The value of the life insurance policy is placed at the "Cash Surrender Value" shown on the policy. The lot in Powell Place and the shares of Building and Loan stock were bought on payments, and are entered at the amount paid for them.

It will be noticed that there is in this statement no valuation on himself or on his wife. When men attempt to make an estimate of the value of their possessions, they sometimes include such items as "My Ability, $200,000.00," or "Wife, $10,000,000.00." While these things may be worth such sums, and certainly would not be parted with for less, yet neither article would be accepted as collateral at anything like these figures.

He Made His Own Main Street

THE little store of Harry L. Adle in St. Joseph, Missouri, is on an out-of-the-way back street that furnishes both automobilists and pedestrians a short cut home from downtown. People who travel this street are in a hurry or they would not be using it. For that reason it is not the place a man would choose for a retail store.

Several years ago Mr. Adle and his partner chose the isolated store building because of its low rent. They were in the butter commission business, and did not need the advantages the main thoroughfares offered, since they sold only to retail stores and carried their wares to these stores. Although the building is only eight by twenty feet in size, they did a good business. Then the "big fellows" coveted the slice of business Mr. Adle and his partner were getting. One morning they awoke to find their supplies cut off at the source. They were overbid. Mr. Adle's partner quit and went to work for one of the "big fellows."

"I'm through, Harry," he said, "and you had better come along."

"Nope; I will stick. I'd rather work for Harry L. Adle than any one else I know of."

The problem now was what to sell, and to whom. After that how to get them to slow up long enough even to realize that there was a store there.

"I can sell them all right," said Mr. Adle, "if I can just get them to look."

So he got them to looking. That summer was a warm one. Buttermilk drinking became a fad in St. Joseph. Across one end of his building he painted a large sign: "Buttermilk Filling Station." This caught on a little, and encouraged other efforts along the sign line.

Every morning he painted a sign across each of the windows. People are always willing to read new signs. They began to watch for Mr. Adle's latest.

One of these read:

A little buttermilk does no harm,
And sends the doctor back to the farm.

As soon as he got a start with the buttermilk trade, he added a full line of dairy items. Each new line was heralded by a sign. Men would tell "the fellows down at the office," and motorists would stop to read—and buy.

"Whatsoever a man seweth, that shall he rip," announced the addition of thread and notions to the stock. And "Our pie fits any face" announced pastry.

"A man from Louisville was here the other day," said Mr. Adle. "He had heard of this place downtown. But it's the way I have slowed up traffic on this street that pleases me." And from the size of the Adle stock it is apparent that the signs did not fail him.

A Wait-on-Yourself Grocery

WAR has caused such a scarcity of clerks and waiters, and also increased costs of running a business to such an extent, that the idea of having customers wait on themselves and get things at reduced prices is being tried in other lines of business besides the cafeteria restaurants, where it has long been familiar. The grocery trade has recently been much interested in a "self-service" grocery store in Lockport, New York, which the Modern Merchant and Grocery World describes as follows:

"A customer enters the store through a turnstile, which registers the number of persons who enter each day. She helps herself to a tray which looks like a long pan with two handles, or, if she prefers, a market basket. There is no charge for this container. If she wishes to use a basket to carry her goods home, she is charged 4 cents for it, which amount she receives on returning it. Shelves are indexed alphabetically as one enters the store, and on these shelves one finds the commodities beginning with the particular initial letter.

"A low partition divides the store. A customer walks down one side and up the other, selecting the goods she desires. When she has finished with the letters 'X Y Z,' she finds herself at the desk of the cashier, who checks the items and collects the amount.

"If the customer has been using a pan on which to collect the groceries, she proceeds to the front of the store, where a large shelf is placed for the accommodation of those desiring to wrap their packages, paper and string being provided. When this has been done the customer returns the pan to the cashier's desk; if a basket is used she does not bother with the wrapping, but merely takes her purchases home. Every article in the store is plainly marked with the price at which it is sold.

"It is remarkable to observe how quickly a customer can wait on herself. A store manager is in charge, and, in addition to the cashier, has a clerk to assist. The proprietor and the clerk do nothing but fill up the shelves to get things ready for the selling hours. On busy days, like Saturday, the proprietor and clerk simply watch the crowd and see that everybody takes care of himself or herself."

Don't Despise the Junkman

WHEN the big metal interests of the country sent experts to Washington to help along our war preparations, they organized a committee on scrap iron and steel. And a sympathetic newspaper editor said everything must be going well, because even the humble junkman was helping us win the war.

Humble! Do you know what the scrap-iron business of this country amounts to in a year? We make 40,000,000 tons of iron and steel, but one ton in every three is made out of scrap-junk!—12,000,000 to 15,000,000 tons of it. The Iron Trade Review gives some figures showing the magnitude of this industry. About twenty-five per cent of all the scrap is produced by the railroads, and forty per cent by mills and factories in the form of pieces cut off from plates, billets and rods, and borings and punchings. The other thirty-five per cent comes from the junkman proper; but even half of that is railroad and industrial scrap, leaving only fifteen to twenty per cent collected from farms and houses. You see the junk peddler going through your alley; but there are single waste trade companies doing a business of from $10,000,000 to $50,000,000 a year in scrap iron.

A Matter of Temperament

By ALEXANDER HULL

Illustrations by Frederic Anderson

LINDALE was big enough to straddle a river that was navigable, on the average, eleven months and two weeks during the year, and to support two daily papers. It had streetcars, two fine bridges, a residence section on the west side of the river which was called the Terrace and which was inhabited almost solely by people of a certain importance in their own regard and others', and beyond the Terrace a Country Club.

It was rather easy to belong to the set that mattered in Lindale. You might enter by the happy accident of birth; you might arrive by means of a bank account and a set of passable manners; or, quite possibly, you might get in with the manners alone. Thus Lindale was the perfect melting-pot for class distinctions.

The Linds hadn't much money, but they had lived on the Terrace since long before there was any Terrace, and they still occupied the gaunt, three-storied, red-brick relic of earlier days in the most favored residential section of the Terrace. Colonel Boyeson Lind, Charlotte's father, had managed to squeeze a few alterations and improvements upon the old house out of his just sufficient income, so that it served. Mrs. Lind was a pleasant-faced person of no particular significance outside the factitious and fortuitous importance of being Charlotte's mother.

Charlotte herself was a young person of twenty-four, just home from college. She had perhaps the coolest, the pleasantest, and the most contained features and manners of any young woman in Lindale. She possessed that girlish and arrogant poise which is quite without offense either to gods or men, and she was fully aware that she was a young woman of intelligence, of charm, of beauty, and of importance.

For the years of her college career she had been living with her mother's sister in the East; but since she had come home, confident, lovely, innocently sophisticated, she had twanged the heart-strings of Lindale's swains with cruel, careless fingers, and without premonition of trouble. If the swains were presumptuous, the dusky-haired, slim young goddess put them ruthlessly down—petulantly, regretfully, or angrily, as the victim's case demanded.

And then came David.

Charlotte's mother's brother, Ansel Hornby, a rather plump, jolly, worldly-wise little bachelor, owned and edited, in the good old fashion, the Lindale Signal. He knew every residenter in town, most of them by their first names, and he usually succeeded in getting acquainted with the stranger before the latter had been in town a week.

CHARLOTTE was giving an informal dance one autumn evening. One of the boys telephoned about ten in the morning, just as Charlotte was off for the other side of the river, technically known as the City, to give her final orders for flowers and refreshments, that he had been so unfortunate ("Stupid!" breathed Charlotte) as to render himself liable to quarantine.

It is, of course, the immemorial characteristic of the ruder sex to be "short" for dances. Charlotte was considerably vexed. She racked her efficient little brain for five minutes in vain. There wereseveral possibilities, to be sure; but each of them at that time happened, for reasons best known to Charlotte herself, to be deemed ineligible. Charlotte, stopping at the Signal office to deliver to the society editor her list of guests for the evening, decided to consult that amiable sinner, Uncle Ansel.

"H'lo, Charlie!" he called jovially.

Charlotte frowned prodigiously.

"I—will—not—be—called—by—that—name!" she said angrily. "You know how it aggravates me. You promised—"

"'Pon my word, so I did!" declared Hornby, falsely apologetic. "I forgot."

"You—"

"No—honest I did!" said her uncle. "Here! Evidence of good faith, best of intentions, and groveling apologies. Get yourself a soda at the corner drug-store."

He proffered her a dollar bill.

Charlotte sniffed, unpropitiated, but she stretched out her acquisitive pink fingers and took the bill. Then, after a moment, she said casually: "Oh, by the way—I'm short a man for to-night. Know any one new I can ask?"

Hornby considered a moment.

"Why—I don' know. Let's see. 'D you ever meet a David Harris—working for me?"

"N—no," said Charlotte. "Would he do?"

"I expect so," replied her uncle seriously. "'Bout your age, I should guess. Nice-lookin'. Went to Alpine College three years, I believe. I guess he'd do."

"Where can I find him?" demanded Charlotte promptly.

"Why—he's over to the court-house just now, workin' on the Miggsby trial," said Hornby. "But, if you want, I could ask him, maybe, for you."

Thus easily was David Harris launched in Lindale's best society.

As he left that evening, among the last, Charlotte, at the shaded end of the walk, gave him her warm, well shaped hand and her impartial, wonderful smile.

"It was good of you to come," she murmured, emphasizing her adjective faintly. "I hope you've not had too dull a time."

His praise of her hospitality was a bit inarticulate for its very fervor.

"And that you'll come again, soon," she ran on enchantingly.

"I—oh—yes!" he said, with suddenly wakened courage. "To-morrow—to-morrow evening—I could come then?"

Charlotte was not unaccustomed or averse to such abrupt homage.

"Not to-morrow, I think. Don't you believe that would be rushing me—rather? You might come Friday, though."

"Friday," he repeated, as if it were a sacrament. "I'll come!"

ANSEL HORNBY paid David Harris sixteen dollars a week, and David lived on twelve of it—comfortably, for this was some years ago. Hornby was overpaying David, knew it, and rather enjoyed the sensation. David was saving four dollars a week toward the last year of his college course. In one year more he would have saved two hundred and fifty dollars—which, with the usual birthday gift of his Uncle Lee Passin, who was very rich, would see him through.

Beyond that the future had been as yet dark to him. Now its curtain was pierced by one bright beam. That candle was Charlotte Lind. The future would at least contain her.

