Are You Too Much Afraid of Disease?

By JOHN B. HUBER, M. D.

SOME time ago a woman came to me in a pitiable state of mind. She was on the verge of nervous breakdown through fear of contact with cancer sufferers. For three years she had been in such constant torture that she prayed continually to die. She had a fearful dread of handling things that cancer patients might conceivably have touched, or of sitting in chairs or in street-car seats where such patients might have sat. Wherever she went, the horror pursued her. The only thing that gave her any peace of mind was to wash all her clothes and shoes—everything that imagination depicted might be touched—on her return home. Because of this state of mind, she was unable to work. She dared not go to church, to shops, to entertainments: a most pathetic condition, brought about by an obsession, a melancholy pathophobia (—)in this case utterly occasionless, for the very simple reason that cancer is not a communicable malady.

Many people have jumped to the unfortunate and disturbing conclusion that all germs are disease-producing, whereas, in point of fact, most of them are quite healthful, and not a few of them, indeed, absolutely necessary to normal human existence. Some germs are the scavengers that convert dead and decomposing matter into material necessary for plant growth. Were these workers to stop work for twenty-four hours, life would become impossible. Other germs are necessary to bread-making; still others give to various butters their delicious and peculiar flavors, while others ripen cheese.

Even among the pathogenic (disease- engendering) germs there are great differences in the degrees of virulence. Some are comparatively innocuous, such as the germ that produces pimples; others, such as the bacterium responsible for septicæmia (blood-poisoning), are very dangerous.

Germs invade the body in various ways. Thus there is infection by contact, as when one is bitten by a rabid dog; ingestion infection—swallowing food and drink containing the germs of typhoid fever or cholera; infection by the intermediation of insects; and so on.

The difference in duration of time, the extent to which one has been in the company of a sufferer, must also be considered. Measles, for example, may ensue upon the most transitory exposure, while tuberculosis, on the contrary, will not be contracted unless intimacy with a consumptive has been close, frequent, and prolonged.

Two factors have to be present in every case of infectious disease: the presence of the specific germ, and susceptibility. By the latter we mean the weakening of the body by starvation, alcoholism, or any other agency by which the organs and tissues may be weakened.

Here, as elsewhere in life, we must first get knowledge, and then upon this base wisdom: to learn first what is really to be feared, how and to what degree; and then to make right judgments and decide upon the steps necessary to rational disease prevention. We fear mainly the unknown and the misunderstood.

With understanding comes courage in the circumstances we have here considered, as elsewhere in human affairs.

The Doctors and the War

HAD it not been for the doctors, this war would have ended long ago; indeed, it could hardly have endured beyond its first year. No one will question this statement who reads the address delivered by Dr. Rivas, of Philadelphia, before the American Society of Tropical Medicine.

In Europe are upward of twenty million men under arms. How many of them would be alive if the diseases which operated even as late as our Spanish War had not been conquered by medical science?

Major Ross of the British Army demonstrated malaria to be mosquito-conveyed; American Army surgeons—among them Lazear, who gave his life to the investigation—proved the same of yellow fever. And Gorgas, who is now the Surgeon-General of the armies of the United States, so applied these principles to the Panamanian Isthmus that such diseases were absolutely banished, so that the building of the Canal was rendered possible.

And so we hear to-day nothing from any of the European armies, nor from any of our own camps, of malaria, that scourge of armies since Alexander and his men received the hideous gift from India.

On our Mexican border several years ago Major Russell inoculated our men against typhoid. And who now hears of that camp fever which, with dysentery and cholera, practically wiped out whole armies and most abruptly ended wars? In our little mix-up with Spain twenty thousand cases of typhoid fever occurred among our troops between May and September of 1898; ninety per cent of our volunteers developed the disease within eight weeks of camp life. In that war we had less than a thousand killed or dead of wounds, injuries, and accidents, while 5438 died of disease. In the Napoleonic wars only three per cent of the deaths were due to wounds or to the enemy ordnance, the other 97 per cent resulting from disease. To-day one hears of camp infections practically not at all.

The Increase in Pneumonia Cases

THE Health Department of one of the large cities, in its weekly Bulletin, warns us of an unusual number, this year, of pneumonia cases, the increase being so marked as to put this disease in the place formerly held by tuberculosis. Pneumonia is a communicable and therefore a preventable disease. To the predispositions usual with this infection we must add, this winter, the peculiar war-time condition as to fuel and food shortage. Pneumonia causes 9 per cent of the total number of deaths among saloonkeepers and bartenders, 10 per cent among printers, and nearly 12 per cent among railway employees.

The following precautions are essential:

The body should be neither overheated nor chilled. Shun every possible exposure to infection, especially when fatigued; cut out alcohol absolutely. Don't spit. Hold a handkerchief always before the face in coughing or sneezing. Use a tooth-brush and a good dentifrice at least once a day. Keep the mouth clean by means of gargles (say half a teaspoonful of common salt to a tumblerful of water as hot as is comfortable). Wash the hands often, and always before meals. Keep away from over-crowded and ill ventilated places. Keep the feet always warm and dry.

To a Can of Beans—Planted and Canned by Ourselves

IT is five o'clock on a winter afternoon.

Looking out from my office on the fifteenth floor, I see thousands of lights in the offices all about me. Thousands of offices, all full of people.

And I wonder again to myself, as often before, how they all live. Through what intricate stages of evolution have we come from the days when our ancestors raised their own food, made their own shoes and clothes, and lived their simple, self-contained and self-supporting lives!

What millions of artificial wants we have created to support this vast organization of modern business!

Thousands of people—packed into great hives, one tier above another—

Retailers living off wholesalers; wholesalers living off manufacturers: and all living off the farmer.

What would happen if for one single year the farmers should decide to quit work and come to town?

I watch the lights flicker out as one man after another closes his desk and starts for home.

And in my heart I can not repress a slight feeling of superiority toward them—poor dependent folk. They are going home to meals that come to them only by grace of the good nature and effort of honest tillers of the soil.

Part of my meal will come to me in like manner. But part of it—

Part of it is beans. Last summer I delved in the earth and raised them with my own effort. And in the kitchen of our little white house we imprisoned their flavor and fragrance.

Only food raised by one's own toil is perfect food.

All beans have strings—all but the beans that we raise on our own place. I have eaten in the homes of the mighty, and never yet have I encountered sandless spinach.

But the sand in the spinach that we raise—ah, just a trace of sand. A superior, far more edible sand. A kind of healthy sand, to give strength and fiber to the system.

As a favorite melody played in the evening brings back the memory of glad days, so those melodies in cans—our beans and corn and spinach—carry to us, even into the twilight of winter, the summer hours that were, and are to be again.

Hours when we woke up with bird notes in our ears and the fragrance of the rambler calling to us. And after breakfast, taking our hoe in hand, we went out to the little plot of land which a few weeks ago had been nothing, and which by our effort had become a part of the battle-line of Europe, a feeder of the world.

The winters no longer have any terror for me: I cut them short at either end.

For the beans of last summer's canning carry the sunshine of that garden clear into February: and in February the seed catalogs arrive, with the scent and sunshine of the garden to come.

I commend to you that system of robbing winter of its terrors: I counsel you to start to-day to warm the shaded places of your soul with the thought of next summer's garden.

There is greater need for food this year than ever in the modern world—so you shall have the satisfaction of those whose duty is well done.

There will be better health for you in the digging—and that alone is reward enough.

But, more than all, you shall have that special sense of independence as you walk among the mass of your dependent fellow men—the proud elevation of one who needs not to ask of any man, since in his own cellar he hath beans, raised on his own good soil, bottled by his own right hand.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

FINDING OUT WHAT'S IN MEN'S HEADS

The new tests for mental speed and accuracy that are being given to the army and that will some day be used to separate the sheep from the goats in business

By BRUCE BARTON

IN one of the large cities of Canada, William Jenkins, discharged from the army as being of no further use to it, pursues his aimless and profitless existence. Jenkins never amounted to very much, even before the war. In busy periods he drifted about a good deal from one factory to another, staying sometimes a month in a place, sometimes only a week, and filling in the intervening hours with odd jobs of various sorts. People regarded him as a good-natured incompetent, one of the great class whom Providence has provided to wash the world's windows and mow the world's lawns; and people were very properly surprised and pleased when the first call for volunteers found him at the recruiting station. "You never can tell," they said to themselves. "Who would ever have supposed that old Bill Jenkins would turn out a hero?"

They knitted him sweaters and sent him cigarettes. The government provided him with a uniform and a gun. They gave him some preliminary training in Canada, shipped him across in a boat of which every ton of carrying capacity was precious, drilled him for months in England, supplying him with food and paying him his regular soldier's wages.

And to-day Bill is back in Canada. He never amounted to much before the war: from now on he will amount to nothing. For he is a victim of "shell-shock," properly discharged, and provided by a grateful country with a pension for life. It will cost the Dominion of Canada a tidy sum each month of Bill's life just for Bill's trip across and back. For—and here is the crux of the whole matter—Bill never took part in a single battle: he was never within five miles of the front-line trenches.

Under the very first stress of camp hardship and cannon thunder, Bill's ill-knit nervous system crumbled to pieces. All the trouble and expense and tonnage used up by Bill, which might have been employed in the training of an effective soldier, were lost; and Bill will be a burden on his fellow citizens for the rest of his days. All because there was no way of looking inside of Bill's brain, at the beginning, and finding out that he just didn't have it in him to stand up under the nervous strain of modern war.

Why We Don't Want an Army from Insane Asylums

SOME rocking-chair strategist, early in the war, suggested that a regiment be formed from the inmates of insane asylums. "It is a shame to form armies of our best men," he protested, "when we might be getting rid of our worst." But science has discovered the pitiful truth that war will not be cheated. It will have the best or nothing. Put a man of sub-normal intelligence under the terrific conditions of modern war, and he is the first to go to pieces: generally speaking, the higher a man's intelligence, the better his chance of rendering first-class service, and the better his chance, also, of coming back alive.

Therefore the economical way to fight a war is to fight it with the men of best mentality. The United States has decided to fight its war that way. There will be no Bill Jenkinses in its army.

Does that seem to you too strong a statement? Were you about to object that it is impossible to look through a man's hard skull and discover what is inside? The answer is that I have seen it done. Recently, at Camp Dix, near Wrightstown, New Jersey, I watched while Captain Joseph Hayes and his associates passed a thousand men before them, and by ten simple tests separated them into six classes. The sixth and lowest of those classes comprised the Bill Jenkinses—the men who are physically strong but who simply have not the mentality that a war like this one requires.

Of the Canadian wounded, now discharged and pensioned in Canada, twenty-five per cent are sufferers from mental and nervous diseases. And, of these, ten per cent never reached the battle-fields at all. It is waste like this that Captain Hayes means to avoid.

We went into a big bare room at Camp Dix. It was fitted with plain wooden benches, on which sat soldiers, perhaps two hundred of them all together. A good-natured crowd they were; yet underneath their jests ran an undercurrent of seriousness. Without knowing exactly the nature of the ordeal before them, each one understood that he was about to undergo some sort of examination that would show up his mental capacities; and even the dullest of them wanted to appear no duller than he really was.

A lieutenant passed down the aisles, handing each man a printed folder.

"A good soldier must be able to understand and to execute orders," he explained to them. "In this folder are ten tests designed to prove how far you are able to remember a verbal order, and how swiftly and accurately you can carry it out. I will read the directions for the first test aloud: every man will hold his pencil above his head until I give the order, 'Write.' You will then be given a certain definite number of seconds or minutes, as the case may be, to answer the first test. At the command, 'Stop; turn over,' you will turn to the second test, and hold your pencils above your heads again until I have read the directions to you."

Simple Tests with Big Results

THE first test is comparatively simple. On the page are certain circles. In some of them the soldier is ordered to make certain marks: others are to be left blank. There are certain geometrical figures which he is to mark in certain ways. No writing is required in any of the tests, with one exception. Every question can be answered by a cross or by underlining a figure or a word.

The first test page looks as if it might be a part of the equipment of a kindergarten. "Surely," I said to myself, "every man here can do the simple things required to make a perfect record on that test." Yet, as I walked down the aisles, watching the men, I soon discovered this: that there are some men who can remember three directions given at once; there are some men who can remember only two, some only one; and there are some who can not do correctly even the single simplest thing.

"Stop," called the lieutenant. "Turn to Test 2. "I shall read certain figures to you aloud. As I finish reading each figure, you are to write it from memory."

So he began, first with simple figures, and then with more complex ones, testing the ability of the men to carry a sequence in their minds and to reproduce it correctly.

So on, through the ten tests. I am sorry that I can not explain them in detail. I wanted to do it: but these are war times, and many matters that make excellent reading are forbidden by the wisdom of the War Department. If I were to print the ten tests here in full, or even explain them too carefully, all of the young men who have not been called in the army, but who will be later on, could begin right now to "plug up" on them, as we used to say in college; and when their turn arrived they might make records that would be entirely disproportionate to their ability.

The tests are ingenious and interesting enough. But, after all, it is the results that are even more interesting. And about the results I am permitted to tell.

The papers are graded on a scale of 400 points. Any man whose paper grades above 300 is classified as an A man. Any man who grades above 250 is a B man. Thirty per cent of the enlisted men and non-commissioned officers fall into these two classes: fifty per cent of the commissioned officers will be found here. Any man who fails to score at least fifty points on the scale of 400 is classed as an E man, and is held for a second examination.

There is a possibility that he may be a foreigner, to whom any test in English is unfair. He therefore, with the others in the E class, is taken into a smaller room and given a series of purely mechanical tests. A simple little picture puzzle is put before him, and he is given a certain time to fit its parts together. A box containing twenty-seven little cubes is passed to him, and he is asked to build them into one large cube, of three blocks on each side. To make sure that he understands, a model is set up, so that he has nothing to do but use his eyes and hands.

If, in such simple tests as these, the man still fails, he is taken before the doctors and given a special, private session. And if he fails again he is recommended by the doctors for discharge. A man who can not put a picture puzzle together is no safe individual to trust with a gun. A mind so badly coördinated that it can not reproduce a simple cube by piling up smaller cubes is the kind of mind that gives way under the first flood of terror.

Some interesting incidents have been brought out by the tests. All the officers went through the thing themselves. There is a certain colonel in the camp who is regarded by every man there as the best and most efficient officer. If the tests were really scientific, he ought to stand in them at or near the top. And, sure enough, when the officers' papers were gathered, he headed the list.

Finding Men Out

IN one group of privates two men took the test. Each had registered himself on the personnel blank as a lithographer. Belonging to the same trade, schooled in the same duties, one would suppose that they would show up with about the same grade of intelligence. To the surprise of the examiners, one rose to the B rank in the test: the other fell far down into D.

What was the matter? Was the test a failure?

An investigation of the two men's records was made; and it was discovered that, while one of them had been a foreman in the lithographic establishment where he worked, the other had run a

Concluded on page 22

How Men Keep House Under Fire

By CAPTAIN A. P. CORCORAN

IT is the dinner hour—12 M.—in the trenches. Round a fire bucket sit six men, mess tins in hand, hastily eating a meal. A stranger wanders by from a neighboring traverse, and halts at the sight of the six.

"Cottage pie, 'ave ye? My eye, but some blokes is lucky. Where did ye get the spuds?"

"Back in billets, ol' dear. Got 'em out of the ol' Madame for 'elping to chop up 'er wood. 'Ave a bite?"

The invitation comes after a pause, reluctantly. Food is very precious on the front.

"Ah don't mind if ah do."

Down he squats with the six others, and the meal proceeds quickly, in silence. Cottage pie is a treat, made by trench artists in cooking. One layer of bully beef chopped fine, overlaid by a layer of potatoes mashed to a pulp, the whole baked in a mess tin over a fire bucket—it is a precious commodity, for potatoes are the reward of care and foresight. They are not included in trench rations.

Not a word is spoken. Then suddenly through the silence, quite close to the ear, comes a prolonged hiss, a bang, followed by a cloud of smoke, and up spatters the earth over our seven silent friends, covering them with stray bits of mud. A "pip-squeak" has hit the trench.

In a second it is all over. Recovering, they look round. At the end of the traverse they see the visitor lying sidewise, a mess tin still clutched in his hand.

"Got 'is," comments one man, who has gone to turn him over.

