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Every Week

The Big 3 ¢ Worth

Published Weekly by Every Week Corporation,
95 Madison Avenue, New York
© June 19, 1916

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Cut Down Your Necessities, and You Will Be Able to Afford a Few Luxuries

MOST of us do not have incomes large enough to provide both the things we need and the things we want.

We are forced to choose between our necessities and our luxuries.

And, very foolishly, we choose to cut our the luxuries.

Thus our existence becomes dull and monotonous.

We never really live: our lives are lived for us—cut out and sewed together by the habits and customs of the class to which we belong.

I have established a very good rule, which I pass on to you: Never do anything just because other people do it.

Most of your friends live in city apartments. They pay so much for the use of their rooms, and twice as much for the location and the fine marble hallway.

To live in an apartment like theirs is one of your "necessities."

If you cut out that necessity, and lived in the country or in an apartment where you had to stretch your legs up three flights of stairs, you would have some money to spend on luxuries.

So with many other things.

Every year, but cutting out a few foolish necessities, I buy myself one big, wise luxury.

Four years ago I bought an automobile.

Not much of an automobile. Many of my friends said they would rather not have any automobile than to have one like mine. But it was an automobile.

It has done some wonderful things for me.

For one thing, it has given me my little summer place up in the country.

A little old white Colonial house, with a brook running behind it, and fruit trees all around—a place I had wanted for years, but couldn't have—because it was two miles from the railroad.

But two miles is nothing, even to an automobile like mine.

So I can work in the city and play all summer in the country—thanks to my automobile.

It has done some other good things for me. It has improved the country roads between my little white house and town. Before the automobiles began to go by, the roads were very rough But now all across the countryside mud puddles and deep ruts have vanished as if by magic. The automobile has made the town "dress up."

And it has made me "dress up" my place, also.

.Have you ever noticed how many more flowers are planted around farm-houses than used to be? Do you want to know why that is? I will tell you.

It used to make me mad because people who whirled by my place in limousines never stopped to look around. "I'll make them turn their proud heads," I said. So I planted flowers and painted my house.

Now, on Sunday afternoons, I lie in the hammock on the porch and listen to the people in the cars saying to each other: "What a pretty little place that is! I wonder who lives there?"

That's why there are more flowers than there used to be—the automobile has done that.

With a tin pail full of coffee and a basket of sandwiches, I have had more fun exploring the wood roads around my place than Columbus ever had in discovering America.

My automobile has brought my office and my little white house side by side. It has given me a new pride in my place. It has improved the roads around me.

Yes, and it has made me a good neighbor to people whom I have wanted to call on for years, and never got around to it, because I hate long, hot rides in the street cars. It has make me a better citizen all around.

Gasolene is very high this year.

I shall have to cut out some other foolish necessity.

Bruce Barton, Editor.
If you want to know how to pack your lunch basket this summer so that you will weigh twenty pounds more by October first, or twenty pounds less, as the case may be, send me four cents in stamps, and I will send you Dr. Bowers; book, "Eating for Health and Efficiency"—one of the half dozen little books I have had prepared as a part of our service to readers.

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Why Are Tramps?

By H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

THE panic of 1907 brought loss and sorrow to many a home. As happens in all panics, it caused family as well as business tragedies. In the case of one man of my acquaintance it had a peculiarly disastrous effect. Married, and having several children, the stern necessity was forced on him of beginning business life anew. He would easily have obtained work at a fair salary with any one of a number of firms formerly his competitors; but he was too independent" to take a subordinate position, and could not reconcile himself to the cut in income this involved.

Realizing that the kind of business with which he was familiar might have to go through a prolonged period of depression, and impatient to be well-to-do again, he allowed himself to indulge in the perilous pastime of "rainbow-chasing." Instead of looking for work, he began to look into "propositions" that promised quick returns.

Presently his means became quite exhausted. He had lost his business; now he lost his home. His wife and children went to live with relatives. He himself migrated to another city, declaring that his home town was "dead." Soon he discovered that, for the purpose of getting rich quickly, his new place of residence was no improvement over the old one. So he removed to a third city, and after that a fourth.

This was the beginning of a wandering, accompanied by a gradual decline both in ambition and in social standards. To-day it is no longer a question with him of "striking it rich": it is simply a ques-tion of gaining a bare existence at a mini-mum of effort. In fine, this one-time prosperous business man is now a member of the strange brotherhood of tramps, that singular fraternity which is the despair of civic authorities and social reformers.

This Young Man Disliked Labor

AGAIN, in another American city, there lived four young men, of good families and excellent habits. They decided, one summer, to spend a vacation together in taking a walking trip. They were gone from home for perhaps a fortnight, and on their return settled down contentedly to the routine of every-day existence.

That is, three of them did. The fourth within a week unaccountably disappeared. Foul play was suspected, and a persistent search made, all to no purpose. Weeks later he returned as unexpectedly as he had vanished. He said little by way of explanation, except to touchsafe the information that he had been away on another walking trip. His family, relieved at having him back, troubled him neither with questions nor with rebukes.

In less than a month he was off again. Thenceforward his life was that of an ordinary tramp, except that at irregular intervals he would come home for a few days. He seemed to retain affection for his relatives, but he also seemed to find it impossible to stay home. His wanderings took him all over the United States. He never worked if he could obtain enough by begging to provide him with food and shelter. Yet, so far as his family could discover, he did not acquire any vicious habits. The sole trouble with him was an abnormal restlessness, and a colossal distaste for labor of any sort.

Strange Case of a College Professor

CONSIDER also the curious case of a college professor. As a student he had worked hard, passing his examinations so well that a teaching appointment was readily given him. Shortly afterward he was among the missing. The police Were notified; search was made, without result. A month passed. Then his family received a letter from him, written in a remote town. He was ill and penniless. At once a relative went to bring him home. Why did he go? What had he been doing? were among the questions with which he was plied.

He could not, it appeared, give any clear reason for his sudden departure, except to say that he had felt an irresistible impulse to get away from work. He knew well enough, however, what he had been doing. He had been tramping from place to place, sleeping where he could, and depending on the charitably inclined for food. Now he was full of remorse. He was sure that nothing of the sort would ever happen to him again. And he was eager to resume his teaching.

The college authorities took a lenient view of the affair. Things began to go on as before. Then the young professor vanished again. Once more, weeks later, he wrote home for help. Again he had been roaming; but surely he would roam no more. He was mistaken: these were the first of numerous disappearances, during each of which he lived as all tramps live. And, unhappily, the college could not forever condone his conduct. His career was ruined.

How explain these tragedies of existence? How, indeed, explain the tragedy of tramp life in general? What is it that makes a man willing—nay, sometimes eager—to undergo the hardships of life on the road and in the freight-car, to become a veritable social outcast, lacking both a settled habitation and the respect of his fellow men? These are not questions of a merely

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theoretical interest. They are of great practical importance.

Every civilized country has its tramp problem, and in every country this is a most serious problem. In the United States, at a conservative estimate, there are not fewer than fifty thousand genuine, dyed-in-the-wool tramps. The economic waste entailed by these represents millions of dollars a year. According to one investigator, the annual burden thus imposed on American taxpayers amounts to the colossal sum of ten million dollars. Nor until lately has there seemed to be any way of lightening this burden. Repressive and coercive measures have been enforced generation after generation, and have failed to eliminate the tramp.

Psychology May Solve the Problem

NOW however, a more hopeful era is dawning, with recognition of the complex psychological and physiological conditions on which human conduct depends. The tramp, like the criminal, and like other types whose behavior differs markedly from that of the generality of mankind, has become the subject of scientific study. In especial, the psychologists and physiologists who have been studying him have sought to discover the secret of his passion for wandering and his profound aversion for work. These are the dominant traits of all true tramps, and on each of them science has in the past few years thrown considerable light. Most important of all, it has established that, not penal treatment, but medical and educational care, is what tramps should receive.

Particularly significant are the results of an investigation made by some French scientists as to the physical condition of tramps. A good many years ago Josiah Flynt Willard, who himself became a tramp in order to gain intimate knowledge of their habits and customs, noted as a curious circumstance that tramps find it hard to keep their attention fixed for any length of time. The French scientists have discovered an explanation of this, and it has a vital bearing on the whole tramp problem. Stated briefly, in making a physical examination of a large number of vagabonds, it was found that, no matter how robust and healthy they looked, nearly every one of them suffered from a peculiar nervous debility, characterized by weak heart-beat, low arterial pressure, and sluggish circulation. This meant that the brain was inadequately nourished, and that, being inadequately nourished, it quickly became fatigued if put to energetic use.

Hence the tramp's incapacity to concentrate attention. Hence also his hatred of work, since work of any kind requires some degree of concentration.

His stupendous idleness is thus what scientists would technically call a defense-reaction. It is not mere moral perversity, but rather the instinctive device of a weak organism to husband its feeble resources. On this basis—and undoubtedly the findings of the French scientists are equally applicable in the case of American tramps—the farmer's wit who out of pity gives a good meal to a tramp is acting more wisely than the functionary who compels the tramp to earn his meal by hard labor.

Obviously, however, the wisest course of all would be to put the tramp through a medical routine that would tone up his nervous system, quicken the circulation of his blood, enrich the nourishment of his brain—in a word, make him fit to work. This, I am convinced, is the course that will have to be adopted if the tramp problem is ever to be satisfactorily solved.

But the scientific explanation of the tramp's distaste for work does not, to be sure, explain his tendency to roam. Every city, town, and village has its habitual idlers, constituted like the tramp in point of deficient brain nutrition, but entirely without his wandering impulse. They are content with loafing about the house, club, saloon, or street corner, and are never happier than when left undisturbed in a favorite lounging spot for hours at a time. The tramp, poor fellow, can not be satisfied with idling in any one town, but must press feverishly from place to place. It is as if he were afflicted with a mania for travel, were lashed by an obsessive longing for perpetual change. In a certain proportion of instances there can be no question that the tramp is actually the victim of a mad obsession.

The Double-Personality Explanation

THIS is particularly likely to be the case if he is what may be called a periodic tramp, of the type represented by the professor mentioned above. His roaming is then a symptom of epilepsy or outright insanity, or it may come on as the result of a hysterical explosion in a person naturally of unstable nervous organization, and rendered doubly neurotic by fatigue, illness, emotional shock, etc. In the latter event, as in the former, there is likely to be considerable mental confusion, even to the extent of what psychologists term a doubling of the personality. This was demonstrably the fact with the tramp-professor, who eventually sought a physician's aid in the effort to put a stop to his recurrent excursions into hoboland. To the physician he stated:

"Whenever the desire to go tramping comes over me, I am first made aware of


it by uneasy feelings. I know what this means, and I try to fight it off. In the end I always yield. Sometimes the struggle lasts eight or ten days. It seems to me that my real self is dominated by another, which insistently urges me to leave home. 'It is necessary for you to go—you must go,' this second self keeps telling me.

"When I have finally surrendered, I feel a great sensation of relief. I know how alarmed my family will he, and I appreciate the absurdity of wandering aimlessly, begging my way. But I persist in doing this for a month or more. I seem to be no longer master of my will. It is the other fellow in me who commands, and I obey.

