Democracy is a New Show, and Every Citizen is the Stage-Manager

A VERY patriotic citizen came to me recently, much perturbed.

"These investigations in Washington are outrageous," he exclaimed. "Suppose there have been mistakes; is that any reason why we should advertise them to our enemies?

"Is there any sense in crying from the house-tops that we have only nine Browning machine-guns, and that our men are inadequately clothed and equipped? Such matters ought to be kept secret."

And I remarked to him that in Germany such matters are kept secret.

There are only two families living on the world's Main Street, I said to him.

There is the Autocracy family, who keep the front gate locked and the front curtains drawn. The lawn looks tidy and the house is well kept; but no one knows what's going on behind those curtains.

It may be only a friendly game of pinochle: but it may be counterfeiting, or a bomb plot, or murder.

And there is the Old Widow Democracy. Her lawn is covered with tin cans, and children are scrapping all over it, and she does her washing right out on the front porch.

But she's in sight every minute, and she has to be pretty honest, whether she wants to or not.

One of the reasons we're fighting, I said to him, is to make the Autocracy family pull up those curtains, and bring their corn-cob pipes and their laundry out on the porch.

And while our boys are over in Autocracy's front yard, breaking the windows and letting sunlight into the back rooms, we don't want anybody—the President or any one else—to be staying at home and locking our doors or pulling our curtains down.

Public criticism is always noisy, sometimes unpleasant, and frequently mistaken: but it is an inseparable feature of democratic control. And, in the long run, it works well—even for the men who are criticized.

And now, my dear Morley [wrote Gladstone to John Morley], there is one more thing I wish to say to you: Take it from me that to endure trampling on with patience and self-control is no bad element in the preparation of a man for walking firmly and successfully in the path of great public duty. Be sure that discipline is full of blessings.

It is a good thing also for business.

One of the great captains of industry of the old school died a few years ago. A little while before his death he attended a meeting of the directors of one of the country's largest industries. There he said something like this:

"I am convinced that I have been wrong, and that you younger men who have stood for full publicity have been right. I am too old now to change: but if I had my life to live over again I would take the public into my confidence straight through."

Most of all, publicity is a good thing for governments.

In the first place, it is necessary to open up the processes of our politics. They have been too secret, too complicated: they have consisted too much of private conference and secret understandings. If there is nothing to conceal, then why conceal it? If it is a public game, then why play it in private? Publicity is one of the purifying elements of politics.

The gentleman who made these remarks is now President of the United States—the same gentleman whom many tender-hearted people are seeking to shield from the publicity in which he so thoroughly believes.

Autocracy is a very old performance. When the curtain of history rose six or seven thousand years ago, kings were playing their part in the spot-light, and they have been on the stage ever since.

Democracy is a new show, still in rehearsal. Every individual citizen regards himself as the stage-manager, with full liberty to shout directions at the actors, or protest at the top of his voice that the performance is rotten.

The result is noise and confusion; but there is no doubt that gradually the show is getting better, just the same.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

EXPERIENCES THAT CAN NOT BE EXPLAINED

By THE READERS OF EVERY WEEK

Illustrations by J. C. Coll

The Prize Story

I HAD been married a year when my husband died, leaving me absolutely alone except for the promise of a little one who would come in a few months.

My family lived in a distant State, and I had no really intimate friends in New York, so I was without companions in the little house where I lived. I had one maid, but she went home every evening.

Since childhood I have always had a terrible fear of fire, and for that reason it had been my custom to sleep with my bedroom door unlocked. I had a vague notion that if a fire should break out in the house, this would give me a better chance of escape.

One night, about three months after the death of my husband, I went to bed as usual, and had slept some time, when I was awakened suddenly without any apparent cause.

I sat up and looked around; but, seeing and hearing nothing, I was preparing to go to sleep again, when I thought I would see what time it was. I reached up to turn on the lamp at my bedside; but I was arrested in the action—not by a sound or a movement, but by a mysterious, inexplicable something much more startling than a sound would have been.

I peered into the darkness around me, and then—well, it is useless to attempt to describe my feelings. For there, at the foot of the bed, stood my husband. He looked and was dressed exactly as in life. He spoke:

"Kitty, lock your door. Do it now for me, dear."

"Neil, Neil!" I cried, and started out of bed.

But as I did so he—I can not tell what happened: he was not there.

I turned on the light, and as I did so I experienced a reaction. I had always been very skeptical concerning the supernatural, and had always believed that there was a normal cause behind every seemingly inexplicable manifestation. This feeling, coupled with that produced by the bright light, made me say to myself that I was foolish to think anything unusual had happened. But in spite of that I, womanlike, got up and locked the door. And then came the part I consider more curious than anything else. I went back to bed, and immediately fell into a sound sleep. I did not wake till morning.

But what an awakening it was. The house had been entered, a small safe in the dining-room emptied, what little silver I had carried off, and, worst of all, there were traces on my bedroom door of an effort to force it open. What had happened to prevent it, I do not know, for it should have been easy to force the lock. But this I do know. Had the robbers entered my room, I should not only have been deprived of a considerable sum of money which was in the drawer of my desk, but the awful shock of finding burglars in my room might have been fatal for me in the condition I was in, and for the little life that was in my care.

To this day I have never found an explanation for what occurred that night: but I am convinced that, for an instant, the veil that separates us from life after death was taken from my eyes.

K. McL.

Mothers Sometimes Dream True

I WAS a widow, with one child, living in San Francisco. My position was that of advertising woman on a magazine printed in that city. I was busy all the time, and scarcely took time to sleep, going to bed late and getting up early in the morning. So I did not notice that my little daughter, who was the apple of my eye, was looking pale and listless until one evening she told me she felt tired all the time. I decided at once that she was studying too hard and must have a vacation, a complete change.

We had some friends living in a small country town near there, and they were very fond of her, often telling me if anything should happen to me they would like to have Ruth; so I wrote them she was coming next day. I took her down to the steamer, and put her aboard, telling her she must be sure to let me know if she did not feel better very soon. Her long black curls hanging down her back and a smile on her face—that is the picture I carried back with me to my work.

Everything went well. I had letters from her almost every day, assuring me she was getting fat, had lots of good milk to drink and such nice fruit. I was delighted. She said she and Mrs. — went for a long walk every morning, as they thought she had been confined too closely in school. I pictured her coming back soon her old self again, and thanked God I had sent her away, although I missed her very much and felt that home was not much to come to without her.

Each night, as soon as I was through with my work, I would write her a letter, go to bed, and sleep soundly till morning.

I seldom dream, but one night I woke up startled. I was sure I heard her call me. Her voice, however, seemed far away and weak.

I told myself I was "lonesome," and went to sleep again, with the thought that I was glad we had such dear, kind friends for her to be with. This time I dreamed I saw Ruth in a lot of water, with lily pads all around her. All I could see was her face, her eyes so large, and such an imploring look in them, and her arms extended as if beckoning me to come; she was slowly sinking in the water, and all but her face had disappeared.

I woke up, and the dream was so vivid, and her voice calling me made such an impression, that I could not sleep any more that night.

Next morning, as soon as I could, I telephoned her on long distance, and she answered herself. In answer to my question, "How are you?" she said:

"I am all right, and am having such a good time. Don't worry about me, mother dear."

Well, I felt relieved, ate my breakfast, and went to the office to report for work, as we had some big contracts on hand. I was busy thinking about them; but when I arrived in the office, instead of reporting for work, I asked for a two days' leave, which did not please my chief. However, I insisted, and reluctantly he consented to let me go.

Ruth and our friends were at the dock to meet me. The moment I looked at her I knew something was wrong. She was much paler and her eyes much larger than when she left me; and her lips were colorless. But she seemed to be in good spirits, and no one said anything about her not being well.

That night when we were alone she said: "Oh, mother, I have been wanting you so much! But every one has been so good, I hated to say I wanted you. I am not sick—I am just tired all the time. I don't know what is the matter with me."

Next morning I brought her home, and immediately took her to see our family physician, and asked him to examine her carefully. When he had finished his examination he told me Ruth was in a very serious condition, had a very bad case of leakage of the heart. The least jar or motion might take her away. He advised me to take her home in a taxicab and put her to bed, and not to let her move, even to turn over in her bed. It was several weeks before she began to show any signs of improvement, but she finally got well.

I have always felt that the dream and premonition I had saved her life.

MRS. M. A. T.

After His Daughter's Death

YE5, I did have an experience that I was unable to explain at the time, and, although it happened seventeen years ago, I haven't found an explanation of it since. In fact, I never looked for an explanation, nor do I wish any now. In a word, my little daughter's spirit appeared to me after her death, and I don't care to have some materialist tell me I was dreaming, or some specialist inform me my nerves were unstrung by grief and shock.

I loved this child—Margie was her name—a little bit more than I did the other children, although they were all good and lovable. Maybe it was because she was my oldest. She was a pretty baby—so pretty that people used to stop my wife and me on the street and in the stores, to pat her cheeks or to say something nice to her. As she grew up she developed a wonderfully helpful love of all mankind, particularly of those in need or suffering.

When she was old enough she, of her own volition, joined a church, and was admitted to the choir. She was just a little past fifteen when we found her dead

Continued on page 15

THE MELTING POT

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

THE DEATH OF THE FORESTS

THE great guns of England, they listen mile on mile
To the boasts of a broken War-Lord; they lift their throats and smile:
But the old woods are fallen
For a while.
The old woods are fallen; yet will they come again—
They will come back some springtime with the warm winds and the rain;
For Nature guardeth her children
Never in vain.
They will come back some season; it may be a hundred years—
It is all one to Nature, with the centuries that are hers;
She shall bring back her children
And dry all their tears.

From "The Great Guns of England," by Lord Dunsany (Overland Monthly).

ALL PEOPLE ARE PREJUDICED

WILLIAM JAMES once said: "Why do so few scientists even look at the evidence for telepathy, so called? Because they think—as a leading biologist, now dead, once said to me—that, even if such a thing were true, scientists ought to band together to keep it suppressed and concealed. It would undo the uniformity of nature and all sorts of other things without which scientists can not carry on their pursuits."

It isn't only the common run of men that are hampered by prejudice. The greatest minds are swerved from straight thinking by this fear of having the results of their labor upset by new evidence. "It can't be true, so it isn't true," they say, and important discoveries are wholly ignored or held up for years.

According to Henry Hazlitt, in Thinking as a Science (E. P. Dutton & Company), there are at least three reasons why all of us are slow to give up our unreasonable opinions—or prejudices. One is self-interest; another is a desire for consistency; and the third is imitation.

We invest our savings in a gold-mine. From that moment on we laugh, or pretend to laugh, at any evidence as to the worthlessness of our investment. Self-interest demands that that mine yield gold.

Emerson said that "inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." If we have held an opinion and told it to our friends, we will cling to it in the face of truth itself. We ignore the facts or deny them, or bully them till they fit our opinion.

The commonest reason for prejudice is the tendency to think the way all the nice people we know are thinking. Our opinions are as important as our clothes and manners. And we want, above all, to be up to date. Mr. Hazlitt says:

"A little while ago it was considered popular to laugh at the suffragettes. And everybody laughed. Now it is getting popular to laugh at the anti-suffragettes. A little while ago it was considered quite comme il faut to fear socialism. Now it is becoming proper to remark, 'There is really quite a good deal of truth in their theories.'"

BOOKS WORTH SENDING FOR

Any of the following books may be secured by sending a money order to the Superintendent of Public Documents (mentioning the department indicated), Washington, D. C.

TEXTILES IN CUBA

(Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Special Agents' Series 126.) Price 10 cents.

THE DOMESTICATED SILVER FOX.

Several fortunes have been made in silver fox farming. This bulletin gives detailed information about the industry. (Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin 795.) Price, 5 cents.

DESTROYING RODENT PESTS ON THE FARM.

How to deal with field mice, cotton rats, pocket gophers, prairie dogs, jack-rabbits, etc. (Department of Agriculture, Yearbook Separate 708.) Price, 5 cents

THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE INSECT ENEMIES OF INJURIOUS INSECTS.