"Why the h— didn't he stay where he belonged?"

Callous? No doubt. But then, it happens every day. There must be some point beyond which emotion will refuse to react—else these men would long since have died of their own sympathy.

The newspapers and the casual correspondents love to talk of the soldier as the modern cave-man. Something romantic in the ring of the words seems to appeal to their phrase-loving ears. But—do you remember that neat bank clerk who used to call at your home? Or that lawyer whose ornate office you once visited? Or that smug-looking carpenter who was forever forgetting his tools?

Can you imagine those men living in the open day and night, facing wind and rain, snow and sun, rats and lice, mud and aching misery? Can you imagine them living so week by week, from year's end to year's end, with the only prospect of final release facing them grimly in the form of a bullet or the explosion of a screaming shell?

Here is a rough outline of the modern soldier's day:

It is midnight when he enters his apartment. Over his shoulder are slung the implements of his trade. In his hand he carries his food and fuel—bacon, bread, butter, biscuits, bully beef, jam, some cheese and oxo cubes, with a little bag of wood, coke, and coal with which he must cook and keep himself warm. Just one day's provisions is all he takes along. He trusts to his friends in the rear to send the rest up daily. He has come, of course, for a stay of four days.

And what is his apartment like? Why, nothing more than a grave eight feet deep by four feet wide.

Having received his orders, he settles down glumly for the night. To his comrades have gone such unpleasant duties as sentry go, listening post. He may go to bed, if he likes.

From two to three feet up the side of the traverse is a hole leading into the earth under No Man's Land. Into this he crawls. It is his sitting-room, dining-room, bedroom, club, and study—the "dug-out."

Perhaps some ingenious member of the battalion has amused himself making furniture: hollowing the earth round the center so as to leave a raised spot in the middle for a table, more raised spots round the sides for seats, and more holes in the wall for beds. If so, our friend lays his ground-sheet on one of the latter, wraps himself tightly into blanket and greatcoat, and is ready for a restful night.

Restful? Why, yes. For no shell comes to rout him out; there is no surprise sally to wake him sharply to realities and make him grab for cold steel to protect his own life or take another's. No, nothing like that. Merely a rat scurries across his nose,—trench rats are about the size of rabbits,—or he twists and turns, made uneasy by those small tormentors which even "Keating's" seems powerless to conquer. But not for long. Real fatigue asserts itself, and he sleeps, until—

"Show a leg!" sounds noisily in his ear. A grinning comrade, who in the trenches takes the place of the "reveille," summons him to his day's work.

Grunting, he turns out, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, rolls up his bed-clothes, and is ready for the day.

Dawn has just peeped out of a still gray east when he steps into the open of the traverse. The daily signal is given for the "stand-to."

A shivering, sleepy, strained-looking band, they gather in the dim light round their commander. Some are blue with cold despite their shaggy coats. They have been standing still all night out on the listening post.

A tot of rum is now handed out to them. A half gill of geniune Jamaica, swallowed neat, does much to restore their circulation—and their spirits. That drunk, the day begins.

First a visit to the suction pump that brings drinking and washing water to the trenches. There are few Tommies, no matter how dirty as to clothing and hands, but will allow themselves the luxury of a daily shave. Nothing like cleanliness to keep up your courage, which, after all, is dependent on your self-respect.

The wash over, then comes breakfast. If you're a solitary soul you may eat alone; but usually the men gather in groups.

One man busies himself with the fireplace, which is no more than a bucket in which holes have been driven. One becomes cook, another housemaid.

Tea, bacon, and perhaps an egg, bread and butter for breakfast; oxo soup, bully beef, perhaps cheese for dinner; tea, bread and jam for "tea"; cheese, bread and butter for supper—this is the daily menu.

Sometimes in the afternoon a joyous shout will rend the air:

"Strarberry! Real strarberry! My word, what luck!" A mistake has been made by the quartermaster. He has varied the dreadful plum and apple jam.

Or at supper a Maconachie has been mysteriously procured. This comes always in the form of a treat—a two-pound tin of excellent stew, which any man might eat with relish. But, as a rule, the tiresome menu prevails.

And what comes in the intervals of meals?

Odd jobs of filling sand-bags, reinforcing trench defenses, oiling guns, cleaning rifles will take a few hours; but for the rest?

There is waiting, waiting—endless waiting to shoot or be shot. That is the main work of the "cave-men." A game of poker, bridge, dice-throwing, reading, may serve to take the mind off the chief task; but, as a rule, it is not long out of sight. Waiting in the cold, the heat, the rain, for death or the more merciful wound that will take one home on leave—that is modern warfare.

ON BEING SUBMARINED

NOT long ago I talked with Professor Walter P. Hall of Princeton University, who was torpedoed on the Finland.

I asked how he felt when the torpedo landed that tore a 35 by 20 foot hole in the ship's side.

"I didn't feel," he answered. ""They didn't give me time.

"We all piled into a life-boat and started to lower it. Then the davits broke, and we crashed into the water. For some reason the boat didn't tip over, and I was feeling that it was all too easy, when a big negro yelled, 'For God's sake, bail!" They had forgotten to put the plug into the boat, and the water was up to the thwarts. We all thought we were sinking. As a matter of fact, those boats can be full of water and still stay afloat, but we didn't know it.

"I took off all my clothes and jumped overboard, and started to swim for a raft. I took an oar along to use when I got there. I advise everybody to make for rafts when they are torpedoed; there are lots of them floating around, and no competition for them. I swam to it easily, and then began to paddle toward a rescue yacht that was steaming up.

"I wasn't very cold, and I paddled lustily. The yacht came fairly close, and I yelled cheerfully to it. Then I suddenly discovered that it was paying absolutely no attention to me. It circled around in wide circles, evidently looking for the submarine. I paddled hard; but a life-boat oar is not easy to manipulate, and I grew very tired. It began to rain, and got steadily colder. I didn't even have my life-belt on. Sitting naked on a raft in November far out of sight of land makes an amusing picture, but it was—" He let that go.

"Slowly, without any pain, I grew numb. I wasn't frightened. I felt a sort of comfortable fatalism. The last thing I remember was a rope passed around my shoulders. I woke up, still sans culotte, on a boat from the New York Yacht Club. They took us back to France. Somebody gave me a shirt and trousers, but I had to go ashore barefoot."

THE EDITOR.

WHAT BECOMES OF YOUR RED CROSS DOLLAR

THE dollar you give to the Red Cross may be worth anywhere from thirty cents to five thousand dollars. It all depends on where it goes.

A dollar flannel shirt in one of the great Red Cross bundles is worth two dollars in cold cash by the time it reaches the wearer. And by arriving at a critical moment, when shirts are not to be had, it may acquire an enormous value. "Then too," says Howard Copeland in the Yale Review, "the value of that shirt may be reduced lower than the proverbial 'thirty cents,' as when I am hoodwinked by a scalawag who sells it for liquor."

Mr. Copeland has had especial charge of distributing hospital supplies since the early days of the war. He says: "Many a shirt or a dollar's worth of woolen sweater has saved a human life, which we quote at five thousand dollars in America, I believe.

"I recall heading my motor-car across country against a cold, sleety rain one bitter day last winter, and meeting a young soldier who accepted the proffered seat by my side. He had just come from the hospital, where he had been sent in the heat of the preceding summer, and he had been trudging now through the snow with evidently the same clothes he had worn then. His poor body, long enfeebled by illness and the close air of hospital wards, was shaking so he could hardly speak. If he has survived that day I am sure it was these humble garments that saved his life."

Money goes far that reaches the small hospitals conducted by local Red Cross branches. But the value of the dollar

reaches its high-water mark in the pathetic bénévole hospital. These exist in villages too small to boast Red Cross locals.

"Our task of distributing Red Cross wares to hospitals such as these is a very easy one. It is just: 'Bon soir, Monsieur le Curé: here are some warm woolens for your wounded men to put on when they are well enough to be about. Here are some bandages, all sealed in these sterilized tin boxes. No, there is nothing at all to pay; thousands of women have been knitting them and making them for you over in America, thousands of miles away. No, there are no thanks due to us from you. It's all the other way around; it's we who thank you for all the work you have been doing for us here in France these three years and more.' And the old curé or the rustic village mayor, looking bewildered as the beautiful flannels, bed linen, and bandages roll out from the automobile, crosses himself piously, and stares at me in a kind of speechless awe, as if I were a messenger straight out of the sky. Truly, every one of the little bénévoles hospitals insures a gilt-edged investment for the American dollar."

In the case of the large military hospitals, supplies are welcome, but they simply save the French government an equivalent sum. The men lying wounded fare just the same as if the goods had never been sent.

THAT STRANGE THING, "SHELL-SHOCK"

SIR JOHN COLLIE, president of the Special Pension Board on Neurasthenics, found that, out of ten thousand cases of discharge from the army for disabilities, twenty per cent were for war neurosis, popularly known as "shell-shock." Almost any injury to the nerves may result in neurosis. It is seldom caused primarily by a shock, but usually comes as the cumulative effect of months of horror, touched off by some sudden violent experience. The symptoms of neurosis are various. It may result in delirium, confusion, loss of memory, terrifying battle dreams, a state of anxiety. It may mean heart disorders, vomiting, difficulty in breathing, paralysis, tremors, convulsive movements. Or the senses may be affected, producing pains, numbness, deafness, mutism, blindness, or disorders of speech.

Often the symptoms bear a direct relation to the shock that precipitated the disease. Dr. Salmon, a major in the Medical Officers' Reserve Corps, writing in Mental Hygiene, says that "a soldier who bayonets an enemy in the face develops an hysterical tic of his own facial muscles; abdominal contractures occur in men who have bayoneted enemies in the abdomen; hysterical blindness follows particularly horrible sights; hysterical deafness appears in those who find the cries of the wounded unbearable."

Often neurosis is a man's unconscious method for escaping from the horrors of war. When things get too bad to stand, his nerves come to his rescue and release him. "Not only fear, which exists at some time in nearly all soldiers, and in many is constantly present, but horror, revulsion against the ghastly duties which must sometimes be performed, intense longing for home, particularly in married men, emotional situations resulting from the interplay of personal conflicts and military conditions, all play their part in making an escape of some sort mandatory."

The courageous, honorable soldier can not seek escape in death or flight or pretended illness. Many men are adaptable enough to adjust themselves to war conditions. But for those who can not, their craving for release makes a nervous collapse sooner or later inevitable.

WHAT A GIRL SOLDIER THOUGHT OF WAR

THE women's Battalion of Death has been honored all over the world; but another group of Russian women, equally courageous, have had less notice than they deserve. These are the girl soldiers who have fought, many of them from the start of the war, in regiments of men. After the revolution some of them joined women's battalions, but many stuck to their regiments and went on fighting by the side of their men comrades. In her new book, Inside the Russian Revolution (Macmillan Company), Rheta Childe Dorr tells of her talks with these seasoned fighters.

"One girl I saw in a hospital, a bullet in her side and a broken hand in a cast, assured me that fighting was the most congenial work she had ever done." She and some other women joined a battalion made up of remnants of several old regiments and a number of marines. "The officers did not object to their enlisting, but were inclined to treat them with a lofty indifference. The men, too, seemed to assume that the girls could not endure the real hardships of war when they came. 'The first thing we had to do in camp was to make a quick march of twelve versts. "Of course the girls can't walk that far," the men said. "They can ride on the cook wagons." But we said: "We didn't come here to watch you do things. We came to be soldiers like yourselves." When we got back to camp, it was so funny; sailors are not much used to walking, you know, and those men were completely tired out, exhausted. They lay around in their bunks and groaned, and called on everybody to look at their feet and their blisters, while we weren't tired at all.'"

This same girl soldier helped storm several lines of trenches, and was one of thirty-seven survivors out of a thousand in her regiment who took part in the engagement. She was severely wounded; but when she found her captain on the field almost unconscious, she managed to get him on her back and carry him to the rear, where the first line of Red Cross took them both in charge.

F. W. HOHENZOLLERN

By Oliver Herford

IN things like this
I've always tried
To look upon the brighter side;
And when I see the prince I say:
"The crown's worth something, anyway."

From "Confessions of a Caricaturist" (Charles Scribner's Sons).

OFFICERS ALL

PENDING the arrival of privates who have been ordered transferred from the National Army, the situation of some of the officers detailed for service with certain National Guard regiments is rather amusing, says the Outlook. One officers' mess, it is said, dicussed hiring at least one man to act as a private, there being none in their command. The depot brigade at Camp Doniphan, Oklahoma, was a little better off, the roster showing one brigadier-general, one colonel, six majors, and one hundred captains exercising command over Private John Goings!

THIS GERMAN WANTED TO FIGHT

HE was in the hospital at T— when I met him. He was a captain in a Bavarian infantry regiment, and had been captured in the fight at Festubert. His wounds were quite slight; but, what was much more serious, he seemed to have lost his mind.

As a rule he was quiet, his only reply to our advances being a laugh or an imbecile grin. It was not that he failed to understand, for he betrayed at times quite an adequate stock of English. Now and again, however, he would break out into acts of violence. Once or twice he deliberately upset trays of soup on his bed. And periodically he would make a charge from between the sheets, shouting in German:

"They're coming! They're coming! Shoot!"

So they took him away as soon as possible, and the doctor told us he was sent to an insane asylum.

About twelve months later, during the early fighting on the Somme, I took part in a night attack in the neighborhood of Pommier. It was one of those surprise sallies in which we often caught the Germans literally napping. This time we took practically an entire company, with most of the officers in charge.

Imagine my astonishment when among the prisoners I recognized my old friend from T—!

I accosted him, and he immediately owned up. He had won his freedom by a ruse.

Knowing that in those periodical ex-changes of prisoners men unfit for fight were usually returned to their own land he had hit on the plan of feigning lunacy. I leave you to imagine what force of character as well as what native ability was needed to carry out his program successfully.

I have heard of only one other feat which, to my mind, equals his. It is that of the Frenchman whose pretense of blindness fooled even the crack German oculists.

Told by Captain Corcoran.

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ABROAD

IN connection with this photograph of American soldiers in a French town, we print the following description of American soldiers abroad, given by a South American who saw them arrive in Paris:

"Large, slow, phlegmatic, the Americans filed through the streets of the city without being affected in the least by the 'parade.'

"They are dressed rather as cowboys than as soldiers, and they savor of the far West. Among them there is no display of gold lace, no fine trimmings, and barely an oak-leaf, an eagle, or a star shows on their collars or shoulders to indicate their rank. They are strong and healthy, and they are not warlike.

"They give the impression of being good, frank, well trained boys; and they will get themselves killed—since this is what they came for—and they will die in the Dantesque waste of No Man's Land with great valor, while seeking with their almost infantile blue eyes the maternal bosom of their native heavens and the soft horizon of the prairies."

From Inter-America.

HELPMATES

By EDWIN BALMER

Illustrations by H. Fisk

LAURA heard his whistle,—the bright leaping notes of Raphaelo's song from "The Jewels of the Madonna,"—and she ran to her room. She brushed back her glorious red hair, patted powder on her straight little sun-burnt nose, smoothed her dress, and, rushing downstairs, flung her slight little self into the arms of the big young man who had just stepped into the hall.

"You got it!" she cried confidently.

He kissed her and held her off admiringly.

"Hello, Laura! You're evidently all right. How're the kids?"

"Oh, so sweet! I've put baby with Jim on the porch to-night. They're both awake yet; you can see them. You got it, Rodney?"

She gave the inflection of a question this time, but with little less sureness in her voice.

"Both!" he repeated, as if incredulous. "A lot you look like the mother of two! No, I didn't get it," he added, as if "it" were of the slightest importance. "Bill got it."

Laura's eyes dampened, and she held her husband more tightly.

"Will Ellis? They put him over you?"

"Why, little Laurie!" he patted her. "I don't mind. I mean, it's all in the game, dear."

"I mind!" Laura tossed her head. "For it's not in the game. Will Ellis never won that position from you. It was Annette won it from me! She helped him to it. That's why Will's going to be sales-manager and not you! And you know it's my fault: that's why you're trying to pretend not to feel badly about it."

"Your fault!" Rodney protested.

