It Really is Mightier

THE word that you hear most frequently applied to German diplomacy is "blundering."

And certainly any diplomacy that earns the distrust and hatred of the whole world, turning the United States and South America and China from neutrals to enemies, is blundering enough.

But let us give the devil his due.

It is German diplomacy, not German arms, that has rendered Russia impotent. It is German diplomacy, based on fear, that has kept the northern nations out of the war, in the face of repeated outrages. It was German diplomacy and intrigue that weakened Italy and opened the way for the last great drive.

Germany, as a pen-wielder, has had this distinct advantage: She has known exactly what she wants; and she has understood the psychology and habits of the common folk around her.

When German business men began to penetrate Russia before the war, did they send out neatly engraved announcements of their coming?

They did not. They sent one-syllable announcements, printed in letters several inches high, because they knew Ivan, their new customer.

Yesterday a correspondent returned from Russia told me of a colored poster that has had great circulation there.

It represents England and America dividing the Trans-Siberian Railway between them; and underneath the words : "Ivan won't ever notice; he's busy fighting our war."

Just another bit of war diplomacy made in Germany.

We Americans have the whole unpleasant trade of war to learn, and the learning will take time.

But as advertisers we ought to be able to compete with Germany from the outset. We are offering the world a far better product—Liberty and Security.

And there are at least 80,000,000 people in the Central Empires who are ripe to receive our advertising. I quote the figures from two recent articles in the Atlantic Monthly by André Cheradamé, the French scientist who has spent his life in studying Pan-Germanism.

Germany has won the war to-day, M. Cheradamé points out. She has established a military and financial hold on Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey that make them mere dependencies. From her conquered territories she has stolen wealth sufficient to pay a large part of her war bills.

How, then, is she to be defeated? By arms, of course, says M. Cheradamé. But also by the pen.

There are, under Turkish dominion, 8,000,000 Arabs who hate the Turks.

There are in the Central Empires alone all these who hate the Germans and the Austrians, their oppressors:

       

Polish Lithuanians	22,000,000
Ruthenians	5,500,000
Czechs	8,500,000
Jugo-Slavs	11,000,000
Rumanians	8,000,000
	—
	55,000,000

A great horde of people, war-sick and restless, ready to make passive or active resistance, if the Allies will give them the necessary guidance and encouragement.

There are ways of getting our advertisements to these peoples. There are, for example, hundreds of newspapers in surrounding countries—in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, as well as in Russia. A full-page advertisement, signed by the Allies and printed in each one every day, would cost a mere trifle in comparison with the cost of ammunition and guns.

We have men in America who, by publicity, have changed the whole eating and buying—yes, and the thinking—habits of a hundred million people.

Recently the President has appointed half a dozen of them a committee on advertising. I hope they will turn their attention to that big group of prospective customers inside the Central States to whom the liberty we are offering ought to be very acceptable.

Forward in 1918, with all the men and guns and swords we can muster.

Not forgetting also the one weapon that is indeed mightier than the sword.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE PRESIDENT KEEPS SMILING

By BRUCE BARTON

IN future Presidential campaigns the voters ought to inquire first of all concerning each candidate whether he has good health—and a sense of humor.

Other issues are of secondary importance. The White House has been occupied by men holding all sorts of opinions regarding the tariff and States' rights and income tax, and their opinions do not seem to have affected the progress of the nation very vitally, one way or the other. In spite of their opinions, we go on adding to our population and our wealth—about as fast under one man as under another.

But let a man slip into the White House, in these days, without the ability to conserve his strength, or lacking that precious shock-absorber for life's rough road, a sense of humor, and the consequences might be very serious. Twenty-five years ago things were different: we were a rather quiet little country then, and pretty well decentralized; we could risk a President like Benjamin Harrison, for instance, whose portraits look as if an honest smile must have hurt him more than cruel words. But the man who attempted to run the United States to-day with no laughter in his system would break to pieces.

A lot of men in Washington are breaking right now. A lot of "swivel-chair majors," as they have been called, each one of them carrying the whole war on his shoulders—little men, in comparatively little jobs, but too busy to take any exercise, too harassed to tell or listen to a funny story. Washington is full of those serious-minded men, many of them on the verge of disaster. And, over and above them all, the Boss of the whole performance, the director-general of the twenty-billion-dollar enterprise, is looking better and fitter than when I saw him two years ago; and is well enough to laugh at jokes that only a man in superbly perfect health could possibly stand.

AT thirty years of age Woodrow Wilson was a comparatively weak man. He was an instructor at Johns Hopkins in those days, and after every lecture he used to find it necessary to go to his rooms and lie down. Even ten years ago, during his presidency at Princeton, he gave the impression of a man in indifferent health. He seldom indulged in physical exercise. His color was not good, and he seemed altogether a bookish individual, neither hard as to muscle nor altogether happy as to digestion. Even in those days his sense of humor was quick and active, as his intimate friends had good reason to understand. But he was not the sort of man, in appearance, whom one would pick out to undertake the most arduous, most exacting job in the modern world.

He will break down," said some people at the time of his first election. And, as the months went by without a breakdown, they repeated:

"Just wait: if we actually get into the war, you'll see."

Well, we're actually in the war, and I, for one, have seen. I saw the three most important members of the Cabinet on my recent trip: I saw army and navy men whose whole life has been spent out of doors. And of them all there is not one who looks to-day any fitter or more radiant of good health than Woodrow Wilson.

How does he do it?

He has a deliberate program: and if Wilhelm could see how tenaciously he sticks to it Wilhelm would be exceedingly discouraged about the chance of making a German peace.

At seven-thirty every morning the President is up. He would like to lie in bed longer—so he confesses: like the rest of us, he knows that there is no sweeter experience in life than waking up in the morning and discovering that it is too early to get up. He would like to lie—but he does not. He is at breakfast by eight o'clock. After breakfast he is off—for what? The office? Not at all. The first and best two hours of every day are spent either on the golf links or on horseback.

He returns to the White House about ten o'clock, has a bath and a rub-down, and settles to work. From then until dinner-time in the evening he is hard at it. And after dinner perhaps more work: but—more than likely—a vaudeville show or a comic opera.

IT was at a comic opera that I saw him. Two years ago I saw him in the office at the White House, and talked with him for almost an hour. It was not easy to see him, even in those days, as compared with Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Taft. Still, he could be seen. To-day he is probably the most inaccessible man in the world. He makes no appointments except those that are absolutely essential to the conduct of the war. Except for these,—made days and even weeks in advance,—he holds himself free for the documents that must have his attention, and for conversations over the telephone with his Cabinet chiefs. The office that used to be his headquarters is now deserted most of the time. His work is done and his conferences held in his private study at the White House.

So it was at the theater that I saw him, at a show that can rightly, though perhaps inelegantly, be described as punk. He, with Mrs. Wilson and a half dozen distinguished folk, occupied one of the lower boxes, the President sitting on the outside, nearest the audience. I presume the same thought occurs to every one on such an occasion: "How dangerous! How easy, in this big audience, for a crank— It was so that Lincoln—" But no such thought, apparently, enters the mind of the President. Perhaps a man becomes something of a fatalist in that position: perhaps he makes up his mind that when his time comes it will come—that openness and apparent disregard of danger are the best protection. At any rate, he sat like any other middle-aged business man at the theater: occasionally looking out over the audience; bending to the other members of the party to make some remark or hear one; and between acts turning a pair of opera-glasses here and there to discover a friend in the crowd.

And he enjoyed the show.

It was not pretense on his part: he really and truly enjoyed it. It was the most commonplace of comic operas—without one single gleam of originality. It opened with the usual chorus of villagers singing in unison words that nobody could understand. There were a couple of rather catchy tunes in the two hours, but the chorus was homely, the plot was archaic, and the jokes filled the auditorium with a musty smell.

Yet the President laughed. Two days before he had read his peace terms; and that morning every newspaper in the world had been filled with his name. On that afternoon he had met a delegation of Congressmen, and by his advice to them assured the passage of the Woman Suffrage amendment through the House. He must have had before him during the week problems that would cause the average board of directors to lose sleep for a life-time. And here he was, completely off duty—as completely as if he had turned the key in his dry-goods shop and had nothing to think of until it was time to sweep out in the morning again.

Without Lincoln's sense of humor, would we have won the Civil War? I doubt it. It was a trait that his serious-mined Cabinet found it hard to appreciate. Chase—handsome, heavy-browed, self-important—never became reconciled to his jokes. It is easy to picture the consternation when, at one of the very first Cabinet meetings, Lincoln announced:

"Gentlemen, my old friend Orlando Kellogg is outside and wishes to tell us the story of the stuttering justice. Let us lay aside all business, for it is a very good story."

The Cabinet was aghast: they thought he must be crazy to trifle with their thoughts at a time of crisis such as that. Some of them continued to be amazed and horrified through the whole four years; but gradually the wiser of them came to know that in his stories there lay the saving balm. There was cheer and rest and reassurance for them, in their moments of extremity, in the fact that the President still could laugh.

I have thought often that President Wilson must have studied much of Lincoln—that there must be often with him the consciousness of the great predecessor who sat before him in that study and wrestled with problems almost too great to bear. At least, he has learned Lincoln's trick of solving the tangle with a joke. Often, when a conference seems inextricably bound up, his wit will cut across the knot like the flash of a knife, and things will move forward again.

ON the morning when he was to deliver his peace terms to Congress, he called Secretary Tumulty about eight o'clock. He was off for the golf links, he said, and when he got back—at twelve-thirty—he would like to address Congress. It was short notice. Congress could not quite make it, and when the President arrived at the Capitol he was kept waiting for a few minutes while the Reception Committee was being appointed to escort him in. Various men wandered in and out of the room, among them the Public Printer, a genial Irishman, on hand to receive the manuscript of the great speech.

He began telling the President an Irish story; and the President was replying with one in Scotch dialect when the august committee arrived. So they found him,—in the midst of a funny story,—and gravely led him into the Chamber, where Congress was assembled to

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What an Airman Has to Know

By CAPTAIN A. P. CORCORAN

A BRITISH airman falls behind the German line. In a few hours an enemy friend sends news of his fate. A British flyer who has put up a particularly good fight drops to death near home. Presently comes a note of condolence from his opponent. A British aviator is interned in a German prison camp—a much more comfortable camp than that of his fellow infantryman. His letters to his friends come with a regularity and despatch perfectly astonishing in war times.

Such is the courtesy of the flying corps.

On land and sea we know the German as a dirty fighter. In the sky he has shown himself a sportsman. Here exists between the enemy and ourselves a chivalry very rare in this war. What is the reason? Well, it probably lies in the fact that here the war is still individual, and a man can measure his opponent.

A young Britisher, a recent but already famous arrival, heard one day that a famous German aviator had returned, after a long leave of absence, to his line. Most of our men were willing to confess this particular German to be more than their match. Not so, however, the cocky youngster.

"I'll get him," he declared.

The others laughed; but he got permission to go ahead.

So, one fine morning, he headed for the German trenches, bearing in his hand a challenge. It promised that, if this airman would meet him at two in the afternoon, the British guns would be silent. Having dropped the note over the hangar, he returned, and had barely got back when over came a note of acceptance. The Boche guns guaranteed a like restraint.

At two promptly they went up. Then began a manœuvering for positions, the most important point in an air fight. The German got on top. Cries of dismay rose from our trenches.

The Boche began fingering his gun. He dipped a little, the signal for a fusillade. We had given our friend up for dead, when with extraordinary swiftness he swooped up from underneath, simultaneously, as it seemed, opening fire.

Down went the German machine in flames, within the German line.

Without a moment's delay our man headed for the hangar, dipped, delayed, and presently was seen to soar back again. Away over the German line he went. We waited for the anti-aircraft to get him. But they were silent.

Once again he dipped, and, before making for home, dropped something. It was a wreath to the memory of a brave man.

If I had not a personal predilection in favor of another branch of the service, I might give another explanation of this chivalry. It is based on a knowledge of the airman's training. When you are familiar with what he has to know and to be, you are tempted to apply to him the name of "superman."

Consider him as having passed the doctor's tests.

His first two weeks are spent doing squad drill and imbibing some idea of military discipline. That over, he is sent to the ground school. Here his course includes such diverse subjects as aërial photography, bomb mechanism, bombing, meteorology, astrology, the construction of an airship, artillery observation, wireless.

The length of his time depends, of course, on individual aptitude. Not until he is proficient does he begin actual flying—usually in two months' time.

Stunting and formation flying are now his lessons. Looping the loop is a mere kindergarten game. In addition, he must learn to fly upside down, to side-slip, nose-dive, tail-slide, and do various other dangerous tricks that are, however, absolutely necessary to his success.

Adjudged proficient, he is put to a test of thirty-five hours' flying, solo. That passed, he is put on machine-gun work; and not until he has qualified in that is he gazetted a member of the Royal Flying Corps.

Now as to his actual work at the front. One man may make a good fighter, another a good photographer. Each gets a task suited to his talents. But the achievements of the corps are summed up in the fact that they supply the "eyes of the army."

It is the airman who furnishes us with all information regarding the lie of the enemy line. It is the airman who finds the objectives for the artillery fire. It is he, too, who directs that fire.

Suppose he has located an enemy battery—a difficult business in these days of effective camouflage. He notifies his battery commander. Let us suppose that officer decides to shell the position. Up goes the airman over the enemy line. With his wireless box he signals back:

"Go!"

They fire. Suppose it is a cloudy day, and they use high explosive—which gives out a yellowish puff that is indistinguishable to the airman's eye. Back he signals again:

"Shrapnel!"

This gives out a white cloud of smoke. He sees it. They fire again.

The shot goes over the target to the right. By means of a code, he tells them approximately the distance by which they have missed. They change the range accordingly. And so it goes, until finally comes the letter:

"Z"—which, in artillery parlance, means "Hit."

