"And Verily Thou Shalt Be Fed"

RIDING up-town on a Fifth Avenue 'bus, we passed one of the richest and most penurious men in New York. My friend said to me: "Did you ever stop to analyze avarice—to discover what it is that makes men hard and grasping?

"It's fear," he continued.

"Men are afraid of being hungry; afraid of being cold; afraid of losing their money and having to start all over again.

"In all the world there is nothing more tragic than the withered soul of a man who has a little money, and lies down and gets up in terror lest it should somehow be taken from him."

Then he went on to tell me about his father, who came out of the Civil War penniless and built up a fortune.

"He lost every cent of it in the panic of 1873," he said. "And in ten years he had made it again.

"Then came the awful year of 1892-3. Banks failed. And right in the midst of it, when it was impossible to borrow a dollar anywhere, certain men attempted to force a proposition on my father by which he could have saved his business at the expense of his business honor.

"He called them into his office,—I was just old enough to remember it,—and there he stood, a man of more than fifty, gray-haired, facing financial ruin.

"'Gentlemen,' he said, 'you have been doing business with me for a good many years: you know I am square and reasonable. And now, when my back is against the wall, you want me to compromise my principles, and threaten to destroy me if I don't.'

"He looked them squarely in the eye:

"'I want to tell you a little story,' he continued quietly. 'I was just a boy in the Civil War: and after the battle of Chancellorsville I was cold and hungry, and there was nothing to eat.

"'Walking across the battle-field, I found the body of a dead soldier. He was not a pretty sight, but clutched in his hand was half a loaf of moldy bread. And I took my ram-rod and fished it out of his hand, and for two days I lived on that moldy crust.'

"'You think you can frighten me by threatening to put me out of business?' he cried. 'Let me ask you a question first. Have you ever lived on a dry crust for two days? No? Well, I have; and, what's more, I can do it again: and if you can't you'd better not go to war with me.

"'That's all.'"

I have read somewhere that fear is the first instinct to reveal itself in infancy. Humor and love and faith and hope all come later: but the evidence of fear may be noted in the very first weeks of a new-born life.

And all the rest of our lives we battle, some more, some less successfully, against that bad inheritance.

Men who supposed that they had conquered fear are shivering again under its influence to-day. I meet them everywhere in business.

They talk in whispers of the Bolsheviki. We shall have our own Bolsheviki movement, they say. There will be a social revolution. Stocks and bonds may become merely scraps of paper.

Such conversation wearies me.

I do not expect any of these dreaded things to happen. But my respect is for the man who, like my father's friend, can face the possibility of their happening and still stand unafraid.

Who says to himself: "Whatever Fate may threaten, I am still strong and well: my purposes the world are right : and I can make a living somewhere, come what may."

Who believes that, through storm and revolution, somehow God still works to make a world more just and decent for the great body of His people.

Who, conscious that he seeks no unrighteous advantage for himself, nails to his mast-head the greatest promissory note in the world:

"Trust in the Lord, and do good: so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed."

And in that faith goes forward.

Bruce Barton, Editor

LETTERS WE SHOULD LIKE TO HAVE RECEIVED

Shakespeare to Southampton

WE wonder whether the powerful Earl of Southampton realized, when he received the following letter from poor, friendless Will Shakespeare, inclosed in the manuscript of "Venus and Adonis," that it would be his only claim to fame in posterity:

Right Honourable:

I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden: only if your honour seemed but pleased I account myself highly praised and vow to take advantage of all idle hours until I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir to my invention prove deformed I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather and never afterward till so barren a land for fear it yield me so bare a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey and your honour to your heart's content; which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world's hopeful expectation.

Your Honour's in all duty,

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Richard Steele to his Prue

RICHARD STEELE wrote to his "Beloved Prue" (Mary Scurlock) just before their marriage:

St. James Coffy House, Se 1 1707.

It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love and yet attend to business. As for me, all who speak to me find me out and I must lock myself up or other people will do it for me.

A gentleman asked me this morning "What news of Lisbon?" and I answered: "She's exquisitely handsome!" Another desired to know when I had been last at Hampton Court. I replied: "'Twill be on Tuesday come se'night."

Prithee allow me to kiss your hand before that day that my mind may be in some composure! Oh love! A thousand torments dwell about thee, yet who could live without thee? Methinks I could write a volume to you, but all the language on earth would fail in saying how much and with what disinterested passion I am ever yours,

RICHARD.

Stevenson Writes of a Friend

WHEN James Walter died, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote to the sister of his dead friend:

I never knew any man so superior to himself as poor James Walter. The best of him came only as a vision like Corsica from the Corniche. He never gave his measure either morally or intellectually. Even his friends did not know him but by fits. I have passed hours with him when he was so wise, good, and sweet that I never knew the like of it in any other. For a beautiful good humor he had no match.

I remember breaking in upon him once with a red-hot story in my worst manner, pouring words upon him by the hour about some truck not worth an egg that had befallen me, and suddenly some half hour later finding that the sweet fellow had some concern of his own of infinitely greater import that he was patiently and smilingly waiting to consult me on. It sounds nothing, but the courtesy and unselfishness of it makes me rage to think how few knew him....

Oh my poor friend! If I had written to him more, if only one of us in these last days had been well. But I ever cherished the honor of his friendship, and now when he is gone I know I have lost still better. We lived meaning to meet, but when the hope is gone the pang comes.

R. L. S.

Aldrich's Bread-and-Butter Letter

THERE is something about the letter Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote to William Dean Howells, after a visit to the latter's home, which has none of the earmarks of the usual bread-and-butter letter:

Dear Howells:

We had so charming a visit at your house that I have about made up my mind to reside with you permanently. I am tired of writing. I would like to settle down in just such a comfortable home as yours with a man who can work regularly four or five hours a day, thereby relieving one of all painful apprehensions in respect to clothes and pocket money. I am easy to get along with. I have few unreasonable wants and never complain when they are constantly supplied. I think I could depend upon you. Ever yours,

T. B. A.

P. S. I should want to bring my two mothers, my two boys (I seem to have everything in twos), my wife and her sister.

Lord Nelson to His Wife

LORD NELSON wrote to his wife just before the battle of the Mediterranean.

Aboard the Agamemnon at Sea,
March 10, 1795.

We are just in sight of the French fleet, beloved wife. The signal is out for a general chase. We have but little wind, and unfortunately the enemy are inshore of us. Whatever may be my fate, I have no doubt in my own mind but that my conduct will be such as will not bring a blush on the face of my friends; the lives of all are in the hands of Him who knows best whether to preserve mine or not. To His will do I resign myself. My character and my good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace would be dreadful; a glorious death to be envied. If anything happens to me recollect that death is a debt we must all pay, whether now or a few years hence can be but of little consequence. God bless you, my very, very dear, and believe me ever your most faithful and affectionate husband,

HORATIO NELSON.

The Pastor of Plymouth Church to Pope Leo XIII

Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Feb., 1903.

AMONG those men who are the glory of their time, the world has already made a large place for you, Leo the Pontiff.

Revered by Protestant and Catholic alike, now that you are dying, the Protestant world mourns for you as does your world, the Catholic. You have been the spiritual ruler of millions of men, yet power has never made you arrogant. You have been a great scholar, wise toward all books and libraries, but neither are you impractical or a dreamer, for you are known as the most practical of men.

You are annually in receipt of treasures so vast as to make the income of princes contemptible, yet to the end you have lived in three rooms, furnished to the point of poverty.

You are held in universal reverence because you stand for the great simplicities, those universals of Christianity, Love, Peace, Good Will.

We can say of you, Leo the Pontiff: "We thank thee, God, that Thou hast counted the world worthy to have him so long."

And now that your career is ending, you stand forth in the form of a man without the admixture of meanness or vice, but clothed with justice, virtue, and goodness as garments.

NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS.

Luther to His Little Son

A LETTER that Martin Luther wrote to his little son is as fresh and sweet to-day as when he wrote it in 1533. In those days letters were not common, and when the neighbors heard that one had arrived from Luther, they gathered at his house to hear it read. Some were shocked at the simple story of heaven. They thought that Luther had trifled with a very important subject. Luther, whose life was bitterly opposed by many, and who did not mind criticism, replied: "An ye think so, so let it be." This was the letter:

My little Hans, grace and peace in Christ to my heartily dear little son: I see gladly that thou learnst well and prayest earnestly. Do thus, my little son, and go on. When I come home I will bring thee a beautiful fairing. I know a pleasant garden wherein many children walk about. They have golden coats and pick up beautiful apples under the trees, and pears, cherries and plums. They dance and are merry, and also have beautiful little ponies with golden reins and silver saddles. Then I asked the Man whose the garden is, whose the children were; he said, "God's: those are the children who love to pray, who learn their lessons and are good." Then I said: "Dear Man, I also have a little son; he is called Hanschen Luther. Might he not also come into this garden and eat apples and pears and ride on the ponies and play with the children?" And the Man said: "If he loves to pray, learns his lessons and is good he shall come into the garden; Lippus and Fost also [the little sons of Melanchthon]; and when they all come together they shall have pipes, flutes, drums and all kinds of music, and shall dance and shoot with little bows and arrows." I said to the Man: "Ah, dear sir, I will go away at once and write all this to my little Hanschen,...so that he may come into the garden. But he has a dear Aunt Lena. He must bring her with him." ...Therefore, my little son, learn thy lessons and pray with a cheerful heart.... Herewith I commend you to Almighty God and greet Aunt Lena and give her a kiss for me.

Thy dear father, MARTIN LUTHER.

Lincoln to a Mother Who Had Lost Five Sons in the War

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, face to face with grave and perplexing problems, laboring with "head, heart, and hand" to save his country, found time to write this letter to a mother who had lost her five sons in the war:

Executive Mansion, Washington,
November 21, 1864.
MRS. BIXBY, Boston, Massachusetts.

Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the war department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I can not refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

What They Think of Him in His Home Town

HENRY FORD

By FRANK HURBURT O'HARA

IN Dearborn, Michigan, he is the man who came back. He went to the city, became famous, and returned. Years ago he used to get his mail—when he had any—through the little village post-office window. They called him "Crazy Henry" then. He was a lean, agile farmer boy. Now he lives in "the mansion," over where the Rouge River takes a swing to cross Michigan Avenue, and the post-office has fine new quarters and rapidly increasing business, and Dearbornites call him Mr. Ford. Or just plain Henry, if they're old-timers.

It's easy to speak of Henry Ford in plain terms, especially in Dearborn. He's such a you-and-me sort of man. And, besides, Dearborn is his home town. I don't think he ever really considered any other; so no one was surprised when he came back.

I was in Dearborn the other day. I wanted a shave. We got to talking, the barber and I, as barbers and I often will.

"Ford?" said the barber. "Oh, he's a common sort of a guy."

"Good fellow?" I translated.

"I'll say so. If you get stuck in a rut with a tin Lizzie, and he comes along in another, he'll stop and pull you out if he can. And, mostly, he can."

Then my friend the barber talked of the coal shortage, and Dearborn's growth, and the Tuscania, and other things. Why talk about a regular every-day citizen of your own home town? And that, in brief, is what Dearborn thinks of Ford, the man. He's a good deal the same as Herman Kalmbach, vice-president of the bank, or Jim Guinan, the postmaster, or Frank Henry, the contractor—he's a good citizen who's made more money; that's all.

What They'll Tell You About Him

"WHAT do you think of Henry Ford?" one citizen asked another (for my benefit).

"Why, he's all right, ain't he?" said the other, as if surprised at the question.

"Ever done you a favor?"

"Sure. Ain't he done you one yet?"

One of the "favors" he had done this man was the purchase of his farm for $40,000.

If you want to take a run over to Dearborn to hear about Henry Ford, I'll tell you in advance what will happen.

You'll hear about Ford's new home. For polite conversation in the little town on the Rouge, "the mansion" is worth a couple of Fords, any day. The great stone house, already weathered to look like an English castle—they say it cost a million—with its vast rooms, its swimming-pools, its lakes and log cabins, landscaping and conservatories, bird-houses and rabbit-coops—here is something new and worth talking about. There's nothing new about the man who built the house. The townsfolk have known him all their lives, and he hasn't changed. They've had a part in the very first "Ford stories"; and so Ford himself is pretty much taken for granted, as old friends ought to be.

On his part, Ford takes Dearborn in the same way. He doesn't do much talking about it. You see him now and then going by in a machine,—one of his own make,—with his uncovered iron-gray hair flowing in the cool wind. Possibly you get a glimpse of him dropping into the town bank, of which he is president. Or you may watch him settled comfortably beside Mrs. Ford at a public school entertainment. If you didn't know him for the great automobile wizard, you'd accept him as he likes to be taken thereabouts, for a plain, every-day Dearbornite. He doesn't entertain many Dearbornites at the big house—I suspect he likes meeting them in the old way better. But, though the house he lives in now is a lot different from the old Ford farmhouse where he grew up, it is situated near the boyhood home; and, to get back to nature without ornament, Mr. and Mrs. Ford every year abandon the stone mansion to spend a month or so quietly at the dairy farm. They like it.

Before Other Folks Are Up

LIFE even at the bigger house is simple. There is the usual entertainment, of course,—distinguished visitors, friends, etc.,—but the genius of the place is such a busy man, especially in these days when invention spells victory for America, that he likes to escape to the quiet of home life. So he retires into the pleasant seclusion of his big estate, and there the curtain pretty much falls upon his actions.