There was about David Harris, who was not a native of Lindale, a peculiar air of decision. One felt that he knew what he was after in life, and that he might, very likely, get it. It was very doubtful whether David did know what he wanted, and it was quite certain he did not know how to get it. But it gave warning that he would be, in the end, a successful, egoistic, self-sufficient man. There are a good many of these self-sufficient men in the world, and they are the sort of men that get on. They do not die for love of women. They rather survive easily if not comfortably, and live to see their one-time idols chastened or consumed with regret.

Enough of that. David Harris was not that sort of a man—yet. He was a mere boy, a year and a half younger than Charlotte; a bundle of contrary, conflicting ignorances, prejudices, enthusiasms, emotions, dim spiritual yearnings, vague glorious worshipings.

Charlotte permitted him, all that winter, to monopolize her time and interest. Consequently David no longer saved his four dollars a week. He spent it upon flowers, upon books, upon candy, upon theater tickets, and plunged recklessly into his savings as well. The year at college grew more and more uncertain in his life scheme.

Marriage is a matter for seasoned men to discuss cautiously with their wise-eyed fiancées. Youth reeks but little of that weighty matter. To clasp the beloved's hand, to capture now and again her fleeting kiss, to bloom splendidly in the sun of her favor—that is glorious enough.

So there had been, of course, furtive hand pressures, stolen delicious kisses, and shadowy understandings between David and Charlotte Lind, with no talk, and no very definite thought, of marriage. The present seemed all-sufficient to David.

TOWARD spring, however, the desire to put the treasures of the world at the feet of the ineffable Charlotte began to make Hornby's sixteen dollars a week seem grotesquely inadequate—impossible, even.

Clifford Holden then came home from Europe. The Holdens had money. Clifford Holden began to pass in a whirl of dust and splendor through Lindale's streets; in a gleaming crimson car—this in a time when cars were not so numerous as now. Clifford's was easily the finest car in Lindale. And not infrequently David Harris, gathering his dull news, breathed the dust and fumes of that car at crossings, embittered by the sight of Charlotte beside Clif Holden in the driver's seat.

It was a bitter dose, and David, the impetuous, somewhat selfish youth, did not spare Miss Lind recriminations. They quarreled bitterly, sulked apart for a week, met at Amy Lea's, ran away between dances to Charlotte's own wooded lawn, and deliciously made up again.

"Oh, Davy, I do care for you," she said plaintively, and I will wait for you! But I can't be mean to other folks, can I? I do like to ride with Clif—it's such a darling, lovely car. But I don't like him one bit—you know I don't, Davy!"

---

"He has everything," said David.

"I know—but you'll have it all one day, too, Davy. You're cleverer than he is. And you—we—will have loads and loads of money some day—and half a dozen shiny cars—if we want. Won't we?"

"I'm afraid," said David, "it will be a long while. Do we need—do you care—so dreadfully about the money?"

"Do I?" exclaimed Charlotte, squeezing his arm excitedly. "Why, I'm crazy about it! I've never had enough in my life. Father is so terribly poor, and I—I've got a million-dollar taste! You don't know what a calamity that is for poor me! Davy dear, you can't know!"

David sat so silently disconsolate that her heart must have smitten her.

"Don't you care, Davy," she whispered suddenly. "You can make it—easily!"

David had his doubts, but her faith was warming and delightful.

"We must be going! Everybody will be talking about us," she said. "Come on—hurry, Davy, please!"

She rose, tugging at his sleeve.

"Wait a minute longer, Charlotte," he begged. "Just a minute! I—we're engaged, aren't we?"

"N—no," said Charlotte. Then, decidedly: "No. We can't be—just now. But we—we're nearly the same as!"

"Just the same as, Charlotte?"

"N—no; nearly."

"That's not enough. Say, 'just the same as'! Please—dear!"

"Won't do it! Won't do it!" said Charlotte, laughing delightedly and flinging him an airy, mischievous kiss. "Just 'nearly the same as,' and not a bit more—yet! Come on, Davy; don't tease!"

There was no resisting her, of course. David rose slowly, and they went back to Amy Lea's, where Charlotte danced oftener with Clif Holden, but flung the more tender glances upon David Harris.

And that summer bloomed and waned and died, and there came another resplendent autumn. David had no longer any thought of school. He had quit the Signal and got a place in the Mearson Machine Company office. It did not pay so well, but there was some chance of advancement.

"He moons around the office," said David's immediate superior, "like a lovesick young calf. He'd be a good boy if he'd forget that girl half a minute in the day."

There came a black day, finally, when David, coming home from work, found a marked copy of the Signal on his bed—the kindly token of some well disposed anonymous friend.

ON the society page were the pictures of those two young society favorites, Charlotte Lind and Clifford Holden, whose engagement had been that day announced at a very select, though informal, luncheon at the Lind home on the Terrace.

David sank back on his bed with burning eyes, white-faced, white-lipped, shaking, nauseated.

He understood now that she had been playing with him. She was but a mercenary little vampire. All that had seemed lightness and beauty and goodness was suddenly revealed in its sordid reality. Her words about money echoed mockingly through his mind: "I'm crazy about it! I've never had enough in my life." He believed it.

Without changing his working clothes, he flung out of his boarding-house, stamped across the bridge that spanned the green river, and climbed the lawn of the Lind home.

Mrs. Lind was on the veranda. She rose, a little flustered.

"Why—it's David Harris!" she said. "What can I do for you ?"

"Charlotte—I want to see her!"

Mrs. Lind seemed doubtful. But she said, after a moment:

"We—well—I don't know if she'll see you. I'll call her."

It was a little after seven.

Charlotte was dressing, Mrs. Lind reported, and would see him in a minute.

The minute stretched into twenty, while he sat there in his seething fury. And then Charlotte appeared, in a new bronze-colored frock, inexpressibly lovely, inexpressibly hateful.

"Hello—Davy," she began uncertainly.

"Is it true?" demanded David tensely. "That's all I want to know—is it true?"

But Charlotte, at the sight of his white rage, must have had her cue given her. She was not afraid of any man that ever lived, much less of David Harris.

"Yes, it is. And you have no right to complain. Could you marry me—even if I were to accept you? You have no claim upon me. You—"

"No claim!" broke in David bitterly. "After all that has happened—your kisses, your—

Charlotte's face whitened and her eyes flashed with sudden anger.

"You—you—keep—still!" she flamed softly but furiously. "Have you no decency?"

"Decency!" echoed David. "Decency! Have you none? You would sell your—"

"You have no right," cried she, "to come here to insult me! You—go! I wish I had never seen you!"

"What do you suppose I wish?" he asked scornfully.

"Go away!" she cried. "Will you go?"

"Yes—when I have told you—"

"Oh!"

She stared at him for one instant with an intense hostility. Then she cut the scene short most effectively by turning, stepping into the hallway, closing the door behind her, and turning the key.

David Harris stood a moment, dazed. Then he turned, tried, with pitiful success, to laugh bitterly, as would a man of the world, hoping that she would hear, and stalked down the steps, across the lawn obliquely, and out upon the sidewalk.

At the crossing of the street three blocks down, he heard the rush of a motor, and, pausing, saw Clifford Holden's long red car bearing down upon him. But no human power could have made him move. He stood there, madly, futilely glaring, with clenched hands.

It was only by an almost miraculous quickness that Holden succeeded in whirling the steering-gear so as to fling the big car sharply to one side and miss David.

"'S matter with you, Harris?" he called. "Sleepin' in the street?"

"Damn you!" shouted David.

"Huh?" said Holden uncertainly over his shoulder.

He had not even caught David's words. Fitting irony!

It was eleven o'clock when David reached his room. He examined his resources, and discovered that he had enough for a ticket to Philadelphia, and the first semester's tuition, and one week's board bill. There was a train at 2:07 A. M.

When that train pulled thunderously out of Lindale and shot eastward into the vast darkness of the cloudy night, David Harris—bitter, disillusioned, the plaything of the colossal hatred that filled him, a misanthrope, a misogynist, and a rather pitiful boy of twenty-three—was on it.

IT has been already hinted that David Harris would not die of unrequited love. Eight years later found him a very substantial young man, physically speaking and otherwise. He had had his year at college, having borrowed the money for it from his Uncle Lee Passin, who was himself a confirmed misogynist and therefore heartily approved the line that David informed him he had taken toward women. Then David had had three grueling years at reporting for a Philadelphia paper, during which he had written a play, which, the following year, had brought him fame—and money. A great deal of the latter.

Continued on page 15

WHAT IS SO NOBLE AS WORK?

MEN HIGHER UP

---

GENTLEMEN BE SEATED

Continued from page 10

Then, as soon as Fate was perfectly certain that David had no need of the money, she let his Uncle Lee Passin die and leave David three quarters of a million.

Following that, David had written a second successful play, in that mordant, misanthropic manner which his first play had rendered peculiarly his own. In it, as in his first, he made no secret at all of what he thought of the sex.

And he did not forget or forgive Charlotte Lind. Always, some day, he meant to go back and pay her off.

For a long time he was undecided upon her punishment. One day it seemed to him that it would be most divinely laughable to marry her; and another day that the crowning accomplishment would be not to marry her. For Charlotte had not married Clifford Holden, after all, nor any one else. He had kept himself informed of that. She was at home, ruling her father's house, since her mother's death, fading slowly, he supposed, into the unclaimed woman—the old maid!

HE thought suddenly, one morning, in the interval of relaxation and leisure that had come upon him with the completion of his third play, that he would go and see her.

He went. Lindale had grown, of course. He learned that Clif Holden had married Amy Lea Maxwell. Also that Charlotte's Uncle Ansel Hornby had died, leaving his very modest fortune to Charlotte, and it was rumored that she had needed it, for the Colonel had undoubtedly lost most of his fortune in a sort of half-baked paving concern.

It seemed to David Harris that it would be a good idea to run out and call, giving no previous warning of his coming.

So he did. It was June, and very lovely on the Terrace. He went up the lawn, conscious by the beating of his usually unnoticed heart, and a tendency in his legs toward shaking, that he was doing rather a daring thing.

Some one was sitting in a hammock on the porch, reading. He gathered himself together compactly, invulnerably, and mounted the steps.

Charlotte rose, apparently bewildered, at first, as well as uncertain of her ground. But she smiled at last, extended her hand, and said slowly:

"Davy."

He took her in avidly, but outwardly kept his pose of casual interest. Still she had the fine, mobile, unlined features, the same vivid coloring, the same massed dusky hair, and she was as slender as the girl had been. She was older, of course. He saw it by subtle signs that individually eluded notice, but all together gave a general impression of added years. She was wiser and more controlled, but—he felt it decidedly—she was the same old Charlotte.

"Charlotte!"

She put his hat on the porch table, and signed him to a wicker-work chair, sinking, herself, back into her hammock.

