Who Wouldn't Get Well?

WHO wouldn't get well if he had four doctors, or doctresses, like the four pictured here?

You know Meredith Nicholson, of course, the author of "The House of a Thousand Candles," etc., the man who refused an ambassadorship. After next week you'll remember him also as the author of "The Heart Cure at Banning Farms," one of the most charming stories in many a day. You want to know what the girls have to do with it? Well, if you must have it, they are the cure.

The Men I Saw Under Fire

IT'S Arthur Gleason who writes the article. when war broke loose he and Mrs. Gleason hurried to Belgium to organize an ambulance corps. For five months they have been dragging men back from death: not in some safe hospital at the rear, but actually under fire. King Albert decorated Mrs. Gleason for bravery. You'll find a real thrill in Mr. Gleason's article.

Introducing Albert Atwood

FARTHER back in this magazine is a department called "What Shall I do with the Money I've Saved?" and under it the name Albert W. Atwood. The name will not be new to you, perhaps. Mr. Atwood is a frequent contributor to McClure's Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post; he was for several years financial editor of a New York daily paper, and is looked upon as one of the most promising of the younger students of finance. His department will be a regular feature. Use it!

Personally, We Never Either

PERSONALLY we just [?] read serial stories; so if [?] have that peculiarity you [?] not be at all embarrassed in [?] fessing it. But this stor [?] Marie Dupont is different, s [?] way. There's a sparkle and [?] in it from the very start, an [?] kept us guessing a long time. [?] cidentally we're more than [?] narily interested in the auto [?] Miss Adele Luermann. It's [?] first big piece of work, and [?] lieve you'll agree with us [?] its extraordinary sucess [?]

"Say, Pop, Why—

does it rain?" or "Say, Ma, [?] do the stars twinkle?" If [?] have a little Question Mark [?] your home, there's a real godsend coming to your in our new [?] partment of children's question [?] If you're stuck with a quest [?] right now, bluff the youngster off for a week or two and se [?] it in to this department.

Our Correspondent at the Rear

BOUCK WHITE, auth [?] preacher, and agitator, h [?] gone to Europe: not to see fig [?] ing , but to talk with the women and children who are left [?] home. We call him "Our Correspondent at the Rear" and unless we are mistaken he will send [?] some articles that w [?] be different form a [?] thing you have [?] about the war. We [?] heard enough of ha [?] and bloodshed: what [?] those left behind w [?] can only wait a [?] weep?

That's what Bouck White has gone to find out.

Mrs. Blumenschein on Woman Artists

"WOMEN have something quite definite and special to contribute to the illustrative art in America today," says Mary Greene Blumenschein, who won the Shaw prize in the spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design.

"Perhaps it is true, as many people assert, that women's work is less daring and strong than men's; but at the same time it is certainly more personal, spirited, and decorative.

"I believe there is such a thing as the woman's point of view. Women see different things than men, and they see them differently. Women are not exactly more sentimental; but they are sentimental at different moments and for different reasons.

Should Avoid Imitating Men

THE thing for women artists to do is to avoid imitating men. Let them discover, during their student days, what type of work comes most naturally to them, and then stick to that. It is fatal to try to be bold and masterful, for example, if one is essentially careful and delicate. I am thinking of Susan Watkins, who studied when I did with Raphael Collin in Paris. She won this same prize in 1910.

"Like all other students, she worked hard at drawing figures. And she used to get fearfully discouraged. What she loved was fabric and bric-à-brac and curios of exquisite workmanship. One day, just to please herself, she did a corner of a room with some still life in it. It was a small triumph, and after that she new what she was meant to paint.

"Personally, I love to paint young and pretty girls: not the merely 'pretty girls,' but the ideal American type of young womanhood, compounded of audacity, intelligence, and charm.

"My prize-winning picture, 'The Princess and the Frog,' is simply the reflection of my childish love of Grimm's fairy tales. After all, there are no tales like fairy tales. You remember when the little Princess first saw the Prince? He was disguised as a frog, you know, and came hopping to her out of her garden pool to bring her back the little golden ball that she had lost. That was the moment I chose to paint.

"Illustrative art here in America is at a pretty low ebb. Where are the artists who can take the place of Abbey or Howard Pyle? It is the psychological moment for women to come into the game and strike a new note of delicacy, spirit, and meaning. They have already done so in sculpture."

Mrs. Blumenschein herself already stands high in the illustrator's world. Her cover designs and her book and magazine illustrations entitle her to be a founder of the new school of decorative painting she so believes in.

Will There Be Polygamy After the War?

NO, says Arnold Bennett, there will be too many young women after the war, and too few young men; but the mean value of young women, he says, will rise. Realizing that there are more of them to compete for the attentions of men, young women as a whole will strive in every way to improve themselves. Moreover, they will have to play a larger part in the industrial life of the nations, and their independence will be increased accordingly.

But Dr. David Starr Jordan, chancellor of Leland Stanford University, to whom the editor of Every Week submitted Mr. Bennett's remarks, does not agree. "After the war," he says, "we shall have a great surplus of women, widows and maids. They will have to undertake work which men have done hitherto. The (financially) lower classes will have coarse hands and clumsy bodies, losing the graces of normal womanhood.

"War leads inevitably to racial decay. It is plain that the most energetic and intelligent men make the best soldiers, and the best soldiers, the most daring, are most likely to be killed. This leaves the weaker elements of one kind or another to be the fathers of coming generations.

"It takes a mind most optimistic to see in the slaughter of a large percentage of the young men of Europe the way to the 'independence of women.' There is no independence worth having to a woman in which man does not have his part.

"And after the war many women will be forced into polygamy or worse."

Living on 25 Cents a Day

By Annie Peck

WHEN I say that one can live on a food cost of twenty-five cents a day I am stating no new discovery. My experience has special interest only because my work of mountain climbing requires that I keep myself always in the height of physical condition. And this I have learned to do at an average expense for meals of twenty-five cents a day.

I do not mean to say that because anyone can live on fifteen cents a day, therefore everyone should. But I do say that the waste of food in this country, as compared to the frugality and good sense exhibited by some of the European nations, is a constant source of amazement to me.

I eat in the morning what might be called a "continental breakfast"; which, by the way, is taking the place of the terrible "old-fashioned breakfast" in more and more American homes.

I find a five-cent cake of almond chocolate and a banana a sufficient luncheon. As for dinner—ten cents will

buy a heaping portion of macaroni and cheese and a vegetable; while for fifteen cents one may have an adequate meat order and a vegetable.

If the average family ordered its food as carefully as I order mine, there would be a surplus for vacations and luxuries.

Making Good with Only One Arm

AT fifty, Charles O. Blomerth of Malden, Massachusetts, lost his arm and his job. He had worked until then with his hands for a daily wage, and so the plight he found himself in suggests a sociological problem.

Two Houses with One Hand

ALL such suggestion disappears, however, when one views Blomerth thirty years later (in his eightieth year now), the owner of twenty acres of valuable land bordering State boulevards, and the owner of two brick and stone houses which, seen from the road, are big enough to give the impression that they house an institution of some kind. Blomerth bought the land, paying for it dollar by dollar, after he lost his arm and his job; he built the houses himself brick by brick, stone by stone, literally single-handed. And that means exactly this, that Blomerth never asked for outside help, and never got any.

Nor is Blomerth through yet. He is now working on plans for his third house. Neither his eighty years, the magnitude of the undertaking, nor the prevailing high price of labor disturbs him. He will build this third brick house as he did the other two, working a lone hand. Blomerth is his own architect, bricklayer, stone mason, gas fitter, plumber, carpenter, roofer, hod carrier, purchasing agent, lumper, painter, tinsmith, and cabinet maker. He is as persevering as a spider, as industrious as an ant—and to say that is a compliment to both the spider and the ant.

Blomerth, at fifty, had had a picturesque career. He had been a carpenter in Stockholm, varying the monotony of that existence with periodic trips to sea. He has traveled the world over, as far as the water routes go, and seen all the great seaports, and many that even the map-makers pass by.

Buying Land a Dollar at a Time

BLOMERTH, one arm and his job gone, took up a newspaper route. The "one-armed newsman" became a well known figure in Malden. Then he became an investor. He bought twenty acres of land, paying a dollar a week for seven years. Then the land became his. That he invested well is apparent. The taxes on the land originally amounted to three dollars a year. Now they are more than a hundred times that sum. The Blomerth place is what a real estate agent would describe as "ripe for building." But Blomerth won't sell, and whatever building is done he will do himself.

The Blomerth houses are three-story

affairs, built on the slope of a hill that traverses his estate. Each of them represents about ten years of steady labor. As Blomerth will be eighty his next birthday, he will be pretty near ninety by the time the third house is finished. That he has already outlived the allotted span of life does not enter into his calculations. He expects to finish the third house.

He makes his home in the first house he built. The other was on the market for a long time—till finally it was leased by a moving-picture firm—because Blomerth requested all prospective tenants to agree that they wouldn't sleep more than one person in a room, and because he insisted upon having all walls painted the prevailing color scheme being light blue and pink. Blomerth doesn't believe in more than one person in a room, nor does he believe in wall paper, and, unlike some landlords, he isn't going to shirk responsibility for tenants' health.

Their Parents Have Given Them Away

WOULD you be willing to give your daughter away until she is twenty-one? Plenty of parents have done it, sending the daughters to Isadora Duncan. If you ask one of "Isadora's friends" (they do not consider themselves her pupils) when she expects to finish her education and begin her career, she looks at you with polite amazement.

"We shall be together and dance together while we live!" she says with delicate finality. "What else?"

"Everyone Should Be Beautiful"

MISS DUNCAN, a decade ago, at Grunewald, near Berlin, took six little girls to live with her. She selected them simply for their physical perfection. It happens that they are also beautiful; as everyone, rightly born and rightly let to grow, should be beautiful, says Miss Duncan. "Isadora," as they call her affectionately, considers them simply normal young creatures, each of whom has her own personality, each of whom is to contribute what she will to the world.

Later on, at Bellevue, near Paris, Miss Duncan added several French girls to the group, and, after the tragic death of her own children in an automobile accident, she opened her doors still wider, and the number went up into the twenties. At the outbreak of the war the group came to New York, and Miss Duncan is gradually taking in American children; so that presently there will be about fifty "Isadorans."

While each of them dances ravishingly, they are not selected for any indications of Terpsichorean ability. They dance incidentally, as it were, just as we other people laugh or cry or talk,—because they feel like it.

They have danced before crowded audiences of wealth and fashion; they have given private exhibitions before most of the crowned heads of Europe; they have delighted New York's East Side with free performances; and they have spent whole weeks, equally contented and equally occupied, in dancing among themselves. Perhaps next year they will dance together round the world. It is all one to them.

They Have No Lessons

THOUGH Miss Duncan dances with them nearly every day, they do not have any dancing lessons in the "one-two-three" sense of the word. The dancer's whole idea is a complete negation of accepted educational systems. The girls do not have any lessons. They do not live by a fixed program. They are given no rules of conduct. Their day's schedule is elasticity itself; but here is a plan that distantly approximates it:

7 to 8.—Breakfast.

8 to 10.—Individual or group reading of history, poetry, or biography.

10 to 11.—The older girls teach the younger ones their A-B-C's.

11 to 1.—Dancing.

After lunch, frankly, their chronicler gives up. Perhaps they go out to a concert or a matinée or a lecture. Perhaps they stay at home and listen to the latest composition of some burning young Russian musician. Perhaps they go to the Metropolitan and linger among the Greek statuary, where they feel very much at home. In some way or other they are absorbing beauty, and that is as certain as one can be of their movements.

They eat wholesome food; but their diet is governed by no faddism. They wear loose clothing of beautiful, soft, pastel shades; but it is in no sense a costume. They regard their bodies as temples to unknown gods, and have a fine pride in developing and caring for them.

Perfection, Not Princesses

THE parents of these fortunate beings pay no tuition; but they give them unreservedly to Miss Duncan until they shall be twenty-one. Social position, money, infant prodigies, have no weight with "Isadora." As a matter of fact, [?] Princess has been offered her and turned down. If you have a physically perfect little child of six or eight on whom you would like this extraordinarily casual educational experiment tried, send it round to the dancer's studio some morning when she has given out word she will consider applicants. Perhaps she will take it.