Now, though this "spotter" has learned "stunting," he rarely has to use it. It is the fighter that needs such skill. But, in the actual battles between planes, altitude is the main object. Twenty-five thousand feet is usually the highest they make. Only the best can attain that. As some one has aptly said, here's a meaning for an old senseless phrase, "the higher the fewer." Also, the higher the better.

It would be useless to try to describe in detail the tricks of this trade. But here is a story that tells of the pluck of one young airman, and that illustrates a way of "saving the day."

Two British machines were up on patrol work. One, a double-seater, carried an experienced pilot and an observer; the other, a young Canadian "first fighter." En route they encountered a great German "Gotha.

The fight started. Almost immediately the "Gotha" winged the double-seater, which began to fall slowly. Thereupon the Boche proceeded to get into position to add the finishing touches before attacking the smaller car. Meanwhile the Canadian's wits were working hard.

He was almost powerless, in his small machine, against the monster. He saw that his comrades were on the point of annihilation. Then, regardless of himself and as a last desperate effort, he drove his car straight, for the "Gotha," and rammed her. Locked together, the planes fell to the earth, carrying both contestants to instant death. The others managed to struggle back to safety.

When Britain entered the war she had about eighty machines, none of which could do more than that number of miles an hour. Now she has more than a hundred times that force, and some can make a speed of 135. And she has men enough trained to drive them all!

THE EDITOR SEES REAR-ADMIRAL McGOWAN

THERE is only one chair in the office of Rear-Admiral Samuel McGowan, Paymaster-General of the Navy: and in that chair the Admiral sits. Visitors are expected to be able to state their business so briefly that they will not be at all wearied by standing while they state it. The sign that is sometimes seen around the water-front, "Do Not Anchor Here," is not needed: there is no place for anchorage.

The Admiral himself works at a desk swept clean; gives his decisions standing up, like an umpire at a ball game; and red tape is exactly as popular with him as a red rag with the proverbial bull. As a result of which the congressional committee, looking for all the possible holes in the war doughnut, had to admit that, so far as Admiral McGowan's department is concerned, there was nothing to criticize.

He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, and a post-graduate, as he says, of the "university of adversity." Every graduating class of the Navy Pay Officers' School receives a "commencement talk" from him: here are some extracts from one of his talks that help to explain the man:

Don't be a cynic—the man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Everybody wants to be thrown with the man who is syndicating his joys, but not his sorrows.

Don't ever compromise with wrong doing. There is no neutral zone between right and wrong. There is a great big, high, barbed-wire fence, and you know when you get to it.

Don't be a sea lawyer. A sea lawyer is one who, generally speaking, is in everybody's mess and on nobody's watch, and who knows everybody's business but his own.

Don't take yourself too seriously. If you have serious work, and apply yourself seriously to it, your personality will be so merged in the work that the work itself will furnish ample evidence of your worth. If a man projects his personality into his work, and the work is good, it is going to live. People can forget the man, but they can not forget the work.

Don't protest. Remonstrate if necessary, and appeal if you are compelled to, but never protest. A story is told of a lieutenant who was ordered to take the punt and go for a load of sand, about the meanest duty aboard ship. Immediately he protested: "I am a lieutenant: I am second watch officer; I have been in the service seventeen years; the executive officer orders me to go for sand!" The captain looked wise for a while, and then replied: "Well, your protest is placed on file—meanwhile you will go for the sand!"

Don't tackle a man while he is eating, if you want to get anything out of him. You know, a friendly and congenial dog will probably bite you if you bother him after you have given him a bone. Men have almost reached that point in their progress toward civilization.

Don't write any unnecessary letters, nor put anything on paper that you are not perfectly willing should come back to you. Don't write anything unofficially that should be not written officially.

Why Germany Marched through Belgium

THE "military necessity" that has been Germany's feeble excuse for the drive through Belgium is explained by Douglas W. Johnson in Topography and Strategy in the War (Henry Holt & Company). "German strategists have long maintained, and German statesmen at the outbreak of the war frankly asserted, that to win the war the German armies must drive swiftly to the heart of France and bring that country to her knees before Russia should have time to mobilize."

Germany had three other possible routes. "She could, for example, concentrate her main armies in the valley of the Rhine with bases at Strassburg and Mülhausen, and in the country about Metz to enter by the Lorraine gateway. The Lorraine gateway is broad and, since the war of 1870, largely in German territory. Metz is an admirably fortified base, and is connected with Strassburg by excellent rail communications." It was by this route that the Prussians passed on their victorious march to Paris in 1870. But since that time the steep barriers stretching from Toul to Verdun have been strongly fortified. The failure of the Crown Prince's army to break through at Verdun vindicates the wisdom of the German general staff in discarding this route.

The second possible road is from a base at Coblenz through Luxemburg. But it leads into the same difficult country east of Paris.

The invaders could have chosen a route from Cologne around the north side of the Ardennes Mountains and so to the Meuse River. But the country is mountainous enough to give the French commanding artillery positions. "The innermost line of cliffs is especially forbidding, and its gateways are guarded by the fortifications of La Fere, Laon, Rheims, and Soissons." A single railway running through a narrow mountain gorge in hostile country would be their only line of communication.

The only remaining road lay through Belgium. "Roads and railways are excellent and numerous, permitting the rapid simultaneous advance of different columns of troops. The country is fertile and highly productive. With the occupation of this route would go the conquest of deposits of coal and iron.

"'Belgian neutrality had to be violated by Germany on strategic grounds,' cabled the Kaiser to President Wilson."

Lincoln as an Ordnance Expert

ALL the talk about the relative merits of the Browning and the Lewis guns is only an echo of similar talk that filled Washington in the early days of the Rebellion. The city was full of inventors, each with his device for winning the war, and Lincoln took great interest in their projects, often testing them himself.

One night a clerk in the Navy Department, who had stayed late, heard some one striding up and down the hall, muttering: "I do wonder if they have gone already and left the building alone all." Looking out, he was surprised to see the President, says Miss Tarbell in her Life of Lincoln (Macmillan Company).

"Good evening," said Mr. Lincoln; "I was just looking for that man who goes shooting with me sometimes."

As this man had gone home, the clerk offered his services. Together they went to the lawn south of the White House, where Mr. Lincoln fixed up a target cut from a sheet of white Congressional note-paper. Then, pacing off a distance of about eighty feet, he raised the rifle, took a quick aim, and drove the round of seven shots in quick succession.

"I believe I can make this gun shoot better," said Mr. Lincoln. With this he took from his vest pocket a small wooden sight which he had whittled from a pine stick, and adjusted it over the sight of the carbine. He then shot two rounds, and of the fourteen bullets nearly a dozen hit the paper!

How Many Will Be Wounded?

"IT has been authoritatively estimated that there is to-day in all the belligerent countries a total of 13,000,000 injured by war, of whom 3,000,000 have suffered amputations," says William L. Stoddard in The Nation's Business.

"The following table, compiled for the Inter-Allied Conference, gives the numbers of the various kinds of injuries per 1000 wounded men:

371 injured in arm or hand
290 injured in foot or leg
118 blind in one eye
74 injured in the head
6 deaf in both ears
141 affected in other parts of body with general diseases."

AS THE ENGLISH SEE US

Transporting Armies in Baskets

TO Italian mountain troops the teleferica is transport train, ambulance, and motor lorry rolled into one. Hundreds of miles of cables span the dizzy chasms between peaks, and troops and ammunition, food and wounded men—even mules—travel in baskets along these slender threads.

An Italian military engineer said to Lewis R. Foreman, writing in the Outlook:

"'I can not tell you how many hundred miles of cableways there are on our front, nor how many thousands of men and hundreds of thousands of tons of food and munitions have been carried over them, but I can assure you that the teleferica (which looks the most dangerous) is really the safest means of transport we have, to say nothing of the fact that it is also the most economical.

"'Did you ever hear of a man being killed in a teleferica accident? You have not. Well, I shall be greatly surprised if you ever do. They are so simple in design—just the cableway, a petrol engine, and a couple of cages—that it is possible to guard almost absolutely against structural defects, so that the only trouble that can happen to them must come from without rather than from within."

The teleferica has saved thousands of lives. Wounded men are sent in coffin-like boxes from the high snow trenches to the nearest hospitals. The motion is much easier than that of an ambulance,

and the wounded soldiers usually arrive some fifteen minutes after they have been picked up.

Even when a man is unconcious, he makes his journey alone. No other life, nor even an ambulance, is risked in bringing him down.

Slightly Overdone

THERE are many tragedies in the war. Some hurt worse than others. Prepare to weep for the transport driver and the men to whom he promised a meal.

His motor lorry had run over a chicken that refused to keep to its own side of the road. According to orders, the corpse should have been taken to its rightful owner, a citizen of France. But instead the driver put it in a box and carried it home to billets. Who would do otherwise after months of bully beef?

Not that he discarded the latter commodity On the contrary, he used it to stuff the bird. It was to be such a tasty meal! They sat down to await it. Sniffs told them they would not have to wait long.

But Tommy proposes and—

Just as they were about to pull the bird out of the improvised oven, in walked an officer on his rounds. And what a nasty disposition that man had! When ordinarily he would have gone again at the end of a few minutes, now he waited for half an hour. When he finally departed, that savory smell had merged into something less pleasant. And the bird, like Casabianca, had been metamorphosed into unsavory cinders.

Told by Captain Corcoran.

THE PASSED WORD

By INEZ HAYNES IRWIN

Illustrations by Herman Pfeifer

"I WISH you didn't have to go, Lucia," Norah said. "Can't you telephone them that you're not well enough?"

"I have half a mind to do that," her sister answered. "I don't feel anything like speaking. I don't know how I ever came to say that I would. It doesn't seem as if I could go through with it. I ought to have told them a week ago to get somebody else. I'm too old; I'm too tired; I'm too sad. I've outlived my abilities and my usefulness."

The tears that seemed to fill her eyes with a blue stain flowed over her cheeks.

The tears dropped on Norah's cheeks too, and she paused in the work of getting her sister ready.

"Shall I call them up and tell them you're too ill to come?"

"Oh, do!" Mrs. Frawley breathed these words on one long-spent, grateful suspiration. But when Norah's corded brown hands touched the telephone, she added:

"No! I'll do it. I said I would, and I will. I have never disappointed an audience yet. But remember in the future, Norah, no matter what my duty seems to be, I must not say yes again. I'm an old, old woman, and I'm tired."

Both women were frankly weeping now, and for an interval neither spoke.

The room was the one which, on her marriage forty years ago, it had pleased Mrs. Frawley to convert into a dressing-room. It still showed the wall-paper of faded pale-blue, rose and silver, the faintly figured rose-and-gray carpet that had so harmonized with Lucia Mayne's delicate chiseling, her châtaigne coloring. The decoration had not changed in a single detail.

The daintiness of coloring gave the two old women weeping in the midst of it an added touch of age. Norah, who had been dark and slender, kept brown, but she shriveled as she grew older. Now she was like the sere gnarled branch of some leafless tree. Lucia had filled out, but her hair had turned white; all her soft blond tints had receded.

"Hark—there's the taxi!" Norah ejaculated suddenly. From the square outside came the sound of churning speed, of arrested motion. The door-bell rang.

"Yes, that's it," Mrs. Frawley agreed.

She sighed heavily. But she drew on a pair of long black silk mitts over her shrunken, blue-veined hands; pulled on over them heavier gloves; reached her arms into the wadded black coat which her sister held for her.

The two women walked together out into the hall and down the stairs.

"It was the taxi, Mary?" Norah asked mechanically of the elderly maid who stood at the door.

"Yes'm," Mary replied.

"To think it is Christmas," Mrs. Frawley said in a tremulous voice. "And this house so quiet—so dark and dull. No young life here—no tree—no presents. It has never been like this since I came into it a bride. Oh, if only Robbie—"

"There! There! Don't speak of Robbie," Norah burst in quickly.

"No, I won't speak of him again," Mrs. Frawley said, with a docility unusual to her. "I don't know why I spoke of him then. Of course I think of him all the time—every moment. But it's no use speaking of him."

"Don't you want me to come too, Lucia?" Norah pleaded. "I hate to think of you going through all that alone."

"No," Mrs. Frawley said. "There is no sense in it when we have so much to do. I shall be all right, I suppose, after I've once started. I would much rather you'd get those letters written. Take particular pains with the one to the National College Association. I—I—I would have liked—" Her voice, thinned to a silver thread, quivered again. "But it's no use; I can't."

She kissed her sister.

"And you think, Lucia," Norah began in uncertain tones, "that you really don't want to see Cousin Edie?"

"Oh, no, no, no! Not at Christmas-time. Ask her to lunch or dinner here next week sometime. But to have children in this house now—with Robbie not cold in his grave—Norah, I couldn't stand it. I couldn't!"

"There, there, Lucia," Norah soothed. "Don't think of it any more. I'll explain it all to Cousin Edie."

"Yes, yes. Tell her just how I feel."

"Yes; I'll make it all right," Norah promised steadfastly. "I know she'll understand. Cousin Edie is such a sweet thing! Now don't think of it any more, Lucia."

LEFT alone, Norah returned to the room upstairs, and listlessly hung up her sister's clothes. As if Lucia's departure had removed the dam that had held back her tears, they flowed freely. She stood looking through them an instant, then hurried downstairs into the library. This was a big room running the width of the house, quiet and faded, but cheerful with the purr of a wood fire, the measured tread of a high old clock beating out time. The walls were lined with books in low, doorless cases. Everywhere was that clutter of incongruous things that people in public life inevitably collect: signed photographs of celebrities; old, faded famous prints; yellowed letters and documents.

Norah seated herself resolutely at the desk. But the tears, which had stopped momentarily, began to pour over her face again. Presently she arose and went to the window in the front room. It had been storming all day, but at dusk had come quiet. The world was just comfortably, fleecily wrapped in snow.