Then she smiled as she said:

"Eight years! Think of it! Heavens, but you look well—and distinguished. Do you know, by the way, that I've never seen a single one of your plays? Isn't it warm? You're in the sun—move your chair over to this side. You'll get the breeze here."

Then, as he obeyed, she said abruptly:

"Well—have you forgiven me yet?"

He caught, he felt, exactly the correct intonation as he replied:

"No."

An accent calculated to allay her suspicions, while at the same time it did no violence to the truth.

"Oh! I'm sorry," she returned lightly. "Davy,—though I shouldn't call you that now, I know—you were perfectly odious that night. Do you know it?"

"I must, at any rate, have touched your conscience!" he said, smiling. "For I notice you didn't marry him."

Charlotte Lind laughed.

"My conscience!" she said first, with a little sardonic curl of her lips. Then she went on: "The honest-to-goodness truth to you, Davy! Maybe I owe you something of the sort. I got paid off for deserting you. Amy Lea Maxwell stole him from me. Positively—absolutely!"

It seemed slightly unreasonable, but Amy Lea had had charm, of a sort.

"You can imagine my feelings. We didn't speak for three years. Bosom friends again now. Well, such is life in Lindale.

"Now—you. What are you doing here? Are you going to stay for tea? Will you honor Lindale long enough for me to entertain for you? Perhaps I'd better tell you that I alone can start you right. I'm a kind of social arbiter—arbitress?—in the Lindale younger set."

"Why—will you go a little slower, please, and let me catch up? Yes, thank you, I'll stay to tea. And to be entertained for. And I'm here out of—well, call it curiosity. It's my old stamping-ground, you know, where I passed certain of the happy, happy years of my youth—"

Charlotte smiled faintly and quizzically.

"And had my first insight into the mysteries of women's minds and wills and hearts and pledges. I just had the feeling that I'd like to see it—and you—again."

"Oh," said Charlotte, with a noncommittal expression. "Well, I'm glad to see you, Davy, but I expect you'll find us rather dull."

He didn't find her so, at any rate. It was not so much the things she said as the way she said them, as the way she looked when she said them, as that—well, that she was the woman who eight years before had outrageously jilted him.

He laughed later when he recalled that he had imagined her an old maid in the making. You can't call any woman an old maid who is blooming, and not more than twenty-five in appearance, and has half a dozen young men dangling about her. He had seen three of them that evening, and they had all been devoted enough, and persevering enough, and distrustful enough of him and of each other, to allay any doubts he might still have been inclined to have about Charlotte's desirability in the marriage market.

He began to wonder what freakish prejudice had kept her from marrying.

Himself? Heaven forbid! He laughed at himself, and went to bed.

But it was not easy to sleep. How truly Charlotte rang to her old note!

"I suppose," she had said, "that you've made money—just as I predicted?"

"Why?" he had asked.

"Well, you were always that sort of boy. And now you look—very prosperous."

"Well—yes. I've made money," he had admitted candidly. "But nothing like the quantity I've inherited. Do you know that if you'd put up with me another four years you'd have been able to marry almost a millionaire? You'd have got the money you wanted so badly."

Charlotte had tried, upon that, to suppress a fleeting expression of—was it regret? She had said, finally, passing it off as a jest: "It was a pity, wasn't it?"

She kept him awake a long time that night. He felt that he was going to enjoy this little personal drama of his very much indeed. First of all, he meant to sift her, down to her bare motives; to see the springs that animated her. It would be rather nice and illuminating to know completely the machinery of one of that race of somewhat contemptible, yet nevertheless fascinating, creatures called women. He promised himself to do that very thing—very thoroughly.

DAVID stayed through June and on into July, and still he was not ready to go. One by one, the Lindale satellites dropped from sight.

He wondered at her—how she held her own against those perennial vandal hordes, each fresh season's débutantes. More than wondered—admired. Admired—and still hated.

Her impervious veneer was amazing. He felt that she was, to a degree, wasted upon Lindale. In a larger city there would have been the opportunities so pitifully lacking for her here. There were so few really wealthy men in Lindale, and probably eighty-five per cent of them were already married. She had never got her money; never would get it, apparently: and his study of her convinced him that she wanted it, upon the whole, rather more than she had ever wanted it.

She put no barriers in his way. The second week in July he bought a motorboat, starting a fad in Lindale; and Charlotte cruised about with him a good deal.

ONE day, when they had landed upon a beach a few miles up the river, David drifted to the decisive words. He had a queer feeling, the instant he had said them, that they had come from him, not of his own volition, but hooked out neatly and unexpectedly, like a surprised fish from its brook.

"What would you think, Charlotte, of marrying me?"

Charlotte glanced at him lazily, her fingers playing in the warm gray sand.

"I don't think I would care to, Davy."

He dropped his detached manner. "Why?"

She laughed. "Because you don't want me."

"I don't want you? Now, what, I wonder, makes you think that?"

"You want to know, really? Well, I'll tell you. Here we sit—quite alone—and—"

With a sudden bound he was close beside her, his hand closing upon hers. She said no more, but sat looking straight ahead across the green river to the hills.

"And—what?" he asked.

"And no man ever really wanted me who did not try to take advantage of me in a situation of this kind," she said evenly.

A twinge of some sort pierced him. He couldn't, for the life of him, have said whether it was feeling for her, or a sort of vague, almost impersonal jealousy.

"You can't have everything, Charlotte. I've learned that of life, if I've learned nothing else. The things of splendid youth—the snows of yester-year! Once you could have had—well—passionate love of me, but little else. I had no more to give. Now there's very little I can't offer you except—what you wouldn't take before."

She turned and stared slowly, disconcertingly, into his face.

"I hurt you—a good deal—that time—didn't I?" she murmured after a bit, half to herself. "I don't believe you've forgiven me for it—have you?"

"No—not yet," he replied. "But if you'll marry me, why—"

"I do want to be forgiven," she said. Then she shook her head slowly. "Only—you don't want me—I'm sure. Still, you've asked me!"

"Yes, I've asked you," he said. Then a sudden gust of decision stirred him. He caught her in his arms and kissed her—oh, very thoroughly. If it was counterfeit—well, he defied her to say. He scarcely knew, himself.

She rose, when he released her, and shook herself free of the sand and—it struck him—perhaps of his caresses.

"Well," she said, looking down at him, "I've accepted you. You haven't convinced me, of course. That—that came too late to be really worth while, Davy. But here I am—thirty-odd, and almost ready to abdicate my throne; and here are you rich, distinguished, and complaisant. Who is Charlotte Lind to cavil at fortune's gifts? Come, let's go home."

David Harris rose, shamed a bit.

"You don't believe I care for you, do you? I wonder if I could make you?"

Charlotte looked at him queerly. "Try!" she said. And then, after a long pause: "But I've accepted you."

She pledged herself to the first of September, at length, and it was so announced in the papers.

TWO weeks before the day, David left Lindale, he told her, upon a business trip to the East, from which he might be expected to return three days before the wedding day. But frankly, as he went away, he was still undecided as to his course, still bitterly unforgiving at heart.

David did not return by the train he had set, nor did he send Charlotte at the last any message. In her mind she granted him twelve hours of grace. At the expiration of that time, not having heard from him, she called in her father.

"Dad," she said evenly, "there's something wrong with Davy. There has been all along. It doesn't matter what it is. At any rate, I've decided not to marry him, after all. I want you to send this notice at once to both papers."

The Colonel, bewildered, took the item she had written. It proved to be a notice of the indefinite postponement of the Lind-Harris wedding, owing to the illness of Miss Lind, who had been sent, it was understood, to a sanatorium.

"It's exactly what every jilted girl says," remarked Charlotte, smiling wryly, "but it will have to serve."

She finished packing a few things, wrote half a dozen short notes, and went into the library.

"Good-by, dad," she said. "I'm slipping off to Hollymere for a little while —before the inquiries and condolences begin to roll in. You lie for me the best you can, won't you? I've told every one who really counts some sort of a makeshift. I don't much care what you tell the others. And don't—don't, above all things, tell a single soul where I am!"

Her father nodded.

"And don't worry, dear! I'm quite all right. One of my sort doesn't—"

The Colonel nodded. "No. You've got the nerve," he said admiringly. "I wish I had as much."

Concluded on page 22

This is the Place Where—

THE grave encyclopædias don't say so; but down in the Danish West Indies, which the United States recently bought for $25,000,000, folks in Charlotte Amalie point out this old tower as the place where Bluebeard cut off the heads of his too curious wives. The Bluebeard tale is to be found in the folklore of many countries. The version in the books of our childhood is taken from translations of Charles Perrault's "Barbe-Bleue," written in 1697.

Down in Charlotte Amalie, legend also has it that the pirate Blackbeard lived in the tower, and that he had seventeen very short-lived wives. But as Tench (Blackbeard) did not meet his deserved end until 1718, he could hardly have been the original of the French story. However, the tower is said to have been built before 1570, and to have been the home of a Spanish pirate whose beard and wives might have inspired M. Perrault's story, although in France they will tell you that Barbe-Bleue lived in Brittany.

Anyway, while there are many Bluebeard towers, this is the only one we know of that has come under our flag.

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

AS a young man in the Soudan and in South Africa, General Byng established a military reputation that his surprise attack at Cambrai in November, 1917, has increased many times over. According to British military experts, the credit of this attack is divided between Byng and the tanks. From May, 1915, until June, 1916, he commanded the Canadian army, in which the soldiers are still called the "Byng boys," transforming them from a body of loosely disciplined men to one of the most tightly knit divisions of the army. His method is summed up in a wail from one of his men: "Parade in the morning, parade in the afternoon, parade in the evening!" However, the Canadians added to Sir Julian's titles the name of "Bingo Byng," in which they expressed a vast amount of affectionate respect.

HOW DAVIS ENCOURAGED YOUNG WRITERS

PART of the winter of 1912 Richard Harding Davis spent in Aiken with Gouverneur Morris. His mother, with whom his companionship had been close and wonderful, had died the preceding year; and he who had given so much friendship in his life felt the need of a little for himself.

Yet, even in his days of sorrow, he was not too preoccupied to spend a little time every day in encouraging young writers and artists.

"He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest pleasure, not in looking backward or forward, but in what is going on at the moment," says Morris, in a letter quoted in Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis (Charles Scribner's Sons). "He was up at 7 A. M., and the day began with attentions to his physical well-being. There were exercises conducted with great vigor and rejoicing, followed by a tub artesian cold, and a loud and joyous singing of ballads.

"The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at his door you must have heard a pen going swiftly and boldly.