"Yes. It was my fault that you weren't able to entertain the Sibleys, and Annette and Will were: that gave them that big Wells & Sibley business. I guess Annette was boasting about it at Jane's luncheon the other day. They were talking about husbands, and some one asked Annette how long she'd been married, and she said she was glad to say she was a bride—she hadn't handicapped her husband for life by marrying him before he got his start and making him slave to support her. She thanked heaven she had the strength of mind to wait and to be of some help to her husband when she married him—especially when he was in a line where entertaining makes as much difference as it does in the motor trade. And every one knew that you and I had been married four years—and you were with Pell's too."

Laura's lips quivered. She was not yet twenty-six, though she had been married almost four years and was the mother of two.

"What did you say to that?" Rodney asked, holding her small hand tight.

"Do you think I'd say a word? If every one didn't know that I wouldn't give a lock of Betty's hair for her fine downtown flat and her two maids and—and everything else she's got—I wouldn't tell them. But I didn't believe that the Wells & Sibley order would put Will Ellis over you!"

"It didn't!" Rodney denied again, loyally but vainly—and went up to look at the children.

Laura did not go with him: it was Thursday, and Olga was out, and dinner was cooking.

RODNEY bent over Betty and Billy. Hmm! What if they had cost him position as sales-manager and a couple of thousand a year? He could not deny to himself that, if Laura had been able to entertain the Sibleys when they were in Detroit in August, he might have got the million-dollar order from Wells & Sibley.

Sibley—no salesman ever saw Wells, the senior partner—for two years had been the most important prospect in Rodney's territory; but Rodney had been completely unable to sell him. Then, this August, Sibley had come to Detroit with his wife. The trip proved to he partly for business, partly for pleasure. They both played golf. It was essential that some one who had a wife should entertain them; and Betty had been born four days before. So Mr. Pell assigned Will and Annette to the Sibleys; and Annette and Will motored them, dined them, and then put them up at the golf club, where Annette and Mrs. Sibley golfed daily for a week. When the Sibleys left Detroit, Will had the Wells & Sibley order for an even million dollars' worth.

That million-dollar order made a difference in Pell's choice when a new sales-manager was to be appointed; but to have Laura blaming herself for it!

He washed and hurried down to her as quickly as he could, to find that, while he had been changing things, she had hunted out her golf bag from the storage closet and was trying stances and chop strokes on the kitchen porch.

"Oh, but I'm soft!" she confessed as Rodney came out. "I guess I just needed Annette to jog me up; I've been letting myself go terribly."

"Go!"

"Do you know, I haven't shot a hole since the summer after we married? But I used to play a half decent round, didn't I, dear?"

"You played like—like an angel!"

Laura laughed.

"Never mind; I can get my game in some sort of shape before winter, so that I can at least qualify if you'll take me to the Gulf tournament. Annette said that, aside from the Wells & Sibley business; she figured that her golf game got Will a hundred thousand dollars in orders last year from buyers whose wives she came to know on the course. You don't know people just by meeting them, but by doing something with them. Will you take me to the winter tournament, Rod?"

"Will you go?"

"I can't see how it'll hurt baby to take her; and I can leave Jim with mother. When Annette is there to mix with the wives of the big buyers, I'll be about to mix with them too!"

THERE was no forbidding her, and, while the fall weather held, Rodney Hobart had the dismaying experience of a man for whom a girl is overdoing. With the doctors' and nurses' bills to be paid, Laura could not consider buying new sport things; so she made what she had to have. It never occurred to Rodney that she needed them until she had them done.

It was an hour by street-car to the golf club, and of course an hour back. There were just three hours in the afternoon when Laura could leave the baby. So, every fair day, she journeyed the two hours on the trolley for fifty minutes or less on the course.

"You oughtn't to be doing that," Rodney objected, when he found it out. "You ought to be resting then. You'll do yourself up."

"I'm just learning how lazy I've been," Laura returned.

So he threatened her with "It'll react on Betty."

To which she triumphed, "I guess she gained eight ounces last week! But, Rod, my game!" she deplored. "It's frightful. Annette drove out to our club to-day, and she took me on. I couldn't win a hole from her, and halved just two of nine. And she's the easiest and gracefulest thing when she plays! I simply stumbled around beside her. Would it be better for me not to try to go to Ocontico and play than to dub everything?"

"I wish I'd seen you playing out in the sunshine to-day," Rodney replied quite irrelevantly, patting her glorious hair. "Did you leave off your hat?"

THE coming of snow saw the hegira of the golf enthusiasts of the motor trade to Ocontico.

The fine course, bastioned by great hotels, is on the Gulf, where summer tarries long after the greens are frozen on the home courses of the golf enthusiasts from Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. Some of the players traveled down in special cars, making merry parties of twenty or thirty together. Annette and Will Ellis came down in that way. They arrived early and practised often. Annette brought with her the prestige and fame of having won two important tournaments in Detroit and of having gone into the semi-final round of a title tournament.

There are few known assemblages as precariously sensitized or charged to as high a potential—either of profit or of trouble—as an association of sellers and buyers on recreation bent. When the men meet alone the potential is high enough; but when wives of both venders and customers also mingle, every encounter is supercharged with all sorts of possibilities. Hundred thousand dollar orders may be gained or canceled by the flattery or the affront of any minute.

Annette Ellis, tall and strong in a way that appealed to both women and men, was also blessed with a memory excellently trained for faces and names. She went about, a beautiful blonde goddess of golf, tireless and immune to the clangers of forgetting or offending. Almost every one knew her and liked her. She could judge just the sort of impression she was making.

Laura arrived at the hotel almost in terror. She had come with Rodney, leaving Jim with grandmother. Betty had shared their drawing-room; and Olga came in an extra lower to look after Betty when Laura should be at the club, or on the links. Laura knew almost no one in the crowd at the hotels, and of the few women whom she did know she had absolutely forgotten their husbands' positions.

However, the qualifying rounds both for men and for women were to start that morning; and the names of everybody were posted in tall columns at the club-house. Rodney rehearsed the columns with her, whispering who was who in the crowd about.

"That's Mrs. Sibley—Wells & Sibley, you know—"

"Over there with Annette now," Laura nodded. "Oh, Rod, I know her."

"That woman beyond, in green, is Mrs. Crane, the wife of D. V. Crane of—"

"I remember now; do we sell him?"

"Not nearly as much as we'd like."

"I'll try to remember that."

"That girl next her is Miss Fosdick, the daughter of E. H. Fosdick, my

---

biggest customer. Be sure to meet her." So Rodney instructed, and Laura repeated and prayed for Napoleon's—or Annette's—knack of remembering names.

"Where's Mrs. Wells, Rod?" she asked, when they had finished the list.

"Who?"

"The wife of Mr. Wells of Wells & Sibley?"

Rodney laughed. "He, thank heaven, is a widower; you haven't got to bother about any one for him. Nor about him, either. He doesn't appear at this sort of thing. I don't know him, but I know he's not here."

The first round was to be played merely to find the thirty-two best players who would later be matched against one another. There proved to be no particular pairings for this round; any two players could choose each other and start off. Persons thus paired did not contest against each other; each played solely to complete the eighteen holes in as few strokes as possible. If both got good scores, both would qualify for further play.

ANNETTE had already engaged Mrs. Sibley for this friendly round, and they started away together. Laura dutifully looked up Mrs. Crane as second in importance, only to find that another wife was ahead of her. Next in value appeared to be Miss Fosdick. Laura was searching for her when a loud-looking woman, whom no one seemed to know, attached herself.

"You paired yet?"

"No," Laura admitted.

"I think I like you," the woman said. "Shall we team it? I'm Mrs. Charleton."

Laura shook hands and told her her name, vainly searching her newly stored recollection for a hint of significance to be attached to Mrs. Charleton. There was none. The name was unusual, and Laura was certain that she remembered that Rodney had repeated it as one strange to him. But there was nothing for her to do but to spend the morning with Mrs. Charleton. Annette would have known how to get out of it, and without giving offense, but Laura did not.

She went with Mrs Charleton to the first tee, and, before they had reached the third hole, Laura was liking Mrs. Charleton too, and having a very good time. The morning was perfect—cool, sunlit, and windless; there was the excitement of play in competition, and the example of Mrs. Charleton's excellent game. When they completed the eighteen holes and returned at noon, Mrs. Charleton turned in the lowest score of all except Annette's. Laura found that, though she had needed several more strokes to complete the round, still her total score was low enough practically to insure qualifying among the thirty-two women who would be matched against each other the next day.

"So I'm still in the tournament; but otherwise I've absolutely wasted the morning," she laughed at herself to Rodney when he came to their room, where she had at once returned to Betty. "I came down here to help you, and I seem to have spent my first day with the one player not connected with the trade at all. She hasn't any husband, and she isn't even related to any one in the business. She was just invited down for the golf, she said; she's keen about that—and she ought to be. She's a perfectly fine player, and when she found I wasn't much she showed me a lot of things and was awfully nice—though I fancy she'd be rather severe if she were losing. However, I got a fair score and had an awfully good time, if I wasn't doing any business."

"You haven't got to excuse that to me," Rodney reminded. "This is your scheme for family betterment. Do you know you're drawn to play against Miss Fosdick to-morrow?"

Laura went pale. "Am I, Rod? You mean against the daughter of your biggest customer?"

"Yes; what's the matter?"

"I don't know," Laura denied. "Yes, I do," she admitted a moment later. "Rod, I've been about on the porch with the other wives like me so mach that I'm afraid—afraid of that little girl, Miss Fosdick! And I've never been afraid of any one before!"

"You shouldn't be that," Rodney urged.

"I know it. I'm ashamed of myself, but I can't help it, now that I'm here. I've come to meet her and play with her—or pretend to play with her for the fun of it—when I'm really doing it for what we can get out of her—or out of her father. I know why you didn't want me to come. Rodney, I can't play a 'customer's' game, as Annette calls it. I can't be low enough to play to please my opponent for the business in it. If I play her, I've got to play to win!"

"Of course you have to," Rodney agreed.

SHE did—though Miss Fosdick, who was only twenty, was very much excited and determined to win. E. H. Fosdick, her father, also was so set upon her winning that he came out to carry her clubs for her and, as caddy, to advise her during the play. He had been boasting about her game and how she always won at home; he said this round would be merely a form for her: she was sure to win her way into the finals, at least.

"And then," Laura confessed to Rodney, "I put her out. She was so amazed and mad that she couldn't believe it, and she hardly shook hands with me at all after the last hole. I admit I had most irritating luck, for I started very badly, losing the first three holes to her, and then holding her only even, so that I was still three holes behind when we finished the first nine. Then, after we started to play the tenth, nothing that I tried went wrong, so I won back three holes from her, and we were even when we started for the last hole. She drove wonderfully for that short eighteenth, and I sliced my ball and sent it away off to the side into long grass.

"She was on the green, and played her ball right up beside the hole with her second shot, and I was almost a hundred yards away when I lofted my ball right straight to the green, and it hopped on and ran into the hole, winning it for me in two strokes! No one—not even a man—had ever done that before; it was too much luck; and—well, Miss Fosdick's father just picked up her clubs and stamped off without a word. Rod, what have I done to your business?"

"I—I don't know," faltered Rodney, who had been passed on the porch by his biggest customer, still not speaking.

Laura broke down and cried. The weather forecast, posted at the hotel, said rain for the morning; and Laura prayed for it—rain, a flood of rain, anything to halt the play.

The rain came—but not till Laura; who met Mrs. Sibley next, had played six holes, at the end of which Laura, with the uncanny continuance of her luck of the afternoon before, was two holes ahead. Then the downpour stopped play for two hours, and when it cleared Laura had to refuse to go on.

"Which put us both out of the play"—she explained that noon the remarkable circumstance of the simultaneous elimination of her name and Mrs. Sibley's from the tournament brackets. "I offered her the match by default, of course; but she wouldn't take a default from me when I was ahead; and I couldn't go on because of baby. It was most unfair to Mrs. Sibley, when I know I wouldn't have had a chance against her on the entire round. She wanted me to play two more holes anyway, to give her a chance to even up; but I couldn't, and she couldn't understand why I couldn't. Well, one person's pleased by me: Mrs. Charleton. For Mrs. Sibley was the only one who might possibly put her out, and now everything's cleared for her to the finals when she meets Annette."

For Annette, as every one anticipated, had swept everybody before her in her half of the drawings. Fate, which had overwhelmed Laura, had played into Annette's hands, furnishing to her as opponents only those who were complimented enough if Annette Ellis seemed to have to struggle to beat them. Laura, that afternoon, saw Mrs. Crane—the wife of the important D. V. Crane—proudly exhibiting her card to show that she had not lost to Annette till the last hole.

Laura was raking tea at the hotel with the sole person she had pleased that week—Mrs. Charleton, the only one in the tournament with absolutely no discoverable connection with the motor trade.

"HEAD!" Annette called as the coin flew up. She won and took the honor entitling her to play first. Will Ellis, carrying her clubs, extended her driver as she herself stooped and patted into form the sand to tee her ball. She chose footing carefully, and drove far and straight away toward the first green. Mrs. Charleton, taking her driver from the little negro who caddied for her, laid her ball beside Annette's; and the final match for the ladies' trophy was begun.

A large number of spectators formed the "gallery" behind and beside the

teeing ground. Except for the Sibleys and a few others who were playing in special matches on the other course, the gallery included every one who had been at Ocontico for the week, and in addition many who had arrived only the evening before. They were coming out upon the course as Mrs. Charleton played her second shot a distance of two hundred yards up to the edge of the far-off putting-green and as Annette duplicated the play in her turn.

Mrs. Charleton "approached," her ball stopping a foot from the hole; but Annette sank her ball in the hole on her next shot. It was an excellent putt from twenty-five feet away, and won the hole for her in three strokes to Mrs. Charleton's four; and four strokes for that hole was "par" for men. Few of the men had made that hole even in four. Every one clapped in loud and long applause.

"Great golf! A wonderful girl, Mrs. Ellis!" Laura heard every one about her praising Annette; and Laura, following with Rodney to the second tee, wholeheartedly agreed.

Annette was wonderful. Until Laura had attempted what Annette was accustomed to do, she had not realized how unusual Annette was. Entirely aside from the remarkable game she had achieved, it was no small triumph to have kept one's temper—and Annette had a good deal of temper—through the trying contests with customers' wives, beating them not only without offense, but even winning their admiration.

To be sure, Annette was facing no test of such self-control this morning. Her opponent was most unpopular; no one who amounted to anything seemed to know her, and almost every one had said that she had no business in the tournament at all, as she was not related to any one in the trade. She clearly was a crack golfer who had taken advantage of some sort of invitation, undoubtedly obtained at her solicitation, for the sake of competing and carrying off the extravagant silver trophy that the trade always furnished as prize for the ladies' event.

However, there never had been any strictly defined requirements as to who should be allowed to enter the tournament. Mrs. Charleton was in, and had played her way up to the finals, and it was too late to put her out except by her final opponent playing better golf than hers: and the gallery was openly jubilant that Annette was playing it.

She "halved" the next hole, making it in the same number of strokes as Mrs. Charleton. Then, by bad luck, she lost a hole; but she immediately regained her advantage, and held it through the remainder of the first nine holes to "the turn"; and she came to the tenth tee leading Mrs. Charleton by one hole.

EVERY one who had started to follow the match had remained in the gallery, which closed again about the players; and a score or so of men who had arrived by the mid-morning train halted at the hotel only to leave their luggage, and hurried out to the tenth tee without changing their things. News of a close contest had spread.

"They've made the first nine holes in one over men's par, and one or the other has shot five holes under par!" the word went around. "Annette Ellis is leading, one hole to the good; and they're at it—for blood."

For the contest was not only close, but was becoming bitter, because, while the play was even and Mrs. Charleton now was matching Annette stroke for stroke, the applause was almost entirely for the favorite. When Mrs. Ellis made a good shot after it seemed that she might lose the hole, the gallery clapped: when Mrs. Charleton saved herself a hole by as cool and skilful play, the gallery sighed, and Mrs. Charleton had begun to set her lips together. She had ceased to glance at the gallery, and her shoulders drew back, straight and defiant, when she stood waiting for Annette to play.

Annette drove again long and straight down the course; and when the usual applause burst out, Laura clapped at the same time that she spoke to Rodney:

"If Mrs. Charleton gets a good drive, we'll clap her too."

"You and I alone?" Rodney asked. "I'd like to; but we—how are we the ones to do it? It'll look as if we had it in for Annette."