Who Was Marie Dupont?

By ADELE LUEHRMANN

CHAPTER I

IT was a raw March day. As Roger Gavock walked the short distance that lay between his hotel, the luxurious Crustacea, and Fifth avenue, a spurt of wind caught his hat and gave it a twist. He saved it by a clutch.

His gaze wandered up the avenue, then down. It had become the finest business street in the world, he had been told by Americans whom he had encountered in Paris, and after his twenty years' absence from New York he had naturally expected to find many changes. But here he could detect nothing else. If anything familiar remained, it eluded his sweeping glance.

He lingered a minute uncertainly, then turned southward and proceeded at the brisk pace that was habitual to him. He was not in a hurry, being bent merely upon sight-seeing. Indeed, he had rarely hurried in his life.

As his eyes sped through the passing throngs he was conscious of distinct disappointment. It was at the women that he looked, and the sight left him chilled, repulsed. They were handsome, many of them; but how self-contained, remote, unindividual! No warming glances enlivened a walk on this finest of streets. One might as well be eighty and wear one's hat over his eyes!

Gavock smiled a wry smile at his own expense. He was neither a libertine nor vain, and few men of his fortune and leisure had lived more sedately; for though he had known many phases of European life, his role for the most part had been that of spectator. It was a surprise to him now to discover how much he had depended on the passing show for his warmth and life. He regretted Paris, its flash of alert eyes, the half-smiles of gracious lips, the perpetual, incorrigible coquetry.

LOST in a retrospective mood, he strode on unseeingly, when suddenly a boy carrying a large box dashed through the moving crowd and ran into his arms. The collision sent them both spinning; but the boy quickly recovered his footing and rushed on, while Gavock, in attempting to regain his balance, staggered wildly, and finally lunged into a woman who was in the act of descending from a limousine. The impact threw her against the open door of the car, and he saved himself from sprawling upon her by clutching the door handle. With a tremendous effort he managed to steady himself sufficiently to gasp out an apology.

"Pardonnez-moi, Madame!"

""Ce ne fait rien, Monsieur," the courteous formula came back instantly, automatically.

She was none the worse for the encounter, apparently. She was frankly smiling, kindly but amusedly, and though he was too human to enjoy being ridiculous he smiled hack from sheer gratitude that the charming young person had not found him offensive. For in spite of unsteady legs and general discomposure he had contrived to notice that the eyes that smiled were young and beautiful. And he observed that the lovely head surmounted a charming figure, elegantly clad, and that the limousine from which their owner had descended was all that was most admirable in limousines.

The next moment he had dropped his eyes and perceived that the hem of her gown was torn and hung down on one side. He must have trodden on it! Impulsively he indicated the damage he had done and poured out apologies in French.

She responded with a stare and a slight lift of the brows. Her smile was gone. She was lovely still, but cold and aloof. "I beg your pardon?" she said, politely questioning.

The English struck him like a dash of iced water. For the moment he was dumb.

"I didn't understand you," she explained when he failed to speak. "I don't understand French."

He stared at her an instant in astonishment, then pulled himself together and repeated his apologies in English.

She glanced down at her frock, and gave a quick shrug which was certainly French enough, he reflected. "That doesn't matter," she said indifferently, smiled faintly, whisked up her skirt, and disappeared into a shop.

HE gazed after her a moment blankly, then resumed his walk. He was puzzled. He had addressed her in French at first, and she had answered him in French. That he should have spoken French was natural; for it had been the language of his daily use for years, and in the excitement of the moment habit had prevailed. And she had replied with the customary phrase, instantly, unthinkingly, as any Frenchwoman might have done. He remembered perfectly her voice and pronunciation. That had been quite without accent.

But her English had been good too, the English of England rather than of America. He had known Englishwomen, and Americans also, educated in France, who spoke French like natives; but they also understood it, and this puzzling person had said distinctly that she did not. And why under heaven should she lie about it?

Unconsciously Gavock slackened his pace. Suddenly he stopped short at the flash of a new idea in his mind. The face was familiar! Somewhere he had seen it before! Where? When? He prodded his memory; but he prodded in vain. It was tantalizing, maddening.

CHAPTER II

I HAPPENED on a very pretty puzzle this afternoon," said Gavock.

"Blond or brunette?" Guy Amarinth asked with a grin.

Gavock's rather plain face crinkled into an attractive smile. He drained his demitasse, peering over it quizzically at his young host, who took his coffee standing, his back to the pleasant blaze of the gas logs.

Guy Amarinth was undoubtedly a very handsome man. This conclusion Gavock reached for the twentieth time that evening, and for the twentieth time regretted it. The boy was too like his mother. He would have been better with less of her beauty and more of his father's charming ugliness. For two hours now Gavock had been watching for traces of his old friend and missing them.

It was not the absence of the physical likeness that he deplored in the blond athlete before him. The mother's robust slenderness had passed to her son in a man's full portion, and the finely chiseled features were amply masculine; but behind the blue eyes that shone so pleasantly upon him now Gavock felt none of the alert sympathy, the warm exuberance of spirit, that had made the father so rare a friend. Strength of will was evident in the handsome face; but was it the fearless, generous strength of the father, that could curb itself in renunciation, or was it the mean tenacity of purpose that in Mrs. Amarinth had spent itself wholly on selfish ends?

Time would answer that question, Gavock reflected behind the smile that had responded to his host's bantering query.

"My dear boy," he said, "throughout the excellent dinner you have just given me it has been painfully apparent that someone has furnished me with a very sad reputation."

Young Amarinth laughed. "Oh, then I am to understand that it was not a woman—this time?"

"On the contrary it was a woman—this time," Gavock retorted. "But don't make the mistake that most of my old acquaintances over here do make, I fancy, that with me it always is a woman. If I have talked a great deal of women tonight, it is because I have talked of life, and woman is life's dynamo. Whether to create or to destroy, she turns the wheels of life. And life fascinates me in much the same way, I fancy, that pictures fascinate the man who studies them and writes about them,—because he cannot paint them."

There was a pause. Amarinth felt that he ought to say something, but could not find words, and when his guest took up the cigar lying on the taboret beside his chair he struck a match and held it without speaking. As the flame lit up the rugged, aging face before him the young man recalled the story, heard long ago and all but forgotten, that Roger Gavock had expatriated himself because of an early and disastrous marriage.

"Thanks, Guy," Gavock said when his cigar was drawing. "You don't mind, I'm sure, if I call you by your given name?"

"I wish you would, Sir," Guy replied. "I've heard so much about you it doesn't seem possible that we had never met until a few hours ago."

"It was a great pleasure to find you

---

here, and a relief to be able to turn my legal tangles over to you. Nothing could have been better—except to have found your father himself."

A few moments of silence paid tribute to the dead.

BUT now for your question, 'Blond or brunette?'" said Gavock, reverting to the light, genial tone that was habitual with him. "The lady was brune decidedly. A French type, I think."

"Young?"

"Under twenty-five certainly; of our best class, apparently; charmingly attired; smallish of stature, svelte, graceful, vivacious, pretty, chic. Does she interest you?"

"Immensely! Just my style, in fact." As though involuntarily the young man's glance sought a framed photograph conspicuously placed on the writing table that occupied a corner of the small sitting room.

Gavock's observant eye followed the glance. "Ah, a puzzle of your own, I see!"

Guy flushed, and admitted that he was still guessing.

"I'd like to take a look, if I may, before I go," said Gavock.

"Certainly. It will repay you, I think. But let's have your story."

"By all means. I want to know how it strikes you."

"As a lawyer?"

"Oh, no—as a person of intelligence," Gavock laughed.

Amarinth laughed back through the smoke of his cigarette. "Proceed," he said, dropping into a chair and settling himself to listen.

BRIEFLY Gavock related his encounter with the unknown lady of the limousine. "I resumed my walk down the avenue," he said at length, "Madame's charming face dancing before my eyes, when suddenly it flashed upon me that the face was familiar, and the more I think of it the more positive I become that somewhere I have seen it before; but where or when I cannot for the life of me remember. I have been nagging at my memory for hours. I have gone back ten years, reliving my life as nearly as I can, from place to place that I have visited, trying vainly to recover that lost trail. It remains always just beyond my reach."

"Perhaps it's just a chance resemblance," Guy suggested.

But Gavock shook his head with decision. "No, the feeling that sort of thing gives is quite different; it soon ceases to haunt you. But what do you make of the fact that the lady lied, that she said she didn't understand French when she did?"

"But maybe she didn't. Lots of people understand a few ordinary phrases of a foreign language and nothing more. Even such a dub at French as I am can say, 'Ce ne fait rien.' It means 'It's of no consequence,' doesn't it?"

"Yes. Say it again."

Guy repeated the French words.

Gavock laughed. "You might as well wave the Stars and Stripes, Guy. It's a short sentence, but a hard test of pronunciation, because it contains the letter R, a sound all but impossible of mastery by a foreign tongue. I have struggled with it sufficiently to recognize it in its absolute perfection as I heard it this afternoon. That anyone could achieve that perfection and yet lack an understanding of the simple phrases I used afterward is not humanely possible. Add to that my conviction of having seen her before—now what conclusion do you draw?"

Guy hesitated. "Why, I hardly know what to say. It seems very odd. I should be inclined to take her at her word. Why under the sun should she lie about such a thing?"

"Well, I can think of one reason—but only one. It occurs to me that she might have recognized me, and might have thought that I would be less likely to recognize her here in America if I were unaided by the knowledge that she was French. She had given French for my French involuntarily, as any French person would have done in the circumstances; but seeing that I did not recognize her she decided probably not to take further risks, thinking perhaps that I had not noticed her first slip."

Amarinth stared blankly. "But why shouldn't she have wanted you to recognize her?"

"That's just the point," declared Gavock. "That's the puzzle. Who is she, and what under heaven does she imagine she has to fear from me?"

Amarinth leaned forward eagerly. "Isn't it possible that she's a married woman with a past—a past that you know about? Of course she wouldn't want you to recognize her in that case."

"Yes, that's the obvious explanation," Gavock said doubtfully.

"But why isn't it the right one? Good Lord! it's like a novel or a play! Why, you might meet her in her own house some day and suddenly remember where you'd seen her before!"

"No such luck, I fear," Gavock replied. "Life holds few such piquant moments."

"You mean you'd like it?" Guy exclaimed.

"Of course. Who wouldn't?"

"I should think it might be deuced unpleasant," Guy answered. "Why, she might be the wife of someone you knew!"

"Well, what of it? I should have, I hope, enough savoir faire not to betray myself even to her, to say nothing of her husband."

"But suppose you had to? Suppose the circumstances were such that you felt it your duty to tell her husband what you knew about her?"

A FROWN gathered between Gavock's brows as his young host spoke, and he bent upon him a sharp glance of puzzled dismay. He had stumbled upon a mental bypath that it did not please him to find in the son of his old friend, and with all his efforts to the contrary he could not keep a note of coldness out of his reply.

"I cannot conceive of such a case," was all he said.

"But if the man were your friend?"

"If he were my brother, if he demanded the truth from me, I should lie with a clear conscience, and I trust convincingly."

The cold disapprobation in Gavock's tone had become unmistakable. Guy Amarinth felt it, and he answered a trifle heatedly, "You are thinking of the woman, I of the man."

"I am thinking of the man," Gavock said. "I should as soon think of telling a man the truth about his unvirtuous wife as I should think of telling the truth to a child about the mutilated doll she fondles."

"Well, I should want to know!" Guy declared, making the point a personal one with the customary egotism of youth. "I believe any man would want to know."

"Most men think so—until they are told."

"Well, no fool's paradise for mine!"

A DARK flush suddenly swept Gavock's pale, thin face. He opened his lips, but closed them again on unspoken words. His mouth hardened. Then, as if some feeling denied oral expression claimed the outlet of bodily action he sprang up, flung his cigar to the hearth, and stamped out its fire with a sharp grind of his heel. When he turned again to Amarinth his face had relaxed into his usual cheerful calm. He laid his hand on the young man's shoulder with affectionate pressure.

"You've a right to your opinion, my dear boy; only I have an idea that twenty years from now you'll find that it has changed. And when you see a poor devil clutching blindly at his little scrap of happiness you won't be the one to rob him of it, nor will you thank anyone for robbing you."