"He was hard at work, doing unto others what others had done unto him. You were a stranger to him; some magazine had accepted a story you had written and published it. R. H. D. had found something to like and admire in that story (very little, perhaps), and it was his duty and pleasure to tell you so. If he had liked the story very much he would send you, instead of a note, a telegram. Or it might be that you had drawn a picture, or, as a cub reporter, had shown golden promise in a half column of unsigned print. R. H. D. would find you out and find time to praise and help you.

"So it was that when he emerged from his room at sharp eight o'clock he was wide-awake and happy and hungry, and whistled and double-shuffled with his feet out of excessive energy, and carried in his hands a whole sheaf of notes and letters and telegrams."

THE ONLY MAN WHO EVER TORE UP A $1,000,000 CONTRACT

THERE is only one man in the world who ever tore up a $1,000,000 a year salary contract.

When the United States Steel Corporation took over the Carnegie Company, it acquired as one of its obligations a contract to pay Charles M. Schwab that unheard-of sum as a minimum annually, says B. C. Forbes in his own magazine.

J. P. Morgan didn't know what to do about it. The highest salary on record was $100,000. He was in a quandary.

Finally he summoned Schwab, showed him the contract, and hesitatingly asked what could be done about it.

"This," said Schwab.

He tore it up.

That contract had netted Schwab $1,300,000 the previous year.

"I didn't care what salary they paid me. I was not animated by money motives. I believed in what I was trying to do and I wanted to see it brought about. I canceled that contract without a moment's hesitation," Mr. Schwab explained to me.

"Why do I work? What do I work for?" he continued. "I have more money than I can begin to spend. I have no children, nobody to leave it to. My wife is rich enough in her own right. She does not need it. I do not need it. I work just for the pleasure I find in work, the satisfaction there is in developing things, in creating. Also, the associations business begets. The man who does not work for the love of work, but only for money, is not likely to make money nor to find much fun in life."

HUMAN NATURE IS INCONSISTENT

EVEN the discipline of the German army is not strong enough to keep the spirit of Christmas out of the trenches. In A German Deserter's War Experience (B. W. Huebsch), the author, an anti-government Socialist, tells of a Christmas celebration on the Argonne front.

"Christmas in the trenches! It was bitterly cold. We had procured a pine tree, and decorated it with candles and cookies.

"Christmas trees were burning everywhere in the trenches, and at midnight all the trees were lifted on to the parapet with their burning candles, and along the whole line German soldiers began to sing Christmas songs in chorus. 'O thou blissful, O thou joyous, mercy-bringing Christmas-time!'—hundreds of men were singing the song in that fearful wood.

"The French left their trenches and stood on the parapet without any fear. There they stood, quite overpowered by emotion, and all of them with cap in hand. We, too, had issued from our trenches. We exchanged gifts with the French— chocolate, cigarettes, etc. They were all laughing, and so were we; why, we did not know. Then everybody went back to his trench, and incessantly the carol resounded, ever more solemnly, ever more longingly—'0 thou blissful'

"All around silence reigned; even the murdered trees seemed to listen. The charm continued, and one scarcely dared to speak. Why could it not always be as peaceful? We thought and thought, we we were as dreamers, and had forgotten everything about us. Suddenly a shot rang out; then another one was fired somewhere. The spell was broken. All rushed to their rifles. Our Christmas was over."

THE OLD-FASHIONED WOMAN IN JAPAN

THE self-abnegation of the Japanese woman is equaled only by that of the tiny fly who produces its offspring and then dies. But the Japanese woman dies, as far as her individual life and interests are concerned, at the moment she is led up to the man her parents have chosen for her and married.

After she is married she is no longer a person; she is simply the servant of her husband, her husband's parents, his grandparents, his brothers-in-law, his sisters-in-law, and finally of her children. The mother-in-law problem is aggravated. Until the husband's mother mercifully dies, the Japanese wife is under her absolute control. Nor can she escape by choosing the lot of an old maid. There are no old maids in Japan. Every respectable girl is married.

When the children come, a wife is doubly enslaved. No nursemaid relieves her of a moment's care; the father never walks the floor at night. Toyokichi Iyenaga, writing in Asia, says: "In Japan mother and babe are rarely separated, night or day, during the first days of the baby's life. No matter how many servants there are, the nursing and care of the baby belong solely to the mother."

Kindliness, docility, sympathy, tenderness, daintiness, these are the guiding principles in the training of the upper-class Japanese woman. Intelligence? Companionship? Humor? "Incomparable as she is as a mother and daughter, is the samurai woman also an interesting companion and 'charming associate'? Mr. Iyenaga asks. "On this point most of the Japanese men, I believe, will hesitate to give an affirmative answer. For our nature is woven out of so many complex threads that goodness alone is hardly sufficient to satisfy us."

COLONEL HOUSE A MYSTERY STILL

COLONEL HOUSE has now been a national—even an international—figure for more than four years. Yet to the great American public, and even to the insiders at Washington, he is just about as much a man of mystery as he was at the start. Let us see how much is really known about him—this man whom the President sends to Europe, and who is spoken of in the despatches as "dominating" the Allied conference.

He was born fifty-nine years ago on July 26, the son of a Texas banker, says Edwin Wildman in the Forum. He was sent North to the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, and later to Cornell, where he graduated in 1881.

He married Miss Loulie Hunter of Austin a few years later, and has two daughters, both of whom are now married.

He inherited some money, but made the larger part of his wealth in Texas ranches and in investments. He was interested in railroads and other enterprises as well; but the chance to branch out and become a figure in national finance he never grasped. When the late Henry B. Hyde got him a directorship in the Equitable Trust Company, he soon resigned. He had no taste for directorships that did not give him a chance to direct.

Probably he has a million—maybe two or three. At any rate, he has been known to say that he has all the money he ever wants to own and is not interested in getting more. His business office in Washington consists of one small room, with an old-fashioned flat-topped desk that has seen better days, a few filing cases, some chairs, a small old-fashioned safe. On the glass door are the words: "Mr. E. M. House."

It is said that hardly a hundred politicians in Texas know him to speak to, yet every Governor for ten years has felt his influence in the campaign, and his support is more desired than that of any other citizen in the State. Apparently he is absolutely sincere in his great dislike for publicity and his entire lack of selfishness. He loves politics as other men love business or golf. He wants to handle the machinery and get results. But for himself he wants—nothing.

---

WHISTLER'S BAD RECORD

THE qualities that make a successful business man seem to have little to do with making a great artist, and no one was ever a better illustration of this than Whistler. He hated routine, never had any sort of system in money matters, and was unpunctual to the end of his life.

"He hated all allusions to time," writes J. Walker McSpadden in Famous Painters of America (Dodd, Mead & Co.). "He never carried a watch; never allowed a clock's tick to be heard in his studio."

Whistler's father and grandfather were both majors in the army; and at eighteen Whistler entered West Point to become a soldier like his forebears. But:

"While Whistler had all the instinct and courage of a soldier—never being afraid of anybody in his life—he was too fond of pranks and too indifferent to the clock to make a favorable record. After two years of training he was. discharged as 'inefficient.'"

After leaving West Point he got a position in the Coast Survey.

"Whistler was always late for breakfast," goes on the sad record, "and as a consequence late at the office. Departmental rules had no terrors for him, as even at this early day he was a law unto himself. 'From the start he was never punctual,' says his mate; 'and as time wore on he would absent himself for days and weeks without tendering an excuse.' In January, 1855, he was credited with but six and one half days' work, which reduced his scant pay to a mere pittance.'"

All this does not mean that Whistler was an irresponsible idler who by an accident of genius became a great painter. On the contrary, he was an indefatigable worker. But he could not and would not work at anything except painting. In the time that he was apparently idling he was observing, studying, taking notes, and storing away impressions that were to form an invaluable part of his equipment later on. His impatience of discipline and routine did not extend to his art. There he could spend days and even weeks perfecting a single effect of color or line.

IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

By Capt. John McRae, of Guelph, Canada
(Now serving in France)

IN Flanders' fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly,
Scarce heard amidst the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders' fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe.
To you from falling hands we throw
The Torch—be yours to hold it high;
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders' fields.

From Town Crier.

THERE ARE NO NEW FASHIONS

THE costume you chose this fall because it was the "very latest" may have originated in the mind of an Egyptian designer. Mr. Sumner says, "Our present modes of dress are the resultant of all the fashions of the last two thousand years." As proof of this assertion Emily Burbank, in Woman as Decoration, informs us that the good Queen Taia, wife of Amenophis, posed for her stone portrait in a gown of striped material, with kimono sleeves and with a ribbon around her waist. The charming Greek costume that has bewitched every artist since Phideas, with its soft folds caught on either shoulder with a metal clasp and belted in at the waist with a slender cord, was copied first during the Empire period, when the women dampened their skirts so that they would cling to them à la Grecque; and again to-day, M. Fortuny, a famous Spanish designer of tea-gowns, has frankly copied the costumes of the dainty Tanagra figures, and of the drawings of Hieron, a Greek artist who lived about 400 B. C.

CAN A SMALL MAN SUCCEED?

"SUPERIORITY in weight and height tend to favor one in the contest for executive positions." This conclu- sion is reached by an analysis of the measurements of important men in all walks of life, undertaken by Enoch Burton Gowin in The Executive and His Control of Men (Macmillan Company).

Railroad presidents and general managers average five feet ten and nine tenths inches in height, and weigh one hundred eighty-six pounds. Governors of States are five feet eleven and two tenths inches tall, and weigh one hundred eighty-two pounds. University presidents are also large, averaging five feet ten and eight tenths inches and one hundred eighty-one pounds. Important reformers top the list in height, with five feet eleven and four tenths inches, while their weight also averages one hundred eighty-one.

Mr. Gowin does not claim that size is necessary to success. A place at the foot of the list is as honorable as the head. But with remarkable consistency the men of small physical dimensions hold positions calling for little executive leadership. Most of them are of the artistic or intellectual type. The ten lowest on the list in respect of size are artists, authors, chief justices of state courts, publishers, manufacturers, merchants, psychologists, philosophers, and lecturers, with musicians bringing up the foot.

As among men in the same lines of work, those at the top average decidedly taller and heavier than their humble competitors. Bishops are seventeen pounds heavier and almost two inches taller than preachers in small towns. University presidents are superior to presidents of small colleges by more than one inch and nearly seventeen pounds and a half. City school superintendents are seven tenths of an inch and twenty-one pounds above school principals in small places. Sales managers tower over mere salesmen by more than one inch and twenty-five and a half pounds. While railroad presidents average almost an inch and a half and thirty-one and a half pounds above their station agents. In every case the larger position is held by the larger man.