In the windows opposite, suspended by broad, stiffly heavy scarlet ribbons, Christmas wreaths made big rounds of green. There were no wreaths in the Frawley windows. Norah sighed heavily.

MRS. FRAWLEY, huddled in her greatcoat, gazed apathetically through the cab window. They proceeded out of Louisburg Square and down Chestnut Street to Beacon Street. Mrs. Frawley's eyes sped along the fronts of houses that she knew, inside and out, as well as her own. But she was not thinking of them. Her thoughts were whirling. It was as if her unhappy reference to Robbie had been the spark that exploded them.

Robbie! Why had she had to endure that?

Her life had been a long and active one. It had held a great deal of happiness, a great deal of unhappiness. Loving and giving, working and thinking! When she looked back on it from one point of view, it seemed all working; from another, all loving; and from a third working and loving were so mixed that she could not disentangle them. On the whole, it had been a happy life. Yet unhappiness came—terrible unhappiness. She had never rebelled, hard as she had grieved. But now Robbie! The single comfort of her old age. Why had that come to her?

She was a girl—in her teens—when the Civil War came and, by a curious accident, brought out her young gift of oratory. It seemed at the time, even to her, a definite gift. But now, looking back upon it from the cold heights of seventy-and-over, she wondered if what was frequently said then was not true—that it was all cocksure youth, youth a little more confident and articulate than the average, youth plus beauty, plus freshness, and above all—plus personality.

At any rate, she had something that held audiences. They listened to her as if she were inspired. Sometimes she had the feeling that she was inspired: for often she spoke impromptu without knowing what she was going to say when she began. Those were among her most brilliant speeches. But any idea that it was really inspiration died within her as her work augmented and her influence increased. The necessity of supplementing that artless, natural impulse with solid fact manifested itself. She began to read, to study. Her work grew with her study, her study grew with her work, and her power grew with both. Languages—she had started with only her school-girl French and German—engaged her first, Latin, Greek, Italian. Then followed history, philosophy, psychology, ethics, belles-lettres. A swift reader,—and with a tenacious memory,—she tore through books. And her reward came. For presently the world in which she moved admitted the mistake of its assumption that Lucia Mayne's career was but the accident of Lucia Mayne's personality.

After the war she threw herself into the woman movement. Susan B. Anthony, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Mary Livermore were her intimates. And then, rather late (she was thirty-two), came her meeting—on the platform, of course—with Julius Frawley, their swift love, their quick wooing, their marriage. What a life it was! What a happy wifehood! What joy her three children had brought! But, just as suddenly as life had given her these hostages, it had taken them away. After their twenty years of a complete union of ambition and work and travel, Frawley dropped dead of heart-failure. Later her two daughters died in a year: Molly in childbirth with her first child; Adelaide, the youngest, leaving only little Robbie. Of course, she still had Julius, her only son. But his mining engineer life seemed to take him to the most lonely, steep, cold places of the world. It was impossible for her even to visit him.

The only grandchild, little Robbie, was her idol for the brief ten years of his existence. And then he too was taken—taken suddenly and almost without warning. A slight cold had become a heavy cold, had become pneumonia, had ended—

THAT was three months ago, and if it had not been for Norah, Lucia Frawley admitted to herself that she would not have had the courage to go on. But Norah, her only sister, the playmate of her childhood, the confidante of her girlhood, companion, nurse of her married life, and now the comforter of her widowhood—she could not leave Norah. And so there they clung, two sunken creatures, abandoned by the tide of life, living alone in the big empty shell that had once housed a family. How it had rung with youth, that house—every kind of gay girl gaiety, every sort of mad boy escapade. And now—

Robbie's death brought physical collapse. Mixed with it in some inextricable way came a kind of paralysis of the will. Till then she kept in harness, working her eight hours a day without difficulty. But everything stopped when Robbie went. Request for service had come to her, as usual, by dozens and scores—to speak here, to preside there, to organize this phase or develop that phase of the movement, to deliver lectures, to take classes, to address the faculty of one university, the student body of another, to serve on the board of directors of a third, to write a series of articles, to prepare her reminiscences, to manage a department in a woman's magazine, to edit a paper.

Within certain inevitable limits, her physical strength knew no diminution. And in mental vigor she did not slow or dull or sag. Up till three months ago she had maintained unimpaired her power to look at big events with a big vision, to see them in their proper relation to each other and in a correct perspective to history. She had not, until three months ago, lost any of her characteristically vivid interest in the times. Her past had always been an increasingly powerful one; and yet at no time had it been anything but a feeder to the present. Her present, except for the

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inevitable personal tragedy, was always a happy one; and yet at no time was it anything but an earnest of the future. Her husband's death was a terrific blow. But, after all, it only changed her from a belatedly young to a definitely middle-aged woman. Robbie's death brought more sinister results. That turned her from a woman old only by the accident of years, still vigorous, still hopeful, to a machine which, dead in life, still mechanically went on repeating the functions of living.

For Robbie had been one of those children who are an extraordinary combination of precocity and character. There was a real mental affinity between him and his grandmother, a great affection. Except for the "little language" that inevitably trickled out of her affection, she always talked to him as if they were the same age—not only that, but often with a touching humility on her side.

"What do you think of that, Robbie?" she would ask. And even, "What would you advise me to do?"

They played together. They read together. They studied together. The dictionary never returned to the bookcase, the many-volumed encyclopædia always showed broken ranks, reference-books were ever at her elbow that she might stay with authoritative data the ceaseless tide of Robbie's wonderful questions. He seemed robust physically and mentally. And yet, in a week he had died. She had her moments even now, after three months, when she could not believe it.

That strange paralysis of the will had dropped on her like a gray, cold, heavy, muffling cloud. It seemed to freeze her very heart. She said no to every request that came to her; said no because she could not make herself say yes. She even said no to an invitation from the important new National College Association for a kind of national triumphal progress in which she would address college students of both sexes all over the country. And that she had always especially wanted to do; for she loved young people. But she could not whip herself into a consent. She delayed answering the letter, though—delayed and delayed until that very morning a second letter had come reminding her of the first. Then she made her decision. Even now Norah was writing her thanks and her regrets.

BUT one engagement she had had to keep. She was keeping it now. Before Robbie's death she had agreed to deliver the eulogy when the Stephen Talcott Association should deliver to Stephen's old school the new bas-relief of Stephen himself. If she had not given her word then she could not give it now. She hated to admit that to herself; but it was true. She could not have broken those frozen bands that held her will, even for Stephen's sake.

Stephen! Her friendship with Stephen dated back to the happy period of Julius's courtship. He too appeared among that little band of radicals which had so startled New England at the close of the war. He was associated with the Frawleys in more reform movements than, at this distant date, she could enumerate. More than that, a real love, a real friendship, bound their triumvirate together. In his later years Talcott had devoted himself to the education of girls, particularly to the development of secondary schools. He became the principal of the biggest public school for girls in Boston, developed into an expert in pedagogy.

Now, twenty years after his death, there had suddenly formed—how, she did not know—this Memorial Association whose object was to carry on the spirit of his work and to keep his memory green. She said yes gladly when—before Robbie's death—that request came. Now she would give anything to be out of it. She told herself that she knew she had grown old all at once, but she had not realized how old. It did not seem to her that she was even equal to the physical strain of an address. She had moments of panic when she felt that she did not know what to say. That mental fluidity, half an instinctive marshaling of arguments, half an immediate rush of expression, which manifested itself the instant she arose before her audience, was atrophied forever. This was the first time in her life when simply the thought of speaking had not roused that tumultuous impulse.

The taxi flashed down Beacon Street. On one side, the Common stretched white and silver-surfaced, tip-tilted to the amethystine pour of the electric lights, edged and dotted with high, leafless elms, bending under their weight of snow. On the other side the houses gushed light. Big wreaths gleamed scarlet and green through frost-etched old purple glass. Once, in an uncurtained bay-window, she caught a glimpse of a family setting up the Christmas-tree. The picture sent a quick stab of pain to her sore heart. She wiped the tears resolutely away, and turned her attention to the trees, so quiet and composed under their heavy burden. The taxicab sped between the Common and the Public Garden up Columbus Avenue.

AS the cab stopped, a pair of women, young, vigorous-faced, emerged from the door at the top of the high gray stone steps.

"I am Miss Murphy," said the dark, wiry one. "Let me introduce Miss Edwards."

Her thick-set, sandy companion smiled half tremulously.

"We are more delighted to have you with us to-night, Mrs. Frawley," Miss Murphy went on, "than we know how to say."

Mrs. Frawley shook hands with both women.

"You are very kind," she said in her chill, tired voice. "I am delighted to be here. I thank you for asking me."

"It is three flights up to the hall where the meeting is to be held," Miss Murphy explained. "They are very long flights, and I am afraid they will tire you. There is no elevator in this building, and so we're going to have the janitors carry you up in a big chair, if you don't mind. We are so sorry that it must be as primitive as that."

"Thank you," Mrs. Frawley assented; "I don't mind at all. I shall be very glad—I don't think I would be quite equal to going over the stairs."

They took her into a dressing-room on the first floor, and helped her off with her wraps.

"This is the gown you wore when Galbraith painted you," Miss Murphy commented. "I'm so glad to see you in it. I admire that portrait so much that, when it was exhibited, I cut the photogravure out of the catalogue and had it framed."

"Yes," Mrs. Frawley responded in her lack-luster tones; "Galbraith himself designed it for me."

It was a long, flat gown of a soft brocaded black satin, with narrow bands of ermine at the pointed neck and the wide ends of the long, close sleeves. It was very simple, and in it Mrs. Frawley looked like the portrait of a mediæval master. Emerging from the cap of white muslin, her clear-cut profile seemed the more cameo-like. Her hair, dropping over her forehead in waves as flat as if cut from marble, added its touch of dignity. Her eyes might once have set an arresting flash of color in all this black and white; but now the blue of the iris seemed to have run into the silver of the eye-ball. They looked like flowers, faded and bruised, that would well dew at any moment.

Presently the janitors appeared, two stalwart Irishmen. Mrs. Frawley seated herself in the arm-chair that seemed the most comfortable, and they carried her up the stairs.

There was only one light burning in the big corridors through which they passed. These corridors, shaped like a Greek cross, two of whose arms led north and south to staircases and two east and west to recitation-rooms, looked just as they had, Mrs. Frawley reflected, in Stephen's day. They were bare but for long strips of rope rug, a faded portrait, a marble bust, an occasional bookcase. They still held the smell of dust, as if the racing young feet that had raised it a few hours before had raised too much to settle in a single night.

In contrast to all this bareness, the big hall at the top of the building held a surprise. The frieze of the Parthenon, in plaster reproduction, ran along the four sides close to the ceiling. The gods of Greek mythology, also in plaster but heroic in size, held pedestal positions beneath. Appropriately for a girls' school, Minerva occupied, on the platform, the central position in this noble conclave.

SOMETHING stirred in Mrs. Frawley's mind as she gazed around, a something so urgent that she was unconscious for an instant of the storm of applause that greeted her entrance. She could not guess what it was that was knocking at the door of her memory. And, before she could find the key, the door opened of itself. She remembered clearly a long talk that she and Stephen and Julius had held late one night, crossing the Common. That talk had prolonged itself in the Frawley library until three in the morning. In it Stephen—he had seemed inspired by the frosty moonlight—outlined wonderful plans for the art-decoration of the ideal school: long, nobly architected vistas with pictures and statuary cloisters about an interior court; fountains, pools, sloping gardens in the formal Italian manner. From that he had dropped to his modest scheme for this very school.

Who, in those days, but Stephen would have thought of a conclave of Greek gods? Was it forty years ago? Yes, it was all of that, perhaps more. But now the

applause growing in volume was so insistent that it penetrated her absorption. She produced a faint mechanical smile, bowed again and again. The applause ceased gradually. In the meantime, she looked the audience in the face, surveying it calmly as she had surveyed hundreds of audiences. It seemed strange to her that no faint film of feeling invaded her frozen heart. For many of the women sitting in this hall were teachers. And Mrs. Frawley held all teachers in loving regard. How often had she and Julius gone to the teachers of Boston for help! And when had they ever met with refusal? But no softening sympathy came; her heart felt as if wrapped in ice.

It was a big audience. It packed the hard wooden settees tight. It lapped into the aisles and swelled back through the doorway. Ringing all the changes on age, size, complexion, beauty, youth, type, developing slowly Celtic, Latin, Hebraic, Germanic strains, it ran down from early alumni with white hair and wrinkles to the graduates of the previous June, who seemed like children. A group of women sat in a semicircle on the platform—teachers in the school, presumably, and officers of the Association.

There was an air of holiday about the assembly. On the chairman's desk was a big bunch of holly, and back of it, covered with white sheets, stood an amorphous object framed in fir-trees—the bas-relief, undoubtedly. But this alone did not account for the spirit of jubilation. No; part of it was the relief from tension inevitable to the last teaching day before vacation.

The chairman, a middle-aged, round, dark woman, with something dynamic back of her smiling personality, shook hands with Mrs. Frawley, murmuring her sense of the pleasure and honor of her company. She was as brief in words as she was quick in movement. Without a moment's delay she opened the program of the evening. First of all, she said, she would read Mr. Talcott's favorite psalm. Then, scarcely looking at the book, she delivered "The Lord is my shepherd." After that she announced that they would sing Mr. Talcott's favorite hymn. She directed the audience where to turn in the hymn-books that were scattered on the settees.

THERE came the clatter of book-covers, the flutter of turning leaves. The woman at the piano struck a chord. The assembly broke into "All through the Night." The voices ceased. The piano stopped. There followed the rustle and confusion of a big audience seating and settling itself; then silence. A wave of anticipation rippled through that silence. The chairman arose again.

