Winning the War a Crumb at a Time

ON the water-front, last week, I watched half a dozen great ships put out to sea, loaded with food for our Allies.

And I thought, as I watched them disappear, of the armies to which that food is going; and then of the little house in our town from which it came.

For those tons of meat and wheat are not the gift of Mr. Hoover to our armies, nor of Congress.

They are the gift of a little white house with green shutters, that stands a few blocks from mine—and of a million houses like it.

A modest little house this one is—the home of a high-school teacher whose income has had no share in teh war prosperity, but, on the contrary, has had to stretch to the limit to cover the increasing cost of everything.

Dining the other night at that house, I could not help noticing that the carpets are well worn with the tramping of little feet; and the food that the mother of the house set before us was wholesome but very plain.

"You see, we are doing what we can to win the war," said the little lady. And the oldest boy piped up:

"Every day we try to save enough to feed our French soldier. Dad said every family out to pick out one soldier in its mind, and try to take care of him."

There is a wise old line that reads: "Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days."

To-day millions of American families are casting their bread upon the waters. Gathered, a crumb at a time, from millinos of modest tables, it goes in great shiploads across the seas—the sacrifice of simple, obscure Americans for the great common cause.

And they shall find it after many days. Bread cast on the waters does return. For every family that is sharing in that great common sacrifice there will be a reward.

It will come, first of all, in the satisfaction of having helped to administer one more defeat to that dreadful enemy of the race—Famine.

More than one good cause has been lost in the world because that great, gaunt enemy aligned itself with the foes of that cause.

There is a satisfaction to you and me—a return for our sacrifice—in the thought that that great enemy shall not intervene, in this war, to protect Germany from the punishment she has so well deserved.

And there will be a return to us of another sort. The whole future of our children and of their children is being made safe by the sacrifice of the simple American homes of to-day.

Between England and France and America there can never in the future be anything but the closest friendship.

Thanks to your sacrifice and mine, England and France are eating of our bread: they are guests in our homes. And between those who have broken bread together there is growing a tie that is the guaranty of the peace of the world, and of every household in it.

But, most important of all, those who are sacrificing now to feed the Allies have their reward immediately in the enrichment of their own character.

I pity the people who never learn this great truth—who go through life, not as men and women, but as school-boys being good in hope of external reward, or avoiding evil in fear of punishment.

The growth of a man's soul is his own great reward: its shriveling under selfishness and meanness is its own worst punishment.

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it (says Emerson). The thief steals from himself; the swindler swindles himself. You must pay at last your own debt.

Have you learned from the war this lesson a little bit more fully? Then you are a war profiteer in the finest and truest sense.

Already the bread that your sacrifice is casting on the waters is returning to bless you. And it will continue to return in teh satisfaction of helping to win the war: in the guaranty of the future peace of the world; and, most of all, in the permanent expansion of your own best self.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE WILL OF FRANCE

Poem and decoration by ENOS B. COMSTOCK

THEY had reckoned well each man and shell
As Teutons calculate,
Their hoarded funds and their great siege guns—
What reason then to wait?
So the brutal hordes unsheathed their swords.
The German law they knew—
That naught but might could dispute their right:
They wrecked—and burned—and slew.
They had reckoned well each gun and shell,—
The War Lord took no chance,—
They reckoned all that their foe could call:
All—save the Will of France.
Her brave men died and were swept aside,
Her fair land dripped with gore:
She was gripped with death—she caught her breath—
And France came back for more.
An imperial slave in a shallow grave,
Slain in his War-Lord's strife—
But where is the toll from a free man's soul
When death is his nation's life?

WHY I NEVER MARRIED

By THE READERS OF EVERY WEEK

Illustrations by J. C. Coll

The Prize Letter

UPON due reflection I believe it was all because one Lydia Fain, some eighty years ago, chose for her life partner a certain John Wright. Now John Wright became my grandfather, and I remember him as a tall, large-framed man, with red hair, keen blue eyes, and a ready smile. Men called him handsome; therefore I was somewhat puzzled when, in my pinafore days, I would overhear friends and relatives remark: "Isn't that child the image of her grandpa Wright! Pity she isn't a boy; freckles and red hair wouldn't matter so much then."

I was to learn, later on, that handsome men and homely women are often cast in the same mold.

Still, life flowed on pleasantly enough until I reached the fan and slipper age, and longed for the frilly, dainty things that girls adore, and to take part in the mistletoe and valentine affairs of the young people. But then I discovered that to red hair and freckles I had added gawkiness, together with clumsy hands and feet.

Now, romance has been known to survive red hair and freckles; but big hands and big feet! Never! I was often hurt and sometimes amused at the sudden escapes the boys would manage when they found themselves placed in my company. Yet, when I compared the dainty loveliness of so many girls with my own homeliness, I could not blame them.

Gradually I drifted into the company of older people, where I found a hearty welcome, and soon heard myself called good, sensible, and industrious. But this is not all-satisfying to a girl of twenty-one.

In my younger days there were, so far as I can recall, only two "near chances" for me at matrimony. The first was Seth R—, a farmer possessed of broad acres, cross-eyes, and a mean disposition. He was known always to get the best of a bargain, by fair means or foul. Now, Seth had commented to neighbors upon my industrious habits, and had singled me out for various little attentions. So one Sunday morning, as we were coming home from church, he began to hint that he was tired of single blessedness. I hastened to inform Seth that I too was lonesome, and was willing to marry a rich man, so that I could revel in candy, novels, fine raiment, and much leisure. (Exit Seth!)

Later there came to our town the Rev. James L—, bringing with him five motherless little children. The Rev. James was quite a ladies' pet, sleek, conceited, and sanctimonious. He began to manifest quite an interest in me, and to talk long and eloquently about woman's sphere, self-sacrifice, and consecration. He was convinced that I had a mission now. I felt sorry for those little children, but concluded to tell him the same tale I had told Seth; and he also came no more.

As time went on, and I watched the matrimonial ventures and adventures of my friends and relatives, I began to appreciate the law of compensation, and to count myself a fortunate person. Growing fine chickens, prize chrysanthemums, and choice roses has kept me busy and happy for many years. I am never lonely, for my brothers and sisters have provided

me with a goodly crop of nieces and nephews, and these young people are always willing to bear me company whenever I want them, and sometimes when I don't.

I am a genuine old maid. The term bachelor girl would never have been suitable for me. I am fifty-five. Time has mellowed my ugliness until to-day I compare very favorably with other women of my age. I have a comfortable income, a pretty home wherein I am both master and mistress, splendid health—in short, I believe I am the luckiest, happiest woman I know.

K. K.

Her Life Went by in Dreams

I AM willing to tell my story because I think my case is not an unusual one, but a tragedy that many women in rural districts have found to be theirs.

I am thirty-five years old, have been considered rather good-looking, well accomplished in home-keeping arts, with a modest talent for music.

I was born and raised in a small town, and am the youngest of my parents' three daughters. I graduated from high school at seventeen, then I took two terms at State Normal to prepare me for teaching. I made my teachers' license, but did not get to use it; for shortly before this my two sisters were married on the same day to two young farmers near our home, and they had only been married about a month when my mother, as a result of an accident, became an invalid for life.

Of course I decided immediately that my duty was with my parents; so I gave up my ambitions and came home.

Now, it happens that, although our town had several nice girls near my age of refinement and fair education, there were no unmarried men that could possibly appeal to a girl of discriminating taste. What few young men there had been who possessed ambition had left the town and established themselves elsewhere.

Then, one by one, the girls went away on one pursuit or another, eventually marrying and settling away from home, until only myself and two other girls, who were bound home as I was, remained of our old crowd.

At first the years flew by without notice on my part; but always in my heart I was unconsciously expecting that some day my Prince Charming would appear. Then, one day, overhearing a reference to my-self as the "old maid," I suddenly woke up to the realization of how the years were flying and my charms were lessening and no signs of any prince on my horizon.

I had been lovingly and cheerfully caring for my parents; and, since my social life was very limited, each day passing in a humdrum, uneventful way, my chief happiness grew out of my dreams of a future love and home of my own. I was a healthy, normal woman, well fitted for wifehood and motherhood, and I knew if I married that some satisfactory provision for the care of my parents could be made with my sisters living so near; so I drifted serenely along, always with that undercurrent of romantic expectancy that made my life contented, until the knock came that made me realize that every passing day made my beautiful dreams become more improbable of fulfilment.

Each day my parents become more dependent on my care, and they will not hear of me leaving them except by marriage. So I am doomed to stay where there is hardly a chance in a thousand of ever meeting a man I could love. And I'm fading more each day—and oh, I want to live, I want to marry, I want to have children and a home of my own. I want my beautiful dreams to come true!

W. R.

Afraid

HERE is my line-up—an unmarried man, aged thirty-eight; salary one hundred and fifty dollars a month; sober, home-loving, industrious, well mannered, fairly well educated, and ordinarily good-looking, with a small bank account.

Why have I not married? "There is the rub. I have been afraid to ask any woman to be my wife. Why? you ask. Because I am a business man; my associates and friends are business men. My women friends are mostly office women.

I like these women—like their independence, like their ability, like their initiative in business affairs: but I'm afraid to love any of them. They are so well poised, so independent, so far-seeing, and so commercial that the hundred and fifty that I could offer them a half share in looks like a joke. Why, they earn more than half of that now and have no "strings" tied to it.

They wear such good-looking clothes; they take such splendid vacations; they have so many extras; and they delight in such luxurious surroundings. Some way, I can't visualize them in a clinging house-gown or with a child's chubby hand held tightly in theirs. I can't picture delight in their eyes when cooking a steak for two, or when tidying up a tiny cottage. Children and housework and family mending seem miles removed from them; and, while I hope I would prove no woman-driver, yet I fear I should like many housewifely duties to be performed by my wife, and to witness her joy in home service.

Perhaps, back of these serene, immobile faces, there lurk different feelings. Perhaps they are repressing the same un-

---

stilled longings that are in my own heart. Perhaps they would gladly and joyously lay down their jobs and take up the one of wife. But how am I to know?

Their aloofness freezes me; their mild contempt for some who have married amazes me; their self-satisfaction awes me; all tend to confuse and bewilder me: and I go on and on without the things I crave most in life—a wife, a home, and little children.

C. A. R.

No Man Ever Asked Her

NEXT year I shall be forty. I am not fat, neither am I fair, but extremely dark and plain, almost homely.

I can cook a good meal and still enjoy a hearty laugh, but I have no one to cook for who cares whether I laugh or cry.

I have never married because no man ever asked me; more than that, no man ever asked me to go to church, to a party, or for a walk—and next year I shall be forty.

No boxes of roses or bonbons ever found their way to my door; no school-boy ever borrowed my ring or wrote me notes; few glances and no smiles were directed to-ward me.

Now, there must be some reason for this, you say; surely no nice girl ever was so neglected.

There is a reason; it is simply this: Men see only girls who are in the lime-light.

They see the girl who leads at school or at church—the singer, the beauty, and the rich girl: but men are blind when it comes to seeing any one who fails to advertise or force herself upon his attention.

There is nothing wrong with the girls, except the fact that they have had so much admiration before marriage it's more difficult to keep them satisfied.

When I was thirteen I came to the city, the home of opportunities. I attended school and took care of Mrs. Grey's children for a home.

Mr. Grey was kind; but when I finished grade school nothing was said of high school, so I stayed at home and became a fixture.

At church I was known as the little girl who lived at Mrs. Grey's; but that fact

was insufficient to arouse either interest or kindness.

One day, while helping Mrs. Grey with a dress, I decided I could make dresses for other people, so a small room was given over for my use, and for fifteen years I made other girls more attractive than I had ever been able to make myself.

Many a wedding dress I fitted with a hateful, envious feeling; but what use had I for a wedding gown, when no man had ever desired my company to attend even a circus performance?

Mrs. Grey and the children are dead and gone. They loved me in a-selfish sort of way, because I was always there to listen to their troubles.

I keep the home fires burning for Mr. Grey, who regards me as a piece of furniture.

Next year I shall be forty—and should any man ask me to marry him I don't know whether I should laugh or cry.

C.

A Mother and Daughter

I AM a spinster, living in a small New England town. My father died when I was fifteen, leaving me, the only child, to take care of my mother, who is—I can not say a hypochondriac—who has been in delicate health for the last sixteen years: nevertheless, she is now fifty-eight, and looks so strong and well that I, although only thirty-three, appear fragile and quite faded beside her.

My first love affair came to me when I was twenty-three. The man was about thirty, and came out of the West to manage the shoe factory in our town. I suppose it was a love affair. He came to see me frequently, bringing candy and books, and even taking me to the theater occasionally, if mother were not too ill and would let some one else stay with her.

I found him fascinating. He had worked his way up, and was filled with a quiet pride and a vague longing for the finer things of art and music he had missed, that seemed curious under his matter-of-fact exterior. When we were alone we talked about such things together, impersonal and enthusiastic, our mutual ignorance only increasing our interest in each other's views. But when he called at our house, and mother stayed with us, telling him about her illness and her utter dependence on me, through the long hours while he waited for a word with me alone, I, sitting quiet in the shadow, could see the misery and pity in his eyes. Then sometimes my cousins would come with their families, and regard him with questioning stares, or talk to him in a way suspicious and embarrassed that must have been intolerable.

Yet he came more and more frequently, until my mother became alarmed and sick, and had to go to bed with a violent attack of heart trouble that held my entire attention for five weeks.

My cousins came to see her every day, gazing at me reproachfully, and sympathizing with her softly and condolingly until I felt I must scream.

I did not see him throughout this period, but I had a letter from him. But my mother was so flushed and ill that it seemed to me somehow wrong, and I burned it unread. It was easier that way. He called once, too; but I could not see him, and he never came again. He always bowed pleasantly to me when we met on the street, but soon left the town.