"Suddenly, some fine morning, I feel myself free from the influence of this strange master. My only desire is to return home. I am overcome with chagrin at the disgrace brought on me. I even think of suicide. I can not hear the thought of meeting the reproaches of my friends. My head is all on fire. But, after I have been home a few days, I quiet down—until the next attack."

In a case like this the sudden descent into trampdom may itself be a defense- reaction, the attempt of a defective nervous organization to gain protection from work—in this instance, the work of teaching—which is putting on it a greater strain than it can bear. Something of the same sort was probably responsible for the development of tramping proclivities in the young man who fled from home after the walking trip with his three friends. If it were possible to gain intimate knowledge of his previous history, it would doubtless be found that he had been under a strain that had badly disorganized a nervous system none too strong to begin with. But in the third of our three cases—the case of the one-time prosperous business man—it is unnecessary to look either to insanity or to hysteria for an adequate explanation. In fact, it is not necessary to look beyond the psychological law of habit.

Tramping Unfits Men for Work

SHORTLY after Josiah Flynt Willard started on his tramping adventures, an old vagabond sagely remarked to him, "Moochin' spiles workin', jes ez workin' spiles moochin'." The moment the business man who later turned tramp began his "rainbow-chasing," and in pursuit of his rainbows moved from town to town, nowhere doing regular work, that

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moment he began to deteriorate mentally and physically. He was already "moochin'," and simply by "moochin'" he was damaging his nervous system, and making it harder for him in the future to work. For it is an established fact that, if prolonged, lack of occupation is itself a producer of the morbid bodily condition unfitting for work tramps and other chronic idlers.

But, in addition to slowing down his physical processes by prolonged failure to keep his mind profitably occupied, this unfortunate business man, through his perpetual changing of residence, gradually made it increasingly difficult for him, not simply to do regular work, but to remain for any length of time in any one locality. In other words, he unconsciously allowed fondness for change to become habitual with him, just as other men unconsciously allow fondness for drink to become habitual and imperative.

Herein; as I see it, we have the true explanation of most tramps. In some cases, but in comparatively few, it is necessary to recognize the influence of insanity, epilepsy, or hysteria as a factor. In most cases tramping is nothing more than a bad habit, acquired by a man who was born with, or has developed, a nervous system decidedly below par. In most cases, too, there is reason to believe that the nervous debility is an accident of development rather than an inborn defect; which means that usually tramping is both curable and preventable, provided it be attacked with due appreciation of the physical and mental elements involved.

Tramps Should Have Medical Treatment

ACCORDINGLY I would suggest that, instead of sending tramps to jails, they should be sent to medical and psychological clinics. There the epileptic, the insane, and the hysterical could be weeded out for custodial and therapeutic care in institutions. The rest could at once begin to receive physically upbuilding treatment, preparatory to moral treatment having as its object the substitution of a working habit for the habit of idling and roaming.

As for the prevention of tramping, that rests chiefly with parents and teachers. The child who is kept in good physical health, in whom love of study and work is established at an early age, and whose home surroundings are such as to develop a feeling of contentment, is not likely to take to the road, either in boyhood or in later life.

A Life for a Life

By MARION PUGH READ

Illustrations by Walter Biggs

IN the two little cabins that stand, one on either side of the "branch," away up near the jagged crest of Big Stoney, for all the world like two little brown creatures come out from the wilderness behind them to drink and then stopped still to gaze at each other in wonder, two women were waiting for spring. One had confided to all the world her tremulous joy; the other, so far, had hidden her shame.

Step-sisters they were, but no real kin. Judy Baxter's mother had married Nance Calvert's father when the two girls were fifteen and sixteen. Not alone in the one circumstance that now divided them so sharply, from every point of view they were opposites. In proportion as Judy was dainty and fragile, Nance was big and overgrown. Her beauty lay in her rude strength, her perfect symmetry, her fearlessness. Nance was an Amazon, while Judy reminded one of nothing so much as one of those delicate little mountain roses that are so lovely up there on Bear Branch in June. It was just that same vivid pink that came and went in her cheeks. Her crinkly yellow hair, pale in the shade, was gold in the sunshine, and the lightest breeze that stirred blew its tendrils till they were like a halo around her face.

But, after all, it was the rare sweetness of her nature that made her seem most like one of those little mountain flowers. It was a sweetness that manifested itself in every tone of her voice, in every ripple of her laughter that woke up such welcome echoes there on Big Stoney, in every willing service her hands found to do. Only on Nance her sweetness did not prevail.

AFTER her mother had died, Nance and Pop had lived alone in the forlorn little cabin that stood by itself then, with no other nearer than old Hamp Eaton's, a mile down the trail. Nance was twelve then. There were plenty of girls far younger than that on Big Stoney who were little old women already, with a woman's acceptance of care bending their slender shoulders, and a woman's knowledge of life looking out from their grave little eyes. But there was nothing of the little old woman in Nance. Under her rude housekeeping the cabin soon lost whatever degree of snug comfort it ever had known. Spinning and weaving and knitting she let go by. The few clothes she needed she bought from a peddler's pack. She had only enough of the feminine instinct to know that, as Pop was a man, she must feed him. Loyally he ate the greasy bacon, and the wretched corn bread, and the biscuits that were worse.

"Air they all right, Pop?" she would ask, at first.

"Sure," he would answer.

And, after all, what did it matter? It was out in the woods and the fields that, even in winter, their real life was, and out in the open there was no dubiousness about Pop's approval.

"You're a boy—that's what you are!" he would cry in delight. "An' somethin' extry of a boy, at that! You kin throw straighter, an' aim truer, an' heft a bigger load than ary boy twicet yer size."

EVERY word of Pop's praise was gold to Nance. No idea had ever entered her head but of living on with him always like this—working with him when he worked, resting with him when he rested, liking the things he liked, and excelling in the things he himself excelled in. Every day she grew bigger and 'stronger. She was learning now to swing an ax as well as any woodsman. Some day Pop would say, "You're as good as ary man!"

And then, one day, without a word to Nance, he married Judy's mother.

She had lived in the lowlands, and had learned secrets of cooking and household arts unknown to the mountaineers. Pop never could get over the wonders of 'the fare she set before him.

"He's kinder to her than ever he was to mammy," Nance declared to herself bitterly.

But it wasn't the new wife—who, as it turned out, died such a short time afterward—that she resented: it was that new daughter that Pop kept coaxing:

"Hain't ye never goin' to call me Pop in no likelier tones than that?"

"Why should she call him Pop? She hain't no right to!" Nance would storm angrily to herself.

Queer new feelings of hate and distrust were born in her heart.

"He likes her better'n me," she decided afresh with each new expression of his delight.

She had never once thought of her own size and strength but as something to be proud of, to win praise from Pop; but when she saw how every one loved Judy's dainty beauty, she was awakened to a sense of her own ungainliness.

"She's as pretty a critter as ever was," she acknowledged to herself. "An' me—I'm as ugly as ary old varmint in the woods."

HER size became a blemish in her sight, a canker in the real bigness of her nature. Self-consciousness was born within her; and self-consciousness was self-distrust. Her pride in her old achievements was gone; her prowess was a wasted art. It didn't matter how much Judy admired that prowess, or how timid she was where Nance was brave.

"Take her out an' show her round," Pop would command.

And Nance, with no invitation other than to rise and take down the old gun from the wall, would stalk out and leave Judy to follow.

"Ain't it purty here, though!" Judy would exclaim with delight in the woods.

"Whar's home?" Nance would demand, turning on her.

"Off—off that-a-way," Judy would decide.

"Ye hain't no more sense fer the directions o' the airth than ye had the day ye come," Nance would declare.

"Thar's sech a many things to see," Judy would plead. "I keep a-lookin', an' I fergit."

"Ye could lose her in a clearin'!" Nance would mutter scornfully as she went on.

"Yander's some sang," Judy would point out, to retrieve herself.

"Ye don't know yaller root from sang!" Nance would exclaim. "Nor a beech from a birch. As fer a gun," she would finish contemptuously, "ye don't know no more 'bout a gun than one o' them little pieded lizards scootin' through the leaves."

"I kin l'arn, if ye'll show me," Judy would coax.

"Let's see ye hit that knot-hole acrost in the forked limb o' that old rotted pine," Nance would say, surrendering the heavy old flintlock rifle, that always kicked so furiously when fired.

Scared to death of it as she was, Judy would take it in her little hands and struggle to hold it up against her shoulder.

"That-a-way?" she would ask. "Now, how do I make it shoot?"

"No use to meddle with the trigger till ye kin grip the barr'I once," Nance would return grimly. "Ye're aimin' now somewhar jest about the middle o' that 'ere big cloud a-sailin' by over the top o' Little Stoney. An' of ye was to shoot now, ye'd go clean through that ground-squirrel's hole, yander to the left."

"Hit's so heavy!" Judy would pant.

"Hit's no more heft than a broomstick, if ye've got any strength," Nance would" say, swinging it back to her shoulder. "I reckon I'd feel 'bout as quare to he walkin' long without ary gun as you would to be a-totin' it."

"It's a purty trick with you, whether e ye're a-totin' it or a-shootin' of it," Judy would cry in admiration of the lithe, strong figure stalking on ahead; but her admiration was nothing to Nance.

THERE was not a thing indoors that Judy couldn't do as if she were born to it. After the three of them were left alone, and she had taken all the care of the housekeeping into her hands, her industry won even more golden praise from Pop.

"What ye fixin' up for us now?" lie would call out, as he stood outside the door, washing his hands ready for supper. "Somethin' mighty good—I kin tell that much by the sizzle!"

"He never talked that-a-way to me," Nance would say to herself bitterly. "An' I hate to cook wusser'n sin!"

It mattered not that she had Pop to herself all day in the fields, where as man to man now she did her full half of the work. Her accomplishment was a matter of course; but the very thought of Judy seemed to lighten his toil. And sometimes, catching the lilt of her song as she came out to fill her bucket at the well or gather the chickens about her for their feed, "She's jest purely sunshine!" he would declare.

That was what young Dick Hartridge thought when Pop brought him home, one night, from the lumber camp over on the Divide.

Pop wanted him to give his estimate on some big yellow poplars he thought of cutting down; but the -first thing he did was to fall in love with Judy


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"Throughout that happy season, only Nance was unhappy. She didn't want to marry Dick—what was it she did want?"

—"'Fore ever he'd kicked his foot loose o' the stirrup," Pop chuckled.

Judy's shy response was almost as prompt:

"Perhaps—some day." And then. "As soon as ever spring comes," she promised.

It'S lovely to see spring waking up on Big Stoney, but it's lovelier still to hear it. From every thicket and glade comes the song of the bobolink, of the redbird and the wren; and across the little valleys comes the call of the quail and the soft murmur of the doves. Above the purling of the waters you can hear the alders stirring, and the first little leaves of the willows rustling in the breeze.