There used to be a road running straight before the doors of his new house. The road is still there, but it's a private one now, with a little gate-lodge where it enters Michigan Avenue. You don't get past the gate without a reason. This, however, does not mean that, because Ford bought up hundreds of acres of land, he blocked the public's traffic. That isn't the Ford way. He decided he wanted that road private, so at his own expense he put through another road, two or three miles of fine macadam, to connect the main east-and-west thoroughfares.

What does Henry Ford do when the "curtain falls"? People in Dearborn weren't sure. I was curious. I found an employee of the estate.

"Does he ever play?" the employee repeated. "Sure he plays. If you get up early enough in the morning, before any one else is out of bed, maybe you'll see Mr. Ford out in the road, running up and down for exercise. And he isn't always quiet about it, either, Mr. Ford ain't. One day a while ago I heard laughing and shouting, and down through the woods comes two fellows, running and yelling like kids out of school for recess. That was Mr. Ford and his superintendent. Letting off steam, I guess."

It seems that early morning activities are not restricted to mere running up and down the road. Some mornings Ford gets his exercise to the pleasant whirr of a mowing-machine.

"Does he do a good job?" some one asked.

"Well," my informant considered, "in a way he does. I reckon he lets the mower lead him around; for afterward we find great streaks in the grass, so that the job has to be done, all right!"

Ford is essentially a worker. Over his huge fireplace is the legend, "Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice." Ever since he was "Crazy Henry" he has been "cutting wood." And the same energy that he puts into his work—and his play—he expects from every one else. "If you work for Ford you've got to work," they say in Dearborn. "He'll give you a chance, and he'll pay you well: but you've got to deliver the goods." It doesn't make any difference if you're an old friend or a relative—he gives you a job to do, and you do it.

His Brother Bill

IN this connection, there is an interesting story current in Ford's home town. I know nothing about the facts. Purposely, this glimpse of the man is hearsay. The

Concluded on page 19

THE LIGHTER SIDE OF THE REVOLUTION

By LOUISE BRYANT

IN every situation, no matter how tragic, there is a very definite touch of humor, and it has been particularly noticeable all during the tremendous upheaval that Russia is passing through.

When I came to Petrograd, during the Korniloff counter-revolution, all supplies were cut off and the city was facing starvation. The bread lines were long and pitiful. Walking down the Nevsky and the little side streets, I noted the contents of the shops. Most of them were alarmingly empty. People told me that the food on hand could not last longer than three days.

What do you suppose I found in abundance in this city besieged and starving? I don't know how true it would be in other cities; but in Petrograd, when there were no warm clothes and no food to speak of, there was show window after show window full of corsets, false hair, and dog collars! All of these ridiculous things can be accounted for without much scientific investigation. The corsets were of the most expensive old-fashioned wasp-waist variety, and the women who wore these cruel aids to beauty have largely disappeared from the capital, with their pet dogs. The reason for the presence of the false hair was plain. About a third of the women in Russia wear their hair short, and there is practically no market for the tons and tons of hair sold in the shops for a few rubles.

Since the Revolution there have been no regular policemen. In the daytime it never made much difference, but for a while under the wabbly provisional government night robberies and murders in great numbers took place. A strictly revolutionary government like the present one is always a strictly moral one. Thieves are mobbed now, and looters ordered shot on sight, so that the town is pretty free of disorders of this kind. But, in the old days, deserters and other folk of uncertain character, along with the professional thieves, did a thriving business. I give the experience of one of my friends to show the somewhat hysterical pitch that this illegal traffic reached.

The Englishman and His Watch

The first story concerns an Englishman who had managed to get aboard a crowded car about eleven o'clock one night. He was obliged to stand on the back platform. He imagined that one neatly dressed little man avoided his eyes. Reaching down for his watch, he found it missing. Just after that the little man got off the car. The Englishman quickly followed, and the man began to run. The Englishman caught him in a yard hiding behind a pile of wood. He said in a commanding voice: "Watch! watch!" The little man promptly handed over a watch.

Later the Englishman found his own watch on his dresser where he had carelessly left it that morning and a strange watch in his pocket. Very much upset by what he had done, he advertised in the papers, and in due time the little man appeared. The Englishman began an elaborate apology: but the little man shut him off. "It's quite all right," he said. "What worried me that night was that I was carrying 3000 rubles, and I was afraid you would ask for those."

When the Council of the Russian Republic, which was really just another name for the Pre-parliament, was sitting in the Marinsky Palace, and had finally got itself so tied up that it could not pass a single measure, the Bolshevikis rather abruptly took over the power and sent a detachment of Cronstadt sailors to dissolve the assemblage. The sailors knew nothing of the usual procedure in such affairs. They read no long decree, but they just quietly surrounded the palace and sent one of their members inside. This great rough

figure appeared in the gold and ivory hall and shouted in a loud voice: "No more council! Go along home!" I never saw language so effective. Three minutes after the sailor had spoken not a single statesman was within calling distance.

Hardened to the bad habit of tipping, we were rather surprised to find little notices posted about the tables in the restaurants: "Just because a man must make his living as a waiter, do not insult him by offering him a tip."

It is hard to get used to the money. Paper is scarce and the 20- and 40-ruble notes, which are only two inches square, look exceedingly like tobacco coupons. Ordinary postage stamps are used for kopecks. Where the glue used to be is written: "To be taken as the equivalent of silver money."

In Moscow, where the fighting was fiercest in the first days of the Bolsheviki uprising, one company refused to take part on either side. Both parties did their best to break down this neutrality, and pressed them with requests to come out. After this company sent back word that it was neutral, it was requested to define just what conduct it would pursue during its watchful waiting, and it returned this official reply: "We mean to go on selling galoshes and cigarettes as usual." Soldiers are permitted to make extra money in Russia by peddling.

Hunting Up a Battle

When Kerensky was reported to be marching on Petrograd with a huge army, three of us Americans took the train for Tsarski Selo in order to see the expected battle. We had passes from the Revolutionary Committee of the Bolshevikis, and we were told that Tsarski Selo was in their hands. Arrived in the town about ten in the evening, we began to look for the Staff. No one seemed to know where they were located. We met a sailor and a soldier, and showed them our passes. They looked embarrassed and handed them back to us without a word. Later we inquired of a student, and he told us to go up to the Ekaterinski Palace. Just before the gate we stopped to rest.

While we were standing there, laughing and talking, we heard voices. Looking up, we saw sentries watching us from the wall. Their bayonets shone ominously in the moonlight. We remembered the queer way the soldier and sailor had acted and we did not want to make another mistake, so this time we asked what side the sentries were on. "We are neutral," they answered. We asked if they would allow us to go in to see the commandant, and they raised no objections.

We found the commandant and his officers seated around a wood fire, and we presented our passes. The commandant looked concerned after reading them, and consulted with several of the officers; then he came back to us and said: "I am very sorry, but these are the wrong passes. We are holding this place for the Kerensky army. But if you would like to go to the hotel to-night, we can issue an order so that you can secure a room, and we will also give you the correct passes and deny all knowledge of these. The battle will take place about four in the morning." It sounded like some kind of show especially staged for our benefit. Then he ordered one of his aides to walk with us a little distance into the town.

A few days later, after Kerensky's Cossacks were defeated, a huge procession marched through the streets to meet the returning victorious Red Guards and soldiers. After standing for hours watching the demonstration, I went into a little restaurant on Zagorodny Prospect. A very old and drunken peasant came in, and begged permission to blow on my fur coat to see if it were real seal. It is not seal, but he decided that it was. We fell into conversation, and he asked me where I came from. I said I was an American, and for some reason this seemed to excite him. He began to tell every one who entered about it.

I asked him curiously what he knew about America. For at least five minutes he was silent, thinking. Then he arose and solemnly announced to the whole company: "America is a great nation! I know about America. Sewing machines come from America!" Then he came over, kissed me on both cheeks, and gave me an apple and a dirty sandwich.

THREE LITTLE STORIES FROM OVER THERE

No Need to See

A YOUNG man who was wounded told the following story of his telephone operator:

"The enemy's artillery demolished the telephone station where I was, and a shell made a fearful wound in the face of my operator. I told him to go down to the dressing station.

"'Why?' he asked.

"'You can't see; your eyes are full of blood,' I answered.

"`I don't need to see to telephone,' came the answer.

"He remained at his post; and half an hour later another shell killed him." (From The Battle of Verdun, by Henri Dugard, published by Dodd, Mead & Company.)

Chivalry

OCCASIONALLY an incident occurs at the trench front which proves that, amid all the cruelty of war, humanity will assert itself, and is appreciated on both sides. Here is such an incident: For some time a British officer had been watching a German officer impaled on his own barbed-wire defenses and writhing in anguish. A hot rifle fire was being exchanged.

At last the British officer turned to the men near him and said:

"I simply can't stand seeing that poor devil in such torment. I'm going out to do something for him."

Before any one could interpose, he had climbed over the top, and, in spite of the danger to his life, made his way to

where the German officer was impaled, and proceeded to release him.

The rifle fire ceased on both sides. Every one watched. The British officer carried the German officer to a German trench.

Presently the German commander came out, took from his own coat the Iron Cross, and pinned it to the breast of the British officer. There followed no cheering—nothing of that sort. But as the British officer returned to his own trench there fell upon the lines a silence of deeper significance.

(Quoted by Donald Hankey.)

What Kind?

SOME men who can accomplish great deeds are at a loss when it comes to words.

A soldier who had crawled on his stomach from his battalion to a danger point on the firing line, and, after spending six hours flat on the ground mending an important communication wire, had crawled back to his battalion wounded, was invalided home. The people of his town were proud of him, and, in order to show their appreciation, decided to give him a watch as a testimonial.

A public meeting was arranged. The hero was invited, and the presentation was duly and impressively made. But, when it came to acknowleding the gift, the brave man could find no words. Finally, holding it up in his hand, he stammered:

"Dear friends, I thank you very much for this kind watch."

THE MYSTERY OF PRINCE HENRY

WHAT has become of Admiral Prince Henry of Prussia, the Kaiser's brother? Considering that when he visited the United States he made the favorable impression of a democratic, sailorlike kind of man, one would have expected American newspaper correspondents in Germany to send in something about him.

But since the beginning of the war nothing regarding him has come from them, and practically nothing from any other source. Only once has he been caught by the camera man, and then he appeared to be merely an onlooker at some parade.

At the outbreak of war he was yachting at Cowes, England, where he was generally popular. He, of course, made a break for home, but on the way stopped off to see King George, and from British official documents it would appear he was more than willing to carry a pacific message to the Kaiser.

He arrived in Berlin, presumably delivered the message, and, so far as the war limelight is concerned, went out of it altogether.

He does not seem to have been given any high naval command, nor has his name been mentioned as forming one of the council of war lords. Moreover, while the Kaiser, his sons, and most of the German princes have been star features as wonders in Germany, and handed what was due them of black paint by the Allies, somehow Prince Henry has escaped both.

It is as if he had been entirely forgotten.

But, as the Kaiser's brother could hardly be forgotten in Germany, one can wonder if he has met the same fate as his brother-in-law, Prince Louis of Battenberg, in England.

It will be remembered, that Prince Louis was compelled to step down from his British naval command on account of his German birth. Is it possible, then, that Prince Henry's friendship with the British royal family and his popularity in England were held by the German haters of England as putting him in the doubtful grade of enthusiasm for barbaric U-boat warfare?

Perhaps he said something along that line which did not please Tirpitz. Perhaps, on the other hand, he is being held in reserve for the time when a man of his standing, whose name has not been besmirched with atrocity, could be used to advantage.

In any event, Prince Henry's complete disappearance from public view must be regarded as one of the real mysteries of the war.

CAPTAIN MICHAEL WHITE.

HOMESICKNESS

IN the Paris Journal a nurse has told her experiences in caring for wounded Moroccans. She was the only woman in the French hospital where they lay who could understand the speech of these great childlike warriors, and consequently her services were in constant demand. Her story is quoted in Current Opinion.

An orderly came running for her one day, to tell her that she was needed immediately.

"They wanted me to translate Arabic. One of the Moroccans was weeping and his fever ran high. They were anxious to satisfy him.

"I bent over his bed and murmured the Koranic salutation. His eyes opened, he smiled, then suddenly he burst into a storm of tears. 'No one cares!' he said piteously; 'no one understands me.'

"'Tell me,' I urged, 'I shall understand.'

"I spoke in Arabic. He smiled.

"'I was thinking, down there in my own country, under a palm tree, I have a mother. She is old. Her name is Hadjira. When I sleep I dream, and in my dream she weeps!'

"'But when you go back to her she will not weep,' I said.

"'I know!' he answered, and fell asleep. We cured him, and after a while he went away.

"Like all the mussulmans, he called me 'Arab Mother.' Whenever they were in trouble they sent for me.

"One day one of them, a tall devil—very dark—he was almost as dark as a negro—was in trouble. They called me, and I ran in.

"When I reached his bed, 'Arab Mother,' he sobbed, 'they are oppressing me! I am a worm, scorned, tormented!"

"'Speak!' I urged, `tell thy mother.'

"He gazed into my eyes. 'It was my breakfast!' he said piteously.

"'Thy breakfast?' I repeated. 'What of thy breakfast?'

"He covered his face.

"'Wilt thou not make known thy woes?' I urged.

"Fixing me with eyes wild with reproach, he sobbed, 'My son of a hen was cooked too hard!"

"Such a fuss for an egg! The nurses could not get over it.

"One day one of the nurses said to me, 'Do you know, I did one of those boys an injustice? I was sure that he called me 'Old Camel'; but I found out that he was asking for his drawers.'"

ONE BRAVER THING

HE was six years old, and the son of an army officer. He himself wore a complete officer's uniform—puttees, coat, cap, and all.