My other love affair happened only two years ago, when I was thirty-one. He also was a business man of the successful type, intense, nervous, aggressive. Indeed, I think it was my uncertainty and helplessness that attracted him, giving him a kind of pleasant irritation. He called upon me only once, and then did not stay long. Our placid atmosphere seemed hard for him to breathe; he fidgeted about a good deal, and soon left abruptly.

Thereafter he came in his motor, saying the air was good for me, and snatching me away for a ride before either I or my mother knew quite what was happening.

I liked the rushes through the cool, dark night, with him sitting quiet and bulky by my side. They were an exhilaration; they made life seem clear and purposeful and real again.

One night he stopped in the dark shadows and proposed to me.

I don't know now whether I loved him or not, but I wanted to say yes. I wanted him to take me away and make me live—live strongly and fiercely for a while. In that moment I was saying yes, and about me all the night was alive and singing. But I didn't—I couldn't. I thought of my mother, growing daily more querulous and exacting, and needing me all the time. I thought of the one night he had called—his irritableness in our atmosphere. I thought of how miserable we should all become.

And, more, I was afraid. I was afraid of myself, I was afraid of him; but most of all I was afraid of life.

I do not think I was born an old maid. Innately, I think I have had as much power of life and love as any other woman.

Yet I do not see where I could act differently if I should have life to live over again.

H. A.

The Philosophy of a Business Woman

THERE are a good many reasons why I am not married, but the most important one is because I have not met the right man. And I believe that is because of our social life, or lack of it. There is no opportunity to meet men socially here in a little village of less than five hundred inhabitants; as a matter of fact there are very few men to meet, and only one little church to meet them in, and they don't go to church.

I have spent the last ten years working in the city near by, and have observed that men do not marry the women that they work with—not altogether because the women are not lovable, but because they have to keep the finer and more feminine part in their nature under cover.

In business a business woman thinks only of her work, and of the men around her as a part of the business, the same as she does of herself.

Also I have noticed that the same girls, when they are out at some social gathering, do not make friends among the men as quickly as other girls, because of their practised reserve; and when they marry, if at all, it is some one they have met socially, not in business.

Girls do occasionally marry men that they work with, but they are usually the girls just beginning their business career—girls who don't follow the rules of business and attend strictly to business in working hours; so of course they are really not business women at all, because they never work for any length of time before they marry.

Being a woman of business and of very few pleasures has prevented me from getting married.

Men still like the women that cling, and business women don't cling. How can they, when they have to be independent in their work and keep their work on a par with that of men in order to succeed? So of course they soon get to treat men as men treat each other.

Men don't love business women, because they think that they are too much like themselves, and I don't blame them. When they go home at night they want a rest, not some one to help them in their work. Certainly not. They want either of two things: some one to amuse them, or some one to bring the beauty and religious side of life closer to them and make them forget business.

My heart cries out for love, but I am afraid to risk marrying any one I know, and the older I get the more afraid I am.

When we are young we are not afraid of anything; that is why so many more marry while they are young. When we are older, we are more cautious; and the more we learn the less likely we are to get married.

The reason I did not marry when I was young was because I was taught from childhood to believe that marriage was a failure, and there was plenty of evidence around me to prove that it was. After I came to the conclusion that marriage was not a failure it was too late.

R. K.

Continued on page 21

"SOME GAME GUY"

By WILBUR HALL

Illustrations by Robert McCaig

THE first report, telephoned from the far side of the course to the judges' stand, was shouted down to Tenny's pit. Johnny Roth, chief pitman, slumped behind the barrier on a pile of tires and sobbed aloud; and, in that telegraphy which carries bad news at an automobile race, the word spread through the packed grand-stands. Before the referee could gain definite confirmation from that distant emergency post, the farthest spectator had heard that Number 19 had gone over the embankment at Hairpin Curve, and that both Wild Bill Tenny and his French mechanician had been killed.

Laflin, the A. P. man, had but three minutes before his eastern day wire closed. He jogged the referee's arm.

"Can't you hustle them?" he snapped. "All I need is a flash. Ask 'em if it's Nine-teen!"

"That's what I'm doing, Laflin!" The official's voice broke. "Hello, flagman! Hello! Hello! Did you say Nineteen?"

Two entries flashed by, their roaring motors drowning the feeble voice in the emergency telephone. One of the cars was Drexel's Number 3, that had been fighting Tenny for first place through all the last fifty laps; but no one noticed him. All eyes were on the bulletin board, to-ward which a white-sweatered boy was climbing, chalk in hand. A mechanic in the pits below screamed impatiently:

"Is that right, kid? Is it Tenny?"

"Aw, how do I know?" the boy retorted. "Think I'm a mind-reader?"

Laflin, unable to get confirmation, leaped across to the shoulder of his telegraph operator.

"You've got to hold that Chicago wire open till I find out. Here, shoot this while we're waiting:

"Wild Bill Tenny, reported killed at Hair-pin Curve, is the driver who has prophesied sudden death for himself for years. Auto race fans will remember that he says— (No, tell San Francisco to lay off. I'll be clear in a shake. Now, go on.) Tenny always said: 'When I get mine, I want it to be quick, with fifty thousand people watching, the bands playing, and with my entry in the lead; and when they go out the gate I want them all saying, "Well, it's too bad—but he was sure one game guy!"'"

Laflin looked up from his dictation as three cars pounded by. Then suddenly the stands at the far north end began cheering. The cheers swept along just ahead of the two cars that hurtled out of the dust of the last turn and came flying down the straightaway, hub to huh. Laflin jerked up his binoculars, but he scarcely needed to see. The applause of the crowds proclaimed the news. The press man dropped his hand to the operator's table.

"Flash, quick, H. O.! 'Kill all reference to Tenny accident. Number Nineteen just passed in second place and going strong!'"

The referee, who had been momentarily forgotten, hung up the telephone and wiped his forehead nervously.

"Hey, you newspaper guys!" he shouted. "It's Nine that turned turtle on the Hair-pin. Nobody hurt!"

More suddenly than it had come the tension in all the stands relaxed. Little Johnny Roth, in Tenny's pit, was threatening to fight if anybody said he had "bawled." Piece o' track grit in me eye!" he reiterated again and again. But the others were not listening. Four more laps, and some one would flash across the wire winner of the greatest motor classic of the year.

The score-board indicated that Drexel, in his little red Number 3, was leading Tenny by half a lap. But, as a matter of fact, Drexel's advantage in time was less than forty seconds, since he had started the race in the first rank of cars, whereas Tenny in Number 19 had gone away with the eighth rank. Laflin and his fellows, their immediate rush passed, sat back, exchanging winged comments.

"Ten dollars to five that Tenny wins, Mosel" Laflin called to a neighbor.

"Why should I make you a present of five bucks? Don't you suppose I know Wild Bill as well as you do?"

A bystander interrupted: "I'll take fifty of that kind of money, Mr. Laflin."

"I'm a reporter, not a millionaire!" the A. P. man snapped back. "If you want to bet me ten against twenty, you're on."

"Any part of a thousand, my son," the outsider said, and dropped a ten-dollar bill to the press table.

"You'll lose your money, Rheinhardt," Mose Wald grunted. "Give Wild Bill Tenny a driving finish and an eight-mile course, and he'll make ten laps to Drexel's nine any old time."

"Yah!!" the bettor sneered—"in a good car!"

"In a wash-tub mounted on car-wheels!" Wald retorted. "Wait, here comes Drexel—and there's that poor old Goose Step special—and Tenny! Good Lord! Look at his right rear—you can see it from here. Ouch! There, he's twisted her nose. Come on, boy! Atta boy! Listen to 'em yell, Tenny—they're pulling for you! Now hold your breath—he's going into that seventy-degree curve below the bridge wide open! Wide open! Did you see that?"

Tenny had gained a hundred yards on Drexel, his rival, on the straightaway, and had torn into the dangerous curve below the stands at a pace that caused the most hardened veteran among his watchers to shiver. Swinging wide on his approach, his right-hand hub-caps had scarred the cement curb on the outside of the course; cutting in, the left-hand caps had shrieked along the inner curb. Number 19 skidded, bounded, skidded again—and made it! And, three laps thereafter, won the race, while the grand-stands rocked and the roars of the thousands drowned the thunderous music of the straining speed engines below.

LAFLIN, hastily dictating his flash on the winners, and pocketing his bet with an unanswered hail to the loser, dropped to the ground and hurried over to Number 19's pit, reaching it in time to see the hysterical pitmen leap the barrier, fall on Wild Bill Tenny, and fairly drag him from his seat. Laflin pushed through and caught the driver's grimy hand.

"Well, fool, the old man with the scythe was on our trail to-day!" he cried.

The pilot slipped his goggles to his cap visor and grinned with embarrassment.

"Oh, I guess not," he answered. "The bands didn't play my music. Cut out the kidding, Laf—go over and let Limpy tell you the news."

Laflin let them sweep Tenny on, and himself confronted the mechanician, stretching his cramped arms beside the battered, dusty car, and stamping his good leg to warm it. Laflin clumped him on the back and held out the bill he had won.

"Get that changed into five-franc notes and send it to that so brave brother in the Ninth Corps!" he said. "It's coming to you!"

The little Frenchman showed all his teeth in a triumphant smile. "But no, Monsieur Laf, I will not send it. I will take it."

"Take it?"

"Yes. You do not comprehend the reason? But I will tell you. Wil' Bill make me win by this race one thousan' dollar. For that we have found the doctor who can straighten my leg. In two months I go to France and enter myself in the war."

Laflin stared. "Do you mean that?"

"Without doubt. Six times I have tried to enlist. They look at my leg; they shake their heads—they smile. The seventh time they look at my leg. I smile. They say, yes. My leg is made straight. Oh, la, la, la, la! You shall see!"

"But what," Laflin objected, "will Wild Bill Tenny do without you?"

The Frenchman shrugged.

"Oh, that is a little secret which I will tell you. But you must not print him in your newspaper. Billy goes also with me."

"You just think he will!"

"No, he will go. It is all arranged."

Laflin led the mechanician off the track and got the story. But not one word of it must go on to the wire, Jouven said. Later, perhaps. What had got into Tenny?—the idol of the circuit, a big money-maker. Jouven stared at Laflin as if from some great height.

"Tenny has the great heart," the mechanician interrupted. "What is money now? It is the heart—"

The last cars had been flagged down, and the newspaperman ran to send his final bulletin. It was three months before he saw Wild Bill Tenny and Jouven again.

IT was on the pier of an Atlantic port where Laflin, himself waiting rather impatiently for the final word of authority that would send him eastward as a full-fledged war correspondent, stood to observe the embarkment of a regiment from the Middle West. The pier was swarming with men in khaki, and the great nets, swinging from booms above, shuttled back and forth in frantic haste to get dunnage bags and impedimenta aboard the squat transport. Across the street, at the shore end, stood watching thousands, almost silent, but showing none of that listlessness and the slack limbs of the usual idle crowd.

At the gate of the pier a smart young lieutenant, a weather-beaten sergeant, and a dozen privates carefully scrutinized the papers of every one who passed.

Laflin thought of a surgery in which, years before, he had watched while the victims of a calamitous train wreck were given the attention of a dozen white-gowned surgeons. The picture had never left his mind—the spotless room slowly ensanguined until it was a shambles; from without, the muffled, hard-held sobs and the tense questions of anxious friends; within, the quick surgeons and alert nurses battling with death. The correspondent felt now, on this sun-lit pier, something of the tenseness of that bloody room. But through those three nightmare hours the surgeons had spoken quietly together, exchanging occasional banter and laughter. So here these youths, confronting a mission of life and death,—standing on the very border and edge of crimson fields,—jested and laughed with steady voices.

At his elbow, abruptly: "Monsieur Laf, you see that what I have told you comes true!"

He wheeled, facing Louis Jouven and—surprisingly tall in his tight-fitting uniform—Wild Bill Tenny, the race pilot.

Tenny grinned with that characteristic embarrassment of his. Laflin grabbed their hands.

"Well, Louis, I did think you were kidding yourself. How's the little leg?"

The mechanician laughed and turned on his heel, strutted a few steps away, flashed about, and came to attention. His old limp was gone, and Laflin saw that the maimed leg—memento of a dreadful moment on a Tacoma course—was whole again.

Tenny chuckled. "What do you mean 'Limpy'? Ever see straighter pins than those?"

They're straighter than yours, Bill."

"Oh, mine! I've been kicking a speed throttle too long to have good knees!"

The Frenchman came back to them proudly—proud of his uniform, prouder of that worn by his old driver. Laflin spoke to them seriously, admiringly. Wild Bill Tenny shrugged. It was better than the old game, at any rate.

"But you're out of your element, man," Laflin remonstrated. "You'll be homesick in a week for the pop of Nineteen's engine and the cheers of the stands in the straightaway!"

"I guess I can pull through," Tenny countered. "And if I'm lucky I may draw some battered old tub over there and have a chance to burn up the French roads. From what I've heard, a driver would get a good imitation of the Vanderbilt if he was trying to nose out a few thousand Krupp shells in a hot finish."

"That's probably true, Tenny. But suppose you'd go out? You're the little maniac who wanted a big crowd on hand, a quick curtain, a band playing, and the fans saying: 'Well, poor old Bill's through—but he sure was one game guy!'"

The famous pilot colored.

"Why not? And maybe I'11 get all that, too. They tell me there's some class to the regimental bands—"

"Mon Dieu!" Louis Jouven broke in indignantly. "What would you? Do you suppose we go for the parade? La, la, la—you will see!"

And so Laflin lost them again—lost them at sharp words of command, in those still ranks of khaki.