But the happiest notes on Big Stoney that year were the sounds of hammer and saw as Dick Hartridge and his helpers built Judy's cabin across the branch. Dick had wanted to take her over to the Divide, where his contract held for another winter; but Pop's generosity and wiser counsel had prevailed.

"Thar hain't no fittin' place fer a woman to live over thar," he said. "Take that fifty-acre tract acrost the branch fer yourn. Put ye up yer cabin an' git in yer crap. Next winter ye kin go back an' forth, an' when yer contract runs out ye've got yer home an' yer start here to come back to."

All day long, up and down the trail, was heard the clatter of the mules bringing up the window-lights and the planed lumber for the inside finishing. Queer, bulky loads they brought, too, of furniture and dishes, ordered from the town. Nothing was too good. "Pretties to the pretty," Pop said, going on from one extravagance to another.

But prettier than any of the "fotched-on" pretties was the wedding party itself. Every one came, down from the little hollows, from Little Stoney across, from the Gap beyond, by twos and threes, in merry cavalcades. It was in laurel-time. From the laden bushes the ripe petals scattered as the guests brushed against them, till every littlest forest path was a flowered trail that led to Judy's wedding.

Throughout that happy season, only Nance was unhappy. She didn't want to marry Dick Hartridge—what was it that she did want? To be loved and petted and spoiled herself? Or did she want, all at once, to be that other kind of woman that men were more likely to cherish? There were whole long, lonely days when she tried to fight it out by herself in the woods. "But even the woods hain't the same no more," she found. She was restless and sleepless, and torn by feelings she could neither stifle nor comprehend. She waited for the days to go by.

"When she's gone, an' Pop an' I air alone ag'in, it'll be old times come back," she thought.

But instead of that it was worse. There was a loneliness about their own hearth stone, now, that even Nance couldn't get over. All its old comfort and cheer seemed to have followed Judy across the Branch to the new cabin. Pop never could get over the daintiness of its white curtains and its white counterpanes. As for Judy—Judy enshrined in happiness in her own home was a greater marvel than ever. It was as if Pop had left home too. He was always over there.

"Why didn't ye come over when we hollered fer ye?" he would inquire of Nance, after supper and an evening by Judy's hearth. "She had ev'rything set out ready an' waitin' fer ye, an' ye never come."

"I was busy a-doin' things here," Nance would answer, turning away to hide her own sullenness.

FINALLY, one day later on in the summer, she came to him.

"I'm a-feelin' fer a change, Pop," she said. "An' they're writin' fer me to come down to Harlan Town. I hain't never been. I guess I'll go."

"Ye'll be a God-a'mighty lonesome critter in town. Ye'll like hit jest about as well as a wood-hawk would."

"I reckon so, but I'm a-goin'. You'll be all right. Ye kin eat over at Judy's. She'll look atter ye."

"I kin look atter myself that long. I'll give ye jest four-an'-twenty hours to git plumb sick of it," Pop called out in farewell.

But the days lengthened into weeks, and the weeks into months, and still Nance didn't come.

Finally, one cold, wet day late in December, draggled and spent as the day itself, Nance came back. When Pop came in from the woods, there she was, huddled in her shawl by the fire.

"Air ye feelin' sick, Nance?" he asked.

"I'm cold," she returned briefly, drawing closer to the blaze.

"Town were too much fer ye?"

"Yes, town were too much fer me," she replied.

"Then whatever did ye stay all this time fer, when I kep' a-writin' fer ye? I've been a-wantin' ye here the worst kind o' way! I'm bound to be off to the loggin' with Dick. They're a-needin' me most mightily as foreman. But thar's Judy. She never could stay alone, an' now less'n ever. When the bad snows come an' the cricks git up, hit's goin' to make travelin' so we won't git back here fer weeks on end. But that don't matter, as long .as ye're here. Ye kin look atter her, an' the place too, as good as ary man. I al'ays said, ye know, I raised a better boy when I raised you than Gib Ellis on Little Fork did when he raised his whole eleven, an' not a gal among 'em."

But Nance's smile had none of its old-time joy at his praise.

"I reckon so," she returned dully.

"If town ain't got it out o' ye."

"Town ain't got it out o' me," she returned. "Ye kin take as soon a start as ever ye like in the mornin'. I'm back—to stay—I reckon."

"That's right!" Pop returned heartily.

When she woke in the morning Pop had gone.

"Shut the door to over thar, an' come an' stay with me," Judy coaxed. "You an' me each to be farin' alone this-a-way—each to be tryin' to cook little enough fer one!"

"I reckon I'll stay on here whar I belong," Nance, returned, with a hostility that was final. "I'll be workin' round outside most o' the time. If there's ary thing ye want, day or night, ye kin holler; I'll hear."

But Judy never called.

IT isn't lonely up on Bear Branch in summer, when the woods are full of birds and living creatures, and when the crop and all the green growing things are like living things too. And then in summer there are people passing by; hardly a day but some one comes. But after winter once sets in in earnest, no one takes the upper trail. Those who live up there must live unto themselves.

It would be hard to tell which of the two was lonelier—Nance, shut up within herself, repelling every proffered friendliness on Judy's part, or Judy herself. The rose was gone from her cheeks now. Sometimes the stinging wind would whip a little color back to them, or the heat of the fire bring a flush; but it soon died away. But with every mark of increasing frailty Nance's hatred grew greater. It wasn't the hatred of a girl any longer, but the deeper, far more unreasoning hatred of a woman. There was something about it that seemed to stifle Judy. If she only thought of it sometimes, she felt as if she couldn't breathe.

"But no wonder—no wonder she hates me!" she couldn't help crying to herself in wondering pity.

The days were lonely, but the nights were lonelier still. Nance, who used to sleep like an Indian, would lie awake sometimes from dusk to dawn, facing her despair. But, after all, she wasn't facing it alone. Over in her cabin, Judy, sleepless too, trembling at the owl's hoot from the Judas tree by the door, shivering with a nameless dread at the lonely barking of the foxes on the hill,—"Not that I'm afeard," she would whisper to the little flicker of a blaze that she kept on the hearth for company, "but hit's so lonesome!"—Judy, lying awake, was thinking and thinking of Nance, trying to divine how she could overcome her hostility and penetrate the isolation to which she had condemned herself and her despair. As the days went by, and Nance's hatred instead of lessening grew only more intense,


deeper and more yearning grew the love in Judy's heart. And to the little flickering blaze she would whisper:

"Tell me what I kin do! Oh, tell me what I kin do!"

EVERY day Nance came to bring her wood and water. Judy no longer had strength enough to take them from her at the door, but her fingers could work still. Faster and faster she made them fly. Sometimes, at the very sight of the little garments she was making, Nance would turn and stalk out without a word. At other times she would sit down and watch her bitterly, as if it were some penance to which she was subjecting herself. Never once did she offer any comment till one day when Judy was rounding off the toe of what was surely the tiniest red stocking that ever was conceived of, it seemed as if the limit of her endurance had been reached.

"Hain't ye never goin' to be done with that truck?" she demanded scornfully.

For a minute Judy did not answer. Then she lifted her eyes up bravely to Nance.

"I hain't makin' these'n fer me," she said. "These here—air fer you."

Nance sprang to her feet; and for one terrible moment she glared at Judy as if she could' have struck her down dead. But something in the pure rove and the courage of Judy's eyes vanquished her. She turned away, with a sob, and burst into tears. Wild, despairing tears they were, hopeless, helpless, of a primitive creature brought to bay. With them Judy mingled her gentler ones.

"Nance," she begged, "don't turn from me. Can't ye see how I love ye? My heart—hit's jest plumb a-breakin' fer ye, Nance. Tell me what I kin do."

"Ye kin kill me, I reckon, if. ye will. I've tried to, but I can't."

"Tell me somethin' I kin do—to help—"

"Hit's the one thing can't be holp."

"Thar's nothin' in life can't be holp, even if it's only by havin' some one that cares live through it with ye, an' lovin' ye more fer what ye're havin' to bear."

Somehow, as Judy spoke, the first intimation of the truth of her words dawned on Nance's soul. Hitherto in all her life she had never asked for help from any one, nor wanted it. Many a little wild creature had she succored in days gone by; many a little calf lost in the woods had she brought back to its mother; many a little lamb delivered from the dogs; many a little fallen nestling put hack tenderly under its mother's wing. But she had never known what it was to he gentle with any human creature, nor to let one be gentle with her. Now, in her need, something of the sweetness of dependence was revealed to her.

"But, if anybody helps, hit hadn't ought to be you," she said brokenly. "I've been 'bout as hateful to ye as a human critter could be. But oh, if ye knew what I'd been through! If only I'd never seed town!

THE very second evenin' atter I got there we went to a set-runnin' out at Jim Benton's, two mile out o' town, a whole gang of us, some on nags, some afoot, but all of 'em, only me, two an' two. Then Harve Stoten come along. He was alone too, an' pretty soon, him an' me, we was two an' two like the rest. They all went on, a-talkin' an' a-laughin' to one another, back an' forth. But somehow, once I'd laid eyes on Harve an' Harve on me, we'd no eyes fer the rest of 'em. They begun a-devilin' us 'fore ever we'd got there, but we didn't care. Seemed like they wasn't none of 'em real, only him an' me.

"An' atter we got there, they was jest like a pack o' fleas hoppin' round, with no more sense to 'em than that. We was standin' over by the door. They was linin' up fer another set, an' they gin us a call, but we didn't make nary move to go towards 'em. We stood thar still, a-lookin' out into the night, wishin' we was still a-comin' hand in hand that-away. He didn't say, 'Let's go out!' nor I didn't neither; but thar was the open door, an' the night jest a-waitin'.

"As long as we could hear 'em laugh an' holler an' tromp the floor to the tune o' the old fiddle, we walked along slow; an' the woods—oh, the woods was nicer than ever the road was nice. When we come to whar there weren't ary sound 'cept jest us an' the trees an' the little critters o' the woods, we stopped. 'Twere so still! An' hit seemed like the night hadn't never been night afore. Hit were somethin' so soft an' so sweet ye hoped hit 'u'd never stop. An' ye loved hit fer shuttin' ye in that-a-way from ev'ry one.

[illustration]

"Finally, one cold, wet day in December, Pop found her huddled in her shawl by the fire. 'Town were too much fer ye?' he asked. 'Yes,' she replied. I'm back—to stay—I reckon.'"

Seemed like hit shet ye in from ev'rything that ever was, or was to be. . . .

"Up in the sky were a moon, jest a littly-bit of a new moon. We set thar an' looked up to it through the trees. Seemed like hit were a-travelin' down the sky straight to us, closer an' closer, an' us jest a-waitin' fer hit to come the rest o' the way. But when hit reached the mounting hit drapped down ahint thar instead. But the plumb dark was nicer'n ary light that ever was.

"'To-night's ourn,' he said. 'To-morrow we'll be married, won't we, Nance?' An' I says, 'Yes, to-morrow we'll be married.' But to-morrow—to-morrow was so God-a'mighty fur away—

"When we come back to town, the little birds was jest pipin' up to sing in the trees. Their sleepy little twitter were so sweet! Hit sounded jest like little childern look when they stand thar asmilin' to ye with the sleep still in their eyes. I didn't know I'd never hear 'em atter that without cussin' myself.