The practice of using one species of insect to destroy another is now well established, and has produced spectacular results—sometimes. (Department of Agriculture, Yearbook Separate 704.) Price, 5 cents.

SUGAR-CANE CULTURE FOR SYRUP PRODUCTION IN THE UNITED STATES.

Practical directions and useful suggestions on this industry. Fully illustrated. (Department of Agriculture, Bulletin 486.) Price, 10 cents.

WHEN CHOATE EXAMINED RUSSELL SAGE

JOSEPH CHOATE did not like Russell Sage: nor did Russell fancy Joseph. They were brought to swords' points in the celebrated case of Laidlaw vs. Sage.

The case grew out of a unique experience. Laidlaw was in Sage's office one day, talking to him, when a man named Norcross came in, carrying a satchel. He demanded a large sum of money from Sage, saying that the satchel contained dynamite and that he would drop it if refused. Sage attempted to put him off; but Norcross carried out his threat, dropped the satchel, which exploded, killing him and injuring Laidlaw. Laidlaw sued, asserting that Sage had thrown him between Norcross and himself.

In the cross-examination Choate displayed the clothes worn by Sage at the time.

The examination is quoted in the Life of Choate by Theron C. Strong (Dodd, Mead & Company).

Q. "Were you familiar with these clothes?" A. "Yes, sir."

Q. "How long had you worn them?" A. "Oh, some months."

Q. "Had you not had them three or four years?" A. "No."

Q. "Don't you remember looking out of the window, that morning when you got up, to see if it was cloudy, so you would know whether to wear an old suit or not?" A. "I don't remember."

Choate showed the holes that Sage alleged had been made by the explosion.

Q. "Now, are not three of those holes moth-eaten?" A. "No."

Q. "Are you a judge of moth-eaten goods?" A. "No."

The cross-examination went on for days, and ended in a verdict for $40,000 for Laidlaw.

Sage never forgave Choate. When his appointment as Ambassador to England was announced, the reporters went to Sage for comment. Sage asked if the news were true. On being assured that it was, he looked heavenward and exclaimed fervently:

"Well, God save the Queen!"

DO YOU START BOOKS YOU NEVER FINISH

OLD Sam Johnson said he "hated to read books through." On the other hand, Edward Everett Hale lamented, in his diary, "how much labor and information I have wasted by beginning books which I have never finished. I accordingly made the resolution," he goes on (in his Life and Letters, by his son; Little, Brown & Company), "to attempt in the future never to have more than five on the tapis at once, which I think I shall divide thus: professional, 2; information, 1; language, 1; light reading, 1.

Looking over the half finished books on hand, he discovered that there were ten of them, "excluding magazines, of course." And it is interesting to note that only one of these was classed as so-called "light reading." And this light reading was Rogers' Life of Columbus, which to the average man would be a real serious achievement.

EXERCISE YOUR BABY

IS your baby a carriage baby or an athletic baby? Likely the former, unless you have been introduced to Rowine Williams and her mother, Edith M. Bates Williams, who together have worked out a system of physical training guaranteed to make any normal baby swell with muscle and pride. In Physical Culture Mrs. Williams writes:

Give the baby a chance. Most mothers don't. They keep the poor little thing in the carriage practically all day. They get exercise for themselves in pushing the carriage. But they wonder why the baby won't eat or sleep and doesn't grow. It is largely because it stays in that carriage, sitting there like a crippled old woman all day long. If they would only put the child down on the floor now and then they would soon see a difference.

The first lesson for every mother to learn is to give the baby a chance to exercise by placing it upon its stomach. The prone position is the natural position of all forms of life, worms, insects, reptiles, mammals, birds. The flounder is about the only exception I know of, and he is only a freak fish. Even the flounder goes belly down when he's a baby. But the human baby, poor thing, is very carefully laid upon its back, in defiance of the rule in all animal life. True, the child may kick its legs and wave its arms when on the back, if not too much restricted with clothing. But this is nothing like the exercise against real resistance which a baby secures when placed upon its stomach and allowed to struggle with its own weight.

You can't exercise a baby conveniently on your lap. The only satisfactory plan is to do it on a table. Lay out a folded blanket or pad for the purpose. It has been my plan to give Baby a little exercise each morning before she has her bath, and then to let her have an air bath and more nude exercise in the evening before the long sleep of the night.

Holding a baby's ankles and pushing its knees up and down is an exercise that may be started almost immediately after birth. A good arm exercise is to raise the hands alternately above the head and then stretch them far out to the sides. An exercise all babies like is that of letting them take hold of your fingers and then lifting or partly lifting. All babies have a surprisingly good grip and many can hold their own weight when born.

A particularly good spine-stretching movement is to lay the baby on its back and hold its feet down with one hand; then place the other hand under its hips or back and raise the body until it forms an arch.

It helps in doing all these exercises to whistle or sing a simple tune.

---

HOW THE HOHENZOLLERNS REPAY

WILHELM and his house are not such bad masters, if one serves them on one's knees: but let a German once make the mistake of entertaining any democratic ideals, and—no matter how great his service to the nation and its Kaiser—he need expect nothing.

In the final overthrow of Napoleon, few men were more instrumental than Henry Frederick Charles, Baron vom Stein, as Andrew D. White shows in Seven Great Statesmen (Century Company). A German of splendid character and ideals, he took hold of Prussia, when Napoleon had humbled her in the dust, and made so much progress in her rehabilitation that Napoleon demanded his discharge and banishment. For years Stein was a fugitive—first at the court of Vienna and then at the Russian court. But, wherever he went, he kept the fires of hatred against Napoleon aflame. He filled the weak Czar with the idea of becoming the saviour of Europe. But in doing it he made the great error. He went into the provinces that had once been Prussian and were now Russian, and there organized the people against Napoleon, calling them together in a parliament.

A parliament—Frederick William of Prussia never forgave him that audacity. When the old statesman lay in the garret of a hotel at Breslau, apparently at the point of death, Frederick William did not even send him a kindly message.

He had saved the king, but he had committed the unpardonable sin—he had helped to spread the idea of Democracy.

THE COST OF FIRING A MAN

TWELVE American factories, the smallest employing three hundred men and women, and the largest over 10,000, were selected by Mr. M. W. Alexander for study as to the cost of maintaining their labor supply. He took the year 1912 as being a nearly normal industrial year, and the results of his investigations, as published in a recent government bulletin, are startling.

He discovered that the twelve factories increased their number of employees during the year by 6,697 persons. But—and here is the significant fact—to provide that net increase a total of 42,571 persons were hired during the year and 35,874 were dropped from employment.

In other words, for every person added permanently to the pay-roll six had to be added temporarily—"tried out."

The factory owners themselves had never given any special consideration to the subject. When the figures were presented to them, they were amazed, and immediately began to figure what it cost each one of them to hire and fire a man. The estimates varied all the way from $50 to $200. In other words, those twelve industries had been put to an expense of between two and nine million dollars in finding "square pegs" to fit into square holes!

Every industry, says Mr. Alexander, ought to have a superintendent of employment to hire all employees; and in his hands ought to be the final authority for discharge. Often an employee who does not fit well in one department is discharged by a foreman, when, if he were

sent back to the employment manager, a place might be found for him where he would do efficient work. And if foremen know that their decisions about men are subject to review by the employment superintendent, they will be much more careful and deliberate.

One reason why Germany can manufacture more cheaply than we can is because her employers do not have this employment problem to so great a degree. There, employees are trained for special work, and fit their jobs. We must find some way in America to conquer this problem. The expense of this constant procession of people into and out of our factories is too great.

A CITY INTOXICATED BY GOLD

BEFORE gold was discovered, San Francisco was nothing but a few small houses occupied by settlers and one or two merchants engaged in the exportation of hides and horns. The gold rush began, and San Francisco became a city overnight—a hideous city of saloons and rats and rioting. In The Gold Hunters (Outing Adventure Library) James Borthwick tells how San Francisco looked to him in 1851, when he joined the scramble for gold. The book is a contemporary account, revised and edited by Horace Kephart.

"Everything bore evidence of newness, and the greater part of the city presented a makeshift and temporary appearance, being composed of the most motley collection of edifices.

"There were two or three French restaurants nearly equal to the best in Paris, where the cheapest dinner one could get cost three dollars. All places of public resort were furnished and decorated in a style of most barbaric splendor, being filled with the costliest French furniture, a profusion of immense mirrors, magnificent chandeliers, and gold and china orments, which contrasted strangely with the appearance and occupations of the people by whom they were frequented.

"California was said to be famous for three things—rats, fleas, and empty bottles. Of the last article—the empty bottles—the enormous heaps of them, piled up in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, suggested a consumption of liquor which was truly awfui."

WILL THERE BE A FAMINE IN WOOL?

THEY STAY BY THE LAND

IN a country where moving from house to house or from State to State is a mere incident, it is hard to appreciate the passion of the peasant of France or Belgium for the little piece of ground he works and lives upon. In Private Peat (Bobbs-Merrill) the author says:

"It is no uncommon thing to see the peasantry of France and Belgium, the old and the young women, the children and the very old men, working in their fields and on their tiny farms, less than a mile from the trenches. It is their home. And love of country and that which is theirs is stronger than fear of death.

"Their houses may be leveled, they may only find shelter in a half ruined cellar. Often they go hungry. But always there is a grim determination to stick to their own, to till the ground which has kept their parents and grandparents, and which they mean shall keep their children when victory shall be complete."

AN INTERVIEW WITH COUNT TOLSTOY

"IT is utterly absurd to say the present troubles have anything to do with prohibition. Prohibition has been the greatest possible help. I am very much in favor of our present prohibition. I hope nothing will be done to disturb it. Of course, there are still small quantities of drugs, and sometimes poisons. But the harm of these is very small and utterly negligible when compared with the great harm frequently done by vodka."

I said to him: "Your father was not a prohibitionist."

He replied: "That is not exactly true. My father did not believe in governments, but if a government had to be, then he believed it should make the best possible laws. Had he been alive to-day he would certainly be in favor of our present Russian prohibition. I should like you to add that, far from our present troubles having anything to do with the shutting down of beer, wine, and distilled liquor, they would have been a great deal worse if the people had been able to get at these forms of alcoholic beverages.

"The troubles in Russia to-day, in my opinion, are mainly due to famine. It is not that we have not enough food, but that we have not transportation facilities. We haven't engines, we haven't trains to get the food around to the people thoroughly. The armies really are in places pretty much without food, and armies have got to be fed to last, you know. That, in my opinion, is the heart of the trouble. That is what makes the great cry for peace—the spots in Russia that are being ravished by famine.

"But prohibition is a blessing. All thoughtful Russians understand this, and in no way has it set back the progress of Russia. Personally, I am for prohibition forever."

By Elizabeth Tilton, in the New York Evening Mail.

BOY WANTED

By GERTRUDE BROOKE HAMILTON

Illustrations by M. L. Bower

FOR half a century the Resinold book shop had browsed on Fifth Avenue like an unobtrusive don. Even the windowscript, "Stanislaus Resinold, First Editions and Rare Prints," had the look of esthetic antiquity.

The present Stanislaus Resinold was a young antique, with his sire's and his grandsire's reverence for the sanctity of first editions. In appearance young Stanislaus was not unlike a mellowed book: having blue-brown eyes and brown skin, a classical nose, an idyllic mouth, and a cleft in his chin that gave his face a look of romance. He resembled his richly toned volumes in the same way that his clerk, Xerxes Dele, resembled the round-faced clock on the ledge between the balconies in the book shop. Xerxes Dele was never out of order: a spectacled gentleman, with neat thumbs.

The one other human accessory to the book shop was the stripling who slid and mounted the book-ladders, dusted the woodwork and bindings, delivered a volume by hand, or returned the costly book to its place on the shelf should the patron deny himself the intellectual feast. This necessary lad in the establishment was engaged—and as often dismissed—by Xerxes Dele. Youths with any appreciation of first editions being difficult to obtain, the clerk, on divers occasions, set up in the window of the Resinold book shop a card stating, in neat letters, that a boy was wanted.