LAFLIN'S sailing orders were delayed, but the late fall found him at last in London. He did daily letters from there for a time, contrived to get an amazing interview from a close-mouthed English official which made the name of Laflin almost as well known among American newspaper readers as was the name of the sphinx he quoted; was intrusted with a delicate mission to Petrograd; and, just be-

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fore Christmas, got his first sight of the trenches in Flanders. Laflin left pretty writing to others; but he had a way of putting on to paper the bigness of little things, the homely tragedies, the dramatic pictures in unimportant lives, all tinged with the red hues of war. His search for the intimate and personal led him to out-of-the-way places—it was in a half-demolished peasant hut that he first got word of Wild Bill Tenny.

A FRENCH boy, one arm gone at the shoulder and his face and chest twisted and scarred by the breath of liquid fire, burst into voluble eulogy on learning that Laflin was an American. The correspondent, with some difficulty, caught the thread of the tale.

Even the dauntless poilus, the boy said, were amazed at the reckless courage of this mad American. Tenny-Sans-Peur, they called him—Tenny-Without-Fear. It seemed that Tenny had been given the pilotage of the car of a French general, and then had drawn courier duty in the very heart of that sodden and storm-swept hell that was the front. The boy had with his own eyes seen him twice—once leaping a ditch with his car, once flying along a dark road, guessing at his way, avoiding obstacles by instinct, laughing at fire, and performing prodigious feats of repair, part of the time under the glare of search-lights that made him the target of a dozen rifles less than half a mile distant. Details were lacking. But Laflin felt the man Tenny moving through the hyperbole of the little poilu.

"How does it happen that Tenny is connected with the French army?" Laflin asked.

The boy did not know. "So they call him Tenny-Sans-Peur!" he repeated again and again. That much he did know.

Thereafter Laflin had Wild Bill Tenny at the back of his head, and finally he heard the story. A Johns Hopkins man, begging for such tobacco and wheat-straw papers as he had not had for fourteen months, had driven with Tenny through-out the summer.

"The sporting editors used to call him Wild Bill, you remember," Moran said. "I wish they could see him now. Wild? The French have nicknamed him—"

"Tenny-Sans-Peur," Laflin interrupted. "Yes, I've heard that much."

"Well, they don't exaggerate. If you didn't know him you'd say that the man was a maniac—that a padded cell would be the safest place for him. He takes every chance. I think he would have been given the Croix de Guerre long ago if it had not been for the fact that he is constantly on the carpet for jeopardizing the precious lives of generals and surgeon-majors, and the safe delivery of absolutely vital des-patches. His officers have threatened several times to send him back to the trenches for foolhardiness."

"Of course they won't!" Laflin interjected.

"Of course not. They tear their hair and rave, but they wouldn't swap Tenny for a field marshal. He came over with a Kansas regiment, but was detached for special service as driver, and along about June was loaned to a French general. The old gentleman doesn't know himself what fear is—but he rode with Tenny just once. They say that when he crawled out of that wild man's car he was shaking like a leaf, and that the pop of a back-firing motor will make him jump twenty feet to this day. Probably libelous—but after that it was courier work and special missions for Wild Bill. When I left the sector five weeks ago, Tenny was driving a twenty-eight-mile run every day that would make the Grand Prix on the Long Island course at its worst look safer than sitting in an arm-chair in the parlor of an old ladies' home. You've seen the finish of big auto races, of course, Mr. Laflin?"

The newspaperman nodded. "Several," he said modestly.

"I wish I could give you an idea of the finish Tenny made, one day, in this race I am speaking of. And you may believe me that it's a race! I had carefully bogged my lorrie in four feet of that Flanders mud, on a little rise, and was waiting for a tow, when an English lieutenant with binoculars called to use from an observation post. When I crawled up beside him, he handed me his glasses and asked if I wanted to see the American daredevil about whom everybody was talking.

"Below us, on a flat plain, they were digging a new line of trenches; and from that line, like the stem of the letter T, there ran a sunken gully that had once been a road straight across to some advanced post on the very edge of things. You've seen that territory: from a little distance the shell craters pockmark it so that it looks like the half of a great Swiss cheese—and all littered with such trifling debris as tree-stumps and fallen trunks, wreckage of guns and machines, and death-traps of tangled barbed wire."

"AND that was Tenny's race-course?" Laflin asked.

"That was Tenny's straightaway!" Moran grunted. "Through the glasses I could see his car pretty plainly half way of the road. It's a famous French driver's machine with power to burn, as you may have heard."

"I think I know the car. It's probably Le Blanc's hundred and twenty Dumond."

"That's the one. Well, here came Tenny in that gray torpedo, merrily doing forty an hour, hitting only the high places like a stone skipped on water, dodging obstacles by inches, shaving corners of wrecks, scotching over crevasses and craters, and trusting springs and torsion rods to fate. Some one had carelessly dropped a new shell crater in his path—from where I stood it looked as if he wasn't going to see it in time. I grunted—squealed, probably—and my English lieutenant laughed. 'Wait until he does, though!' he said—or words to that effect. And, sure enough, Tenny saw that trap. It was nip-and-tuck to turn the car's nose in time, but he jerked her out of her course and went into the edge of that crater sidewise. I thought he must go over—but he didn't. He kicked his throttle, caught the left-hand wheels on the rim of the hole, and went around it as if he were driving in a bowl. And out of it, too—though how he made it I can't even guess. Into it and out again, traveling on two wheels and at forty miles an hour and up! Golly!"

Laflin laughed, with a jerk in his voice. "Some driver, Tenny!"

"And don't forget that Old Fritz wasn't sleeping on the job any of this time, either. He had Tenny's number every foot of the way; but he couldn't seem to out-guess the driver. You must imagine the whole run punctuated with clouds of smoke and dust from bursting shells—which, of course, doesn't take into account mere snipers' bullets and the deadly efforts of sharp-shooters nicking up their sights. No gambler would have given Wild Bill one chance in a thousand to get through. And, mind you, this isn't any special party I'm talking about—Tenny did it for weeks. I met him shortly after that first sight I had of him,—modest guy, too,—and was there the day he drove in with one hand, cursing Old Fritz because he had finally gotten the range and broken Tenny's speedometer for him. We sympathized with him for that speedometer, and didn't find out until a day or so later that the same bullet had got two of the man's best fingers. Nerve? Well, rather!"

Laflin was staring abstractedly out of the hospital window. Green was bursting on the trees and the twitter of young birds came in to them.

"It's a queer thing—this war business," he said slowly. "I knew Tenny as the greatest race pilot of his day. He always used to say that when his time came he wanted to go out with a crowd watching and the bands playing. And all he asked for an epitaph was to have people say: 'Poor old Tenny. He sure was one game guy!

Moran grunted. "There won't be any crowds watching when he gets the inevitable," he said. "And the bands will be miles away. But we'll all admit he's one game guy!"

"It's more than gameness," Laflin concluded. "It's something big inside. I hope he gets through, God knows, but if he doesn't—"

SHORTLY Laflin went to London. He was gone two months, and the day he returned to Paris he met Louis Jouven, Wild Bill Tenny's former mechanician, capped, gloved, and goggled, embracing the steering post of a heavy lorrie and cursing a blockade ahead of him in unmentionable French.

"Bon jour, Monsieur Laf'," the little driver cried. "If you have the proper credentials, come with me on the Verdun road. I will be back in Paris to-morrow morning."

Laflin hesitated only a moment, then jumped up. Between indignant squeals at the pig-headed dogs of drivers who delayed him, Jouven recited his own Iliad briefly. He had been in the hospital for a month, and they—the mercenary and ignorant bunglers of surgeons—had refused to permit him to go back to his old regiment. He had spent a fortnight wetting the paths of the authorities with his tears and driving subordinate officials half mad with his importunities; then he had been shunted off on the American Field Service, and now he was piloting hospital supplies from base to field.

"Je m'en fiche! It is better than nothing!" he concluded philosophically.

"How about "Tenny-Sans-Peur?" Laflin asked. "I've been away and have lost track of him."

For some moments the Frenchman did not reply. Then he said, very quietly:

"I have not been away—but I, too, have lost track of him."

Laflin turned on him. "What do you mean? Has anything happened?"

"How can I tell, m'sieur? Do I know everything, like the good God?"

He would say no more. They reached their destination, unloaded the truck, and turned their faces once again toward Paris.

A light rain had started falling late in the afternoon; now it developed into a steady downpour. The Frenchman, voluble enough in indignation over little things, became quiet, watchful, uncomplaining, when real difficulties beset him.

Concluded on page 15

WHO HAS KILLED THE MOST SOLDIERS?

THE Kaiser will undoubtedly go to his grave responsible for the death of more men than any other man who ever lived. Before him, the record was probably held by Caesar, who, according to Charles Lowe in the Illustrated London News, was the means of sending to their last account some two millions of his fellow men:

"In his battle alone with the Nervii, near Namur, he slew over 60,000, and the Roman casualty lists never included any 'wounded'—the short sword, most deadly of all 'weapons of precision,' taking care of that. Previously at Cannae, as Livy tells us, the Carthaginians of Hannibal stretched dead upon the plain from 40,000 to 50,000 Romans. The victor sent three bushels of gold rings as a present to the Carthaginian ladies which he had stripped from the fingers of the Roman knights slain in this fearful battle.

"The figures as to ancient and mediaeval battles are not always to be trusted, but there can be no doubt that those battles were far bloodier than modern ones, dating, say, from the days of Marlborough, when war statistics became fairly reliable. Slaughter lists, in fact, began to grow shorter with the lengthening of the range of fire, a proof that cold steel at close quarters, or even a flintlock at any range under 100 yards, was a far more terrible arm of precision than a repeating rifle at 1000 yards, where it proverbially costs a marksman his own weight in lead to kill an enemy. At Blenheim the total force engaged amounted to 108,000, of whom 52,000, or nearly a half, were put out of action."

Fear

THE war has proved that nearly every man is brave; most brave men, however, have known fear, and are willing to admit it. Basil Clarke, in My Round of the War, tells about one little corporal.

"He's the 'hardest case' I know," said the officer. "He'll go anywhere, do anything under fire. But one telltale little trick he has. Over and over I have noticed it—when the bullets are spitting about him. Guess what he does?

"He turns his overcoat collar up. That's the only outward concesson to funk that he makes. But I'd like to know what's going on in that lion's heart of his, all the same."

The prospect of "leave" engenders in soldiers a fear that is unique.

"The only time that out men feared battle and death," says Mr. Clarke, "was when they had been posted for leave. To be killed on the eve of your leave was the only death I heard spoken of in terms of horror and fear."

In Shining Armor Clad

He Did It with His Little Scissors

A PAIR of scissors and a flashlight are perfectly good weapons with which to capture Germans if one has nothing else handy. So Captain William Hale, Jr., discovered. Captain Hale is a graduate with the Canadian Medical Corps; and the exploit that won him the British Military Cross is told in the Springfield Republican:

After a forward rush in which several lines of German trenches were taken, Captain Hale tackled the problem of locating a new first-aid station in the captured terrain. "It is safe to say," writes the chaplain, "that there was not a German dugout in the vicinity which Captain Hale did not visit to secure the best quarters. This itself was a dangerous business, as there was no saying when he might run across a lurking and stubborn Hun. As a matter of fact, this actually occurred, for, descending into the darkness of an apparently abandoned dugout, Captain Hale was accosted by the now familiar appeal, 'Mercy—Kamerad.' Turning his ridiculously small flashlight in the direction of the voices, he saw five uninjured and able-bodied Germans. The situation required tact. There was no time to parley. It was one M. D. armed with a flashlight and a pair of scissors versus five truculent Huns. Captain Hale's knowledge of the German tongue is limited but practical. 'Heraus mit you!' he shouted, and the five, seeing the ferocity of his glance, obediently 'heraused,' and were turned over by the Captain to the boys who watch the barbed-wire preserves."

Will They Stand for This After the War?

WE sometimes imagine the whole German nation as having been united in its enthusiasm for the army before the war. As a matter of fact, Americans who did business in Germany say that they seldom met a middle-class business man who did not hate the army. Army service meant for him that he must take a couple of weeks out of the busiest time of every year to go to camp and be ordered about by petty officers; and that he must be always subject to the insolence of men who, in his heart, he knew were usually inferior to himself.

In 1914 the socialist Rosa Luxemburg was brought to trial for protesting publicly against the maltreatment of soldiers in the barracks by their officers. She was brought to trial, and the government broke off the trial when it was half through—not, however, before 922 German citizens had rushed forward with offers to testify against the brutality of German officers.

These are just a few extracts from the testimony that was offered, and republished by the Committee on Public Information:

A witness who had served in the army from 1885 to 1888 was struck in the face with the fist by Lieutenant Erler, so that a tooth bled and got loose. He was beaten till he was bleeding, but report of the case was not sent higher up. Musketeer Hempel shot and killed himself after drill, because he had been grossly insulted by a corporal in front of the company. A reservist threw himself in front of a railroad train, another drowned himself, because they could no longer stand the abuse of Non-Commissioned Officer Huebner.

Another witnessed maltreatment so severe as to cause blood to flow: spitting at soldiers by superiors; cursing by officers, one of whom made two soldiers poke the head of another, who was bodily and mentally weak, into the snow up to his neck. This lieutenant stuck his sword between a soldier's hands, which were tied behind his back, so that when he walked the point struck the hollow of his knee.

A Polish recruit was maltreated so fearfully by a N. C. O. that he finally hanged himself. The N. C. O. got the soldiers to certify that they had seen nothing.

A N. C. O. struck a sick recruit repeatedly on the chest so that he screamed with pain and soon therafter died in a hospital.

Witness saw that the recruits were made to sweep the rooms with tooth-brushes, climb on wardrobes, slide under the beds on their stomachs; were beaten with whips, particularly at night, by the professional regulars (alte Leute).

Officers and N. C. O,'s tolerated the maltreatment on the part of these men. The witness reported such a case, but without result. One officer struck recruits in the face during instruction.

Militarism has only one food—victories. People will submit to its exactions so long as it brings them fresh territories to exploit, and new chances for wealth and distinction. But if German militarism comes home from this war without a victory, is it likely that the German people will ever again stand for the sort of thing that they stood so patiently before the war?