"A man's wife is—is different from other people to him. She's part of him: her dishonor is his dishonor."

Gavock sighed. "Dishonor is like immorality, Guy,—largely a matter of geography. But we're off on an unprofitable tack," he added, again discarding the serious mood. "The husband of my mysterious lady is in no immediate danger of being deceived by anyone, for the best of reasons. She has no husband."

HOW do you know?" Guy exclaimed, taken aback.

"I followed her. Yes, I was just interested enough and idle enough for that. I took a cab and followed her. I saw her enter a house—her home—in the most fashionable part of the town. I noticed that a passing policeman touched his hat respectfully as she alighted, and when she disappeared I pumped him. Voilà! The lady is still 'Miss.'"

"Miss what?"

"Ah, that's my secret, and I shall certainly not share it with anyone holding such rigorous views about the rights of husbands!" Gavock laughed. "She might marry a friend of yours."

"I'm not sure she isn't already married," said Guy.

"Neither am I. She isn't generally known to be, that's all I'm sure of. Where I have seen her before I haven't an idea—not the remotest. But I have seen her!" He looked at his watch. "By Jove! I had no idea it was so late. You have an engagement, you said. I hope our long talk has not delayed you."

"Not at all: I've plenty of time. It's a dance, a charity benefit, and starts late. Sorry you won't join me. There will be some very attractive exhibition dancing."

"Thank you. It's good of you to ask me; but I feel a bit let down by the voyage, and want to turn in early. If you are going now, we might start together. Where is the dance?"

"At the Esplanade. It's on your way. I'll get your hat and coat and 'phone for a cab." He started toward the door.

"While you're gone I'll take a look at your charming friend over there," Gavock said.

WITH laughing permission Amarinth left the room, and Gavock crossed to the writing table and took up the photograph that had attracted his attention earlier in the evening.

As his glance fell on the face in the frame he started sharply. His hand groped nervously in a pocket and brought out a pair of glasses, which he adjusted hastily, casting an anxious eye toward the door through which his host had disappeared. Stepping back into the light of the center chandelier, he stared at the picture. His brows met in the tenseness of his scrutiny.

Suddenly Amarinth's returning step sounded at the door. Instantly Gavock relaxed his gaze and turned a clear countenance to greet the young man.

"A lovely girl, Guy—really lovely."

"Yes, and a splendid likeness."

Gavock extended the frame to arm's length and regarded it with evident approval. "A most charming face," he pronounced heartily. "And I dare say I knew the young lady's father and mother well, and that she is one of those clever children who have taken advantage of my absence to grow up?" The light speech ended on a note of inquiry.

"No, you've missed fire there. Miss Dupont is not an American."

"Dupont? The name is French."

"She is of English birth and parentage. She is an orphan, and lives here with an old school friend of her mother's, Mrs. Alicia Thorley. Perhaps you know her. She is a New Yorker."

"I have heard of her. Her husband was English. They had a place near Paris. Some friends of mine bought it after Thorley's death. A very nice place—" Gavock's voice trailed off vaguely, as though he were lost in memories. "Does Miss Dupont care for Paris?" he asked abruptly.

"She has never been there."

"Indeed!" Gavock carefully replaced the photograph on the desk.

"You see she lived in England until her mother died; then Mrs. Thorley brought her here, and she has never been back, even to England."

GAVOCK accepted Amarinth's aid in donning his overcoat. He turned and looked up at the handsome young face a full six inches above his own. "How old are you, Guy?" he asked.

"Twenty-five."

"I thought about that. You were hardly more than a baby when I saw you last. I remember the occasion distinctly. Your father and I were smoking in the library before dinner, and your mother brought you in to say goodnight." He paused a moment, then with his hand on the younger man's arm he added, his voice a bit unsteady, "You've lost them both, my boy, and sometimes you miss them?"

Amarinth did not answer except with a twitch of his fine mouth.

"Of course," Gavock said. "Well," he added after a moment, "I don't know whether I need to say it, but I will say it. If you ever get to the point where you miss your father,—need him, I mean,—will you come to me? I loved him, Guy. It wasn't given to me to return in the slightest measure all that I owed him. I want you to know that there isn't anything I would have done for him that I wouldn't do for you. I wonder if you understand?"

There was a short silence. Guy's face reddened with the embarrassment that speech which touches the hidden springs of feeling almost always brings to an American, particularly a young one. "I do understand," he stammered. "It's awfully good of you, Sir."

"Then that's settled," Gavock said briskly, anxious to relieve the young man's embarrassment. He glanced again at the photograph. "Are you hoping for a sight of Miss Dupont at the dance tonight?" he inquired lightly over his shoulder.

"We're to do a stunt together—one of the exhibition dances. She is a beautiful dancer, and sort of pulls me through somehow."

Gavock wheeled. "My dear boy, why didn't you tell me that you were to be an actor in the fête? That quite alters the matter! With your permission I am going to change my mind and accept your invitation to go along."

"Good!" Guy said heartily. "Really I don't believe you'll be bored," he added modestly.

Gavock gave a short, odd laugh. "I am quite sure of that," he said.

CHAPTER III

MARIE DUPONT! Where did you get that gown?"

The girl addressed had just let her long evening coat slip from her bare shoulders into the waiting arms of a maid, and the quick cry of admiration that greeted her appearance drew to her every eye in the dressing room. Even the maid looked back and then remained, staring. There was an odd, breath-held, gasping pause, and as Marie Dupont's lovely dark eyes sent a lightning glance from face to face of her companions she tasted a triumph that would have delighted the heart of any girl. The expressions she encountered were as varied as the natures of their wearers,—involuntary delight, generous admiration, envy, chagrin, consternation, anger.

"Stephanie never made that!" It was little Beth Tate who again found her tongue. She had a heart incapable of envy; yet as her eyes swept the circle of silent figures, all clad as she knew by Stephanie, the fashionable modiste of the winter, she ended with a glance of disdain at her own pretty but conventional frock.

"You got it over from Paris, didn't you?" This time the speaker was Sybil Lowther, a tall, slim ash-blond, whose clinging chiffon draperies undressed her rather startlingly. The words were not, so much a question as an accusation of unfair advantage taken.

Marie Dupont's quick ear caught the hostile note, and over her face swept a pink wave of distress. "Oh, no, no!" she cried. "I did not get it from Paris! Stephanie did make it; but," she paused an instant, "I designed it."

"But, Marie, where did you ever get the idea?" Beth Tate demanded.

"Out of my head, of course!" She tapped her forehead with two pink finger-tips, then facing the cheval mirror she swept her hands lightly back over the

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dark mass of hair, which lay flat against her small head like a dusky veil outlining a perfect oval of creamy skin, below which the beautiful curves of throat and shoulders melted into the bewildering radiance of her wonderful gown.

At the vision the glass gave back to her her lips opened with a sharply caught breath. Compared with the conventional, attenuated color schemes of her companions' costumes her own stood out with the primitive force of first principles. She drew the eye as dancing flames draw the eye from garish draperies. What miracle of chiffon, reds and golds and a myriad of intervening hues had achieved the throbbing effect of flame and fire one neither knew nor cared. From cold blue to hot crimson the gamut of color ran, swirling about her as she moved, ever so slightly, like spitting tongues from a crackling blaze.

"Gee! Marie, you look like a houri or a house afire!" was the verdict of Cornelia O'Rourke, a wholesome, athletic-looking girl with a wide, Irish mouth.

"I feel like one, Connie," was the answer. "Anyway, I don't feel like Marie Dupont—and that's the main thing. Of course it's different with the rest of you: your dances are the ordinary ones that we are accustomed to seeing done in modern clothes. It would be absurd to costume those fantastically. But my dance is different. I couldn't have done it in an everyday dance frock—I simply couldn't! Why, it would have been like Farrar doing 'Butterfly' in a tailor-made!"

A MAID came into the room and spoke to Marie Dupont. "Mr. Amarinth wishes you to know that he has come, Miss. He says he would like to run through the dance if you have time."

"Please tell him that I'll be there in a minute."

The maid went out, and after a last survey of herself in the mirror Marie followed.

"She's the only real dancer in the bunch," said Cornelia, looking after her. "Do you girls remember the day she first did that flying pirouette, and how surprised Madame Adrienne was?"

"Madame Adrienne did not believe that Miss Dupont was doing it for the first time," said Sybil Lowther. "I don't believe it either. I think she has studied dancing before—so does Madame Adrienne."

"What of Madame Adrienne?" a sharp, nasal voice inquired in the doorway.

Every eye turned to the dancing mistress. There was a pause.

"I was just saying," Sybil Lowther said, "that Miss Dupont dances so well that she must have studied before she came to you."

Madame shrugged her fat shoulders. "Miss Dupont says not, and assuredly Miss Dupont should know."

The little Frenchwoman's black, bead-like eyes peered about the room from under her thick, black brows. Once a member of the ballet of the opera in St. Petersburg, she was now fat and fifty, and glad to take advantage of the modern dance craze to turn an honest penny.

"Has Miss Niklova not arrived?"

"I think not, Madame," Beth Tate answered. "I haven't seen her."

Madame frowned anxiously. "She should be here. The orchestra waits to begin; the ballroom is crowded."

"Her brother is ill, she told me yesterday at rehearsal. Maybe he's worse," suggested Cornelia O'Rourke.

Madame nodded thoughtfully.

"What shall we do if she doesn't come?" Miss Lowther questioned, alarm in her voice. "The orchestra will be sure to play my music too fast."

"She will come," Madame retorted shortly. These children of idleness were inconceivably dull! "She comes to work—not to play."

"Madame Adrienne!" It was Sybil Lowther's throaty drawl that arrested Madame's departure from the room. "How do you like my gown?"

Madame Adrienne's noncommittal eyes appraised the scanty costume. "I find it charming, Mademoiselle."

"What do you think of Miss Dupont's?" Cornelia asked.

"Ah!" Madame's sallow face lighted swiftly, then instantly she veiled her beadlike eyes. "It is a miracle! Miss Dupont is a miracle. Ah, enfin!"

THE last words were an exclamation of relief as a girl carrying a violin case burst breathlessly into the room. She was Irma Niklova, small, thin to emaciation, and of a sickly pallor.

"I am late, Madame," she panted. "I regret."

She nervously unwound a faded blue scarf that covered her head and throat. Madame Adrienne unbuttoned the rough serge coat and took it from her.

"You are trembling, my child," said Madame.

"I ran—I feared to delay you."

"Are we going to begin, now that Miss Niklova has come?" Miss Lowther asked, pausing at the door.

"Immediately. You are ready?" Madame's glance took in the few girls who still remained in the room.

They acquiesced in their several manners, and one after the other strolled out. Cornelia O'Rourke was the last. She lingered a moment in the doorway.

"I hope your brother is better, Miss Niklova," she said.

"Thank you, yes—much better." The Russian girl forced a wan smile.

"I'm so glad!" Cornelia said kindly and passed out.

Alone with her assistant, Madame dropped English for French. "The brother is better then—that is good."

The girl shook her head and shivered. "He is worse—much worse! But why speak of it to these people? What do they understand? Their houses are always warm, their stomachs always full, their bodies covered. What do they know of us? They only play at living!" She was beating her hands together to send what little blood her wasted body could provide into them that they might be presently warm enough for use.

She unlocked her violin ease and took out her instrument. In her shabby evening gown her extreme meagerness of flesh was plainly apparent.

From without came the sound of the tuning of instruments.

"Come, my child," said Madame.

At the door Irma Niklova suddenly halted.

"Madame, in the music for Miss Dupont's solo bid the orchestra be silent. It is better that I play alone. The rhythm is all. They do not understand. They do not follow. Miss Dupont dances like an artist. She must be followed, not led."

Madame nodded. "You are right. I will so order."

CHAPTER IV

YOUR responsibility as host ends here," said Gavock when he and Amarinth paused at the entrance to the grand ball-

Continued on page 16

My Experiences With Young Playwrights

By ETHEL BARRYMORE

ON the night of September 23, 1895, my uncle John Drew seized me by the left hand, which I had awkwardly thrust out to him in my excitement and nervousness, and pulled me before the curtain of the Empire Theater, which had just been applauded up for the sixth time on the third act of Henry Guy Carleton's comedy, "That Independent Young Person." I was playing the little role of Katherine in the play, the first part I had ever had, and this was my first appearance on the stage.