This card garnished the window one morning when young Stanislaus was looking through a first edition of Sir John Suckling's poems, which he had just secured from the estate of a private collector, at a relishable price.

As Stanislaus turned the pages breathing of exquisite petticoats and laces, he thought of the lady he hoped some day to find in life—a choice edition of girlhood, with golden hair and hands like lilies.

He looked from his window out to the daylight, and met a pair of eyes gazing in at him. They were eyes like sea-water animated by sunshine. For a second young Stanislaus straightened, to give them glance for glance. Then he realized that the eyes belonged to a starveling face with unruly hair blowing about it, and that, in the flare of light outside, a young girl like a tall weed was limned against the window.

"List this in the next catalogue, Dele," he directed his clerk.

THE clerk came from an alcove with a long feather duster in his hand. He had been using the duster on the backs of high-shelved books, and he carefully shook it over the waste-paper basket. After hanging it on its nail, he stepped back to the alcove, and washed his hands in the yellowed basin under a long-nuzzled brass spigot. He dried each finger painstakingly before he returned to pick up the copy of Sir John Suckling. He turned the volume over between his thumbs.

"'Twouldn't be rash to list this at two hundred and fifty dollars, Mr. Stan," he vouchsafed, and went to the front of the shop, where some one had come in.

Stanislaus lightly penciled the selling price on the fly-leaf of his rare find. Turning the leaves again, his thoughts dreamed back three centuries as he read in a dream:

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?

He was roused from his day-dream by a slight and liquid voice somewhere in his book shop. With an intangible feeling of delight, he put aside the book of poetry and got to his feet.

But the voice was only the starveling's who had gazed into his window with eyes like sea-water. He looked at her. She was not unlike a seaweed, with her tangle of curling hair and her scraggily clothed young limbs. When she talked she used waterfalls of words. She was talking to his clerk.

Xerxes Dele was regarding her through his spectacles.

Stanislaus left his desk and walked forward. "What is it?" he asked.

"I'm Norleen Quail, and I'm answering the card in your window," she said eagerly.

He laughed involuntarily. "Our card for a page?"

She pushed up the sleeve of her coat and thrust out an over-thin arm.

"I've the muscle of a boy," she said.

"Boys have more muscle than that," remarked Stanislaus, eyeing the puny arm.

She pulled down her sleeve.

"Why are you after a boy's job?" asked the young bookseller.

She laughed. "Because it's a boy you want."

She took off her cloth hat, and, eyes bright beneath an unruly thatch of hair, stood before him.

"And because you have books. It's books that I want. My grandfather used to say to me, 'Whist, Norleen asthore! Whin God was making the first man the divil got in his whack and slid the brains in before the skull was closed up. God was for giving man heart, Norleen; the divil was for giving him brains.' But my grandfather was so old he had fancies. The McGinnitys could tell you of his fancies." Her voice was soft with the word "grandfather." "He was so old, he died," she said.

"I see," commented young Stanislaus.

She explained quickly:

"I live with the McGinnitys. Patrick McGinnity has gone to be a soldier, and Molly is working for the children—that's another reason why I should be busy."

She looked from the card in the book-lined window to the tiers of books in the shop. She began at the bottom and with her eyes devoured each tier up to the top.

"Oh, it's books I want!" she said, flushing.

Her expression touched Stanislaus, who all his life long had had plenty to read.

"I'm sorry," he said, "that you won't do for the boy's place. But would you like to look at my books?"

On a courteous impulse, his backward step gave her the privilege of his long, sunny-windowed, richly toned book shop.

She gazed from his books to him. A tide of color crept to her unruly hair. She put out a bare hand and touched a book near her.

On a whim, Stanislaus walked with her along the aisle, under the round-faced clock and the balconies of books.

She moved beside him, eager for knowledge.

He showed her—with humor in his blue-brown eyes—even the Resinold treasures in the alcove: a bulky fifteenth-century volume printed on vellum; the portion of a letter penned by Madame de Sévigné; an autograph book whose pages of illustrious names began with "Daniel Webster," and whose margin bore an inscription, over Henry Clay's name, "I take this upper place because I have never been below Webster in anything"; and a dinner menu-card in the handwriting of an Irish poet-statesman of the last century who, for political reasons, had been exiled from his country, and who had died in obscure poverty.

"You should like this," he told the starveling, "because the poet's name is Quail."

She seized the faded menu and read each dish on it.

"He didn't have but one tooth when he died, he was so old," she said reminiscently. "He used to tell about his parties, and wrap his tongue about his tooth. He was so old!"

Her graceful, ungroomed finger caressed the menu.

"And where is he now?" she speculated. "Surely, he's not with the devil because he had brains!" Tears came to her eyes. "I'm Norleen Quail; he was my grandfather," she explained.

Stanislaus Resinold stared at the starveling. "Your grandfather?" he said.

She nodded. The tears brimmed over her eyes.

"He was so old when he died, he thought the saints would be his poems," she said softly. She did not wipe the tears away, but let them fall—and laughed behind them. "If you won't take me for your book-boy because of myself, will you take me because of my grandfather?" she demanded.

YOUNG Resinold's stare was prolonged. "Who are the McGinnitys?" he questioned her.

She replied lucidly:

"Patrick's father was my grandfather's body-servant, who followed him when he was forbidden the Isles. When my grandfather grew old and had nothing, the McGinnitys were honored to have us live with them. When my grandfather died, the McGinnitys went without meat for a month to buy the tombstone—the little stone with just a quill on it! My grandfather was so gifted that every child above the McGinnitys' flat loved him. He would tell them of the fine clothes he had worn—he was so old. And they would wait, the darlings, till he came to handing out the rhyme in his stories.

"If it's in the skull, it must come out. And there's never a crowd that grows weary waiting for it."

With a laugh and a tear, she took a pencil stub from the pocket of her scraggy coat, and put the tip of the pencil to her lips.

"I'm Norleen Quail," she said, with philosophy; "some day I'll be rhyming."

She returned the pencil stub to her pocket.

"Will you give me the place of page:" she asked the young bookseller. "With Patrick gone to be a soldier and Molly working for the children, I should he busy."

She waited for his answeran expectant sliver in clothes that were evidently relics of Molly Mc-Ginnity.

Chivalrous features grave, Stanislaus looked at the starveling with the great poet's name. In his blood he had generations of those who had bowed to the gifted, generations of booksellers who had revered the names that make volumes precious. It was as if a dilapidated first edition had come into his hands, a choice little volume in pitiful plight.

He took Norleen Quail's cloth hat from her and hung it on a peg in the alcove.

"It makes a difference, knowing who you are," he told her. "You have such credentials that we should overlook the fact that you are not a boy."

Norleen put her heels together and made him a bow of service. "May you bless the morning I opened the door

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and walked in!" she cried. She colored up suddenly. "Does the boy handle the books?" she inquired.

"Why, yes," said Stanislaus; "I believe he does."

She gazed from the alcove at the oatmeal-tinted walls and sepia woodwork of the shop; at the rich brown rugs along the aisles, the big leather chairs; the book-ladder on a track, ready to be run along the shelves; at the desk with the green droplight and the account books; and at the orderly Resinold desk, touched by a long finger of sunlight that pointed from the window across the ancient paper-cutter and across the golden-brown first edition of Sir John Suckling's poems.

She turned to Stanislaus. "May I look at that book?" she asked. Without waiting for his reply, she went to his desk and touched the calf binding with her finger. "It's pretty enough to eat!" she exclaimed. "Is it gifted?"

"It would make a nice gift," he laughed, going to his desk. "It's three centuries old."

She picked the book up. "What's it about?"

"Love," he said. "Most poetry is."

"If it's gifted, my grandfather would say it came from the 'divil'!" she meditated. She opened the book.

"Be careful," he warned. "It can't be replaced."

She turned the leaves, fingering them.

"We have just acquired Sir John Suckling," he said. "Suppose you make a place for him in the poetry section." Putting away the books was a duty that belonged to the stripling. "Then you may give Mr. Dele your address."

She looked about her. "Where is the poetry section?" she asked him.

"Over there, where the ladder is," he replied, indicating the corner behind the sunny window.

"Yes, I see," she said.

With the book in her hand, she walked the length of the shop to the poetry section. She was limpid-eyed before it. She ascended the ladder, touching the books, as she climbed, with the tips of her fingers.

STANISLAUS seated himself at his desk. His telephone rang, and he took down the receiver. One of his agents was attending a book auction, and had quotations, and questions as to the bidding he should make. Stanislaus jotted down some notes on his desk-pad. He was finishing the notes when he was greeted by an old friend of his father's, an anthologist with a beetle nose, who was hunting through the book-stalls of the world for a certain literary extract, and who annually appeared in the Stanislaus Resinold establishment in his circuitous search. After the anthologist there came in a conversational gentleman with a blithe hope of selling a facsimile for an original. Then a consignment of books arrived from the Resinold agency in London. The normal number of literati and faddists after first editions dropped into the book shop and gazed about.

At half after twelve Stanislaus left his clerk in charge, while he lunched in his club off the Avenue. The good weather invited him to a stroll. He walked, zestily using his stick, as far as the Park, and back. He had a habit of taking the crowded blocks with his blue-brown eyes straight ahead. Younger than his years in living, older than his years in learning, he found it enough—as yet—to look afar.

He returned to his book shop at his leisure. Xerxes Dele was cataloguing the consignment from London. Stanislaus appraised the volumes with his clerk for the rest of the afternoon.

Dusk came. On the Avenue the white globes of light shone; and in the book shop the clerk switched on the green drop-light and gave his attention to the commercial books.

Young Stanislaus mused at the dusky window where his sire and his grandsire had mused before him.

A sigh, in the corner where he stood, seemed almost a part of his musings. He glanced up.

On the shelf-ladder of the poetry section sat Norleen Quail. She had books all about her. Her eyes were alight in the dusk.

Stanislaus had forgotten her.

"Have you been up there all day?" he laughed.

Her eyes looked raptly down—they were like sea-water gilded by sunset. She stirred, took several of the books in her thin arms, and came down the ladder. She had about a thousand dollars' worth of rare editions against her childish breast.

"May I take these home?" she asked.

"Hardly!" ejaculated Stanislaus. He took the books from her.

Coloring, she gave them up.

"You're stingy!" she said impulsively.

"Not at all," he replied. "These books are worth a great deal of money."

He mounted the ladder, to return the volumes to their places.

He discovered that Norleen possessed no sense of order. She had taken poetry from the shelves at her pleasure.

"You must be more careful," he told her, as he righted the books. "'Order is heaven's first law.'"

Near the foot of the ladder, she looked up at him, with her hair falling back from her temples.

He continued, his mellowed young voice conservative:

"Mr. Dele, my clerk, is at his desk; perhaps you had better ask him about your duties here. Give him your address. He will arrange your salary."

Righting the poetry, he returned "R" to its place beside "Q."

She remained where she was, near the foot of the ladder.

"Didn't you understand me?" he questioned, with a shade of annoyance.

"Oh, yes," she said quickly. "It's roiled a McGinnity would be to hear Norleen Quail ordered about!"

Her eyes discovered the peg in the alcove where he had hung her hat. She went to the alcove and took down the cloth head-gear.

He descended the ladder, dusting his hands. "You have a temper," he laughed.

"Yes," she said.

She put on her hat as she went toward the door.

"Aren't you going to give Mr. Dele your address?" he protested.

"No," she said.

That's foolish," he rebuked her, "with Patrick gone to be a soldier and Molly working for the children."

She hesitated at the door.

"Think of what you are giving up in your anger," he jested: "business and books."

"You're making fun of me," she said, turning the handle of the door. "Good-by."

She opened the door and went out.

THOUGH somewhat taken aback, Stanislaus Resinold was not altogether sorry to be rid of the starveling with the great name. He could not but feel it just as well to see the last of a vainglorious page with no consideration for his books.

He ran the book-ladder from the poetry section to shelve the London consignment. A half hour later he took up his hat and stick to go home.