It Deserved the V.C.

The Deserter

BIGGS was a Canadian attached to a base hospital. One day he went down town, and failed to return. Immediately the cry went out for him, and French and British police began to search for a deserter or a dead body in the sea. Finally they located him—in the trenches.

His colonel raved, and the fine point was raised: Could a man desert into the fight? While they were trying to settle it, Biggs was brought back under the charge of a couple of military police. He told his story, which was simple.

He had met a couple of friends downtown. Being raw to the business of war, they did not realize that it was a crime to be over-zealous to fight. Being lucky, they were not caught en route to the firing line, where an inspector halts you at every few yards. They had evaded such interruptions by climbing on a rock train and hiding amid the rocks. Arrived at the line, they inquired for a battalion in which they had some friends. Here they marched boldly up to the Major, who happened to be a chum of Biggs's. He, though hospitable in the matter of food, put them under open arrest, giving them duty until an escort arrived.

The Boche, willing to oblige in the matter of fighting, immediately opened fire on the trench, while a sniper took a shot at the over-eager Biggs, who ventured to put a head over the parapet. However, none of them being hurt, they were quite unrepentant when they returned and faced the judge at a trial.

What was the charge? Absence for so many days without leave.

Mr. Biggs's sentence was fourteen days' field punishment! The moral of the tale you may draw for yourself. It is told in Letters of a Canadian Stretcher-Bearer (Little, Brown & Company).

German Subjects

How Bud Fisher Invented Mutt and Jeff

—By JANE DIXON

FAILURE is not always final. The slightest turn of fortune's wheel, and it is revamped into success.

Take, for example, the failure of Harry Conway Fisher, the inimitable "Bud" who presides over the antics of those funny fellows Mutt and Jeff. Bud will tell you that nine out of every ten persons he meets ask him where he found the characters for his cartoons.

Bud started his cartooning career in Los Angeles. He had barely passed his 'teens. When the home town began to feel a trifle cramped, he drifted to San Francisco. He was getting along fairly well, drawing a salary of about fifteen dollars a week—some weeks. Among other beats he covered was the race-track.

One evening Bud came in from the track feeling pretty blue. The ponies were running wrong. The life of a comic artist looked about as promising as a packet of canceled checks. He sat down at his board and drew a cartoon of himself. Underneath it he printed "A. Mutt." He took it in and handed it to the city editor of the Chronicle. "Who's that?" snapped the big boss.

"That's A. Mutt."

"Who's A. Mutt?"

"That's me," said Bud.

A. Mutt was such a comical figure of dejection that the editor broke out in a laugh.

"He's good. Keep him in the act," was the order.

The next day Bud took Mutt to the race-track. Mutt looked over the horses through Bud's eyes. That night he gave a tip on the races for the following day. Luck was with him. Again and again he won. It reached the point where Mutt could not lose. It is a matter of newspaper history that this fictitional character ran his winnings up from $1,000 to $80,000. That is, if a man who had $1,000 had taken Mutt's tips from the beginning, he would have been $79,000 to the good.

The publisher of the Chronicle tells to this day how men and women from every walk of San Francisco life used to line up outside the building, waiting for the first papers off the press to get Mutt's daily tip. All sorts of tricks were resorted to in an effort to get inside information before the papers were out.

Little Jeff entered the act later. At the time of the Claus Spreckels mayoralty scandals in San Francisco, Bud took Mutt to visit an asylum. There Mutt formed the acquaintance of Little Jeff. He immediately adopted Jeff as a pal.

They still talk in San Francisco of the hair-trigger mind of the brilliant young cartoonist, once he struck his pace. One evening—it was the 31st of March, to be exact—Bud was talking shop with a bunch of cronies in a favorite refreshment haunt near the Chronicle office. It was growing late. One of the party reminded Bud that he had to draw a "strip" that night before press time.

"Plenty of time," was the reply.

The hands of the clock kept moving around. Some of the fellows grew nervous.

"Look here, Bud," they said, "if you are going to draw that strip to-night, you'd better blow."

"What's the hurry?" asked Bud.

Fifteen minutes before press time a fellow artist exploded.

"Well," he gurgled, "you'll never draw that strip to-night."

"Bet you a hundred dollars I do."

"I'll cover your money. I know it can't be done."

The wager was deposited with a trusty for safe keeping. Bud left. In fifteen minutes to the dot he was back.

"Draw your strip?" came the chorus.

"Sure I did."

It took a telephone message to the art editor to confirm Bud's word. The next morning Bud's friends were on hand bright and early to see his lightning cartoon. Across the seven-column space reserved for Mutt and Jeff, in large black letters, was printed: "APRIL FOOL." Bud had rushed over, grabbed a brush, and painted the timely joke. The laugh was on the town, and no one enjoyed it more than the town itself.

That clever comedy team, Mutt and Jeff, have traveled a long way since those old days in San Francisco. They are the biggest money-makers of the current comics. They have pinned on their author the title of $100,000-a-year cartoonist. A recent contract with a newspaper syndicate brought $1,500 a week from the newspapers alone. Besides this, Mutt and Jeff act in the movies. And whenever they have a bit of extra time, Bud takes them into vaudeville—another thousand or so a week to their credit.

Various other sources of income bring their net earnings up dangerously close to the two hundred thousand per annum mark.

Just at present Mutt and Jeff are in the army, where they are doing valiant service in the artillery. It is Lieutenant Bud Fisher, F. A.-N. A., now. The cartoonist was a graduate from the second officers' training camp at Plattsburg, and expects soon to take his faithful allies, the big and little fellows, over the top with him in France.

This is not their first experience in army life. Two years or more ago, during a trip into Mexico, Bud was commissioned a captain in the army of General Pancho Villa. He never worked at the job. Looting Mexico didn't appeal to the man who has a gold mine of his own right back of his forehead.

She Owes Her Career to a Cow

MISS MARGARET WOODVILLE, surgeon and gynecologist, graduate of the Medical Institute of Berlin, and now a distinguished practitioner in New York City, told me the other day how she came to be a doctor.

It was because I discovered, purely by

accident, that I could be happy in no other profession [she said].

I used to he a teacher, and I lived 'way down South in Dixie. I graduated from a State Normal Institute when I was eighteen, and began teaching a rural school, because I had to work for my living and could think of nothing else I was fitted to do. I managed fairly well at it, by hard, conscientious endeavor; but I just couldn't love my work.

I taught in a log cabin on the edge of a wood, without modern appliances or conveniences, and with hardly enough books and slates to go around. I had twenty-five pupils, and I made friends with them all; only, I couldn't bear to teach them. The pleasantest part of the day was the walk I took after school with two of my boys through two miles of forest way leading to the home of their mother, with whom I boarded. She was a dear, and everybody called her "Miss Abbie," disregarding the fact that she had been wedded and widowed.

Miss Abbie had a cow named Redbird, which we all adored because, like the immortal cow of whom Stevenson writes, she "gave us cream with all her might."

One day when I went home after school with Jimmy and Danny, Miss Abbie met us on the edge of the clearing, with a tragic face. Redbird had broken pasture and got into the growing corn of a neighbor, who—most unneighborlike—had shot her in the thigh. Poor Redbird had limped home on three legs, and sunk down in the barn-yard to die in a pool of her blood.

Whether it was the sight of Miss Abbie's tears, or Redbird's blood, or both, that moved me, I was instantly at my boldest and best. I got some strong home-spun cotton cloth and made a tourniquet bandage. This I got around Redbird's thigh so as to cut off the flow of blood from the heart, twisting a stick into it to make a tight ligature. Then Miss Abbie heated a caldron of water, and Danny and I bathed away the blood, after the boys had constructed, under my directions, a sort of framework of light rails, to prevent our patient from escaping.

Then came the really dreadful part. I put my fingers deep into the warm and bleeding wound, and probed until I found the bullet. I drew it out; and then, tremendously emboldened, picked up and tied the severed veins. I found a little iodine in Miss Abbie's medicine-chest, and disinfected the wound.

Redbird recovered, and lived many years and had many sons and daughters.

"My child," said Miss Abbie to me, "you ought to be a doctor."'

"My dear," said I, with complete conviction, "I am going to be."

This is His Week

YOUNG Nathan Hale, Yale, class of 1773, was teaching school in New London, Connecticut, when the War of the Revolution broke out. There was no Plattsburg in those days, but he had qualified as a guards-man in the college militia, and he was of the stuff of which officers were made. He got a lieutenancy without any difficulty, and marched away to the colors. Within a few months he was made a captain.

Almost at once he came under the notice of General Washington, and the harassed General was looking for such a man as Hale for a job he had in view.

It was not a nice job, but it was a job that had to be done by some one. New York was practically at the mercy of the enemy. Their guns on Brooklyn Heights commanded the city, and the safety of the whole rebel army depended upon discovering what was happening on Long Island, how things stood within the enemy lines.

Disguised as a Dutch school-teacher, Hale crossed the Sound at Norwalk, and took observation of the enemy camp. Precisely when, where, and under what circumstances Hale was captured and executed has been a matter of tradition and uncertainty. It appears, however, that he did not seek to save his life when he saw that he had failed in his mission. He told them who he was and why he was there, and then, with the breath that was left him, came the inborn spontaneous sentiment which we now carve in marble and in bronze:

"I ONLY REGRET THAT I HAVE BUT ONE LIFE TO GIVE FOR MY COUNTRY."

GENERATIONS of priests in glittering robes, canons in scarlet and purple, and acolytes in white surplices have paced the magnificent aisles of Notre Dame of Rheims. Generations of voices have chanted hymns beneath the gorgeous splendor of sculpture, row upon row, tier upon tier. No tourist's note-book has been complete without a work about the dull little town in northern France in whose great cathedral the builders left scarcely a stone untouched by the chisel.

To-day, great gaping holes pierce the walls, and fragments of shattered kings, of saints and owls, of angels and gargoyles, lie in heaps upon the floor. Nor is this the first time that the great cathedral has stood against the challenge of destruction. The first work was begun about 1212, and for three centuries the church authorities and the workers were at dagger points. Archbishops fought their flocks from fortified castles, and the flocks defied archbishops from behind barriers made of the stones intended for the new cathedral. Again, during the French Revolution, great portions of rare sculpture were destroyed by those who hoped to throw off the power of the Church.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars will be needed to rebuild Notre Dame of Rheims. But, even when this sum is in hand, will she ever be truly "restored"? Probably not; for even more necessary to its reconstruction than money and skilled workmen is the spirit of the fifteenth century: and where will one find that?

LOVE LETTERS OF THE GREAT

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PEOPLE WHO HAVE TIME TO THINK

FIVE MINUTES OF SCIENCE

—By WALDEMAR KAEMPFFERT

An Electric Eye

SOMETIMES an admiral wants smoke, and sometimes he doesn't. When his movements are to be concealed from the enemy, he orders a squadron of oil-fired destroyers to place themselves between him and the enemy, and to belch from their funnels the thickest kind of black smoke that can be produced. The draft under the boilers is partially shut off, and forthwith a sooty veil hangs over the sea.

The men down in the boiler-room see nothing but gauge-glasses, dials, and fire-boxes. How do they know whether their ship is vomiting the densest possible kind of smoke? The officers on the bridge can signal down to the boiler-room; but in a battle they have enough to do without that.

In order to help out the men below, electric eyes have been mounted on some of our torpedo-boat destroyers. What's an electric eye? Selenium—a metal with a very peculiar property. Copper, iron, and other metals conduct electricity in a businesslike, untemperamental way. But selenium differs from them. Just how well it conducts electricity depends entirely on the amount of light by which it happens to be illuminated at a given moment. It is this peculiar property of selenium that enabled our naval scientists to fashion an electric eye.

Inside the smoke-stack of the destroyer, a wire of selenium is coiled in a little recess. Directly opposite, in another recess, is an electric light which plays squarely on the selenium wire. The smoke that pouts up through the smoke-stack cuts off more or less of the light that falls on the selenium from the lamp.

You can see at once that the thicker the smoke, the less light reaches the selenium eye from the lamp. Connect the selenium electrically with sensitive instruments in the engine-room, and the men down below know exactly how dense is the smoke-cloud that is pouring from their funnels. They read dials of electrical instruments like those to be found in any power-house.

As you watch the men in the boiler-room you would never guess that under the smoke-stack is an artificial eye that sees the smoke roll by.

Making the Past Live Again

WHEN you went to high school or college, the teacher in physics told you that light travels at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second. And then, in order to drive home to you how unstaggeringly vast is this universe in which the earth is but a little drifting speck, you were told that, swiftly as light travels, you see some of the more distant stars, not as they are, but as they were hundreds and even thousands of years ago. Centuries must elapse before light can bridge the intervening chasm.

Now, suppose that you could be shot from the earth into space at a speed greater than that of light, and suppose that you were armed with a wonderful telescope that enabled you to see everything that happened in Europe or America, just as if you were following a motion-picture drama on the screen. The entire past would be unfolded; for you would behold the earth, not with the light that leaves it at the moment of observation, but with light shot through space years earlier.

Remember that you are traveling faster than light; you are turning back the leaves of time. You see Antony and Cleopatra billing and cooing on the Nile; Columbus setting sail on the greatest voyage of discovery; Cornwallis surrendering to Washington at Yorktown; Napoleon crushed at Waterloo.

If you could control your speed, if you could move forward or backward to suit yourself, you would see the same event over and over again. To please you, Julius Caeser would be killed a hundred times in the Roman senate, so that you could determine precisely whether or not Brutus was the murderer that tradition says he was.

In short, tradition would cease to exist.

Juggling Germs

OF course you have been hypnotized by those garden fountains in which a thin, purling jet of water projected upward holds a small ball in the air. You see the water divide itself into something resembling watery hands that grip the ball instead of flinging it away. The ball is juggled up and down; but, for all that, it stays in the air for hours at a time.