In spite of her frozen self-absorption, Mrs. Frawley noted the simplicity and dignity of that speech. From the instant she began, "Members of the Stephen Talcott Association, we are gathered here this evening," to the instant when she drew the sheets away from the bas-relief, the chairman spoke with fine feeling and a finer understanding. She reviewed briefly the facts of Stephen's connection with the school (she had been a pupil at the time), related many anecdotes of him that were new to Mrs. Frawley, concluded with a summary of his character and influence that showed real acumen. And yet, through it all, Mrs. Frawley's heart stayed frozen, stayed frozen through the ovation that greeted the bas-relief, stayed frozen through the graceful tribute with which the chairman introduced her, stayed frozen through the applause that followed, stayed frozen through her own eulogy.

Mrs. Frawley talked for an hour. Her voice was as clear as a glass bell, and, despite her pessimistic premonitions, her words flowed with their accustomed grace and facility. She traced her friendship with Stephen Talcott from their first meeting, through their subsequent constant association, to the day of his death. She outlined the steps by which

Continued on page 21

FORSYTHE AT THE FINISH

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Arthur William Brown

I EXPECT I wouldn't have noticed Forsythe particular if it hadn't been for Mrs. Robert. It takes all kinds, you know, to make up a week-end house-party bunch; and in these days, when specimens of the razor-usin' sex are so scarce—well, that's when half portions like this T. Forsythe Hurd get by as full orders.

Besides, Mrs. Robert had meant well. Her idea was to make the Captain's 48-hour shore leave as gay and lively as possible. She'd had a hard time roundin' up any of his friends, too. Hence Forsythe. One of these slim, fine-haired, well manicured parlor Pomeranians, Forsythe is—the kind who raves over the sandwiches and whispers perfectly killin' things to the ladies as he flits about at afternoon teas.

We were up at the Ellinses', Vee and me, fillin' out at Saturday luncheon, when Mr. Robert drifts in, about an hour behind schedule. You know, he's commandin' one of these coast patrol boats. Some of 'em are converted steam yachts, some are sea-goin' tugs, and then again some are just old menhaden fish-boats painted gray with a few three-inch guns stuck around on 'em casual. And this last is the sort of craft Mr. Robert had had wished on him.

Seems there'd been some weather off the Hook for the last few days, and, with a fresh U-boat scare on, him and his reformed glue barge had been havin' anything but a merry time. I don't know how the old fish-boat stood it, but Mr. Robert sure showed that he'd been on more or less active service. He had a three days' growth of stubble on his face, his navy uniform was wrinkled and brine-stained, and the knuckles on one hand were all barked up.

"Why, Robert!" says young Mrs. Ellins, as she wriggles out of the clinch and gives him the once-over. "You're a sight."

"Sorry, my dear," says Mr. Robert; "but the beauty parlor on the Narcissus wasn't working when I left. But if you can give me half an hour to—"

He got it. And when he shows up again in dry togs and with his face mowed he's almost fit to mingle with the guests. It was about then that T. Forsythe was pullin' his star act at the salad bowl. Course, when you have only ordinary people around, you let the kitchen help do such things. But when Forsythe is present he's asked to mix the salad dressin'.

SO there is Forsythe, wearin' a jade-green tie to match the color of the salad bowl, surrounded by cruets and pepper grinders and paprika bottles, and manipulatin' his own special olivewood spoon and fork as dainty and graceful as if he was conductin' an orchestra.

"Oh, I say, Jevons," says he, signalin' the Ellinses' butler, "have some one conduct a clove of garlic to the back veranda, slice it, and gently rub it on a crust of fresh bread. Then bring me the bread. And do you mind very much, Mrs. Ellins, if I have those Papa Gontier roses removed? They clash with an otherwise perfect color scheme, and you've no idea how sensitive I am to such jarring notes. Besides, their perfume is so beastly obtrusive. At times I've been made quite ill by them. Really."

"Take them away, Jevons," says Mrs. Robert, smotherin' a sarcastic smile.

"Huh!" grumbles Mr. Robert. "What a rotter you are, Forsythe. If I could only get you aboard the Narcissus for a ten-day cruise! I'd introduce you to perfumes, the sort you could lean up against. You know, when a boat has carried mature fish for—"

"Please, Bob!" protests Forsythe. "We all admit you're a hero, and that you've been saving the country, but don't let's have the disgusting details; at least, not when the salad dressing is at its most critical stage."

Havin' said which, Forsythe proceeds to finish what was for him a hard day's work.

Discussin' his likes and dislikes was Forsythe's strong hold, and, if you could believe him, he had more finicky notions than a sanatorium full of nervous wrecks. He positively couldn't bear the sight of this, the touch of that, and the sound of the other thing. The rustle of a newspaper made him so fidgety he could hardly sit still. The smell of boiled cabbage made him faint. Some one had sent him a plaid neck-tie for Christmas. He had ordered his man to pick it up with the fire-tongs and throw it in the ash-can. Things like that.

All through luncheon we listened while Forsythe described the awful agonies he'd gone through. We had to listen. You can guess what a joy that was. And, all the

time, I could watch Mr. Robert gettin' sorer and sorer.

"Entertainin' party, eh ?" I remarks on the side, as we escapes from the dinin'-room.

"Forsythe," says Mr. Robert, "is one of those persons you're always wanting to kick and never do. I could generally avoid him at the club, but here—"

Mr. Robert shrugs his shoulders. Then he adds:

"I say, Torchy, you have clever ideas now and then."

"Who, me?" says I. "Some one's been kiddin' you."

"Perhaps," says he; "but if anything should occur to you that might help toward putting Forsythe in a position where real work and genuine discomfort couldn't be dodged—well, I should be deeply grateful."

"What a cruel thought!" says I. "Still, if a miracle like that could be pulled, it would be entertainin' to watch. Eh?"

"Especially if it had to do with handling cold, slippery things," chuckles Mr. Robert, "like iced eels or pickles."

Then we both grins. I was tryin' to picture Forsythe servin' a sentence as helper in a fish market or assistant stirrer in a soap fact'ry. Not that anything like that could happen through me. Who was I to interfere with a brilliant drawin'-room performer like him? Honest, with Forsythe scintillatin' around, I felt like a Bolsheviki of the third class. And yet, the longer I watched him, the more I mulled over that hint Mr. Robert had thrown out.

I WAS still wonderin' if I was all hollow above the eyes, when our placid afternoon gatherin' is busted complete by a big cream-colored limousine rollin' through the porte-cochère and a new arrival breezin' in. From the way Jevons swells his chest out as he helps her shed the mink-lined motor coat, I guessed she must be somebody important.

"Why, it's Miss Gorman!" whispers Vee.

"Not the Miss Gorman—Miss Jane?" I says.

Vee nods, and I stretches my neck out another kink. Who wouldn't? Not just because she's a society head-liner, or the richest old maid in the country, but because she's such a wonder at gettin' things done. You know, I expect—Red Cross work, suffrage campaignin', Polish relief. Say, I'll bet if she could be turned loose in Mexico or Russia for a couple of months, she'd have things runnin' as smooth as a directors' meetin' of the Standard Oil.

Look at the things she's put through, since the war started, just by crashin' right in and stayin' on the job. They say she keeps four secretaries with their suitcases packed, ready to jump into their travelin' clothes and slide down the pole when she pushes the buzzer button.

And now she's makin' straight for Mr. Robert.

"What luck!" says she. "I wasn't at all sure of finding you. How much leave have you? Only until Monday morning? Oh, you overworked naval officers! But you must find some men for me, Robert; two, at least. I need them at once."

"Might I ask, Miss Jane," says he, "if any particular qualifications are—"

"What I would like," breaks in Miss Gorman, "would be two active, intelligent young men with some initiative and executive ability. You see, I am giving a going away dinner for some soldiers of the Rainbow Division who are about to be sent to the transports. It's an official secret, of course. No one is supposed to know that they are going to sail soon, but every one does know. None of their friends or relatives are to be allowed to be there to wish them God-speed or anything like that, and they need cheering up just now. So I arrange one of these dinners when I can. My plans for this one, however, have been terribly rushed."

"I see," says Mr. Robert. "And it's perfectly bully of you, Miss Jane. Splendid! I suppose there'll be a hundred or so."

"Six eighty," says she, never battin' an eye. "We are not including the officers—only privates. And we don't want one of them to lift a finger for it. They've had enough fatigue duty. This time they're to be guests—honored guests. I have permission from the Brigadier in command. We are to have one of the mess halls for a whole day. The chef and waiters have been engaged, too. And an orchestra. But there'll be so many to manage—the telling of who to go where, and seeing that the entertainers don't get lost, and that the little dinner favors are put around, and all those details. So I must have help."

I could see Mr. Robert rollin' his eyes around for me, so I steps up. Just from hearin' her talk a couple of minutes I'd caught the fever. That's a way she has, I understand. So the next thing I knew I'd been patted on the shoulder and taken on as a volunteer.

"Precisely the sort of assistant I was hoping for," says Miss Gorman. "I can tell by his hair. I know just what I shall ask him to do. But there'll be so much more; decorating the tables, and—"

Here I nudges Mr. Robert. "How about Forsythe?" I suggests.

"Eh?" says he. "Why—why— By Jove, though! Why not? Oh, I say, Forsythe! Just a moment."

MAYBE the same thought struck him as had come to me, which is that helpin' Miss Jane give a blowout to near seven hundred soldiers wouldn't be any rest-cure stunt. She's rated at about ninety horse-power herself, when she's speeded up, and anybody that happens to be on her staff has got to keep movin' in high. They'd have to be ready to tackle anything that turned up, too.

But, to hear Mr. Robert explain it to Forsythe, you'd think it was just that his fame as an arranger of floral center-pieces had spread until Miss Gorman has decided nobody else would do.

"Although, heaven knows, I never suspected you could be really useful, Forsythe," says Mr. Robert. "But if Miss Jane thinks you'd be a help—"

"Oh, I am sure Mr. Hurd would be the very one," puts in Miss Gorman.

Concluded on page 15

FOUR MOTHERS

WHERE THE SUMMER STARS WINTER

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LOCAL MAGNATES

Concluded from page 10

"At last!" says Forsythe, strikin' a pose. "My virtues are about to be discovered. I shall be delighted to assist you, Miss Gorman, in any way."

"Tut, tut, Forsythe!" says Mr. Robert. "Don't be too reckless. Miss Jane might take you at your word."

"Go on. Slander me," says Forsythe. "Say that, when enlisted in a noble cause, I am a miserable shirker."

"Indeed, I shouldn't believe a word of it, even if I had time to listen to him," declares Miss Jane. "And I must be at the camp within an hour. I shall need one of you young men now. Let me see. Suppose I take this one—Torchy, isn't it? Get your coat. I'll not promise to have you back for dinner, but I'll try. Thank you so much, Robert."

AND then it was a case of goin' on from there. Whew! I've sort of had the notion now and then, when I've been operatin' with Old Hickory Ellins at the Corrugated Trust on busy days, that I was some rapid-fire private sec. But say, havin' followed Miss Jane Gorman through them dinner preliminaries, I know better.

While that French chauffeur of hers is rollin' us down Long Island at from forty to fifty miles per hour, she has her notebook out and is pumpin' me full of things I'm expected to remember—what train the chef's gang is comin' on, how the supplies are to be carted over, who to see about knockin' up a stage for the cabaret talent, and where the buntin' has been ordered. I borrows a pad and pencil, and wishes I knew shorthand.

By the time we lands at the camp, though, I have a fair idea of the job she's tackled; and while she's havin' an interview with the C. O. I starts explorin' the scene of the banquet. First off I finds that the mess-hall seats less than five hundred, the way they got the tables fixed; that there's no room for a stage without breakin' through one end and tackin' it on; and that the camp cooks will have the range ovens full of bread and the tops covered with oatmeal in double boilers as usual. Outside of that and a few other things, the arrangements was lovely.

Miss Jane ain't a bit disturbed when I makes my report.

"There!" says she. "Didn't I say you were just the assistant I needed? Now, please tell all those things to the Brigadier. He will know exactly what to do. Then you'd best be out here early Monday morning to see that they're done properly. And I think, Torchy, I shall make you my general manager for this occasion. Yes, I'll do it. Every one will report first to you, and you will tell them exactly where to go and what to do."

"You—you mean," says I, gaspin' a bit, "all the hired help?"

"And the volunteers too," says Miss Jane. "Every one."

"Oh, very well," says I.

MAYBE I grinned. I didn't know just how it was goin' to work out, but I could feel something comin'. Forsythe was goin' to get his. He stood to get it good, too. Not all on account of what I owed Mr. Robert for the friendly turns he'd done me. Some of it would be on my own hook, to pay up for the yawny half hours I'd had to sit through listenin' while Forsythe discoursed about himself. You should have seen the satisfied look on Mr. Robert's face when I hinted how Forsythe might be in line for new sensations.

"If I could only be there to watch!" says he. "You must tell me all about it afterwards. They'll enjoy hearing of it at the club."

But, at that, Forsythe wasn't the one to walk right into trouble. He's a shifty party, and he ain't been duckin' work all these years without gettin' expert at it. Accordin' to schedule he was to show up at the camp about nine-thirty Monday morning; but it's nearer noon when he rolls up in his car. And I don't hesitate a bit about givin' him the call.

"You know it's this week, not next," says I, "that this dinner is comin' off. And there's four bolts of buntin' waitin' to be hung up."

"Quite so," says Forsythe. "We must get to work right away."

I had to chase down to the station again then, to see that the chef's outfit was bein' loaded on the trucks; but I was cheered up by the thought of Forsythe balanced on top of a tall step-ladder with his mouth full of tacks and his collar gettin' wilty.

It's near an hour before I gets back, though. Do I find Forsythe in his shirt sleeves climbin' around on the rafters? I do not. He's sittin' comfortable in a camp-chair on a fur motor robe, smokin' a cigarette calm, and surrounded by half a dozen classy young ladies that he's rounded up by 'phone from the nearest country club. The girls and three or four chauffeurs are doin' the work, while Forsythe is doin' the heavy directin'.