"Good night, Dele," he said to his clerk, passing the desk with the green droplight and going out to the Avenue.

With the crisp, equable steps that had carried the Resinolds over the same route for three generations, the young bookseller walked down to his home in Irving Place. Having lost both parents in a disaster at sea, he had early fallen heir to the book shop on Fifth Avenue, and to the Resinold residence on Irving Place, with its retinue of genteel Mrs. Wenlock, the housekeeper, crabbed Clowes, the serving man, and the middle-aged maids, Jane and Tibbetts.

In a block that had escaped the house-wreckers, the Resinold residence was a handsome brownstone edifice, with wrought-iron window gratings and broad steps curving up to solid doors of mahogany and beveled glass. The young book-seller took the curving steps and rang the bell.

Clowes, in snuff-colored livery, opened the door.

"How is your gout, Cloves?" asked Stanislaus, handing him his hat and stick.

IT happened that Stanislaus reached his book shop the next morning ahead of his clerk. It was raining. On the low stone step of the shop stood Norleen Quail, under a cotton-baize umbrella.

"I was a poor page," she said contritely.

She looked more like a seaweed than ever with the rain dripping from the points of her baize umbrella.

Stanislaus laughed as he unlocked the door of his book shop.

"How long have you been waiting here?" he questioned.

"Long enough," she replied, entering with an umbrella that ran rivulets.

He took the umbrella from her, and put it in the rack with his own.

"You needn't come so early," he told her politely.

"What time shall I come?" she inquired, looking up at the round-faced clock on the ledge between the balconies.

"Ask my clerk," he laughed, and stepped out to the vestibule to unlock his mail-box.

WHEN he returned, she was hatless before the window.

"May I take the card out?" she asked him.

He was looking over his mail. "Yes," he said, inattentive.

She took from the window the card inscribed "Boy Wanted," thereby establishing herself as a human accessory in the book shop. She looked to see what he made of this action; but he was opening his mail with his paper-cutter, and an ocean might have flowed between them.

She sat on the stair leading to the book balconies, and studied the rain as it washed the expanse of window glass, the semicircle of books in the window, the full shelves from floor to ceiling—and the brown-toned young lord of creation opening his letters at his brown-toned desk.

Norleen took the pencil stub from the pocket of her coat, and put the tip of the pencil to her tongue. Her eyes were full of

Continued on page 20

Measuring Your Brain by Your Vocabulary

HOW MANY CAN YOU DEFINE?

If you can define sixty-five of the hundred words printed above, you [?] good average adult person; if you can define seventy-five you are quite superior.

                    

1. orange	21. plumbing	41. majesty	61. priceless	81.incrustation
2. bonfire	22. outward	42. brunette	62. swaddle	82. laity
3. roar	23. lecture	43. snip	63. tolerate	83. selectman
4. gown	24. dungeon	44. apish	64. gelatinous	84. sapient
5. tap	25. southern	45. sportive	65. depredation	85. retroactive
6. scorch	26. noticeable	46. hysterics	66. promontory	86. achromatic
7. puddle	27. muzzle	47. Mars	67. frustrate	87. ambergris
8. envelop	28. quake	48. repose	68. milksop	88. casuistry
9. straw	29. civil	49. shrewd	69. philanthropy	89. paleology
10. rule	30. treasury	50. forfeit	70. irony	90. perfunctory
11. haste	31. reception	51. peculiarity	71. lotus	91. precipitancy
12. afloat	32. ramble	52. coinage	72. drabble	92. theosophy
13. eye-lash	33. skill	53. mosaic	73. harpy	93. piscatorial
14. copper	34. misuse	54. bewail	74. embody	94. sudorific
15. health	35. insure	55. disproportionate	75. infuse	95. parterre
16. curse	36. stave	56. dilapidated	76. flaunt	96. homunculus
17. guitar	37. regard	57. charter	77. declivity	97. cameo
18. mellow	38. nerve	58. conscientious	78. fen	98. shagreen
19. pork	39. crunch	59. avarice	79. ochre	99. limpet
20. impolite	40. juggler	60. artless	80. exaltation	100. complot

NO single test has yet been devised which will measure absolutely the intelligence of men: but Professor Lewis M. Terman, whose new book on the subject (Houghton, Mifflin Company) is reviewed by the Journal of Heredity, has discovered a vocabulary test whose results appear to be singularly accurate and interesting.

Generally speaking, the wider a man's range of knowledge and information, the wider will be his knowledge and the more accurate his use of words. On this safe assumption Professor Terman has arbitrarily selected the list of one hundred words here printed, and by testing several hundred individuals has established certain standards.

Apparently normal children of ten years of age are able to give sonic sort of definition of the first ten words. The definition is not necessarily precise or elegant: a wide range of latitude is allowed. For example, a child may say of the word "orange" "An orange is to eat"; or, "It is yellow and grows on a tree." Either phrase would be accepted as a satisfactory definition within the terms of the test, the main thing being to discover how wide a range of information the mind contains.

Apparently normal children of twelve may begin with word 16; and fifteen-year-olds with word 21.

If you want to determine whether you are a normal or a supernormal person, go through the list and see how many of the hundred words you can define. If you succeed in defining sixty-five you are a normal adult; if you reach seventy-five you are a distinctly superior person. And if you are interested to know what your total vocabulary of words amounts to, multiply the number of words that you define correctly by 180. For each word was picked at random from one column of a dictionary containing 100 columns, with a total of 18,000 words.

The average number of words that will be correctly defined, and the average vocabulary of individuals at various ages, is shown in the following table:

       

	Words	Vocabulary
Eight years	20	3,600
Ten years	30	5,400
Twelve years	40	7,200
Fourteen years	50	9,000
Average adult	65	11,700
Superior adult	75	13,500

It may perhaps seem to you incredible that so small a sampling of words would give a reliable index to an individual's vocabulary. That it does so is due to the operation of the ordinary laws of chance, which enable reporters to predict the result of an election from the count of the first few thousand votes. Thus, in the California election of 1914, when only 10,000 of the 1,000,000 votes had been counted, the papers announced Governor Johnson's reëlection by a plurality of about 150,000. The actual plurality was 188,505—the error being less than 10 per cent of the total vote. Repeated tests with this list prove that with people of equal intelligence it will give very closely the same results and that the total vocabulary will be within a comparatively few words of the estimate.

What Kept Edward Everett Hale Happy

IT was Edward Everett Hale who was the inspiration for the Lend a Hand Society, with its motto: "Look up, not down; look out, not in; lend a hand."

He had in a remarkable degree the capacity for finding happiness in life, and people were forever writing to ask him for his formula of belief.

To one of these inquirers he wrote this

letter, which is quoted in his Life and Letters, by his son (Little, Brown and Company):

Boston, December 14, 1874.
My dear friend:

As I hope I may call you.

I am very sorry to have delayed so lone my answer to your note of the 18th of November. But I have had to let all my letters go while I was finishing a little book which I had promised and which I shall hope in a few days to send you.

I can tell you in a very few words what I believe.

I believe that God is here now, and that I am one of his children whom he dearly loves.

I believe a great many more things than this. But when you ask me such a question as yours,—namely, what is the belief that makes me a happy man, and resolute to do God's work in the world as well as I can,—this answer is the real answer.

It is what your ministers would call the essential or fundamental answer.

For the truth is, that what a man needs is to live as much as he can. "Life more abundantly," as the Saviour says, is the great object. That I may live more earnestly and vigorously and efficiently to-day than I did last year.

Now, in this matter of life, what I do or do not happen to think about one thing or another is of very little consequence, if only I have the infinite help of God's Holy Spirit, which does come to any man who believes God is, that God loves him, and is eager to help him as being indeed his child.

Instead therefore of hunting round, as I think you are doing, for verbal expressions of the truth, I try to live by such truth as I have, quite certain that I shall get more. Suppose I were a blacksmith and wanted to strike stronger blows.

The best thing I could do would be to strike my very best, and my arm would get stronger every day. But if I went off to read books about the structure of the arm, and other books about vital fluids, and others about medical theories, why, my arm would be growing flabby all the time.

If you will use what faith you have you will be sure to get more faith. That is about what Jesus says. If you only have as much as a grain of mustard seed, use it. That is, the grain, if you use it, will swell and grow and become a tree, with ever so many more grains. But if you keep it in a box to look at it, and handle it, and talk about it, and are all ready when the minister comes round to show it to him, so that he can say it is all right, why, it will not grow at all, and you will not have any more.

Live with all your might, and you will have more life with which to live.

This Man Likes Snakes

THERE is such romance in news-gathering that few reporters ever quit the business. Many of those who have proved exceptions to this rule have climbed high in the fields of science, law, and politics; but any vocational pursuit must have rainbow's of rare promise to induce the average reporter to give up the fascinating game of chasing that phantomlike something we call "news."

Who on earth would ever imagine a clever newspaper man giving up the business to nurse snakes for a living? And yet, that's just what R. L. Ditmars did, and he is now earning a big salary taking care of the sinuous creepers that he has gathered from the jungles and placed on exhibit at the reptile house of the New York Zoölogical Park.

When Ditmars was a cub reporter on the New York Times, he kept a collection of two hundred or more reptiles in his bedroom, ranging from the tiny garter-snake—which he said was as "harmless as a fly"—to the deadly diamond-back rattler from the palmetto swamps of Florida. He used to fondle his serpentine friends, feed them on the things they liked best, and in every way make them feel at home

in his neatly furnished and cozy room. Just how Ditmars could feel "at home" there will remain a puzzle to his friends. Occasionally Ditmars would take one of his harmless snakes in his overcoat pocket with him to the Times office, where he would calmly lay the reptile on a reporter's desk.

Ditmars is curator of reptiles and assistant curator of mammals for the New York Zoölogical Society, the foremost concern of its kind in the world.

"Why do I love snakes?" he repeated after me. "Why, because they are snakes—that's why. I got interested in them as a small boy, for I never had that inborn fear of a serpent that most people have. I don't recall that I was ever afraid of a snake in my life, though I have had some close calls with the rattlers and cotton-mouth moccasins of the South while catching them for exhibit. I don't think I would care to visit the cobra family in India, for the reason that these snakes will run after and attack a person who invades their premises. But what could be fairer than the rattlesnake, which always gives you warning before he strikes?

"Once, in my laboratory, a glass jar broke, scratched my arm, and inoculated me with rattlesnake poison from a skeleton I was preserving, and I spent six weeks in a hospital. But even that didn't turn me against snakes. The poor creatures have no friends, and ought to be pitied. Oh, yes, I like snakes—because they're snakes."

R. C.

Unimportant People

"PROMINENT surgeons"—the world war has brought half a dozen men of science into such prominence that they rank with premiers and presidents in the news of the day. At a certain Babies' Hospital we known of there is only a nurse in charge of the operating room. All the staff doctors and the cream of the nurses have enlisted for service abroad. Romance and the big opportunity, they feel, is "over there." Well, the hero of this story is only a country doctor. He will never leave Salisbury, Massachusetts, where he and his old buggy have been on the job for years. Once fifty summer visitors were poisoned by some bad ice-cream. Dr. Spaulding did the work of six doctors and saved them all. Last winter, in the teeth of a howling blizzard and despite his advanced age, with one life saver this doctor fought his way out to a hermit's shack on the Salisbury beach and rescued a poor fellow who was in the last extremity from illness and exposure. Dr. Spaulding responds to calls for weddings and funerals as well as for illness, for he is a doctor of divinity as well as of medicine, and sometimes preaches an excellent sermon. On the side, there is his garden. "I'm no one in particular," says the doctor, "but I was the first chap in Salisbury parts to make good on green peas."

HIMSELFS

THE GENTLE ART OF KNOWING ONE THING WELL

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WHEN WILL IT APPEAR?

Experiences that Can Not be Explained

Continued from page 5

in bed one morning. The doctor said a congestive chill had killed her like a flash. She had suffered no pain, for the pale face bore her always beautiful smile. God had called her to his throne for His own choir.

Hundreds of children came to see her—boys and girls from the public school she had attended; the choir from the church; and all its children, big and little.