Struck by this spectacle, it occurred to the professor of a Western university that it might pay him to study the bubbling cups that have been introduced in late years to avoid the bacteriological perils that lurk in the common drinking tumbler.

What did he find? In some forms of bubbling cups, bacteria of the deadliest kind are juggled day after day, just like the ball in the fountain jet.

The man who invented and introduced the bubbling cup thought that he had side-stepped bacteria once and for all. Now he will have to start in all over again. And then probably some other bacteriologist will come along with more alarming discoveries.

Domesticating an Explosive

YOU cherish an illusion if you think that your library chair or the luxuriant upholstery of an automobile is made of leather. Much of the leather that you buy on the strength of its looks is nothing but a form of gun-cotton—gun-cotton without the "gun." The war is largely responsible for the development of an industry in this country which makes out of the most powerful explosive known substitutes for leather that are actually better than some kinds of hide.

The first step is to make gun-cotton, which is done by treating clean cotton with a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acid. After it has dried, the cotton is a terrible explosive. Dissolve the gun-cotton in ether or alcohol, and it becomes a harmless, sticky liquid not unlike collodion.

It is this dissolved gun-cotton—this "pyroxilin," as it is called—that is the principal base of leather substitutes. Cloth is coated over and over again with "pyroxilin" until a film of the proper thickness has been built up. Then hot embossing cylinders of steel press pat-terns in the coating, so that it assumes the appearance of morocco, seal, walrus, and other leathers.

Perhaps it may console you to know that even an expert can't always tell whether your pocket-book is made of real hide or not.

"Some Game Guy,"

by Wilbur Hall

—Concluded from page 8

Their progress was slow. About eight o'clock Jouven drew up in the shelter of a ruined building to let the height of the storm pass.

Squatting under the lorrie, he spoke suddenly of Wild Bill Tenny:

"He was my good friend. He himself found the doctor who would straighten my poor leg. He was always brave and kind, He thought first of others—never of himself." The boy's voice was hoarse.

Laflin, struggling with a damp cigarette and his pocket lighter, grunted sympathetically. "Oh, Wild Bill will show up somewhere," he said.

The Frenchman only shrugged, hitching his shoulders against the driving-rod of the machine and drawing up his wet knees. An hour passed, and they went on once more, threading their way cautiously. Suddenly they stopped.

"It is that we have lost our road," the driver said laconically. "The devil with this rain!"

They gave up trying to make headway until after midnight, when the downpour ceased abruptly. After a long search Jouven started once more, striking off to the left on a well rutted road leading through what had once been a village. They floundered on for three or four miles, uncertam as to anything save the directions given them by their pocket compasses, but undoubtedly a long way off the beaten track. Dawn found them in a wood tangled with fallen trees, and on a road that had not been traveled, from all appearances, for weeks.

Laflin, welcoming the first rays of the morning sun with hearty exclamations of relief, stretched his long legs on the dash.

"We can't be very far from Berlin, Jouven," he said. "Carry on, my brave!" They topped a low summit, dropped down, sliding and jolting through the mud, and came out of the wood. Jouven checked the motor and stood up, peering about for familiar landmarks. With the aid of pocket maps he found the Verdun road far away to the east. Once more they started.

"Mon Dieu!" the driver ejaculated. "I would be ashamed if any one knew I had been so far lost between Paris and Verdun!"

"Cheer up, Louis!" Laflin said, looking ahead. "Some one else has been lost here before you—and stayed lost. See that?"

HE pointed. At one side of the road, its demolished wheels in the air, was a long gray runabout—rather, there sprawled what had once been a motor-car until its course had been checked suddenly by a small shell. A random shot, flying thither from some distant gun, had found this car and wrecked it. The motor lorrie drew nearer.

Jouven uttered a sharp cry:

"Bon Dieu! Do you see that rear-end housing? And the torpedo-shaped body—and that radiator?"

He jammed his brakes on and leaped to the ground. His face was white under the mud that splotched it. Laflin knew then.

It was the old hundred-and-twenty-horse-power Dumond in which Wild Bill Tenny, the man without fear, had driven his daily deadly races. There could be no doubt of that. Jouven had worked on the car in America during its racing career—he had seen it after Tenny became its pilot. And presently the Frenchman, crawling under the machine with pitiful little moaning cries, came out with a faded and misshapen leather head-guard. On the band were burned the initials "W. T." Jouven slumped down on the overturned chassis and buried his face.

Laflin, crawling stiffly from the lorrie, put a hand on the boy's shoulder. Apparently the wrecked car had lain as it lay now for several weeks. Relics—mere remnants—told in unmistakable language the fate of the daredevil driver. Here was spread the pitiable story of the end of that heroic soul who had said that he wanted the final catastrophe to come with packed grand-stands looking on. Laflin stared about him, deeply moved. On every hand for miles and miles was desolation. Waste and emptiness and a stillness emphasized by distant blurred explosions held the spot in their dead center. Not a living thing could be seen.

The newspaper correspondent growled an imprecation at the injustice of the thing—the grim irony of this answer to all that Tenny had asked, the little all he had asked. Merely to meet his heroic death with the cheers, that had always been food and drink to his odd spirit, ringing in his ears—going down around him when he went down. And the gods had sent him out alone, unwatched, uncheered, and sped death to meet him here!

But then Laflin's eye fell to the bruised and bullet-scarred car, rose to the horizon above a shell-torn and desolate land—France. And slowly there came to the correspondent another vision—the vision of a world breathless, stunned, uncomprehending, watching, watching, watching—and cheering in their hearts the brave men fighting there for an idea, a universal idea, a principle of life! No one had seen Tenny die, and yet the cause for which he had given his life occupied the mind of that world. Shivering at the loneliness of the spot, Laflin suddenly saw that the struggle, of which Tenny-Sans-Peur had been an integral and indivisible part, made all places where men fought and lived or died, in this conflict, a very center and axis of the world's focused attentions.

He touched and raised Louis Jouven. The boy stood up unresistingly, mutely folding the leather head-guard with clumsy fingers, on which tears fell, one by one.

"It wasn't so bad, Louis," he said. "Come—we can't do anything here."

"No, monsieur. But he was—he was—They stumbled away.

Then, faintly, both of them heard a thin piping note, and they stopped, listening. From somewhere in the distance the skirl of bagpipes, riding the quiet, rain-washed morning air, reached out to them.

The Frenchman caught his breath. "The band!" he cried. "What he had always wished!"

His voice broke. Laflin tried to speak, choked, and laughed hysterically.

"Yes, Louis—the band. And the world watching and the flags flying. And you and I going out saying to each other: 'Poor old Tenny. But he sure was one game guy.

THE MELTING POT

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

THE WOODS ARE FULL OF MINKS AND ERMINES

THE price of furs has increased from 60 to 100 per cent in the last year, while furs are becoming scarcer and scarcer. Why is this? Are fur-bearing animals being killed off and the actual supply of fur exhausted?

Quite the contrary, says Estelline Bennett in Hunter-Trapper-Trader. There are lots of fur-bearing animals in the woods. It is the trapper who is becoming extinct. When the war started the woodsman left his traps to rust and made for the nearest recruiting station. "Not until he shouldered a gun and marched away did people begin to realize that it was he, this unconsidered frontiers-man, who really was the source and supply of the world's fur market."

The result of this exodus is twofold. Animals are increasing in numbers and boldness; and trapping is coming to be one of the most profitable and least crowded occupations in Canada. Not only are the professional trappers who are left getting unheard-of returns, but homesteaders are going into it as a winter industry when the harvest season is over.

"Sam Patanaude, a French-Canadian who has a homestead upon the Athabasca River, where he raises grain and makes his home in the summer, went out last winter with his partner into the country above Fort McMurray, and the two men made three thousand dollars over and above all their expenses. In their catch they had two beautiful black foxes besides a large number of small animals such as mink, muskrat, and the little American ermine.

"Six loads of furs brought into Edmonton last spring by professional trappers netted three quarters of a million dollars.

"A trapper's outfit is simple in the extreme. It must be something he can pack on his back from one trapping shack to the next. He takes a small camp stove for the main shack, which is a little more permanent and comfortable than the others, and a little tin reflector that he can set up in front of the open fire and use to bake his 'bannocks'—large baking-powder biscuits. Each trapper takes from one hundred to one hundred and fifty steel traps of all sizes, from those designed for the grizzly bear to the little snares for mink and ermine. His supplies, which must be sufficient for the entire winter, include flour, bacon, sugar, tea, beans, and evaporated potatoes which come in five-pound tins—hard, dry little souvenirs of potatoes, that swell up like dried apples when they are boiled and regain an amazing amount of their pristine mealiness.

"With this outfit compactly packed, the trapper takes the train for Grande Prairie. He rides his horse out on to the Kootenai Plains, where he leaves him for the winter, and then, with snow-shoes and packs, goes out into the great purple mystery."

WHY 15,000 MEN FAIL EVERY YEAR

YEAR in and year out, about 15,000 business men, and business concerns, fail. In good years, such as 1917, the number drops to 13,000, and in more trying years rises to 16,000 or 17,000. Since about 20,000 new concerns are set up every year, it is evident that the annual mortalities are about 75 per cent of the business births.

Why is it? asks Professor Malcolm Keir in the Independent. Why do 15,000 men fail in business every year?

The failures, he finds, group themselves under five or six heads; and, expressed in percentages, the record looks something like this: inexperience, 39 per cent; unwise use of capital, 30 per cent; employing relatives, bad location, over-conservatism, and bad accounting, 25 per cent; dishonesty, 6 per cent.

Inexperience is by far the most deadly enemy, accounting for more than six times as many casualties as dishonesty. Many a bright young man who has been a good subordinate jumps to the conclusion that he can make a success on his own account, and, without any real knowledge of buying or accounting or the problems of advertising and salesmanship, opens an office and hangs out his sign.

Unless such a man is exceptionally fortunate, or has older and wiser heads to guide him, he is pretty certain to he numbered with the failures at the end of the year. With him also will be found the man successful in one line of business, who thinks that he can step over into another line with which he is only partially familiar.

"Lack of capital" is given often as a cause of failure: but the real trouble, as Professor Keir points out, is not the lack but the unwise use of capital. Americans, he says, have a mania for machinery. Young men starting in business load themselves up with far more equipment than they can use or pay for, and leave too little working capital to carry on the business.

These are the two chief trouble-makers. Then close behind them come bad location, bad accounting, the employment of relatives, and over-conservatism. Dishonesty—to the credit of American business—is a comparatively small factor in the record of failures.

DOES IT DO ANY GOOD TO WHIP A MAN?

AS a part of its prison system, New Jersey continues the whipping post. Ostensibly it is maintained for the punishment of wife-beaters and bank-robbers; but, as a matter of fact, of sixty-four men who were whipped last year only one was a wife-beater; and the majority were common thieves, many of whom had committed only minor thefts.

Captain Richard F. Cross, the man in charge of the Newcastle Work House, who attends to the whipping, is of the opinion that it does very little good in deterring men from future crime.

"The total lashes given during the year were 1175," he reports, "and yet I may say that 999 out of a thousand, or even the thousand flat, were of no use as far as making a better man out of the prisoner goes.

"To get some more definite information about the benefit or damage the whipping-post might be to the community, I walked into the dining-room recently, and said: 'Boys, there is a movement on foot to abolish the whipping-post. Now I want all of you who have been whipped more than once to raise your hands.' I found that eleven had been whipped twice, three had been whipped three times, and one had been at the whipping-post four times. I also heard that there was a man out of prison who had been whipped seven or eight times."

FROM AN EARLY VIRGINIA CHRONICLE

INDIANS have a wide reputation for dour, silent behavior. It is interesting to read the testimony given by early settlers in Virginia, who seem to refute this theory. Conway Whittle Sams, in The Conquest of Virginia (G. P. Putnam's Sons), quotes one of the early chronicles as saying:

"The Indian damsels are full of spirit, and from thence are always inspired with mirth and good humor. They are extremely given to laugh, which they do with a grace not to be resisted. The excess of life and fire, which they never fail to have, makes them frolicsome, but without any real imputation to their Innocence.

"Their elder women are cooks, barbers, and for service; the younger for dalliance. The women hang their children at their backs in summer naked, in winter under a deer skin. They are of modest behaviour. They seldom or never brawl. In entertaining a stranger, they spread a mat for him to sit down, and dance before him. They wear their nails long to flay their deer; they put bow and arrows into their children's hands before they are six years old.

"The manner of the Indians treating their young children is very strange, for instead of keeping them warm, at their first entry into the world, and wrapping them up, with I don't know how many clothes, according to our fond custom, the first thing they do is to dip the child over head and ears in cold water, and then to bind it naked to a convenient board; but they always put cotton, wool, fur, or other soft thing, for the body to rest easy on, between the child and the board. In this posture they keep it several months, till the bones begin to harden, the joints to knit, and the limbs to grow strong, and they then let it loose from the board, suffering it to crawl about except when they are feeding or playing with it.

"Their cookery has nothing commendable in it but that it is performed with little trouble. They have no other sauce but a good stomach, which they seldom want."

THE ARMY WANTS WOMEN LIKE THIS

---

THE CZARINA RESISTED TO THE LAST

WHEN Nicholas II was dethroned by the Revolution, he took it with a calm that was admirable. Nothing in his career as Czar ever became him like the leaving of it. He dug in his garden, answered politely when his revolutionary guards addressed him as Colonel Romanoff, and always thanked his armed escort when they brought him home from a walk.

But the Czarina refused to compromise with her fate. From the minute she heard of the Revolution, she resented it and never yielded an inch in her contempt for its commands.

At first she refused to believe that the rising of the people could be serious. She insisted, says Marla Mouchanou, her first maid in waiting, in My Empress (John Lane Company), that the Czar would call together a responsible ministry with Prince Lyoff as premier, which she said would not be so bad, because the Prince at heart was a loyal monarchist.