A cousin met him, and asked respectfully: "Well, Billy, are you a soldier?"

He looked at her with indignation. "No! I'm a lady street-car conductor!"

FORWARD INTO THE UNKNOWN

WILL THE WAR BRING A NEW RELIGION?

THE old-time parson has gone out of style on the battle-fields of Europe, says Private Peat (Bobbs-Merrill Company), and a new type of human, companionable man of religion has taken his place. "No stupid tracts are handed to us, no whining and groaning, no morbid comments on the possibility of eternal damnation. No; the chaplain of to-day is a real man—a man who risks his life as do we who are in the fighting line.

"Out of this war will come a new religion. It won't be a sin any more to sing rag-time on Sunday, as it was in the days of my childhood. It won't be a sin to play a game on Sunday. After church parade in France we rushed to the playing fields behind the lines; and many a time I've seen the chaplain umpire the ball game. Many a time I've seen him take a hand in a friendly game of poker.

"The new-style chaplain is as brave as he is human. At Neuve Chapelle a number of wounded men lay in a street swept by machine-gun fire. A guard of soldiers were stationed behind a barricade of sand-bags, and strict orders were given that no man should pass beyond it.

"The enemy fire grew hotter. A Roman Catholic chaplain reached the side of the sergeant. 'Sergeant, I want to go over to the aid of those wounded men.'

"'No, sir; my orders are absolutely strict. I am to let no one go across.'

"A chaplain of the Presbyterian faith came up. 'Sergeant, I want to go across to those men. They are in a bad way.'

"I know, sir. Sorry, sir. Strict orders that no one must be allowed to pass.'

"'Who are your orders from?'

"'High authority, sir.'

"'Ah!' The padre looked at the sergeant.

"'Sorry, Sergeant, but I have orders from a Higher Authority.' And the Presbyterian minister rushed across the bullet-swept area. He fell dead before he reached his objective.

"'I, too, have orders from a Higher Authority,' said the Roman Catholic priest, and he dashed out into the road-way. He fell dead close by the body of his Protestant brother.

"They had not reached the wounded, but Heaven is their witness that their death was the death of men."

HE WANTED HIS SLEEP OUT

GERMAN officers are said to stay in safe, cement-walled dug-outs behind the lines; but British officers have a calm disregard for shells and high explosives that often worries their subordinates beyond all measure. A captain in the British army told Major F. McKelvey Bell, in The First Canadians in France (George H. Doran Company), of his attempt to rescue a colonel who refused to be rescued.

"Our dear-old colonel was billeted in the tenement row which used to be in the square of Ypres, close to the Guild Hall. One night they started chucking big shells into the cathedral and what was left of the square. I counted fifty-seven falling over and around the colonel's billet. It was about eleven o'clock, and some of the houses in the row had already been hit.

"I went over to wake up the old boy, as he showed no signs of having been disturbed. I stumbled up the stairs to his room. He was sound asleep—think of it! I spoke to him, but he didn't wake; so I shook him gently by the arm, and he opened his eyes.

"'Hello, Wellcombe!' he growled. 'What brings you prowling around at this time of night?'

"I told him that I thought the billet was becoming a trifle unsafe, as some of the other houses in the row had already been hit.

"'Well, well,' he came back at me, 'and you woke me out of a sound sleep to tell me this! Go and get me a drink, and then run along like a good fellow and go to bed!'

"And after the old fellow had had his drink he thanked me, turned over in bed, and I believe was sound asleep before I got out of the house—while a continual hell of fire and shells tore the guts out of the town about him! When I went back in the morning there was only one house left standing in that row—the colonel's. The others were a crumpled mess of bricks and mortar!"

THE SURF OF WAR

By Étienne (Lieutenant R. N.)

HEAVY is the price that the nations pay to war—
Heavy as the thunder of surf upon the shore,
Grinding up the sea-shells it flings upon the land.
Countless tiny works of God broken on the sand.
So the wave of warfare, relentless in its beat,
Smites the slow and sluggish, and smites the swift and fleet;
When the wave recedeth, sprawling on the sod
Lies the broken wreckage of images of God.
Verses from The Grand Fleet
(Erskine Macdonald, publisher).

JIM EAGAN'S DRAFT

By JENNETTE LEE

Illustrations by S. J. Woolf

THE woman moving briskly about her kitchen stopped and looked at the young man seated by the table. An official-looking paper and gray envelop lay on the table beside him. His fingers reached out to the paper and pushed it nervously away.

"I don't know what they want to draft me for!" he said. "I never shot so much as a chipmunk in my life—let alone shootin' a man!"

The woman's eyes, that had followed the movement with a protecting gesture, flashed to his face.

"You wa'n't never very strong, Jamie, you know." She made the comment dryly and turned away to her stove.

He straightened a little and glanced out of the window at the low-lying hill and the scrubby pasturage at the back of the house.

"I've got my farm-land to 'tend to," he muttered. "Who is going to take care of the farm if I go off to France or Belgium or Hungary—" The words trailed away into ignorance and a sense of hopeless and futile protest.

"Maybe they won't take you," volunteered the woman.

A gleam of hope shot into his eyes, and retreated dully.

"The' ain't anything the matter with me," he said hopelessly.

"You wa'n't never very strong," she repeated briskly. "You had fits when you was a baby."

He thrust the paper from him with a half angry gesture.

"Fits when I was a baby won't save me!" he said. He turned toward the door.

A young woman stood in it. She stood straight and strong, and she carried a great pan of peas in the curve of her arm. Her face was moist with the heat and her hair curled in little wet rings on her temples. She pushed it back and stared at them.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Jamie's drafted," said his mother. The young woman looked at him with a slow smile.

"Shucks!" she said.

"It's so!" said the youth.

She set down the pan of peas. "But you can't go!" she said decisively. "You've got me dependent on you!" She stood looking down at him.

He shook his head. "That don't count, they say—not unless there's children."

She flushed slowly and turned away. She took a porcelain kettle from the wall and set it on the table with a little thump.

"I guess when a man's got his wife and mother to take care of, it's enough!"

She sat down, spreading her ample apron wide to make room for the pea-pods that her nimble fingers stripped away as she threw the peas into the kettle beside her.

"Drafting mere boys!" she said. "You ain't really nothing but a boy!"

"I'm twenty-three," he returned.

The elder woman had seated herself on the opposite side of the table. The three faced one another.

"You ought to get out of it, Jamie—some way," said the mother.

The wife nodded. "I ain't going to have you killed!" she said quickly. Her nimble fingers flashed at the peas and dropped a handful of pods into her lap.

The youth started.

He touched the paper beside him on the table. "It says the seventh of the month," he said.

"That's Monday," replied the wife. "And to-day's Wednesday."

They looked at each other.

"They don't give you much time, do they?" said the mother.

He shook his head. "I'll just have to go, I suppose. What you goin' to have for dinner?"

"Peas—and I'll make a good squash pie for you." His mother got up from the table and disappeared in the pantry.

The two sitting by the table looked at each other. The wife leaned forward a little. Her full bosom rose. "I just can't bear to have you go, Jim!"

The woman reappeared in the pantry door. "Jamie, I want you should go and see a doctor right off."

The two turned to her.

"What for?"

"You see Dr. Brown," she replied.

The youth stared. "He don't know anything about me. I better see Cooley, if I see anybody."

"He may get something to know," said his mother. "They say a good many of the boys that's gone to him have got off."

The boy smiled a little bitterly and got up, taking the paper from the table.

"All right," he said. He reached for his hat.

"You see Dr. Brown!" repeated his mother significantly. He went out.

THE two women, left behind, were silent a minute. The younger one, resting a plump arm on the edge of the pan of peas in her lap, seemed looking far into the future.

She turned to her mother-in-law with a swift gesture.

"Somehow, I feel he'll have to go!" she said fiercely.

The mother gave her a slow look—almost of contempt, it seemed—and returned to the pantry. The thumping of her rolling-pin came through the open door.

The younger woman returned to her work. She did not mind her mother-in-law's sharpness. They understood each other perfectly.

When the boy returned from the doctor's, the peas were cooked and the table spread. The squash pie, with its delicate cream-brown surface, stood on the back of the stove waiting for him.

"Smells good!" he said, sniffing. He hung his cap on its nail.

Both women looked at him.

He glanced from one to the other and nodded. A little smile touched his lip.

"Let's eat!" he said. "I'm hungry!"

"Did you get off, Jim?"

It was his wife. She was leaning forward, gazing at him with deep eyes.

"Oh—" He gave a little embarrassed laugh. "I didn't get off, exactly. But Dr. Brown seems to think maybe they won't pass me—" He paused a minute, irresolute.

"Why won't they pass ye?" demanded his mother. Her voice was keen.

"He said something about my heart," replied the youth. "And he gave me something to take."

"To cure you?" said the wife.

She was looking at him with a strange glance. One could not have told whether hope or fear was in it.

"Well—" The youth hesitated. "He talked to me real good about the war. He said the Germans don't want to hurt us—not really. They're friendly to us. And the best thing we can do is to keep out of it."

He straightened himself as he said it.

The two women nodded slowly.

"You give me that medicine!" said his mother. She reached out a hand.

He stared at her.

"Give it to me!" she repeated.

"What you want it for?" he demanded.

"I'm going to put it in the stove!"

He looked at her a long, slow minute.

"I wouldn't do that, mother."

"Why not? You're not going to be such a fool as to take it before you're examined—and get well beforehand!" She leaned forward. "Give it to me. I'll keep it for you—till after the seventh."

A little smile touched his lips, leaving them ghastly.

"I don't take it till the seventh," he replied. "I take it about an hour before I'm examined."

There was silence in the kitchen. A fly buzzed against a window-pane.

The mother's face had grown pale.

"I—I don't dare—have you take any poweful stuff—like that!" she whispered.

He laughed easily. "You don't need to be afraid, mother. I guess Dr. Brown knows what he's about."

He took a folded white paper from his pocket and looked down at it thoughtfully.

The two women looked at it with fascinated gaze.

"You be careful, Jamie!" warned his mother.

"Jim's all right!" interposed the wife.

She spoke almost sharply. Little lines had come in her round, placid face, and her eyes followed the youth with a puzzled look that had something almost wistful in its depths.

"He's got to make up his mind for himself—whether he's going or not going," she said with soft decision.

"We better have dinner," said the older woman. "Everything's getting stone-cold. It won't be fit to eat."

THEY sat around the table in silence. Now and then one of them made some jerky remark that broke off futilely against the silence. If the folded white packet had lain on the table between them, it could not have been more present to their thoughts.

Presently the youth got up.

"I'm going to grub out that hard-hack this afternoon." He moved his hand toward the hill pasture at the back of the house.

His mother stared. "You're going to dig the potatoes," she returned crisply.

He faced her uneasily.

"I'm going to clear up that pasture," he said. "I've been meaning to do it for years. I'm always putting it off."

"Well, this ain't any time to do it—with the potato-tops dead—and you going away, maybe forever!" She gulped.

He returned the look, and his face grew set.

"I'm going to grub out the hard-hack."

With puzzled eyes she watched him leave the room. It was the first time he had set his will against hers. There was something almost defiant in his tread as he crossed the yard to the barn and disappeared under the shed.

Presently he came out carrying a large pick-ax and a bush-hook. He went toward the hill pasture.

ALL the afternoon they watched him, from the kitchen window, toiling in the hot sun. He would lift the pick-ax with a heavy, swinging blow, driving at the tough roots. Then he would drop to his knees, grubbing with tense fingers at the earth and roots. When the bush gave way, he would rise to his feet, and brandish it almost fiercely before he cast it away.

To the two women watching from the window, it seemed as if he were talking and calling out as he brandished it.

After a time the mother left the house and went toward the pasture. She skirted the wall by the barn, keeping out of sight of the figure on the hill. She had thrown a towel over her head to keep off the sun, and the ends of it were held firmly in her set teeth. As she came nearer the figure she peered from behind the bushes with a cautious look.

He was bending to a great clump of hard-hack, his muscles gripped to the strain. The moisture poured from his set

---

face. She could see his thin back tighten beneath the shirt and lift itself in a long heave. The roots loosened from the soil, and he straightened himself, brandishing the mass of bush and earth high in one hand.

His face was covered with dirt and his eyes gleamed.

"There goes another German!" he shouted, and tossed the bush from him.

She dropped to her knees and crept along the wall back to the house. The towel, still held in her set teeth, fluttered a little.

When she came in the door, she took it off and wiped the moisture from her face.

"I'm kind o' worried about Jamie," she said to the younger woman. "He's actin' queer."

"Jim's all right," returned the wife dully.

ALL that week he worked on the hill pasture, neglecting the rest of the farm. Once, when his mother protested, he put her aside, with a kind of sternness in his young face. "When I'm away I want to see that pasture looking decent," he said.

"But you ain't going, Jamie!" She almost whispered the words.

"You don't know whether I'm going or not going. Nobody knows!" he shouted.

He looked at her fiercely.

She did not trouble him again. And on the morning of the seventh, when he came out of his room, clean-shaven and wearing his best suit of clothes, the hill pasture, cleared of brush and stubble, rose in the sun serene at the back of the house.

He cast a satisfied look at it as he stepped from the door.

"That's done!" he muttered.

His mother and wife had followed him to the door.

"You got it with you, Jamie?" asked his mother anxiously.

He placed his hand on his pocket, with a little smile.

"Don't be afraid for me. I'm all right!"

He strode away, and they watched him out of sight. The older woman turned to the wife.

"Did you tell him?" she asked.

"No."