I was sitting beside her late in the evening. The funeral was to be held in the morning. I was crying, as a man does when he is grief-stricken. I heard a low, soft "Papa!" Startled, I looked at my girl; but there was no sign of life. Again I heard, " Papa!" I looked up in the dim light, and I saw her standing there, in her chorister's surplice.

Smiling down at me, she said: "Don't cry, papa; I'm very happy."

And then she was gone. The entire incident lasted not over a second or two.

Even as I write this little story, after

all the years, my eyes fill; but they are not unhappy tears. Maybe I don't believe in a material heaven; but, whatever heaven there is, my Margie is there. That was the only time I saw her after her death, but perhaps she sees and helps me, for, time and again, some guardian angel has led me through a troubled situation.

G. B.

A Daylight Premonition

SOME years ago an old-fashioned brick church stood on Connecticut Avenue, near L Street, in Washington, which has since given way to a modern business block. At the time, I was engaged in the tinning business, and secured a contract to put up new eaves, gutters, and spouts on this church.

Taking a load of material and a man and helper to the church early one morning, I started them on the work and then went to another building where we had a number of men putting on new roofs.

I was exceedingly busy, but about half past ten that morning I had an impulse to return to the church. There was nothing sensational or dramatic about it, but the impulse to go persisted and grew stronger; so, although it seemed a waste of time, I got on my bicycle and rode to the church.

The church had an A-shaped roof, and the gutters were the old style that hung from the eaves. In order to hang them, it was necessary for a workman to lie flat upon the roof and lean over the edge as he worked, a rope being tied beneath his arms, and the end held by his assistant, who stood at the ridge of the roof.

I placed my wheel against the building and climbed up to the roof. Taking the rope that held the man at the eaves, I told his assistant to go inside the building and bring up more charcoal for the fire. As he left to do this, I glanced along the rope I was holding.

My heart skipped several beats, for I saw that the knot in the rope around the man's waist had been insecurely tied, and that it was only a matter of seconds before the end of the rope would be entirely free.

Ray," I called quietly, "reach behind you and get hold of the rope."

"I'm all right, sir," he answered, laughing, thinking I wanted to ease him.

"Reach back and get hold of the rope," I ordered sharply.

He obeyed, and looked wonderingly at me to see what was up.

"Now get behind that chimney and look at the knot in your rope."

He did as he was told; but as he pulled the rope around him to examine the knot, the end of the rope fell to the roof.

"Oh, my God!" he exclaimed, trembling. He was so upset by the affair that I took him off the job for the day and sent him elsewhere.

I do not know what had caused me to go back to the church that morning. There was no feeling of impending danger or anything like that, only the strong impulse to go. But I am convinced that if I had been five minutes later the man would have fallen to certain death.

Life After Death

MY father was drowned when I was eleven months old, and mother always claimed that at times father appeared to me, for I would often cry, "See papa!"

During the latter part of 1894 I was thrown out of work, and wandered from city to city, looking for a position. I came to Boston from New York over the old New York and New England Railroad, arriving in Boston at 6 P. M. I had only fifteen cents in my pocket. Hardly knowing what to do, I sat down on a seat in the station and waited; and the spirit of my father came and sat down beside me.

"Go up those stairs into the chief train despatcher's office," he said. "He needs a telegraph operator bad."

I walked up the stairs into the chief despatcher's office. C. N. Woodward, now general superintendent of the N. Y. & N. H., was then the chief despatcher of the N. Y. & N. E.

"Do you need an operator?"I asked.

"Yes," he answered. "Want a man to go to Hampton, Connecticut, on the seven-thirty train. Come in and I'll examine you.

I walked into his office, was examined, passed, and started for Hampton on the next train.

A year and a half later, while beating my way out of New Orleans on the N. O. & N. E. R. R., my father saved my life in the wilderness of a Mississippi swamp.

I was riding underneath the freight cars on the truss rods. This is done by swinging under feet first after the train starts, and riding lying on one's back on the rods. There are generally three or four rods underneath every freight car.

Whenever the train stopped to shift, I'd swing out from underneath the car, hide close to the track, and, after the train started, run along, grasp a side-door handle, and swing under. As it was pitch-dark, I couldn't always pick the same car.

It happened that I swung under one car that had only one rod. My body swung around, and I nearly went under. The train was going too fast for me to swing out, and I rode along with part of my body outside and part of it underneath the car, in danger of being knocked under the wheels by switch targets set close to the track.

As I was on the point of giving up, a shadow swung under the car, pulled my body under, braced my knee up against

---

a beam, placed one hand grasping the rod under my head, and my other hand on the door handle outside. It was my father's spirit. I was too weak to do this myself.

When the train started again the same shadow guided me to a four-rod car, and I rode safely into Harrisburg, Mississippi, at daylight.

Once, when I was lost on the Arizona Desert, and nearly dead from hunger and thirst, my father's shadow guided me to the Colorado River, six miles below the town of Yuma. Here I drank my fill, and he bade me follow the river, and left me. I followed the banks of the river into Yuma. I bought a ticket to New York, and secured a good position. Since then I've wandered on the desert no more.

F. H. S.

Out of the Storm

IT was a bitter cold night in the winter of 1915. My mother, my two little sisters, and my younger brother were visiting my aunt, one hundred miles from our farm at Wisconsin. My father had gone to town some time before, which left me, a boy of sixteen, alone in a ten-room farm-house, four miles from the nearest neighbor.

It was very near ten o'clock, and I could hear the blizzard raging out of doors. I was beginning to be a little worried. My father had been gone six hours longer than he had expected to be. At another time this would not have worried me, but now I felt vaguely uneasy.

I fell into—not a sleep, exactly, but a deep, heavy drowsiness. I thought my mother came home. I greeted her naturally, and inquired for my little sisters and brother, who did not troop in after her.

Then, for the first time, I noticed that she was crying. The sorrowful attitude of my beloved mother seemed to rouse me from my stupor, and I asked her what was the matter. She began to tell me hysterically:

"Mrs. Brown [a neighboring farmer's wife] was at home reading, when she heard a terrible cry on the 'Long Road' passing her house. She ran out to see what was the matter, and found that John [my father], while mending the harness on the horse, had been kicked in the head and was slowly bleeding to death. She was not strong enough to lift him, so she did what she could for him, and then went for help." How my mother knew all this she did not tell and I did not ask.

This vivid dream wakened me, but I dismissed it as the outcome of a very good supper. But I couldn't sleep. Again and again my mother's story came before me, until at last I went out and started down the "Long Road"—all the while laughing at myself for a fool.

But, to my intense relief, I found my father. Unlike my dream, his sleigh had overturned and he had been hurled about ten feet away, where he lay unconscious.

Thank God, he was not bleeding to death, though he seemed in danger of freezing. I hurried him to the village doctor, where he was attended to. The doctor told me that I had saved my father's life.

Explanations I have none to make. Maybe you can tell me how this came about.

M. C. S.

The Baby on the Santa Fé Road

NO one, probably, has ever had a more strange and mystifying experience than one that happened in our family when I was a small child. It was over twenty years ago, but it is as plain to me as if it had been yesterday.

One Sunday afternoon about four o'clock, on a bright summer day, we were all driving home through the country after a visit to my father's parents, who lived about nine miles west of our town. We had got about half way home, to a place where the old Santa Fé trail crossed the road. There, as in many places still, huge rocks were placed in the center of the crossroads. We may have been thirty-five or forty feet from this corner-stone when a tiny baby girl, dressed all in white, with hands outstretched to balance herself on her tiny feet, swaying back and forth as light as a breeze, her curly yellow hair looking yet more yellow in the afternoon sun, suddenly appeared almost under the horse's feet.

The old white horse we drove had been used by families with small children so long that she instantly stopped without father telling her to. She cast her eyes down toward the baby and pricked up both ears. Father said: "Why, where under the sun did that little baby come from, out in such heat as this?"

The nearest house was half or three quarters of a mile away, and we knew there were no children there.

Father said: "I'll drive up a little closer and get out and pick her up."

But he never did. As soon as the horse started, the child started too, with the same swaying motion, always just a little ahead of the horse, and looking back over her shoulder. None of us at the time thought how impossible it would be for a baby to go so fast. The horse never took its eyes off the baby, nor did any of the rest of us. She ran on till she came to this corner-stone, went around it, and sat down facing us.

When we came pretty close, father started to get out of the buggy. Suddenly the baby darted diagonally across the road to a telegraph pole, and ran around, peeking out from the other side at us. This pole was located in the corner of a wheat field, and had been put up some years before by my father when he was helping string the first postal line from Chicago to Denver. He hurried after the baby when she ran around the pole. "Why, you little scamp," he said, "don't you think I can catch you?" and made a dive around the pole, only to find empty air. Not a thing in sight, not even a bird or a cloud to make a shadow. We three waited excitedly, for we couldn't imagine what had happened.

The wheat had been cut and shocked, but the nearest shock was a long way to the pole, and the baby couldn't possibly have got to this shock without all of us in the buggy seeing it. We looked and looked, but never discovered a trace of anything. At last we started for home.

No one can describe the feelings we

had, and still have, when any mention is made of that baby. It has never been explained, and it is now more than twenty years since it happened. Our family doctor, who was a great friend of my father's, said he believed possibly there had been gold or valuables buried there by travelers who had been attacked by Indians. Can any one explain this to us?

MRS. C. G. S.

Two Sisters

IT was in the late spring of the late '80's that my sister Juneil and I finished our high-school course and took up teaching.

She was two years my senior, but we had always insisted on being in the same classes, and had always worked together. When we secured our schools, we followed this custom as near as it was possible, and both found country schools, two and five miles respectively from our country home.

I drove our family horse, old Job, to and from school every day; while Juneil took a passenger train for Forestville, a small village of perhaps two hundred inhabitants, where she taught.

She would reach home in the afternoon at about fifteen minutes past four, as that was the only train she could return on; while I, having my horse to hitch up and many little things to look after, used to get home about a half hour later.

It was the closing of a beautiful day in early April, and the unusually warm weather made new blades of grass peep out of the ground at every spot. Heavy rains had washed the lowland after the breaking up of the ice.

I was nearing the bridge which I had to cross on the way home when I heard Juneil call me. I stopped and waited a minute, thinking she had been waiting for me for some reason; but as I saw nothing of her, I decided I must have been mistaken.

The only people I could see were the road commissioner and his men grading a road that had been severely torn by the heavy rains.

I urged Job on, and we were very near the bridge—perhaps not more than ten feet away—when again Juneil's ringing voice calling, "Flora, Flora!" stopped me suddenly.

I was not mistaken this time, for I knew Juneil's voice—nothing but a bell could imitate her clear, full tones.

I looked this way and that way. I was amazed, alarmed, and was peering through the glass in the back of the cover of the carriage when I heard a grinding, tearing, and deafening noise, and looked around to see the bridge slide from its foundation, and Juneil standing in the middle of the road at the other end of the bridge.

I was frightened beyond description, and poor old patient Job had the first real scare of his faithful life.

In a few minutes the men who were working on the road, hearing and seeing the bridge fall, came to my rescue. As one of them caught my horse at the bridle and spoke kindly to the frightened animal, I saw Juneil smile, turn, and walk in the direction of home.

Of course I thought Juneil had heard that the bridge was unsafe, and had come to warn me, and seeing I had help, had started back home.

One of the men, a neighbor, was kind enough to lead my horse along the creek until we came to a suitable place where he knew we could ford; then he seated himself in the carriage with me, took the lines, and drove poor frightened Job home.

As we drove in the yard, my father, mother, and uncle came out to meet us, of course wondering why I was so late.

Noticing the horse's wet and muddy legs, they said: "Were you trying to drown poor Job?"

"No," I answered; "and it was a blessing that you sent Juneil to warn me about that bridge."

"Juneil!" they said. "Why, Juneil isn't home yet."

Impossible, I told them, for I had seen her at the bridge. As we were discussing it a messenger came with this news:

"Four-fifteen passenger went into Hollow Creek two miles this side of Forestville. Bridge treacherously undermined by recent high waters. Casualties high."