Then suddenly the news came that the Czar had abdicated. The Czarina was overcome. "'There must be some mistake. It is impossible that Nicky has sacrificed our boy's claims,' she kept repeating. But, when at last compelled to believe that such had been the case, she gave vent to an expression of rage which showed how thoroughly she despised the weak-minded man to whom she was bound, and exclaimed, 'He might at least in his fright have remembered his son!'"

Later on the Empress was placed under arrest. General Korniloff, afterward known as a leader of reactionary forces, appeared at Czarskoi Selo with all the officers of his staff, and demanded to see the Empress. She received him with a haughty and ironic manner, but in return she was forced to stand while he read her the order for her arrest.

This incident, more than the arrest itself, humiliated the Czarina beyond all reason. Often, in her conversations with her maid in waiting, she would repeat: "Can you imagine! He made me stand up—me, the Empress of Russia!"

"Among the many annoyances and indignities put upon the Emperor and Empress," says the author, "was the order given by the Revolutionary Government not to address them any more as 'Your Majesty,' but to call them Colonel and Mrs. Romanoff. The Czar took it good-humoredly, or, rather, contemptuously; but the Empress was extremely affected by this insolence. 'We have been crowned in Moscow,' she used to say, 'and nothing can change this now. The Czar is always the Czar."

ALLAH IN ENGLAND

MORAL QUALITIES CAN NOT BE INHERITED

TAKE two healthy babies, one of humble peasant stock, the other of "high-born" parents, give them the same environment and an equal chance to develop, and is it true that "blood will tell," and as time goes on the high-born baby will surpass the other in character, talent, strength of will, etc.?

This idea has always been dear to aristocrats, but there is very little in it, says Edmond Holmes in The Problem of the Soul (E. P. Dutton & Company). It is well enough to point to the bulldog and say that his puppies can never guard sheep; or to the draft-horse and say that his descendants will never be racers. Animals are bred for the accentuating of strong physical differences, and these physical differences determine what they can or can not do. But with man it is otherwise. There is only one dominant human type. An Italian baby and an English baby, a farm laborer's baby and a king's baby, all belong to the same physical type. Their birth from one particular pair of parents does not limit them to a single vocation, as in the case of a collie dog or a race-horse. Instead, the average baby has it in him to speak any one of a hundred languages, learn any one of a hundred trades, play any one of a hundred parts in life. Consciousness—the faculty that distinguishes him from all other animals—gives him a marvelous adaptability and puts at his command the whole inheritance of the human race. Against this racial inheritance, his "lineal inheritance,"—that is, what he inherits from his father and mother,—counts for little, says Mr. Holmes:

The idea that the upper classes are by nature morally and spiritually superior to the lower is a dangerous delusion, of which, for their own sakes, those who belong to the upper classes would do well to rid themselves. If the lower classes fill more than their share of our prison cells, the reason is that many of them are born into and reared in criminal surroundings, and that there is still one law for the rich and another for the poor.

The present war has proved to demonstration that there are vast reserves of heroism and self-devotion in human nature, and that in this respect the upper classes are not more richly endowed than the lower, nor the lower classes than the upper. An officer writes:

"I'm not emotional, but since I've been out here in the trenches I've had the water forced into my eyes, not once, but a dozen times, from sheer admiration and respect, by the action of rough, rude chaps whom you'd never waste a second glance on in the streets of London—men who, so far from being exceptional, are typical through and through, just the common street average. Under the strain and stress of this savage existence, these men show up for what they really are under their rough hides: they are jewel all through, and the daily round of their lives is simply full of little acts of self-sacrifice, generosity, and unstudied heroism."

And our men at the front have often written in equivalent terms of their officers. The truth is that, in response to the stimulus of this tremendous war, sublime qualities are ever awaking which exist as possibilities in those hidden depths of our nature where distinctions of class and breeding are unknown.

A STUDY IN EXPRESSION

THE BEST AGE FOR GENIUS

SIR EDWARD CLARKE in his memoirs made the statement that "the age of thirty-seven marks the highest level of the faculties of man," and adduced a number of illustrations to prove it.

The statement was challenged by Hall Caine, whose letter to the London Observer is quoted in Current Opinion.

It is true that thirty-seven does in some cases seem to be the meridian of the imaginative mind [says Mr. Caine]. Shakespeare was thirty-seven when he produced "Hamlet," Edmund Spenser was thirty-seven when he was writing the last books of "The Faery Queen," Thackeray was thirty-seven when he finished "Vanity Fair," Zola must have been thirty-seven when he completed "L'Assommoir."

All this seems to sustain your view; but, on the other hand, I think forty-seven might as justifiably claim to be the meridian of the imaginative mind. Scott was forty-seven when he produced "The Heart of Midlothian," Dickens was forty-seven when he produced "The Tale of Two Cities," Charles Reade was forty-seven when he produced "The Cloister and the Hearth," and Hawthorne was in his forty-seventh year when he produced "The Scarlet Letter."

A certain number of literary achievements approximate more closely to the earlier than to the later age. "Macbeth" was written when Shakespeare was forty-one, "Tom Jones" when Fielding was forty-two, "Fathers and Children" when Turgenev was forty-four, "The Count of Monte Cristo" when Dumas was forty-two, "Anna Karenina " when Tolstoy was forty-one, and "The French Revolution" when Carlyle was forty-two.

But against this there are notable imaginative achievements which belong to a much later period of life. "Paradise Lost" was published when Milton was fifty-eight, "Clarissa Harlowe" was produced by Richardson when he was fifty-five, and "Les Miserables" was published when Victor Hugo was sixty. I leave various great writers out of question.

THAT SO-CALLED PRUSSIAN EFFICIENCY

WE grow a little tired of this talk of German efficiency. Graft is just as much fact in German life as anywhere else in the world; and is usually, if anything, a good bit more sordid.

Herr von Behr-Pinnow, who has received recent publicity in the Berlin dailies, is secretary to the Empress. After having pledged his word to the Ministry of War that the work of sewing would be given exclusively to the wives of soldiers, Herr von Behr-Pinnow secured a monopoly of the making and supplying of sacks and sand bags for the German army.

In the interests of these soldiers' wives [says the Boston Transcript], the Ministry of War, in response to Herr von Pinnow's request, had agreed to pay them 10d. for each sack. Herr von Pinnow thereupon established a limited company to carry on the work, but it eventually appeared that this concern, which was started with a capital of $5000, was carried on solely by Herr von Pinnow, with Frau Legatun, Councilor Rose, and a fourth party whose name is not disclosed.

On this limited capital the company realized a profit within the period of nine months of $1,300,000.

It was further stated that Her von Pinnow had paid the seamstresses considerably less than 10d. per sack and had pocketed the difference.

When this very curious business was discovered, Her von Pinnow declared his readiness to pay to the War Office the sum of $125,000 as "conscience money." This offer the War Department was prepared to accept, but owing to the determined opposition of certain Reichstag deputies it fell through, and Herr von Pinnow was accordingly charged with embezzling public money.

At the very moment, however, when the judge was about to pass sentence a statement was handed to the Court, in which every one of the charges brought against the defendant was denied, and he was at once discharged.

Verily, German efficiency covers a multitude of crimes.

WE HAVE OFTEN FELT THE SAME WAY

A LOW TACKLE BY TORCHY

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Arthur William Brown

WHAT I like about livin' out in the forty-minute-if-you're-lucky sector is that, once you get here, it's so nice and quiet. You don't have to worry, when you turn in at night, about manhole covers bein' blown through your front windows, or whether the basement floor will drop into the subway, or if some gun gang is going to use your street for a shootin' gallery. All you do is douse the lights and feel sure nothin's going to happen until breakfast.

We were talkin' something along this line the other evenin', Vee and me, sayin' how restful and soothin' these spring nights in the country was—you know, sort of handin' it to ourselves. And it couldn't have been more'n two hours later that I'm routed rude out of the downy by the 'phone bell. It's buzzin' away frantic. I scrambles out and fits the receiver to my ear just in time to get the full benefit of the last half of a long ring.

"Ah, take your thumb off," I sings out to the night operator. "Who you think you're callin'—the fire house or some doctor?"

"Here's your party," I hears her remark cheerful, and then this other voice comes in.

Well, it's Norton Plummer, that fussy little lawyer neighbor of ours who lives about half a mile the other side of the railroad. Since he's been made chairman of the local Council of Defense and put me on as head of one of his committees, he's rung me up frequent, generally at dinner-time, to ask if I have anything to report. Seems to think, just because I'm a reserve lieutenant on special detail, that I ought to be discoverin' spies and diggin' out plots every few minutes.

"Yes, yes," says I. "This is me. What then?"

"Did you read about that German naval officer who escaped from an internment camp last week?" he asks.

"But that was 'way down in North Carolina or somewhere, wasn't it?" says I.

"Perhaps," says Plummer. "But he isn't there now. He's here."

"Eh?" says I. "Where?"

"Prowling around my house," says Plummer. "That is, he was a few moments ago. My chauffeur saw him. So did I. He's on his way down towards the trolley line now."

"Why didn't you nab him?" I asks.

"Me?" says Plummer. "Why, he's a huge fellow, and no doubt a desperate man. I presume he was after me: I don't know."

"But how'd you come to spot him as a Hun officer?" says I.

"By the description I read," says he. "It fits perfectly. There's no telling what he's up to around here. And listen: I have telephoned to the Secret Service headquarters in town for them to send some men out in a machine. But they'll be nearly an hour on the road, at best. Meanwhile, what we must do is prevent him from catching that last trolley car, which goes in about twelve-fifteen. We must stop him, you see."

"Oh, must we?" says I. "Listens to me like some he-sized job."

"That's why I called you up," says Plummer. "You know where the line crosses the railroad? Well, he'll probably try to get on there. Hurry down and prevent him."

"Is that all I have to do?" says I. "What's the scheme—do I trip him up and sit on his head?"

"No, no!" says Plummer. "Don't attempt violence. He's a powerful man. Why, my chauffeur saw him break the chain on our back gate as if it had been nothing but twine. Just gave it a push—and snap it went. Oh, he's strong as a bull. Ill-tempered, too."

"Huh!" says I. "And I'm to go down and— Say, where do you come in on this?"

"I'll be there with John just as soon as we can quiet Mrs. Plummer and the maids," says he. "They're almost in hysterics. In the meantime, though, if you could get there and— Well, use strategy of some kind. Anything to keep him from catching that car. You understand?"

"I get you," says I. "And it don't sound enticin' at all. But I'll see what I can do. If you find me smeared all over the road, though, you'll know I didn't pull it off. Also, I'd suggest that you make that soothin' act of yours speedy."

COURSE this wakes Vee up, and she wants to know what it's all about.

"Oh, a little private panic that Norton Plummer is indulgin' in," says I. "Nothin' to get fidgety over. I'll be back soon."

"But—but you won't be reckless, will you, Torchy?" she asks.

"Who, me?" says I. "Flow foolish. Why, I invented that 'Safety First' motto, and side-steppin' trouble is the easiest thing I do. Trust me."

I expect she was some nervous, at that. But she's a good sport, Vee.

"If you're needed," says she, "of course I want you to go. But do be careful."

I didn't need any coaxin'. Somehow, I never could get used to roamin' around in the country after dark. Always seemed sort of spooky. Bein' brought up in the city, I expect, where the scenery is illuminated constant, accounts for that. So, as I slips out the front gate and down towards the station, I keeps in the middle of the road and glances suspicious at the tree shadows.

Not that I was takin' Plummer's Hun scare real serious. He'd had a bad case of spy fever recent. Why, only last week he got all stirred up over what he announced was a private wireless outfit that he'd discovered somewhere in the out-skirts of Flushing; and when they came to trail it down it turns out to be some new wire clothes-line strung up back of a flat buildin'.

Besides, what would an escaped German naval officer be doin' up this way? He'd be more apt to strike for Mexico, wouldn't he? Still, long as I'd let Plummer put me on the committee, it was up to me to answer any calls. Might be entertainin' to see who he'd mistaken for an enemy alien this time. And if all I was expected to do was spill a little impromptu strategy—well, maybe I could, and then again maybe I couldn't. I'd take a look, anyway.

IT was seein' a light in Danny Shea's little cottage, back on a side lane, that gave me my original hunch. Danny is one of the important officials of the Long Island Railroad, if you let him tell it. He's the flagman down where the highway and trolley line cross the tracks at grade, and when his rheumatism ain't makin' him grouchy he's more or less amusin' to chin with.

Danny had pestered the section boss until he'd got him to build a little square coop for him, there by the crossin'—a place where he could crawl in between trains, smoke his pipe, and toast himself over a sheet-iron stove about as big as a picnic coffee-pot.

And that sentry-box effect was the pride of Danny's heart. Most of his spare time and all the money he could bone out of the commuters he spent in improvin' and decoratin' it. He'd cut a couple of round windows, like port-holes, and fitted 'em with swingin' sashes. Then he'd tacked on some flower-boxes underneath and filled 'em with geraniums.

When he wasn't waterin' his flowers or coaxin' along his little grass-plot or addin' another shelf inside, he was paintin' the outside. Danny's idea of a swell color scheme seemed to be to get on as many different shades as possible. The roof was red, the sides a bright blue. But where he spread himself was on the trim. All you had to do to get on the right side of Danny was to lug him out a half-pound can of paint different from any he'd applied so far. He'd use it somehow.

So the window-sashes was picked out in

yellow, the side battens loomed up prominent as black lines, and the door-panels was a pale pink. Nearly all the commuters had been touched by Danny for something or other that could be added to the shack. Only a week or so before, I'd got in strong with him by contibutin' a new padlock for the door—a vivid red one, like they have on the village jail in vaudeville plays.

And it struck me now that if I had the key to that little box of Danny's it would make a perfectly good listenin'-post for any midnight sleuthin' I had to do. Most likely he was up dosin' himself or bathin' his joints.