"Maybe; but it's positively brutal as it is. Mrs. Charleton may not belong here; she may not be pleasant to people. But she's here, and our guest, and she's playing a great game, and—"

Mrs. Charleton's club struck the ball

---

at that instant, and it flew away in the long, low parabola of an excellent drive.

Laura clapped, and when Rodney joined her Miss Fosdick and a few others also applauded—but not many. So few, indeed, that it emphasized the partiality of the gallery almost more than the previous silence.

Mrs. Charleton felt it, and flushed. Then she turned and nodded to Laura. "Thank you," she said.

Another who had applauded was a short, plain-looking man who evidently was one of those who had just come from the train. No one seemed to know him; but he was a friend of Mrs. Charleton's, for she nodded to him and he took off his hat.

When the gallery trailed after the players down the fairway, Miss Fosdick and her father walked with Laura and Rodney; and Mrs. Charleton's friend found a place beside them. They went on together to the green, where, after the tensest sort of playing, Annette missed a short putt. The gallery groaned—not quite a groan, perhaps, Laura thought, but at least a murmur of disappointment. And when Mrs. Charleton putted her ball steadily and it dropped fairly into the hole, no one clapped till Laura's group began it, and then very few.

Mrs. Charleton had made the hole in five strokes; Annette had taken six. Annette had lost her advantage of one hole. The match between her and Mrs. Charleton was "all square;" and now for five holes straight Annette and Mrs. Charleton played the nerve-snapping, temper-testing game of playing precisely even to each other; each strained to make every stroke as perfect as humanly possible, with the knowledge that the slightest slip meant a lost hole, and whoever lost a hole now would almost certainly lose the match.

SO they had come to the sixteenth tee with the match still "all square," when Annette, too eager, drove her ball too hard and too far to the side, and it went into tall grass. She got it out well; but Mrs. Charleton had not failed: her second shot had placed her ball close to the hole. She won it in four strokes to Annette's five, and was one hole ahead, with but two holes more to play.

The gallery, which had groaned outright this time,—Laura had to admit to herself,—voiced its disappointment as it gathered about the seventeenth tee, where Mrs. Charleton, having won the last hole, was preparing to drive first. Remarks were made loudly enough to reach the players; and Mrs. Charleton colored.

Laura turned to the talkers:

"Mrs. Charleton's going to drive; won't you please keep still?"

The color deepened in Mrs. Charleton's face; she turned to Laura again. "Thank you," she said.

"Thank you," the plain-looking little man who had joined them repeated. "I was about to do that myself."

But it seemed to Laura that her interference had shaken Mrs. Charleton more than it had aided her. She sliced badly, and her ball flew into the woods to the right. No one groaned, but every one burst into applause when Annette got her drive away short but straight down the course.

This hole was vital to her. If Mrs. Charleton won it, the match was over; if she even halved it, Annette must win the one remaining hole to bring the match hack to even terms; if Annette took this hole, then the match would be square again.

The gallery trooped after Annette to her ball a hundred and fifty yards down the fairway, where Annette waited while Mrs. Charleton and her caddy beat the woods for her ball. Mrs Charleton's plain-looking friend followed her, as did one or two others. Laura remained with Rodney in the circle about Annette.

"How long are they allowed to look for a ball?" some one inquired impatiently.

"Five minutes!" another informed.

"Then the ball is declared lost?"

"That's it."

"And if her ball is lost, Mrs. Ellis wins the hole?"

That's the rule; they've been hunting three minutes now."

"Three and a half, I make it!"

Laura watched Annette and Will, who also were hearing this. The gallery—at least, those of the gallery closest about them—were audibly hoping that the five minutes would pass before the ball was found, forcing Mrs. Charleton to forfeit that hole.

"Four minutes now! Four and a half!"

Laura looked at Annette and her caddy again, and started for the woods. Will, encouraged by the partizans in the gallery, was going to claim for Annette the advantage as soon as the time was up. She had the right to take it—the rule required it: indeed, the rules expressly forbade the waiving of such advantage on the part of an opponent. But when friends were playing—or when one was playing with a customer's wife—one waited for the searcher herself to abandon hunt for a ball.

"Fore!" Laura heard Will call for Annette, and, turning, she saw Annette swing her mashie and play her ball to the edge of the green. The five minutes were up. Mrs. Charleton's ball, though found now, was "lost" by the rules, and Annette merely had to finish her play to be awarded that hole.

"Fore!" Mrs. Charleton called from the brush; and her ball flew from the woods straight toward the green. It came down, bounded toward the hole, and stopped barely a yard away.

THE good golf of it caught those who did not appreciate the rule that had disqualified further play by that ball for that hole; and, though Laura and Rodney did not lead now, not a few applauded.

But Annette only smiled. She approached, putted and sank her ball for a total of four strokes, and, when Mrs. Charleton went down in three, Will calmly scored:

"Mrs. Ellis' hole. You forfeited. Your score doesn't count. Lost ball. Match all square."

Mrs. Charleton picked her ball out of the hole, visibly trembling.

"Very well," she accepted, pressing her lips tightly together. "Very well. Match all square."

Laura found herself trembling too as she followed with the rest to the eighteenth tee. It was not simply because something bitter had come into the game: it was because now something more than golf was being played. And others knew it too, if Annette and Will, who caddied for her, did not.

Annette took a new ball, and, though she tried to play carefully, she was so upset that she topped it and drove it somewhat short. Mrs. Charleton also took a new ball, and, though she set herself as calmly as she could, sliced again into the woods. Annette went down beside her ball on the edge of the fairway and waited; but this time, almost at once, Mrs. Charleton's voice called the warning "Fore," and a ball flew out of the woods and straight to the edge of the final green, as on the hole before.

Annette watched it land and bounce up toward the hole, where it rested now two yards away. Annette set her lips and prepared to run her ball up on the green. She was twenty yards away, and she must lay her ball, with this stroke, so close to the hole that she could go in on the following shot, or she would lose; for Mrs. Charleton was sure to hole out on her next shot.

Will Ellis went to the green. Annette glanced at him, put down her club, and went to the green also and studied it. She glanced at Mrs. Charleton's ball, and something about it seemed to attract her attention; for she glanced at Will more intently again, and then, smiling very slightly, she looked quickly away.

The players from the other course were coming out to the eighteenth green when they saw that the finals of the ladies match was being fought to the end. They formed a big semi-circle; and Laura, gazing at them, noticed Mr. and Mrs. Sibley. They seemed to have sensed that more than the ordinary tension of competition had come into the contest. Laura saw Mrs. Sibley gaze at Annette and try to attract her attention, as if to warn her of something. But Annette was lost to everything but the contest of the game.

She was back at her ball now, and she played it without hesitation. The gallery exclaimed as the ball ran true and straight for the hole; they gasped as it swerved a little now, ran past the hole, and on and on eight or nine yards too far to the other edge of the green. She played again, and this time her ball halted three inches from the hole. But she had taken three strokes, and her ball was not yet in the hole. Mrs. Charleton had taken only two strokes, and her ball was a bare two yards away. She bent and, steadying herself, tapped her ball lightly with her putter. While the gallery held breath, her ball rolled to the hole and dropped in.

MANY of the gallery applauded the winning of the match; but Laura was not among them: and the little man beside her, who had begun clapping very loudly, suddenly stopped and stepped forward.

Mrs. Charleton had straightened and, dropping her putter, was extending her hand to her opponent; but Annette only smiled, shaking her head slightly, and Will Ellis stooped and picked Mrs. Charleton's ball from the hole.

The applause ceased.

Concluded on page 20

Till the Clouds Roll By

By PAUL HERVEY FOX

NOW that everything was over, Rufus folded his arms over his breast and looked down at her with an air of cold finality.

"Well, I suppose I had better pack my trunk," he said with dismally assumed ease.

Alice made no response. She had coiled herself up in that annoyingly enticing way of hers on the window-seat, and her eyes were fastened with an absurd concentration on a page of a novel.

Rufus stood there in a quiet fury for just a moment too long; then he turned, with a gloomy smile, and went into the corridor. As he dragged the heavy trunk through the hallway back to the little apartment's single living-room, his mind absently reviewed each aspect of the grim situation.

It had begun with a disagreement so silly that it was strange how intense they had become. Alice had said that she didn't like musical comedies, and Rufus had said that without musical comedies life would not be worth the living. Then Alice had declared that they were horrid, vulgar, and stupid, and implied that so were the people who went to them. And Rufus (who was feeling tired) had asked her to explain what she meant by that. And Alice (who was feeling depressed) had explained in one vivid, cutting sentence.

That was the end. And they had been married only three months. Tugging angrily at the obstinate trunk, Rufus remembered with a throb of pain the two years that he had taken Alice everywhere, written to her, thought of her, lived for her, slaved for her—and all for this. They were hopelessly incompatible: that was clear. No couple who took such divergent views of a tremendous question like the worth of musical comedy could ever hope for a happy marriage.

Very briefly, in a low, solemn voice, Rufus had said this; and she had listened with a smile so mocking that—that—that he wanted to rush over and spank her!

But he was a man; his dignity must be maintained at any hazard. So he had told her calmly that he was going to leave her. He would continue to pay the rent of the apartment, continue to supply her—through his attorneys—with funds; but he intended never to see her again.

And the hard-hearted girl had not cried. There was nothing to do but carry the design efficiently through.

With a spirit of lead, Rufus hauled at the irritating trunk and pondered the dark future. The trunk caught in the corner of the doorway with a particularly vicious jerk, and Rufus wanted to swear, to say at least one "Damn!" with honest emotion. But this was a time when he must show how imperturbable he was, how unruffled, how careless, and—how gay.

He shoved it into the center of the room, with a hollow grin on his face. Alice did not move, and seemed to read her book with rapturous interest. It must have been a fascinating book. Rufus, as he snapped the trunk-locks open and lifted the lid, saw, out of the tail of his eye, expressions of wild amusement, alarm, and excitement follow one another across her face. It was probably as crowded with incident as a scenario. And yet, the strange thing about it all was that Alice never appeared to turn the page.

Rufus went to the bureau, carried a drawer from it to the trunk, and dumped its contents out with masculine directness.

The silence was terrific in the room. Desperately he drew in his breath, and, as he moved about, began to whistle. At the first opening bars he realized what the air was—"Till the Clouds Roll By." His sensibilities told him that Alice would think this a pointed sneer after the musical comedy discussion; but it was too late to back out now. He went quavering on, with a kind of dolorous cheerfulness.

THE trunk was filling up rapidly. As he poured more and more into it, Rufus noticed the knitted comforter that she had made for him. He had never meant to use it, but to keep it always. How wonderful he had thought her to make it for him! How he treasured it! Well—it was all done with now.

He let his thoughts seek out the future. First he would go to his college club, then look up a small bachelor apartment. Where was Dick Sturgis? He hadn't seen him for a year. What wild times they would have together! Dear old Dick! And Dick was right: a man was a fool to marry. See what a mess he had made of things.

The last drawer was emptied, the final closet ransacked. He threw some friendly books into the corners, wedged down a pair of shoes, and dropped in a rain-coat. The trunk bulged like a boy with a blouseful of stolen apples. Rufus solemnly lowered the lid; but, to his dismay, the big moment was quite spoiled because of destiny's carelessness with regard to the properties. The confounded lid would not go down. The trunk was too full.

Rufus bent and, with angry laboriousness, began to take out some of the contents. He prodded and pounded those below, and then flung back those he had removed. Still the stupid trunk would not shut. He never could pack a trunk or a grip, anyway. She knew that. Why the dickens didn't she help him? There she sat, reading a novel, just like the wife in a problem play, while he did all the work. He glanced at her briefly. The book was as delightful as ever; apparently, she seemed to have forgotten that actual life existed. Her eyebrows were raised in expectation, her lips were parted eagerly, her gaze was riveted. And yet—so slow a reader was she that she was still on the same page.

RUFUS, hardened by the sight, resolutely began to take things out again.

Suddenly her book fell from her hands with a little thump. After that mysteriously gripping narrative, she yawned in an oddly bored way. Her eyes fell upon Rufus, and she started—seeing him, of course, for the first time.

"Sha'n't I help you with your packing?" she asked.

Rufus wanted to shout, "No!" in virile pride. Hang it, he'd leave the trunk where it was, if it came to that! But he had no time to say or do anything. She came over, with a maddening smile of pity, and lifted out a clotted mass of shirts that lay in the very center. Whistling airily, his brows knitted in suspicion, Rufus took them from her hands and put them down.

Nothing would ever make him change his decision now, he knew; nothing in the world! That she should so easily offer to assist him—to go away! She cared as little as that; she was even glad; she had brought things to this calculated pitch with a serpent's cunning. All women were exactly alike; she was no exception. Well, he would take to drink—by Jove!—he would go to the dogs.

AS he watched her, she paused in the act of bending over the trunk, and slowly lifted her eyes to his. He saw what had attracted her attention. She had unearthed her own picture, which he had secretly slipped from the mantel a few moments before. She appeared to hesitate, as if waiting for him to say something, and her eyes grew fuller of a queer mistiness.

He leaned over quickly.

"I don't know how that got in there," he said, reddening, and, catching it up, tossed it casually to the couch. He resumed his whistle.

With a little jerk, she lowered her shoulders, and pulled things out as if they were hateful to her. Rufus caught one glance of her eyes, and he felt miserable. She—she had intended to say she was sorry and to ask him if he wasn't, and now the only opportunity had been lost. He knew that after that brutal sentence she would never forgive him on this earth. Yes, everything was surely over.

Silently, nervously, breathing shortly, Alice packed in things for the last time. It was as if she were running a race with herself.

When Rufus lowered the lid, it almost met, but still not quite. He put his weight on one side, and she moved over to the other. How well she did it, and without being told! Was there any one else her equal in swift understanding?

Each pried down on the opposite ends. Alice could see his strong, well cut head, and his blue eyes with their charming, angry, boyish look. And Rufus gazed across at her lip, curling with wounded sensitiveness, and the loose strand of light hair that went floating toward her neck. How—how he would like to kiss her there!

Still whistling faintly, he shut his eyes and pressed harder; but the beastly trunk wouldn't shut. He lunged over, bending his body so that his face was near hers. And at that moment he saw something that put a dull, thick lump in his throat. Two great tears were rolling down her cheeks, and her eyelids were quivering wretchedly.

With a little sob, she released her hold and sat down weakly on the lid. At the same instant Rufus, his whistle fading out like a gust of escaped steam, was at her side, with his arms around her. And, as she sat there telling him, in one breath, how cruel and unkind and brave and generous he was, while he was telling her over and over that he was a brute and was terribly, terribly sorry, the lid slid down with a crunch of metal, and the lock clicked sharply and solidly.

The trunk was packed.

Adopting Bobby

By RUSSELL ADAMS

BOBBY TOLLIVER was the twelve-year-old son of Red-Shirt Tolliver. Red-Shirt Tolliver was a widower, and lived in a strip of country locally known as "Lapland." Lapland is where the timbered hills of the Ozark range come down to clasp hands with the Oklahoma prairies; and the people living there are known to the plainsmen as "laplanders" or "nesters."

Red-Shirt was a "bad man," and proud of his reputation of being such; he never allowed an opportunity to pass unheeded whereby he might add a notch or two to the collection already filed on the pearl handle of his .45.

On a Fourth of July, Red-Shirt decided to leave the peace and quietude of his black-jack farm for the more exciting pastime of shooting at the feet of timid people on the board-walks of Muskogee. As soon as this decision was made, he immediately began preparation for his departure to the frontier metropolis.

His live stock was cared for by the simple process of turning them out to roam wherever fancy might lead them. A team of wiry bronchos were hitched to a rickety old buckboard, and father and son drove to the farm of a neighbor who lived over on the Spavinaw. The neighbor gladly agreed to accompany Red-Shirt on his trip to Muskogee.

Bobby was left behind to play with the neighbor's children.

RED-SHIRT and his friend reached their destination about ten o'clock, and at once started on a tour of investigation and celebration. After taking a few drinks at each saloon along the street, they finally arrived at the Long Horn—the most popular temple of Bacchus in the border city.

While Red-Shirt and his friend were having another round of drinks, a stranger entered and called for a small beer. Red-Shirt insinuated that drinking beer was a childish pastime at best, and that no grown man would trifle with so mild a beverage. The stranger paid no attention to his remarks, but calmly drank his beer.