And—I can scarcely repeat it now—Juneil's name was on the list of the dead.

It is not necessary to dwell on heart-breaking scenes or to recall them to memory again; but I would like an answer to this question that I have cherished from that time:

Was Juneil determined that I should not lose my life in Hollow Creek as she did?

I shall always think so.

F. G.

One Night in the Philippines

WHAT I describe here is not a personal experience, but I was acquainted with all of the people, and the facts as stated are all true; only the names that are used are fictitious.

Mindanao is one of the large islands of the Philippines. It is inhabited by the Moros, who are savages. Under the American influence the Moros are showing considerable signs of improvement, but it has been a very slow process. At the time of the events here related the improvement had been hardly noticeable. Their favorite and almost the only weapon they had was a long knife, in the use of which they were very skilful. It was against the law for them to own firearms, and their desire to obtain a rifle or pistol was the cause of a number of murders. It was against army orders for a party of less than ten men to leave a post, and each man had to be armed.

The United States built and maintained a road twenty miles long between Malabang and Camp Vicars. A construction camp was maintained at Mataling Falls. One of the foremen at this camp was a man of the name of Atkins. Atkins had come with the Americans in the early days; he had remained in the country, and had married a Moro woman.

Atkins was known throughout the country as the man who went up and down the road, supervising the work, alone and armed only with a .32 revolver.

Atkins had the reputation of having the natives pretty well "bluffed." Possibly this helps to account for a feeling of ill will against him that grew among the natives, and finally came to a head.

---

Malabang is a small town in which is located an army post. In Malabang there lived a surgeon of the name of Brown. Dr. Brown and his wife lived in a nipa house, and when they went to bed at night there was always a .45 near the head of the bed, as was customary and advisable.

When Atkins needed medical treatment he went to Malabang, and there he became acquainted with Dr. Brown, who gave him such pills or other treatment as might be necessary. The pills must have had the desired effect, for Atkins was very appreciative. Possibly the fact that no fee was attached to the service helped to increase his appreciation. Whenever he went to Malabang he would take some eggs or chickens to Mrs. Brown. Among the Moros a gift of eggs or chickens is the customary method of expressing friendship.

This friendship between Atkins and the Browns had lasted for about a year.

One night Dr. and Mrs. Brown retired at about nine o'clock. It was a bright moonlight night. There was a window in the room through which the moon shone, making a bright spot of light on that side of the room.

Just as Mrs. Brown reached that semi-conscious state that precedes sound sleep, she had a feeling that there was some one in the room. Glancing toward the window, she saw a form. Sitting up, she looked,

and had the impression of seeing Atkins standing in the moonlight.

While Mrs. Brown was doing this, Dr. Brown had reached for the .45, and as he did so he exclaimed, "What are you doing in here?" He likewise had the impression of seeing Atkins standing in the moonlight.

For both of them the impression was only momentary. As they looked they saw that there was no one in the room.

After they had recovered from their surprise at the unusual occurrence, they both went to sleep.

The next morning sad news concerning Atkins was brought to Malabang. During the early part of the night the Moros had rushed his house, captured him, taken him out of the house, and put him to death.

The details of his death need not be described; General Pershing said that some of the Hun methods are not altogether new to army officers who have served in the Philippines.

As well as could be judged, the experience of the Browns took place at the same time that Atkins was killed.

It would seem to be a perfectly reasonable assumption that Atkins, at the time of his death, thought of the doctor to whom he was accustomed to go for the relief of physical pain.

The appearance of Atkins in the moonlight, as related, could hardly be considered an unusual occurrence, except for the fact that he appeared to two people at the same time.

O. R. P.

Seen by a Child

WHEN our son Karl was six years old, he started going to school. One day in October there was a cold rain; but, as we lived very near the school, we let him go. He happened to get there after the door had been closed, and it was such a large, heavy door that he was unable to open it, so he waited for some one to come and let him in. But no one came until he was wet and cold, and as a result he acquired a very severe attack of diphtheritic croup. At times it seemed impossible to save him.

One day, as I was taking his breakfast to him, the baby, a little boy of two years, followed me into the room, and, seeing his brother, ran up to him and kissed him. I had not been told that the disease was contagious, but had kept the child away from him, as I felt it was always best to keep a child out of any sick-room. By this time, however, Karl was almost well, so I did not give the incident much thought. Just three days later, and almost before we realized that he was sick, our baby died of diphtheria. He was a little dull, but seemed to be getting better, the day before he died. In fact, he walked across the floor at nine o'clock, and died a little before midnight.

The older boy had been sleeping tranquilly at night, and seemed to be gaining all the time. A few moments after the baby died he was taken with violent vomiting. We all ran upstairs to him. The doctor turned to us and said: "That is curious; that is purely from shock."

We had been very careful never to refer in his presence to the baby's sickness, and there had been no chance for him to know that anything had happened. But the next morning, as I went in with his breakfast, he asked, in a very matter-of-fact way: "Mama, is Paul dead?"

I was so shocked that I put the tray on the dresser, and turned and left the room in a great hurry, as if I had forgotten something. I went into another room, and made a great deal of noise, pretending to be very busy, in hopes that I might get his mind off the subject. We had decided not to let him know anything about the baby's death until he was quite well again, as the two children had been great chums.

After a time I got the courage to go back into the room, only to be met with the same question, still more insistent. I replied: "Why—what do you ask me such a question as that for?" His answer was: "Because I feel as if he is."

I could see that there was no use in trying to evade him, so I said: "Yes, Karl; he died last night. He had the same kind of trouble that you have just had, and we could not make him gargle as you did, you know. He was only a baby, and did not know how."

It seemed to be just what he expected, and he did not make any comment or demonstration whatever.

The next morning, as I stood outside his door, I heard him talking and laughing. As I opened the door he cried: "Oh, Mama! Paul was here!"

Another time, as I came in, he was talking again. When he saw me, he said: "Paul was here, and he crawled up here on the bed by me and patted my face, but I couldn't see anything but his hand. Wasn't that funny?"

I put all of the baby's things away, thinking that it would be best to have everything that would remind Karl of the baby out of sight. The first time he came downstairs to a meal, he commenced to hunt around, and I said: "What do you want, Karl?" He replied: "I want Paul's high chair—he wants to come to the table with us."

His grandmother, who was already seated at the table, said: "He sees it too—I have known it all the time." So I got the chair and put it at the table, by my side, and he was perfectly contented.

MRS. G. H. P.

GETTING FOOD TO THE MEN AND THE GUNS

By CAPTAIN A. P. CORCORAN

YOU in America call it the Quartermaster's Department. We call it the Army Service Corps. The duties, of course, are similar. They consist in supplying food, clothing, ammunition to the men who do the fighting on the line.

"Supply officer? Oh, he's safe. Not a chance he'll reach the trenches."

So I heard one man console a father whose son had just left for France. And, as I listened, I saw the men scattering from the ammunition park as a spy-directed bomb pitched neatly near them.

Safe? Well, judge for yourself.

An ammunition train has arrived at a rail-head in France. Close at hand are three five-ton trucks waiting to remove part of the cargo to a spot somewhat nearer the scene of action. The motors are loaded. They move off, preceded by a cyclist whose business it is to clear the road for their coming.

It is a bad road, narrow and rough. The going is dangerous, so their speed is not great—no more than ten miles an hour. So far, so safe. They are nearing their goal, a "divisional dump" some five miles behind the line, when suddenly there appears a speck against the sky.

It comes swiftly toward them, seems to pause a moment, then swoops, drops something, and shoots rapidly away. There is a plop! a loud roar, and a great scattering of fragments.

The smoke clears. A little débris cumbers the road where once the column of trucks moved. For the rest, you may search the fields on either side. And the drivers, supply officers, and cyclist? Gone where the good men go!

I have said three trucks. There might easily have been fifteen, depending on the needs of the moment. Their fate would, of course, have been the same. There is no escape when carrying explosives.

But let us suppose they arrived safely. What is their destination? Just a big open field, well out of range of shell-fire, and exposed only to the visits of "Taubes." It is known as the divisional dump. And here, for a radius of several miles, are collected all army stores, rations, engineering supplies, as well as ordnance, awaiting transport to their various places on the line.

Here comes the brigade supply officer, seeking food and small arms for his men. He comes in a wagon drawn by horses. Usually he comes by night; for at the front it is the day that has the "thousand eyes," and each one looking for a target. The road he travels, too, is usually well within their range of vision—it leads to the regimental dump. So he goes furtively. Yet he does not always escape.

It was during the retreat from Mons that the following "accident" took place. I relate it not merely to illustrate the "safety" of the supply officer's position, but also to bear witness to his heart and his pluck:

The transport was engaged in carrying food to a village that had been a bone of contention for some twenty-four hours. The German artillery, not daring to fire too close to the scene of action lest they inadvertently kill their own men, were busily peppering the roads behind the town. Up these lumbered our wagon, drawn by four horses. On the near leader sat a rider. There was a driver on the box, and beside him sat the supply officer in command.

You've heard, perhaps, of "freak" shell bursts? Well, this was one of them. When the "Bertha" got busy, it blew the rider to atoms, killed one horse, wounded three others, shot the driver dead into a ditch, and landed the officer twenty yards from him, with no more injury to his person than is understood by that useful word "shock."

The Boches, unconscious of their success, kept on wasting their amunition. Had that supply officer stayed where he was, he would have escaped unhurt. But out there on the road he could see the horses squirming and plunging in their pain.

It was too much for him. He was a sportsman and he loved animals. So out he crawled from his safe landing-place, and with his revolver put the three beasts out of their agony. Then, just as he was beating it back to cover, another shell hit. This time he was not so fortunate, for he lost a leg from above the knee.

The shells, however, are not the only danger faced by these men. Frightened animals can do quite a lot of damage, too. They tell of one team that, panic-stricken by an explosion some fifty yards away, bolted into the nearest field. There was a river running through it—quite a deep river, that completely swallowed up horses and wagon. Miraculously the men jumped clear to safety; but the supplies and the truck were lost.

But, to come back to the method of transportation. The regimental dump was our next resting place. Like most of the refilling stations, this is a movable spot, changing its location according to the will and convenience of the command. Indeed, the finding of a safe place for it is one of the transport officer's chief difficulties. It is no slight matter to have your dump go up in smoke.

Usually it is located a mile or two behind the lines. From here fatigue parties, under the command of the regimental quartermaster, bring the supplies up to the actual trenches by hand. Often, however, the distance is too great for that. Then a wagon goes half the way, and the party comes to meet it.

I remember one dark, damp night, when we had been mending some cables back of the trenches, coming on a party of these A. S. C. men at their job. The Hun had been very busy that evening, distributing his shells at random behind the line. If these chaps had acted according to the letter of their instructions, they might have escaped unhurt.

But when the quartermaster's men failed to meet them, they proceeded up to the line on their own. There weren't enough of them to carry the cases properly, so they were trying to drag them through the mud—Flanders mud, which is not content with covering your boots, but must reach up to your knees as well.

One of the men had been hurt. They thought it easier to have him sit on one of the cases than to carry him back as he was to the wagon. The trench dressing station could bandage him up before he set out for home. It is in a case like this that you test a man's spirit. Those chaps would have been entirely justified in dropping their deadly load and driving back in comparative safety. But it never occurred to them to do it. Their friends up on the line might need them—that was the only thought in their minds. So they plowed along, cursing a little and joking a little, but never once hesitating on their way.

And so it is always with the work of this corps. It is monotonous. It is inglorious. There is nothing in it to rouse the blood. And it is unending. They have to work at it day and night. Sometimes, in a rush, these men get no sleep for two or three nights running, but that won't get their names into the despatches.

There must be food for the fighters and fuel for their guns. If there isn't, God help the A. S. C.!

NOT SO GERMAN AS SOME

CAPTAIN ROBINSON of the Royal Navy was in charge of a vessel which heard itself one day hailed by a submarine.

"Halt and take to your boats!" was the gist of the order, which Captain Robinson chose to ignore.