In many instances, obviously, the small job brings with it a lean diet, while the important positions are held by older men whom the youngsters on the rungs below may hope to rival at least in weight as age and wisdom increase.

DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT OUR PRISONS?

CARLO DE FORNARO, artist and editor, was held for five weeks in the Tombs, in New York, and then sentenced to one year at hard labor on Blackwell's Island on a charge of criminal libel against the late President Diaz of Mexico. As Mr. Fornaro's lawyer in Mexico City was not allowed to represent him, and as it became impossible to spirit out of Mexico the testimony necessary for his defense, Mr. Fornaro's conviction was to be expected. The record of his prison experiences, which he published shortly after his release, is a sordid and unvarnished tale.

"The line of convicts which upon their release streams out of our prisons is like a large sewer emptying its filth back into society," declares Mr. Fornaro in A Modern Purgatory. To begin with, the prisoner's self-respect is instantly lowered by the dirty, hideous uniform he must don. In describing his own costume Mr. Fornaro writes: "The trousers were decidedly too long, the coat and the rag—unjustly called a vest—both too short; a cap which came down to my eyebrows made up this uniform of degeneration and infamy." Because of the unsanitary condition of his uniform, Mr. Fornaro contracted a skin disease from which he suffered for a year.

In reference to his cell he writes: "A bed made of an iron frame with canvas stretched across it, two cheap cotton blankets, a straw pillow, a large covered pail, and a drinking cup complete the total of my furniture." Mr. Fornaro admits that poor ventilation, no sheets, thin blankets, are not all that make night hideous. "As soon as a little heat radiates from my body, scores of bed-bugs are attracted and start a vicious, incessant campaign."

Of all days in prison, Sunday is the most unbearable. "From four o'clock Saturday afternoon until Monday morning at eight we are locked into our cells. There is no exercise, no work for almost forty hours. Most cases of insanity are due to this enforced inaction and the accumulation of foul air in the cells."

In answer to Mr. Fornaro's request for the plays of Shakespeare, "Truthful Jane" was left. Fortunately, however, he found in a hole under his bed a copy of the Bible; on the fly-leaf were penciled instructions to leave it concealed there for the next unfortunate.

WE HAVE THEM HERE, TOO

DOES MEAT-EATING CAUSE CANCER?

SOME day, if we continue investigating and asking questions, we shall discover the real cause of cancer. The editor of the Golden Age, seeking light, has brought together some interesting facts on the relation between meat-eating and cancer. For instance, no case of cancer has occurred among the Russian Dukhobors in Canada, who number seven thousand and whose tenets forbid the use of meat. The apparent immunity of vegetarians is also confirmed by the records of two Benedictine monasteries, while the lowest death rate in any European country is found in Italy, where the per capita consumption of meat is also lowest. The largest increases in cancer deaths in America have occurred in San Francisco and Chicago, centers of good eating.

On the other hand, it has long been observed that cancer and gout seldom go together: and a good diet of meat is presumed to contribute to gout. So you can pay your money and take your choice.

THE GOLDEN SNARE

By JAMES O. CURWOOD

Illustrations by George Giguère

(Concluded)

THE shock of the discovery that Blake had escaped brought Philip half to his knees before he thought of Celie. In an instant the girl was awake. His arm tightened almost fiercely about her. She caught the gleam of his revolver, and in another moment she saw the empty space where their prisoner had been. Swiftly Philip's eyes traveled over the moonlit spaces about them. Blake had utterly disappeared. Then they saw the rifle, and breathed easier.

Leaving Celie huddled in her furs, Philip rose to his feet and slowly approached the snow hummock against which he had left his prisoner. The girl heard the startled exclamation that fell from his lips when he saw what had happened. Blake had not escaped alone. Running straight out from behind the hummock was a furrow in the snow like the trail made by an otter. He had seen such furrows before, where Eskimos had wormed their way, foot by foot, within striking distance of dozing seals. Assistance had come to Blake in that manner, and he could see where—on their hands and knees—two men instead of one had stolen back through the moonlight.

Celie came to his side now, gripping the rifle in her hands, and he was glad that she could not question him in words. He slipped the Colt into his holster and took the rifle from her hands. In the emergency that he anticipated, the rifle would be more effective. That something would happen very soon he was positive. If one Eskimo had succeeded in getting ahead of his comrades to Blake's relief, others of Upi's tribe must be close behind. And yet, he wondered, as he thought of this, why Blake and the Kogmollock had not killed him instead of running away.

He tried to smile, knowing that with every second the end might come for them from out of the gray mist of moonlight.

"It was a one-man job, sneaking out like that, and there's sure a bunch of them coming up fast to take a hand in the game. It's up to us to hit the high spots, my dear—and you might pray God to give us time for a start."

If he had hoped to keep from her the full horror of their situation, he knew, as he placed her on the sledge, that he had failed. Her eyes told him that. She had guessed at the heart of the thing, and suddenly her arms reached up about his neck as he bent over her, and against his breast he heard the sobbing cry that she was trying hard to choke back. A moment later she had herself in hand, and Philip sent the long lash of the driving whip curling viciously over the backs of the pack. Straight ahead of them ran the white trail of the Coppermine.

Philip was already hatching a scheme in his brain. If he failed to get Blake early in the fight that he anticipated, he would show the white flag, demand a parley with the outlaw under pretense of surrendering Celie, and shoot him dead the moment they stood face to face.

With Blake out of the way, there might be another way of dealing with Upi and his Kogmollocks. It was Blake who wanted Celie. In Upi's eyes there were other things more precious than a woman.

Suddenly he began to see more than hope in a situation that five minutes before had been one of appalling gloom. At some spot where he could keep the Kogmollocks at bay and scatter death among them if they attacked, he would barricade himself and Celie behind the sledge, and call out his acceptance of Blake's proposition to give up Celie as the price of his own safety. He would demand an interview with Blake, and it was then that his opportunity would come.

It was so still that the click, click, click of the dogs' claws sounded like the swift beat of tiny castanets on the ice. He could hear the panting breath of the beasts. The whalebone runners of the sledge creaked with the shrill protest of steel traveling over frozen snow. Mile after mile of the Coppermine dropped behind them, and the last tree and the last fringe of bushes disappeared.

AFTER an eternity the dawn came. What there was to be of day followed swiftly, like the Arctic night. Shadows faded away, the shores loomed up, and the illimitable sweep of the plain lifted itself into vision as if from out of a great sea of receding fog.

It was Celie, huddled close at his side, who turned her eyes first from the trail their enemies would follow. She faced the north, and the cry that came from her lips brought Philip about like a shot. Not more than a third of a mile distant the river ran into a dark strip of forest that reached in from the western plain like a great finger. Then he saw what Celie had seen. Close up against the timber a spiral of smoke was rising into the air. He made out in another moment the form of a cabin, and the look in Celie's staring face told him the rest. She was sobbing breathless words which he could not understand; but he knew that they had won their race, and that it was Armin's place. And Armin was not dead. He was alive, as Blake had said. Philip had held up under the tremendous strain of the night until now—and now he was filled with an uncontrollable desire to laugh. But he continued to stare until Celie turned to him and swayed in his arms.

And then the thing happened which brought the life back into him again with a shock. From far up the black finger of timber where it bellied over the horizon of the plain there floated down to them a chorus of sound. It was a human sound—the yapping, wolfish cry of an Eskimo horde closing in on man or beast. It was made by many voices, and it was accompanied almost instantly by the clear, sharp report of a rifle. A moment later the single shot was followed by a scattering fusillade. After that, silence.

Quickly Philip bundled Celie on the sledge and drove the dogs ahead, his eyes on a wide opening in the timber three or four hundred yards above the river. Five minutes later the sledge drew up in front of the cabin. Scarcely had the sledge stopped before Celie was on her feet and running to the door. It was locked, and she beat against it excitedly, calling a strange name. Standing close behind her, Philip heard a shuffling movement beyond the log walls, the scraping of a bar, and a man's voice, so deep that it had in it the booming notes of a drum. To it Celie replied with almost a shriek.

The door swung inward, and Philip saw a man's arms open and Celie run into them. He was an old man. His hair and beard were white. This much Philip observed before he turned with a sudden thrill toward the opening in the forest. Only he had heard the cry that had come from that direction, and, looking back, he saw a figure running swiftly over the plain toward the cabin. Instantly he knew that it was a white man. With his revolver in his hand, he advanced to meet him; and in a brief space they stood face to face.

The stranger was a giant of a man. His long, reddish hair fell to his shoulders. He was bareheaded, and panting as if hard run, and his face was streaming with blood.

Philip, almost dropping his revolver in his amazement, gasped incredulously:

"My God, is it you—Olaf Anderson!"

FOLLOWING that first wild stare of uncertainty and disbelief in the big Swede's eyes came a look of sudden and joyous recognition. He was clutching at Philip's hand like a drowning man before he made an effort to speak. Then he grinned. There was only one man in the world who could grin like Olaf Anderson. In spite of blood and swollen features, it transformed him. Men loved the redheaded Swede because of that grin. It was the grin that answered Philip's question.

"Just in time—to the dot," said Olaf, still pumping Philip's hand, and grinning hard. "All dead but me—Calkins, Harris, and that little Dutchman, O'Flynn. I knew an investigating patrol would be coming up pretty soon. How many men you got?"

He looked beyond Philip to the cabin and the sledge. The grin slowly went out of his face, and Philip heard the sudden catch in his breath. He dropped Philip's hand and stepped back, taking him in suddenly from head to foot.

"Alone?"

"Yes, alone," nodded Philip. "With the exception of Celie Armin. I brought her back to her father. A fellow named Blake is back there a little way with Upi's tribe. We beat them out, but I'm figuring it won't be very long before they show up."

The grin was fixed in Olaf's face again.

"Lord bless us, but it's funny," he grunted. "They're coming on the next train, so to speak. And right over in that neck of woods is the other half of Upi's tribe, chasing their short legs off to get me. And the comical part of it is, you're alone!" His eyes were fixed suddenly on the revolver. "Ammunition?" he demanded eagerly. "And—grub?"

"Thirty or forty rounds of rifle, a dozen Colt, and plenty of meat—"

"Then into the cabin, and the dogs with us!" almost shouted the Swede.

From the edge of the forest came the report of a rifle, and over their heads went the humming drone of a bullet.

They were back at the cabin in a dozen seconds, tugging at the dogs. It cost an effort to get them through the door, with the sledge after them. A bullet spattered against the log wall, found a crevice, and something metallic jingled inside. As Olaf swung the door shut and dropped the wooden bar in place, Philip turned for a moment toward Celie. She came to him, and put her arms up around his shoulders. On her tiptoes, Celie kissed Philip, and then, turning with her arms still about him, said something to the older man that brought an audible gasp from Olaf. In another moment she had slipped away from Philip and back to her father.