"Why not?" The tone was sharp.

"Because I'm not sure—myself. A man don't want to hide behind a baby—not a full-sized man!" she said contemptuously.

The mother eyed her a minute over stern spectacles. A mist seemed to cover them, and she took them off and rubbed them on her apron.

"He wa'n't ever your baby!" she said slowly, as she readjusted them.

"No." The tone was more gentle. Her eyes rested on the hill.

"He's done a good job up there."

The mother's glance followed hers with rebellious squint.

"I do' know why he wanted to waste time like that!" she said peevishly. "Everything on the farm's behind-hand. Next thing we know, you and I'll have to take hold and help."

The younger woman looked at her with a smile. Her round, indolent face was flushed. She raised a hand to her side and stood looking at the hill with quick, shining eyes.

"I shouldn't mind it!" she said softly. "I shouldn't mind it, mother—should you?"

She turned to her, and suddenly the older woman gave back the look.

"You ain't the only one that can work!" she said swiftly. "I can work as well as any one. I worked for him 'fore he was born. I've done it all my life. I could do it again if need be, I guess!"

They stood looking at each other. A new fear and a new hope seemed born between them.

With a little sigh, the wife turned away. She looked along the path that led to the road.

"We are just too late!" she said softly. Her gaze followed the path.

Her mother-in-law touched her arm.

"We could telegraph him!" she said swiftly.

But the wife shook her head. "I didn't mean that. I only meant—I've set here like a pan of dough while he was fightin' up there—like it was for his life!"

A little look of humor touched the mother's thin lips.

"Well—even dough'll rise if you give it time enough and there's good yeast in it," she said quietly. "I guess the best thing we can do is to clean the woodshed chamber. It's been needing it."

She went into the shed, and her voice came dimly back:

"Besides, we don't know but what he'll decide right, anyway. His father was a good man."

The daughter-in-law stepped into the shed. The mother was examining a basket on the wall by the stairs.

"He was a brave man, too," she said slowly, squinting at the basket. "I do' know as I remember any brave thing he ever did—" She took down the basket and tested it a little. "But you kind o' felt he was brave. He always toted fair—carried the big end of the load, you know, if there was anything hard to do." She held out the basket.

"You better take this. There'll be a good many things up there to throw away, I guess."

She went toward the stairs, carrying another basket on her arm, and disappeared through the opening above.

The daughter stood dreaming through the open door.

She heard a voice above her:

"You better bring up the broom and dust-pan. There's more cobwebs up here than you can shake a stick at!"

THE young man in the train sat with his cap thrust back, a look of smiling content on his face. His companions all about him were laughing and talking.

Some one slapped him on the shoulder. "Come on, Eagan! We're making up a hand!"

He moved to a seat across the aisle and took the cards that were dealt out to him. His face was smiling. The voices about him, the motion of the train, the flying landscape, all gave him an unwonted sense of freedom and happy life.

His companions joked, and shuffled and dealt the cards as if life were to go on forever. Suddenly, at a way station, some one looked out.

"Hello—Peterboro! We're half way there! Let's have a smoke!" He glanced at his companions.

One of them laughed and shook his head.

"Forget it!" he said. "Bad for the examination—unless you mean to claim exemption," he added quickly.

His companion's eyes dropped a minute. They raised themselves to the flying landscape. There was a clear look in them.

"I'm not claiming exemption this trip."

"Me neither! Come on, Eagan—your deal."

But the boy did not touch the cards. "I guess I won't play any more," he said slowly.

He got up and sauntered toward the smoker. The eyes of the other two followed him a minute. They met in a glance that was just short of contempt.

IN the smoker, the youth sank into a back seat. His fingers were feeling nervously in his vest pocket. It was there—the smooth, flat packet. "An hour before examination," Dr. Brown had said. They were nearly to Windham. Well, there was time. The examination was from eight to six. There would be time enough.

He opened the packet and looked down at the smooth white powder with fascinated gaze. Strange, that a little thing like that could keep the bullets from whipping and stinging about one's ears!

He lifted his eyes. The man in front was reading a paper. Over his shoulder he noted dully the war headlines. Then he saw that the man's coat and cap were of khaki. The broad shoulders made an effectual shield.

The youth lifted the powder cautiously to his lips and let it slide to his tongue. The man in front turned the paper with an impatient rustle and half glanced around.

The youth withdrew his hand quickly. A little of the powder spilled on his sleeve, and his hand wiped it off as he glanced down at the packet.

Fully half the powder was left.

He looked at it a moment irresolutely. Then he folded it with slow fingers and replaced it in his pocket. The stuff had slid down his throat, leaving not a taste behind. Yet it seemed to him that something within him had been killed.

The man in khaki turned a little in his seat. His eye fell on the young man.

"Bad business, these slackers!" he said. "You going up for examination?"

The youth nodded.

The older man started a little and looked at him keenly.

"Is your name Eagan?" he asked.

Jim stared a little and nodded assent.

"And you're related to Tom Eagan, who used to live in Bakerville?"

He was my father," replied the boy. There was a little proud lift to his head.

The other nodded slowly.

"You're the living image of what he was at your age. I should have known you anywhere. How is he?"

"He is dead," said the boy.

The man's face held the news a moment thoughtfully.

"He was a fine man," he said at last. "Brave and yet very gentle—"

The youth leaned forward a little. His eyes were shining. His face was pale.

The man had pushed back his cap, showing the grizzled hair beneath. A little smile of reminiscence was on his face.

"I remember well the time a lot of us youngsters were off together, and a boy got too near the edge and went over—and Tom Eagan went down for him, hand over fist. I guess there wasn't another one of us would have dared risk it—there wasn't foothold for a monkey. But he did it, and got the boy up somehow and got him to a doctor and had the arm set—" He touched the khaki sleeve with a smile. "I've got a place here now that reminds me of Tom Eagan when it rains!"

The boy's eyes glowed. "Was it you that fell?" he asked quickly.

The other nodded. "A nasty break—and might have been worse if he hadn't had the nerve to think and act quick. He was a rare fellow!" He reached for his bag.

"We're getting in." He turned to the boy and held out a hand.

"Good luck to you! I'm glad to have seen you.

He moved down the aisle, and the boy's shining eyes noted that he carried himself very erectly and that three or four men in khaki touched their caps as he passed.

At the station the boy avoided the

Continued on page 21

From Office-Boy to Manager

THIS is a story of inspiration for office-boys—and others.

Not so many years ago, Malcolm W. Bingay, now managing editor of the Detroit News, a daily paper whose growth almost rivals that other famous Detroit industry, the Ford Company, was an office-boy on a rival journal. He wasn't satisfied with his prospects. One day he heard that a boy was quitting the News. He applied for the job.

"How much are you getting on the Times?" asked the editor.

"Four dollars a week," replied the boy. "Huh!" snorted the editor suspiciously. "Will you work for three?"

"Yes, sir."

Those were the days when office-boys had to chase "copy" all over the city. It was summer, and among the newcomer's duties was the task of hustling to the ball park, getting the early story of the game, and rushing back to the paper with it. This, you see, was before baseball writers were furnished with direct wires from their desks to their offices.

At the ball park Bingay heard that President McKinley had been shot. Without waiting, he dashed from the inclosure and broke the record for the mile run—the exact distance from his news room to the baseball grounds.

Breathless, he sprang up the stairs and plumped into the city editor.

"The President's been shot!" he gasped. "I heard it at the ball park."

"Is that so?" returned the city editor, very quietly. "Well, well. Maybe we had better put a piece in the paper about it, eh? You might go back to the ball park, Bing, and verify it, because if it's so it's really a big story."

Then the office-boy saw an extra edition of the paper on the editor's desk. Not until then did it occur to him that there were telegraph wires into the office.

But a boy with such energy could not, and would not, remain on the pay-roll at three dollars a week for long. He began to keep his eyes and ears open for stories. He learned how to use a type-writer. He was particularly interested in police stories, and he kept turning them in and getting them in the paper.

One Labor Day he was working in the office. The managing editor, passing through, asked him what he was doing.

"Writing a piece for the paper," he said.

"Start to work in the morning as a reporter," ordered the managing editor.

After that Bingay went up fast. He worked, by various and more or less rapid stages, as a police reporter, on the courts, in the city hall, on the street, going from there to the sporting room, where he became editor of the page.

His work as a baseball writer is still remembered in the big league cities. He made the News sport pages the most widely read and quoted in the Middle West.

Bingay might have been content to continue as an authority on baseball, and to gain some sort of fleeting fame telling the fans of the doings of the Cobbs, the Speakers, and the Mathewsons. Baseball writers, as a rule, make fairly handsome salary checks.

But Bingay decided not to stop.

One day the city editor quit, and Bingay asked for the job. He got it. There were a lot of beats in the city with which he was unfamiliar. He made it his business to know all about them, going out in the afternoon after the going-to-press of the principal editions. He familiarized himself with the duties of the reporters and became acquainted with the news sources. Bingay soon became the best city editor in Detroit. Then he stepped into the shoes of the assistant managing editor, supervising the make-up of the paper.

Then came the day when the owners of the News decided that they would have to find a new job for this energetic young man.

It was announced that the managing editor had been elevated to the newly created position of editor-in-chief, while Bingay was assigned the privilege of putting the letters "M. E." behind his name whenever issuing instructions to the toilers in the news room.

Malcolm W. Bingay is not yet thirty-five. He hasn't a college education, as you have doubtless figured out, but he knows men and understands them.

A Shoe Dealer's Idea

"FOR one of his special clearance sales a shoe merchant advertised an unusual plan," System reports. "To each person who purchased a pair of shoes during the sale he gave a price reduction of a cent for each letter in the buyer's name.

"Although a few fictitious names probably found their way in, most of his trade gave their correct names and gladly took advantage of the offer. It helped, too, in building up his mailing list."

He Specializes on Grouches

A NEW kind of specialist is William H. Sibbald, a hotel manager of Los Angeles. For the past decade he has made a scientific study of the disagreeable moods of the traveling public, with the view of discovering cures, or at least palliating treatments. The "grouch"—also known technically among hotel men as the "peeve"—has been closely observed from all angles by the expert.

The hotel office and marble lobby have been Mr. Sibbald's fruitful laboratory; his subjects, the more than 1,000,000 persons whom he met face to face and some 300,000 others who talked with him over the telephone. Before he went to the Alexandria Hotel in Los Angeles ten years ago he was employed as clerk in hotels in New York and Chicago.

Mr. Sibbald declares that more than one half of the multitude of persons with whom he has dealt were suffering from the "grouch" disease, in one or another of its manifestations. He has classified these forms, common among hotel patrons:

Temperamental, assumed, sick persons, rainy weather, actress-separated-from-her-dog, commercial-traveler-separated-from-expense-money-in-pinochle-game, and other dismals due to disappointments and misfortunes, large and small.

The broad principle laid down by Mr. Sibbald is that one grouch can not be used to cure another grouch. That is, if one person with a peeve meets another similarly afflicted, the two dark moods do not equalize each other and disappear, but rather feed on each other and wax more powerful. The student declares that the broad smile, supplemented with gentleness of manner, is the greatest known remedy for the ill temper that manifests itself outwardly with a long face and disagreeable utterances.

When the smile, generously applied, fails to give relief to a sufferer, Mr. Sibbald resorts to other remedies. There are certain forms of this disease of travelers which he frankly declares are incurable. In such cases all that can be done is to keep the patient as quiet and comfortable as possible until he checks out.

"A decidedly hopeless form of melancholy is that which envelops the commercial traveler who has lost several hundred dollars of his expense money in a pinochle game on the train coming into the city," says Mr. Sibbald. "This is a type of disorder that I easily recognize the full length of the lobby. It is incurable.

"Another form of grouch which defies all known treatments is that possessed by the tourist of limited means who arrives in Los Angeles with one day to spend, and finds it raining in 'sunny Southern California.' I discovered long ago that these cases can not be lifted from the depths. The best that can be done with such a one is to sympathize with him, and get him to understand as nearly as possible that the country needs the moisture.

"The hot-water bottle is handy in dealing with the invalid's peeve. Other comfort devices, special diet, and the most considerate treatment also are used.

"The usual cure for the depression suffered by an actress who has been separated from her dog is to take her to the kennels and show her the precious animal lying on a brand-new mattress.

"A difficult case to cope with is the man with rheumatism who grieves because we do not give him a room where he has sunshine every hour of the day. Some of these disagreeable persons appear to be surprised when they learn that the sun sets out here, apparently expecting it to shine every hour of the twenty-four.

"Good service, fruits, and flowers are successful antidotes for the feminine forms of grouch. The assumed peeve, when discovered as such, is not worthy of consideration. My policy in dealing with this form is to refrain from converting it into the real thing."

V. D.

Driven Back to Eden

IN June I resigned my position as a public school teacher with twenty-seven years to my credit. The last twenty-four had been continuous, the final nineteen in a large city. I hated to quit. A few looked down on us, but more looked up to us, and all respected us.

I was afraid I should slump and get old. I knew a number who had retired, but stayed near where they could toddle around the edges of things with a book under their arms, telling the rest of us how they used to do. It made me shiver. But nature gave the warning, and I knew I must obey.

Which way should I jump? I shut my eyes and jumped—clear out into the country, where I landed in a tiny old house on the corner of a friend's farm. Books, pictures, the garnered treasures of the years, a few sticks of cast-off furniture, a few dollars wisely spent, and here I have a home—after years of hotels, boarding-houses, half-heated bedrooms in somebody's upstairs. Think of it!