As punishment for this disobedience his boat was shelled; whereupon, her steering gear giving way, she halted of her own accord, and the crew lowered the boats.

As one officer was descending the side of the ship, the Captain handed him a pet Pomeranian, Betty, the pride of his heart, to keep. The officer carelessly dropped her into the water, and immediately the little beast—was she inspired, one wonders?—struck out for the submarine's side.

No sooner had Captain Robinson entered his life-boat than he saw her, and straightway jumped into the water after her. A quarter of a mile he swam before he caught up with her, and put her on his shoulder. Meanwhile the submarine was dangerously close—so close, indeed, that he caught hold of her side while he tried to recover his breath.

A crazy man, you conclude. But you never can tell!

Consider his astonishment when, close to his ear, he heard the voice of the German commander saying: "I make up my mind to blow up your boats for you not stopping ship had you not save little dog."

Perhaps the Boche had a pet dachshund at home.

From Obstacles to Peace, by S. S. McClure (Houghton, Mifflin Company).

BELGIAN CHILDREN WILL REMEMBER HIM

The son of John Redmond, the great Irish leader, was killed fighting in Flanders. Belgian orphans bring flowers to his grave, and are taught to remember his name in their prayers.

WHAT FEAR DOES TO SOLDIERS

A WHOLE company, or a regiment, may become panic-stricken in battle, and flee; but, as Ian Hay says, no individual soldier has ever been found with courage enough to flee by himself.

In other words, the soldier, from his first day in camp, becomes every day less and less an individual and more and more a part of the large unit. The ancient military spirit, the collective impulses, will determine his conduct, says Professor G. T. W. Patrick in Medicine and Surgery.

In battle he may possibly have more fear than the others, or less; but he will act much as they act. To do otherwise takes more courage than a coward can summon.

And fear, indeed, is most valuable to a soldier, Professor Patrick continues. Psychologists have recently proved this by experiments, made in laboratories, on cats frightened by dogs. Those experiments showed that fear produces a number of interesting internal changes that really prepare the body to exert its maximum power.

The most important of these changes is the effect upon the adrenal glands. "Under the influence of any strong emotion, such as fear or anger," says Professor Patrick, "these glands secrete and pour into the circulating blood a substance called adrenalin. The effect of this, circulating through the blood, is instantly to prepare the body for violent action."

No soldier need, therefore, have any fear of fear. A certain amount of it he will fear, but it is good for him; and the danger that his fear will lead him to a cowardly act is remote: in the crisis the courage of the crowd will take him up and carry him on.

PART OF HIM WAS LEFT

THE lure of aviation is worse than gambling, but it only gets into the blood of brave men. Major Joseph Tulasne, Chief of the French Aviation Mission to America, was an infantry officer when the war broke out. He wanted to get into the air service; but, as he had not yet received his training, he had to join his infantry regiment on the eastern frontier.

In the National Geographic Magazine he wrote:

"On the the 22d of September, 1914, both my arms were broken in a combat. As soon as I reached the hospital, I put in a request to enter the air service if possible. My request was refused: there was too great a need for infantry officers. So, when my arms were well again, I returned to my regiment at the front.

In January, 1915, my foot was blown off by a shell; they cut off my leg and they cured me. They

gave me an articulated leg. Not wanting to be discharged, I again put in a plea to join the aviation service, and after a great many formalities was allowed to become an observer. In a combat at Verdun our machine was riddled with bullets and was obliged to hobble back to our lines. A bullet had carried off two fingers of my right hand.

"I joined my squadron again in the Somme after six months of illness in a hospital. I remained there five months, with the good fortune not to be wounded, happy to be able to serve once more. It was not the result of a wound, but of illness and weakness after nine operations in two years, that I was again sent away from the front."

Boy Wanted

—Continued from page 9

the rain and morning, full of spray and dawn. The card she had taken from the window was on her knees, face down. Her gaze was now on the books and now on the young bookseller.

Stanislaus became cognizant of breathing softer than his own in his book shop.

He turned in his leather chair, and saw Norleen Quail on the balcony stairs. Her hair was falling over her eyes, her eyes were down; she was writing on the card from the window.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She jumped, pencil-tip flying to her lips.

"You've made me lose it!" she exclaimed.

"Lose what?" he inquired.

"Nothing," she retorted, and started to tear the card in two.

He held out his hand. "Let me see what you were doing."

"It's just nothing," she said, bringing the card to him.

He took it from her. The phrases she had scrawled over it were like a drawerful of odd gloves; he could not fit them to meaning. "It doesn't seem that you've inherited your grandfather's gift," he quizzed her.

Her hands came down on the card—and shredded it.

"You needn't laugh!" she cried, eyes inky.

"I wasn't laughing," he protested.

Xerxes Dele came in just then, with his cherry-stick umbrella, galoshes, and sand-colored rain-coat.

"Dele," said young Stanislaus, "what are the duties of our page?"

The clerk deposited his umbrella in the rack.

"Eh, Mr. Stan?" he said, adjusting his spectacles with his thumbs.

"What do we pay the page, Dele?" asked Stanislaus.

The clerk divested himself of galoshes and rain-coat.

"Seven dollars a week, Mr. Stan," he stated, mildly bewildered.

"Is the stipend satisfactory?" the young bookseller asked Norleen Quail.

"It will keep famine from the McGinnitys," she answered.

"Miss Quail is to fill the vacancy in the shop," Stanislaus explained to his clerk. "Please request—very civilly, Dele—her address, and give her something to do."

With humor the young bookseller resumed the perusal of his morning mail.

Xerxes Dele was a bachelor, and he regarded in gentle embarrassment the young lady who was to fill the stripling's place. He ushered Norleen Quail to the desk with the green droplight, where he ascertained her address and entered her on the books. He then presented her with the most feminine article in the establishment—the feather duster. And when Norleen, on reaching the poetry section with the duster; tarried, enamoured of the verse, the clerk tiptoed to the poetical nook, removed the feather duster from her unobservant hand, and kindly completed the morning task himself.

THAT was the beginning of the new human accessory to the Resinold book shop. In fair and foul weather, Norleen Quail came for her day of reading—for, from the first, reading was all she did. Partly from kindliness, and partly from timidity toward her sex, the clerk took upon himself the tasks usually allotted the stripling.

Stanislaus Resinold, busy bargaining in first editions and rare prints, became accustomed to the girl in his shop. He righted the shelves after Norleen had rummaged through them; he delivered her lectures on law and order, and laughed at her incongruous arrogance; he scanned her scribblings, and quizzed her when she talked of the gift in her skull. He took her no more seriously than he would have taken a long-legged water-skipper. And not once could he find coherency in the quicksilver phrases she scribbled.

One day the girl came to Resinold's desk with cheeks like coral and eyes as bright as the gold-leaf edges of the volume she had in her hand—it was the choice edition of Sir John Suckling's poems.

She laid the volume open before him. And on the fly-leaf she laid her pencil stub.

"Read what I've written!" she cried. "It's cast down you'll be! It will sing in your head and bother your sleeping! There'll be no forgetting it! There's the glint of the sun and the wet of the rain in it. You'll not be laughing at—this!"

She paused for breath and for his approbation.

He was staring at the book placed open before him—the first edition that the Resinolds had been unable to find for more than a score of years. She had scribbled on its fly-leaf!

"See what I've done!" she exulted.

He did not speak, but turned the fly-leaf. She had scribbled on the fibrous title-page, and on the finely engraved portrait of the knightly versifier!

She touched his shoulder with her finger. "Read it!" she said.

"You have ruined it," he replied in consternation.

"Not I!" she laughed. "Nothing could ruin it, when it came! It has the gift!"

He turned the title-page. Her pencil stub, smothering and smudging the dainty old English lettering, had run over:

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prithee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothing do't?
Prithee, why so mute?

He sat inert. She was touching his volume with one finger, and touching his shoulder with another finger—a whirlpool of laughter and delight.

"I wonder," he said chillily, "if you are aware of the value of what you have defaced."

"I'm thrilling to the value of what I've expressed!" she flung back. Her finger tapped his shoulder. "Tell me what you think of it!" she commanded. "Has it the 'divil's whack'?"

She all but put her cheek to his, in an overflow of prismatic joy.

In cold rage, he all but felt her cheek on his! No woman—as yet—had put her cheek to his. Some day, from somewhere, some one might brush his cheek with one of pearly purity and pallor. This starveling's cheek!—coral with her blood! This seaweed—in a tangle of active color! He was inanimate in his leather chair.

And suddenly his frigidity seemed to reach her. Her color fluctuated. She fell back.

He took up the volume she had scribbled through.

"You have abused my property," he said evenly. "The person who trespasses on another's property is unthinkable."

He pigeonholed the marred book.

She gazed at him in fright. Then she went slowly to the peg in the alcove where her cloth hat hung. She stood for a minute in the alcove, struggling with tears.

RESINOLD saw the doorof his book shop open and close behind her. In the coldest anger he had ever known, he resumed the work on his desk that she had interrupted.

It was late afternoon; and soon the globes of light shone on the Avenue, and in the book shop the clerk switched on the green droplight. Dusk gathered in the corners of the place, and shadowed the poetry section. Stanislaus closed and locked his desk, and reached for his hat and stick. His good night to his clerk was punctilious. His route to Irving Place in no way deviated from his sire's and his grandsire's.

But, when Clowes was slow in answering his ring, he filled his residence with his punch of the bell. And his house seemed mummified to him. Dinner in his ponderous dining-room seemed dry as dust. Everything seemed old enough to crumble away. And that evening, under his curbed demeanor, he felt confoundingly juvenile. He desired to arise from his table and give Clowes a swat below the snuff-colored belt—or to pull the nose of Tibbetts, the maid, to see if her eyes could water! And after dinner, in passing Mrs. Wenlock, the genteel housekeeper, on the staircase, he was tempted to whoop over his balustrade and land in his highly polished hall!

He restrained these inclinations—proceeding, in young dignity, up to his rooms. He was beset there by a feeling of unrest, of not having finished the day, of having

---

left something undone in his book shop. He went to a window and sprang the heavily tasseled shade to the top. It was a wet night—not raining, but wet with a mist that befogged the windows of the old house on Irving Place. It was a night when anything left undone was disturbing.

He wished that he had read what Norleen Quail had scribbled through his first edition of Suckling. In his anger at her destruction of the book—and in his chagrin at the thought of her cheek against his—he had perhaps overlooked an obligation to the starveling with the great name. What if she had written something illustrious—something that made her the sort it was in his blood to bow to? She had said, "There's the glint of the sun and the wet of the rain in it."

Stanislaus left his house, and walked up Fifth Avenue to his book shop. The Allies' flags on the Avenue were soft in the mist, their colors cheek to cheek. He let himself into the place that smelled of seasoned leather and parchments. Without turning on a light, he unlocked his desk. He carried the little volume of Sir John Suckling to the window; and, in the illumination from the street, he read what Norleen Quail had written.

CLEAR as the sound of falling water was the love-poem the girl had scribbled. Curiously wrought and magnificently fashioned, it fell and flowed; tinkling words dripped to tides of words, tides broke and whirled through sweeps and shallows, to deeps where words broke under words, and ran almost in silence. Love, in its first edition, price beyond listing! Love, vivid like pomegranates, sweet like white grapes! Love, nude and chaste, clear as the sound of falling water.

Blue-brown eyes booming to light, idyllic mouth melting to a smile, chivalrous features shadowed by ardors, young Stanislaus fell in love with the poem. He fell mightily in love with it. With her gift, Norleen seemed to emerge from vapors and to laugh, wet-eyed, before him—the starveling who had blown into his shop like a sea-breeze! He tried to estimate what she had written. But her up-hill, down-dale scrawl only led him down dale, up hill. She had rhymed of love, and she had brought her love-rhyming to him— What should he do with the love in the rhyme? He wondered. From the first, he had not known what to do with her. She was not like the girl his sire had loved, nor like the girl his grandsire had loved. She was only a vagabond echo of a great name. But what she had written was immortal—the freshet in a pure heart gushing to the waters of love! What place had a starveling freshet in the blue waters within him?