But if I was excited and nervous, it was not because I was making my first appearance: it was because of a man—a single, solitary, lonely looking man with a black mustache, whom I had never seen before!

When I made my first entrance on the stage he was sitting down in front and looking at me as if he were trying to hypnotize me. I felt his eyes go through me like a sharp knife. His cold stare made me so nervous that I shook every time I came out on the stage. The next night the eyes were in the same seat. The night after that I glanced out of the peephole in the curtain before the performance began, and beheld the eyes as usual in the same seat in the third row. It upset me so that I had difficulty in remembering the few lines in the play that fell to my share.

My First Playwright

WHEN I came to the theater in the morning to answer a rehearsal call I found the man waiting for me near the stage door. I started to run past him; but he checked me with a low bow and a very polite "I beg your pardon," and as he smiled he reached back suddenly and pulled out of his pocket one of the deadliest weapons in the world,—a bulky play manuscript.

"I have watched your work carefully for three successive nights," he said, "and I believe you have a good future ahead of you. I think you are just the actress I want for my play, the first I have ever written, and I want you to read it, and if possible enact the leading role. Here it is!" and he thrust it into my hand.

Too frightened to know what to answer, I brushed past him and slammed the stage door. I thought he was crazy. Of course, as I look at it now, he was nothing of the sort. He was simply an amateur playwright. I was flattered, anyway, that a play should have been written for me (I was very young then), and I sat down and began reading it during spare moments while the rehearsal was going on.

When I had finished it I turned to my Uncle John. "Oh," I exclaimed, "it's splendid!"

He took the bulky manuscript from me. "What is it?" he asked.

"A play," I answered.

He ran the pages back over his thumb. "Do you know, my dear Ethel, how long it would take to act this play?" he inquired with a bland smile.

"About two hours," I replied. You see it's only ninety-five hundred pages long."

Uncle John smiled more broadly. "Your trouble with amateur playwrights is just beginning," he said. "It would take at least twenty-four hours to act this play!"

Plays About My "Personality"

THAT was a long while ago; but my Uncle John's prediction was true. I have had enough adventures with amateur playwrights and amateur manuscripts during my years on the stage to fill a library.

Almost everyone, at some time or

other in his career, thinks of writing a play. I do not want to seem immodest, but I honestly believe I have suffered more at the hands of ultra self-confident young "dramatists" than most players.

Most of the notes that come to me with play manuscripts contain somewhere this sentence, "This drama is eminently suited to you because of your personality." One amateur dramatist from Muncie, Indiana, sent me six years ago a play that he had entitled "Ethel Barrymore." Imagine!

My speaking voice, some people have said, possesses "peculiar throaty tones," or something to that effect. Well, plays have been submitted to me by playwriting neophytes that were actually built around my voice. One of the manuscripts was called, in fact, "The Voice." It had been written for me, the writer assured me, and, although I was meant for the star part in it, I was not to reveal myself to the audience until the final curtain. My voice was simply to be heard off stage! The plot concerned a man who traveled all over the world in search of the owner of a wonderful voice that he had once heard at an American summer resort. At the last minute—after five long acts laid respectively in the United States, Chile, China, Egypt, and Algiers—the man was to discover me and marry me.

The Commonest Blunders

IF a playwright has one great passion in the world, it is to present his play personally to the actor whom he wants to see act it. Plays are thrust at me by acquaintances who come to my dressing room; they are thrust at me as I go from the stage door to my car; they are thrust at me at afternoon receptions, and even at those intimate little parties after the theater. At night, when I dream of being in a horrible situation, I am never surrounded by the points of swords and lances, but by great spectral amateurs with sharpened manuscripts sticking out toward me.

You would think, in these days when so much is written about plays and playwriting, that the young person who set out to write a play would have some slight knowledge of the rudiments of technic. Yet some of them have not even a sense of time. Not long ago one of my acquaintances announced enthusiastically that he had sent to my hotel a manuscript that he had written expressly for me. I turned to a friend and said, "I'll wager the play is five hours long." I lost. It was seven.

Many amateur playwrights would send managers to the poorhouse, they are so extravagant with their scenery. The props required in a six-act drama by one wealthy man who makes his home in Paris most of the year would have furnished a good-sized apartment hotel. Nor was a little school teacher up in the Tennessee mountains any less liberal. In her "Mary, a Play of Rural Life," recently sent to me, there were only nine acts and thirty-four scenes! The girl wrote that she lived on a mountaintop and could see four towns on clear days. I suppose she found the temptation irresistible up among so much scenery. But there is usually a freshness and naïveté about these plays that makes them good fun to read, even though their production is impossible.

Dodging the Highbrow

THE one person I would beware of, even above the most amateurish of the amateurs, is the cut and dried dramatist, the person with technic but without ideas. There are men and women of my acquaintance who have been writing for years and have never got beyond the production of a one-act play at a charitable bazaar. They write in a stereotyped fashion an average of two plays a year,—spring and fall.

I know one woman who has sent in two plays every season since I have been starring. Her leading character is always a young woman, and the title of the play is always a single word. One, for instance, is called "Fate," another "Horror," another "Love." I fancy that as long as there is a dictionary there is hope. She confessed to me one afternoon that the moment she saw an elemental word she immediately saw a drama. She is a good "horrible example" of the class of people who know something of the manner in which plays must be constructed, but absolutely nothing of what must be in them.

It seems to me that everyone who has been to a theater or even to a moving picture show writes "plays." I've had them from Ambassadors, Senators, and even waitresses. I believe there isn't a class of people represented among my acquaintances that has not sent me at least a half-dozen manuscripts.

The Frenchman's Genders

MY uncle John Drew relates a fairly relevant story of a member of the French consulate, a young attaché who could barely speak English. He had written a play and had it translated. The moment he met what he called "un vrai artist" he immediately gave him the manuscript. In it the hero had to descend to the bottom of the ocean in a submarine boat. This and other highly "advanced" situations made the play impossible, and Uncle John returned it.

"Thank you so much for reading it," said the Frenchman. "I hope that I have not cockroached on your time."

"Not at all," replied Uncle John. "Only you did not quite get the right word. You mean hencroached."

"Oh, I see," drawled the attaché. "I get so frightfully mixed in your genders."

He Needed the Money

THE tyro playwrights are not writers, par excellence. Some of the epistles that chase the manuscripts into an actress's hands are wonders to behold. Here are two samples that I have received lately. The first was from a hopeful playwright in a little town in Nebraska:

I trust you will see your way clear to produce my play immediately, because you can play the leading role as no other woman on the stage can, and because I need the money. It took me eight long days to write this drama, and, because of its sheer oddity, I am sure it will make a very big impression. Its title, as you will perceive, is "The Land of the Dead," and all the acts are laid in a cemetery by moonlight. Your role is that of a vivified piece of tombstone sculpture representing a young woman. You move about among the spirits of the deceased preaching the gospel of peace on earth. And you can do it best of all, because the public like you and will go to see you whether they like my play or not. Therefore, can't you send me the first instalment of royalties in advance?

Note number two was penned by woman in Pittsburgh. This was its tenor:

For years I have kept a picture of your lovely self on top of my bureau, and it has finally inspired me to help you out by writing a play for you. I will send it to you soon as it is written, which will be within the next three days. I call my play "The Decision of Fate," and, in order to write of subject that I know intimately and understand, I have chosen for my subject yourself and myself. The plot relates my admiration for you throughout the years, and of my final resolve to dress and look like you, of a regular correspondence that springs up between us, and of the final duplication of your soul in my body. I wish, if you use the play, that you will print this line on the programs and billboards, under title, "A drama of psychology."

Some of Them Send Bribes

It is not unusual for an actress to be bribed by the amateur playwrights. Every once in awhile I receive a box of candy or flowers with a play manuscript. Once, when I was playing in a Western town in "Captain Jinks," I received a bulky play by messenger. A note with the manuscript said that if I would accept it, and play the leading role, the author would agree to pay me out of his own pocket a bonus of fifteen dollars a week.

On another occasion, when playing in New England in "Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire, there was delivered to me a manuscript together with a beautiful turkey. A note attached to the turkey's foot read, "I will bring this play of mine to your attention by fair means or fowl."

These are only a few of my experiences with young playwrights. Of one thing you may be sure,—the amateur dramatist is the hardest part of an actress's job.

When John Fixed the Cuckoo Clock

By ELLIS PARKER BUTLER

YES'M," said Mrs. Higgins, casting her eyes at the shelf over the melodeon, "we got a cuckoo clock; but it don't cuckoo no more. I don't know as I mind it not cuckooing either. First off when you get a cuckoo clock you take real enjoyment out of hearing it. Seems sort of companyish to have the door flop open and the little bird come out and say 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!' now and ag'in, and the children just go mortally wild over it; but bimeby you do get sort of cuckooed out of patience. Come noon and your dinner ain't ready and you know John will be home in a minute, it sort of riles a person to have a fool wooden bird pop out at ye and start squawkin' 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!' at ye a dozen times hand runnin'. Many's the time I've shook my fist at it and said 'Oh, hush!' Yes'm! Gettin' on my nerves that way!

"But John he never felt that way about it—not until the end. First off, when he bought it, him and me and the children we used to stand in a row and wait for the little birdy to come out and cuckoo.

"Along about hour time John would start lookin' at his watch, and begin to get uneasy, and start roundin' up the children.

'Oh, Georgie,' he'd holler, 'come quick! The cuckoo's goin' to cuckoo!' and 'Hurry, Mary, if you want to hear the little birdy!' and 'Come, Toodles! Toodles goin' hear pretty birdy sing!' and then it would be 'Ma-ma, don't you want to hear the clock?' and I'd have to drop whatever I was doin' and hurry into the parlor to hear that mis'able bird lift up its wings and say 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!'

"It's all right for a man that's away at business all day, and just comes home meal-times and to sleep, to take pleasure in a cuckoo clock, but when a woman is around the house day in and day out and has one of them clocks hootin' at her all the time she gets mortally tired of it.

"'Bout two months after the novelty has worn off the cute little birdy don't look nothin' but a piece of carved wood, and the noise it makes don't sound like no sound ever made by livin' critter. It don't sound like 'cuckoo' no more at all; but sort of like 'hookhoo.' I got so I almost wished the house would burn down, if might be that clock would burn with it, with it hookhooin' at me wherever I happened to be. If I was in the parlor, I'd hear 'Hookhoo!' and if I was down cellar I'd hear 'Hookhoo!' 'Drat it!' I used to say, 'I wish the thing would hookhoo its head off and be done with it!'

Well," said Mrs. Higgins with a sigh, "I had my wish. Come a day when the cuckoo didn't hookhoo no more. Stead of that the clock just started whirr-in' when the hour come—'Whir-r-r-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r-r-r!' and the door flopped open and the bird come out on its shelf and flapped its wooden wings and opened and shut its beak like a chicken with the pip, like it was dyin' of thirst. 'Land sakes!' I says, it was so comical. I hadn't no idea a deaf an' dumb cuckoo clock could be so comical. It was real funny to see the bird come out at eleven o'clock and gasp for water eleven times and then back into the clock sort of disappointed like. 'Serve you right!' I says. 'I hope you choke to death, drat ye!'

"But when John come home he was real worked up about it. 'Ain't that too had!' he says, like it had been one of the children got the measles. 'But don't you worry,' he says. 'Tomorrow is Sunday, and I'll fix her!'

"He's a wonderful fixer, John is. He can fix most everything, give him plenty of time. He's a real mechanical genius, I tell him, the way he can fix locks and my sewing machine, and put washers in the sink pump, and all. So Sunday he went to work, and he worked all day, and by nine o'clock he had the cuckoo as good as ever it was, except that it hooed before it hooked.

"'There!' he says, real triumphant. 'I knew I could fix her, give me time enough. How's that, Mama?' and he turned the hands around.

"'Hoohook! Hoohook! Hoohook!' says the bird—only one wing don't flap any more.

"'Pretty good for an amateur mender, ain't I?' he says, as proud as a parson. 'Next Sunday I'll fix up that wing and get her so she'll hook before she hoos, and she'll he as good as new.'

"'Hoohook! Hoohook! Hoohook! Hoohook!' says the clock.