In the summer I have flowers, a tiny lawn to keep, and a bit of garden. I help the farmer's wife in her garden, and in canning, pickling, and preserving, thus providing myself with a stock for winter. I have not been homesick for the school-room one instant. I ran back the second week, just to gloat; and I enjoyed seeing the boys and girls and teacher friends, but a day or so was enough. I was homesick to come back and dry more corn and help pick apples.

I sleep as much as I like, eat what I want to, try all the Hooverized recipes, read Browning or Sewell Ford, as the mood takes me, sew, knit, write stories for—the waste-basket. And sometimes I think. I've always wanted to think, but never had time, before, where I could enjoy the necessary quiet. Now I luxuriate in quiet.

This is the Place Where—

IT would have been nuts to Tom Sawyer, as Huckleberry Finn would say, to shine so in the sight of folks in the old home town that they'd name the hotel after him. The creator of Tom and Huck achieved that distinction.

But perhaps the biggest compliment Mark Twain ever received was paid him when he went to Oxford to take the degree of Doctor of Letters at the great university. No, it wasn't the crimson-hooded robe, or the nice things the Oxford wise men said to him; it was the cheer he got from the London cabbies. They knew him as soon as he appeared on the street. That's real fame.

It was in this little room in Florida, Missouri, that Samuel Clemens was born. A few years later the Clemens family moved to Hannibal. No one thought then that by the time Hannibal got a real hotel little Samuel would be all ready to have it named after him.

"YOU can't find a man in the trenches," said Major Gordon (Ralph Connor), "who doesn't believe in immortality. Face to face with death, a man has to believe."

And Harry Lauder said recently, in answer to the question whether the soldiers believe in God: "Believe in God? They know God: they talk to him."

If in a certain barrack-room in France, at the beginning of the war, there was one lone English boy who each night knelt down and said his prayers, says Donald Hankey in "A Student in Arms" (E. P. Dutton & Company). There was a certain hushed surprise the first night; and then the conversation went on as if nothing was happening. Nobody jeered; nobody persecuted; nobody followed his example. He was simply ignored, that was all. After a while he quit kneeling down, and began murmuring his prayers in bed: and then he stopped saying them at all.

One day there came a charge—a hopeless affair from the start, undertaken in broad daylight. This boy had fallen between the lines, and had seen the battered remnant of his company retire past him to their own trench before a hail of bullets. He lay in the long grass between the lines, unable to move, and with an unceasing throbbing pain in his left leg and arm. All that afternoon he lay still, his mind obsessed by one thought: Would any one find him when it was dark, or would he be left to die? He found himself vaguely wondering about the meaning of everything. The stars gazed at him imperturbably."

So he lay, looking up, while the pain grew fiercer. And all at once it seemed to him that there was a Presence in and around and all about him. "God!" he whispered softly. "God everywhere!" Then into his tired brain came a new phrase: "Underneath are the everlasting arms." He sighed contentedly, like a tired child, and the phrase went on repeating itself in his brain in a kind of chant—"Underneath are the everlasting arms."

It is the experience of thousands of others who, in the fierce realities of No Man's Land, have found their way back to the trust and faith of childhood.

FIVE MILLION A YEAR MEN

---

MADAM, DINNER IS SERVED

A Slant at the Comers

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by F. Vaux Wilson

I'D just finished a half-hour session with the Honorable Thaddeus Corson, durin' which I was supposed to be tellin' him what was the best kind of exercises to take for a Wall Street liver and a Union League digestion. Anyway, that was what I was bein' paid for.

As a matter of fact, I hadn't been tellin' the Honorable Thaddeus much of anything. He'd been tellin' me. Oh, yes; I'd been favored with a full account of his case, from the way his tongue looked in the mornin', to that heavy feelin' he had after dinner.

Surprisin' what a lot of these old plutes are that way. They've made good at something or other,—jugglin' suburban and country trolley properties was Corson's speciality,—and because they've broken into the seven-figure class they hand themselves the pleasin' fiction that they're wise in the head on any subject that comes up.

As for me, I kids him along and don't disturb his happy dreams. I was willin' to admit that he did know the trolley game fairly well. Must have, to keep on buckin' the big syndicates and not get squeezed out. Short lines was his feature; independents, small-town stuff. He was fond of tellin' how he got hold of his first controllin' interest—by swappin' a mortgage on a run-down gas plant for five miles of wabbly track, half a dozen punk cars, and a twenty-year franchise. Now he owned 'em all over the lot—up in New England, down in Jersey, and as far West as Iowa.

You'd never guess it, to look at him, either. Kind of a simple-lookin', leather-faced old Rube. And in that dusty black Stetson, the slate-gray frock-coat, and the striped trousers, you'd probably have sized him up for some village banker or Cayuga County senator. He had served a couple of terms in the Assembly from an up-State district, hence the Honorable.

He'd been comin' to the Physical Culture Studio, on and off, for a couple of years, mostly durin' the winter, when he missed gettin' out and showin' his gardeners how to trim hedges and plant trees. So I'd heard a good deal, first hand, about how much he knew. Maybe that's why I turns him over to Swifty Joe so prompt, strolls out into the front office, and shuts the door behind me.

I FINDS some one waitin': a tall, loose built young gent wearin' thick eye-glasses. Quite a spiffy dressed party he is, with his fawn-colored gaiters and his yellow gloves, and he's leanin' jaunty on a crook-handled walkin'-stick, gazin' out one of the front windows.

"Ah!" says he, swingin' round. "Professor McCabe?"

"No other," says. I

"I suppose, then," says he, "that father is about through in there?" And he nods towards the gym.

"Eh?" says I. "Sure you got the right shop? I haven't seen anybody round here that I'd guess you'd call father."

"I think you have," he goes on. "Thaddeus Corson, for instance. I'm Thad Corson, Jr."

"One on me," says I. "You must take more after your mother than after the old man."

"I suppose I do," says he, "in more ways than one. It is a favorite topic of father's." And he shrugs his shoulders. "I merely stepped in," goes on Thad, "because I missed finding father at the office. Thought I'd pick him up on the way home."

"You're just in time," says I. "He'll be out in a couple of minutes."

And, while he's consumin' a cigarette and gazin' out on to Forty-second Street, I couldn't help checkin' him up with Thaddeus, Sr. What a difference there is, sometimes. Now, here's this young sport with his long, pale face, full eyes, his narrow, stooped shoulders, and his easy drawin'-room manners. Why, he's about as much like his old man as a spray of lilies-of-the-valley is like a sunflower.

THE minute his father steps into the front office and sees him, he lets out a snort.

"Huh!" says he. "So you're back, eh?"

"Yes, sir," says young Thad. "I—I'll tell you about it after we get home."

"Oh, let's have it," says Corson. "Come on! Out with it!"

"But, dad!" protests Thaddeus, Jr., glancin' at me. "Couldn't we save this until after dinner?"

Another snort from Corson.

"Bah!" says he. "McCabe won't mind. And I'm curious to know just how badly you've fallen down this trip."

The youngster hunches his shoulders.

"I couldn't do a thing out there, dad," says he.

"You mean you didn't," says the other. "But why—why? That's what I want to know. What's your alibi?"

"They're against us, that's all," says young Thad. "They don't intend to renew our franchise on anything like the same terms. They mean to raise our taxes, make us pay a percentage on gross receipts, and perhaps let in a competitive line."

"Oh, they mean all that, do they!" says Thaddeus, Sr., his smolderin' little eyes flarin' up combative. "How about what I told you to do with the city council?"

"No use," says young Thad. "Reform administration—two Socialists among the lot. You know that newspaper you took the advertising away from for printing a story about the grade-crossing smash last fall? Well, they've been pounding you ever since, stirring up public sentiment against the company. And next year matters will be worse. They're going to make you an issue in the coming city election. I went over the whole situation with our local attorneys. They admitted that things looked squally. And, as I failed to see how I could do anything along the lines you suggested—well, I came back."

The Honorable Thaddeus stares at him hostile. Then he turns to me.

"Talk about young blood being needed in business!" says he. "This is a sample. He goes out and lets a sore-head news-paper and a few cheap politicians throw a scare into him; quits—cold!"

"Oh, well," says I, soothin', "they got to learn, I expect."

"If Thad only would learn!" raps out the old man, pacin' up and down. "Why, look here: I'll bet I could go out there to-morrow, get a line on that bunch of ward heelers, and inside of a week have enough of 'em fixed so I'd be making the city council jump through a hoop."

Young Thad don't say a word. He just shakes his head.

"Eh?" demands Corson. "Think I couldn't?"

"I think you would be indicted before you could get out of the county."

"Bah!" says the other. "Maybe you've got some brilliant schemes of your own?"

"Oh, what's the use, dad?" says he. "They wouldn't seem good to you. "

"How'd you guess it?" sneers Corson.

"Simply because you never have conceded that I could possibly know anything on any subject whatever," comes back young Thad.

He don't say it messy—just states it quiet and patient.

But Corson blows out his cheeks and glares like he'd been mortally insulted.

"So that's how you feel about it, eh?" he rants. "Want to give McCabe here the notion that you've got an old tyrant for a father, do you? That's your gratitude for all I've tried to do for you! What do you think of that, Professor?"

But I'd had about enough of the old grouch myself.

"Ah, give the boy a chance," says I. "He might have a hunch; who knows?"

"Very well," says Corson. "Let him tell us why he shouldn't have followed my orders. Think I don't know the street-car business, eh?"

"I am quite sure you did know it—once," says young Thad. "But this 'fixing' game is slightly out of date, dad. It doesn't work as it used to."

"Oh, doesn't it?" gasps the old man, gettin' purple in the gills. "Then what would? Let's hear what you'd do instead. Or would you make a present of the line to the city and tell 'em to run it as a public charity?"

"If you wish," says young Thad, "I will give you the facts in this particular instance. As you know, the company hasn't paid a dividend in the last three years. The rolling stock is in bad shape—cars dirty and shabby, half of them with flat wheels, and all of them rickety. Then, there's the power plant, with a set of patched-up engines that are coal-eaters and energy-wasters."

"Huh!" grumbles Corson, actin' sort of jarred. "I suppose you would give that one-horse town a metropolitan outfit?"

"Not precisely that," says Thad.

"Well, well! Just what would you do?"

"In what capacity?" asks Thaddeus, Jr. "As office-boy, for instance?"

"No; as general manager," raps out Corson.

"Do—do you mean it?" says the other.

"Why not?"' says Corson. "If I'm an old fossil, I ought to know it; and if I'm not, perhaps it will be worth what it costs to prove it to my son. Yes, I'll make you the G. M. I'll give you a year, full swing. But I must know something of your program, of course."

"Certainly," says young Thad, producin' a note-book. "You see, I had jotted down a few things, just for my own satisfaction. First, I would instal a new Corliss, so that we could keep our schedules. Then I'd paint and repair the cars, one at a time, perhaps adding three or four new ones of the pay-as-you-enter type. At the same time, I would start a publicity campaign—big ads in both papers, assuring our patrons that we were there to give them service, first, last, and all the time. There's a young reporter on the Herald out there, a chap who was a classmate of mine, who can write that sort of thing with either hand. Yes, I know that is the paper which has been roasting us. But we'd forget that. So would they, after our ad contract was signed. And I should hope, within a month or so, to have public sentiment with us instead of against us; then I wouldn't care about the city council. It's an entirely different policy, I know; but—"

"Yes, yes," breaks in Corson. "It's the fad just now—soothing syrup stuff. Make 'em believe you're running your business to suit them instead of yourself."

YOUNG Thad indulges in a quiet smile. "I suppose you wanted to try out new methods when you first started?"

"Me?" says the old man. "Why, I began with a cable line, and in six months I'd changed it to an overhead trolley—first in the State. Some of the directors thought I was crazy. But I'd studied it all out; I knew what I was doing. You, though! Why, you've been out of college barely two years."

Concluded on page 18

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

WILL OUR BOYS BE CONTENT TO COME HOME?

WHEN the war is over, will the millions of men who have been living a primitive outdoor existence be content merely to take their places in the humdrum of city life again? What is "over there" doing to them?

War relieves a man of all obligations, Captain Derby Holmes answers in the New York Evening Post. He has no bills to meet, no thinking to do. After the first strain of adjustment, the men come to like the rough outdoor existence.

"The probability is that hardly any man in the trenches would say, if he were asked, that he liked army life," says Captain Holmes. "But he does, just the same—which is amply and frequently demonstrated by men on furlough. Almost any healthy, unwounded man on leave finds himself in a very few days bored to death and irked beyond endurance by the restrictions of a nearly forgotten civilization."

After the war, the Captain continues, thousands of those men will turn to the wild frontier sections of the world. "The men are thinking and talking about where they will go after the war, and the place in fifty per cent of the cases is most emphatically not home, sweet home!"

When a man landed in the trenches from South Africa, the Tommies fairly pounced upon him and pumped him dry. South Africa sounded good to them.

Captain Holmes overheard the following conversation one night between two privates—Coffee Byers and his chum, Taters Smith. Coffee was just back from a six days' leave, and he confessed that he was glad to get back—that his home in England hadn't looked nearly so good to him as he had thought it would.

"Gawd lumme! Taters," said Coffee. "Blighty ayen't wot it was. Not hawf. Too many 'ouses. Too blinkin' many busses. A cove ayen't safe. No fresh air."

"Which, I take it, epitomizes the opinion of a large part of the British soldiery," Captain Holmes concludes.

BETTER CARE FOR MOTHERS

INJURE the twig ever so slightly, while it is still a twig, and you will have serious trouble when it gets to be a tree. That is the explanation of a lot of our social troubles. Youngsters get a bad start, and all the health laws in the world find it hard to overcome that start.