Well, he was. He didn't seem any too enthusiastic about lettin' me have the key, though.

"I dunno," says he. "'Tis railroad property, y' understand, and I'd be afther riskin' me job if anythin' should—"

"I know, Danny," says I. "But you tell 'em it was commandeered by the U. S. Army, which is me; and if that don't square you I'll have Mr. Baker come on and tell the section boss where he gets off.,'

"Verra well," says Danny. And in less than five minutes more I'm down there at the crossin', all snug and cozy, peekin' out of them round windows into No Man's Land.

For a while it was kind of excitin'; but after that it got sort of monotonous. There was about half of an old moon in the sky, and only a few clouds, so you could see fairly well—if there'd been anything to see. But nothing seemed to be stirrin', up or down the road.

What a nut that Norton Hummer was, anyway, feedin' me tip with his wild tales in the middle of the night! And why didn't he show up? Finally I got restless, and walked out where I could rubber up the trolley track. No sign or sound of a car. Then I looks at my watch again, and figures out it ain't due for twenty minutes or so. Next I strolls across the railroad to look for Plummer. And, just as I'm passin' a big maple tree, out steps this huge party with the whiskers. I nearly jumped out of my puttees.

"Eh?" says I gaspy.

"Gotta match?" says he.

"I—I guess so," says I.

I REACHED as far as I could when I hands him the box, too. He's a whale of a man, tall and bulky. And his whiskers are the bristly kind—straw-colored, I should say. He's wearin' a double-breasted blue coat and a sort of yachtin' cap. Uh-huh! Plummer must have been right. If this gink wasn't a Hun naval officer, then what was he? The ayes had it.

He produces a pipe and starts to light up. One match broke, the second had no strikin' head on it, the third just fizzed.

"Gr-r-r-r!" says he.

Then he starts for the crossin', me trailin' along. I saw he had his eye on Danny's sentry-box, meanin' to get in the lee of it. Even then I didn't have any bright little idea.

"Waitin' for the trolley?" I throws out.

"What of it?" he growls.

"Oh, no offense," says I hasty. "Maybe there are others."

He just lets out another grunt, and tries one more match with his face up against the side of the shanty. And then, all in a jump, my bean got into gear.

"You might have better luck inside,"—says I, swingin' open the door invitin'.

He don't even say thank you. He ain't one of that kind. For a second or so I thought he wasn't goin to' take any notice; but after one more failure he steps around, inspects the inside of the shanty, and then squeezes himself through the door. At that, he wasn't all the way in, but by the time he had a match goin' I'd got my nerve back.

"Ah, take the limit, Cap'n," says I.

With that I plants one foot impulsive right where he was widest, gives a quick shove, slams the door shut behind him, and snaps the big padlock through the hasp.

"Hey!" he sings out startled. "What the—"

"Now don't get messy, Cap," says I. "You're in, ain't you? Smoke up and be happy."

"You—you loafer!" he gurgles throaty. "What—what do you mean?"

---

"Just a playful little prank, Cap," says I. "Don't get excited. You're perfectly safe."

Maybe he was. But some folks don't appreciate little attentions like that. The Cap'n starts in bumpin' and thrashin' violent in there, like a pup that's crawled into a drain-pipe and got himself stuck. He hammers on the walls with his fists, throws his weight against the door, and tries to kick his way out.

But the section boss must have used rail spikes and reinforced the studdin' with fish-plates when he built that coop for Danny, or else the big Hun was too tight a fit to get full play for his strength. Anyway, all he did was make the little house rock until you'd thought Long Island was enjoyin' a young earthquake. Meanwhile I stands by, ready to do a sprint if he should break loose, and offers more or less cheerin' advice.

"Easy with your elbows in there, Cap," says I. "You're assaultin' railroad property, you know, and if you do any damage you can be pinched for malicious mischief."

"You—you better let me out of here quick!" he roars. "I gotta get back."

"Oh, you'll get to town all right," says I. "I'll promise you that."

"Loafer!" he snorts.

"Say, how do you know I ain't sensitive on that point?" says "You might hurt my feelin's."

"Gr-r-r!" says he. "I would wring your neck."

"Such a disposition!" says I.

Oh, yes, we swapped quite a little repartee, me and the Cap'n, or whatever he was. But, instead of his bein' soothed by it he gets more strenuous every minute. He had that shack rockin' like a boat.

Next thing I saw was one of his big feet stickin' out under the bottom sill. Then I remembers that the sentry-box has only a dirt floor—on account of the stove, I expect. Course, Danny has banked the outside up with sod for five or six inches, but that ain't enough to hold it down with a human tornado cuttin' loose inside. A minute more and another foot appears on the other side, and the next I knew the whole shootin' match begins to rise, wabbly but sure, until he's lifted it almost to his knees.

LOOKED like the Cap'n was goin' to shed the coop over his head, as you'd shuck a shirt, and I was edgin' away prepared to make a run for it. But right there the elevatin' process stops, and after some violent squirms there comes an outburst of language that would only get the delete sign if I should give it. I could dope out what had happened. That plank seat across one side had caught the Cap'n about where he buckles his belt, and he couldn't budge it any further.

"Want a shoe-horn, Cap?" I asks. "Say, next time you try wearin' a kiosk as a slip-on sweater you'd better train down for the act."

"Gr-r-r-r!" says he. "I—I will teach you to play your jokes on me, young whippersnap.

He does some more writhin', and pretty soon manages to swing open one of the portholes. With his face up to that, like a deep-sea diver peekin' out o' his copper bonnet, he starts for me, kickin' over the little stove as he gets under way, and tearin' the whole thing loose from the foundation.

Course he's some handicapped by the hobble-skirt effect around his knees, and the weight above his shoulders makes him a bit topheavy; but, at that, he can get over the ground as fast as I can walk backwards.

Must have been kind of a weird sight, there in the moonlight—me bein' pursued up the road by this shack with legs under it, the little tin smoke-pipe wavin' jaunty about nine feet in the air, and the geraniums in the flower-boxes noddin' jerky.

"Say, what do you think you are?" I calls out. "A wooden tank goin' over the top?"

I was sort of wonderin' how long he could keep this up, and what would be the finish, when from behind me I hears this spluttery line of exclamations indicatin'

---

rage. It's Danny, who's got anxious about lettin' me have the use of his coop and has come down to see what's happenin' to it. Well, he saw.

"Hey! Stop him, stop him!" he yells.

"Stop him yourself, Danny," says I.

"But he's runnin' away with me little flag-house, thief of the worruld!" howls Danny. "It's breakin' and enterin' and carryin' away th' property of the Long Island Railroad that he's guilty of."

"Yes; I've explained all that to him," says I.

"Go back and come out of that, ye thievin' Dutchman!" orders Danny, rush-in' up and bangin' on the door with his fists.

"Just let me out, you Irish shrimp!" snarls the Cap'n.

"Can't be done—not yet, Danny," says I.

"But—but he's destroyin' me flowers and runnin' off with me little house," protested Danny. "I'll have the law on him, so I will."

"Get out, Irisher, or I'll fall on you," warns the Cap'n.

AND right in the midst of this debate I sees Norton Plummer and his chauffeur hurryin' up from across the tracks. I skips back to meet 'em.

"Well," says Plummer, "have you seen anything of the escaped prisoner?"

"That's him," says I, pointin' to the wabblin' shack.

"Whaddye mean?" says Plummer, starin' puzzled.

"He's inside," says I. "You said use strategy, didn't you. Well, that's the best I had in stock. I got him boxed, all right, but he won't stay put. He insists on playin' the human turtle. What'll we do with him now? Conte see."

"My word!" says Plummer, as he gets a view of the Cap'n's legs and the big whiskered face at the little window. "So there you are, eh, you runaway Hun?"

"Bah!" says the Cap'n. "Why you call me Hun?"

"Because I've identified you as an escaped German naval officer," says Plummer. "Do you deny it?"

"Me?" says the Cap'n. "Bah!"

"Who do you claim to be, then?" says I. "A tourist Eskimo or an out-of-town buyer from Patagonia?"

"I am Nels Petersen, that's who I am," says he, "and I'm chief engineer of a ferry-boat that's due to make her first run at five-thirty-three."

"What!" says Plummer. "Are you the Sweed engineer who has been writing love letters to— Say, what is the name of Mrs. Plummer's maid?"

"Selma," says the Cap'n.

"By George!" says Hummer. "I believe the man's right. But see here: what were you doing prowling around my back yard to-night? Why didn't you go to the servants' entrance and ask the cook for Selma, if you're as much in love with her as you've written that you are?"

"What do you know about it?" demands Petersen.

"Good Lord!" gasps Plummer. "Haven't I had to puzzle out all those wretched scrawls of yours and read 'em to her? Such mushy letters, too! Come, if you're the man, why didn't you call Selma out and tell her all that to her face?"

Nothing but heavy breathing from inside the shack.

"You don't mean to say you were too bashful?" goes on Plummer. "A great big fellow like you!"

If it hadn't been for the whiskers I believe we could have seen him blush.

"Look here," says Plummer. "You may be what you say you are, and then again you may not. Perhaps you just guessed at the girl's name. We can't afford to take any chances. The only way to settle it is to send for Selma."

"No, no!" pleads the big gink. "Please! Not like this."

"Yes, just like that," insists Plummer. "Only, if you'd rather, you can carry your house back where it belongs and sit down. John, run home and bring Selma here."

WELL, we had our man nicely tamed now. With Selma liable to show up, he was ready to do as he was told. Just why, we couldn't make out. Anyway, he hobbles back to the crossin' and eases the shack down where he found it. Also, he slumps inside on the bench and waits, durin' which proceedin' the last trolley goes boomin' past.

Inside of ten minutes John is back with the maid. Kind of a slim, classy-lookin' girl she is, too. And when Selma sees that big face at the round window there's no doubt about his being the chosen one.

"Oh, Nels, Nels!" she wails out. "Vy you don'd coom by the house yet?"

"I was scart, Selma," says Nels, "for fear you'd tell me to go away."

"But—but I don'd, Nels," says Selma.

"Shall I let him out for the fade-away scene?" says I.

Plummer nods. And we had to turn our backs as they go to the fond clinch.

Accordin' to Plummer, Selma had been waitin' for Nels to say the word for more'n a year, and for the last two months she'd been so absent-minded and moody that she hadn't been of much use around the house. But him gettin' himself boxed up as an escaped Hun had sort of broken the ice.

"There, now!" says Plummer. "You two go back to the house and talk it over. You may have until three-fifteen to settle all the details, and then I'll have John drive Petersen down to his ferry-boat. Be sure and fix the day, though. I don't want to go through another night like this."

"But what about me little lawn," demands Danny, "that's tore up entirely? And who's to mend me stove-pipe and all?"

"Oh, here's something that will cover all that, Danny," says Plummer, slippin' him a ten-spot. "And I've no doubt Petersen will contribute something, too."

"Sure!" says Nels, fishin' in his pockets.

"Two bits!" says Danny, pickin' up the quarter scornful. "Thim Swedes are the tightwads! And if ever I find this wan kidnappin' me little house again—"

At which Danny breaks off and shakes his fist menacin'.

When I gets back home I tiptoes up-stairs; but Vee is only dozin', and wakes up with a jump.

"Is that you, Torchy?" says she. "Has—has anything dreadful happened?"

"Yes," says I. "I had to pull a low tackle, and Danny Shea's declared war on Sweden."

What One Boy Knows of War

TO-DAY Kurkan Der Mugurchian is the hardest working pupil in a public school at Fresno, California—his only anxiety being to become a good American as soon as possible. But yesterday he was, in spite of his thirteen years, a fighting man among fighting men.

When the Turks made their first rush at the Armenian town of Van, the boy, like every other Armenian who could hold up a gun, got into the battle, and Kurkan was active in the hand-to-hand fighting. He led a group that set fire to the houses that sheltered Turkish sharp-shooters.

On one raid in the dark, Kurkan and his chum were caught by a Turkish patrol. His companion was wounded, and Kurkan will bear for life the mark of a deep cut inflicted in his hand with a knife.

"After battles and massacres Turks and Armenians became so enraged they forgot to be afraid," said Kurkan through an interpreter. "When I was slashed by the Turk, I wanted to sink my teeth in his neck. The cry of my wounded friend roused some Armenian guards, and the Turks ran away without finishing us."

When the Russians took possession of Van, they sent the civilian population back of the lines. Driving sheep, goats, and dogs, which carried what was left of worldly goods, the hapless people walked for seven days over deserts toward Russian territory, only to be cut off again by the Turks.

"Then the Turks came on black Arab horses," said the boy. "Our people crowded the dusty road as far as the eye could see. Most were unarmed. They fled back for an hour toward Van. Many were captured; some were mutilated; and, night coming on, the people scattered. My mother hid my little sister, Servart, under a rock. My grandfather went into the fight. We were scattered,

and I searched all night among the dead for my mother and sister. I had no hope, and wished I too had been killed. I found them finally and we went on by nights. My mother was lost once for five days, and almost perished for water. She had been so badly shaken by shell-shock at Van that she died later at Baku, Russia.

"Some of the native Kurds were kind and generous, and shared the water from their goat-skins. One old red-bearded wild Kurd, with long Arab bloomers, his belt filled with cartridges, brought a big sack full of snow from the summit, and offered to sell it for what amounted to about $1 a handful. We would eagerly have paid what money we had for it, as many were dying for even a taste of snow. The party was unable to buy the snow, and in desperation tried to snatch it from him. He hugged the sack to his hairy breast. One of our boys drew a knife and ripped the bag open, and Jabzad, seeing all was lost, tried to tear himself to pieces in his anger. Finally he began slapping his knees in fatalistic Kurdish resignation."

The Russians proved cordial. German-Russian soldiers, however, made things unpleasant. Kurkan's father became baker for an institution for two thousand orphans at Baku, and remained there; while Kurkan, sent for by an uncle at Fresno, after two years set out by rail for America. While wandering about the steamer at Yokohama, Kurkan met friends.