"John hoohooked her clear around the dial until she was at ten minutes before nine,—which was what time it was,—and then he went to bed. He was all tuckered out, poor critter, workin' so hard at the clock all day!

WELL, I fixed her!' he says, after we was in bed. 'She was as good as gone; but I fixed her.'

"'All right,' I says. 'Go to sleep, and let me have my rest.'

"So he was still for awhile, and then he says 'Ma!'

I let on to be asleep.

"'Ma!' he says again.

"'Well, what?' I says, knowin' he'd keep on until I waked up.

"'Did you notice if that clock cuckooed at nine o'clock?'

"'No, I didn't,' I says, real provoked, 'and what's more, John Higgins, you know as well as I do that if it went off at all it didn't cuckoo! It coocuked. So go to sleep and forgit about it.'

"'Say,' he says. 'I wonder if she did coocuck, or if she didn't? It would be the dickens and all if I worked all day on that clock, and then she didn't coocuck or cuckoo or nothin.' I'm goin' to get up.'

"'Lie still, and don't he so foolish,' I says. 'You'll have plenty time come morning to see about that clock.'

"'Can't get to sleep,' he says, 'for wonderin' does she or don't she. I'll just get up and take a look at her,' he says.

"So he did.

"I heard him fallin' over chairs and bumpin' into tables, and then I didn't hear nothin' more, and I guess I fell off asleep. What woke me up was John shakin' me by the shoulder.

"'What's the matter?' I says, sittin' right up in bed; for Toodles has the croup off and on, and I always git scared.

"'Ma,' says John in a whisper, 'where did you put that little screwdriver when I got through usin' it this evening?'

"'In my sewin' machine drawer, right hand, top,' I says, and I went to sleep again.

"I don't know when John come to bed next. He wouldn't say, come mornin'.

"'Fix the clock?' I says.

"'Fix nothin'!' he says as grumpy as you please.

"Won't she cuckoo?' I says.

"No, she won't!' says John, cross like. 'She won't cuckoo, and she won't coocuek, and she won't coo, and she won't cuck.'

"Just then the clock went 'Whir-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r!' and the little door slammed open like it was angry, and the bird popped out like a shot out of a gun, and she says, 'Hoohookhoohookhoohookhoohook!' all in one breath like, and the door slapped shut so fast it hit the bird in the nose.

"'I thought you said—' I began; but before I could get the words out of my mouth the clock went 'Whir-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!' again, and the little door slapped open, and the bird popped out and went 'Hoohookhoohookhoohookhoohook!' and was back in the clock again.

"'Gosh!' says John, looking at the clock with his mouth wide open. 'Gosh!' he says.

"At that the clock set at it again. 'Whir-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!' she goes. Bang! comes the door open, and out slams the bird.

"'Look out!' says John; and he says it just in time, for the bird comes clear loose and falls on the table right along my ham and egg. 'Hoo————oo!' says the clock—and then says no more.

"But all three of the children were fighting to get the bird. John had to box their ears to get it away from them.

"'Now you let this bird be,' he says, putting it up by the clock. 'I don't want none of you to touch it, because I'm going to mend that clock tonight, and you might break it. Don't touch it!'

"Well, of course, after that all of them had to have a hand on it before the day was over; but I guess they didn't harm it none, and I didn't say anything to John about it. He didn't ask me. He hurried through his supper, and got out his tools. He had a gimlet, and a pair of tweezers, and his pocket knife, and my screwdriver from my sewing machine, and he set right to work.

IT took John a couple of nights to get the clock together again after he had it all apart, and then he says:

"'Now! Now, Mama!' just as proud as pumpkins, and he pushed the hand around to the hour mark. 'Now you listen to her!' he says, and the little door flipped open and out come the bird.

"'Whir-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r!' goes the clock, and then the bird opened its mouth and it says 'Huk! Just like that, it says it, 'Huk!'

"'What's the matter with the contraption, anyway?' says John, real mad. 'You go to bed if you're so tired you got to be yawnin' like the Mammoth Cave,' he says. 'I'm goin' to fix this clock, or know why!'

"So I went to bed. John didn't come till I don't know when. I woke up when he come; but I didn't say anything. He wasn't in any mood to be said to. So I kept still and waited to hear what time it was; but I couldn't hear. Birdy wasn't hookhooing. So I went to sleep.

"Next morning John didn't seem to wish to converse about the clock, so I let it pass; but he hadn't no sooner left the house than it come the full hour, and out

Is Life Worth Living after 70?

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popped the bird. 'Whir-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r! WHIR-R-R-R!' went the clock. I almost jumped out of my chair.

"'Great snakes!' I says. 'What has John done to that clock?' and then the bird tried to hookhoo.

"It flapped its wings three or four times, and opened and shut its poor little beak. It was real pitiful like. 'Ick! it says, just as faint as faint. I looked for it to shut its eyes and keel over on its back and curl up its claws, it sounded so sickly.

"'Poor Birdy!' says Toodles.

"I should think he would!

WHEN John set to work on the clock that night he was real grim about it. I seen it wasn't no occasion for me to say much; so I complained of not feelin' just well, and went to bed. I dare say it was about one o'clock in the A. M. when John come to bed, and I knew he was real cross. He sort of muttered while he undressed, and then all at once he shouts out:

"Oh, plague that kid—leavin' everything everywhere! Near murdered my heel on this mis'able snake!'

"Then I knew he had stepped on Toodles's toy snake. I guess it hurt John consid'able, especially in his state of mind just then; for it was one of them jointed wood snakes, and he was cross anyway.

"'Drat the snake!' he says.

"Next morning I understood why John was so cross. The birdy wouldn't even say 'Ick!' The clock only went 'Whir-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r! WHIR-R-R-R!' when hour time come, and the birdy slid out and opened its poor, mute beak, and flapped one wing, and backed in again. It was the foolishest lookin' bird I ever see try to burst into song.

"'Thank goodness, anyway,' I says to myself, 'it won't set me crazy hoohooking! Trust John to mend the noise out of a clock, give him time enough!'

"So when John come home that night, lookin' sort of studious and worn, I says to him, 'John, why don't you leave that clock the way it is? I think it's real nice as it is. I was tired to death of that eternal hoohooking and hookhooing, and I'm satisfied to let it be.'

"'All right,' he says, 'and it's just as well you are,' he says; 'for this clock isn't going to hoohook or hookhoo no more. I've puttered over it, and worked over it, and lost my sleep over it, and all, and I'm done trying to make it hoohook and hookhoo. Where did you put that screwdriver?'

"'What you goin' to do now, John?' I says.

"Do?' he says. 'Do? Why, Mother, the hoohook is all busted out of this clock, and I'm sick of it like you are anyway, and the children don't hanker after it any more. I've worked over the crazy contraption until I'm so put out with it that the sight of that wooden bird comin' out of that door and hoohookin' at me is more than mortal man can bear. But I've got an idea—I've got a notion—'

"He stood off and looked at the clock and scratched his ear with the screwdriver. 'Hum!' he says, and he turned the hands to the hour mark.

"Whir-r-r-r!Whir-r-r-r!WHIR-R-R-R! goes the clock.

"Yes, Sir,' says John, sort of pleased-like, 'I got an idea! Where's that snake of Toodles's I got a stone bruise with last night?'

"'Georgie,' I says, 'go fetch Father Toodles's snake.'

"So George went and got it. 'What she goin' t' do, Fawther?' he asks.

"'You wait an' see!' says John. 'You just wait an' see!'

"'You won't wait to see tonight, George Higgins!' I says. 'It's your bedtime right now. Upstairs with you!'

"So George fretted a little; but he went, and John seemed so happy and cheerful I thought maybe I'd stay down and watch him work. I'd been goin' to bed so early while he was trying to make the

clock hookhoo that I'd got behind in my stocking darning. So I set darnin' and John set fixin' the clock.

"You wait!' he says once in awhile when I asked him how he was gettin' along. 'This is goin' to be the biggest surprise you and the kids ever had.'

"Then he'd tinker awhile, and set off the clock. She'd go 'Whir-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r! WHIR-R-R-R! and then John would chuckle. He was real pleased with hisself and what he was doin'. I like a man to be that way.

NOW then, Ma,' he says, come eleven o'clock or so, 'I got her fixed!' and he laughed out loud, he was so pleased. 'This is goin' to be the biggest surprise the kids ever had. It'll be worth a dollar bill to see 'em in the mornin',' he says. 'Now here's what I done,' he says. 'I've took this bird clear off from the clock,' he says, showin' it to me.

"'So you have,' I says.

"'Yes,' he says, 'because this bird is past hookhooing,' he says. 'It has hooked its last hook, and hooed its last hoo; so what's the use of it? Nothing!' he says. 'But I got an idea last night when I stepped on the snake,' he says, as proud as pickled persimmons. "Here's a clock," I says to myself,' he says, "that's goin' 'Whir-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r!' like a rattlesnake, and here's the snake lyin' around and doin' nothin' but givin' me stone bruises on my heel, and what's the matter with makin' a rattlesnake clock out of that cuckoo clock?"'

"I seen he wanted to be praised some, like men do want to be; so I says, 'John Higgins! Do you mean to tell me you've been able to turn that cuckoo clock into a rattlesnake clock with nothin' but a screwdriver and a penknife to do it with?'

"'With them and a gimlet,' he says, prouder than ever.

"'Well, you're wonderful!' I says.

"You wait till I show you,' he says, 'and then see what you say. Great idea for teachin' the kids natural history, ain't it?' he says. 'Now wait till I wind her up,' he says. 'There, now!' he says, 'I wish I could wake up Georgie and Mary and Toodles right now, and let them see it. See? The hour comes around. "Lookout for the rattlesnake!" I says. "Big rattlesnake in the clock! Look out for him!" Then they listen. "Whir-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r! Whir-r-r-r!" goes the rattlesnake in the clock. "Look out!" I says, and bang! comes the door open, and out comes the snake where the bird used to be, and wags its head as many times as the hour is, and backs in again. Now, Mother!'

"Well," said Mrs. Higgins, "sure enough! The minute he pushed the hands to the hour mark the clock went 'Whir-r-r! Whir-r-r-r! WHIR-R-R-R!' for all the world like a rattlesnake. It was real creepy to hear. Slap! come the little door open, just like John said it would, and out popped the head and about two joints of Toodles's snake, the red tongue waggin' and the green bead eyes a starin'. It was real scary—yes, indeed! Only—"

"Only—" said the visitor.

"Only," said Mrs. Higgins, "as soon as the snake had its head out of the clock it sort of turned to look at John, and then turned to look at me, and said 'Cuckoo! Cuck-oo!' plainer than the bird had ever said it in its life. Yes'm. 'Cuck-oo!' it says. 'Cuck-oo!—twelve times. It was real comical to see that fierce-lookin' snake waggle its head and sing like a bird that way. 'Cuck-oo!' it says to me, and `Cuck-oo!' it says to John.

"'Huh!' says John, getting red in the face. 'Huh! So that's what you say, is it? I'll snake you! I'll natural-history-lesson you! I'll show you them can't no rattlesnake hang around here singing like a canary bird, I will! Come out of that clock!'

"So that," said Mrs. Higgins placidly, "is why our cuckoo clock don't cuckoo no more."

The Hard Job of Being a Crook

IT'S getting harder every year. Time was when a man could make a fair living by crime and have a fighting chance of keeping out of jail. But today, unless he be a perfect paragon of intelligence, the scientific detectors of crime will find him out.

A cigar holder with an amber mouthpiece was found near the scene of a murder (Raymond Fosdick tells of it in his new book, "European Police Systems"; the Century Co.). The cigar holder was "so shaped that it could be held only in one position. A close examination showed that it had two marks which must have been made by two teeth of unequal length. While the murdered man had no such irregular teeth, it was discovered that his nephew had. The suspicions of the authorities were aroused by this simple but important fact, and they soon learned enough to arrest the nephew on the charge of murder." Betrayed by his own teeth!

"Or, again, a razor was identified as the instrument used by a murderer through finding in the dried blood on its edge a shred of cotton identical with the material of the murdered man's nightcap, which had been cut through. Again, a man was gravely wounded at night by an unknown person, who dropped his cap in his flight. Inside the cap two hairs were found, which were subjected to microscopic examination. As a result the authorities were provided with the following description of the criminal, which enabled them ultimately to apprehend him: 'A man of middle age, of robust constitution, black hair mingled with gray, recently cut, commencing to grow bald." And all that from two hairs in a hat!