The Children's Bureau, determined to go back to the root of the matter, has recently made a survey of one county in Kansas to discover what sort of start the babies there receive. It is a prosperous county; yet four fifths of the mothers of babies had to do the work for big farm households right up to the very day of the birth of their babies. Two thirds had no medical care before the babies were born; and more than one third received none afterward.

Some day we will learn that a little more care at the beginning of life will mean a lot less care later on.

THE SMALLEST CHURCH IN THE WORLD

THE BIRMINGHAM JAIL IS EMPTY

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama, built a new city prison a few years ago, and in August, 1915, there were 109 prisoners in it, as well as 134 in the older jail downtown. Two years later, in August, 1917, there were only twenty-three prisoners in the new city prison, and twenty-eight downtown. A month later the total number of prisoners was only eleven—and not a white man or woman.

With such slim patronage the city fathers decided they could not afford to operate the nice new jail any longer; and it is consequently closed until further orders.

What has caused the startling decrease in what used to be an established and dependable business? The answer is twofold, says the Survey. The activity of Birmingham's industries has cleared the streets of idle men—and busy men have no time for crime. But a factor greater than this is prohibition. "The commissioner of public safety declares that, in his judgment, it is certain that seventy-five per cent of the decrease in crime is due to the State prohibition law and the federal 'bone dry' law—in other words, no open saloons and a scarcity of blind tigers."

THE TWELVE NUNS AND MARTIN LUTHER

WHEN the influence of Martin Luther's propaganda against celibacy and the vows of the cloister began to cause unrest in the monasteries and nunneries of Germany, twelve nuns from a convent at Nimbschen escaped and went to Wittenberg. They appealed to Luther for help; and, as he realized that his ideas were responsible for their flight, he felt bound to come to their assistance. The Rev. Arthur C. McGiffert, in Martin Luther, the Man and His Work (Century Company), tells how Luther put them up temporarily in the Wittenberg cloister, where they were a source of interest and anxiety to him and his colleagues.

One good friend of Luther's, Amsdorf by name, wrote to Spalatin, chaplain to the Elector of Wittenberg:

"Not nine but twelve nuns escaped. Nine of them have come to us. They are beautiful and ladylike, and all are of noble birth and under fifty years of age. The oldest of them, the sister of my gracious lord and uncle, Dr. Staupitz, I have selected, my dear brother, as your wife. But if you wish a younger one, you may have your choice among the most beautiful of them. If you desire to give something to the poor, give it to them, for they are destitute and deserted by their friends. I pity the creatures. They have neither shoes nor clothes. I wonder, indeed, how they can be so brave and merry when in such distress and want."

At the same time a young Wittenberg student wrote to his old teacher:

"I have no other news to write, except that a few days ago a wagon landed here full and loaded down with vestal virgins, as they call them, who desire as much to marry as to live."

The fate of one of the ex-nuns, Katharine von Bora, seemed particularly to trouble Martin Luther. She fell in love with a young man of patrician birth from Nuremberg, and Luther urged the match; but the young man's family refused to allow him to marry an escaped nun.

The next husband suggested to her by Luther was Casper Glatz, rector of Wittenberg University. But Katharine was not to be disposed of lightly. She told Luther's friend Amsdorf that she would be glad to marry either him or Luther, but she would not marry Glatz.

Amsdorf declined the offer, but passed the information on to his friend. Luther had often loudly proclaimed his intention never to marry. In 1521 he wrote to Spalatin: "Good God! Will our Wittenbergers give wives even to the monks? But they shall not force a wife on me!"

However, in June, 1525, the ex-monk and the ex-nun were married. "I am not passionately in love," wrote Luther to Amsdorf, "but I esteem my wife."

NURSING WOUNDED WAR DOGS

OUTSIDE of Paris is a hospital filled with wounded heroes—heroes with bullet wounds, shattered legs, shell-shock, one or both eyes gone. It is run by the Russian Countess Yourkevitch, and all her patients are war dogs.

All of these patients are veterans. The messenger dogs have perhaps the longest record of heroism. Says Ivan Novikoff in the Wide World Magazine: "They carry written orders or information from one body of troops to another. They have often to cross territory swept by shot or shell, where it would be almost impossible for a man to live."

A rough-haired terrier, afterward badly wounded, saved a whole squad of men from death. "This little animal," says Novikoff, "was a great ratter. One day he smelt other kinds of rats and gave the alarm. It was a passage that had been dug out by German soldiers where they were making preparations to place a mine, and his timely warning enabled his masters to destroy the passage."

One dog of quite nondescript breed, Mirko by name, was the companion of a man in an advanced listening post. The soldier's most cherished possession was a bundle of personal relics, including pictures of his wife and boy. When looking at his photographs he would hold them up before Mirko and whisper, "Maîtresse" or "Bobby." The dog would wag his tail appreciatively.

One day the soldier was wounded. In the dressing station he found that in his painful journey to the rear he had lost the precious bundle of pictures. He fretted over it, and his fever shot up. No one could console him. Suddenly one of the attendants said, "Would your dog know it?" The soldier smiled and nodded. They brought the animal. The attendant made signs to him to go and get something, and the wounded man murmured, "Maîtresse! Bobby!"

Off the dog ran. It seemed a forlorn hope; but somehow the wounded man had confidence, and his fever decreased. In two or three hours Mirko returned with the missing parcel.

---

BUSINESS MEN'S DOLLS

DOLLS date back further than the story of man. Cleopatra played with them. They have been found in the catacombs of Rome, and Greek girls used to dedicate their dolls to Venus when they married. It is even told that the prophet Mohammed was induced to play dolls with his nine-year-old wife, Ayesha. Cortez found Montezuma and his Mexican court playing with dolls.

In these days little girls still cling to them; but dolls, like everything else, have been bent to the stern uses of business. They are being utilized on the stage by the most modern of managers, where they give whole plays by themselves; and recently manufacturers have adopted them instead of human manikins. They are docile models, and as beautiful as paint and plaster can make them.

A FOOL THERE WAS

IN Chicago a foolish young man named Nelson Morris, who was born to fortune because his grandfather was industrious and thrifty, has recently been displaying his ignorance before a committee that was investigating the wages paid in the packing establishment of which young Morris is the hereditary proprietor. "We doubt," says Commerce and Finance, "whether what he said is of much importance or will be long remembered; but the New York World comments on his statement so scathingly that its remarks are worth reprinting:"

"That $1,288 a year is infinitely more than is necessary to support a family of five; that $20 a year is too much to pay for a child's clothing; that three shows a year arc enough in the way of entertainment; and that carfare for children is a waste of money, were the mature conclusions of Nelson Morris, twenty-six, as expressed at the stock-yards wage arbitration in Chicago.

"The packing corporation of which this young man is chairman employs 13,000 men at an average yearly wage of $800. Morris & Company's net profits in 1916 were $3,800,000 and in 1917 $5,400,000.

"In the early days of the Civil War the grandfather of this witness of the same name, carried on for a time a bootblacking establishment at Camp Douglas. In that humble station he laid the foundation of a great fortune. But he would have passed all his days in the same capacity if the philosophy which his heir now lays down had been applied to him.

"How soon some Americans forget, and how easy it is when they are prosperous to assume that their happy lot is due to superiour worthiness and virtue!"

HOW MANY CHILDREN ARE UNDERFED?

THESE are days of high wages for the ordinary man: but do the increases cover the whole field of industry? And are they sufficient to keep pace with the higher cost of everything?

Are men and women better dressed, for example, than they were a year ago? Are they better fed? The People's Institute of New York conducted an investigation during the past winter which revealed these astonishing facts:

216,000 school children (21 per cent.) in New York were undernourished.

611,000 (61 per cent.) were below the normal standard of nutrition.

Thousands of children, it was discovered, go to school with no other breakfast than coffee and bread; and it is among these undernourished youngsters that tuberculosis spreads most rapidly.

To prove that this condition can be corrected by wholesome hot lunches served by the city, the Institute took twenty-five boys suffering from undernourishment, and provided a wholesome lunch each day. At the end of the ninth day twenty-one of the twenty-five boys showed a gain in weight varying from one ounce to two pounds.

WHEN GOETHALS SLICED THE RED TAPE

RED tape is just about as popular with Colonel Goethals as a bad case of measles: and one very encouraging thing about the Washington situation is that he has at last been given a place and a power in the War Department where he can really get results.

There was plenty of red tape at Panama, and Forbes' Magazine tells an anecdote to illustrate how the Colonel dealt with it:

"A large squad of Italian laborers were engaged, but word came to the Colonel that they refused to work unless they were allowed a modest quantity of their beloved red wine with their meals. It appears that the law forbade supplying Canal workers on duty with liquor—except for medicinal purposes. Goethals was wise enough to know that he couldn't change human nature.

"So, what did he do?

"He called up Dr. Gorgas, the famous head of the medical department, explained the trouble, and asked him to write out a prescription calling for a certain amount of red wine daily for each of his 'sick' Italians."

The Italians made a surprisingly satisfactory recovery, and the work went on.

THE PLEASANT BUSINESS OF RAISING GAME

THE double achievement of preserving many kinds of wild birds otherwise sure to become extinct, and conducting a lucrative business, is possible for people who go in for game farming. Besides this, it is a fascinating sport.

The laws have hindered wild bird breeding. "A hunter," says Herbert K. Job in the American Museum Journal, "pays a dollar for a license, and kills, say, a hundred birds. It has been lawful to have many dead ones, but a crime to be caught with one alive and unwounded! Our domestic poultry was originally a wild species—very wild—with restricted range. Had it been 'protected' as we have been protecting our game, there probably would not be one left on earth to-day.

"The propagation of wild game requires careful attention to matters of sanitation, as wild species are very susceptible to diseases of uncleanliness. No one is qualified to undertake it who has not a deep interest in the birds themselves. Always begin on a small scale and learn the technique by first-hand experience.

"It is usual to start with a few ring-necked pheasants. These are easily obtained, are hardy, and every dealer can furnish booklets showing how to proceed. The birds are light eaters, of good size, prolific, and bring excellent prices.

"The breeding and rearing of quails are entirely practicable. Young quails are delightful to handle, and the rearing of them is considered by some to be more easily accomplished than the rearing of pheasants, as they stay with the hen and run with her, whereas the young pheasants often merely squat in the grass.

"Pheasants are fed mostly on small grain, such as 'scratch feed,' and any convenient green stuff, with a little rich laying-mash in spring.

"Quails are managed in the same general way as pheasants, with modifications due to the fact that the species is monogamous. Each hen lays from twenty to forty eggs a season, sometimes more. She will seldom incubate her eggs in captivity, and it is best to rear the young with bantams. The eggs are so small and fragile that large hens would crush them."

GERMANY'S PLAGUE OF MEDALS

A CAMPAIGN of German Schrecklichkeit unmatched in other countries has recently been unearthed by G. F. Hill, Keeper of the Department of Coins and Medals of the British Museum. All over Germany there has spread a plague of medals. Those that, up to the present, have found their way to neutral countries comprise at least 580 different varieties. Some represent general patriotic sentiments and picture the Crown Prince or his father. Some commemorate definite events or celebrate particular policies of frightfulness. Then are evidently used for propaganda.

The Crown Prince medal (upper left-hand corner) needs no explanation except that it is not, as might be supposed, intended as a caricature.

The von Tirpitz medal, next, has on one side a portrait of the Grand Admiral himself. The reverse, shown here, represents Neptune, who has evidently been adopted by the Germans as patron deity of the submarine, perched between the periscopes of a U-boat, shaking his fist at a sinking merchant ship. Another submarine and merchant ship are visible under the words: "God punish England, 18 February 1915" (the date of the beginning of the submarine campaign).

On the Zeppelin medal is an imaginary representation of an air raid on London, showing the Tower Bridge.

The famous Lusitania medal shows the great merchant ship, loaded with munitions and aëroplanes, and furnished with a ram like a battleship, sinking in the Atlantic. Above are the words, "No contraband," and below: "The liner Lusitania, sunk by a German submarine, 5th May 1915." The date is two days out, so the historical value of the medal is damaged; but its spirit is plain.

The medal (lower left-hand corner) celebrating the new triple alliance shows, with unflattering realism, the Kaiser, the Sultan of Turkey, and the late Emperor of Austria. Beside the heads of the three despots are the words in Latin, "To God Alone the Glory."

The next medal needs little but translation. The figure represents God with a sickle, and the world in flames below him. A quotation from Heinrich von Kleist runs: "Smite him dead! The day of judgment will not ask your reasons!"

Another medal, both sides of which are shown here, has Woodrow Wilson wearing a laurel wreath. Below are the words in English, "Liberty, Neutrality, Humanity." The reverse of this medal, in the lower right-hand corner, shows Uncle Sam sitting beside a gun on a pile of cannon-balls, offering a ship with one hand and clasping a million dollars with the other, with the words, "America's Neutral Trade."

A German expert in medals says sadly: "We have in the last two years unfortunately suffered from so much that is mediocre in the sphere of the modern war medal." It is to be hoped that many German people share his sorrow.

Concluded from page 15

"Just look who's been coaching me all that time, though, dad," puts in Thad.

"There, now! None of your blarney," says Corson, slappin' the youngster playful on the shoulder. "But you shall have a shot at it, son—a year's try-out. And if you can show the old man any new tricks—well, we'll see."

And off they goes, arm in arm—which was a happier finish than I'd looked for when they starts in.

BEIN' as how I'd taken part in the original debate, old Corson sort of counted me in on the deal.