He'd sketched out his decoratin' scheme on the back of an envelop, and now he was tellin' 'em how to carry it out. The worst of it is, too, that he's gettin' some stunnin' effects and is bein' congratulated enthusiastic by the girls.

It's the same way with fixin' up the tables with ferns and flowers. Forsythe plans it out with a pencil, and his crew do the hustlin' around.

Course, I had to let it ride. Besides, there was a dozen other things for me to look after. But I'm good at a waitin' game. I kept my eye on Forsythe, to see that he didn't slip away. He was still there at two-thirty, havin' organized a picnic luncheon with the young ladies, when Miss Jane blew in. And blamed if she don't fall for Forsythe's stuff, too.

"Why, you've done wonders, Mr. Hurd," says she. "What a versatile genius you are!"

"Oh, that!" says he, wavin' a sandwich careless. "But it's an inspiration to be doing anything at all for you, Miss Gorman."

And here he hasn't so much as shed his overcoat.

IT must have been half an hour later when Sig. Zaretti, the head chef, comes huntin' me out with a desperate look in his eyes. I was consultin' Miss Jane about borrowin' a piano from the Y. M. C. A. tent, but he kicks right in.

"Ah, I am distract," says he, puffin' out his cheeks. "Eet—eet ees too mooch!"

"Go on," says I. "Shoot the tragedy. What's too much?"

"That Pedro and that Salvatore," says he. "They have become lost, the worthless ones. They disappear on me. And in three hours I am to serve, in this crude place, a dinner of six courses to seven hundred men. They abandon me at such a time, with so much to be done."

"Well, that's up to you," says I. "Can't some of your crowd double in brass? What about workin' in some of your waiters?"

"But they are all employed," says Zaretti. "Besides, the union does not permit. If you could assist me with two men, even one. I implore."

"There ain't a cook in sight," says I. "Sorry, but—"

"Eet ees not for cook," he protests. "No; only to help make the peel from those so many potatoes. One who could make the peel. Please!"

"Oh!" says I. "Peelin' potatoes? Why, 'most anybody could help out at that, I guess. I would myself if—"

"No," breaks in Miss Jane. "You can not be spared. And I'm sure I don't know who could."

"Unless," I puts in, "Mr. Hurd is all through with his decoratin'."

"Why, to be sure," says she. "Just tell him, will you?"

"Suppose I send him over to you, Miss Gorman," says I, "while I hustle along that piano?"

She nods, and I loses no time trailin' down Forsythe.

"Emergency call for you from Miss Jane," says I, edgin' in among his admirers and tappin' him on the shoulder. "She's waitin' over by headquarters."

"Oh, certainly," says Forsythe, startin' off brisk.

"And say," I calls after him, "I hope it won't be anything that'll make you faint."

"Please don't worry about me," says he.

WELL, I tried not to. In fact, I tried so hard that some folks might have thought I'd heard good news from home. But I'd had a peek or two into the camp kitchen since Zaretti's food construction squad had moved in, and, believe me, it was no place for an artistic temperament subject to creeps up the back. There was about a ton of cold-storage turkeys bein' unpacked, bushels of onions goin' through the shuckin' process, buckets of soup stock standin' around, and half a dozen murderous-lookin' assistant chefs was sharpenin' long knives and jabberin' excited in four languages.

Oh, yes; Forsythe was goin' to need all the inspiration he'd collected, if he lasted through.

I kind of wanted to stick around and cheer him up with friendly words while he was fishin' potatoes out of the cold water and learnin' to use a peelin'-knife, but my job wouldn't let me. After I'd seen the piano landed on the new stage, there were chairs to be placed for the orchestra, and then other things. So it was some little time before I got around to the kitchen wing again, pretendin' to be lookin' for Zaretti. But nowhere in that steamin', hustlin', garlic-smellin' bunch could I see Forsythe.

"Hey, chef!" I sings out. "Where's that expert potato-peeler I sent you?"

"Ah!" says he, rubbin' his hands enthusiastic. "The signor with the yellow gloves? In the tent there you will find heem."

So I steps over to the door of a sort of canvas annex and peers in. And say, it was a rude shock. Forsythe is there, all right. He's snuggled up cozy next to an oil heater, holdin' a watch in one hand and a cigarette in the other, while around him is grouped his faithful fluff body-guard, each with a pan in her lap and the potato-peelin's comin' off rapid. Forsythe? Oh, he seems to be speedin' 'em up and keepin' tally.

I'd just let out my second gasp when I feels somebody at my elbow, and glances round to find it's Miss Jane.

"Look!" says I, indicatin' Forsythe and his busy bees.

"What a picture!" says Miss Jane.

"Yes," says I, "illustratin' the manly art of lettin' the women do it."

Miss Jane laughs easy.

"It has been that way for ages," says she. "Mr. Hurd is only running true to type. But see! The potatoes are nearly all peeled and our dinner is going to be served on time. What splendid assistants you've both been!"

At that, though, if there'd been a medal to be passed out, I guess it would have been pinned on Forsythe.

This is the Place Where—

THIS cross marks the place where the white man first set up his rule in California. It was here on a hill overlooking a bay that Junipero Serra, a Franciscan friar, and a few followers founded a mission on July 16, 1769, naming it San Diego. Eighty-one years later California had passed from Spanish dominion and had entered the Union, being the eighteenth State admitted into the federation formed by the original thirteen. On the 144th anniversary of the founding of the settlement, San Diegans dug into the débris on the site of the old mission, and from the fragments of adobe tiles unearthed built this cross. In those 144 years California's population had grown from Serra's handful of men to nearly 3,000,000.

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

SOME BUSINESS MEN ARE HEROES

A MAN who lives on a glass of hot water for breakfast, a little fruit for lunch, and some vegetables for dinner might be set down as a starving poet or an over-zealous supporter of the Food Administration. But, strangely enough, this is an outline of the daily habits of John H. Patterson, president of the National Cash Register Company, and one of the country's most untiring workers and successful business men.

Mr. Patterson is known for a great many things besides being a teetotal vegetarian. He is known for "coddling" his employees by building them golf courses and shower-baths, for reforming the politics of Dayton, Ohio, for opening his huge estate to the public for picnics and play-grounds. But most of all he is known for his generalship during the Dayton flood of 1913, when most of the city was submerged under seventeen feet of water. Mr. Patterson emerged from the flood with the title of the "savior of Dayton." A description of his titanic efforts is given by B. C. Forbes in Men Who Are Making America:

"It was Patterson who, hours before the flood came, by telephone, by telegraph, by horseback, by automobile, by foot messenger,—by every means of communication that could be impressed,—aroused the whole city to its impending danger and gave instructions how to prepare for the coming avalanche of water.

"It was Patterson, too, who summoned his executive and other force to Industrial Hall, mounted the stage, and, showing his famous pyramidical chart illustrating the organization of the company, announced: 'I declare the National Cash Register Company out of commission, and I proclaim the Citizens' Relief Association.' With a piece of charcoal he sketched a diagram of the Relief Association, naming a head for each division of the work, and instructing them how to proceed.

"From the Patterson factory came rafts and boats—constructed of materials taken from his immense lumber-yards—at the rate of one every seven minutes.

"By common consent, Patterson became the acknowledged dictator of the whole rescue work. Never did military general direct forces with more skill, with more rapidity, or to more effect. So brilliantly did he command that when General Wood and Secretary of War Garrison rushed to the scene and viewed the functioning of the Patterson emergency machine, they announced: 'We can do nothing beyond what you are doing.'"

RODIN LOVED AMERICA

RODIN modeled beauty, not ideas. Those who hunt down subtle meanings in his work will go astray. His friend Frank Rutter in the London Outlook says:

"All Rodin's finest works have been plastically conceived—that is to say, they were inspired by his own vision of form rather than by any clearly held idea. A few days after our call at the Rue de l'Université, I visited the sculptor at his home in Meudon. As he conducted me round the great glass-domed studio I could not help noting that the wooden pedestals supporting his heads and small figures were covered with pencil jottings of titles.

"Rodin explained quite simply that he was usually indebted to his friends for the titles of his works, and gave as an example the history of his 'John the Baptist.'

"One morning, it appeared, his model had totally failed to take up a satisfactory pose till, Rodin having dismissed him in despair, he strode across the room to pick up his things and go.

"His movement was admirable. 'Stop,' cried the sculptor. 'Stay as you are, and hold it'—and he began his sketch.

"When the statue was finished, Rodin had no idea but to exhibit it as 'A Man Walking.' But soon after it was finished in came his friend Octave Mirbeau, who, in one breath, pronounced it to be splendid and, of course and unmistakably, John the Baptist.

"'It was an idea,' Rodin confessed to me, 'and I wrote the name down at once for fear that I might forget it.'

"After that, whenever literary friends came to his studio and explained to the sculptor what his works were and meant, the wise old artist preserved a non-committal silence, kept his pencil stumps handy, and made surreptitious notes of titles likely to be useful, for fear that he might forget them."

Rodin loved America. Only a couple of years ago he said to Jules Bois: "America is the only country which I should like to visit, if I were not already too old, if France were not so dear to me, and if I were not detained here by my children"—he pointed to his statues. "It would be a pilgrimage of gratitude; for that great country befriended me before all the other countries.

If all I am I owe to France, my mother, America has often come to me as a message of hope. And in hours of depression I heard her generous voice calling to me: 'Forward, Rodin! If the present is forbidding, the future smiles on you from afar.'"

IF YOU MUST WEAR FURS, RAISE THEM

THE lonely trapper of other days is going out. The chances are that your new fox furs came from a farm, just as your potatoes did, or your breakfast egg. Fox farms, mink farms, skunk farms, all are becoming common throughout Canada and the northern United States. It is well that this is true.

Ned Dearborn, in the American Museum Journal, says that, owing to the gradual cultivation of wild lands and the tremendous modern demand for furs, the number of fur-bearing animals is steadily decreasing. Luckily, these animals are easily domesticated, and their furs seem to be of equally good quality when they are raised in captivity. Skunks are particularly easy to raise.

"To-day the number of skunk breeders in this country is greater than that of all the other breeders of fur animals combined. This pretty animal is easily tamed, and aside from its one objectionable feature, the offensive scent glands, which can be removed easily, makes quite as pleasing a pet as a kitten. Its habit of remaining in its den during the severe winter months simplifies the work of caring for it. The trade in skunk furs alone amounts in the United States to three million dollars a year, slightly exceeding in value the mink industry."

Foxes are anything but simple to care for. Experienced breeders keep them as nearly wild as possible. They live in long wire inclosures, with plenty of room in which to run and to dig. Their houses have crooked entrances, imitating the tortuous passage into a fox's burrow. They are temperamental to the tips of their tails, and have to be treated with constant tact to keep their digestions and dispositions in order.

"In choosing a site for the farm, the first consideration is climate, which has much to do with the character of the fur produced. A long cold season and at least a moderate rainfall are important.

"A short hot summer is not detrimental if followed by a season of frosty weather, during which the animals renew their coats."

DO WOMEN LACK COURAGE?

BOTH parents and colleges receive a rebuke from Helen Marie Bennett in her book, Women and Work (D. Appleton & Company), both being greatly to blame for the educated girl's difficulty after graduation in finding herself and her work. "Parents," says Miss Bennett (Miss Bennett is manager of the Chicago Collegiate Bureau of Occupations), "parents and colleges discourage the spirit of adventure in girls. They talk glowingly and proudly of grandmothers who lived in frontier lands; and yet, when their own girls develop venturesome tastes, parents lift hands in horror. The truth is, the girls need more of the old-time valor. They need to be encouraged to go forth and find, to leave behind their fearfulness and indecision. A college graduate confided to a vocational adviser her great desire to go to California.

"'Why don't you go?' said the adviser.

"'Why,' said the girl, amazed, 'I have no position there.'

"'You might get one after you arrived,' was suggested.

"The girl fairly quailed with horror.

"'I couldn't think of going away out there,' she panted, 'unless I knew before I started that I had a position.'"

The author goes on to say that this girl had no college debts, no family obligations, perfect health, and the ability to command a fairly good salary. Yet she shrank from trying her fortunes in so civilized a country as California.

The author does not altogether accept the psychological tests for applicants worked out with mathematical precision by Dr. Hugo Münsterberg and others.

"Humanity," she says, "can not be standardized. There is too much of the personal, too much of the spiritual, which defies tests and instruments, questionnaires and card catalogues." For the most part, she would judge applicants "through the application of common sense, a study of humanity, and a knowledge of the old-time beliefs which people for ages have applied in the effort to estimate each other for certain tasks."

---

BEWARE OF FAIRY TALES

"EVERY ugly thing told to the child, every shock, every fright given him, will remain like minute splinters in the flesh to torture him all his life long," says Angelo Mosso, the famous Italian scientist.

The remark is quoted by H. Addington Bruce, who gives in Handicaps of Childhood (Dodd, Mead & Company) a very interesting instance of the fact that ill-chosen fairy tales told to children are often at the basis of much later mental suffering.

A young man of thirty came to Dr. Brill.

"Ever since my boyhood," he related, "I have fainted at seeing blood. Now I feel weak and dizzy, and sometimes I faint outright, at anything which merely brings to my mind the thought of blood. I am afraid to talk to certain people, because they may speak of accidents that will bring the blood thought to my mind."

The young man had no clinical record that would account for the fear. Psychological analyses ultimately brought the truth to light. His fear, they revealed, had its beginnings in certain fairy stories told him by his nurse in childhood—especially the story of Bluebeard and another story of a false princess who was rolled in a barrel into which long pointed spikes had been driven.

As he had grown older, the memory of the stories had faded, but subconsciously their influence remained.