"What did she say, Olaf?" Philip entreated.

"That she's going to marry you if we ever get out of this hell of a fix we're in," grunted Olaf. "Pretty lucky dog, I say."

Philip glued his eyes to the long crevice between the logs, and found the forest and the little finger of plain between straight in his vision. The edge of the timber was alive with men, there must have been half a hundred of them. For the first time, Olaf began to give him an understanding of the situation.

"This is the fortieth day we've held them off," he said, in a quick-cut, businesslike voice. "Eighty cartridges to begin with, and a month's ration of grub for two. All but the last three cartridges went day before yesterday. Yesterday everything quiet. On the edge of starvation this morning when I went out on scout duty and to take a chance at game. Surprised a couple of them carrying meat, and had a tall fight. Others hove into action, and I had to use two of my cartridges. One left—and they're showing themselves because they know we don't dare to use ammunition at long range. My caliber is thirty-five. What's yours?"

---

"The same," replied Philip quickly, his blood beginning to thrill with the anticipation of battle. "I'll give you half. I'm on duty from Fort Churchill, off on a tangent of my own."

He told Anderson in a hundred words what had happened since his meeting with Bram Johnson.

"And with forty cartridges we'll give 'em a taste of hell!" he added.

He caught his breath, and the last word half choked itself from his lips.

"It's Blake!" exclaimed Philip.

Anderson drew himself away from the wall. Slowly he turned, pointing a long arm at each of the four walls of the cabin.

"That's the lay of the fight," he said, making his words short and to the point. "They can come at us on all sides, and so I've made a six-foot gun-crevice in each wall. We can't count on Armin for anything but the use of a club, if it comes to close quarters. The walls are built of saplings, and they've got pins out there that get through. Outside of that, we've got one big advantage. The little devils are superstitious about fighting at night, and even Blake can't force them into it. Blake is the man I was after when I ran across Armin and his people."

There was an unpleasant snap in his voice as he peered through the gun-hole again. Philip looked across the room to Celie and her father as he divided the cartridges. They were both listening, yet he knew they did not understand.

He dropped half of the cartridges into the right-hand pocket of the Swede's service coat, and advanced then toward Armin, with both his hands held out in greeting. Even in that tense moment he saw the sudden flash of pleasure in Celie's face.

ARMIN advanced a step, and their hands met. At first Philip had taken him for an old man; but his eyes, sunken deep in their sockets, had not aged with the rest of him.

Then he spoke, and it was the light in Celie's eyes, her parted lips, and the flush that came swiftly into her face that gave him an understanding of what Armin was saying.

From the end of the cabin Olaf's voice broke in. With it came the metallic working of his rifle as he filled the chamber with cartridges. He spoke first to Celie and Armin in their own language, and then to Philip.

"It's a pretty safe gamble we'd better get ready for them," he said. "They'll soon begin. Did you split even on the cartridges?"

"Seventeen apiece."

Philip examined his rifle, and looked through the gun-crevice toward the forest. In the fringe of the forest was a long, thin line of moving figures—advancing. Like a camera flash his eyes ran over the battleground.

Half way between the cabin and that fringe of forest four hundred yards away was a "hog-back" in the snow, running a curving parallel with the plain. It formed scarcely more than a three- or four-foot rise in the surface, and he had given it no special significance until now. His lips formed words as understanding leaped upon him.

"They're moving!" he called to Olaf. "They're going to make a rush for the little ridge between us and the timber. Good God, Anderson, there's an army of them!"

"Not more'n a hundred," replied the Swede calmly. "Take it easy, Phil. This will be good target practice. We've got to make an eighty per cent kill as they come across the open."

The moving line had paused just within the last straggling growth of trees, as if inviting the fire of the defenders.

Olaf grunted as he looked along the barrel of his rifle.

"Strategy," he mumbled. "They know we're shy of ammunition."

In the moments of tense waiting Philip found his first opportunity to question the man at his side.

First he said:

"I guess maybe you understand, Olaf. We've gone through hell together, and I love her. If we get out of this she's going to be my wife. She's promised me that, and yet I swear to heaven I don't know more than a dozen words of her language. What has happened? Who is she? Why was she with Bram Johnson? You know their language and have been with them—"

"They're taking final orders," interrupted Olaf, as if he had not heard. "It's Blake's scheming. See those little groups forming? They're going to bring battering-rams and make a second rush from the ridge."

He drew in a deep breath, and, without a change in the even tone of his voice, went on:

"Calkins, Harris, and O'Flynn went down in a good fight. Tell you about that later. Hit seven days west, and run on the camp of Armin, his girl, and two white men—Russians—guided by two Kogmollocks from Coronation Gulf. The little devils had Blake and his gang about us two days after I struck them. Bram Johnson and his wolves came along then—from nowhere—going nowhere.

"The Kogmollocks think Bram is a great devil, and that each of his wolves is a devil. If it hadn't been for that they would have murdered us in a hurry, and Blake would have taken the girl. They were queered by the way Bram would squat on his haunches and stare at her.

"The second day I saw him mumbling over something, and looked sharp. He had one of Celie's long hairs, and when he saw me he snarled like an animal. I knew Blake was only waiting for Bram to get away from his Kogmollocks, so I told Celie to give Bram a strand of her hair. She did—with her own hands. And from that minute the madman watched her like a dog. I tried to talk with him, but couldn't. I didn't seem to be able to make him understand. And them—"

The Swede cut himself short:

"They're moving, Phil! Take the men with the battering-rams—and let them get half way before you fire!

"You see, Bram and his wolves had to have meat. Blake attacked while he was gone. Russians killed—Armin and I cornered, fighting for the girl behind us, when Bram came back like a burst of thunder. He didn't fight. He grabbed the girl, and was off with her like the wind with his wolf-team. Armin and I got into this cabin, and here—forty days and nights—"

His voice stopped ominously. A fraction of a second later it was followed by the roar of his rifle, and at the first shot one of Blake's Kogmollocks crumpled up with a grunt half way between the snow-ridge and the forest.

THE Eskimos were advancing at a trot over the open space. There were at least a hundred, and Philip's heart choked with a feeling of despair. He had seen the effect of Olaf's shot, and, following the Swede's instructions, aimed for his man in the nearest group behind the main line. A moment later, aiming again, he saw a dark blotch left in the snow.

There were five of the groups bearing tree-trunks for battering-rams, and on one of these Philip concentrated the six shots in his rifle. Four of the tree-bearers went down, and the two that were left dropped their burden and joined those ahead of them.

Until Philip stepped back to reload his gun, he had not noticed Celie. She was close at his side, peering through the gunhole at the tragedy out on the plain.

Then he heard Anderson's voice:

"They're behind the ridge. We got eight of them."

In half a dozen places Philip had seen where bullets had bored their way through the cabin, and, leaning his gun against the wall, he almost carried Celie behind the bunk that was built against the logs.

"You must stay here!" he cried. "Do you understand? Here!"

Olaf was peering through the gun-hole. And then came what he had expected—a rattle of fire from the snow-ridge. The pit-pit-pit of bullets rained against the cabin in a dull tattoo. Through the door came a bullet, sending a splinter close to Armin's

---

face. One of the dogs emitted a wailing howl and flopped among its comrades in uncanny convulsions.

Olaf staggered back and faced Philip.

"Get down!" he shouted. "Do you hear? Get down!"

He dropped on his knees, crying out the warning to Armin in the other's language.

"They've got enough guns to make a sieve of this kennel if their ammunition holds out—and the lower logs are heaviest."

In place of following the Swede's example, Philip ran to Celie. Half way a bullet almost got him, flipping the collar of his shirt. He dropped beside her and gathered her up in his arms, keeping his body between her and the fire. He heard the ripping of a bullet through the saplings, and caught distinctly the thud of it as the spent lead dropped to the floor. Lead was finding its way into the cabin like raindrops.

He heard the Swede's voice again, crying thickly from the floor:

"Hug below the lower log. You've got eight inches. If you rise above that they'll get you."

He repeated the warning to Armin. As if to emphasize his words, there came a howl of agony from another of the dogs.

Still closer Philip held the girl to him. He crushed his face down against hers, and waited.

It came to him suddenly that Blake must be reckoning on this very protection which he was giving Celie. He was gambling on the chance that, while the male defenders of the cabin would be wounded or killed, Celie would be sheltered until the last moment from their fire. If that was so, the firing would soon cease until Blake learned results.

SCARCELY had he made this guess when the fusillade ended, and Olaf sprang to his feet. Philip had risen, when the Swede's voice came to him in a choking cry. Prepared for the rush he had expected, Olaf was making an observation through the gun-crevice. Without turning his head, he yelled back at them:

"Good God—it's Bram—Bram Johnson!"

Bram and his wolves! The pack was free, spreading out fan-shape, driving on like the wind! Behind them was Bram. His yell came to them. It rose above all other sound, like the cry of a great beast. The wolves came faster, and then—

The truth fell upon those in the cabin with a suddenness that stopped the beating of their hearts.

Bram Johnson and his wolves were attacking the Eskimos!

From the thrilling spectacle of the giant madman charging over the plain behind his ravenous beasts, Philip shifted his amazed gaze to the Eskimos. Palsied by a strange terror, they were staring at the on-rushing horde and the shrieking wolfman.

Suddenly there arose from the ranks of the Kogmollocks a strange and terrible cry; and in another moment the plain between the forest and the snow-ridge was alive with fleeing creatures.

From man to man the beasts leaped, urged by the shrieking voice of their master. And now Philip saw the giant madman overtake one after another of the running figures, and saw the crushing force of his club as it fell.

Celie swayed back from the wall, and stood with her hands to her face. The Swede sprang past her, flung back the bar to the door, and opened it. Philip was a step behind him.

From the front of the cabin they began firing, and man after man crumpled down under their shots.

In another sixty seconds the visible part of it was over. The last of the Kogmollocks disappeared into the edge of the forest. After them went the wolf-man and his pack.

Philip faced his companion. His gun was hot—and empty. The old grin was in Olaf's face. In spite of it he shuddered.

"We won't follow," he said. "Bram and his wolves will attend to the trimmings, and he'll come back when the job is finished. Meanwhile we'll get a little start for home, eh? I'm tired of this cabin. Forty days and nights—ugh! Have you a spare pipeful of tobacco, Phil? If you have—let's see, where did I leave off in that story about Princess Celie and the Duke of Rugni?"