"Bartender, give that feller a man's drink and I'll pay for it," ordered Red-Shirt.

The stranger paid for his glass of beer and started for the door.

"Hold on, young feller," commanded Red.

The stranger walked on.

"I'll teach you to walk away from a real drink," shouted Red-Shirt as he reached for his gun.

But Red-Shirt Tolliver never pulled his gun from its scabbard. He had misjudged his man. There was a sharp report, and Red-Shirt slumped to the floor. A thin trickle of blood started down his forehead from a round black hole.

Death comes suddenly in Oklahoma when you misjudge your man. Bobby Tolliver was an orphan.

---

That night the cow-boys of the Turkey Foot ranch held council in the ranch-house.

"Red-Shirt Tolliver shore got his good and plenty over at town this mornin'," said the Kid, who had been to Muskogee.

"How'd it happen?" asked Cheyenne.

"Jest like it always happens—picked a fuss with the wrong man."

"I don't give a ding-dang what happened to Red-Shirt, for he's stole lots of our calves; but I'm almighty sorry for that pore little Bobby," said Fatty.

"Yes; jest think of the little chap a-growin' up in that heathen lapland among those nesters," put in Uncle Josh, a decrepit old ranger who did chores around the ranch-house.

"Wisht we could bring him over here where he'd have a chanct to grow into a real man," suggested Cheyenne.

"This outfit shore do need the soothin' influence of a little child," affirmed Uncle Josh.

"Let's adapt him," says Sunny Jim.

"That'd be all right, but how'd we go about this here adapting business?" questioned Fatty.

"Why, we jest go to a lawyer or a preacher and say: 'Mister, we, the men of the Turkey Foot, being of lawful age, hereby wish and desire to adapt this here child, Bobby Tolliver, who is the son of Red-Shirt Tolliver, now dead, which fate has left without parent or gar-deen.' Then the preacher or lawyer will say: 'Hold up your right hands and be sworn. Do you men swear to love, honor, obey, and protect this said child through thick and thin, through hell and high water, through life until death do you part, so help you God?' And then we answer: 'We do.' That's all there is to this here adapting business—it's jest the same as getting married, only different," answered Uncle Josh.

CAPPY TODOVER, the cook, who had been an actor before he dallied too long on the primrose path, now added his voice to the question:

"Men, it has been decreed by a higher power than ours that we men of the Turkey Foot shall see to it that little Bobby Tolliver be not allowed to grow up in ignorance in the miserable shacks of the unrighteous laplanders; neither shall he toil as their slave in the lowly cotton patch, such labor being degrading to any one not a nester, but rather shall he be brought up among civilized people. Men, are you ready for the vote?"

"We are," they answered in chorus.

"The vote is unanimous. Bobby Tolliver is our child, and I appoint you, Cheyenne, and you, Caddo Kid, and you, Sunny Jim, to carry out the decree of this court."

"What'll we do if the nesters won't give Bobby tip?" asked Sunny Jim.

"When Samuel Colt perfectioned the revolver that bears his name, he made all men free and equal. If a laplander says one word against the decree of this here court, I hope you know how to inforce order. The main thing in life is to not allow the other feller to shoot first; I've lived damnigh seventy year on these here prairies, and I have noticed that rule always holds good. Some fellers say there is exceptions to all rules, but that's not one of them," admonished Uncle Josh.

"We'll just kinda scatter a few shots through the roof of the house, as we ride up, that will kinda give the nester family something to think about while we are getting little Bobby on the horse," advised Cheyenne.

When they reached the clearing on the banks of the Spavinaw the riders of the Turkey Foot quirted their horses into a mad gallop and swirled about the cabin of Tom Camp before he realized they were coming.

THE cow-boys could hear Bobby crying in the house.

"Mister, you know what happened to Red-Shirt. We have been ordered by the court to take Bobby to the Turkey Foot, where he will be adapted as one of our family. Resistance to the law will not be tolerated. Will you give him up peaceably or not?" questioned Sunny Jim, as spokesman for the crowd.

Tom Camp decided it would be a good idea to agree to the demands of the "court," and offered no objection.

"Bobby, you're goin' home to live with us. You will have a little pony and saddle of your own. No one will ever make you hoe corn or pick cotton. That kinda work ain't fit for a man to do, nohow," averred Sunny Jim to the little boy who rode back to the Turkey Foot behind him.

"'The right has prevailed,'" quoted Uncle Josh as the boys rode up to the ranch-house.

A Sex Problem in Buttons

IN a drawer of my clipping cabinet devoted to "Origins" is an envelop indorsed: "Buttoning of male and female garments." Why should a woman button the right side of her clothes over the left, while a man buttons the left side over the right?

Here are several clippings showing that woman, by reason of less strength, uses her thumb where man uses a finger; or that man, by reason of his clumsiness, must use his most agile digit, the forefinger, to accomplish that which woman does with her thumb.

One author having access to statistics from some rare and undisclosed source makes it quite clear that there are more "southpaws" among men than among women.

Another finds that, because the buckler was used on the left arm, the soldier went cornerwise into battle, and if his garments were lapped in the other direction they would afford a pocket to engage the weapon points of the enemy and direct them to his vitals.

There is another who makes clear the woman's side of the case. Primitive woman was the drudge and beast of burden. She must manage to carry and to nurse her child under all kinds of difficulties. The greater her burdens, the more certain she was to devote the stronger and more agile arm to the care of her baby; hence she lapped the right side of her garment over the left to make a warm and convenient pocket for the child under the protection of her strong right arm.

Still another bases it all upon the "well known fact" that among the Highlanders, who commonly slept in the open, the mother habitually lay on her left side, that she might attend her children with the right, while the father lay on the right, so that in case of a surprise attack he should arise in attitude to fend with his left and to smite with his right. Hence the lap of the garments was determined in such manner as to shed rain at night.

Other theories are much more finely spun and less convincing; but by far the greater number of clippings are from writers who see in it only deep unfathomable mystery.

Not one of them all even hints at the obvious reason, which should be apparent to any one who gives the matter more than passing thought. That primitive woman should standardize the lap of her own garments is to be expected, and requires no explanation. Whether the direction of the lap of her garments was the result of chance, or was dictated by any form of expediency, we do not pretend to say. The question is altogether why the man's garment should lap in the opposite direction.

This reason is to be found in the fact that primitive woman, the maker of her own and of her husband's garments, was inside of hers and outside of his. She looked at the lap of her garments from within, and at the lap of his from without, so that, unconsciously and naturally, she would make them to lap in opposite directions. To have done differently would have required thought and careful comparison such as were not given to the details of dress at the time when the standards were established.

ALBERT L. WILLIAMS.

She Has So Many Children She Knows Just What to Do

CHILDREN have been her hobby—her only one. Never for a moment has she regarded herself as a philanthropist, although her charity was of the most expensive brand, demanding never-ceasing labor and constant self-sacrifice. She has washed and ironed for and clothed and fed twenty-two children—only two of them her own: but "Ma" O'Brien is ideally happy, for hers is a labor of love.

When her husband died, Mrs. O'Brien bought a candy store and made a living for herself and her two children. Within a year her husband's sister died, leaving two little boys, who were warmly welcomed by the O'Briens. The candy store interfered with her attentions to the little ones, so "Ma" decided to take boarders. This was profitable in spots.

She says they were the very nicest people in the world, but had a way of dying and leaving one or two children. As "Ma" rode home in the mourners' coach from each funeral, she elected herself foster-mother of the bereft youngsters.

For twenty years she gathered in children, skimping and saving and managing in an effort to keep them at school. Two have died, and "Ma" O'Brien still bemoans their loss. Her most recent acquisition is a little girl of eight, and "Ma" has given her promise to collect no more. Her boys and girls need her so much that they want her to spare herself and are doing their best to make her take things easy.

Her family is rather scattered at present, and she has quite a time keeping track of her boys. The girls are all at home, two teaching in New York public schools, one a stenographer, several holding executive positions, and the "lambkin," who is the pride of the household and the last of the line.

When she parted with her boys, "Ma" clung to each a little longer than he liked—because of the lump in his throat and the tears that would come; and as they looked back to wave good-by to faithful "Ma" O'Brien, they noticed that the brave smile was confined to her lips. In

her eyes no shadow of joy was reflected.

One of her boys is a private in the Seventh Regiment at Spartanburg; another is at Camp Mills; a third at Camp Dix; three are in the Navy, one does government construction work, while another is a naval engineer. Her own son is a student in a medical college, and expects to go over there as soon as he's proficient in his particular line. One member of her brood couldn't wait till the United States declared war, but joined the Princess Pats and has been fighting in France for some time.

"Ma's" spare moments are spent visiting her boys, and she has been their guest at each respective camp. She has been promoted to the rank of "Ma" by several hundred soldiers, and her boxes are well known—for "Ma" is a first-class cook.

"Ma" has been so busy that she's had no time to grow old. Her auburn hair is as ruddy as when she was a girl; her eyes are as bright—in fact, brighter, for they have a gentle, steady glow that does not conme to youth; and as she sits in her rocking-chair, knitting sweaters for her boys, she sighs for the motherless lads who depend upon charity for their warmth and comfort.

MARY SULLIVAN.

A Hard Word Saved Him

WHEN the factory where I worked closed down for the summer, I could not get another job, so I concluded to see something of the world. That meant I should have to tramp about, as I had no money to spend on railway fare.

My mother begged me not to do it, telling me that many a young fellow drifts into the vagrant's life in that way. I laughed at her fears, and assured her that when the factory opened I would come back.

I found the country a pleasant place to idle through. I always offered to pay for my meals in work, but I soon found that not one woman in ten wants a strange man around. They would slam the door in my face, or handout some food and say they had nothing for me to do.

I went on until I was two hundred miles from home, with no thought of turning back. I soothed my conscience by reflecting that life in the open would benefit me, and that when I returned in the fall I would be in better shape for work.

One night I slept in a clover field, and woke greatly refreshed in the morning. In the distance I saw the roof of a farm-house, and resolved to travel toward it after a while, when I knew the men would be in the fields.

When I reached the house, an overworked but kind-hearted woman opened the door. She invited me in, and, setting a clean plate and knife and fork on the table, placed a good breakfast before me. A baby about two years old was in its high chair, and began to whimper. The mother had no time to give to it, and kept telling it to be quiet. Finally she said:

"Be good, I tell you, be good! or the bum will get you—won't you, bum?"

You could have knocked me out of the chair with a straw. Bum! I thought of my mother, of my decent bringing up, of my good trade—and the food stuck in my throat. Bum! And that was exactly what I was! I got up from the table, laid a quarter beside my plate,—my last piece of money!—and left the house.

As I walked on, I saw a farmer in his tobacco field. I went to him and demanded work. I suppose he noticed that I was in a bad mood. He told me to go to the house and get some breakfast; then, if I still wanted work, to come back. I answered that I had had breakfast and had paid for it.

I stayed with him till I earned money to pay my fare home. The factory had not yet opened, but I got work in a freight depot. I soon realized that there were better chances here for a young fellow with ambition, and decided to stick to my new job. I am now holding a good position; and there are better waiting for me, when I measure up to them.

But, looking back, I see what a wreck I might have made of life if that chance word had not jerked me up and turned me around that morning.

N. F.

Stick to It

PLAN for more than you can do,
Then do it.
Bite off more than you can chew,
Then chew it.
Hitch your wagon to a star,
Keep your seat, and there you are.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

BILLIE BURKE'S BABY—First Official Interview

YOU think this is Billie Burke and Billie Burke's Baby. Wrong. It is Miss Patricia Ziegfeld, and the other young lady in the picture is her mother. A natural mistake. Mrs. Fangel and I thought we were going out to Hastings-on-the-Hudson to see Miss Burke's Baby. But that was before we had cooled our French heels for three quarters of an hour in the reception-hall until the maid finally returned and said: "Miss Patricia will see you now in the nursery." Once in the nursery (so called from the fact that Miss Patricia keeps her nurse there), we quickly discovered whom we were interviewing.

"Do," said Miss Patricia. (She was a year old in October.)

"We would like to interview you," I said rather timidly.

"And draw your picture." added Mrs. Fangel.

Miss Patricia turned to her mother, and they carried on a short colloquy in Esperanto. It was not at all the sort of conversation you'd expect between two red-headed people. It was lyrical and modulated and full of all sorts of little trills.

"'Tricia will be happy to be of any assistance," interpreted Miss Burke, "although she's not very fond of sitting still."

We promised to be very quick. Mrs. Fangel sat down on the floor behind her big drawing block, and I retired out of the way on the windowsill, between the yellow and blue duck and the woolly elephant.

"What are your chief interests, Miss Patricia?" I began.

"Mama," said 'Tricia. giving Miss Burke's pearl necklace a terrific tug.

"What is your favorite outdoor sport?"

"Nana," answered 'Tricia, with a gleeful gurgle.

"Have you gotten behind Hoover?"

At this Miss Patricia threw all her toys on the floor and wept bitterly.

"Now you have gone and spoiled the pose," said Mrs. Fangel crossly, and she began talking Esperanto.

We then gave Miss Patricia one woolly cat, one smooth cat, one pink box, one imitation Bert Williams, and one shoe-horn.

"Instead of doing any more interviewing," said Mrs. Fangel (she has a child of her own). "you had better just tell some of your jokes and if possible turn an occasional handspring. I want that soulful look in her eyes."

So I did, and she did, and after a little while—"By," said Miss Patricia. And we did that too.

ANNE HERENDEEN.

AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW

---

THE TRAIL OF THE WATER WAGON

THE MOST INTERESTING MAN I KNOW

From Dr. Alexander Graham Bell

CHARLES ALLEN CRANE was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on April 10, 1906. When he was nine months old he lost both sight and hearing through spinal meningitis. He was admitted to the School for the Deaf at Halifax on May 10, 1916, when he was a little over ten years of age. He is one of a family of eight, four boys and four girls, and his parents are healthy, intelligent, and well educated people.

Charlie has a keen sense of humor, is most inquisitive, and as happy as the day is long. If he suspects you are fooling him, up like a flash goes his hand to your throat to find out whether or not you are laughing. He has been about eighteen months in Halifax, and under regular instruction less than twelve months. In that short time he has been taught to speak; and his speech, unlike that of so many deaf children, is pleasant and even the most difficult sounds distinct and easily intelligible. Some months ago he addressed the Rotary Club here, and each word was easily understood by every one in the large room. He has a most retentive memory. He had been about five weeks here when the school closed for the summer, and one day in the holidays his teacher was surprised to see him spelling the names of pupils. She watched him carefully, and found that he omitted only seven out of the ninety-seven pupils in attendance.

Geography, if I may so call it, has a fascination for him, and he seems to be endeavoring to make a world for himself by finding out from all who come in touch with him the names of countries and what the people are doing who inhabit them. He has wormed out the names of numbers of streets in London, Paris, New York, Washington, Vancouver, and in other cities.

The marvelous progress Charlie has made and the pleasure it has been to him convince me more strongly than ever that the teaching of language for the sake of language has been the bane of the education of the deaf child, and often of the hearing. Give a child nuts with good, sweet kernels, and he will go on cracking them unceasingly; but give him empty shells and see how soon he will tire. Such is language unassociated with new and interesting information.

One beautiful summer morning, fifteen years ago, I was walking round the grounds of our school with Helen Keller, when she suddenly remarked that there was soon going to be a change in the weather. There was nothing to indicate to my eye anything but a continuation of the glorious weather we had been having; but before the afternoon was over the change had come. I asked her how she knew, and she said she felt it—adding that the sense of touch was by far the most important sense we had, and that the possibility of its development was incalculable. I have found out since in dealing with deaf-blind children that this is undoubtedly true. Touch is, in certain respects, far more accurate and delicate than sight or hearing, and speech is far more tangible than visible. If the speech of the average deaf child is ever to approach the normal, it will be brought about not through inherited speech tendencies or sight alone, but largely by the development and use of those marvelous touch sensations.

A Cow-Boy Sage

By Douglas Fairbanks

IT is rather difficult to select my most interesting acquaintance—more difficult than anything I can think of at the present writing, because of the many very interesting people one meets almost every day in our profession.