"He didn't come by at noontime, like he said he would. He didn't come that atternoon. When I asked fer him, He's loved an' left ye, that's what he's done,' they laughed. 'Didn't he tell ye he was goin' fer a soldier to-day?' Ye could ha' knocked me over whar I stood 'I was thinkin' 'twas to-night he were a-goin',' I made out to say. 'How'd ye reckon he was goin' to git into Louisville in time to shoulder his kit an' git into line with the rest of 'em marchin' out fer the Philippines at seven-ten to-night? Ye'll not see ag'in fer a good three year an' more.'

"That was the kind of a man he were.

"AT first I couldn't think o' ary thing 'ceptin' jest that he was gone, an' I were done fer. An' then I found 'twas wusser'n that. I won't never go back home no more,' I said. I got me a place to work, an' ev'ry cent I made I laid it by. Atter a while,' I thought, when the time comes, I'll go off to Louisville or som'eres like that whar no one knows me.' All the time I was so lonesome fer the mountings it might' nigh kilt me. Atter a while it got so that bein' homesick that-a-way were wusser'n anything else. I had to come or die, an' I come; but I knowed all the way I were goin' to kill myself atter I got here."

"Poor Nance!"

"A sight o' women die that-a-way, but I won't die. I wish't I could."

"No, ye don't. Ye wouldn't want to die an' leave hit all to hitself, would ye? If you was the sickliest critter on airth, ye'd be bound to live an' look atter it."

"Pore little critter! Hit'll need some one, comin' into the world that-a-way."

"Hit'll come into the world jest as dear an' sweet an' full o' play as ary other. They all come alike. We'll bring 'em up together. One alone 'u'd be lonesome, 'way off to the top o' the mounting like this. Can't ye jest see 'em toddlin' about together, each of a size?"

"An' when hit grows up big enough to ask whar hits pappy is?"

"We'll tell hit hit ain't got nary pappy, an' hit'll think hits pappy's dead."

"Other folks'll tell hit differ'nt."

"By that time hit'll have a pappy. Ye'll have l'arned to love some other man by that time."

"An' who'd ever want me?"

"Men hain't like that. A man that 'u'd punish ye fer the wrong some other man done ye wouldn't be worth the havin'."

Nance shook her head.

"I hain't purty like you. Nary 'nother man'll ever come fer me. But that don't seem to matter now. Hit were wrong to do as I done—I see that now: but no power on airth could ha' made me seen hit then."

"Ye didn't know—we don't ary one of us. Some of us has better luck, that's all."

And somehow, as Nance looked at it with Judy, it began to seem as if it was the same thing that was happening to them both. Before that she had not even accepted her fate. Now she met and rose above it.

"Only Pop—he'll be all broke up when he hears."

"Not when he sees how ye're takin' it. An' when hit comes, think how he'll love hit! Oh, hit's happy times that's on ahead; don't ye see?"

If the struggle wasn't ove yet for Nance, every day an every hour told. It was good to see the newly awakened love and gentleness on her face. The whole growth of her soul was there to read sometimes in the worshiping look she bent on Judy.

"'Tain't only that ye've l'arned me to love you," she said one day, in a rare little rush of tenderness, "but ye've l'arned me to love hit. Seems like I can't wait till hit's here."

Up there on Big Stoney, winter wasn't lonely any longer.

AS they sat together by the fire, Judy's dream was vague and diffuse. It was as if she were looking out upon a sea of happiness too deep to probe, too vast to contemplate in its entirety, but so soft, so pretty so blue, her feet couldn't help hurrying toward it. Now its little waves sang one song, now another. And how sweet were the little breezes that blew from it!

But Nance's vision took on clearer shapes.

"If hit's a boy-child," she would say to herself, "hit won't miss hits pappy so much. I kin l'arn hit all the things he would. I kin l'arn hit to make hits little bows an' arrers, an' hits marbles outen clay, an' hits little flute outen a holler reed. I kin l'arn hit to swim, an' shoot a gun, an' tell hits way in the woods. An' I kin l'arn hit to name the trees, an' all the little roots an' harbs, an' what each un's good for. An' thar's all the little wild critters to l'arn hit, an' how some on 'em dens in the cliffs, an' some in the holler trees. An' I kin tell hit tales—Injun tales, an' all the old huntin' tales I ever heered Pop an' the others tell."

And thus to Nance the unimaginative was imagination granted. As she sat there, winter vanished, and it was always spring. The little streams were running, and the woods were clothed with green. And as she roamed through them a vision persisted of a little boy, quick and lithe and sunny-haired, now running on before her, now toddling at her side. And every time he heard a bird sing, or pulled a speckled trout out on his little line, it was to her he turned his eyes of pure delight. Every time he picked a flower or found a pretty rock, it was to her he brought his treasure—to her, always to her! And


then sometimes her glance would wander back from the vision to Judy.

"An' if hit's a girl-child, "she would finish softly aloud, "you'll have to l'arn hit your ways."

IT was early in February when Nance shut the door on her own cabin and went over to live with Judy. It was a month of storms. Toward the very end, after a day when the blue skies and the soft air and the trickle of melting snow from the roof gave promise of early spring, there came a snowfall that was worse than any of all the winter. Silently and softly it began in the night. When the two women awoke in the morning, it was piled up high, and still coming down fast and straight. At noon it was coming down faster still. The wind had risen, and all the white peacefulness was changed to fury. For two days it raged, filling up the valleys and obliterating the trails. After the storm came bitter cold.

"If hit keeps on like this the men won't never be able to git here," Judy said. "But they kin stay, fer all us; we ain't a-needin' 'em, air we?" she smiled, to hide a little longing in her heart for her husband to be there at her side.

It was that very night that Nance was roused by her cries of agony.

There was only one mule on the place—Young Nick, left behind because he was no use in the woods. On Big Stoney no one asks of a mule that he shall be altogether gentle, but the cunning treachery of Young Nick put him into a class by himself. "He's got more tricks than the old Nick ever dreamed of," Pop said; but he kept him because of his marvelous strength and his good looks. Some day he meant to get the mastery over him. Strictest orders had been given to Nance never to mount him, and she had witnessed so many exhibitions of his meanness that even she had no desire to. But to-night it never occurred to her to hesitate. Bridle and saddle in hand, she went straight to his stall. Dazed by her effrontery, Young Nick took the bit before he knew it. Five minutes later she was galloping headlong down the trail.

It was that same trail where, less than a year before, the merrymakers had ridden up through the laurel to be at Judy's wedding. Prettier even than the trail itself then was the brown stream beside it, slipping on from sunshine to shadow with never a sound but its own soft murmur and the bird-song from the hidden depths of thicket and tree. But wilder and far more glorious is its beauty in winter, when it tears its way furiously through the ice-covered rocks. In the lowlands the streams were frozen deep; but Bear was a mountain stream—it couldn't stop to freeze. Colder than ice, its swollen waters laved the rocks high up on the banks and forged their way through miniature gorges and caverns of ice. Little flying beads of spray froze as they lighted on the jagged green leaves of holly and pine. But Nance had no eyes for the beauties of the way, nor even for the dazzling splendor of the moonlight on the snow, that gave such a superhuman glory to the whiteness of the night.

Not for one minute of that ten-mile ride could she relax her vigilance. At every step of the way it was a contest between her sheer will and Young Nick's. Something in the spell of the night came to her aid. Never in the mundane light of day could he have been persuaded to the adventure. Furiously she lashed him through the untrodden drifts. Twelve times the trail crossed the stream. She didn't wait till he refused the descent, but spurred him into the icy waters, where the swirling current lifted her sometimes from the saddle, and only the strength and sure-footedness of Young Nick brought them safely in one last mad scramble up the slippery bank beyond.

All the way she had no other fear than that she would be too late. Surely not so long as this could Judy hold out. When at last she arrived at the little log station house at Badger, she did not dismount, but managed to keep Young Nick before the door until she had roused them and heard her message telephoned to the new doctor at Wenham, three miles down the track.

"Tell him if he don't git thar soon—soon!—hit'll be no use to come."

Then she gave Young Nick his head.

Faster even than they had come was their flying ride back. "If it had ha' been ary other mule we wouldn't ha' been thar yit," she said once to herself, in a little rush of gratitude to the strong beast beneath her.

BUT, in the very sight of home, Young Nick took his revenge—perhaps because it was his last chance, or because the spell of the night was wearing off. Swerving to avoid the last plunge into the stream, he freed himself from the tangle of bushes with one mad spring that unseated Nance and hurled her against the sharp rocks of the bank. Then, after a few vicious kicks, he cleared the stream with one flying leap, and dashed on home.

And thus it happened that the new doctor at Wenham,—who had wondered sometimes why he had ever come to the wilderness,—answering the call posthaste, came just in the nick of time to save two women's lives. But, of those two unborn lives, one had been crushed forever, out there in the cold of the dawn.

For days Nance lay perilously ill. Delirium succeeded delirium. But at last there came a day when, despite the fever still burning in her cheeks, she opened her eyes and took cognizance of life again. Memory stirred within her. Painfully she tried to gather up the lost threads of thought. Between this present moment and whatever lay behind it there was a wall, a dark, impenetrable wall of agony and pain. Then the wall became a veil, thin, diaphanous, sheer; but still she could not pierce it. The effort was more torturing than the pain itself.

THEN suddenly, as her glance wandered about the room, the miracle was granted. Sitting by the fire, her face as white and sweet as a bent lily, Judy sat nursing her baby, Just one minute Nance gazed at the picture, and then the past was hors again—but not quite.

"Whar's—whar's—?" she cried piteously.

"Nance!" Judy cried, coming over to her. "Air ye back to yerself?"

But Nance's eyes were on the little creature in her arms.

"Whar's—whar's—?" she tried again to ask, lifting her beseeching eyes to Judy. But Judy understood.

"Hit lost hits life fer this un," she answered tenderly.

Tears gathered in Nance's eyes and rolled down her wasted cheeks. In her heart there was a new ache of loneliness, a desolation so keen it seemed her heart would break.

Then to Judy was inspiration granted. Bending over, she laid the baby in Nance's arms, and smiled to see his little fingers close on hers.

"Hit's ourn," she whispered. "Don't ye see? Yourn an' mine together."

Lajoie, the Star and the Farmer

By BILLY EVANS

"THEY say this is my last year in the big league," remarked Napoleon Lajoie to me, just prior to his start for the South to begin training. "Perhaps' it is, but a lot of people have been saying that about me for the last ten years, and I am still plugging along. If 1916 is my last, it comes without a pang of regret, for baseball has been exceedingly kind to me. I love the baseball diamond in the summer, but I love the old farm equally well in the winter. It will be the simple life for the entire year when I finally get out of baseball."

For twenty years—about three times the length of the career of the average big-league player—Larry Lajoie has basked in the spotlight of popularity: Despite the fact that no player was ever idolized more than the big Frenchman, it in no way affected him.