"Wasn't it you urged me to give the boy a show?" he demands, next time he came to the Studio. "Well, I've done it. He's in full charge out there now, with two hundred thousand to finance his schemes. I'll bet he sinks every dollar."

"What's the stock quoted at now?" says I.

"Around 68," says he.

"Just as a flier," says I, "I'll go long on a hundred shares of your holdings at that figure."

"You will?" says he, gawpin' at me. "By George, I'll take you, McCabe!" And I handed over a margin check on the spot.

Must have been about a month later when he comes in chucklin'.

"You would back young blood!" says he. "Noticed where your trolley stock has slumped to?"

I said I hadn't.

"Fifty-six," says he. "Had to pass another semi-annual. And there's a minority committee applyin' for an injunction."

"That don't mean much to me," says I, "but I'll stay with it. I'll cover. Ain't got his schemes to runnin' yet, eh?"

"Oh, he's pulling the soothing syrup act, all right," says Corson. "Spending three hundred a week on newspaper space. It's smooth talk, too. You'd think he was not only undertaking to carry his passengers home, but to put 'em to bed and shake the furnace mornings. He's buffaloed the city council so soon. They'll renew the charter most likely, and he's worked 'em for two new turnouts. I understand he's maintaining a ten-minute schedule to three miles beyond the city limits for a single fare. That may be good philanthropy, but it isn't good business."

Next I heard from Corson, he calls up to cancel his afternoon session, and he talks puffy and excited.

"I've got to go out and see what that boy's up to," says he.

"Been plungin', has he?" I asks.

"That hardly describes it," says Corson. "Say, what do you think? He's planning to lay four more miles of track and has ordered ten new cars. In these times! Why, he'll bankrupt me, at this rate. Know what rails cost now? And grading and ties? Suffering Lazarus! That's what I get for turning a boy loose."

He shows up a week later, wearin' a grin.

"Well," says I, "did you block him off?"

"No," says he, "I didn't. Instead of that, I've come back to float a bond issue for him. Know what Thad's done? He's plannin' to give the city a new amusement park. Yes, sir. He's organized his company, got options on a hundred acres of land, and has started extending his line. Seems he found a real pretty little lake out there, and a pine grove where people have been in the habit of driving out for picnics. Well, he's gobbled up the whole thing, and by the Fourth of July he'll have a regular little Coney Island in full blast. Half way out he's got more options, and is promoting a nice little suburb with a golf and country club on the side. See? Making business for the line. And instead of running half empty cars he'll have 'em crowded most of the time. Why, I'll bet that Sundays and holidays he'll have to carry ten thousand people. That's going to mean revenue."

"And maybe dividends?" I suggests.

"Bound to come," says Corson. Then he stops and scratches his head. "And to think of Thad—just a boy, as you might say working out schemes like that which I— Well, I'll have to own up, I wouldn't have thought of 'em in a thousand years. And this is my game, too, the one I've made my pile at. Oh, Thad stumbled into luck, that's all. In the long run, it's us old fellows who can be depended on."

"Sometimes," says I. "But mostly I'm backin' the comers."

"You'll lose out, then," says Corson.

"Think so?" says I. "By the way, how are those shares standing the strain?"

"Oh!" says he. "Of course, with all that new business in sight, they're on the jump. I look for 'em to touch par inside of six months. In fact, McCabe, I'll give you a

thousand to close our little deal, right now."

"Listens good to me," says I. "I'll soak it into some real certificates of that company young Thad's runnin'."

And as we breaks away we was both grinnin'.

WHEN I got home that night, I starts to tell Sadie about what I'd pinched off; but she cuts in with a report about little Sully. Seems he was demandin' a pair of hockey skates.

"I don't think he ought to have them," says she. "Hockey is such a rough game. I wish you would talk him out of the notion, Shorty."

"Sure I will," says I.

I went about it real vigorous, too, pointin' out that we knew what was good for him a heap better'n he did.

"Aw, pap!" he protests. "Jes' 'cause you didn't uster play hockey yourself! A lot you and ma know about it. Shucks!"

"Now, listen here, young man," I starts in, "when I tell you a thing once, I want you to—"

Then I stops; for, someway, just about then I thought of old Corson.

"Well?" asks Sadie, after the session is over.

"Eh?" says I, tryin' to look innocent.

"What about the hockey skates?" she demands.

"Skates?" says I. "Oh, yes! I promised to get him a pair in town to-morrow."

Henry Ford—

Concluded from page 5

story is about Ford's brother "Bill." Bill Ford, they say, for some time was in charge of the farms. One day Henry came up to him and announced:

"I've got a new manager for the farms."

"All right," responded Bill. "What do I do now?"

"Bill," said Henry Ford, according to the story, "you put on your coat and your hat and your gloves, and walk through the shops. When you get through doing that, I'll tell you what to do next."

Bill Ford is still "walking through the shops." I imagine he doesn't always wear the gloves. I don't know what his position is. I haven't the slightest idea, and don't care to know. I'm merely fairly certain that this popular brother of the great man is "cutting wood" and "delivering the goods."

A Hundred Per Cent Citizen

FORD has not forgotten the steps upward in his career. A couple of incidents indicate as much.

I was walking through a small stretch of woods perhaps two miles from "the mansion." Across a rail fence I saw a tract of farm land.

"That's Ford's," said my companion, an old-timer who has seen Ford grow up.

"What did he want that land for?"

"I'l tell you," explained the old-timer. "Years ago, Henry needed some money. He had a little shop out Grand River Avenue, and he'd put in every cent he could get. He came to a man here in town, and says, 'John, I need some money.' 'How much?' says John. 'I think about a thousand will swing the deal; but I haven't any security.' 'Never mind the security,' says John. 'I've got the thousand. Take it.' Well, things went fine after that—with Henry. But years later John himself was in a bad fix—about to fail in business. And along comes Henry and buys his farm at a fancy figure—without any brass band, y' understand."

The second story comes from Jake Tyson. Jake Tyson was a boy with Ford. One day the elder Ford came to young Tyson with a worried look in his eye.

"Jake," said the father, "I wish you'd speak to Henry. He's tinkering away his time, and not making anything of himself. He'll listen to you."

Jake went out into the field where Henry had been sent to plow. He found the plow, and the horse grazing lazily beside it. Over in a corner of the field sat his young friend, his head bent over a pad of paper propped in his lap. Ford was busy "figuring." Tyson marched up to him.

"Harry," he began abruptly, "do you know what you're doing?"

Ford looked up absently from his penciling. "Sure," he answered; "I'm working, Jake."

"Working? Harry, you're making a darn fool of yourself! It isn't right. Now, if you get to work, the old gentleman will leave you the farm, and you'll amount to something."

"Thanks, Jake," said Ford, and went back to his figures, and apparently forgot the incident.

But he hadn't forgotten. A short while ago the multimillionaire saw his old friend walking along the road. Ford was out in the fields, where he is frequently seen.

"Come here," he hailed Tyson.

Near by was one of the new motor devices attached to a binder. Ford mounted the machine.

"Jake, get up here; have a ride," he invited.

For a while they swept through the field where, long ago, the two boys had sat and talked. The binder hummed slickly at its revolutionary work. Ford said nothing for a long time. Then, with the shade of a twinkle in his eye, he turned to Tyson.

"Jake," he remarked, "I just wanted to ask you who's a darn fool now?"

In the matter of citizenship Dearborn gives Ford one hundred per cent plus. He made their water system possible. He established there the plant for his tractors, which are playing a part in the big war. In Dearborn the other day the working plans for his new airplane were laid out. He has contributed $25,000 to the town's sewage system. When the coal shortage hit the town hard, he distributed 130 tons of coal. Some of his friends, duly grateful, mentioned pay. "Forget it," said Ford. "It's too much bother keeping track of it."

Yes, Dearborn appreciates its "first citizen." But it's a red-blooded, thriving American town, and not without its sense of humor.

"Ford has done more for the farmers in this section than any other man," a Dearborn wit told me.

"How's that?" I took the bait.

"Well, you know, he's a great bird lover. Got bird-houses all over the place, and even electric-heated fountains for 'em. But he's had so much grain scattered over the ground that the sparrows for miles around flock to his estate. He caught 15,000 in traps last summer, and that's only a drop in the bucket. The rest of us aren't bothered with a single sparrow any more!"

Thus extensive are his "benefactions." The real feeling of the town is put succinctly by James Guinan, the postmaster:

"Mr. Ford is a good citizen who wants to see Dearborn grow. And the best thing about him is that he's just the same as he was when we first knew him."

And His Wife

MRS. FORD is as active as her husband. She keeps in close touch with work on the estate, going about from one group of workers to another. I was in Dearborn two days, and each afternoon I saw her going to the Red Cross work-rooms in the schoolhouse, to do her share. She entertains the ladies of the Dearborn Garden Club at "the mansion," and now and then at a school reception "pours the coffee," to quote from the Dearborn Independent. Indeed, in school activities the Fords have a lively interest, for there are several nieces and nephews in attendance.

Said a youngster to one of the Ford children: "Say, you're lucky, you are, having an uncle with so much money." "That's all right," replied the little Ford, "but I got a mighty fine daddy, too!"

I think Henry Ford will like that answer. It's so democratically American. And, indeed, that is the key-note of Dearborn's attitude toward Ford. Dearborn likes to have him in town, because Dearborn likes Ford. The people talk about his fine house, and then with a beautiful simplicity conclude: "But, d'you know, I don't think I'd care for it myself. I'm afraid I'd get lost. I guess I'd rather have my own little house." I don't blame the people of Dearborn for liking "their own little houses." Dearborn is a pretty little town, thriving toward citydom, but still having charming houses where there are perambulators on the front porches, and phonographs in the parlors, preserves on pantry shelves, and potato patches in the back yards.

In 1915 there was a big Fourth of July celebration at Dearborn. Ford was "back of it." When evening settled down refreshingly on a hot and busy day, and quiet after noise accompanied it, and lovely Dearborn girls strolled beside stalwart Dearborn youths, across a cleared space moving pictures were flashed. They were the first pictures of Ford's first tractors. I stood on the running-board of an automobile, watching the pictures. And in a seat close beside me, watching also silently, was the slim, still youthful figure of a man in pepper-gray: It was Henry Ford. His eyes never left the pictures. His thoughts, I think, were not in Dearborn. They were flying ahead to what is fact to-day—visioning, visioning. And I think that in that Dearborn twilight I caught the home spirit of Henry Ford. He says little about his home town; his mind is busy visioning. But he likes to do his visioning in Dearborn.

THE EDITOR ANSWERS

WAR wears out ships and railroads and factories: but the wear and tear on consciences is terrific also. Whenever I am tempted to take a few hours off and go to the movies, up rises Conscience and says: "Have you written that piece you promised the Red Cross?" When I would get in my car and take my family out for a ride, Conscience is right there to remind me that I ought to save gasolene and write an appeal for the Liberty Loan.

And I say to myself: "What a wonderful spring next spring will be, if only the war is over. And we can put up a lunch without the fear of Hoover, and get in our car without the fear of McAdoo, and drive off in the woods, and take off our shoes and stockings and wade in the brook, without any thought that we are being slackers in being happy once again."

From San Quentin Prison

Dear Sir:

I trust that you will not be offended in receiving a word of praise "from the inside." Your magazine passes through a good many hands here, and is surely appreciated. Your editorials are so full of hope that they alone are bound to make an impression; and the one headed "Where Will You Be Ten Years from Now?" made quite a stir among the men. Please let us have more like it, for we are trying hard, inside here, to believe that we have a chance for a brighter future, and such messages help.

J. W. W., San Quentin.

We would like to feel that there is something in every number of the magazine that makes living a bit happier and easier and more hopeful for folks outside as well as "in." Letters like yours, J. W. W., please us almost as much as our salary check—and that is going some, believe us.

The Head of Lincoln

Dear Sir:

Will you tell me why you have the head of Lincoln over your editorials in EVERY WEEK? Is it because you get your inspiration from him? And, by the way, I am over thirty years of age and am ashamed to say that I have never read a life of Lincoln. Can you recommend a good life for me to read?

C. I. H., New York.

Lincoln embodies all of the qualities that we want this magazine to have. He was self-educated; and we want to print the sort of material that is helpful to people who are ambitious and are educating themselves for a better place in the world. He had an unquenchable good humor: he was patient, and exceedingly tolerant with people who disagreed with him.

Most of all, he believed in the great body of "plain people." "God must have loved the plain people," he said, "or He would not have made so many of them."

Those are the reasons that led us to take his picture as our trade-mark. Ida M. Tarbell's "Life of Lincoln," published by the Macmillan Company, is one of the most interesting and readable. Two very good books written by Alonzo Rothschild and published by Houghton, Mifflin Company are called "Lincoln, Master of Men," and "Honest Abe." Both are good. And for a shorter life I like Norman Hapgood's.

Speaking of Beans

Dear Sir:

That editorial of yours "On a Can of Beans" surely made a big hit with me. We had a big garden last summer, and, though the snow is all about us, we're living still on our canned beans. Drop in, the next time you're in Oregon, and try them.

O. G. S., Portland.

That beans editorial is the most successful we ever wrote. One subscriber, a seed dealer, offered to supply all the seeds we need for next year's garden; and another asked where she could send us a dozen tomato plants.

If some one will pay his subscription with a stick of wood or a piece of coal, now, we'll feel like a regular editor.

What I Call a Regular Subscriber

Dear Sir:

Yours is the finest little magazine in America, and I boost for it in every town we reach. I am bandmaster for Barnum and Bailey, and will be in New York about April 1st with the circus. I understand you have children. Do you want to take them to the circus? If so, I will be glad to meet you and get tickets for you and the family.