"The—the—what?"

"Your tobacco, Phil!"

In a dazed fashion Philip handed his tobacco pouch to the Swede.

"You said—Princess Celie—the Duke of Rugni—"

Olaf nodded as he stuffed his pipe bowl.

"That's it. Armin is the Duke of Rugni, whatever Rugni is. He was chased off to Siberia a good many years ago, when Celie was a kid, so somebody else could get hold of the dukedom. Understand? Millions in it, I suppose. He says some of Rasputin's old friends were behind it, and that for a long time he was kept in the dungeons of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, with the Neva River running over his head. The friends he had, most of them in exile or chased out of the country, thought he was dead, and some of these friends were caring for Celie.

"Just after Rasputin was killed, and before the Revolution broke out, they learned that Armin was alive, but dying by inches somewhere up on the Siberian coast. Celie's mother was Danish—died almost before Celie could remember; but some of her relatives and a bunch of Russian exiles in London framed up a scheme to get Armin back, chartered a ship, sailed with Celie on board, and—"

Olaf paused to light his pipe.

"And they found the Duke," he added. "They escaped with him before they learned of the Revolution, or Armin could have gone home with the rest of the Siberian exiles and claimed his rights. For a lot of reasons they put him aboard an American whaler, and the whaler missed its plans by getting stuck in the ice for the winter up in Coronation Gulf. After that they started out with dogs and sledge and guides. There's a lot more, but that's the meat of it, Phil. I'm going to leave it to you to learn Celie's language and get the details first hand from her. But she's a right enough princess, old man. And her dad's a duke. It's up to you to Americanize 'em. Eh, what's that?"

Celie had come from the cabin and was standing at Philip's side, looking up into his face, and the light that Olaf saw unhidden in her eyes made him laugh softly.

"And you've got the job half done, Phil. The Duke may go back and raise the devil with the people who put him in cold storage, but Lady Celie is going to like America!"

IT was late that afternoon, traveling slowly southward over the trail of the Coppermine, when they heard far behind them the wailing cry of Bram Johnson's wolves. The sound came only once, like the swelling surge of a sudden sweep of wind; yet, when they camped at the beginning of darkness, Philip was confident that the madman and his pack were close behind them. Twice in the stillness of his long vigil he heard strange cries. Once it was the cry of a beast. The second time it was that of a man.

The second day, with dogs refreshed, they traveled faster, and it was this night they camped in the edge of timber and built a huge fire. It was such a fire as illumined the space about them for fifty paces or more. And it was into this light that Bram Johnson stalked, so suddenly and so noiselessly that a sharp little cry sprang from Celie's lips, and Olaf and Philip and the Duke of Rugni stared in wide-eyed amazement.

In his right hand the wolf-man bore a strange object. It was an Eskimo coat, tied into the form of a bag, and in the bottom of this was a lump half the size of a water-pail. Bram seemed oblivious of all presence but that of Celie. His eyes were on her alone as he advanced and, with a weird sound in his throat, deposited the bundle at her feet. In another moment he was gone.

The Swede rose slowly from where he was sitting, and, speaking casually to Celie, took the wolf-man's gift in his hands.

Philip observed the strange look in his face as he turned his back to Celie in the fire-light and opened the bag sufficiently to get a look inside. Then he walked out into the darkness, and a moment later returned without the bundle, and with a laugh apologized to Celie for his action.

"No need of telling her what it was," he said to Philip, then. "I explained that it was foul meat Bram had brought in as a present. As a matter of fact, it was Blake's head. You know, the Kogmollocks have a pretty habit of pleasing a friend by presenting him with the head of a dead enemy. Nice little package for her to have opened, eh?"

AFTER all, there are some very strange happenings in life, and the adventurers of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police come upon their share. The case of Bram Johnson, the mad wolf-man of the Upper Country, happened to be one of them, and filed away in the archives of the Department is a big envelop filled with official and personal documents, signed and sworn to by various people. There is, for instance, the brief and straightforward deposition of Corporal Olaf Anderson, of the Fort Churchill division; and there is the longer and more detailed testimony of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Brant and the Duke of Rugni; and attached to these depositions is a copy of an official decision pardoning Bram Johnson and making of him a ward of the great Dominion instead of a criminal. He is no longer hunted. "Let Bram Johnson alone," is the word that had gone forth to the man-hunters of the Service.

It is a wise and humane judgment. Bram's country is big and wild. And he and his wolves still hunt there under the light of the moon and the stars.

The End

If Big Men Awe You, Try This Plan

I HAVE a friend who is perhaps one of the best salesmen n the United States. He is the kind of man who goes out for big game exclusively, leaving windfalls for the lesser lights. When he attempts to get an order from a big corporation, he invariably reaches the man at the top before he attempts to talk business. His orders come in six figures. To the question of how he does it, he answers:

"My diffidence in the presence of big men was my biggest handicap at the beginning, and it worried me for some time, until I worked out a successful solution. I decided that my embarrassment was due to the fact that I was subconsciously comparing the sheer power and presence of the big man with my own state, with the natural result that I felt about as big as a peanut beside the Woolworth Building.

"The natural conclusion was that somehow I must make a conscious comparison less unflattering to myself. I decided that I would see beyond the august presence, the relentless manner and surroundings. I would imagine the man himself as he would appear in his underclothes.

It is very seldom that the men I interview are good physical specimens. They are either corpulent and ungainly with fat, or so thin as to remind one of the string-bean. Either type, as you remember it on the bathing beach, is a funny sight. As for myself, I am a good physical specimen.

"This odd thought at last became a habit with me. The picture of the man in his underclothes made me smile inwardly and feel that, man for man, I was the Woolworth Building myself, and he the peanut. Thereafter, instead of being conscious of personal inferiority, I let my mind dwell on the superiority of my person and the proposition I wished to advance. To this attitude of belief in myself and my goods, I owe my success."

H. R. S.

A Tax on Southeners and Westerners in Favor of New Yorkers

IF you live in New York or immediately around New York, this article will not interest you so much.

But if you live in the South or the Middle West or on the Pacific Coast, you should read it very carefully. For it explains what is meant by the zone system of postage, adopted by Congress at its last session. It explains why—if this system is allowed to stand—you will have to pay more for your magazines than if you lived in New York; why—in general—the price to you will increase according to your distance from New York.

The zone system of postage in effect inflicts a punishment upon you for living in the South or West. If you claim that there is no reason for you to be punished; that living in the South or West is no crime, then you agree with the position which the magazine publishers upheld before Congress.

But the publishers were not strong enough to influence Congress. If you are to be protected from this injustice, you will have to take the matter up personally with your Senator and Congressman. Congress does not care much for any publisher or group of publishers: it cares a great deal for your vote.

How the "Flat Rate" Came to Be

WHEN this country was very young, Congress decided that magazines and newspapers should be carried through the mails at a flat rate of one cent a pound, regardless of the distance. (Canada has a similar law but charges only one half cent a pound.)

The argument was that a big country like this needed all possible freedom of inter-communication to bind it together. The more a man in the East wrote to his friends in the West; the more interchange of information there was between North and South—whether by letter or through the printed page—the better country we would have.

So Congress argued in the early days. And it decided that every United States citizen, whether he lived in the city or the country, whether on the Atlantic coast, or along the Mississippi or on the Pacific, should have his letters delivered to him, and his magazines, at a fixed, flat rate.

You will have to admit that this system has worked pretty well in this country.

Never before in the history of the world have a hundred million people, stretched out over so vast a territory, been held together as a unit. Always there have been different dialects, and customs, and ideas.

But we Americans have no dialects: we have no geographical divisions of custom or interest. We are one people.

And to the magazines belongs some credit for this phenomenon.

How the National Magazines Help to Unify the Nation

THE woman from Portland, Oregon, who gets off the train in Chicago looks exactly in her dress like the woman who gets off the train the same day from Portland, Maine.

The dressmakers of the two women read the same magazine, and follow the same styles.

The business man in New Orleans who gets a good idea passes it on through his trade paper; and the business man in St. Paul and Philadelphia and Spokane adopts it. And everywhere you find men speaking the same business language and following the same business methods.

The farmer in Maine who discovers how to increase the productiveness of his soil sends out the good news through his farm paper, and a million other farmers read and welcome it.

The campaigns for railroad regulation, for prohibition, for woman suffrage and for national preparedness, all of them became national campaigns partly at least because of the help of the magazines.

All Congressional Commissions Against the Zone System

CERTAIN businesses drift naturally to certain centers. Thus Pittsburgh is the center of steel; and Detroit the center for automobiles; and New York is, and will continue to be, the center for publishing.

There are reasons for this that need not be mentioned here: but they are reasons that are not likely to be overcome. The great majority of magazines will continue to be issued in New York. And under this act of Congress every man or woman who lives at a distance from New York will be penalized on that account—the penalty growing larger the farther West and South he or she may live.

The question of a proper rate of postage on so-called second-class matter is a very perplexing one. Twice Congress has appointed commissions to investigate it. Both commissions reported unanimously against a zone system.

The last Commission, headed by Justice Charles E. Hughes, said:

"It would seem to the Commission to be entirely impracticable to attempt to establish a system of zone rates for second-class matter."

A Letter from You Will Help a Lot

THE magazines want to pay their way in the world: they ask for no favor—for nothing but a fair recognition of their service to the nation, and the opportunity of continuing to serve.

They feel—and they believe you feel—that Congress made a mistake in hastily casting aside the recommendations of its two commissions, and—in the hurried last hours of the session—jamming through a system that works an injustice to a large proportion of the American people.

They believe that it is unfair to lay a penalty against any American citizen because he happens to live at a distance from New York.

If you believe this—if you who live in the Middle West and the South and far West believe in the equal rights of every citizen to have his mail carried at the same rate—we ask you to join with us in petitioning Congress to reconsider its zone postage bill.

We ask you because it is you who will have to pay the bill—not for our sakes, but for your own—to sit down now and write a short letter to your Congressman and to one or both of your Senators.

Simply say: "Senator John Smith, Senate Chamber, Washington, D. C.: My dear Senator: I believe the zone system of second-class postage is wrong in principle, and that Congress ought at once to reconsider its action in the matter."

Do this now for your own sake, and for the sake of keeping the national magazines really national.

The Crowell Publishing Company
Publishers ofz
WOMAN'S HOME COMPANION
THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE
EVERY WEEK
FARM AND FIRESIDE

A Matter of Temperament—

Continued from page 15

"You must have! Now, listen. The minute the Signal comes out this afternoon, mail a marked copy to Davy's address. No writing, no message. Simply the paper. And forward all my mail at once. If it should happen—but it won't. I'm as certain he never means to show up as I've ever been of anything in my life. That's all, I guess—except keep as mum!"