He's Popular with His Neighbors

ON a well stocked little farm in the village of South Euclid, fifteen miles from Cleveland, resides the great Napoleon Lajoie. For the last five or six winters Larry has lived the life of the typical farmer; and he gives much credit to the simple life of the farm for his success on the ball field.

The other inhabitants of South Euclid get a great deal of pride out of the fact that Lajoie, is one of them. He is no less popular in his home village than he has always been. in the various cities of the American League circuit. Every youngster in the place is a strong admirer of Larry. He knows most of them by their first names.

The present season marks Lajoie's twenty-first year as a big-league star. From his very entry into the game in 1896 with the Philadelphia club of the American League, he attracted widespread attention. Very few players who were in the game then remain now in harness. He is the only one of the players with the American League at the start who is still in active service.

Most of the good things have come to Lajoie in a baseball way, but he has had two disappointments. After realizing his ambition to become a manager, he failed to achieve his fondest hope—the winning of a pennant, with its right to take part in the World's Series. In 1908 Larry came closest to realizing his goal, the Cleveland club losing to Detroit by the `scant margin of half a game. Failure to win that year was a severe setback to the big Frenchman. It took a great deal of the joy out of life—in fact, just about put an end to his managerial career; for the following year he retired as head of the Cleveland club to go back to the ranks as a private.

"To be the manager of a big-league club was once the height of my ambition," he says. "I achieved it, had my fling at the reins for about five years, and was glad then to pass it up and forget I ever was a manager. A manager, you know, is measured by one standard—success. He is immense if he wins, and a dub

[photograph]

If you want to hold your place in the game long after every one else your age is down and out, spend six months of the year amid the cows and chickens—that's Lajoie's formula.

if he loses. I have been through the mill, and I know from experience. I have enjoyed all the sensations and endured all the troubles. Now that it is all over, I seriously question whether my career at the head of the club was worth while. I feel that it just cut my playing career by about five years." "Who is the greatest pitcher you ever batted against, Larry?" I asked.

"I suppose you figure that question would set me to thinking, but it doesn't. I have batted against a great many wonderful pitchers in the last twenty years, but I have never in all that time faced a man who was harder for me to hit than Walter Johnson. I regard the star of the Washington team as by far the greatest pitcher I have ever faced. I know such a statement will cause considerable discussion, for National League adherents of the present time will point to Mathewson and Alexander as superior to Johnson. Unfortunately, I have never batted against either of these two pitchers. But I have seen them pitch, " and have watched them closely; and, while I have the greatest admiration in the world for the marvelous ability they possess, still I say without the slightest hesitation that I would prefer hitting against either of them to Johnson."

The Greatest Pitchers Lajoie Has Faced

HERE is the way Lajoie places the greatest pitchers he has faced during his score of years in the majors, during which time he has piled up a batting average of considerably better than .300:

                   
Walter Johnson 
Joe Wood 
Rube Waddell 
Addle Joss 
Ed Walsh 
Bill Donovan 
Eddie Plank 
Vean Gregg 
Jack Chesbro 
Chief Bender 
Jimmy McJames 
Virgil Garvin 
Joe Meekin 
Cy Young 
Kid Nichols 
Clarke Griffith 
Jimmy Callahan 
Jack Taylor 
Doc White 

"What one thing about the game has appealed most to you?" I asked Larry.

"The honesty of the sport," was his immediate reply. "The spirit of the game never dies. A player may become temporarily disgruntled because of conditions that exist on the team of which he is a member; but he never tires of the sport. That is often the reason a player takes a new lease on life when sent to some other club. Baseball is the cleanest of professional sports. The absence of crookedness is due to the loyalty each man has for the game. In the twenty years I have been connected with the game I have seen hundreds of players come and go. In a great many cases, players believed their failure was due to reasons over which they had no control, yet never has a player dropped from the ranks said one single word about the honesty of the game. There could be no greater tribute to the sport. In conclusion, let me say that I like my base hits; but just now I like the cows and chickens and the simple life much better."


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Getting a Fresh Start at Forty-Six

As told to GEORGE BARTON

CAN a man make a fresh start, with any hope of success, at the age of forty-six?

It all depends upon the woman. I don't pretend to say that a man can not come back himself, without the assistance of a devoted wife; but I am perfectly satisfied that I would not if it had not been for the encouragement and the constant coöperation of Jane.

She rooted for me from the start—never ceased for a second until I had won the fight. If she had been of the nagging kind,—the kind that forever reminds a man of his faults and failings, the kind that reproaches him the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night,—well, I should not have any story to tell.

The day before my-forty-sixth birthday the firm with which I had been connected for sixteen years suddenly failed. The causes of the failure are neither here nor there. But, when I had passed middle life, I found myself thrown on the world, without a trade or a profession, and with no prospect of securing employment with anything like so remunerative a return as that which I had enjoyed for so many years. My salary was $1800 a year. To this I had added $600 by supervising the bookkeeping for a subsidiary concern. But I am sorry to say that I had not saved anything worth talking about.

I went home on the night of the crash and talked it over in a very deliberate way with Jane. She is such a sensible woman that the mere fact of talking with her seemed to solve half of our trouble. We took account of stock, and the first move was to see how much we could cut off the cost of our living.

To begin with, we realized that we would have to get cheaper house rent. Forty dollars a month was too much for a man without a job. We decided to take a modest house in a small city near by. It had a population of twenty thousand, and I knew that I could secure employment there as well as I could in a big city, and at the same time cut our rent in half. Jane immediately put down $240 a year as already saved. I had an endowment insurance policy for five thousand dollars. I made an arrangement by which I got a paid-up policy for three thousand dollars and relieved myself of further payments. This meant a saving of $220 a year on the premium I had been paying annually.

We had two children: Frank, sixteen years old, and Ethel, ten. Frank was attending a military academy which cost me $500 a year. We decided not to send him back for the next term. Ethel had been going to a boarding-school that cost $300 a year. We resolved to send her instead to a public school.

By this process we succeeded in cutting off about a thousand dollars a year in expense.

In less than ten days after the crash, we had moved to the smaller city, renting a house at twenty dollars a month. I had $585 coming to me from a building association, and this we looked upon as the foundation of our future fortune. We let Frank take a business course for $60. I decided to cultivate a little vegetable patch. We had sufficient ground for this, and I thought that it would be a diversion as well as a means of reducing the cost of our table. All the while I had in my mind that as soon as we were settled I would secure employment of some kind, even if it paid but ten or twelve dollars a week.

I Go into Real Estate

WE had scarcely been settled in our new home when I noticed a yellow sign on a small house a few blocks away. It was the notice of a sheriff's sale which was to take place the next day. Some of the neighbors—who were very friendly—informed me that the house, would he sacrificed, and that, if any one could afford a small outlay for a little while it would be sure to be profitable. I learned that the property carried a mortgage for $800. I talked with Jane, and the next morning bought it in at $900. I made sure, of course, that the mortgage of $800 would stand. Consequently, I had only $100 to pay.

The exterior of the house looked shabby, but it was only for the want of a coat of paint. I made a deal with a painter to do up the front for fifty dollars. The rough part in the rear and on the sides I did myself. Then Jane and I together cleaned the whole house; and spent about thirty dollars in repapering the rooms. I put a sign on the house, and also spent a dollar in advertising it in the local paper. In less than a week after the house had been put in condition, I sold it for $1100, clearing a profit of $100.

Jane took thirty dollars of her share of the profit and bought a second-hand typewriter. Before our marriage she had been an expert stenographer and typist. After the machine arrived there was a great deal of letter-writing, and before many weeks had gone by Jane had secured a list of authors and was soliciting the work of typing their manuscripts. Frank helped her in this in his idle hours, and in less than two weeks the firm of Jane & Frank, as she laughingly called it, had as much work as they could manage. I protested against this; but she insisted that she did not intend to be a drone in the beehive.

Jane was the treasurer of our little corporation. I concerned myself with the income, but paid little attention to the outgo. At the end of six months she told me that, with the assistance of Frank, she had made enough to pay the rent and clothe the children. Then Frank got a job as typewriter and bookkeeper for a small coal dealer at seven dollars a week. At the end of the first year we found that we had made a comfortable living and had $180 in the bank, and that we had paid off a number of small claims which had accumulated during our last year in the city.

I had not hunted a position, after all. Encouraged by my profit of a hundred dollars, on the house bought, I opened a little office and went into the real estate business. I never felt so happy in all my life. The sensation of being my own boss was overwhelming.

Business gradually increased. I became a notary public and took depositions for all sorts of people at fifty cents each. I sold fire insurance too, and between the various odds and ends managed to fill out each working day. Of course, I had one or two setbacks.

I was always on the alert for bargains in real estate. There was a big house on the main street which had cost something like $10,000. It had depreciated in value and was being offered for $6500. I looked it over and made an offer of $6000 for the property, with the understanding that $5500 could remain on mortgage. My intention was to fix it up a bit and then sell it quickly on a small profit. I put it in a presentable condition, but I could not get a purchaser. Two, three, four, six months went by, and I began to feel that the interest would make a serious hole in my other earnings. At that critical juncture I received an offer of $5800 for it. That meant a loss of two hundred dollars to me, but I sold it. I believe there is nothing so expensive as a white elephant.

For some time after that I stuck closely to the legitimate work of a real estate man, which is to rent, exchange, buy, and sell houses for other people; but I was ambitious just the same, and kept my eyes open. A large store on the main street of the town had been idle for more than a year. The rent was only fifty dollars a month, but no one who rented the property seemed to be able to make the place go. The fact is, it was too big for ordinary purposes.

I went to the owner one day and told him that if he would spend a thousand dollars on improvements and give me charge of the store I would rent it for him to advantage in less than sixty days. I explained my plans in detail, and he told me to go ahead. I was my own architect and made my own plans, and after I had finished them I got a contractor, who made two moderate sized stores out of the one big store, and fitted it up with attractive bulk windows. The paint was hardly dry on the new front when I rented each of the stores for thirty dollars a month.

My Prospects at Fifty

AT the end of two years I had eighty houses under my charge, and all the while I dabbled in real estate myself. But I had several hard and fast rules that aided me very much in my undertakings. To begin with, I bought only very small houses. Usually I got them in a state of poor repair, and always bought them at a sacrifice. I put them in condition at a small expenditure of money, and sold them at a small profit at the earliest moment.

I recently celebrated my fiftieth birthday. We own the house we live in; we are all in splendid health; I have a thousand dollars in the bank; and, best of all, I know that I am no longer dependent on the whim of any employer.

The Three Smallest Churches in the World

Photographs by Paul Thompson

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WHEN King Edward—then the Prince of Wales—came to America, he wanted to do three things. One of them was to "sit in a pew in the back of Plymouth Church and hear Henry Ward Beecher preach."

Standing on Brooklyn Bridge and looking out over Brooklyn, one may count fifty church spires: Plymouth Church, where Beecher preached; the Church of the Pilgrims a few blocks away, in which the great voice of Richard Salter Storrs thundered; the Presbyterian Church founded by Theodore Cuyler and ministered to by him throughout his life—and dozens of others.