"The coat of a locksmith contains a different kind of dust than the coat of a miller; the dust accumulating in the pocket of a schoolboy is essentially different from that in the pocket of a chemist; while in the groove of a gentleman's pocket knife a different kind of dirt and dust will be found than that in the pocketknife of a tramp.

For instance, on the scene of a crime a garment was found from which no information could be obtained as to its owner. The coat was placed in a strong and well gummed paper bag, which was vigorously beaten with sticks for as long a time as could be done without tearing the paper. The bag was then opened, the dust collected and submitted to chemical examination. The examination proved that the dust was composed of wood fibrous matter, finely pulverized. The deduction drawn was that the coat belonged to a carpenter, joiner, or sawyer. But among the particles of dust gelatine and powdered glue were found; as these are not extensively used by carpenters and sawyers, the further deduction was drawn that the garment belonged to a joiner; a fact which was subsequently substantiated."

From which the conclusion may be drawn that to be successful as a criminal today one should be bald, toothless, and wear no clothes. Even then there would be prints of hands or feet, which under the microscope would proclaim their maker. For in the laboratories of Germany, especially, the examination of footprints and fingerprints has become so fine an art that a single track in the soft earth has oftentimes been made to yield a considerable life history.

No More Titanic Disasters

THE establishment of an efficient iceberg police, for guarding the main transatlantic steamship lanes against a much-dreaded peril, is at present engaging the attention of the government. It was to have been an international affair, and doubtless will become such later on; but just now the war is interfering.

During the coming summer a coast guard steamer will patrol a wide stretch of ocean, especially off the banks of Newfoundland, looking for icebergs, the presence and location of which will be immediately reported by wireless, with a view to cautioning shipmasters.

The coast guard is under control of the Treasury Department. But other government departments are going to coöperate, sending their own experts along to make investigations. Thus the navy will study ocean currents in that region, by which icebergs are drifted; and the Fisheries Bureau will find out what it can about the finny and other animal life of the deep sea.

Meanwhile the Bureau of Standards is trying to devise a means whereby, through the help of some automatic kind of apparatus, ships may get warning of the nearness of icebergs. It was thought that thermometers, giving notice of more than ordinary cold in the sea, might serve the purpose; but this idea has not materialized. For one thing, a shipmaster might easily be deceived by coming across a lot of water representing an iceberg that had melted. Such water (fresh, of course) takes quite awhile to mix with sea water of a higher temperature.

The most interesting studies in connection with the ice patrol, however, will be made by the Weather Bureau, which is going to send up kites from the steamer. They will be box kites, carrying automatic, self-registering instruments to record temperature, moisture, and atmospheric pressure. Observations made in this way will be wirelessed to Washington, to help in the business of making weather forecasts.

Weather conditions over the surface of the ocean are regularly reported from island stations and from ships; but it is desired to supplement the data thus obtained with observations in the upper air. To make the latter as complete as possible, kite flights will be made over the warm Gulf Stream, flowing northward, over the cold Labrador Current that comes down from the Arctic, and, for the sake of comparison, over the sea elsewhere.

An advantage of flying kites from a steamer is that, if the wind is too weak, the vessel can run against it, thereby strengthening its effect. On the other hand, if the wind is so strong as to threaten the destruction of the kite, its effect may be lessened by running with it.

In good weather it is practicable to use for the same purpose small captive balloons of rubber-coated cotton or silk, with a capacity of twenty or thirty cubic yards, which may be sent up as high as two miles. In making observations by such means the steamer would move with the balloon in such a manner as to keep it directly overhead.

Youngest Chauffeur in the World

She Took Up the Work Where He Left It

MRS. EWING is the widow of William B. Ewing, one of Chicago's most prominent engineers. At the time of his death a few years ago Ewing had under way, or in course of planning, sewerage systems and contingent work for a dozen Illinois towns, the total cost of which aggregated nearly a million dollars. To see this work carried out successfully was the serious problem his widow had to face. Accordingly a few days later she took her place at Ewing's desk, and every day since she has been there conducting the business, looking after every detail of the office work, and personally directing many of the field operations.

Mrs. Ewing's training was secured by interesting herself in her husband's profession and keeping in close touch with his work throughout their married life, a period of twenty-four years. They read and studied together many of the technical books; while Mrs. Ewing took care of the maps, blueprints, tracings, and other drawings, and in many other ways served as "general office boy."

Mrs. Ewing will not be content merely to complete the work started by her husband, but intends to branch out on her own responsibility. She is now negotiating for municipal work in several Illinois towns.

Before her marriage Mrs. Ewing invented the first deodorizer for the odor of rubber in dress shields. She secured a patent on this, and made $3,000 from the sale of it during the first two years. Later she sold her rights in the invention to a New York manufacturer.

Is It Worry That Kills?

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M. D.

IT was through worrying about the condition of the cocoanut crop or the next raid of the saber-toothed tiger that our ancestors learned to walk on their hind legs and use a club with their front ones.

Worry Sometimes Useful

A REASONABLE amount of worry, if directed into constructive channels, is admirable. Only when worry is useless, or when it becomes a factor in dissipating energy, is it really harmful.

We have a limited amount of energy to expend in our work, on our physiological processes, and to bank as reserve stock. We can transform and store only a certain amount of this from food, air, water, and sleep.

Morbid thoughts and fears—familiar forms of worry—upset and disorganize the nervous system. A disordered nervous system lays the foundation for almost every ill to which suffering flesh is liable, from falling hair to falling foot arches. Even infectious diseases are "caught" more readily when the nervous system and its storehouse are overtaxed.

Worry Is Energy Bankruptcy

WHAT use is it to treat nervous dyspepsia, palpitation of the heart, neurasthenia, malnutrition, "shingles," or prolapse of the stomach, if we cannot remove their original cause?

From a medical viewpoint it is lack of a reserve supply of energy that causes worry. Any or all means that will replenish this lack of energy and restore the normal rhythm of cell vibration will cure the worry.

But to replenish the strong box of vitality by mental and physical methods is not always possible. If it were, we shouldn't have such an army of nerve-impoverished neurasthenics demanding relief, and even resorting to the extremely doubtful and hazardous employment of opiates and narcotics in order to gain this relief. So, financial, domestic, and other sources of personal worry being removed,—and here the patient must minister to himself,—worry depends largely upon energy bankruptcy and nerve starvation.

Now we can't pour energy into a person from a bottle, nor inject it with a hypodermic syringe. We can gently whip him along, or we can help him up the hills and over the hard places in the road; but his necessary supply of energy must be manufactured in his own internal laboratory. He can assist in this by eating all the good, nutritious food that his system can utilize, and by getting rid of the debris; by breathing plenty of pure air, and thereby burning up the underoxidized material in the blood and tissues; by getting a maximum of sleep; and by loafing and inviting his soul—as Whitman puts it.

The Best Medicine

REST, and then more rest, and after that a little more of the same, is his best medicine. And rest, be it remembered, does not consist altogether in inaction. It consists in doing what one wasn't doing before. In other words, if a mother is worn to a frazzle from the dreary monotony of household cares, or from sitting still and hearing the children recite their Latin and geometry lessons, her rest would consist in tucking the most frivolous, empty-headed maiden of her acquaintance under her arm and speeding away to a musical comedy—the crazier or more nonsensical the better, so long as it gives her brains a change.

The "tired business man" might recover his nervous equanimity by trying to batter a golf ball, or catch all the fish the law allows him.

The artisan may sooner get over his worry by keeping right on with what he is doing,—lifting the mortgage off the house or sending the children through school, or whatever his particular worry sin might be,—for the same stone with which he kills the bird of anxiety will knock his mental worries sky high. He will experience a change more quickly by not making any change unless it consists in trying to get more sleep, or a little more of that spice of existence, variety.

On the whole, it is rather consoling to remember that only those with brains worry, and that, by a judicious use of these same brains, worry can usually be driven from its trenches and sent scampering about its business in most admirable disorder.

What Shall I Do With the Money I've Saved?

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

Mrs. F. W. S. BOSTON.—If you are afraid to send money in advance to your brokers, simply deposit the money in your bank, notify the bank to pay for the stock when it arrives, and then instruct your brokers to send the stock to that bank.

D. FREDONIA, N.Y.—You are right, in a sense in supposing that United States Steel sinking fund 5's really pay more than 5%; although they cost almost $1,100 a bond. In May of each year the company has to draw by lot $1,600,000 of the bonds at 110, or $1,100 for each bond, and you may be the lucky one.

L. EAST STROUDSBURG, PA.—Excessive cost of construction seems to have been the difficulty with the Western Pacific. It has $54,773 a mile in first mortgage bonds alone, as compared with a total debt of $28,773 a mile for Northern Pacific, $18,691 for Great Northern, $31,165 for St. Paul, and $53,156 for Southern Pacific; although these companies have been earning big profits for years and the Western Pacific is brand new.

PA., BUFFALO.—By odd lots of stock is meant any number of shares under 100. Certainly you can buy one share, and the broker will not be doing you a favor in buying it for you. He will charge S1.25 for buying one share, as compared with 12 1/2 cents a share for 100.

S. A. C., CLEVELAND, OHIO.—I believe Union Pacific and Pennsylvania will probably continue to pay their present rate of dividends, unless general business throughout the country grows worse instead of better.

W. G., NEW YORK.—"S-20," when following a quotation for a bond on the New York Stock Exchange, means that the bonds are being sold for 20 days' delivery. Such operations are conducted by persons in Europe who require that length of time to deliver the bonds to buyers in this country. It is no sign of weakness in the bond itself that there should be a great many Seller-20 transactions, but simply indicates that foreigners are in need of money.

A. P. C., AKRON, OHIO.—The Bethlehem Steel first and refunding 5's bonds are quite safe. You can get them in $100 amounts, and they pay close to 6%.

W. D. T., Pittsburgh.—You cannot buy any safer bonds than the Great Northern Railway 4 ½'s. The fact that the bonds do not come due until 2047 need not worry you. Of course no one can tell what will happen by that time, but probably there will always be a market on which the bonds can be sold, at least during your lifetime and mine.

Wu Ting Fang Pitches the First Ball

THE baseball season is on in the Philippines, and Wu Ting Fang, who was for so many years Minister from China to the United States, pitched the first ball in the game between the University of the Philippines and Waseda (Japan) University. He is seventy-three years old—which shows that life is worth living after seventy in China as well as in the United States. He is just as full of impertinent questions and interest in people as he ever was.

No straightforward question is considered impertinent by the Chinese, and his questions were a constant source of joy to Washington. "How old are you?" he would ask the society matron, or "How much money does your husband make?" And he would do it always, and ask other embarassing questions, with a smile that was "childlike and bland."

He is president of the Far Eastern Athletic Association, organized with the help of the Y. M. C. A. secretaries in the Orient, and embracing China, Japan, and the Philippines. In May, this year, the Association is to hold a series of championship games in Shanghai, in which athletes from all over the Orient will compete. Dr. Wu's visit to the Philippines was partly in the interest of foreign commerce, and partly to assure a large delegation of Philippine athletes for the meet.

Since the coming of the Americans athletics in the Philippine Islands have become tremendously popular. It is said that there are 59,000 girl students on regularly organized basket ball teams playing out of doors, and more than 1,500 athletes competed in the recent Interscholastic Championships.

"The Philippines have 9,000,000 people, who are being benefited either directly or indirectly by the physical training they are receiving," says Dr. Wu; "whereas China has 400,000,000 persons who need the same training."

If he lives ten years more, he expects to see China turn out a ball team that will wrest the world's championship from the United States.

Here is more of the mystery

Who Was Marie Dupont?

Continued from page 7

room of the Hotel Esplanade. "If I feel like leaving before the show ends, I want to be free to go; so we'll say goodnight here." He held out his hand.

Amarinth took it mechanically. "But I want you to meet Miss Dupont," he said. "Our dance is the last on the program, and of course she won't want to show herself until then. There is to be general dancing and supper afterward, you know. Let me find you a seat then and introduce you to some of my friends."