"I was worrying about the journey," he said. "All at once I saw Aslan, the merchant of Van, and thought I was deceiving myself. He took me in his arms and kissed me, and cried, 'Kurkan, Kurkan! Come, hurry!' he said. 'Your grandparents are worrying about you, thinking you dead. My fears were ended."

Why I Never Married

—Continued from page 6

The Voice in the Night

YES, I am unmarried. And I am a college woman. I am not unmarried because I am a college woman; nor yet am I a college woman because I am unmarried. The two conditions are independent of each other, and yet, queerly enough, they are both the results of the plans of a life-time—almost.

As long as I remember I planned to go to college. Just how that ambition took root I do not know. However, that dream came true in spite of many obstacles and discouragements.

As for the ambition toward single blessedness—that also originated in my pig-tail, freckle-nose days. Exactly when or how, I can not say. But it did. I can remember one hot summer day. Hot summer days are very rare in our high altitude; that day is the first real landmark. We were in our back yard, my first admirer and I. He had red hair and was therefore my hero.

The air was sweet with the fragrance of the mountain choke-cherry. I can smell it yet! We had been playing house, and he said to me, "When we're big, you are going to be my wife." I wanted to say that I would, but I did not. My sacrifice was beginning. "No, I won't," said I. "I'm not going to be anybody's wife."

Far down in my heart I knew something—something that was connected with a high, shrill voice that came once in a while from our house, something that hurt and made me lie awake nights staring into the darkness until my eyes hurt as much as my heart did. And I was such a little girl!

That secret made me fickle during my high-school days. I liked the boys immensely—and they liked me. But I never allowed myself to develop what is popularly called "a serious case."

You see, I knew something, and I just could not.

Well, in my college days it was much more difficult. At any standard co-educational school a woman is likely to meet a number of attractive men. And I was no exception to the rule. There were several who might have been wonderfully fine companions for life. But I learned to steel my heart, to build a safe and sure barrier, to be satisfied with their friendship.

But X was different. Had I not been armed with the secret, wedding-bells might have rung for us. But I was, and I gently and firmly let myself grow away from him,—and let him grow away from me too,—and he is none the wiser.

Of course, from the very beginning there were moments of rebellion—sometimes weeks and months of it. There were moments when I actually let myself forget the secret, just that I might be like other girls. Then would come one mad, glad fling at life, until conscience revived. Hours of suffering followed, and the resolve became firmer and firmer.

No one knew, however. I never breathed a word. On the surface my life was a very ordinary one. Now I am teaching, doing my bit, living the monotonous life of a bachelorette, respected and loved, I suspect—resigned too, I hope.

This last is all the more strange, for I adore little children, especially babies. I am naturally a home-maker. Sweeping, washing, ironing, sewing, even dish-washing are delightful occupations to me.

The thing that bothers me is this: What shall I do if the one man should appear?

You see, there is insanity in our family.

Z.

Not Wanted

WHY am I not married? Well, briefly, I have never been asked; and now I'm beyond the "wanted" age. You say, "Oh, that's easy; you are an awful prune." No, I'm not; really, I am not. I am not a Cleopatra or a Theda Bara, but folks say I am a "nice-looking" woman and was a pretty girl. "Well," you say, "there is something the matter with you, or maybe you did not want to marry?"

Yes, I did; I always wanted to marry. I did not have any romantic or eugenic ideas about finding a man "fit to enter the sanctuary of my heart" or anything of that sort. I simply thought that marriage was a woman's most natural vocation, and I think so more than ever now, because I am old enough to miss my children.

I can't understand why women cry because their sons must go to war. Not having a son to go is the real sorrow, I think, because it is a deprivation that can't be discussed; in fact, I can not allow my mind to dwell upon it. I work to keep my mind off myself and the humiliating fact that I am a refuse piece of womanhood from the man's standpoint.

I am not feeling sorry for myself. I joke about being an old maid, but all the time something about that undiscovered region of my heart just seems to tighten and hurt.

In my opinion, there are many women in just exactly my class, and sometimes I think men are cruel to have passed them all by.

Besides being fairly easy to look at, I am that fearful creature, "an educated woman," with two collegiate degrees of which I do not boast. I am not alone in this feeling: I know other women who will not wear their scholarship keys. I earn a good salary, was reared in a pleasant home with a large family, and have had fine opportunities for making friends. I am not to be pitied. I have a little money of my own—not enough for a fortune-hunter, but enough to have kept me somewhat independent of a man's salary had I married.

I am a successful teacher; my pupils and my associates seem to like me. I have done all the things that the unmarried do, except suffrage work. I have gone in for church work, social work, and now the Red Cross. I think I would be more contented with my life had my family needed my support.

I am pleasant to men, and they seem to respect and like me; but they invite me to their weddings as a guest. I swallow hard, smile, and go. You say, "You don't know how to treat men." I listen to them talk about themselves; I laugh at their jokes, and I feed them—I am a good cook, too.

I do not think society will suffer because I shall leave the world no copy, but I think the race would have been as safe with me as with my washerwoman and her six unkempt, unwanted children.

Why is it that women of my type do not marry or have opportunities to marry? I think it is because the educative process teaches them too much emotional self-control. Men, being short on intuition, think such women cold and unresponsive.

The worst of it—there're no marriages in heaven.

L. A. C.

The Story of a Wallflower

WILL tell my story of why I never married. I am thirty-five, and admit that I am a lonely old maid at times; but I am also a successful business woman, and my life is too full of work to allow me much time for self-pity.

I was the youngest child of a family of

---

four, and the only daughter. I was a plain child and grew up to be a homely young woman. After graduating from college I returned to my home in a small Southern city. My father, a judge and a prominent citizen, insisted that I "come out" in society.

The very thought was horrible and made cold chills run up and down my back. I would be a failure. What had I to offer society except my education? And the younger set, I knew, did not care for that.

My appearance was so discouraging—a dark complexion, light gray eyes, mouse-colored hair, and a mouth entirely too large. And what was my intellect and learning compared with the dainty loveliness of most of my friends?

I did not have a "debut" party, but gradually drifted into a few social affairs. I never had engagements for the theaters, or dates to go driving, or callers on Sunday afternoon, but went to an occasional party or dance because some man was asked with me. At dances I was a "wallflower"—a horrible remembrance even now.

With envious eyes I saw my friends sought by their admirers, showered with gifts, and radiantly happy, while I was miserable and life seemed almost unbearable.

Things drifted along this way for two years, and a young man moved to our city. He and my brother became fast friends, and brother persuaded my mother to let Jim stay at our house. We were thrown together constantly, and naturally went out together in the evenings. Friendship grew into love, and soon Jim proposed and was accepted.

I was the happiest girl in the world. I simply adored Jim, and all the little attentions, the stolen kisses, the moonlight strolls and other things I had missed before filled my heart with joy and my life became a blissful dream. My happiness was complete.

It was too good to be true. The next spring Jim became worried and depressed, and postponed our wedding, which was to have occurred in June. I, thinking he was nervous and overworked, did everything in my power to help him.

One evening we attended a dance, and during an intermission, I slipped out on the lawn, for the night was sultry. Around the corner of the house stood Jim and a friend, and Jim was saying: "I've stood it about as long as I can."

I strained my ears to hear more, and in a low voice he continued: "You know, I never did love that ugly girl; but I got myself into this mess, and I don't know how to get out."

All the hatred in my being flamed up. I, turned and fled—stumbling blindly along, the tears running down my cheeks like rain.

Alone that night I fought the battle. I put love and the thought of marriage out of my life forever.

F. C.

How Can He Get a Wife?

I AM an unmarried man who has lived forty-two years alone. Not until this last year have I ever felt how much I needed a wife—and how I have wasted the prime of my life.

After graduating from the State University at the age of twenty-one, I plunged into law and worked with head down for success. Never did I ask myself why I wanted success—was it for myself, or would I marry?

I had never been what is known as a "fusser" at college. I didn't have the time. I had to work my way through school, and maybe that kept me from the gentle sex. I had only one "date" in my college life. That was to attend a musical concert. This girl had been in my classes, and one day she scolded me for being so selfish with my company, as she put it. At that remark I asked her to attend this concert with me, and she did; but either I proved too dull for her, or she was too silly for me—I never asked her to another concert.

After leaving college I moved into a small country town, where I stayed until this last year. There I worked and studied.

I never had many women's cases—mostly men and nearly all farmers. My little old-fashioned office got on my nerves. My rooms over a photographer's studio had that empty feeling—no welcome, no change, every evening the same quiet hollowness, until I could stand it no longer. Finally I moved to a larger place with the small fortune I have saved. A man forty-two years old, retired, and tired of living alone.

I ask myself so many times a day, is it a wife I want? Could I find some one to share my burdens and peculiarities? Could she make my life worth living, help me fulfil my ambitions to raise a family, make me feel that I too could enjoy life as my father and mother did?

Then again I am confronted with the big question, could my savings afford a a wife? So much is said of the expenses and extravagance of a wife.

I have never wanted a partner in life until now, and now where will I find one?

So you see why I never have married. I never have thought of it until now—never had time to think of it; and now I see the emptiness of it all. I want a wife to share the rest of my life and make a home for me. But the old Man Time points out to me two bold questions: Where is she? and, How will I get her?

LONESOME BACHELOR.

What Charlie Chaplin Does With His Money

IN the good old days it used to be the thing for popular idols to squander their $1,000 a night or their $10,000 a week, or whatever preposterous sum it was, in riotous living: million-dollar banquets, champagne suppers, any idiotic form of cash-consuming pastime that happened to be handy.

But to-day what a difference. Look over the lists of the spoiled darlings of popularity, and see what they do with their cash. You will almost be tempted to say that we in America are coming to our senses cashwise.

Look at the hundreds of thousands that John L. Sullivan made. He died with little to show for it. "Death Valley Scotty" came East bulging with greenbacks, and went home on a special train, dead broke. Most of the old-time singers and dancers and pugilists were forever having "benefit" performances given for them. But it is not this way any more.

Caruso owns a great deal of property in Italy, and is fairly rolling in war bonds.

John McCormack, the tenor, is a millionaire who buys $100,000 pictures and thinks nothing of it. Jess Willard owns two circuses and several farms. The list is long and the story the same in almost every case.

The other day Charlie Chaplin walked into a New York bank with $2,500, which he placed on deposit. A week later an order came to pay him $10,000 more. He told the bank to credit it to his account. The same thing happened the next week, and the next. This went on for several months, and the pile grew large. Asked why he never drew any money, Charlie replied that he had no use for it. Asked if he desired to invest what he had deposited, he repied, "Assuredly," and asked the banker for suggestions. They were given and followed, and now that money is making money and more is piling up. No foolishness for Charlie off the screen. When folks like Charlie get conservative, it's a pretty good sign that the thrift idea is taking root in our midst.

"Safety First" for Women Investors

IF women would buy their bonds and securities and other investments with as much prayerful consideration as they devote to the purchase of a new hat, the procession of penniless femininity, with its heart-breaking tales of lost savings and dwindled inheritances, would be greatly shortened, says Lillian C. Kearney in the Magazine of Wall Street:

"A woman will go into the security market, without a thought of using the caution and learning the intrinsic value of her purchases, as she does in the hat, gown, and glove market. And the worst ones at this game are usually the ones who can least afford to take such risks—widows, orphans, and middle-aged workingwomen with small savings.

"'Safety first" should be the slogan of the woman investor. Let her avoid such get-rich-quick offerings as oil and mining prospects, speculative stocks on margin, and second mortgages with high interest rates."

Women—and men too—would do well to consult the banker before investing in anything. Bankers are pretty careful about what they recommend their patrons to buy. Among the things they do consider safe, as a rule, are these:

Securities in which savings banks are compelled by law to invest their funds, preferred stocks of companies they know are financially and morally sound, high-grade municipal, public-utility, industrial, and railway securities; mortgage bonds on church property, guaranteed mortgages on improved real estate, annuities, and 4 to 4 1/2 per cent savings accounts.

But there may be arguments in special cases against some of these. Better consult the banker and approach this thing of investing your money in the glove-counter spirit.

Graft and the Hat-Check

ONE time we sat down and made out a list of foolish expenses: things we dug up our hard earned money for and got nothing in return. There were several interesting items on the bill, but the thing that made us maddest was the fact that we had paid hat-check boys, at one time and another, about $7 in tips for a $3.50 hat. In other words, we had spent twice the original price of the hat buying it back from restaurant brigands.

If this hat-check robbery were confined to the lobster palaces of the larger cities, we'd take our medicine in silence and say nothing about it; but it is an evil that has spread into every town of any size in the country. It is an isult and an abomination, and we ought to rise up in our wrath and smite it. But we won't, probably.

Just to-day our rage was rekindled by a suit filed in the new York courts over the hat-check privilege in certain Broadway resorts. It appears that two brothers collected $750,000 in hat tips in seven years, $250,000 of which was net profit to them, and they quarreled about the division of it.

Talk about wilful waste! There it is in its most virulent form. Just stop and figure how many millions of dollars that might go into Liberty bonds is pouring into the coffers of these affluent flunkies all over the United States every year. The amount will stagger you.

Commerce and Finance, commenting on the suit, hits off our feelings on the subject to a T. "The hotel or restaurant keeper who establishes this hat-check swindle," it says, "deliberately plans to plunder his patrons. He is not content with the returns he gets from his business, but, knowing the weakness of the average American and his reluctance to protest against any extortion to which he is subjected for fear of being clases as a 'cheap skate,' he inflicts upon him a seemingly petty, but in the aggregate large, robbery.

"The hat-checkers are parasites. Refuse to have anything to do with them, and notify the proprietor of the hotel or restaurant that is party to it that he can not have your patronage so long as he maintains this bird of prey in his establishment."