He walked the length of his book shop to the desk with the green droplight. He turned on the light and found her address, where his clerk had neatly filed it. He left the droplight burning when he left his book shop.

It was still early. The mist was drenching. He walked across town, through the moist thoroughfares, to the street where the McGinnitys lived.

It was a block of decent flats. The McGinnitys lived in a basement flat with green things growing in the windows. Stanislaus Resinold went down the area steps and rang the bell.

Norleen Quail opened the door.

"Oh!" she cried, at seeing him.

He said nothing. From the misty area he looked at her. What she had written sang in his head. She was outlined against a light room furnished in bright colors. She seemed to him like a leaf on bright waters.

"Is it to take me to court for the writing on the book that you've come?" she asked, in the doorway.

"No."

"Is it to make a judge of yourself and scold me?" she questioned quickly; "or is it to laugh at me?"

He was not laughing.

"I've read your poem," he told her.

It was her turn to be silent.

"It—has the gift," he said.

Color came up to her cheeks.

"It is very good," he informed her, his mouth smiling. "I did not know it was in you. I can see why you hardly cared where you wrote it. What I can't see is how you wrote it." His laugh was rich. "What do you know about love?"

She had a smile for his smile now. Between the light and the mist, she was ready with her retort:

"Maybe it's just my grandfather's gift."

His laughter receded.

"You mean the poem is merely the outcome of an inherited talent?"

"What's in the skull comes out," she replied.

Blue-brown eyes on her—"Who put it in your skull?"

"The 'divil,' my grandfather would say."

"Did I put it in, Norleen asthore?"

Her face was suffused.

"Is that what you're thinking?" she stammered.

He seized her hands.

"Yes. Give me the love in your rhyme!"

She gazed at him. Eyes and cheeks submerged in color, she fled from him—into the light room.

He ran after her and caught her. He rumpled the hair from her forehead.

"A page with such gifts in her skull!" he cried. In the light room, he swung her up in his arms.

"I'm going to marry you!" he said. "Put your cheek to mine!"

Laughing, kissing her, he carried her forward, through the McGinnity flat, where the children were going to bed.

"Molly, wherever you are," he called, "I'm asking you for Norleen Quail!"

This is His Week

ROBERT THE BRUCE, afterward King Robert I of Scotland, was born March 21, 1274, and died in 1329. In 1286 the crown of Scotland became the cause of dispute amongst thirteen noblemen who set up claims for the vacancy. Edward I of England determined that none of them should have it, because he wanted it himself; so Bruce, the strongest claimant, found himself for fifteen years a king without a country.

For years he was a hunted beggar, hiding in forests and garmenting himself in rags and skins of beasts. Wild animals and roots and berries were his food. He sheltered himself from cold and wind and rain under dark pine trees or in wild rocky caves. He had to keep moving always, for enemies were always on his trail. For years his queen roamed with him; but she was finally captured, and hung in a cage on the wall of Berwick Castle, England, to be pelted with mud and stones by passersby.

A spider, so the fable runs, was this king's inspiration for the success that ultimately rewarded his endurance. One day he lay on a bed of straw in a poor cottage where he had taken refuge, wondering whether it was worth while to fight and struggle any more. "I will renounce my right to the throne," he thought; "I will send away all my brave men, and bid them make peace with the English king. Then I will go to the Holy Land and die fighting for the cross."

Full of such thoughts, he looked up at the bare rafters of the cottage roof where a spider hung from one of the cobwebs. It was trying to swing from one rafter to another. It tried and failed. Again it tried, and again it failed. "It is like me," the King thought bitterly. "I have tried and failed."

But the spider did not seem to be aware that it had failed. At last, after innumerable attempts, it landed safely on the opposite rafter. "Bravo!" cried Bruce, "henceforth there is no such word as fail!" He rose and buckled on his armor, and tackled his job again. He was a mighty king, with a mighty arm and a mighty ax—and he finally came triumphantly into his own.

This is the Place Where—

IN this little white, clap-boarded building, which still stands at Litchfield, Connecticut, was established, in 1784 the first law school in the United States.

Its story is in large part the story of the early days of our country.

It stood originally in the yard of Judge Tapping Reeve, its founder, and within a stone's throw of the garden in which the women-folk of the neighborhood melted up the statue of King George, torn down in New York to be made into bullets for American muskets. We had barely signed a peace treaty with Great Britain when its doors opened to the first of the long line of men who were to march through them to great careers.

Hither came Aaron Burr, who was to play such a dramatic and tragic part in the affairs of his country. Came, too, John C. Calhoun, the meditative Scotch-Irish youth from South Carolina, who in after years just missed the President's chair and who has caused innumerable school-boys to wrinkle their brows over the question: "Who was known as the great nullifier?"

Sixteen of the young men who studied there became members of the United States Senate; ten of them were governors of States; two sat in the United States Supreme Court, and forty others had place upon the bench of the highest courts of their States. Congress claimed fifty, five were members of the Cabinet, and several served their country as ambassadors. In 1831 the Vice-President and one eighth of the members of the Senate over which he presided were men who had had their training in Litchfield County, and nearly all of them at the Litchfield Law School.

How a Scrap-Book Helped Me

WHEN I was a child I started a scrap-book of the things I liked. There were pictures of furniture, and plans for making it, pretty rooms, plans for houses and gardens, recipes of all kinds, and many other things. Mother alone knew of my hobby, and she smiled indulgently; but I kept it up, and filled book after book. Then, when I grew up, I gathered all the best things into one book. I never dreamed, as I made the selection, how useful that book was to be.

It went with me to my new home when I was married, and then I forgot all about it until one day when my husband was offered a position in the mountains. His health had been bad and he was anxious to go, but it meant that I would have to buy supplies and cook for a large number of workmen. I had never had experience in such matters, and I hesitated. Then I came across that blessed book. In it were tables for ordering supplies, every recipe I could ever need, and many other useful things. We took the job.

Life in the mountains gave my husband back his health, and he was full of enthusiasm when he came home one night and exclaimed: "Wish I had a book of furniture plans. The boss wants some things made, and it would help a lot if I had some plans."

I smiled and got out my book. In it was just what he wanted. It enabled him to do the work, and helped him to a better position.

Parts of my book have been copied by many brides, and by woodsmen dependent for comfort on things they could make for themselves. It is no longer just a book, for I found it so useful that I have now a volume for each subject of interest. We have moved about a good deal since my husband got his health back in the mountains; but wherever we go those books go with us.

Who is He?

HE is a British novelist whom people of late years have begun to call a prophet. As a young man he wrote strange books in which he told of ships in the air and under seas, of man's penetration to other planets, of wars that would wage on this world and on other worlds. The books were audaciously speculative, sensationally imaginative, but they were also filled with far-reaching understanding of man's piteous struggle against the cosmic.

The author's youthful style changed. He attempted to forecast the future of the world sociologically and along scientific principles, with a vision of a finer civilization some day to be attained through thought and sacrifice. Few took him seriously, however. Yet much of what he foretold then has come to pass.

Particularly did he prophesy the new forms of warfare that would usurp the old; and had England heeded his warnings she might have lost fewer men, suffered less humiliation in the early days of the fighting. In 1900 he drew a memorable picture of what would happen to the British army should it set out to meet a scientifically organized foe. "Marching to slaughter I see a million half trained lads, all imbued with the fallacy of British invincibility, led by parson-bred sixth-form school-boys, men of pleasure, noble old men in epaulettes still thinking of Balaklava." We know now how quickly generals become obsolete—what happened to the British when they met the Germans first at Loos.

He tells us now, in a new vision, that we are on the verge of a great awakening: that nightmares of empire and racial conflict are throwing forth our clumsy cosmogonies and theologies; that in time we will tread the earth a free people; that we shall discover the means of transmuting jealousies, leudnesses, and mean passions; that we shall control our increase, and breed a stronger, wiser race. Will we? Who is he?

THE EDITOR ANSWERS

THIS war has certainly exposed a lot of hoary old frauds. Take the Potato, for instance. I used to think I couldn't live without him. Then Mr. Hoover asked me to go easy, and to my surprise I discovered that the Potato is by no means necessary to my happiness; and that he is, moreover, mostly water and bluff, with very little real nourishment.

Now the lid falls on my old friend Wheat. Instead of bread made of white flour, I am being served with bread made partly of flour, partly of rye and corn and sawdust and various other things.

I don't know how you find it; but, personally, I like it about three times as well as the old-fashioned white bread.

The Doctors Disagree Again

Dear Editor:

I like to read a little of everything, and today I read your short story entitled "Morning"—the first of the very short stories which you say you intend to run.

I would like to know where under the sun you could expect to find a woman doing things in the way described in that story. You try to relate a story pertaining to farm life, and you describe methods so different from the actual ones that I feel, if you are no more nearly right regarding the zone postal system, the more this zone system is narrowed the better.

W. H. P., Delphi, Indiana.

It wasn't meant to be a treatise on farming, W. H. P. For that sort of thing we publish a very good magazine called Farm and Fireside. It was meant to be a short story; and you will be interested to know that the president of the Woman's Press Club announced to her members, at a recent meeting, that it was so perfect an example of what a very short story could be that every one of them ought to go straight home and read it.

Wet Your Coal

Dear Sir:

On reading your advice, "Sift Your Ashes," I feel impelled to write you, in the interest of conservation, that we go you one better. We burn ours. Please don't laugh. I did, the first time that I heard it. But, after thinking it over, I tried it, and it works fine. We wet the ashes with the garden hose, and shovel them on, and find that our coal consumption is reduced from a quarter to a third. One requires a little practice to become expert in burning ashes; and a little stronger draft is needed than with coal. But it pays.

Another way of saving is to wet your coal. I know coal-dealers pooh-pooh the idea and say there is nothing in it. But I know better, because this winter I kept track very carefully and found that a great deal more coal is required to get the same heat when it is not wet. I do not know the reason for this: wish I did.

L. A. P., Chicago.

Another reader has written us about wetting coal to make it last longer, and we pass the information on for whatever help there is in it. Personally, after this winter we envy the automobile more than ever. Like it, we would fill our radiator with anti-freeze mixture, and be laid up somewhere from November to May.

S. O. S. for P. J. C.

Dear Sir:

Will you please furnish me with the name and address of your correspondent P. J. C., who in your war letter contest wrote that he had made his fortune in the war but had lost his family and is lonely? By so doing you will greatly oblige

E. F. H., Indianapolis.

We must have had fifty letters like yours, E. F. H. They are of various sorts, but most of them from ladies who seem willing to do what they can to comfort a lonely man with a fortune. And to all of them we have had to make the same reply: we can not furnish the names and addresses of those correspondents who write to us under our pledge that their letters will be treated as confidential.

Some day you will feel tempted to write us some very personal experience that will be helpful to other people. And we want you to feel absolutely assured, when that impulse seizes you, that you are writing to us and to no one else.

About Building a Home

Dear Sir:

My husband and I are living in the hope of being able to build a home of our own. Already we have our fund started. Can you tell us something about the method of financing the balance? How do building and loan associations operate?

(Mrs.) E. T. S., Providence.

I'm sending you a very helpful answer to that question. It is contained in one chapter of Mr. Atwood's book, "Making Your Money Work for You," which we sell for five cents. In your case, never mind the nickel. If you find anything in the little book that will help to make that dream of yours come true, we'll be mighty proud to have had even a tiny part in it.

Wasn't It Lucky the President Had Three Daughters?

GIRLS have to get along without being named after the President—at least, for the present. But these little maids did the next best thing and got themselves named after Mr. Wilson's daughters. Reading from left to right, they are Margaret, Jessie, and Eleanor. They were all born on the same day four years ago, and all call Mrs. Andrew Gunderson, of Valley City, North Dakota, mother. Yes, you've guessed it—they are triplets. They treasure pleasant letters from the young women of the White House for whom they were named. Eleanor and Jessie also have marriage announcements of two White House weddings, and Eleanor's collection is ahead of her sisters' by a bunch of violets which the wife of the Secretary of the Treasury sent to her.