"My dear fellow, I shall probably find acquaintances before I am halfway across the room," Gavock protested. He turned and looked about the rapidly filling ballroom. "I think I see a familiar face already,—Mrs. Estell. Over there, see, in green—now she is turning this way. She sees me! She doesn't believe her eyes." He nodded smilingly to the distant woman. "She's beckoning." He waved his hand with a gesture of assent. "You know her?" he asked, seeing that Amarinth was also bowing.

"Yes," Guy answered. "You'll not be lonely now."

MRS. ESTELL greeted his arrival effusively. She was a vivacious little blond, just emerging fully from the shadows into the sunshine of widowhood. She ordered him to occupy a chair beside her own.

"I hope I'm not depriving anyone," he said, accepting the seat.

She laughed. "You ought to say you hope you are," she corrected. "Now tell me, do you dance?"

"I decline to answer by advice of counsel."

"You don't? Heavens! what have you come to New York for?"

"Can't I stay?" he pleaded.

"Oh, you can; but you won't. There'll be no one to talk to you. We have all lost the power of speech. We talk only with our toes."

The lady's nimble tongue immediately belied her speech; for she began to ply Gavock with questions, and in return to give him all her news and that of their friends. They were in the habit of meeting each spring in Paris, and had many acquaintances in common. Some of these occasionally interrupted the talk, pausing for words of greeting.

"Aren't they ever going to begin?" Mrs. Estell had exclaimed several times before her question was finally answered by the appearance of the musicians in the small balcony above the stage.

"Heavens! what a wraith of a woman!" Mrs. Estell exclaimed as Irma Niklova joined the group of men in the balcony.

The Russian girl raised her violin to her shoulder, and as at a signal the men poised their instruments for action.

"She seems to be the leader," Gavock observed.

"Yes. She plays regularly for Adrienne's dancing class, I believe. The others are probably specially engaged for the evening. Her story is quite tragic—if it's true. She was a student at the Imperial Conservatory in Petersburg (she's Russian), and a career was predicted for her. Then her father, who was a violinist in the orchestra at the opera, fell under the suspicion of the police and was sent to Siberia. The girl was dismissed from the conservatory, and could find no employment; so she managed somehow to get over here, and ekes out a bare existence. She looks as if she hadn't enough to eat, doesn't she? Oh!" Mrs. Estell's serious tone changed abruptly to one of delight as the opening strain of a waltz filled the room. "That's 'Love in the Air'—the most heavenly thing to dance to!"

THE curtains at the back of the stage were drawn aside, and a young man and girl entered dancing. A friendly ripple of applause greeted them.

"That's Beth Tate and Fred Crawley—nice children. You mustn't expect anything from the program, you know: they're all amateurs. We haven't come to see dancing: we've come to dance ourselves." Mrs. Estell moved her hands and feet in time with the music. "I can hardly wait!" she said.

The "nice children" made their exit amid more clapping of indulgent hands. Several couples followed them, and were similarly rewarded for their efforts. The danse eccentrique of Cornelia O'Rourke and her brother was rendered with a rompish glee that was contagious, and it had to be repeated.

"That girl is Sybil Lowther," Mrs. Estell announced, as the next couple entered on the slow, sensuous strains of a tango. "She's by way of being a professional. She's Canadian, and used to do recitations in French-Canadian dialect; but she starved at it after the dance craze began, and wisely decided to swim with the current. She affects a temperament."

"So I see."

They watched the dancers in silence for several minutes. Miss Lowther's writhings and posturings, designed to register on the minds of her audience as suppressed passions that tortured her soul, were contradicted by her cold eyes and the firm set of her lips. Her partner, selected probably as a foil, was a fresh-cheeked boy with an expression as placid as a feeding infant's.

"The ability to exalt oneself and to give oneself,—that is a clever Frenchman's definition of temperament," said Gavock. "Why does she try for it, I wonder? She dances gracefully, she is pretty. Why attempt the impossible?"

"She thinks it makes her interesting, and to be interesting is her métier. She lives by it, poor thing! She's a salamander. That's the fashionable name for a girl who teeters along the brink working men for anything she can get out of them,—dinners, flowers, jewels, the use of car,—anything, in fact, except actual money,—giving nothing in return except—well, say the finer feelings, if she has any."

"But surely a girl who accepts so much subjects herself to—er—well—"

"Impropositions?" Mrs. Estell laughed. "That's what Tommy Nave calls them. Don't you love it? Of course she does, constantly. But she manages to keep her footing: not from any overplus of virtue, but from a cool-headed canniness that makes her cling to respectability as to life itself."

"But is a girl who knowingly exposes herself to such advances considered respectable?"

"Oh, she maintains a semirespectability that serves her purpose well enough."

"Very semi, I should say."

"Demi, I should say," laughed the lady. "But it serves, as you see."

THE dance had ended, and Miss Lowther and her partner had returned to acknowledge the generous applause that recompensed them. With her arms full of flowers the girl bowed her thanks right and left. Then, as the clapping moderated, instead of retiring through the back exit she came down a short flight of step that led from the stage to the auditorium.

"I'm going to present you," Mrs. Estell said, starting up and signaling the girl, who was approaching them. "You may find the species interesting. But I warn you that your gray hairs will not protect your pocketbook."

"I think I'll run when I can," Gavock laughed, making a feint of turning away.

She seized his arm. "No, I'm going to run," she said; then, detaining Miss Lowther, who had come abreast of them, she introduced Gavock, "Mr. Roger Gavock, my dear—straight from the Rue de la Paix and mad to meet you."

Gavock bowed. The girl held out her hand and smiled at him above the mass of roses in her arms.

"Enchantée, Monsieur."

"Take my seat, Miss Lowther," Mrs. Estell said, and left them.

To be continued next Sunday

Playing with Death for Forty Years

A LITTLE band of clean cut, hard hitting mounted policemen, in a country as large as our own great West, and filled, as the West used to be, with Indians and bad men, for forty years have kept order in that empire so effectively that their name is feared from one end to the other. They have faced death in many forms, and more than one of them has met it. But no criminal ever slew one of their number without paying the penalty.

They are the famous Northwestern Mounted Police of Canada; and their commander, Colonel S. B. Steele, has told their story in a new book, "Forty Years of Canada" (published by Dodd, Mead & Co.). Indians, bad men, murderers,—he has faced them all in those years, and mobs of angry men also.

Eight Men Against a Mob

THERE was a strike among the men engaged in building the Canadian Pacific Railroad. They were bad men, most of them, fugitives from the United States, wanted for all sorts of crimes. Farther west a rising among the Blackfeet Indians had called for most of the mounted policemen, leaving Colonel Steele only eight. And the Colonel himself sat in his headquarters, racked with a terrible fever.

It was the moment of opportunity for the strikers, and they knew it. One of their number had been arrested. They rushed upon the two mounted policemen who held him, struck them to the ground, and rescued him. Then, gathering together, they flung themselves across the little bridge that separated their town from the Colonel's camp. There were only eight men against them—what had they to fear?

But they reckoned without their host. Leaping from his chair, still weak from fever, Colonel Steele grasped a rifle and rushed into the very face of the crowd. "Bring me the Riot Act!" he called to one of his men, and to the crowd he cried, "I'm going to have the Riot Act read to you. Listen to it, and keep your hands off your guns. I'll shoot the first man who makes a hostile move!"

Steele Reads the Riot Act

THEY might have shot him easily. There were two hundred of them, and he was alone on the bridge, with only a handful of men behind him. Yet they stood frozen in their tracks. The ring of command in his voice, the fearless flash in his eye, the instinctive regard for the uniform which had made itself felt in every corner of the great Northwest,—all these held them fast.

"Now disperse!" he cried to them, when the reading was over, "and if I find more than twelve of you standing together, or any large crowd, I'll open fire upon you and mow you down!"

Keeping an Empire in Order

THEY knew he meant it. That evening the town was as peaceful as a village green, and the next day the mob suffered its ringleaders to be brought one by one before Colonel Steele and sentenced; for he was Judge as well as guardian of the North Country. And they knew that, sick as he was, he was a match for them all. It isn't the number of men that counts—as the whole forty years of the Mounted Police have proved. There are only a handful of them; but they have kept a whole empire in order, because they and their leader knew no fear.

She Makes Money Raising Olives

THE R. F. D. man stopped at a little Iowa farm, and dropped a piece of mail postmarked Los Angeles, California. The woman who lived on the farm had been waiting for that piece of literature. In the long winter evenings that come on the farm she read it from cover

to cover, and everything else that told of Lower California, where it is always warm and sunshiny, where oranges grow, and grapefruit, and olives.

That was several years ago. Today the Iowa woman operates one of the largest olive ranches in California, and a factory where she cans her own product. And twice a year she comes to New York with the season's yield, to arrange herself for the sale of what she herself has raised and canned. She is the only woman in America who does all of these things on so large a scale, and her story is another proof that intelligence and hard work and knowledge of the game are the real factors in success.

For Mrs. C. Martha Ehmann is not the only person who has been caught by the "warmth and sunshine fever"—not by any means! There are thousands of other women, on farms and in cities, who have it. A good many hundred of them go to California every year, with the vague expectation of making a living somehow in that loveliest country. But Mrs. Ehmann did not go until she was equipped to succeed—and therein lies the difference.

She's an enthusiast about olives, naturally. If all the world ate olives every day, she thinks, it would go about as far toward bringing in the millennium as anything could.

"Babies ought to eat olive oil," she says. "It feeds and lubricates and heals, all at once. As for the grown-ups—we marvel that the Italian is able to do so much work and endure exposure in all sorts of weather when he lives 'simply on a diet of bread and oil and cheese.' But if we realized the amazing amount of nutriment that there is in olive oil, heavy bread, and good rich cheese, we should not marvel so much."

Running an olive ranch and a factory and being a sales manager all at once require a pretty long day. But it isn't long hours that wear one out, Mrs. Ehmann believes: it's the irksomeness of uncongenial work. "And to me," she says, "growing olives is the greatest fun in the world."

If You Need a New Office Boy—

DOWN Tompkins Square way, on the lower East Side of New York, is the Boys' Club, a six-story granite structure which was built by Averell Harriman in memory of his father, the late E. H. Harriman. In the basement of this club is the only Office Boys' Training School in the world. Although flourishing like a young bay tree, its chief inability is to turn out enough trained workers to fill the positions awaiting them with big corporations and business firms.

According to Marvin Jackson, the young Columbia man who keeps the wheels of the school revolving, the average boy who wishes to enter has but one idea. When asked what he is going to do he invariably replies, "I'm goin' to get a job." Coming from a home where the little amenities of life are unknown, where cleanliness and neatness are a secondary consideration as a rule, the boy's chance to get and keep a job is not promising.

The main object of the school, therefore, is to start the boy right; to take him before he enters an office and do four definite things for him,—teach him simple office duties, how to conduct himself, how to make good in his job, and above all to create in him an intense desire to be a success in life.

No boy is admitted to the school who is not in earnest. Be is told kindly but crisply at the outset that the world is too full of good timber to waste time on poor "sticks." Before he is permitted to enroll he is handed a card of printed rules, with reference to personal appearance, habits of neatness, daily courtesies, and kindred matters. After its perusal he is asked if he approves of them, and if there is any reason why he cannot live up to them. Naturally he replies with decision. He is then told that he must be willing to submit to a daily personal inspection of his clothing, face, neck, ears, nails, hands, and general appearance.

From the moment the boy enters the training school Mr. Jackson's attitude toward him is that of employer toward employee. Nothing more is explained

than is absolutely necessary. There is frequent allusion to the motto of the school, "Use Your Head"; for the boys are told that this is the fundamental element that will make for their success, not only in their jobs, but in after life as well.

He Learns to Take Telephone Calls

THE equipment of the school consists of switchboards, telephones, typewriting machines, filing cabinets, and general office paraphernalia. The school idea is kept in the background, and the office spirit fostered. Each boy is thrown upon his own resources as much as possible. If he asks too many questions, he is told kindly to use his head. He is taught how to use a telephone, how to secure numbers, how to make calls, and how to treat people over the wire; he is shown how to operate a switchboard, each pupil taking his turn in instructing another, in order to create the initiative referred to. All of this is much more important than may at first appear, as but few of the boys have ever had telephone receiver in their hand before.