But one would have to have a spy-glass of powerful lens to pick out the three churches shown above. Yet these are also in Brooklyn—or rather were, for one of them since these pictures were made has been blown down, and another has given way to an apartment building. They all stood within a half mile of one another—the African Methodist Espicopal Church, with nineteen members; the Apostolic Church, which could on a pinch seat fifty persons; and the Primitive Methodist Church, that might possibly do as well.

Strange, when you come to think of it, how many different kinds of churches have grown up, all out of the same Bible. There are scores of country towns with half a dozen different denominations, all weak and dwindling, where there should be only one strong, vigorous church. When will the churches make a real, businesslike effort at union? When will they discard the spirit of the old lady who confessed: "Our church isn't getting on very well; but, praise the Lord, the Baptists aren't doing any better."


everyweek Page 9Page 9

Trousers à la Mode

[photograph]

Photograph by Gertrude A. Brugman.

OUR great-grandmothers used to tell our grandmothers, "Young ladies have no limbs. Their feet are pinned to the bottom ruffles of their pantalettes." It naturally followed that no young lady or even little girl could bark her shin or bump her knee, because you can't hurt what doesn't exist. That system must have saved everybody a lot of pain. Nowadays all is changed. "Ouch," says Miss Beatrice Machin frankly and freely when she meets up with a rocker of the rocking-chair in the dark; but she maintains that the comfort of trousers for home wear more than makes up for an occasional black-and-blue spot.

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Photograph by Gertrude A. Brugman.

SKIRTS, of course, were originally wished on women so that a soldier, a long way off, could tell a woman from a man and not shoot her. But as the potting of women and children has become one of the favorite pastimes in the present war, there is now no reason for skirts. Especially when you're riding a motor-cycle from Chicago to New York, says Miss Vippella Dolores.

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Photograph by Gertrude A. Brugman.

MISS ARNA DECK got caught one muddy day with a busted tire, and had to get out, in her newest striped sport skirt, to fix it. Next day she called up her modiste and ordered "something simple in overalls." Her aunts fear that it makes her a trifle conspicuous; but a girl with a ten thousand dollar smile and the title of the daredevil of the movies, has to get used to a little attention.

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Photograph by Moody.

WHAT is home to Miss Octavia Ellis? Answer, the one place, except Sunday school, where she must wear skirts. She escapes this affliction on the stage by playing boys' parts—and playing them very well, Eddie, thank you. "I have grown so used to trousers that I hate to go back to skirts," says Miss Ellis sadly; "but there is the matter of convention, and convention sways in my home."

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Photograph by Gertrude A. Brugman

MISS CLELAND BACON, to quote her own words, "doesn't feel she does convention any harm when she wears trousers." "Wear skirts for skating?" she cries. "In the north you don't hear of half so many accidents, because there they never skate in skirts. And I've never heard a bit of scandal about a single Eskimo lady, either." Miss Bacon wears a warm flannel shirt, a white sweater, and knickerbockers, when she appears at an outdoor skating rink in New York City.

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Photograph from M. Macbeth.

SHE has gone back to skirts. This extraordinary woman tried trousers only once. When she climbed Mount Tremblant, the highest peak in the Laurentian Mountains, she borrowed a pair from a nice young man at the hotel. She was gone on the mountain sixteen hours. When she returned she sent a note to the young man as follows: "Thank you: never again."

[photograph]

Photograph by Gertrude A. Brugman

WHY must a lady be compelled to sweep a room twice—once with a broom and once with a heavy skirt? Why, indeed. "Trousers are so much more convenient and sanitary," argues Mrs. A. C. McKinnon, and we second the motion.


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What They Would Have Been If They Hadn't Been What They Are

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THINK of it. They are actresses. People applaud them, and copy their clothes. They have their pictures in so many papers they don't care anything about it. They get a proposal a week. And yet—they want to be something else. Maud Fealy has played every part ever played in stock; but she yearns to be a newspaper woman, and go prowling around the slums, or interviewing millionaires about their dead wife's love for them. Foolish, foolish girl, Maud. What do you know about our newspaper business—you who get three square meals every day?

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MISS MABEL TALIAFERRO didn't have a thing to say about the choice of her career, and so she became an actress instead of an architect. This crisis deciding her whole future came at the age of two, so that you can't blame her for not being firm in her plans. But, though she pays the rent with the proceeds of "Polly of the Circus," she did plan her mother's hotel at Long Beach with such a knack that a Chicago firm offered her a job as consulting architect.

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"DO, re, mi, fa, sot, la, si, do," played Kathleen MacDonnell on her piano. She was going to be a great musician. But music lessons cost a lot and the MacDonnells were poor. And one day she discovered that she could get a job on the stage that would pay the bills. And so no more do, re, mi, but plenty of up-and-coming stage stuff, such as that pleasant trifle this year where she plays the part of a woman who finds her baby is black. We hope the young lady who practises in the flat below us will read this note about Kathleen.

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ONCE Julia Dean played the part of a trained nurse. She played it so well that a terrible conclusion came to her. She was not intended to be an actress at all, but a real nurse. She hail gone on the stage when she was sixteen, ignorant as all sweet persons of sixteen are of their true aims in life. Nat Goodwin gave her her first chance. "She isn't beautiful, but she can act," he said. Don't you cry, Julia; even if you can't be a real nurse and give castor oil, you can draw ten times as much salary. But what is money to a thwarted life?

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ROBERT EDESON took a year at Brooklyn Medical College, but his father said: "We need all the live ones we can get to fill up the theaters, Bob. Give 'em a chance for their lives; keep out of the doctor business." Robert wept a little at the stern parent's command, but we can tell him right now that he ought to thank his kind old father. It's much pleasanter to hear the cheers of the audience at 12:30 A. M. than it is to get this over the telephone: "That you, Doc? Well, the baby's swallowed the key to my automobile, and I want to start on a trip to-morrow. Come right over."


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MISS JOSEPHINE VICTOR wants to be a great author, like Amélie Rives (Princess Troubetzkoy) or Jess Willard (champion). One day she wrote a story about the East Side in New York—and it was published. That was a great moment for Miss Victor. Could it be possible that her life too was started in the wrong line, like the poet's. Mr. Masefield's, who started to be a bartender? Here you see Miss Victor writing what she says is the great American short story. Send it to us when finished, Josephine; and don't forget to inclose return stamps.

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BEFORE the age of kewpies the Gibson Girl was the fashion. And the Gibson girl was Jobyna Howland. Jobyna comes from Denver, Colorado, and is six feet two in her lisles. She wanted to be, and still wants to be, a model and have her soul interpreted by artists. But then cubism came in; and what self-respecting woman would trust her soul to a cubist artist? With dignity, therefore, Miss Howland withdrew to the stage, devoting her leisure to writing articles on "How the Tall Woman Should Dress." (See picture.)

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WHEN Marguerite Leslie isn't acting she is busy pulling carpet tacks or painting the kitchen chairs the latest tint in orange. For Miss Leslie wants to be an interior decorator just as earnestly as any Vassar girl who wins the algebra prize wants a career. Miss Leslie buys things—those actresses never have to save. She buys cabinets for $3000, and French marquetry that she won't tell the price of, and she hasn't a single stage prop in her front parlor.

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NOW that even Harry Thaw finds our divorce laws altogether too lenient, Miss Gladys Hanson thinks somebody ought to look into them. Miss Hanson would have done it herself, only she is so beautiful that she had to go on the stage. Whenever she gets a chance she goes to court—she just yearned to be a lawyer—and has come to the conclusion that lawyers and actresses are very much alike. She doesn't carry her point, however, so far as to say that any good lawyer would make a good chorus girl.


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How Big Is Your Horizon?

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© Underwood & Underwood.

IN 1833 John Phillips found Ohio too effete for his pioneer spirit. So, with his sons and daughters and their wives and husbands and sisters and cousins and aunts,—67 strong, all told,—he set out for what is now Minnesota. Disease did for all but forty-six the first winter; then, one night, the Sioux did for the rest. No one was left to tell the story of John Phillips' bravery. But because his horizon was big, the country that he sought to settle is to-day "the bread-basket of the world."

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© Aimé Dupont

HERE'S another kind of horizon. It happens to be Lou Tellegen's. Lou is believed by many people to be the handsomest man on the stage. He loved Geraldine Farrar, it is said, from the moment he first laid eyes on her, singing Butterfly in the opera. A veritable Verdun was Geraldine; but, one by one, her defenses were leveled, and one day last February she became Mrs. Lou. Which proves that one may attain his horizon ultimately, if one be persevering.

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© Underwood & Underwood.

PROFESSOR WILLIAM GIBNEY PRATT claims that enough sunlight goes to waste every year on the great American desert to stoke and heat the United States for twice that period; and he means to capture, rope, and brand that force. "All the coal in the world will be exhausted in about 200 years," he says, "and then electricity and sunlight will come into their own." It's a big dream. Some one has to have dreams like that—or we would still be chewing bones in a dark cave.

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Photograph by Ralph Osborne.

GRUB-STAKED, healthy, and optimistic, Peter Frobisher set out to cross the Sierra range in '41. He had a hunch that there was gold behind it. For eight years Gold Pete's horizon lured him on. He lived on berries and roots. Bears and wolves tracked him. But always he told himself that when he came to the most distant range there would be gold. There was. It was then '49. And every one knows what happened in '49.

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Photograph by Ralph Osborne.

IN 1543 Don Sol de Mendota of Seville said "Good-by, dear; see you shortly," and disappeared for five years. First a storm carried away his mast and rudder; then he floated around in the Sargasso Sea for two years. Scurvy decimated his crew; the survivors mutinied or went mad. But just before the Don and his one remaining sailor gave up the ghost, he struck the Philippines, and took them in the name of Spain.

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Photograph by Brown Brothers.

BOORGM'STER MINUIT, who bought Manhattan Island from the Indians for $24, would one-step in his grave if he could see this horizon. Unlike other horizons, this one goes up in the clouds instead of lying comfortably under them—the reason being that it serves some 7,000,000 persons all living within a twenty-mile radius. You probably wonder why your ancestors weren't on the job when New York was being sold for $24; and your descendants will wonder just as much what you were doing when the big chances of to-day were going by.

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© A. Fiala.

"IF I don't come back," wrote brave Sir John Franklin to his friend Van Wrangell, when he started out on his last voyage in search of a northwest passage to the Indies, "look for my spirit at the North Pole cruising in high revel with a goodlie company." When the pole was still 700 miles away the arctic night overtook Sir John; and, stalked by starvation and tortured by cold, he settled down to wait until day broke ten months later. Driven mad by the darkness, his men slew one another. Some lost ears, feet, and hands by freezing. Eskimos stole their stores. Fuel gave out. They sickened through eating whale oil and walrus blubber. Before the night had lifted, all had perished. Sixty years later Peary, the American, avenged Sir John and those who had gone before when he made that terrible region come through with its secret. To what end? None—save that it might be said of him that he had stood on the axis of the world. For, strange to relate, this has been a horizon of brave men since Pytheas the Greek surmised centuries ago that the world was round.