K. L. K.

Do I want to take them to the circus? Haven't I been watching that youngster day by day, and saying to myself, "Next spring he will be two and a half: surely that is old enough for the circus." Do I want—say, Mr. King, you're sure you have the address right, aren't you? 381 Fourth Avenue. And you needn't send in your card: just walk right in.

That Bitter Postage Pill

Dear Sir:

Will you kindly tell me what this postage business is which the magazines seem so fussed about? I've heard a lot about it, but it's all Greek to me.

P. G. K., Madison, Wisconsin.

It's this way, P. G. K. The magazines have always been carried to subscribers in all parts of the country at a flat rate of postage, just like letters. Congress established the rate a long time ago, on the theory that it was a good thing for a big country to have the freest possible means of intercommunication, through national periodicals.

Now Congress has passed what is known as a "zone bill," which divides the country into zones of about three hundred miles apiece, and proposes that the magazines shall pay an increased rate on the copies that have to travel farthest.

We publishers believe that magazines ought to be classed with letters, rather than with freight and parcel-post packages. If our postage rate is lower than the government can afford to give us, we are willing to pay what we can afford. But we believe it is unwise and unfair to arrange the rates in such a way that a subscriber is penalized for living away from New York—which is where most of the magazines are published.

If the law stands, we shall either have to reduce our circulation very much, or we shall have to charge a higher price to folks who live in the West and South.

We want the bill taken up by Congress again and revised. And, if you think our point of view sounds reasonable, it will help us a whole lot if you will write to your Senator or Congressman and say so.

Jim Eagan's Draft—

Continued from page 9

crowd and slipped away from his companions. He wanted to think.

He went toward the center of the town, and found a bench on the edge of a small park. It faced toward the square, where people passed and repassed.

Presently he became aware of a brownness and dullness in the dress of the men, and woke to the fact that the State encampment was a mile from Windham. He watched them passing by his bench on the edge of the square. Some of them moved with an air of awkward importance. But others passed with free stride and a clean-cut, careless swing of the shoulders that drew the eye. His heart beat in little dull thumps. Something hurt his throat.

A small boy, who had seated himself on the other end of the bench and was swinging his feet contentedly, looked across to him.

A troop of soldiers carrying a flag went slowly by. The boy stood rigid with lifted hand till the flag was out of sight. Then he sank back on the seat with a little sigh.

"Why did you do that?" asked Eagan.

The boy's look was apologetic.

"I ain't old enough!" he said softly. "But Mr. Prescott—he's Scout-Master—he says it's all right to salute even if you ain't a Scout. I shall be one in two years," he added proudly.

The boy moved a little nearer to him. Eagan had never felt toward any one as this boy made him feel. He wanted to put out an arm and draw him close and protect him.

The boy looked up with a smile.

You going to enlist?" he asked.

"I—don't know."

Little beads of moisture had come to Eagan's forehead. He wiped them away and got to his feet. The boy stood up too.

"I'm going to take my examination," said Eagan. He noticed with surprise that his voice was curiously thick.

The boy's face broke into a smile.

"Bully for you!" he said. Then the smile grew wistful.

"I suppose the bloomin' war'll be over before I'm big enough!" he said. "But Mr. Prescott says there'll always be things to fight," he added hopefully. "Common things, you know, like dirt and fever and dogs. He told me that once because I didn't want to wash behind my ears!"

He grinned a little, and looked at Eagan wistfully.

"Want to come along with me?" the man asked gruffly.

The boy nodded, and they moved away together toward the court-house.

But at the door he was turned back. He stood on the sidewalk and waved a hand.

"I hope you'll pass!" he called after him.

The youth looked back and nodded. Then, with a wan smile, he went in.

THE two doctors moved away. They came back. One of them bent to him.

"You are all right," he said. "But the heart action is a little—"

He moved a quick hand. The face lifted to him had gone pale.

"Here—some water—quick!" he said.

But the youth sat up. He pushed aside the glass.

"I'm all right!" he muttered. And again he noticed with surprise the curious thickness in his voice.

The doctor nodded kindly. The office was busy. A dozen men were waiting in the outer room. But something in the boy's face held him.

"Listen—" He bent to him. "You don't need to be frightened. You'll probably live to be an old man. Do you understand? Sudden excitement or strain might be bad for you. So you won't do for army risk. But you'll live to be an old man, probably."

He patted the boy's shoulder a little.

Eagan had sprung to his feet. His face worked strangely. He tugged at his collar.

"I—I'm all right!" he panted. "You just let me tell—"

His hand, fumbling at his vest pocket, had brought out a flat white packet.

The doctor took it gravely.

"Sit down," he said.

HE opened the packet and looked at it. Then he glanced at Eagan. The boy nodded.

"I took it—part of it," he said hoarsely.

The man beckoned to his associate. They stood looking at the powder and sniffing it a moment. Then the doctor lifted a tiny bit on the blade of his knife and put it to his lips. After a moment he nodded and folded the paper with care and locked it in a case on the other side of the room.

He came back to Eagan.

"Where did you get that?" he asked.

And while the boy told his story his pencil made swift notes.

Eagan finished, and sat looking at him with dumb eyes.

"What will they do with me?" he asked.

"You ought to have a medal!" said the doctor gruffly.

Quick tears came to the boy's eyes. He lifted them and searched the doctor's face for the sarcasm and keen scorn he felt the words conveyed. But there was only kindness.

"I don't mind so much about myself," he said; "but my father was a brave man."

The doctor's eyes gleamed.

"You have not disgraced him," he said. "You have done the country a big service. What you have told me is worth hundreds of men, thousands of dollars to the government. We have suspected all along. But we could not get evidence. Too many men from this district have shown curious heart action. Now we have this man, and through him we shall probably get more. They'll all squeal. And, what is still more to the point, we shall know the symptoms—when we meet them."

There was a little gleam like steel in the doctor's eyes.

"The slackers are in for surprises now," he said softly.

"Do you think they will take me?" asked the boy humbly.

The doctor looked down at him.

"Take you? Yes! And as many more like you as they can get! The men who are afraid, and then are not afraid of being afraid, are the kind we make soldiers of!"

A look of happiness crossed the boy's sensitive face. He got up.

---

"Listen." The doctor spoke with authority. "You must not breathe a word to any one. Go home, and say there was something wrong with the heart action and you have to come back for reëxamination. That is all you need to say. Let the news get out. If the doctor offers you another powder, bring it with you." He smiled grimly. "Good-by."

He nodded and turned away to the next man. And Eagan went out of the room. As he passed through the hall a door marked "Private" opened and a man came quickly out.

He saw Eagan and halted. He was busy and he had only five hours at the camp to-day. He was due there now. But he could not let Tom Eagan's boy go without a word.

"Hallo!"

Young Eagan turned.

"How did you get through?"

The boy hesitated and flushed.

"They're going to take you, aren't they?" demanded the Colonel.

Tom Eagan's boy was the kind of stuff they needed. The Colonel had seen men in action, and he knew. And he knew the blunders the home office was capable of. He looked at him.

"They didn't turn you down?" he said sharply.

"No. But—"

The Colonel's laugh broke across it.

"We'll never mind 'buts'! We'll explain your 'buts' to the Germans. That's what your father would have done!"

He passed on down the hall, and Eagan went out into the sunshine.

On the curbstone the boy waited, kicking his heels.

"Did you pass?" he demanded.

Eagan flushed. "It looks like it—yes," he said gravely.

"Bully for you!" said the boy.

He swung into step with him and walked proudly beside him down the street.

THE two women waited in the twilight. They had worked all day in the woodshed chamber, carrying out rubbish and burning it, and sweeping and dusting with a grim intentness that left no time for thought or feeling. Once, when they stopped, they had found themselves laughing hysterically at an antiquated hat the mother had dragged from beneath the eaves. It was a fine silk beaver that had belonged to some Eagan of a time long past.

She held it up with a hopeless gesture, and they had fallen to laughing over it—fierce, uncontrollable shakes of laughter that left them weak and a little helpless. Then she had thrust it fiercely into the flames.

"There's too much old rubbish lying about!" she said.

She had crowded it down and watched the flames encircle the stiff black brim and burn it to a curled and crispy shape.

A little before supper they had finished their work and put on clean clothes. The daughter had put on her hat and gone out for a little while, and had come back with a shining look in her face.

"Did you see him?" asked the mother.

She nodded.

He says I can begin to get my things ready," she said quietly.

She took off her hat and pushed up the little rings of hair from her forehead. The face had the waiting look of a Flemish Madonna—healthy and unafraid.

"Jamie can claim his exemption, then!" said the mother quickly.

"He'll have a child dependent on him," assented the other. She looked at the mother gravely and turned away.

When supper was done they sat in the twilight, waiting. Neither of them stirred to light a lamp, and the sounds of early dusk came to them softly. Somewhere in the distance a frog croaked at intervals, and near at hand small invisible wings stirred the air. The fireflies glowed in the meadow below the house. A brook ran through the meadow, and as the silence deepened they could hear the sound of water gurgling in the channel. After a time the moon rose and shone into the room and made the formless tables and chairs stately and unreal and touched with charm.

The mother's rocking-chair creaked a little as she moved.

"The train is late," she said.

"I thought I heard a whistle—"

"Owl, maybe," said the mother. She turned her head to listen.

The whistle sounded shrilly far away.

The moon was flooding the meadow below with shapes that rose and floated vaguely. On the hill behind the house the moonlight lay in a shimmering veil on blackened circles where the fire had burned.

SOME one was approaching along the road, whistling quickly.

The mother leaned forward. "He's coming!" she said.

The daughter had not stirred.

He turned into the path from the road, and they could see that he walked with a free stride—like a man who has cast off a burden.

He entered the half-dim room and peered in at them from the doorway.

"Where are you?" he asked.

The two women's faces were turned to him, waiting.

"What are you in the dark for?"

"Waiting for you," said the mother. The wife had not stirred.

He flung his cap on a chair and sat down. The moonlight on the floor touched his feet. His face was in shadow.

"Well, that's done!" he said. He whistled a little between his teeth.

"Have you had supper?" asked his mother.

"Yes—with the boys."

There was silence again. After a time he began to speak in a slow voice, as if some one within were communing with him.

"It was easy—dead easy—when I came to it. There was nothing to be scared of!"

The two women's glances sought each other in the dimness and looked away.

His hands were thrust a little into his pockets. He whistled absently and a smile touched his lips.

"It was like a bad dream!" he said softly. "You're kind of tied, hand and foot—and then something gives way and you float off, easy as anything! Why, when they said they were going to take me, I felt as if I was standing on top of the world and looking 'way off somewhere—and I could see things coming!"

His hands had come out of his pockets and his voice was like a triumph.

"You're going?" cried his mother.

"Sure!"

Something wistful was in the air. Across the moonlight the two women regarded each other gravely.

He looked from one to the other.

"Maybe I've been selfish," he said. "I've just been thinking of myself all day, I guess. I seemed to forget you might need me!"

"I reckon we can get along," said the mother dryly. "I took care of two of us a good many years, after your father died. I reckon I can take care of two of us again—and three if need be."

He looked from one shadow to the other swiftly.

"There's going to be a child, Jim. You can claim exemption if you want to," said his wife.

He stirred quickly. His breath gave a little laugh.

"Why, I'll stay if you want me, of course. But I wouldn't want the boy to think his father was a slacker!"

He spoke half timidly, but there was a ring of pride in the words.

His wife's voice came quietly from the shadow:

"We want you to go, Jim—all of us want it, I guess."

Again there was silence; and the moonlight, traveling across the room, touched the faces with an austere light, as if it revealed something the day had kept hid.

THIS IS HIS WEEK

LORD CORNWALLIS, passing through Hanover County on a raid, left two gold pieces, as payment for property destroyed, on the cottage table of a poor widow of the name of Clay. After he had left, the woman spat upon the money and threw it in the fire. Then she stood at the door of her cottage, shaking her fist after the departing British. A six-year-old boy was tugging at her skirts. "That's right, ma!" he cried. "We'll show 'em what, we will."

The boy was a born patriot, as his mother was before him. They had a hard time making both ends meet, these two, for there were smaller brothers and sisters to feed and clothe; but they had one another and they were happy. The boy plowed, ground meal, broke stone, cut wood. The country-side nicknamed him "the mill-boy of the slashes," for the cottage of the Clays stood in the marshes. Years later, when this same barefooted, mother-loving boy was nominated for President, the term became an expression of endearment to hundreds of thousands who knew by experience what a childhood of hardship and toil meant.

Henry Clay was a country boy with dignity. When he first went to Richmond, people laughed at his back-woods clothes; but that was before they knew him. He was a born leader. He became one of the most eloquent lawyers of the day. It is said that no one defended by him was ever hanged. He practised law in Lexington, Kentucky, and came to Congress from that rude frontier town at the time we were on the verge of our second war with England. He helped to make and helped to end that war, establishing forever the status of those who claimed American citizenship. "Nations must be free, and peoples must be free," said Henry Clay; and Greece found him her friend in her fight for independence, and struggling South American republics received his support.

Clay knew the value of compromise, however, in politics, and secured California and the States won from Mexico to the Union as free States through the expedient of allowing Missouri to hold slaves. "The time is coming, but it has not yet come," he told Congress, "to make our stand for a free America." Yet he would not go beyond a certain point in compromise. It was when he was told that certain measures he advocated would turn his supporters into enemies that he made his famous assertion, "I would rather be right than President," and maintained his measures, though they meant defeat.

BUY YOUR FLY-PAPER EARLY