He nodded.

"Good-by, dear," she said, and kissed him and went out dry-eyed.

The Colonel dutifully mailed the paper. The evening before the first, he received a registered special-delivery letter for Charlotte. He sent it on to her.

Charlotte, opening it on what was to have been her wedding morning, read:

Yes, you did hurt me that day eight years ago. And you were right—I have never forgiven you for it. And you were right upon the third count: I do not want to marry you.

I have promised myself always that I would even scores with you. This will do it.

It was never anything but the money you wanted, really. I realized that. Well, here you have it.

Perhaps you won't think this is evening scores. For me, it is. If it happens, at the same time, that you have what you want most—why, it is something that has no value to me and so—it doesn't matter!

DAVID HARRIS.

A slip of bluish paper fluttered from the envelop as she shook it. It made her gasp when she examined it. It was a check for one hundred thousand dollars.

Charlotte sat quite still for a moment, by her shaded window, waiting for her pounding heart to stop beating so furiously.

"Well," she murmured to herself, taking up the thread of life again, "you know, my dear, you've been vaguely expecting something right along. But not quite this! How perfectly crazy—and how exactly like him! I knew he'd never forgiven you. But a hundred thousand dollars! I presume, though, he thought he'd stave off breach-of-promise action. I wonder will he ever grow up? Why—"

And after a while she went off into a gale of laughter. At length she rose, put on her hat, and went to the post-office.

"I want a stamped envelop, please."

"Plain?" inquired the postmaster.

"Er—no. With the return on, if you please," said Charlotte.

She took the envelop, addressed it, took a slip of bluish paper from her purse, tore it neatly in four pieces, inclosed them in the envelop, sealed it, and dropped it in the mail-chute.

The postmaster took it out almost at at once and stamped it.

"Now, I declare," he said with genial wonder, "that young lady said she wanted the return address on it, but if she hasn't gone and run a pen through it. Funny that some folks never seem to know their own minds, ain't it?"

It would have been funny if Charlotte Lind had not known hers.

FIRST David Harris got the newspaper, and perceived that Charlotte had not waited for the blow that he had intended should crush her. Then he got the envelop containing the torn check.

And then he sat down seriously to think. When he had got done thinking a good many very long thoughts, he fell to studying the return address corner of the envelop. She had run a pen through it, that was plain—a pen with a good deal of ink on it. Still, one could make out the name of the station with a little painstaking.

Two days later he presented himself at Charlotte's hotel in Hollymere. The clerk said presently that Miss Lind had promised to see him in the parlor.

She was standing looking out of the window. As he entered the room, she turned, without visible traces of emotion.

"Hello, Davy," she said.

He murmured an indistinct greeting, and, clearing his throat nervously, went on rather more decidedly:

"I thought I—ought to come down and see you."

"Yes?" she responded coolly. "You know, I didn't know whether I ought to come down and see you or not."

He made no reply to that.

"Look here, Charlotte," he began abruptly. "Why did you do that?"

"What?"

"You know. Tear up the check?"

She smiled enigmatically. Finally she replied, with the grossest irrelevance:

"You have an awfully nasty, mean, unforgiving disposition, haven't you, Davy?"

He flushed, and, ignoring her question, repeated his own. Still smiling, she answered with evident finality:

"You know, I think you've rather forfeited your right to know."

He stared at her in a long silence.

"Well?" she inquired at length. "Is that all?"

It was all that he was prepared for just then, at any rate.

"Then good-by," said Charlotte pleasantly.

He answered her:

"It's not good-by at all. I'm staying here for a while."

For reply, she merely lifted her eyebrows delicately.

AFTER lunch, according to her daily custom since coming to Hollymere, Charlotte went walking. A quarter of a mile from the hotel, David Harris overtook her.

"See here," he said abruptly. "I know I've been a fool—a damned fool. Are you going to forgive me?"

She smiled a little, and then laughed.

"Forgive you? Why, yes. I've forgiven you already. It would have been absurd not to. You couldn't help yourself. You have that mean, vindictive sort of a disposition. It's a matter of temperament entirely. I always knew that."

"Then if you knew that I had that sort of a disposition—why were you chancing marrying me?" he demanded savagely.

She smiled disconcertingly.

"Have you forgotten already? The money, you know. You were rich."

He lost all control of himself at that.

"Oh—damn the money!" he almost shouted. "Everlastingly! I love you, I tell you! I love you!"

"Oh, no; I don't believe that you do," said Charlotte. "I don't think you ever loved any one—really—but yourself. You see, you have that sort of a disposition. You can't help it. You see, really, it's a matter of—"

He flung his arms about her. "If you say 'temperament' just once more to me—I—I'll murder you!" he said furiously. "I'm not that sort of a man! I won't be! I love you! Do you hear me?"

"Yes," said Charlotte quietly. "I hear you."

"Do you believe me?"

"Would you mind clutching me just a trifle more gently?" said she. "You see, I'm not made of iron. Yes, I believe you."

"Will you marry me?"

"Why, yes; I will."

"You mean that? You're not—?"

"No—I'm not playing your trick, Davy. Do you suppose I should have stood for all this if I hadn't cared for you? If I hadn't intended to marry you? I always have cared for you. I knew, as soon as I sent you away years ago, that I did. When you'd gone, I went upstairs and cried for you, and wouldn't go down to see Clif Holden. If you hadn't run away, I'd have shown you then. I was just that foolish about you. I've never gotten over it.

"And if you hadn't come back to me, angry, determined to make me pay—why, you'd have seen this time that I loved you. But you were so blind, with your—you wouldn't see! Do you suppose I'd have stayed unmarried all these years, or that I'd have let Amy Lea Maxwell steal Clif from me, if I hadn't—

"Oh, Davy, Davy dear, you've such a horrible disposition! What shall I do with you?"

"I—don't know," said David Harris abjectly.

"Well," said Charlotte at length, "perhaps marrying you is punishment enough. At least, I'm going to try that first."

At Last—the Jitney Bond

By THE EDITOR

IF you were to receive in to-day's mail the following letter from Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo, what would you think about it?

Treasury Department,
Washington, Jan. 20, 1918.
Dear Sir:

The United States Government needs money to carry on the war. We have therefore been authorized by Congress to make you, as a United States citizen, the following proposition:

For every $4.12 which you pay in at any post-office, the Government will give you, when the war is over, a nice new $5 bill.

If you have as much as $82.40 and will pay that in at the post-office, the Government will give you a new crisp $100 bill. Very truly yours,

WILLIAM G. McADOO,
Secretary.

That letter would sound pretty good to you, wouldn't it? You would be likely to scurry around and get together all the money you could lay your hands on, and take it to the post-office as fast as your legs would carry you. You would even talk the thing over with your family, and decide that by cutting out one cigar a day, or wearing your last year's suit for another few months, you could stretch the amount somewhat.

In other words, if your government would promise you eighty cents profit on every four dollars you saved, you would make a great deal bigger effort to save money than ever before in your life.

Well, the government has decided to do just that very thing.

Every man, woman, and child in the United States who can save even twenty-five cents a week can now own a share in the securities of the government, can help to shorten the war—which means saving the lives of American boys at the front.

Here is the story:

The government is selling what are known as War Savings Stamps and Thrift Stamps.

A War Savings Stamp sells this month for $4.12, and can be attached to a War Savings Certificate, which has room for twenty such stamps. Each month the price of these stamps advances one cent. Next month, for example, they will cost $4.13, and in March $4.14, etc. This is because they begin to bear interest immediately.

Now—here comes the interesting part: For each of these $4.12 stamps the United States Government promises to pay on January 1, 1923, $5. In other words, the stamp bears interest at 4 per cent compounded; and the whole amount, principal and interest, comes due in one lump. For every $82.40 paid in this year the government will hand back a $100 bill on January 1, 1923.

"But suppose I don't have four dollars all at once?" you say.

Very good: then you can buy a Thrift Stamp, which sells for twenty-five cents, and can be attached to a Thrift Certificate having space for sixteen Thrift Stamps. The Thrift Stamps bear no interest; but the Certificate, when it is full, can be exchanged for a War Savings Stamp, which does bear interest, as already explained.

What does this mean?

It means that you, right in your own home, can—by means of a War Savings Certificate—watch your savings grow week by week, invested in the safest security in the world.

The writer once talked with the president of a great bond house.

"We mean to establish offices in every city," said the president, "and make them the investment centers of each city, to which any man can come with his investment problems."

"Yes," said the writer; "you are doing great work for the man who can save $2000 or more a year. But what are you doing for the man who can save only $200 or less a year?"

And the great financier had to admit that he was doing nothing for that man—that nobody was doing anything. But the government is going to do something for us little fellows—is doing it now.

Now comes the chance for us who are thrifty and patriotic, who want to have a share in the fight for Liberty, but whose thrift can not possibly amount to more than $25 or $50 or $100 a year. The War Savings Stamp—the Jitney Bond—is for us.

Let's grab these stamps! Let's have a certificate in the home of every reader of this magazine for every member of the family.

Nothing would please me so much as to know that the readers of EVERY WEEK made a better record on War Savings Stamps than the readers of any other magazine in the United States.

If you want more information, go to your post-office, or your bank, or just drop a line to any of the financial houses whose advertisements appear in this magazine. All of them have pamphlets on the subject that they will be glad to send you for the asking.

But do something now, while the impulse is on you. Get a War Savings Certificate for everybody—old or young—under your roof.

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

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.

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.

Prices of all securities have declined to so low a level that many good investments 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. Also comparisons of prices before the war and now, showing that a large number of high-class stocks are selling at the lowest price for ten years. Copies will be sent on application to J. S. Bache & Company, members of the New York Stock Exchange, 42 Broadway, New York City.

The safety of the first-mortgage loans of Perkins & Company, of Lawrence, Kansas, has been fully established by over forty years of successful business. Interest paid promptly each six months. Our saving certificates, yielding 6 per cent, are convenient for small investors. Write for circular No. 721.

Forty-nine years of successful experience, capital and surplus of eight million dollars, resources of over sixty-five million dollars, are-safeguards distinguishing the Citizens Savings and Trust Company, Cleveland, Ohio. This bank will send its booklet "P" free on request.

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.

The Taps Pharmacal Company of 38 West Twenty-first Street, New York, which markets several well known products through the drug stores in its vicinity, has prepared a pamphlet showing why investments in companies manufacturing patent medicines should prove attractive from the standpoint of the investor. A copy of this prospectus may be had upon request.

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.