To be able to operate a typewriter may be of assistance to even the humblest office boy. To know the parts of the machine, and to care for it properly, making slight repairs, and keeping it in good working order will enhance his value about any office. He is therefore taught the touch system, and is shown how to write business letters, make out bills, etc. His first lesson is to write a letter application for a position.

Lessons in wrapping parcels, mailing, stamping, sealing, and folding letters are driven home daily. Among the amenities along these lines is the proper use of stamps; for the boy is made to understand that he cannot afford to appropriate a single stamp for his person use, and thus run the risk becoming a common thief, jeopardizing both his honor and his position. Such a boy cannot expect references.

How to run errands with economy of time and strength, how to get about town in the most expeditious manner, using the car when fares have been provided, thus saving the employer's time, instead of appropriating the dime for candy, chewing gum, or a "movie," are lessons that are taught in the very beginning. A city geography drill is given, with the aid of a big map and street guides.

Continuation classes are held for the boys who have already secured positions, thus teaching them along the lines in which they are working. This gives them opportunity to bring up their individual problem and meet it with kindly help through the most crucial period of their first job.

While the Office Boys' Training School makes no pretense of turning out skilled accountants, bookkeepers, or typists, it does lay the foundation for the alert boy to build upon, teaching him a few preliminaries that he should know before going into an office. In short, it turns out the kind of boys employers want.

Measuring the Smallest Thing in the World

WHEN Professor R. A. Millikan of the Ryerson Physical Laboratory at the University of Chicago announced a short time ago that he had discovered a way to isolate and accurately measure an electron, which is the smallest thing in the world, scientists immediately sat up and listened with all their ears.

The Smallness of a Molecule

YET there is something fascinating in the thought of a particle so small that it would take a thousand of them laid side by side in a row, and then magnified a thousand times or more under a microscope, to make a speck large enough to be seen. This is true of a molecule, which the textbooks tell us is the smallest particle of a substance that can exist separately and still retain its composition and properties. In other words, it is a combination of two or more atoms of any element, held together by chemical attraction or affinity. It is evident, therefore, that an atom is smaller than a molecule.

But even an atom is a long way from being the smallest thing in the world. As a matter of fact, it is a perfect giant when compared with an electron.

According to Professor Millikan there are hundreds of electrons in a single atom of most of the common substances, and the volume actually occupied by these electrons themselves is probably as small in comparison with the volume of an atom as is the volume of the solar system. Reduced to figures, the diameter of a molecule is one fifty-millionth of a centimeter. But the diameter of an electron is about one hundred-thousandth that of a molecule. This means that one hundred million of them would have to be placed side by side in a row before even the most powerful microscope would reveal the speck thus made to the human eye.

In measuring an electron it is first necessary to isolate an ion. An ion is a molecule carrying one free electron or atom of electricity. Professor Millikan does this by means of an apparatus of his own design. The apparatus consists essentially of a dust-free chamber, into which a cloud of fine droplets of oil is blown with the aid of dust-free air.

One or more of the droplets of this cloud are allowed to fall through a pinhole into the space between two plates of a horizontal air condenser, and the pinhole is then closed by means of an electro-magnetically operated cover. Three small glass windows are placed in the side of the condenser at the angular positions of nothing, 165 degrees, and 180 degrees.

A narrow parallel beam of light from an arc lamp enters the condenser through the first window and emerges from the last The other window serves for observing, with the aid of a short-focus telescope placed about two feet distant, the illuminated oil droplet as it floats in the air between the plates. The appearance of this droplet is that of a brilliant star on a black background.

Molecules Make Them Dance

BY suspending these minute oil droplets in rarefied gases, instead of in airs at atmospheric pressure Professor Millikan has been able to make the droplets partake of the motions of agitation of the molecules to such an extent that they can be seen to dance violently about under the bombardment they receive from the flying air molecules. Then by measuring accurately the amount of motion of agitation of the oil droplets and comparing it with the motions they assume under the influence of an electric field because of the charge they carry, Professor Millikan has been able to make an exact and certain identification of the electrical charge carried by an atmospheric ion: with the electrical charge carried by equivalent ions in solution.

Start the Week with a Smile

A Bright Spot

ON Taft's round-the-world party, on which most of Nicholas Longworth's time was occupied in courting Alice, the Captain of the consort one bright sunny day sen the following message to the Captain of Taft's ship:

"Please repeat heliograph. My operator got confused on it."

"I have not been heliographing," replied Taft's Captain.

"In that case," answered the other Captain, "will you kindly request Mr. Longowrth to put on his cap?"

Longworth's bald head has brought out no end of jokes.

And This in Boston

ARE passengers allowed to expectorate on theis car?" asked an indignant looking Boston woman of an Irish car conductor.

"Yes'm" was the reply. "Ye cant spit annywhere ye want to, Leddy."

J. M. Barrie's Telegram

ORLANDO DAY, a fourth-rate actor in London, who had never been able to secure a part much beyond the range of a mere supernumerary, sometime ago was called in a sudden emergency to supply the place of a well known star a the Criterion Theater for a single night.

The call filled him with joy. Here was a chance to show the public how great a histronic genius had remained unknown for lack of opportunity! But his joy was suddenly dampened by the dreadful thought that, as the play was already in the midst of its run, none of the dramatic critics might be there to watch his triumph. A bright htought struck him. He would announce the event. Rushing to a telegraph office, he composed the following telegram, frugally confining the message within the regulation ten words:

"Orlando Day presents Allen Ainsworth's part tonight at the Criterion."

This message he sent to one of the leading critics. Then it occurred to him, "why not tell them all?" And so, as telegrams are cheap in England, he repeated the message to a dozen or more important persons.

At a late hour of the same day in the Garrick Club a lounging man produced one of the telegrams, and read it to a group of friends. A chorus of exclamations followed the reading.

"Why, I got precisely the same message!"

"And so did I!"

"And I too!"

"Who is Orlando Day?"

"What beastly cheek!"

"Did the ass fancy that one would pay any attention to his wire?"

James M. Barrie, who was present, was the only one who said nothing.

"Didn't he wire you too?" asked one of the group.

"Oh, yes."

"But of course you didn't answer."

"Oh, but it was only polite to send an answer after he had taken the trouble to wire me. So of course I answered him."

"You did! What did you say?"

"Oh, I just telegraphed him, 'Thanks for timely warning.'"

Theory Versus Practice

A TEACHER of the fourth grade in a Michigan school asked little Bessie what she had noticed on a recent field trip the children had made. Bessie rose, and after several observations remarked:

"And at this time of the year there ain't a leaf left on the trees."

"Did anybody notice a mistake that Bessie made?" asked the teacher.

Thomas raised his hand very promptly. "Aw, there aint any such word as ain't!" he announced scornfully.

Just Like a Man

IT'S a funny thing about human nature," said Jones.

"What's funny about it?"

"Why, if you tell a man there are 270,169,325,481 stars, he'll believe you; but if a sign says 'Fresh Paint,' he wont believe it without a personal investigation.

Little Things You Ought to Know

How Deep Is the Ocean?

A DEPTH surpassing all previous records has been sounded by the German survey steamer Planet, forty nautical miles east of Northern Mindanao. This depth was 32,088 feet, or over six miles, and a determination of bottom temperature and a sample of the sea bottom at the spot were also secured.

The greatest depth previously known was that found by the American ship Nero near Guam in 1899, which was fixed at 31,614 feet.

Why Is the Sky Blue?

WHEN a piece of iron is slowly heated in a flame it at first radiates hear, and as the frequency of the wave motions becomes greater it radiates light; first red rays, then yellow, and finally, if the heat is very intense, a white light is emitted.

The red rays are longer and of less frequency than the blue. When white light is passed through a prism the waves are acted upon and are separated. The red rays are diverted less from their previous direction than the violet. This is exemplified by light from a clear sky. Refracted by suspended particles in teh air, the blue rays are diverted more than the others, and give a blue appearance to the otherwise colorless clear sky.—Samuel S. Sadtler, S. B., in the Chemistry of Familiar Things (J. B. Lipincott Co.)

The Marking of Bills

IN their surveillance and apprehension of suspected persons government Secret Service officers often find it necessary to "mark the money" handled by such persons. There are various methods of so marking the national currency, one of the most novel of which is the pinprick.

The note to be marked is, say, the five-dollar silver certificate bearing the vignette of an Indian chief in his full regalia of feathers and trappings and presenting a full-face view. With the aid of a pin the secret service man makes tow punctures in the bill directly in the pupils of the Indian's eyes. To the casual and sometimes even critical inspector of the note these pinpricks are invisible. If raised to the light, however, the bill will distinctly reveal them.

The markings are complicated by the following process; The pinpoint is applied in the "twist" of the large figure 5 at the tow upper corners of the note. These tiny twists do not appear in the "necks" of the tow figures 5 that are at both ends of the bottom of the note. The note is now pierced again, this time in the ends of the scrolls on each side of the word five in the lower center of the bill. The marking is now complete. In secret it is exhibited to one or more persons for purposes of identification, and is then placed in the till or money drawer to which the suspected person has access.

It is said that the pinpricks will remain perfect for sometime. When such bills are produced in court, and their marking is explained under oath, conviction is practically certain.

Testing the Air

AN instrument for measuring the quantity of impurity in the air of a room or shop is the result of the inventive ingenuity of a German scientist. It consists of a glass bulb containing a red liquid which turns white on contact with carbonic acid gas. The liquid in the bulb is kept from the air; but once in every one hundred seconds a drop, drawn automatically from the bulb trough a bent cord and begins slowly to descend the cord.

If the air be foul with carbonic acid, the drop turns white at he upper end of the cord, and the purer the air the farther the drop descends before changing color. Alongside the cord runs a scale, like that of a thermometer or barometer, indicating the degrees of impurity of the atmosphere.

The Spanish Cork Industry

AN important industry in Spain is the cultivation of cork trees. This tree is an oak which grows best in the poorest soil. It cannot endure frost, and must have sea air, and also some altitude. It is found all along the coast of Spain, the northern coast of Africa, and the northern shores of the Mediterranean.

There are two barks, the outer of which is stripped for use. The cork is valuable according as it is soft and velvety. When the sapling has reached the age of ten years it is stripped of its outer bark for two feet from the ground. The tree will then be about five inches in diameter, and about six feet up to the branches. This stripping is worthless. The inner bark appears blood red, and if it is split or injured the tree dies.

When eight or ten years more have elapsed the outer bark has again grown, and then the tree is stripped four feet from the roots. This stripping is very coarse, and is used to make floats for fish nets. Every ten years thereafter the bark is stripped each year two feet higher up, until the tree is forty or fifty years old, when it is in its prime, and may then be stripped every ten years from the ground to the branches.

How to Clean Silver

TO clean silver where no coating is necessary, the best way to do it is electrolytically, says Samuel S. Sadtler, in his book. "The Chemistry of Familiar Things" (J. B. Lippincott Co). There is now on the market ab arrangement that consists essentially of a zinc tray with racks to hold the silver. A bath is made up of a hot solution of salt and bicarbonate of soda.

When the more or less tarnished silver is immersed in the silver and in contact with the zinc, galvanic action is set up, and the tarnish is removed from the silver and deposited upon the zinc. There pans offer a nice little lesson in electrochemistry, and improve the appearance of silver without much labor.

Edible Dog

ENGLISH bon vivants have been testing the merits of the Chinese edible dog, and they pronounce it very good dog indeed.

The dog is destined from the beginning for the table. Like the edible rat of the same country, it is fed mainly upon vegetable food, which is often delicately prepared and specially devised, in order to give the dog's flesh a peculiar flavor and aroma. The result is something quite different from the flesh of the ordinary dog of the Western world.

The genuine Chinese edible dog is known by its bluish black tongue, which is a peculiar mark of its variety. In infancy and early youth the dog's tongue is red, and upon reaching maturity and the edible age it suddenly becomes black, sometimes within two weeks.

Another peculiarity of this dog is its lack of the barking faculty. It is said that hey dog can bark, and on occasions does so; but these occasions are rare.

Many experiments, most of them unwilling, were made with the flesh of dogs during the Paris siege. Newfoundlands and St. Bernards were preferred, under the mistaken impression that they would probe more eatable than other varieties. They proved to be detestable in all cases.