SPIDERS DO NOT WATCH FOR PREY

A SPIDER gets all her news by telephone, and listens with her hind leg. When you see a spider dart out after a hapless fly, it is natural to imagine that a policy of watchful waiting has brought her her prey. But the contrary is true. Through the hot hours of the day the spider retires to a dark retreat, often built many feet away from the web. She goes into it head first, leaving only her hind quarters protruding.

Suddenly an insect becomes enmeshed in her web. Without a second's hesitation, the spider shoots out, traverses the complicated cross-roads of her web, and seizes her next meal. How did she know the fly was there? By telephonic connection, says J. Henri Fabre in Insect Adventures (Dodd, Mead & Company). From the exact central point of the web a finely spun thread runs to the tip of one of the spider's hind legs protruding from her cool retreat. Every vibration from every radial spoke of the web is transmitted to the center and along this thread. After delivering its message the thread serves also as a rope-ladder by which the spider hurries to the scene of action.

"The web is often shaken by the wind," says Fabre. "The signaling-cord must pass this vibration to the spider. Nevertheless she does not leave her hut, and remains indifferent at the commotion prevailing in the net. She can tell the difference between the vibration proceeding from a prisoner and the mere shaking caused by the wind."

THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD

ONE REASON FOR THE COAL SHORTAGE

WILL BELGIUM EVER RECOVER?

SEVENTY-FIVE hundred thousand Belgians are today within the German lines, absolutely cut off from contact with the rest of the world. Everybody knows of the sturdy army of 100,000 that kept at bay the first military empire of Europe, but few of us know about the million of loyal Belgians putting up to-day perhaps a harder fight on the enemy's side of the firing line. In Through the Iron Bars (G. P. Putnam's Sons) Emile Cammaerts traces the development of German Kultur in Belgium from the days when Baron von der Goltz announced that he "asked no one to renounce his patriotic feelings," to the régime of General von Bissing, when to invest in a patriotic postal card became an act of treason. Before the war, in proportion to her population, Belgium was the richest country in Europe. In the early days of the occupation Germany modestly demanded only food-stuffs, cattle, horses, and fodder; to-day Germany drains from her twenty million pounds a year.

The German occupation, of course, brought Belgian industry to a standstill and threw thousands of workers out of employment. The Germans offered these men as much as ten dollars a day, but they decided to live on half wages or with the assistance of the "Comité National" rather than to "accept any work which might directly or indirectly help the occupying power." "The strike of the folded arms," it was called. But the Germans were desperate for manual labor, and on May 30, 1915, the following notice was posted in the town of Malines:

"The town of Malines must be punished as long as the required number of workmen have not resumed work."

Then the invaders began requisitioning men, just as they had cattle and fodder in the early days. At first only the unemployed were seized, and every one was assured that he would not be employed in war work or deported to Germany. Soon these myths were discarded. In a few months the list of deportees increased to 200,000. Such messages as this steal back from the workers: "They will have to make us fast a long time before we consent to work for the king of Prussia." From the slave-trains bearing the deported, the men shout back to their friends: "Do not sign an engagement to work in Germany; do not sign a compromise."

Emile Cammaerts thinks they would respond to the offers of a German peace with the same shout: "Do not sign—do not sign a German peace!"

REPRIMANDING THACKERAY

WHEN Thackeray came to this country, in the early fifties, he brought letters of introduction to Dr. Lothrop, pastor of the old Brattle Street Church in Boston, and father of a very vivacious young woman. At the dinner-table, the first evening, according to the Journal of Thomas R. Sullivan (Houghton, Mifflin Company), Thackeray pushed back his chair when the meal was over and said:

"I suppose this is the moment when you Yankees put your feet on the table."

There was a pause of breathless indignation, no one knowing quite what to say, and then Miss Lothrop replied:

"'In that case, Mr. Thackeray, the mantelpiece is the only place for yours.' Now, Thackeray was very sensitive about his figure; he was not only very tall, but his legs were absurdly long. He accordingly turned purple with rage, and retorted: 'Miss Lothrop, that is the first rude word spoken to me in America.' 'Very well, Mr. Thackeray,' said she; 'if you go on as you have begun, the American girl will not let it be the last.'

"The next morning, very early, his card was handed in 'for Miss Lothrop.' She found him in the drawing-room. 'I have come,' he said, 'to see if you are ready to apologize.' 'Apologize? For what?' 'Why, for your rudeness to me last night.' 'Oh, with pleasure, if you will begin by apologizing to me.' But he would not, and, though their acquaintance continued pleasantly, the first little tiff was never quite forgotten."

HAVE YOU A HOUSEHOLD FILE?

WITHOUT an office file the husband's business office would be upside down in no time. Why, not a household file for the wife? asks the Housewife's Magazine, and proceeds to think up a dozen uses for it.

The family snap-shots. Where are they? Scattered over a dozen different drawers and pigeonholes, probably.

The family recipes. No more hunting through dusty books.

The piano music, which has to be pored over so many times to discover the one piece that is wanted.

Not to speak of the wife's bills and receipts and returned checks.

THE MUSIC TEACHER IN THE SMALL TOWN

A MUSIC teacher's lot is not a happy one—especially in a small town. Parents are apt to be her worst enemy. She may have an ambition to introduce Sarah May to some of the musical classics; but if Sarah May's mother has determined that her daughter's career shall stop with the "Maiden's Prayer" the ambitious teacher will likely lose her pupil.

Max Schoen, in Musical America, tells of one teacher whose "attention was called to a very young girl living 'somewhere out in the woods' who displayed a remarkable talent for the piano. She persuaded the parents to let the child have some lessons, and she was elated over the remarkable progress of the girl. However, all her hopes came to naught when the parents gave her to understand that Effie was given a piano and lessons to enable her to play hymns, and nothing else but hymns."

"A second source of worry and annoyance to the small-town music teacher is the attitude of the community toward its home musical talent. The violinist, pianist, or vocalist is looked upon as a sort of free-for-all public utility. It often happens, and why nobody can tell, that the home talent will be asked to play without pay at some function, and if they refuse outside talent will be brought in at double expense."

Well, What's New in Your Line?

By JAMES H. COLLINS

Illustration by Jessie Gillespie

GOVERNMENT departments at Washington are supposed to be dry and bureaucratic.

Maybe!

One morning, not long ago, the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic battleship fleet paid a formal call upon the Paymaster-General of the Navy, bringing a message from a Vice-Admiral of the British navy to the effect that the latter wished to express his appreciation of the efficient way in which the United States navy supply ships were feeding British sailors at sea, in the submarine zone.

Now, running those supply ships is part of the Paymaster-General's job. Within an hour the news was mimeographed as an intra-bureau order, and passed around among the hundreds of workers in his organization, as commendation for good work in which each officer, yeoman, and typist was entitled to share—something to make them feel good and do better work.

They pay a great deal of attention to inside news nowadays in many business organizations. The telephone, electric light, trolley, and railroad corporations, with employees scattered over wide territory, publish periodicals to keep their people posted on what is happening, and to inspire them with the spirit of the company, interpret its policies and rules, and explain technicalities of work. Industrial and mercantile concerns publish similar periodicals for employees—"house organs," as they are called; and there are perhaps a thousand of these published throughout the United States.

The hunger for news is human—basic. If people who work for you can not get some notion of what it is all about, through a "house organ" or a systematic scheme of reports, they will make their own news, and get things all wrong, as gossip, rumor, prejudice, misrepresentation. Authoritative publication of your own business news makes for straight thinking as well as inspiration.

"I wish we could do something like that!" said the general manager of a little factory some months ago, enviously showing his secretary a handsomely printed employees' magazine just started by their biggest competitor.

The secretary asked if she might read it, and took it home. The next morning she was positive that they could do just as well, barring the expensive typography.

"We have just as interesting happenings around this shop," she insisted. "You write better than the editor who made up this house organ, for I've taken half a dozen good statements about our business from letters you've dictated the past week. Here they are; and we've got a mimeograph, and I propose that we get out a weekly bulletin for our own folks."

Which proved to be better than the printed monthly periodical of their big competitor, because it cost less, and could be written more easily and published oftener.

Everybody connected with a business concern wants to know what's going on generally, as readers, whether the concern be large or small.

And in many a large concern there are a few people who might use business news themselves, as writers and publishers.

For example, a department manager in a big industrial concern felt that his staff was doing extraordinary work unnoticed—indeed, against the indifference of other departments, and without attention from the president. Sometimes this feeling burst out openly.

"Aw—what's the use?" one of them protested, one evening when a little extra work that night would complete a big job and send it out a week ahead of schedule. "Nobody ever knows it outside of this department, and we never get any credit."

This set the manager thinking. Nobody knew, perhaps, because nobody had ever been told. He himself had never written even a brief statement of the time saved on any job. True, nobody had ever asked him what his department was doing. But why wait to be asked? Suppose a statement about this job were drawn up in the form of a report and passed around the works?

That night the job was finished. Before going home himself, the manager took a pad and pencil and wrote a comprehensive diary account of the whole performance, giving the date that the work began, the progress from week to week, the number of days and hours that went into it all told, the number of men, and a statement showing how previous records had been beaten and materials economized. Next morning this was mimeographed as a report about nothing in general, and passed around among his own men.

Before night the president sent for a copy, and other departments woke up to the fact that the men in that particular department were celebrating, and wanted to hear about it too.

The president confessed that he was astonished to learn that one of his executives had been doing such unusual work. He commended the report, and suggested that other departments issue similar statements when they had anything they were proud of.

In a few months this scheme of occasional reports grew into a regular organization newspaper, and today everybody in that concern knows what others are doing, and finds a live reading audience of fellow workers for his own achievements.

What's going on in your line? Are you telling people about it?

Some Foods We Ought to Eat These Thrifty Days

AMONG the foods that we neglect most disrespectfully, none deserves better treatment at our hands than the ever-present dandelion. How many people know that this lowly weed is perfectly delicious, eaten either as a salad, or boiled as spinach and served with olive oil, salt, and pepper?

The dandelion green is also rich in a medical principle (taraxacum) which exerts a tonic influence upon the kidneys and promotes the activity of the stomach and intestines. The water in which the dandelion greens are boiled may be freely drunk (a glassful at a time, hot) for the same beneficial purpose.

The coarse outside leaves of lettuce, romaine, or chicory, and the beet and celery tops—all of which are usually thrown out—are also excellent, boiled and served as a vegetable.

Certain species of seaweed are also valuable in this same connection—not so much for their intrinsic food value as for their digestion-stimulating bulk, and for certain lubricating and other qualities that they possess. The Japanese—forced by over-population to eat anything that didn't bite them first—long ago discovered the edibility and the value of seaweed, and now use it extensively, making up the agar, or gelatinous base of the seaweed, into various combinations of food products and confectionery.

But our dietetic waste is not confined to vegetables, by any means. People who live at the seashore often overlook the lowly mussel. I confess that, though I have been going to the shore for many years, I never tasted a mussel until last summer, when an Italian friend who was visiting my home gathered a pailful from one of the numerous mussel beds that we had been swimming, rowing, and wading over for years, scrubbed them carefully, put them in a pan with a little olive oil and a suspicion of garlic, and steamed them.

Not one per cent of summer visitors to the seashore ever go fishing. Yet there is no more healthful exercise, and none more profitable. For if we ate fish in this country in the same proportionate amounts as Englishmen and Germans and Japanese do, we should use much less meat and all be healthier.

EDWIN F. BOWERS, M. D.

See the Body Think

IF you could have strapped to your arm all day an instrument for measuring blood pressure, the record it would make would surprise you at the day's end.

You would discover that every single thought, every emotion, every bit of concentrated effort, whether mental or physical, was registered in your arteries. That moment of impatience because the coffee was cold raised your blood pressure for an instant. The little run you had to make to catch the train—that too is there. The irritation that came over you when the telephone rang in the midst of an important conversation—your arteries felt that also.

In the diagram above you have a half-hour blood-pressure record of a young woman of twenty-two, a university student and an athlete. Each space along the horizontal line indicates five minutes of time; each space on the vertical line marks ten blood-pressure units. Look at the chart—this is what happened:

The young woman came in, sat down, and was invited to relax. For five minutes she sat completely at ease, and during that period her blood pressure declined appreciably. In the sixth minute she was told that a problem in mental arithmetic was to be given her, and at once there was a little added tension. In the tenth minute the problem was stated—the multiplication of 98 by 76. In the next two minutes her blood pressure jumped twenty points. The remainder of the chart shows the mind at work in the solution of the problem, and its complete relaxation, combined with some fatigue, at the end.

When your mind thinks, your whole body thinks also. Your arteries are catching and recording every mental movement. Remember that when you are tempted to worry or hurry or overdo.

GEORGE VAN NESS DEARBORN.

How J. P. Morgan Handled an Offender

THERE is no better test of a man's bigness than his way of handling subordinates who make mistakes. J. P. Morgan the elder had a clerk who, living beyond his means, sought to make up the balance through speculation; and, having failed, helped himself to the firm's money. "The culprit was called into Mr. Morgan's private office," says J. Horace Hazeltine in Forbes' Magazine.

"He expected arrest. Instead he was told to go home and tell his wife all about it. 'And to-morrow morning,' said Mr. Morgan, 'see me again.' The clerk obeyed, and Mr. Morgan, to the young fellow's amazement, handed him in bills the full amount of his peculation—$5,400—with: 'Put that back where you took the other from. It is a loan from me, and I expect you to return it as soon as you can. None of the other clerks know anything about it. Let me see if you can't be a man.'

"After many months the youngster restored to Mr. Morgan the last dollar of the debt. After counting a pile of bills on his desk to which he had added those just given him, Mr. Morgan observed: 'Well, my boy, it was a bit harder saving it than losing it, I'll warrant. Now, take it home and give it to your wife. It's a safe bet that she saved most of it.' That's the kind of a man J. Pierpont Morgan was."

Couldn't You Use a Note-Book in Your Business?