One day last summer I was trying my luck at bucking broncos, and was pretty well discouraged by my semi-aëronautical attempts, when Jim Kidd—who later proved to be my guide, philosopher, and friend—came up and took me in hand. Kidd was a remarkable type of plainsman and cow-puncher. He was quite as interesting a character as Roosevelt—in fact, he was much like the Colonel in many respects.

Kidd was quite a philosopher, and I would as soon consult him as read Herbert Spencer. His was the philosophy of life generally. He taught himself never to worry. "Life at its best," he used to say, "is simply a different way of doing things." And again: "We have wonderful houses here, but the ground I sleep on is both enough and good enough for me." Once he said: "I take every man to be a gentleman until he proves himself otherwise."

We were riding on the Mojave Desert one day, and I asked him, "How do you like it out here, Jim?"

"It don't make much difference where you are, it's who's with you," was his answer. And how true that is!

Jim never could stand for the ill-treatment of a horse. I heard him say once to an Indian who was abusing his bronco: "If you don't get off that horse, I'll bust you high, wide, and handsome."

And the Indian got, too!

By the way, I got a good many titles for "The Americano" from such remarks of Kidd's.

A curious thing about this man was, he was very forgiving. He had a quick temper, but a most remarkable sense of justice. He would always find a good excuse for some one who had offended him. He used to say: "Give me two hours and I'll find the right solution." He had learned his philosophy on the round-up.

Jim took a fancy to me because I was a tenderfoot. I had a great affection for the old man. He was getting on toward seventy and I used to have to look out for him.

One night he came to me and said very confidentially: "Doug, if you want anybody killed let me know!"

I told him I didn't have any work of that kind laid out or in contemplation at the moment, and he went away. But the next day he wrote me a letter saying:

"I was drunk last night, and maybe I meant what I said and maybe I didn't—but I guess I did. But I just wanted you to know I would do anything in the world for you."

Jim's memory used to betray him at times when he was too deeply in his cups. He gave his horse to me one day, and then sold the same animal to somebody else.

Kidd was sixty-seven when he died, but he was spry as a boy. And he didn't know what fear was. Eight months ago he played for me in a picture. He rode right into the midst of a fight, and he was supposed to be killed, falling off his horse in a mix-up of stamping horses and fighting men!

We sent Kidd back to Wyoming, his beloved State, to be buried. Two hundred and fifty cow-punchers in full regalia rode down to the depot to "see Jim off." And there was his horse with the empty saddle reversed. It was a very impressive sight.

THE MELTING POT

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

THE MILK-ROUTE WASTE

IF the women who want to help win the war are seeking an immediate task, let them investigate the wasteful methods of milk delivery in their cities, and see whether something can't be done about it. Milk is selling in New York city at from fourteen to sixteen cents a quart, which means that thousands of babies of the poor are having to go without, and are thus laying the foundations for ill health and dependency in the future.

In Chicago, says the Survey, the dealers were recently brought together for conferences, which developed the fact that a single apartment-house was often being visited by half a dozen different wagons. And an investigation made some time ago in Rochester showed that the milk delivery done by 380 horses and 365 men, traveling a total of 2,500 miles, could be reduced to a delivery done by 50 horses and 90 men traveling only 300 miles.

How many different milk wagons travel your street every morning?

MRS. FISKE'S ADVICE TO ACTORS

MRS. FISKE was recently confronted with a promising young actor demanding advice. Here is her idea of the straight and narrow path to dramatic fame, quoted by Alexander Woollcott in his volume on her views of the stage (Century Company).

"Dear child," said Mrs. Fiske, "consider your voice; first, last, and always, your voice. It is the beginning and the end of acting. Train that till it responds to your thought and purpose with absolute precision.

"And be reflective. Think. Does this seem so obvious as to be scarcely worth saying?

"Let me tell you, dear child, that an appalling proportion of the young players who pass our way can not have spent one really reflective hour since the stage-door first closed behind them. I'm sure they haven't. It would have left some trace.

"Stay away from the theater as much as you can. Stay out of the theatrical world, out of its petty interests, its inbreeding tendencies, its stifling atmosphere, its corroding influence. Once become 'theatricalized,' and you are lost, my friend; you are lost.

"The actor who lets the dust accumulate on his Ibsen, his Shakespeare, and his Bible, but pores greedily over every little column of theatrical news, is a lost soul. Go into the streets, into the slums, into the fashionable quarters. Go into the day courts, and the night courts. Become acquainted with sorrow, with many kinds of sorrow. Go into the modest homes, into the out-of-the-way corners, into the open country. Go where you can find something fresh to bring back to the stage."

DO ANIMALS THINK?

YOUR dog doubtless seems sad while you are away, and exhibits joy at your return; but was he thinking about you in your absence? Is he happy only because he sees and smells again your old coat, or does he say to himself as you enter the door: "This is my master for whom I have been grieving so long"?

In her book, The Animal Mind (Macmillan Company), Margaret Floy Washburn goes exhaustively into this and many kindred questions. "A dog," she says, "shows depression during his master's absence, but his state of mind may be merely vague discomfort at the lack of an accustomed set of stimuli, not a clear idea of what he wants."

Miss Washburn proceeds to show by a number of instances that animals lack the "memory idea." A dog or a cat having difficulty in opening a door will continue to have the same difficulty every time the occasion arises. They also lack the ability to remember an act which they have seen done and later to do it. Neither do they seem to be able to postpone reacting in a certain way to a certain stimulus. The delayed reaction method has been employed to obtain data on this. A light is shown in any one of the three directions open to the animal, and it is restrained from reaction at once. After a few seconds it is allowed to act, and if it goes in the direction of the light where the light appeared, it is given food. Almost all animals bungle this test.

THIS SHOEMAKER BECAME A SENATOR

THE first advertisement of Douglas shoes appeared in the newspaper of a frontier town in the year 1886. It read:

INDIANS!

If you wish to run away from the Indians don't go barefoot, but buy a pair of Boots or Shoes

OF STUDLEY AND DOUGLAS

who keep constantly on hand a good assortment of Boots and Shoes which they will sell cheap for cash. Particular attention paid to manufacturing and repairing. Store on Second Street, opposite the Boutwell House, Golden City, Colorado.

Evidently the wise inhabitants of Golden City took this advice, for thirty years later shoes manufactured by William L. Douglas are sold throughout the country in his nine thousand stores and deck the feet of one member of every second family in America.

Mr. Douglas began pegging shoes at the age of seven; he is still at it, in a large way, at the age of seventy-two. But, in the meantime, he has had time to do more on the side than most people could accomplish as a life-work. B. C. Forbes, in Men Who Are Making America, says that Mr. Douglas has fooled all the wise folk who believe that "servants make the worst masters." The great maker of shoes went through years of apprenticeship, and stood hardships that would have beaten down a man of smaller caliber. But, having won through by sheer personal power, he became an employer of immense generosity and patience. He does not demand of others the wearing industry that he exhibited himself.

Mr. Douglas was the father of industrial arbitration in this country. As State Senator he worked for the passage of a bill in Massachusetts "to provide for the settlement of differences between employers and their employees." He also shoved through a law providing for the weekly payment of wage workers at a time when this custom was not established. He has endowed a surgical department in the Brockton Hospital, and a day nursery for the benefit of working mothers, and he has been councilman and mayor, legislator and governor of his State.

THE HANDICAP OF THE ONLY CHILD

DOES the only child have as good a chance to make good in life as the child who has brothers and sisters? Havelock Ellis, the English psychologist, in his study of the lives of more than four hundred eminent men and women, discovered that only 6.9 per cent of them were only children.

A more recent investigation was made by Dr. E. W. Bohannon, whose results are recorded by H. Addington Bruce in Handicaps of Childhood (Dodd, Mead & Company). From teachers, parents, and in other ways, definite information was obtained concerning four hundred "only children."

The average age of those whose ages were given—nearly three hundred—was twelve years. About one hundred of the four hundred were said to be in good health and another hundred to be in outright bad health. In one hundred and thirty-three cases the temperament was said to be 'nervous.' Precocity was another oft-mentioned trait; but, on the avearge, the beginning of school life was from a year and a half to two years later than is usual, and in the performance of school work the questionnaire responses revealed a marked inferiority on the part of many only children.

"In their social relations only eighty were reported as 'normal,' while one hundred and thirty-four got along badly with other children, usually because they were unwilling or did not know how to make concessions, or were stubbornly set on having their own way. Of the two hundred and forty-five who were actively in school at the time of the questionnaire, more than one hundred 'only' children were recorded as not being interested in active games. It is plainly evident, says the report, 'that, while they have as deep longings for society as other children, their isolated home life has failed to give them equal skill in social matters. They do not so well understand how to make approaches, to concede this and that.'"

WRITING HOME

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WHEN A LADY PROPOSED TO COTTON MATHER

NEVER let us heed what our elders tell us of maidenly reserve in the good old days. There is nothing in it. Ask the Rev. Cotton Mather, worthiest of Puritan divines in the colony of Massachusetts Bay. His pursuit by a determined young gentlewoman and his providential escape therefrom form a touching chapter in The Heart of a Puritan, by Elizabeth Deering Hanscom (Macmillan Company). The quotations are from Cotton Mather's diary of the year 1703:

There is a young Gentlewoman of incomparable Accomplishments. No Gentlewoman in the English America has had a more polite Education. She is one of rare Witt and Sense; and of a comely Aspect; and extremely winning in her Conversation, and she has a Mother of extraordinary Character for her Piety.

This young Gentlewoman first Addresses me with diverse Letters, and then makes me a Visit at my House, wherein she gives me to understand that since my present Condition [Mrs. Mather had died two months before] had given her Liberty to think of me, she must confess herself charmed with my Person, to such a Degree that she could not but break in upon me, with her most importunate Requests that I would make her mine; and that the highest consideration she had in it, was her eternal salvation, for if she were mine she could not but hope the Effect of it would be, that she should also be Christ's.

But Mr. Mather has his doubts:

She is not much more than twenty years old. I know she has been a very aiery Person. Her Reputation has been under some Disadvantage.

What snares may be laying for me, I know not. Much Prayer and Fasting and Patience must be my way to encounter them.

On February 12 he makes an admission:

Nature itself causes in me a mighty Tenderness for a Person so very amiable.

But by the next week his mind is made up:

As for my special, soul-harrassing Point; I did some Days ago, under my Hand, vehemently beg, as for my Life, that it might be desisted from, and that I might not be killed by hearing any more of it.

It was not desisted from. On March 6 he confesses:

My spirit is excessively broken. There is Danger of my dying suddenly, with smothered Griefs and Fears.

But relief was in sight. On July 10 a hopeful note enters his book of tribulations:

He [God] showes me a Gentlewoman, within two houses of my own, a Gentlewoman of Piety and Probity and a most unspotted Reputation; . . . and a very comely Person.

With matrimony firmly in mind, Mr. Mather "did on 14 d. 5. m. Wednesday give my first Visit unto that lovely Gentlewoman," and was "entertained with more than ordinary Civility, Affection, and Veneration."

In spite of this, safety was not yet achieved. On July 17 he chronicles:

The Rage of that young Gentlewoman, whom out of Obedience to God I have rejected, is transporting her; to threaten that she will be a Thorn in my Side, and contrive all possible Wayes to vex me, affront me, disgrace me, in my Attempting a Return to the married State with another Gentlewoman. My Conversation with the lovely Person, to whom Heaven has directed me, goes on, with pure, chast, noble Strokes, and the Smiles of God upon it.

But on August 18 is recorded:

I am, in the Evening of this Day, to receive a most lovely Creature.

EXPERIENCE

IT was necessary for one man to stand up and draw the enemy's fire. A soldier volunteered, and fortunately not one of the bullets struck him.

When the charge was over, the captain said to the brave fellow:

"Where did you get the wonderful nerve to stand out there and make yourself a target for the bullets of the enemy?"

The other smiled.

"For five years," he answered, "I was a guide in the Maine woods."

Boston Transcript.

HOW FRENCH AND GERMAN SURGEONS DIFFER

THE prestige of German surgery has suffered in this war in proportion as that of the Americans and French has gained. An American surgeon, writing in the New York Medical Journal, says:

"After three years' observation of the wounded passing across Switzerland in both directions, the wounded French from Germany and the wounded Germans from France, I can unhesitatingly say that French surgery has shown itself far superior to that of the land of Kultur. Let me take an example, that of amputation stumps. The French wounded who have been amputated on the other side of the Rhine have been mostly in a fearful condition, which will require reamputation in France. The amputated Germans coming from Lyons and elsewhere are in fine condition, and the operative results would be a credit to the art of surgery of any country. Fractures have received practically no treatment whatever by German surgeons. They seem to consider that a splint put on 'any old way' will do.

"One point I wish to make here, and that is that surgeons of neutral countries who have seen the Germans at work have assured me that the poor operating was not confined to the French prisoners, but was just the same in the case of their own wounded. As one very competent neutral surgeon put it to me, 'They had lost their heads completely.' I think that the reason for this is easily explained. German surgeons are merely specialized puppets, like the rest of the race. Their university training has been of the kind that inspires no initiative, and when thrown on their own resources they are at sea.

"A French physician, prisoner in Germany at the beginning of the war, was ordered to an internment camp in Guströw to treat the French prisoners suffering from an epidemic of typhoid fever. What seemed to startle the German doctors was the different treatments the Frenchman resorted to in order to adapt them to the individual constitution of the patient. From the Teuton viewpoint the patient should adapt himself to the treatment. The minute a patient has typhoid, he must, according to the German view, be treated according to their rules laid down for this disease."

HUSBAND AND WIFE

WHO SPOILED THE HAGUE CONFERENCE?

ON August 24, 1898, the Russian Czar surprised the world by inviting all the nations to an International Congress at The Hague to discuss the possibilities of general disarmament and arbitration.

All the great nations were represented, and it is easy to remember the high hopes that the proposal raised in this country as well as in France and England. How was it received in Germany? On September 7—a few days later—William II declared, in a speech at Oynhausen: "Believe me, peace will never be better safeguarded than by a perfectly organized and prepared German army. God grant that it may always be possible for us to preserve the world's peace with this sharp and well kept arm." And when the Reichstag met a few weeks later, in December, it was compelled to pass a bill providing a huge increase for the maintenance of the army.

Nevertheless, the Kaiser appointed representatives to the Conference. What happened is best told in the diary of Andrew D. White, one of the American Ambassadors; the diary is quoted in The Coming Democracy, by Hermann Fernau (E. P. Dutton & Company):

"Meeting Count Münster, who, after M. de Staal, is very generally considered the most important personage here, we discussed the subject of arbitration. To my very great regret, I found him entirely opposed to it—at least, to any well developed plan. He did not say that he would oppose a moderate plan for voluntary arbitration, but he insisted that arbitration must be injurious to Germany; that Germany is prepared for war as no other nation is or can be; that she can mobilize her army in ten days; and that neither France nor any other power can do this. Arbitration, he said, would simply give other powers time to put themselves in readiness, and would therefore be a great disadvantage to Germany."

Again, under date June 30: "There seems no longer any doubt that the German Emperor is opposing arbitration, and, indeed, the whole work of the Conference, and that he will insist on his main allies, Austria and Italy, going with him.

"Some days ago I said to a leading German diplomatist here: 'The Ministers of the German Emperor ought to tell him that, should he oppose arbitration, there would be concentrated on him an amount of hatred which no Minister ought to allow a sovereign to incur.' To this he answered: 'That is true; but there is not a Minister in Germany who dares to tell him.'"

On June 15 Mr. White reports another conversation with the Count in which he appealed earnestly to him to come out for arbitration and make the Conference a success. To this Count Münster's only reply was that the "Conference was a political trick. It was done," he said, "mainly to embarrass Germany and glorify the Russian Emperor, and to put Germany into a false position." To this White answered: "If this be the case, why not trump the Russian trick?"

All in vain: On July 29 the Conference adjourned, after a cynical speech by Count Münster, which gave the death-blow to all hope of arbitration and disarmament.

THAT WHICH CAN NOT BE RESTORED

AN indemnity may be paid to Belgium; she may be "restored" in her roads and bridges and buildings: but the people of Belgium have suffered a destruction of their nervous systems that will not be restored for generations. Thousands of Belgians, as Dr. Crile points out in A Mechanistic View of War and Peace (Macmillan Company), have "lived years in months."