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On the Side With Silas

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by F. Vaux Wilson

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"It's a crazy-actin', wild-eyed, pantin' crowd, pushin' people into the gutters and doorways, like a thunder-storm scatterin' a Sunday-school picnic."

AFTER all, one of the best points about real life is that every now and then the schedule goes on the blink and things happen foolish and unexpected. Such as this batty affair I got mixed up in, the other noon.

I'd been around to my fav'rite chophouse for lunch—just a triflin' little snack consistin' of a slab of shad roe decorated with strips of crisp bacon and a spray of water-cress, a fat baked potato snuggled up against it, with a hunk of rhubarb pie as a chaser. And, if you're askin' me, that's about as fine as they come, no matter who you are. I remarked as much to Fritz as I shoved over the tip, and he agreed with me cordial. Yes; with such paltry nourishment as that, I felt I could struggle through until dinner-time without goin' faint.

Maybe that's why Forty-second Street looked so calm and peaceful as I drifted back to the Physical Culture Studio. As a matter of fact, I expect it wasn't anything of the kind, for the cross-town traffic was snarled up, a gang of wreckers was tearin' the front off a five-story buildin' in the middle of the block, pavin' contractors had a cement-mixer goin' a little further on, and the one o'clock rush back to the offices was in full swing. But I was serene and contented, especially under my belt, and I didn't notice anything but the sunshine.

A few doors from the Studio entrance I stopped to rubber in at a show window. Nothing but the same old display of electric irons and toasters that I've passed every day for months; but I hung up and gawped at it interested. If they'd had an outside barker they might have sold me 'most anything.

Then, all of a sudden, I looks up and sees this young mob surgin' down on me from Sixth Avenue way. Seemed to have oozed up through the sidewalk gratin's or been dropped off the roofs. I'd take oath there wasn't anything of the kind in sight a minute before.

But here was a bunch of men and boys swarmin' around, wavin' their arms, pushin', kickin', diggin' in with their elbows, and shoutin' frantic. It's a crazy-actin', wild-eyed, pantin' crowd, that sways and swings and revolves on itself, but all the time surges along, sweepin' the ordinary foot traffic one side, brushin' people into the gutters and doorways, like a thunderstorm scatterin' a Sunday-school picnic.

FIRST off I couldn't make anything out of it at all; but finally I spots this short-legged old gent in the gray suit and gray felt hat who seems to be leadin' the bunch. That is, he was in front, but walkin' backwards and sort of pushin' away them that was nearest to him.

A rummy-lookin' crowd it is, with hardly a clean shave or a fresh collar in the lot; but they all seemed greatly worked up over something or other.

"Hey, old sport!" a tall, lanky gink was shoutin'. "I didn't git one. You skipped me." "Gimme one, gimme one, mister!" yells another; and so on, until you could hardly hear yourself think.

And, the first thing I knew, the old gent has backed square into me, so solid I had to grab him by the shoulders to keep both of us from goin' down; and the next minute we're surrounded with dirty paws stretched out at us from all sides and clawin' our coat sleeves' promiscuous.

As the old boy turns to see who's sharin' the center of the stage with him, I gets a better look; and, while he's a perfect stranger, there's something about his face—maybe that mildly worried look in his gray blue eyes—that I kind of liked. Anyway, I decides offhand that I'm shinnyin' on his side.

"Want any help?" says I.

"Thank you," says he; "I—I would like to get out of this, if I can."

"Then stick close to me and drift along a few doors," says I. "That's it! Let 'em push. Here we are. Now! Duck behind and into this hallway. In you go!"

There's a grand howl too, when the old chap slips into the entrance to the Studio and the mob finds me blockin' the door. They don't hold any caucus or council of war, but proceeds to try rushin' me off my feet. But say, I ain't fond of actin' as door-mat in a place where I'm payin' rent. Not while my elbows are free. The next I knew, some of the leaders was wabblin' groggy on their hands and knees in front of the doorway, and the general ambition to walk over me sort of slackens.

"Sorry to mess up any of you enterprisin' hobos," says I, "but you shouldn't crowd in so enthusiastic. Now, I move you that this mass meetin' adjourn."

"Ah, send out the old geezer!" shouts some one from the far edge of the bunch. "Where's the old guy with the dollar bills?"

"Come in closer and you'll get the answer to that," says I. "Just push up within arm's length. Ah, come along!"

Maybe I wasn't cordial enough. Anyway, nobody seemed anxious to get in range, and when I steps out on the sidewalk to see if there ain't a cop within hail they scuttles off like so many rats.

IN the hallway I finds the old boy leanin' sort of limp against the wall, with one band to his side.

"Hello!" says I. "Feelin' a bit fluttery after the excitement?"

"It—it's nothing," says he. "My—my heart, you know. Pounding a little."

"Better come up to the Studio until it slows down," says I. "Here; lemme steady you. That's it. Easy does it."

While he's sippin' a glass of water and gettin' his blood pump regulated, I sizes him up curious. First off, I had him placed in the prosperous jay class—maybe a country banker, or owner of the big shingle works or a string of brick-yards. But somehow that don't fit, exactly. For one thing, there's too deep a tan on his neck and the lower half of his face—the sort of color you find on these old boys who spend their winters on Southern golf courses. Then I spots the custom-made shoes and the manicured finger-nails, and I know he must be a plute of some kind.

MEANWHILE he's been gazin' around, them calm, steady eyes of his travelin' from the pictures on the wall to the letter- in' on the office door.

"Yes," says I. "That's me—Professor McCabe."

"Shorty, eh?" says he. "I remember now. I used to follow ring events when I wasn't too busy. I was in St. Louis the night you won the belt."

"Well, well!" says I. "Then we're almost acquainted."

"I'm Silas Rapp," says he, "of Rapp & Baker."

"Oh!" says I. "Rapp & Baker ranges, found in a million homes?"

He chuckles easy and nods. "They were good ranges when we made 'em," says he. "I can't say as much for the ones the trust is turning out to-day—fancier, maybe, with more nickel and frills. But we tried to make a stove that would cook things and last a life-time—not a kitchen ornament. I suppose I shouldn't find fault, though."

"Your dividends jumping every year, eh?" I suggests.

"It's scandalous, the money we're making," he says. "We don't know how to spend it. Look at Baker—with a Scotch castle! Bores him to death, you know. I'm not much better, though."

"Your fad is distributin' dollar bills to the multitude and gettin' yourself mobbed, is it?" says I.

Silas drops his chin sheepish.

"I don't quite understand yet how it happened," says he. "I've always felt sorry for those poor fellows on the park benches. To-day I took a sudden notion to help them. It seemed easy enough. I got a lot of ones from the bank, and went at it. Thought I was doing the job very quietly, too. Why, some of them were sound. asleep when I tucked the folded bills into their hands, and—"

"For the love of Pete!" says I. "Is that the way you did it? No wonder you stirred up the panhandlers. Why don't you know you can block Broadway just by startin' to distribute samples of tooth paste or chewing gum? But openin' up a free kale dispensary in Bryant Park! Say, Mr. Rapp, you don't look as nutty as that Perfectly sober too, I judge?"

That brings an uneasy squirm out of Silas, and he tints up some under the eyes.

"Then," says he, smilin' sarcastic, "a man who tries in his own way to help others is either drunk or insane, is he? It—it's a queer world."

"Now you've said a mouthful," says I. "Queer's the word. And the funny thing is that so few of us suspicion we're doin' our part to make it so. You and me, for instance."

If he'd been one of these chesty, touchy plutes that expects you to cross yourself every time they tap their check-books, our little confab would have ended right there, and likely as not he'd have gone out luggin' a grouch. I'd been willin', too.

But Silas Rapp ain't that kind. He's jolted, I can see. After a second, though, he gets a grip on himself and shoots over


a shrewd, good-natured glance. After he's cut the end off a long, slim cigar, he opens up.

"McCabe," says he, "you've done me a good turn, a mighty good turn. I appreciate it. But I must say that I still consider myself neither foolish nor crazy. It's merely this: I have a lot more money than I need. I wanted to share a little of it with those unfortunates who do need it so badly. Now, in heaven's name, why shouldn't I?"

"Because they're bums, most of 'em," says I, "and they don't deserve help."

Silas rocks his head vigorous.

"No," says he. "You're wrong. No human being ever fell so low that he didn't deserve to be helped up. Besides, it isn't fair to call a man a bum just because you find him sitting on a park bench. I know, because I've been there."

"Ah, go on!" says I. "You?"

HE stops to light the slim cigar, and gazes awhile at the smoke he puffs toward the ceiling.

"It was in Detroit," says he, "nearly forty years ago. I'd been working in a little foundry up in Alpena, and I had come down to the big city to make my fortune by selling a patent stove-damper that I had thought out. I was a raw, stupid-looking country boy. I suppose I looked even more stupid than I really was, for the city rather dazed me. Anyway, no one would let me explain about my new damper. They wouldn't give me a job in the pattern shops, either. So I sat on a park bench for two days and nights, hungry and discouraged."

"Until some one came along and slipped you a dollar?" I suggests.

"I wish some one had," says he. "It wouldn't have taken me so long to find out that the tooth-and-nail theory of life ought to be left to the beasts. No; I could have starved right there in public quite undisturbed. But I didn't. When I got desperate enough, I went back to a pattern shop where I had been all but thrown out, and offered to work for half pay. They fired an old fellow who'd been with them for years and gave me his place. I felt a little mean about it at the time, but I soon forgot. I was mighty busy. Evenings I whittled away at a model of my damper, and I perfected the Rapp oven.

"When I had saved up enough to take out patents on the whole thing, I went to a rival concern and made a deal with them to put it on the market. Baker was foreman there. He saw the possibilities of the Rapp range at once, and talked over the directors. It was Baker, too, who advised me to take my pay in shares instead of cash. So I divided with him. We put our dividends back into stock. Inside of ten years we had control and were starting out on that campaign of ours—Rapp & Baker Ranges in a Million Homes.' Well, we did it, and more. And here I am."

"Yes," says I; "here you are, almost creatin' a riot because you don't know how to spend your money."

"I suppose you could tell me just how it ought to be done?" says he.

"I don't know anything easier," says I. "Seems to me I'd hunt up all' my relations and give 'em a good time."

Silas hunches his shoulders.

"I tried that," says he. "Three summers ago I got them all together—nearly thirty of 'em—at my big Michigan farm on the lake shore. I built a twenty-room annex on to the house especially to accommodate 'em, bought five automobiles and half a dozen motor-boats, laid out tennis courts and croquet grounds, and hired an orchestra for the season.

"But it didn't work. Not one of 'em was satisfied. Cousin Kate left because Cousin Emma had a private bath and she didn't. Uncle Tom's boys scrapped with Aunt May's youngsters. The young folks wanted to dance all night, and the old people wanted the place quiet after nine o'clock. Every one bossed the servants. until half of 'em quit. Then my twin nephews came down with measles, and there was a grand howl to have them sent away.