A PLUMBER in a Western city heard so many jokes about plumbers having to "go back for tools" that he decided he would make a reputation for himself. Accordingly, says Arthur Hallam in System, when any of his men are called to a house, they carry a note-book and take careful notes of the position and condition of all pipes and fixtures. Then, when the next call comes, they know exactly what to take: also, they know exactly what fixtures are wearing out, and have a first-class selling talk for the purchase of new fixtures. Isn't there some way that you could use a note-book in your business?

The President Keeps Smiling

Concluded from page 5

hear on what terms the people of the United States would talk peace with the Central Powers.

THERE were pretty frequent references to him as the "school-teacher" and the "theorist" in his first term, and he was apparently eager to live down his past as rapidly as possible.

I remember asking him whether he found that the years he had spent as a student of politics helped him in the solution of practical problems: and he was quick to remind me that he had been, not a "student" of politics, but a "teacher" of politics. The word "student" smacked too much of cloistered halls. One hears few references to him as the student and theorist in these days.

In Washington are gathered many of the biggest executives American business has produced: and, while they differ with him often, and criticize this policy and appointment or that, they no longer speak slightingly of his capacity for handling men.

Nor do they fail to recognize the marvelous self-mastery of a man who can so organize a twenty-billion-dollar enterprise as to leave himself free from detail and worry—with plenty of time to take care of his physical well being and the maintenance of his poise and clearness of judgment and mind.

When he works, he works with tremendous concentration. Department heads who send him long memoranda find, when they are returned, his pencil marks in the margin of almost every page; and nearly always the points on which they themselves felt doubtful are the-very points that he has questioned. And when he plays he plays with all his might. No business conversation on the golf course; no business conversation at meals; no business conversation on the train when he makes an occasional trip, like the one to Buffalo to address the trade-union convention. "When ah mourns," said the colored lady with the black underwear, "ah mourns." When Woodrow Wilson plays, he plays.

Watching him there in the theater box, totally immersed in the play, laughing at every possible chance, I thought of the story of the clergyman on the storm-tossed ship.

In response to his terrified inquiries, the captain led him over to the hatchway, and let him look down at the perspiring, swearing men who were manning the pumps.

"When those fellows quit swearing and begin to pray, you'll know we're done for," said the captain. "Keep your eye on them."

So, a few minutes later, the clergyman slipped off and took another look at the men.

"Praise the Lord, Mary," he said to his wife, "they're still swearing."

IT did me good to go to Washington. I think I'll go down again, whenever the waves seem to be rising too high around this old ship of state. I'll pay my two dollars and sit down in an orchestra seat in the theater and watch Woodrow Wilson in the box. And when a joke comes over the footlights and fails to bring any response to his face, I'll begin to worry: and not until then.

For the present, I am glad to be able to announce that his sense of humor is in splendid shape.

Praise the Lord, he's still smiling.

From a Woman Thirty-Six and Unmarried

Dear Editor:

Now that you have done with the married ones, why not "start something" about the unmarried ones—write something for the vast numbers of us?

How about the woman, now thirty-eight, who has never had a proposal? How about a woman, now thirty-six, who has been in love with love for twenty years, and has manoeuvered two proposals, both engagements being broken by the respective men? Neither girl is halt, lame, nor blind. Alone in the world, having neither gifts nor talents, wanting a husband and a home, what are they to do?

You see, the unmarried women are human just like the married ones: they powder their noses, wear tight shoes, and everything. The troubles of your married ones seem slight to me. There is but one trouble for which there is no cure—time but makes it worse. That is, being alone.

In our issue of February 23 we published another letter, also from an unmarried woman; and we promised to devote a whole contest to the unmarried.

If you are of marriageable age, or more, and are not married, why is it? Say what you have to say on the subject, in five hundred words, and mail your letter to the Editor, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York.

The contest closes March 16.

We will pay $5 apiece for letters that we publish. All rejected letters will be destroyed: none can be returned.

Leading Them to It

Another Letter from a Homely Woman

I AM not one of those people who are forever bursting into print, but I can not allow that "Letter to the Editor from a Homely Woman" to get by me unchallenged. Yes, you are right; I am another homely woman: that's why it touched a sore spot. My nose is a most decided "snub," my cheek-bones are too high, and I have an overpowering jawbone—a combination hard to beat for unattractiveness. But I have succeeded by perseverance and a grim determination not to be downed. No, I have not managed to pull out my nose nor massage away my jaw-bone, but I have managed to force them into the background, both in the eyes of my friends and in my own mind.

That is the trouble with our homely friend. She has dwelt on her shortcomings so much that she has lost sight entirely of any attractions she may have. She has the right idea, but is working it backward.

When I was about sixteen I began to realize that, if I were to set the world on fire, I must cast about for some other means than my great beauty; and now, at twenty-five, I would not sacrifice what I have attained for the most beautiful face in the world. "Sour grapes," says our homely friend. No, indeed; not a bit of it.

I have a friend who looks like a blond angel; yet she is always asking me to tell her how to make and keep friends. What good does it do you to attract people who feast their eyes on you for a while, and then go off in a corner to really talk with some homely person who is more interesting?

Can you imagine the anguish of the woman who has only her beauty, when she finds it beginning to melt away before increasing years, like snow before the sun? No; my face is homely, but my hair is brushed until it fairly glistens, and is always neatly and carefully dressed. My mouth is over-wide, but it is filled with snowy, well kept teeth; and my voice is low and full. I avoid cosmetics, jewelry, and fussy clothes like the plague, but am always very simply and modishly dressed. My daily bath and dainty lingerie give me a feeling of well being: no beauty, could enjoy more. I hold my head high, my chin in, and walk like a queen. But, after I have done all this, I promptly forget myself and set out to devote all my thoughts and interests to every one I meet.

I deliberately endeavor to make every one like me, from my own maid to the casual acquaintance I may never meet again. Even the grocery boy doesn't escape. For the time being, I give every person I meet my absolute, undivided, and truly interested attention, and it is perfectly marvelous how every one appreciates it. The dullest seeming person has something interesting in her if you are clever enough to bring it out; while the most famous, brilliant people seldom find a really sympathetic listener. And remember that a merely simulated interest is never convincing. It must be real.

From behind a bulwark like this, one can gaze with equanimity upon the advancing years, knowing that they can not take away, but only deepen and enrich, the priceless gift of charm. Beauty is only a beautifully carved door that too often leads into an empty house.

H. G. T.

This is His Week

NOW and then some exotic spirit, blessed of the gods, but foredoomed to suffering beyond the capacity of others, comes into the world. Frédéric Chopin was one of these. As a child, we are told, when he heard beautiful music he used to cry and beat his hands together helplessly. All his life he suffered from some strange sort of melancholia, his depressions lasting for weeks and months, during which he would hide away from friends, feverishly writing music, much of which he destroyed in hateful dissatisfaction.

At other times—such are the contradictions of genius—he would go about in society, and seem to find pleasure in the fashion and luxury about him, idling away whole half years in jauntings from capital to capital, eating and drinking and dressing and dancing; playing but little and composing not at all.

He had a raft of friends—Liszt, Heine, Berlioz, Mérimée, Myerbeer, Balzac, Dumas, and de Musset—and, as de Lenz tells us, "always half a dozen women in love with him.

George Sand—the "polyandrous Sand"—came into his life in 1837. Their romance lasted three years, at the end of which time they hated each other cordially. Sand deftly turned their love into "copy" in her novel "Lucrezia Floriani." Of her Chopin writes: "I have never cursed any one, but I am near to cursing Lucrezia. But she suffers too, but more because she grows older in wickedness."

The real love of his life, a Polish girl, Marie Wodzinski, he could not marry because of his poverty. When Mlle. Wodzinski's father refused him her hand in marriage, Chopin despairingly composed the tragic sixth prelude in B minor, which in his opinion was his greatest work.

He made money, but spent it recklessly and was always in debt. Contrary to the genus genius, these debts preyed upon his mind. He nourished himself badly, and wrecked his constitution by overwork and catching cold, one of his peculiarities being never to protect himself from rain.

In his last sickness a Scotchwoman, Jane Sterling, came to his rescue with 25,000 francs. At his bedside were other women who loved him, among them the Countess Potocka, in whose arms he died.

George Sand also came to see him, we are told, and cried a great deal. "You once told me," said Chopin to her, "that I should die in no arms but yours."

Chopin knew more about the piano, it is said, than anybody that ever lived.

The War Department's Shock-Absorber

ASSUMING that eventually you will go to Washington to see the Secretary of War, since everybody seems to have business nowadays with Secretary Baker,this is to introduce the man in the outer office, the "official shock-absorber" of a war-time administration.

When Frederick Paul Keppel was dean of the college at Columbia University he had the knack of handling folks, of sending them away satisfied. To-day Dr. Keppel is officially an "assistant to the Secretary of War." In reality he is a "shock-absorber" for the dynamic Newton D. Baker, and probably relieves that overworked Cabinet officer of more surplus worries than any bureau chief or major-general takes from his shoulders.

Dr. Keppel extends the "glad hand" to the public, hears every visitor's tale of trouble, makes engagements for the Secretary of War, separates the wheat from the chaff on the calling list, and is an Assistant Secretary, ironer of ruffled feelings, confidential clerk, and ready letter-writer all rolled into one.

He makes good in the difficult job because he knows people.

He can spot a pest a mile away; he can as quickly diagnose the case of a visitor worth while. This does not mean that all persons who fail to get into the private office of the Secretary of War are pests. Many a well intentioned and deserving person calls upon a matter that may be speedily handled by Dr. Keppel himself or by some officer to whom the visitor may be referred. No matter how fast the callers come, Dr. Keppel never loses his smile or his agreeable mannerisms.

"Now, what can I do for you?" he asks briskly, as he approaches in turn callers seated in the big leather chairs ranged about the four walls of the Baker anteroom. Frequently it is a case of some one who wants to get into or out of the army; again it's a disgruntled contractor; and still again a mother who wants the War Department to tell her whether her son has arrived safely in France.

As rapidly as individuals having engagements with the Secretary of War arrive, Dr. Keppel hustles them into the inner office. If the Secretary has a full program, he diplomatically suggests that the visitor do not remain too long.

There are two offices through which one must go to get to the Secretary of War. Dr. Keppel, occasionally reinforced by a stenographer, holds forth in the main waiting-room. Just adjoining is a room occupied by Ralph Hayes, private secretary to Mr. Baker, and a dozen clerks and stenographers. At times Mr. Hayes is able to assist Dr. Keppel in placating the waiting public. Both officials must use great tact, for they meet everybody, from senators and members of visiting foreign commissions, to job-hunters and promoters.

Dean Keppel came to Washington to offer his services to the government at one dollar a year. He learned that they were short-handed at the War Department, and, although he had never seen Secretary Baker, nor had the Secretary seen him, he was immediately engaged as a confidential assistant. The War Department would not permit him to work for one dollar a year; but the compromise figure is barely more than the salary of the average clerk and does not fully pay Dr. Keppel's living expenses.

He is on indefinite leave of absence from Columbia University, where he has been dean since 1910.

Hoover Buys a Peck of Potatoes

THIS peck of potatoes was purchased in a Washington grocery store by the potato expert of the Food Administration, and photographed as an exhibit in poor grocery buying.

A good market potato ought to weigh at least eight ounces, or about thirty-two to the peck. This lot contained seventy-five marbles, culls, cuts, and rots, with only a single specimen that came up to the No. 1 United States standard. The general size is shown by a disk the size a nickel, photographed for comparison. The "peck" was nearly two pounds short weight.

This sort of buying, and also retailing, is poor business, as is indicated by our backward potato industry. We raised about four and a half bushels per capita this year—a bumper crop for us. But what is that beside little Ireland, with twenty-eight bushels per capita, and Holland with sixteen? Even war-torn France actually raised more potatoes than the United States—500,000,000 bushels against our 440,000,000.

We raise poor potatoes because the demand is poor. The demand is poor because we raise poor potatoes. See-saw, Marjorie Daw! Every few years we have a potato famine. Between grower and consumer stands the grocer, a business man. If he used more care in buying potatoes, he could sell more, and farmers would raise more and better. So one of the permanent improvements to our food supply planned by Herbert Hoover is a new government standard for buying potatoes, and the weight system for selling them instead of the loose peck and bushel.

The Passed Word—Continued from page 9

Stephen's general interest in the woman movement had crystallized into work for young girls.

She described the desiccated system of education of her day. She showed how Stephen's extraordinary culture had served as an adjuvant, reinforcing, enriching background to all his teaching. She told them stories that rang with his quick wit and shone with his quiet humor. She dwelt on his charm, his kindness, his rectitude, his instant sense of indignation with injustice, the tireless persistence that rested only when such injustice had been repaired.

She made him a live figure. Her remarks ran on an undercurrent of laughter from her audience that was broken by sudden bursts of applause. When she stopped, her listeners were warmed and thrilled. But she herself was as cold inwardly as ever. She was conscious only of one sensation—relief. It was over and done with. Now she could go home to her shadows again, could merge with a quiet which she hoped would gradually thicken until it became the coma that precedes dissolution.

THE audience began to shuffle, ready for dismissal. The chairman arose. But a woman sitting in the front row, rising impulsively, anticipated her.

"Madam Chairman," she said in an uncertain voice, "I would like very much to add a word about Mr. Talcott, if I may. I won't take long, and I think I can tell you a story about him that nobody else has ever heard. It will be of special interest to-night—because it also concerns our honored guest, Mrs. Lucia Mayne Frawley."

The chairman smiled and nodded. "Go on, Miss Keith," she approved. "It will be a great pleasure to us all, I'm sure."

"I taught mathematics in this school when I was quite young," Miss Keith began. "Mr. Talcott was master here then."