There have been many sudden deaths; many cases of insomnia; of neurasthenia; of prostration; of lost spirit and impaired efficiency; and generally a loss of hope and ambition. There has been an average loss of from six to ten pounds in weight. Many Belgians have been found dead in their beds without external injuries, and many after brief illnesses. Children were prematurely born. There have been many suicides among children as well as adults; and children as well as adults have become insane.

It is to be expected that these conditions will continue and progress, and that there will be an increasing number of cases of Bright's disease and apoplexy.

The posthumous children have been robbed of their birthright of healthy bodies and stable nervous systems. The little children whose action patterns had not been formed are the only ones who may bear their rude transplantation without loss of mental or physical efficiency. The Belgian exiles whom I have seen show a loss in morale. They are preoccupied, absent-minded, diseased, homesick, weak, dejected, bitter, and broken. They have suffered a permanent loss which is beyond compensation and beyond redemption.

Thus millions of men, women, children, and unborn infants have been subjected to a vivisection of unparalleled cruelty unsurpassed in the history of man or of the lower animals. It is as if upon Belgium as a whole every degree of physical, mental, and moral torture has been inflicted without anesthesia.

JOYS OF A COMMUTER

Will It Pay Me to Keep Cost Records?

By JAMES H. COLLINS

Illustration by Jessie Gillespie

NOW, the man who received five talents, in the Bible parable, had delivered his other five talents to the Master, and the man of two talents had brought his two talents increase.

Then the fellow of one talent, who had hidden his money in the earth, and had nothing to show, undertook to explain matters:

"I am not prepared to say just what has been accomplished in this matter to date," he said. "We can only tell approximately. It would take a week to get the exact figures, and even then you would probably not understand them."

That is to say, the five-talent and two-talent fellows knew where they were at, because they kept costs, while the one-talent chap didn't know, and couldn't show a profit, because he lacked cost records. He hid his talent in a business without a cost system.

A good many people still think of cost accounting as pretty dry stuff—a lot of figures and details. Therefore, they either take no interest in it, or dodge cost keeping as a disagreeable task. But cost keeping is really the drama of business—its moving-picture scenario—full of all sorts of striking incidents and possibilities. Cost keeping is also a good fat pocketbook—it yields talent for talent, one hundred per cent increase, to the business man who uses it to find out what there is in the business for him.

An office woman employed in the cost department of a big mercantile house went to the country on her vacation, and fell in love with a young fellow who owned a general store left him by his father. It was an establishment that kept everything, from a pin to a plow—and the word "kept" is used with double meaning; for the young man's success thus far was not of the kind that warranted his saying, "No, we do not keep pins and plows—we sell them." Dead stock had been accumulating for years. He did not know what he had on hand, or what was running short, or what was selling and making him money.

That was a dull little town, and his city wife had to have something to do. It was the most logical thing in the world for her to apply her business training to her husband's work. Up in the city establishment where she had worked there were complete cost records based on the division of the business into departments. Without bothering her husband, she proceeded to departmentalize his whole stock, separating pins from plows. That in itself led to a more orderly arrangement of stock, so that he could put his hands on things.

Then she compiled figures showing how much capital was used in each department, and what goods were sold, and how often stock was turned yearly, and where money was tied up in slow-selling goods. By and by she asked him to let her run a couple of departments—a regular woman's request with something at the back of her mind in this case; for her knowledge of costs enabled her to pick out two departments that gave the best basis for a good showing.

He consented, of course; and within three months, by putting bargain prices on slow selling articles and stocking new goods to increase sales, she was able to demonstrate in black and white that her two departments were making more net profit than all his departments put together.

Do you suppose that he began to see something more than red tape in cost figures after that? Well, rather!

"I am not in business for my health," is one of the commonest statements of business men. But nine times in ten a cost accountant could go into court and prove to a jury that the fellow who makes such a statement must be doing some kinds of business for his health at least, because he is giving away his product or goods in certain departments and giving some of his money with them for full measure.

Some years ago the patent on a certain type of factory machinery expired, making it available to the little concerns that had been competing with a trust which controlled this machinery. All the little fellows promptly installed that equipment, confident that the days of trust oppression were over, for now they would be able to make goods as cheaply as their big competitor.

Within a year, however, only one had reaped any real advantage from this improvement in factory facilities, and he did it through the magic of cost accounting. All the other little fellows kept costs of production and fancied that their problems were solved when the expiring patent put them on a fairly even footing with the trust in the cost of making goods. In some cases there was good reason to believe that they actually made goods cheaper than the trust with this new machinery, for certain items of overhead expenses were lower in their case—rent, interest on capital, etc.

Yet they were not able to extend their sales or to deliver goods as cheaply as the trust, and the discovery of this fact seemed positive proof that the wicked trust must be selling its stuff below cost to drive them out of business.

But one small manufacturer found what the trouble was. His cost records extended beyond the factory into selling expenses, and there he discovered that the trust had advantages which made good everything it had lost through the expiration of its machinery patents. Its salesmen covered every section of the country, and sold one product with another in such combinations that volume was increased, costs reduced, and customers held on a basis of connections that secured distribution at an expense which no smaller concern could meet on a national basis. But when he learned this vital fact, that small manufacturer was able to apply the trust's system to his sales department in a way that amounted to another free gift of patent rights; for he simply abandoned the attempt to compete nationally, and turned to intensive sales development in his own State. And when he was able to cover that smaller territory as efficiently as the trust, selling one thing with another and building connections and volume, the trust could not touch him.

In effect, when all the other little fellows got their one talent of better machinery to work with, they promptly digged it in the earth—the cold, sour, unproductive soil of cost ignorance. But the other fellow intelligently put his talent to work, and made it increase because, by comprehensive cost analysis, he was able to watch what it was doing.

Inexpensive, But It Works

"YOUR fountain pen filled free" advertises a book and stationery store situated in a hotel arcade. Not only does the service catch a considerable trade from tourists and traveling salesmen (says System), but it brings into the shop at noon some substantial local business men who lunch at the hotel. At noon the average man seems to have more leisure than at other times, and this simple plan aids sales.

The Best Reason for Life Insurance

A LIFE-INSURANCE man wrote a large policy on a well-to-do business man not long ago, and when he delivered the policy asked: "Do you mind telling me why you, a wealthy man, have taken out this life insurance?"

The answer is pronounced by Rough Notes one of the best arguments for insurance ever given.

"Men die at the wrong time!" he said.

If men could only die at the right time, when their work is finished, when their finances are in good shape, when their going will create the least possible disturbance to their families and their business, insurance would be of less use than it is. But every man who is worth while always has an iron in the fire somewhere.

The bigger the man, the bigger his affairs and the greater the chances—therefore, the greater need for protection.

Do You Buy Too Carefully?

SOME of the costliest leaks in business are due to over-buying; but others are due to under-buying. The Farm Implement News has a story of an implement dealer who ordered fifty grain-saving guards. By some accident he received five hundred. The factory suggested that he try to sell them, offering to take back any left on his hands.

He piled his window full of guards, with attractive show cards, and within a few days he had sold the entire five hundred, and ordered more.

This Increased Production

"A GENERAL tendency to lag in the middle of the forenoon and the afternoon was discovered by the management of a large mercantile concern when it checked up its employees' work," says A. V. Levering in System. "The slacking up was due to the fatigue caused by uninterrupted, long periods of work."

Now malted milk is served to the workers at ten and three o'clock every day. The time allowed to drink it and the nourishment afforded conquer the general inclination to slow down.

From a Dime to $100,000

A TELEPHONE repair-man went into the automobile tire-repairing business, says the Horseless Age. He had some unusual ideas.

In the telephone business he had learned that repairs must be made quickly, and that people will pay for good service. It costs money, however, to give service, and many automobile tire repairs are offered free.

Free service is apt to be slow. Also, customers who are able to pay hesitate to ask for it. So he adopted the policy of making repairs quickly, and charging a fair price.

He made a specialty of repairs in response to telephone calls, with trouble-men ready to go anywhere at any time, just like the telephone trouble-man. That led him to make a rule that nothing should be given free, but that even a fifty-cent repair job should be done by the best mechanics he could hire—that every bolt would be tightened and every tire put on right, and to stay.

This led him into the sale of automobile accessories. He started with a dime's worth of stock, and applied the same principles of quick, skilful service. The accessory stock was placed so that every person who brought in a car for repairs ha to visit the cashier in the accessory department, and found it a convenient place in which to wait until the repairs were made.

The original investment of ten cents in accessories has grown to a business aggregating $100,000 yearly.

Edward Everett Hale's Rules for Effective Talking and Writing

IF you go through Edward Everett Hale's speeches and writings, you are struck by the fact that there are no long words and no long sentences. There was a deliberate plan in this: these are Dr. Hale's rules for those who would speak and write convincingly:

How to Talk

Do not talk about your own affairs.

Confess ignorance.

Talk to the person who is talking to you.

Never underrate your interlocutor.

Be short.

How to Write

Know what you want to say.

Say it.

Use your own language (the language you use in daily life).

Leave out all the fine passages.

A short word (other things being equal) is better than a long one.

The fewer words the better.

From "Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale," by his son. (Little, Brown & Company.)

THE EDITOR ANSWERS

I HAVE lived thirty years in the world, and not until last week did I discover that the back collar button is a useless parasite, a gay deceiver: in short, a snare and a delusion. Having lost mine, I find that my collar stays down just as well; and I shall therefore never wear a rear collar button again.

Stanley is Lonely

Dear Sir:

I have been a reader of your magazine since its first issue, and wish to state that it has taken away a little of my loneliness. I am a very lonely boy, and want to ask boy readers of your magazine who live west of New York City to correspond with me. They must be between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, and I don't care what nationality, race, creed, or color they are. My address is 137 Fifth Avenue, care of S. G., New York; and I hope you will print my letter.

STANLEY ROSE.

All, right, Stanley. I know what it is to be lonely in a big town; and, like you, I like to get mail. Here's hoping you make some good boy friends. Write me sometime and let me know if you do.

A Mistake

IN our November 19th number we quoted an article from System on "Six Rules for Writing a Sales Letter," and credited them to Lejaren Hiller. Now comes J. H. Picken, a sales expert from Chicago, to tell us that he wrote the article. In looking it up we find that he is right and that Lejaren Hiller made the illustrations. Our apologies to both Mr. Picken and Mr. Hiller.

You Do Know Us Personally

Dear Editor:

It seems as if I almost knew you personally. Your good magazine is perfectly to my taste: it seems too long to wait until the next issue. I have a card index for private use, and many items from every issue are entering my files to help me win success.

R. L. G.

You do know us personally. We folks who get out this magazine have no dual personalities. We write just the way we happen to feel, and we don't have any idea for a minute that we know it all.

And whenever a reader tells us that he is really finding something in the magazine that is helping him on to success, we feel as good as if we had had a raise in salary.

That is to say, we feel almost as good as we think we would feel if we were to have a raise in salary.

We trust that our employer will read this, and that you will continue to add to the sale of the magazine at the five-cent price—you've done wonders so far.

Two Letters in the Same Mail

FROM the president of a big company in Pittsburgh:

I take the liberty of congratulating you on your editorial "Camouflage" which appeared in EVERY WEEK of December 17. It should be appreciated by every progressive business man who has the good fortune to read it, and should be reprinted in every publication in the country.

And in the same mail, from the president of an equally big business concern in Chicago, referring to the same editorial:

I would have expected from you, instead of this suppressed note of a Hymn of Hate, a suggestion that we feel toward the German people a disposition to forgive, immediately we have accomplished our purpose in entering the war.

How did it happen that you struck a note so discordant? How much more in harmony with the spirit that usually permeates your columns had the editorial been based on "Forgive them, for they know not what they do"?

I certainly get lots of fun out of my mail. Just enough letters from folks who think I know something to encourage me to go on; and an equal number from folks who are sure I know nothing to lend spice to life. Heaven, I suppose, will have no opposition party: and I have sometimes wondered whether politicians and editors will not find it rather dull.

H. C. Witwer Talks as Funny as He Writes

H. C. WITWER, who writes for other magazines almost as good as this, talks just as funny as he writes. He was in the office the other day, having just returned from France, where he went to write some articles about the war.

"Every girl on the streets of London comes up to you and asks, 'Why aren't you in uniform?' he says.

"After a while you begin to feel sympathetic toward the chap in the story.

"The girl asked him scornfully: 'Why don't you enlist?'

'Enlist?' he responded in amazement. 'What—with this war going on?'"

From a School-Teacher

Dear Sir:

This thought may be of value to some other people. I found it in a book some years ago; and when the dark days come, and I am tempted to be discouraged with teaching, and to wonder if I ought not to change into some other line where I could make more money, it has been a great solace to me:

"Better for me than a bank full of gold shall be a mind full of noble thoughts; better than a house full of treasure, a heart full of love; better than a year of selfish pleasure and personal profit, a year of blessings shared with others and prayers illumined with service."

I wish I had room to print all of this school-teacher's letter. Like so many of the others that come to my desk, it gives me an added appreciation of the courage and devotion and nobility of the average inconspicuous human life.

Poor Old New York

Dear Editor:

I came to New York eight months ago from South Africa, where the sun shines so brightly that it seems somehow to thaw the people into warm-heartedness. And there seems to me to be about you New Yorkers a coldness and a hardness that I have not seen anywhere else. I can almost pick out the strangers in the city merely by the way they exhibit thought for others; they do little of the crowding and pushing that is second nature to the average New Yorker.

I like Americans—but I do not like the New Yorker. He's blatant, selfish, knows everything—or thinks he does; and he thinks that New York is America.

J. W. S.

I smiled when I got that letter. It was, almost word for word, the kind of letter that I wrote home when I arrived in New York seven years ago. I suppose that every boy who ever left home to go to Chicago or Terre Haute or Painesville wrote back to his folks that the people were cold and hard—not at all like the friendly folks at home.

After you've been in New York a while you discover that there are no New Yorkers. They're all like yourself, boys who have come on because New York is the biggest thing of its kind and they sort of ached to go up against it.

And at night they go home and get down on the nursery floor and play with the kids just as if they were in Mansfield, Ohio. While, from Mansfield, the rich manufacturer, on his annual tour of hilarity, is helping to crowd Broadway and give the poor New Yorker a hard name.

Meantime

MEANTIME, even if you don't like New Yorkers, don't take it out on me. Remember, I work at 381 Fourth Avenue and I love to get mail.

Helpmates—

Concluded from page 8

"Is that your ball?" Annette inquired. "Or did you lose your ball back there—and just play this one out of the woods?"

The ball, as many now could see, was not a new one; and every one knew that Mrs. Charleton had driven a new one into the woods.

But Laura's gaze went from the players to the little man near her, who, in his anger, was not plain-looking at all now.

"What's that?" he demanded distinctly.

Annette remained blind to Mrs. Sibley's signaling from the other side of the green. Will Ellis too was blind.

"Mrs. Charleton can not take this hole, because that is not her ball," he explained curtly. "She lost her ball, substituted this, and played it out."

The little man took the ball.

"It is correct that this is not her ball," he admitted. "As to the substitution—I found that ball, pointed it out to Mrs. Charleton, and she believed it was hers when she played it out. I should say—however you believed the substitution was made—that the time to point it out was when you and Mrs. Ellis discovered Mrs. Charleton had the wrong ball on the green a few minutes ago, and before it was too late to correct the error."

He moved nearer to Mrs. Charleton and took her arm.

"Also," he added to the talkers in the gallery, "I may say that Mrs. Charleton's right to invitation here may soon be indicated."

WILL Ellis gazed at him dizzily as he moved away. Then Annette saw Mrs. Sibley.

"Who," she demanded in a daze—"who is he?"

"Mr. Wells!"

"Of—of," Annette staggered—"of Wells & Sibley?"

Mrs. Sibley nodded shortly.

"Then who—who is Mrs. Charleton?" Will Ellis asked.

"It was a secret," Mrs. Sibley enlightened. "I was under oath to say nothing about it, and not to be with her so much that any one might suspect. But I guess it's not a secret now. She is Mr. Wells' guest down here."

"His guest?'

"Yes; for they're engaged, you see. They're to be married this winter."

IT was the end of the week after the return to Detroit that Rodney arrived home a little later than usual.

"Well," he said soberly, when Laura met him in the hall, "everything's fixed up, I think."