She was a tall, thin woman of an undetermined age, plain, angular to the point of scragginess. Her thick blond hair, heavily slashed with white, was combed straight back from her high, irregular features and bundled into a great wad in the center of her head. Her face, notwithstanding lines so deep that they were almost furrows, was singularly fresh in coloring, singularly quick and pleasant in expression. It was apparent that she was not used to this kind of speaking. She blushed and hesitated. Her confusion did not wear off until she was well into her narrative.

"I worked with him—for two or three years. I grew to love him as—everybody did—who knew him. There was something about him—I don't know how to describe it—a kind of simplicity—and humility; I can't tell you exactly what I mean, but—it made you, yourself—simple and humble—when you were with him—even if you weren't that way naturally.

In the midst of that teaching, I lost my little sister—my only sister—by an accident. We were orphans; she was all I had; she was the apple of my eye. I apologize to you—for being so personal—but I can't seem to tell this story—any other way. And it all happened thirty years ago.

"Mr. Talcott wrote me not to return to school until I felt quite able to come. But I went back in a few days, because I couldn't stand my own thoughts. I had a study hour from nine to ten. Mr. Talcott sent for me to come to the office. When I got there, he said he was sorry that I had come back so soon. I told him—that things were pretty bad with me—I didn't know how I was going to stand it. I said I hadn't slept—I couldn't stay at home. Well, I broke down. He saw just how I felt—how rebellious. He began to try to comfort me. He said that a few years before he had met with a great loss, a young brother.

"He told me quite a bit about his brother—what a wonderful boy he was: how he could write poetry, and paint pictures, and had even produced some beautiful sculpture. I remember at the time thinking he was like the young Rossetti, one of those many-sided geniuses that are so rare.

"Mr. Talcott said that his brother had been his constant companion, the pride of his heart. He was eighteen when he died. He was drowned. Mr. Talcott told me that it nearly killed him, that at first he didn't think he was going to be able to stand it, and how it got worse and worse. And then, one day, he went to call on a dear friend to have a talk with her about it. That was our guest to-night, Mrs. Lucia Mayne Frawley. They spoke of how such terrible things happened, like a bolt from the blue—without rhyme or reason—seems if. And then Mrs. Frawley told him that she'd worked out a—well, a sort of fable—to account for such

---

tragedies, that had been a great comfort to her.

"She said that people were constantly being born into the world with wonderful gifts of service. And sometimes they wasted their gifts, or neglected them while they played with toys. At first those toys were the mere pleasures of youth. Women often lost themselves in an enjoyment of their own beauty, men of their own strength. Then often these earlier toys were succeeded by other toys—objects of a worshiping affection, sometimes a wife or husband, sometimes a sister or brother, sometimes a child. And she ended—these, I think, are her exact words as Mr. Talcott quoted them; I wrote them down when I got back to my desk: 'And so, if God really reserves us for service, he takes our toys away from us, one by one. Always it means great suffering. But he has to hurt us because he has other work for us to do, and that is the only way he has of making us see it.'"

Mrs. Frawley was scarcely conscious of the murmur of sympathy that greeted this confession, the understanding silence, unbroken by applause, that followed it.

The chairman arose, and, after saying that comment on such a story would be an impertinence, gave out the good-night hymn. With the last chord from the piano came the quick reaction to high talk and laughter which so often follows an interval so touching. Women came by dozens to shake hands with the guest of the evening, and most of them stopped to speak to Miss Keith on the way.

THEY said pleasant things to Mrs. Frawley, and she received them with words equally pleasant. She smiled and chatted. But to herself she seemed to speak through a mist. Once she went closer to the bas-relief and surveyed Stephen's fine, ascetic profile, with its splendid brow and clustering locks. To herself she seemed to move in a haze. After a while, her wraps were brought to her and she was carefully insinuated into them. She declined the assistance of the janitors, insisted on walking over the stairs, an attendant group circling her with anxious deference all the time. And when she was seated in the cab, she produced complimentary remarks and little speeches of farewell as if her mind were perfectly tranquil.

But it was not tranquil. It boiled; it seethed; it fumed. And, once the cab had started, she leaned back, closing her eyes the better to gaze inward, that she might watch that whirl of thought—like an eddy of autumn leaves blown in circles by an eddy of autumn breeze. Her own words:

"And so, if God really reserves us for service, he takes our toys away from us, one by one. Always it means great suffering. But he has to hurt us because he has other work for us to do, and that is the only way he has of making us see it."

SHE remembered the incident clearly now. Stephen had come to her half insane after a sleepless week of brooding over his brother's death. She had entirely forgotten her own remarks, but now the whole talk came back to her.

Yes, God had taken all her toys away, one by one: Julius, Molly, Esther, the baby, and now—Robbie. She had sunk herself in them all, especially Robbie. It was not that she loved him more than the others, but that he came in her old age, when she had so little protection against grief. And yet—and yet— It was true. She had made a toy of Robbie. She had neglected her work the last four years. She had taken only the easy work and what came near home. It was true, she needed to be shaken awake. For there was still much to be done. And that was, of course, the only way to choke grief—by work. Work and more work and ever more work. Always work. Forever work. Work until you dropped dead in the harness. And then perhaps you would find that somewhere God had kept all your toys stored for you. Work! How glorious! To get to work again! Could she ever work hard enough to make up for these cowardly three months? Work! Work! Thank God for work!

NORAH, gazing listlessly at the pages of a book, heard the taxicab drive up to the door, heard a step on the stairs that brought her rushing into the hall. She opened the door on—

That look in the eyes of the blue running to the white had gone. They were of a color so deep it seemed impossible there could also be the flame in them. Lucia's head was up, her shoulders back. She strode into the room.

"What is it, Lucia?" Norah's voice held a note of terror.

"I've had a wonderful evening, Norah," her sister said. "It's made a new creature of me. I won't tell you now—it's too long a story. But a word I passed to Stephen Talcott years ago was passed back to me to-night. And it pulled me out of the slough I'd sunk into. Yes, it waked me up. And suddenly I had the strength of a dozen lions. I wanted to work. Did you write the letter to the National College Association?"

Norah nodded.

"Have you posted it?"

Norah shook her head.

"Good. Destroy it. In a moment I'll dictate another. I'm going to do that work. And you're going with me, Norah. When I think of talking to young people, fresh young girls, fine young men of the college age—adolescence is so tender, so plastic, so soft to impression. How I shall enjoy it! Norah, we will bathe our souls in those audiences as if they were fountains of youth."

Norah did not speak. She just looked at her sister.

"And now I'm going to call up Cousin Edie and ask the whole family over here for Christmas dinner. She'll come, I know. I have a sudden yearning to see them all—little Lyssie in particular. Lyssie is such a devoted creature. She works too hard taking care of the rest of them. We must give some dances for her, Norah. And to see those lovely rosy twins again, and jolly naughty little Francis, and darling roly-poly Geraldine. And the precious baby. And to-morrow, Norah, we'll hire a limousine for the day. We'll buy all the Christmas wreaths and all the holly and mistletoe left in Boston. I want this house to bloom. We'll get a Christmas-tree, too. Lyssie'll trim it for us. And then we'll go round to the book-stores and toy-shops and pick out some presents for the children. Oh, such a gift as I've had this Christmas! Norah, you don't know how it's made me feel. I want to pass that word on to the whole world."

Everything You Know Counts

THIS man had an idle period between jobs. He needed money, and needed it badly; but the only thing he knew besides his trade was basket-weaving, a craft he had been taught as a schoolboy. In the big town where he lived materials were hard to get and expensive, but between two skyscrapers was a lot, the site of a burned building, overgrown with willows. The man made a seat for himself in the thicket, and set to work.

People in the office buildings became curious about what he was doing. He had a large audience every noon-time; and so, as his baskets grew, they advertised themselves. He soon had a thriving trade, and it was all clear profit.

The Foolishness of "Tips"

ABOUT a year and a half ago, when the speculative fever was highest, a business man, an officer of a big concern, drove over one Sunday evenning to the home of a friend.

"Jim," he said, "I have just heard of something very good. There's a couple of thousand in it for you easy. Are you interested?"

"Always interested in a couple of thousand," the other answered.

"Buy XYZ to-morrow at 66," the first man continued. "I have it straight from a man whose concern helped to finance that company. There's a big movement on in the stock, and it's good for twenty-five points anyway. Be sure you get in—and hold on for twenty-five points."

With no more information than this so-called "tip," the two went to their offices the next day, and each purchased a hundred shares of the stock in question, on margin. Surely enough, it did go up—two points, five points, ten points. The two men were jubilant, and of course held on. At 76, however, something happened to the stock: it started down, and continued down steadily. It passed 66, where they had bought it, and still they held on, believing that somehow, sometime, it must come back.

One of them, in disgust, sold out at 42, the other at 39. To-day the stock is quoted at 13, and it is a question whether it is worth even that.

Now, here is the amazing thing: Each of the two men is a success in his own particular business. Moreover, the businesses in which they are employed are making money. Had they saved their dollars and invested them in the stock of their own companies, they would have been sure of a good return on the investment, and—as later events have proved—a substantial profit in addition. Yet both men turned their backs on the businesses that they know, and companies whose earning power is proved, to waste their money in a fly-by-night concern of which they knew nothing at all—simply on the strength of a "tip."

When it comes to the matter of tips, all rules governing the action of men along intelligent lines seem to be off. Men will overhear a conversation in a train: "I hear that Such-and-Such Company is going to have a melon"; or "They say So-and-So—" And forthwith they will recklessly toss away money which they have saved, dollar by dollar, over a long period of time.

Beware of the man with a tip. If the tip were any good it probably would not have become public property. If it had real value he would keep it for himself instead of passing it on to you so eagerly.

Without tips the promoter of worthless securities could not live. It is with him that many of the most widely circulated tips originate. It's always a tip to buy that comes to the public, never a tip to sell. And usually the man who started the tip traveling has something that he is tired of holding and wants very much to pass on to somebody else.

Nothing Will Stand Without Watching

THERE is a popular fallacy to the effect that "the stock you buy and put away you never lose on." Many people delude themselves with that notion.

They buy a stock hastily, having heard a report that it is likely to advance, or that the dividends are to be resumed on it or increased. The good news fails to come true; the stock goes off in price. "Oh, very well," they say; "I should worry. It will come back again."

Or they purchase so-called standard securities, with no study of their record, their previous selling cost, or their actual worth as shown by the statements of the company. And when the shares decline they are not disturbed. In the long run, they figure, the point at which they purchased will be reached again. Meantime, they will not worry.

In general, there is something to be said for this attitude of mind. The average small investor has no need to follow the day's market quotations. It is not important to him that a stock has gone up two points or down two. The important thing is the value inherent in the security, and the rate of dividends that it pays. But the attitude of easy-going security can be carried too far.

For example, there was a time not long ago, as a financial magazine points out, when New Haven sold at 255, Rock Island at 207, St. Paul at 199 and the preferred at 218, Great Northern at 348, Northwestern at 271.

From these peak points these stocks have steadily declined: and wise investors,—not speculators,—noting the steadiness of the decline, have sold and transferred their savings into other stocks and bonds.

The lesson is simply this—that in the world of money nothing is absolutely safe.

While there are certain stocks whose record, over a long period of years, entitles them to the confidence of conservative investors, there is no stock that can be put away and forgotten, with the assurance that it will not decline.

"Nothing that I owned seemed to me safer than People's Gas," said a prominent financier a few weeks ago. "It had paid 8 per cent right along, and its record was fine. Yet in one year its dividend was cut first to four per cent and then passed altogether. Rising costs of gas production, coupled with the inability to agree with the Chicago City Council on a raise in rates, created a condition that no one could possibly have foreseen."

If you want to forget your investments, stick to Liberty Bonds and the bonds that are recognized as legal investments for savings banks. These will some day be paid off at par, and will give a sure return meanwhile. But no stock can be so good as to excuse you from knowing something about the industry it represents, and giving intelligent attention to the general business conditions as they are likely to affect that industry.

Financial Booklets that Will Help You

IF you are interested in the investment of your savings in sound securities, write to John Muir & Company. Ask for their booklet 33 entitled "The Partial Payment Plan." A copy will be sent upon application to their main office, 61 Broadway, New York City.

R. C. MEGARGEL & Co., 27 [?] Street, New York, members of the New York and Chicago Stock Exchanges, will send you booklets entitled "The Partial Payment Plan" and "Securities Suggestions." The latter is published semi-monthly, and any one who is interested in increasing the earning power of his surplus funds should receive this valuable publication regularly. Write for these booklets, which will be sent free of charge upon request for A.

THE Bache Review contains each week a carefully considered estimate of the effect of important current events on the financial and commercial situation, in condensed and graphic form. And, in addition, a statistical supplement giving the essential facts regarding the financial condition, management, capitalization, and earning power of some one important company. Copy sent on application to J. S. Bache & Co., members of New York Stock Exchange, 42 Broadway, New York City.

THE oldest trust company in Ohio conducts a banking by mail department, paying four per cent compound interest on deposits of one dollar or more. Write the Citizens Savings & Trust Company, Cleveland, Ohio, for a copy of free booklet "P."

AN interesting circular on the production of brass and its uses under war conditions and peace condition has been issued by Dunham & Company, 43 Exchange Place, New York City. It also contains a statement of the financial condition, management, and history of a conservative and well known brass manufacturing concern. Copies will be sent on request.

A USEFUL booklet entitled the "1918 Traders' Companion," which contains a calendar of dividend rates and approximate ex-dividend dates revised to January 1, 1918, and other useful information for the investor, has been issued by Louchheim, Minton & Company, members of the New York Stock Exchange, 71 Broadway, New York. Copy mailed on request.

THERE is a small weekly paper which reflect investor opportunities from the small investor's standpoint. It is written in plain English in terms which the average man can understand. It avoids useless technicalities and explains technicalities which are essential. Sample copies will be sent on request to the Odd Lot Review, Inc., 61 Broadway, New York.

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.