"How, dear?"

"Bill's going to take charge of our Pacific coast branch. It's not as much money for him as being sales-manager here; but it's a better job than he had before."

"And you, Rod?"

"I'm to be sales-manager now, I guess."

"You mean you've saved the Wells & Sibley order!"

"I think so—rather, you have."

"I?"

"Yes. It seems that after Mr. Wells wired his famous telegram from Ocontico breaking off all relations with the Pell Company and canceling his orders—it seems that Mrs. Charleton made him follow it up with a regular Wilsonian note that Wells & Sibley would at any time take up negotiations looking to peace with the Pell Company, but would refuse to have any dealings with the head of the sales department. Now, as Pell already had fired Bill—and Annette—Pell wired asking if Wells would see me. To which Wells wired back to-day asking me to come and see him and give him two days next week."

"I see!" Laura cried. "Then that's what Mrs. Charleton meant. I got a letter from her this afternoon telling me she hoped I could come with you next Wednesday, as she's going to be married Thursday and wants me to be there. Can I go?"

Rodney shook hands with her.

"This time, I guess, Laura, and for this event. After that, no more. Mr. Pell had rather a talk with me about that. He says that helpmates in business make everything a gamble; and the time to quit gambling is when you're still to the good."

Who is He?

HE is a Frenchman who has dedicated his life to searching for cures of the ills of man. He is a great surgeon who could make huge sums practising privately, were he not too engrossed in discovering new wonders of medicine and scalpel. Recently he isolated a cure for gas gangrene, and in doing this, it is probable, has saved more lives from the war than any other living person.

Gas gangrene is a hideously dangerous malady. At the beginning of the war thousands died of it, as they have in other wars, because no one had yet discovered how to treat it successfully. He devised a treatment, inventing a device of tubes by means of which the infection could be kept constantly irrigated with saline solutions; and the treatment, simple as it is, has proved infallible. Gas gangrene no longer spells death. Thousands are recovering from it every day in the hospitals of France.

This man came to America from France about twelve years ago to work at the Rockefeller Institute. In 1912 he was awarded the Nobel prize in medicine. Since we are prone to measure everything by dollars, every one knew then that a great honor had been conferred, that the person who received $40,000 "out of the sky" must have done remarkable things.

And he had done wonderful things. He had discovered, for instance, that flesh will live after the body has died; that this growth may be retarded or stimulated.

He had grafted a leg on a dog in place of one taken away, with no outward evidences of such change. He had taken the heart of a guinea-pig, and, linking it with the coronary circulation of a live animal, literally had made "two hearts beat as one." He had transplanted organs and limbs, dealing with human bodies as Burbank deals with seeds.

When the war came he returned to France, and was given a free had in the improvement of military surgery. Here was human material to work with instead of guinea-pigs—work that was, moreover, a mercy, inasmuch as the men were doomed.

He set up a hospital near Neuilly, and began to experiment at once on the gangrene problem. In six months he had beaten the bugbear that had puzzled military surgeons since wars began. Every wound and infection on which his treatment has been applied so far has been cured in schedule time.

What will he do next?

Who is he?

WHAT A SYSTEMATIC COURSE OF READING DID FOR ME

FROM my parents I inherited an inclination to read and study; and, while we possessed few books, we had an abundant supply of magazines and newspapers in our home.

I left high school with a strong desire to go to college and learn more of the wonders of science and delights of literature. However, that year my father met with financial misfortune, and I could not ask for the necessary funds. Added to this, my mother was in ill health and needed my constant care. I went about my daily duties as cheerfully as possible, and no one knew how deep my disappointment was.

There was no public library in our small town, but an elderly acquaintance, who had some well selected books, kindly lent me books by standard authors.

I desired to increase my knowledge and develop my mind by reading along certain definite lines, but my plans were vague and undetermined.

One day I chanced to meet a girl friend, and spoke of a book I had been reading. She mentioned that one of the public school teachers had just returned from Lake Chautauqua, New York, where she had spent several weeks, and that she was taking a course in reading that had been planned by Dr. John H. Vincent.

Noting my interest, she procured for me the address of the secretary of a reading circle. I wrote to the secretary, and received circulars outlining the course of reading in history, literature, science, art, and religion.

I then sent the few dollars required to pay for the books, and as soon as they arrived I eagerly began my studies.

Miss A., the school-teacher, enlisted several others in the work, and we organized a local circle of students.

Later I went into business and left my home town for a distant city. Here I also found a reading circle connected with one of the churches, and I met with the group of readers on one evening of each week.

The regular course of reading laid out for the circle extended over four years. However, I enjoyed the information, instruction, and inspiration I gained, and therefore continued to read along other prescribed courses for nearly ten years.

The idea of a systematic course of reading came to me just in the formative period of youth, when I was groping blindly for guidance or suggestion.

Through financial trouble, hard work, bereavement, and illness, I have held fast to ideals of intellectual development and spiritual progress; and the education that I have gained through my books has kept me well informed and given me courage to work out my own dreams and fancies through original work in poetry and prose.

My life has been full of interest, and each year has brought new joys.

N. F. M.

They Started in an Election Booth

INDEPENDENCE and liberty was our motto. All that we craved was a humble little home, free from all encumbrance.

There were only three of us in the family—my wife, our little boy, two years old, and myself.

I had a steady job, making twelve dollars a week. We saved from two to three dollars out of it each week, and did not stint ourselves, either.

On the outskirts of the town and near my work there was some land that was being cut up into lots for sale.

One Sunday afternoon my wife and I went out and looked things over. We finally decided on a lot with a 50-foot front and 150 feet deep. We agreed to pay fifty dollars down and one dollar a week, with no interest.

Six months later, in early spring, I was riding home from work one evening when I noticed an advertisement in the paper announcing that the city officials were going to dispose of some of their election booths, which were on wheels, at twenty-five dollars each.

This gave me an idea—which was to place a booth on our lot and live in it during the hot summer months. I could save twelve dollars on rent a month, besides carfare, and we could do some planting.

Two weeks later we were living in the booth.

A man who worked beside me at the bench in the shop, a bachelor, complained about not feeling well. He told me that he thought sleeping under a tent for several months would be the ideal thing for his health. I told him if he would buy the tent he could pitch it on my lot. He did this, and took his meals with us, paying five dollars a week for his board.

When we left, about the middle of September, for our winter quarters in the city, we had saved $100 from our boarder, $25 on carfare, $50 on rent, and $18 on our garden product, besides what we had taken with us for winter use.

Our total saving for the summer amounted to $190.

Good fortune clung to us. Our boarder wanted to make his home with us, and this he did.

The following spring we had a capital of $250 to invest, with a few extra dollars in case of emergency.

We negotiated with a building and loan association. Our plans were to build a three-room cottage, including a summer kitchen.

Three months later it was completed. Its total cost was $950. We paid $250 cash, which left $700 to be paid off at six per cent. interest, which amounted to forty-two dollars a year.

Four years later we built another three-room cottage, with a summer kitchen, on the other twenty feet of ground, and rented it out for twelve dollars a month. In time it paid for itself.

That is how we got our start.

H. J. B., Cincinnati, Ohio.

This is His Week

ALL the great musicians had not hard boyhoods and unhappy lives. "He who has not eaten his bread with tears can not know immortality," we are told by Goethe. But here was a genius of music who ate his bread with a glad heart, and, what is more, always had bread to eat—and butter too. Riches and fame came to him without a struggle. When he was dying he said:

"I think I could have written better music had I known adversity; as it is, I have known neither tumult nor sorrow, and there is no pang of world suffering in my music."

This is true. All his music is graceful, refined, beautiful, full of the pleasant imagery of youth, spring, fairies, flowers, exemplified in his best known composition, the eternal wedding march from his musical setting for Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream." Mendelssohn was born with everything in his favor. His parents were wealthy; he had a handsome person, the power of making friends, a gift for the acquisition of language, skill at sports and games. He was never tried by harshness or injustice or lack of appreciation or poverty or ill health. He married the woman he loved, and their life together was full of blessings.

For some reason or other, musical geniuses "start" early in life. Mendelssohn was playing the difficult music of Bach at the age of six. He began to compose at twelve, and many of these compositions are included in his works. At fifteen he had written the music for three operas. At sixteen, "in the name of Mozart, Haydn, and old Bach," he was formally admitted into the society of German musicians.

In London and Paris Mendelssohn became the idol of the hour. In England his vogue was a sort of cult or "Mendelssohn worship." Perhaps no composer was ever so fêted during life and lost so much ground after death. Mendelssohn enjoyed this popularity and produced new works rapidly.

The music to his "Antigone" was written in seven days. Inspired by the furore created by Jenny Lind in this country, he planned a trip to the United States, but died of pneumonia, the result of overwork and a weakened constitution.

Finding Out What's in Men's Heads

Concluded from page 3

cutting-machine in the same shop, and was not a lithographer at all. The test had found them out: it had showed exactly where they ought to be in the world of industry,—according to their mental accuracy and alertness,—and the examination of their records proved that where they ought to be was exactly where they were.

The tests have shown that two carpenters who have made about the same wages in civil life will almost invariably fall into the same class in the test. Three visitors to the camps, each one the head of a large business, took the test as a matter of curiosity, on the day of my visit. Each of them landed in the A class, their marks within a few points of each other.

It looked like such a foolish procedure when it was first suggested. Test soldiers for mentality! It sounded absurd. Any man who was strong enough to carry a gun was good enough to shoot and to be shot at. What did it matter how he could figure, or how many orders he could remember and execute with a pencil? What had all this to do with killing Germans? So the regular officers argued, and almost unanimously they opposed the tests at first.

To-day every officer in the camp is enthusiastic about them.

"They told me when I came here that I would need 200 laborers for my regiment," said Colonel Markham of the Engineers. "I don't want 200 laborers. I want 200 good men who can labor. There's all the difference in the world. Give me men who are intelligent, and I will teach them how to labor, and give them all the engineering knowledge that they need for war. And they will be a thousand times more effective than unintelligent men who may have had a dozen years of work on engineering projects."

"I have half a dozen old-time, regular-army sergeants in my command," another officer said. "They have been in the army a long time, and they know a good deal about drills and all that. Yet the tests prove that not one of them is really fit to command men. They'll do well enough here in camp to teach the raw recruits the manual. But before we go to France I am going to pick my sergeants from among the men who have proved that they can remember orders and think for themselves."

I could not help thinking, as I watched the examinations, what a big thing lies hidden here for the use of business after the war. Two men appear as applicants for a job. They are dressed equally well; they have had fair experience; to all appearances they are equally desirable. What a wonderful thing it will be to be able to look inside their heads—to know in advance of their employment, which one has the power to think most quickly and most accurately.

There is no greater waste in industry than the waste in labor turn-over. A certain business with which I am familiar has about a thousand commission salesmen employed in disposing of its products. To maintain that force of one thousand men, the company finds it necessary to hire and train seven thousand men a year.

Seven thousand men—at an average expense for training and for samples of perhaps fifty dollars. What a wonderful thing to be able to eliminate right at the outset the five thousand men whose minds simply are not quick and accurate enough for that sort of work!

And if we are to have these tests for men in business, then the tests ought to begin long before the men reach manhood. From the very beginning of the boy's schooI life, science ought to be lifting the top of his hard skull occasionally and taking a peek inside. How much of the sorrow and failure and despair of life would be eliminated if, at the very outset, we could know much more accurately than we now know about the intelligence a child develops, and could begin to shape his growth toward a line of work in which he has a real chance to succeed.

It is along these very hopeful, very helpful lines that Captain Hayes and the other psychologists associated with him mean to work in peace times, applying the immense amount of scientific data that is being gathered from the examination of Uncle Sam's million young recruits.

Two Things to Remember in Days Like These

A SUCCESSFUL business man, whose salary is more than $10,000 a year, recently stepped into the office of the president of his bank with a very worried look on his face.

He is approaching the age when men like to look forward to retirement. He has lived modestly all his years, and has invested a few thousand dollars every year in first-class dividend-paying securities. A year ago all of the companies represented by them were showing record earnings and record prices. To-day the prices have shrunk day by day until many of them are at low levels never before reached.

And day by day, as he has seen the savings of the years fade away, the man has grown more worried. On this day he had come to talk with his banker about a certain railroad bond that had dropped far below the point where he had bought it. The banker listened to his story, and then said this:

"You have fifteen or twenty of those bonds, and are worried, naturally. Think, then, what must be the state of mind of the savings banks, and the companies carrying your insurance. They have their funds in those bonds also. What do you suppose they are thinking about, these days, as they watch the prices fall?

"I have recently made a study of that railroad. Your bond is a first mortgage on every cent of property it owns. And what does it own? Tracks and locomotives and cars—yes. Something could conceivably happen to them. But—it owns thousands of acres of land, heavily timbered and rich in all sorts of minerals. I figure conservatively that the value of that land and timber and ore is alone sufficient to pay off your bonds at par. Of course, that timber and those minerals can not be realized on at once. But they can't be lost or stolen: they are still there—real indestructible security behind your bonds.

"Remember, in days like these, to make the distinction between real- value and market value.. Hundreds of good securities to-day are selling away below their real value. That is unfortunate for those who are compelled to realize money on them at once. But to a man in your position it need mean nothing. Your wise course is to forget the quotations and re-member only the security behind your shares or bonds that, sooner or later, will bring the prices back where they belong."

A second thing to remember in days like these is that there is no magic in words. You read a great deal about "bond bargains." And many people have the idea that anything which is labeled "bond" is necessarily better than anything labeled "stock." No idea, of course, could be more dangerous. There are dozens of bonds that are far more speculative than good stocks. For example, as the Wall Street Journal points out, in 1908 the first-mortgage 4s of the Iowa Central Railroad sold at 81 and the common stock of Sears, Roebuck & Company at 40. This year the Iowa 4s sold at 45 and Sears, Roebuck at more than three times as much.

There is no guaranty in the word "bond." Because a "bond" is low is no sign that it is a bargain. In this, as in everything else relating to investments, the way of wisdom is to consult your banker or a first-class financial house.

The Ear-Marks of Wallingford

WHY do people buy worthless "securities"? We know that year after year they purchase them to the value of millions. But why? Bankers and advertising men recently sought the answer to this question, and, after a study of circulars used by blue-sky promotion artists, have prepared a simply working guide to assist in detecting bad securities through the claims made for them in advertising. The reason that so many millions of dollars annually are sunk in worthless securities, says this guide, is that the sellers of such so-called investments make alluring promises of great profits to be derived from a few dollars. If deliberate misrepresentations and recklessly loose statements are eliminated, get-rich-quick operators will not be able to make their fraudulent schemes pay.

In investments one does not get something for nothing any more readily than in any other branch of merchandising. It is entirely misleading, therefore, to use statements which will lead investors to believe this to be possible, such as the following taken from one piece of copy advertising a promotion that failed:

"Immense profits on small investments."
"$1,000,000 a month profits."
"You take no chance."
"Golden Harvest."

Some of the other more dangerous bad practices which invariably mislead are:

Trading on reputation or earning power of another company, such as implying that a new automobile company will be as successful as Mr. Ford, or using a name which sounds similar to a well known trade name, to imply that the well known person or corporation is interested in the new company.

Offering securities where the corporation has not a well defined financial plan calculated to carry the company through poor times as well as good times.

Giving undue importance to the name of the banks acting as trustee or registrar, and implying thereby that these banks in any way are responsible for the securities.

Offering to let people in on the ground floor.

Stating that securities are as safe as government bonds.

The use, by a dealer concern, of a name which implies that it is a bank or trust company when it is not such.

Using the word "guarantee" as applying to the security when no guaranty exists.

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

"Your Liberty Bond"—a new, conveniently indexed booklet that will answer all your questions concerning Liberty Bonds. Issued by John Muir & Company, 61 Broadway, New York. Send for booklet, "Your Liberty Bond." Free on request.

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 in 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.

If your money is earning less than 4 per cent, write the Citizens Savings & Trust Company, Cleveland, Ohio, for a copy of their booklet "P" explaining their plan of banking by mail at 4 per cent interest.

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 Re-view, Inc., 61 Broadway, New York City.

If you are interested in a preferred stock which pays 8 per cent and which is now being offered at par with a bonus of common stock, write to the Taps Pharmacal Company, 38 West 21st Street, New York, for complete information.

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

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