"Before the season was over I was half crazy. Never again! I had the annex torn down, and I've arranged a family pension list which bars visiting. No more family reunions for me, thank you. Living with sister Sarah is bad enough. I've sort of got used to her, though. You see, since Mrs. Rapp died, she—well, Sarah has kind of taken me in charge."

"An old maid, is she?" I asks.

"Double and twisted," says Silas. "Set in her ways, too. Doesn't believe in private charity, for one thing. Wouldn't she raise a row about this, though, if she knew! So whenever I do anything of the kind it's on the quiet. That's why I slipped into town to-day without letting her know. You see, I wanted to look up something I started a couple of weeks ago. It's a little odd, but I think I've found a way to be of help to a lot of people. I—I'd like to tell you about it, McCabe."

"Shoot," says I.

Well, it seems he'd run across an ex-chauffeur of his who was driving a motor-truck for a wholesale house and living over on the East Side with his fam'ly—a fellow by the name of Jenkins. Bright, enterprisin' chap, accordin' to Silas. He'd organized some sort of club over there, kind of an independent Cooper Union on a small scale, where they had speeches and lectures and so on. But all they could afford to hire was a hall over a beer saloon, and the speakin' was interrupted by waiters takin' orders.

"So I leased an old dance-hall," says Silas, "had it fitted up a little, and paid the rent for a year in advance. Anonymously, you understand. Even Jenkins doesn't know who did it. But it's free for them to use seven days in the week. I hear they're having some sort of meeting there this afternoon—helpful addresses to the unemployed, I believe. I thought I'd like to drop around and see how the scheme is working out. I hate sneaking in alone, though. Won't you come along, too?"

Well, I wasn't crazy about it, but he urged so hard that I went. And say, Silas had done the thing up in good shape—

[illustration]

"'You can talk about the brotherhood of man until you're black in the face, but it won't get you anywhere. It's a nice, pleasant, silly dream.'"

seats for several hundred, reg'lar orchestra chairs; a big speakers' platform; plenty of flag decorations; and a sign over the door announcin' that this was "The East Side Public Forum, Admission Free."

THE place was about half full when we wandered in. A short, squatty gent with a heavy crop of grizzly gray hair was holdin' forth on the brotherhood of man or some guff like that. It was kind of a vague, ramblin' talk, and he wasn't holdin' the crowd very well, when a tall, dark- eyed younger man walks out with a watch in his hand. Silas nudges me.

"That's Jenkins," says he. "Looks as if he was running the show."

He was, too. He proceeds to choke off the brotherhood-of-man guy neat and prompt, sayin' there was other speakers waitin', and then he launches out on a few remarks of his own. He starts in mild enough, but he soon begins shootin' it over hot and spicy and wakin' up the audience.

"You can talk about the brotherhood of man," says he, "until you're black in the face, but it won't get you anywhere. It's a nice, pleasant, silly dream. If you think it will work, ask John D. Rockefeller to join you. Ask any capitalist. That's what's the matter with this country—too many millionaires. We have to make 'em and support 'em, you and I. We have to work our souls out to build up their great fortunes, to give 'em palaces to live in. And they don't care a hoot for us, not one of 'em. They hardly know we exist.

"Big or little, they're all the same. They've got us chained down by their trusts, and if we don't keep on working for 'em they shoot us, or put us in jail, or let us starve. They own the judges and the legislatures and the army. That's their idea of a perfectly good brother- hood. I'm not telling you things I've read. I've been the slave of a capitalist myself. Silas Rapp, if you want to know—Rapp, the stove king. What's he got to do with you, eh? Why, every time your wife cooks dinner on the kitchen range you're paying tribute to Silas Rapp. And he's a greedy, selfish, soulless old wretch who has ground his millions out of our working people without caring whether they—"

"Say," I whispers to Silas, "your friend seems to be handin' it to you kind of rough. Want to hear the rest?"

"No," says Silas, edgin' toward the aisle. "I—I think I've heard enough."

SEEMS sort of stunned and dazed, Silas does; he don't, say another word until we're two blocks away. Then he lets out a groan.

"So that's what I get!" says he. "From Jenkins, too! And they were all with him. You heard them applaud?"

"Sure," says I. "They're always strong for the hate stuff. I expect, now, he's made such a hit he'Il be usin' you as a horrible example right along. Unless you shut up the joint and throw 'em all out."

"I won't do that," says Silas. "No, I've just made another fool mistake, I'll let it go. Let them keep on learning to hate me. Perhaps it's what I deserve."

"Ah, come; buck up, Mr. Rapp!" says I. "You don't mean that."

"Why not?" says he. "Haven't I made a mess of things all around? I'm only fit for money-grabbing, I guess. Whenever I try to do any good with it, I make people wretched. And now—now they're being taught to hate me!"

The old boy has his chin down and his lip is quiverin'. Honest, he was takin' it hard. It's kind of pitiful, too, watchin' him; for it's easy enough to see he's one, of these sensitive, thin-skinned parties that likes to have folks think well of him. And hearin' himself roasted in public, that way, had taken the heart right out of him. There's a hunted, desperate look in them kind old eyes of his. No tellin' what he was thinkin' of doin' next.

Well, administerin' first aid to plutes that's had their feelin's hurt was a new line for me, but I couldn't help feelin' sorry for Silas. So I does my best.

"Ah, come!" says I. "If you think you're the only one that ever miscued on the philanthropy stunt, you ain't well posted. Why, every big scheme of that kind you can name, from Carnegie's library fund down, is knocked constant and generous by the very ones it's meant to help. I don't know why, but it's so. Check-book charity ain't popular. It's human nature, I expect. Most of us feel that way. Do you cheer every time you see a bread line or pass a soup kitchen? I don't. I can't help thinking that something's wrong somewhere."

"Then," says Silas, "you agree with Jenkins about me?"

"That don't follow," says I. "Jenkins is just a sore-head. He don't think—he feels. All he can see standin' between him and the things he wants is you."

"I know," says Silas. "Perhaps he's right."

"Say, you give me an ache," says I. "Look here. Did you invent the business game as well as the cook-stove? Not much. You found it all laid out, and you played it accordin' to the rules. Near as I can figure out, you've always played it on the level, too. And you happened to make your pile at it. So why are you to blame if others missed out? If any of us don't like the results, it seems to me we're wastin' time hatin' you for that. Our cue is to get together and revise the rules of the game."

"By gum!" says Silas, slappin' his knee. "I never looked at it just that way. I—I believe there's something in that, McCabe. I'm much obliged to you."

"Help yourself," says I. "Givin' off my opinions on things I don't know much about is the easiest thing I do."

"You're right, though," he goes on. "The rules ought to be changed. But 1 couldn't say how."

"Me, either," says I. "I don't let the fact get me panicky, though. I go on playing the game and gettin' as much fun out of it as I can."

"I wish I could," says Silas. "Anyway, I mean to quit trying fool experiments. There's only one other thing I'd like to do. I wish I had the courage to tackle it."

"What's that?" says I.

"I'd like to raise pigs," says he, solemn and earnest.

"Pigs!" I gasps.

"Yes," says he. "When I was a boy 3 we always had a litter or two around the place every spring. I used to think a lot of those little black and white rooters, with their pink snouts and their funny little eyes and their curly tails. What can be cuter or more comical? It may seem odd to you, but ever since I got out of active business I've had a hankering to go back to Michigan, settle down on my farm, and raise pigs by the hundred."

"Mr. Rapp," says I, "if you're askin' my permission, here you are. Go to it."

"By gum, I will!" says he. "And sister Sarah can just lump it."

WE shakes hands on the proposition, and off he goes. I gets back to the Physical Culture Studio about closin' time, and finds Swifty Joe more or less peeved.

"Ahr-r-r-r chee!" says he. "Why didn't you tip me off this was a half holiday? Been down to Coney, have you?"

"No, Swifty," says I. "Nothing so happy as that. I've been out sympathizin' with the idle rich and steerin' a poor plute back to the pigs."

"Ahr-r-r chee!" says Swifty, indicatin' disgust. And with that, he beats it for South Brooklyn.

It was a pleasant afternoon, though, even if I didn't lay up a cent.


everyweek Page 15Page 15

Four Reasons for Owning a Car

It May Make You a Carnegie Hero

[photograph]

Photograph from Owen B. Winters.

"SIX men entombed in Hazelgreen mine; send physicians and aid," was the S. O. S. that came winging over the wires into Modesto, California, early last April.

The old-timers, who knew what the road was like at that season, threw up their hands. "It's no use," they declared. "It's not humanly possible to make that trip in less than three days, and then there's no telling whether you can get through. Nothing but a burro could do it, and even if you took a burro, it's ten to one La Grange Creek's too high to ford."

"Burros be hanged," sniffed Dr. Carl Ludington. "I'll take three men, a brace of shovels and a stout rope, and go through in my car."

Without losing a moment, Ludington stocked the tonneau with provisions and first-aid kits, took on three passengers, and telephoned Hazelgreen he was on the way.

On that journey the doctor's automobile took roads that no horse or burro could possibly have navigated. Perhaps the most thrilling incident of the whole run came at La Grange Creek. A forest ranger, whose house stood on the bank of the creek. warned the party against attempting the ford.

"Might as well stall in the creek as here," Ludington said. So, raising the hood, he blanketed the carburetor with a rubber mask cut from a new inner tube, stepped on the accelerator, and the motor- submarine took to the water.

It was ticklish business. The water rose higher and higher, lapping the floorboards. Then, with a lurch, the car lunged ahead and came to a stop. "Quicksand," cried one of the passengers. But Ludington threw the throttle wide open, and the little car clambered up the opposite bank like a bedraggled spaniel.

From then on it was but ten miles, and easy going. The rescue party arrived in time. They had made the 97 miles in 11 hours and 40 minutes. The six men were taken from the shaft, all alive.

Or It May Double Your Income

I HAD started out to make my living as a piano teacher; but I was having a hard time of it. I had studied a rather expensive method that prepared one to teach young children in classes instead of giving individual lessons. But there were not many children in the neighborhood where I lived, and the parents of those who lived at a distance were not willing for them to come alone and hadn't time to bring them. So there I was with an expensive method on my hands and no classes to teach. What was I to do?

It wasn't long before the answer came to me: Buy an automobile. Fortunately, I had the money and the courage, and it was wonderful how my plan—to fetch my pupils back and forth, rain or shine, in a big storm-proof car—succeeded. Instead of begging off from music lessons, children—especially the boys— pleaded with their parents to be allowed to study with me. Before long I had a waiting list.

My mother learned to run the car, and while I was teaching one class she would go out and collect the next.

My automobile cost me originally $600. It has more than paid for itself. Instead of a few pupils at 75 cents a lesson, I now have full classes at twenty dollars for twenty lessons.

A. H.

It May Save Your Child's Life

WHEN Dennis Corbly, a grower of fruits and vegetables ten miles out from Chattanooga,Tennessee, paid nearly $2000 for a motor-truck, he asked himself more than once, "Will I ever get my money back in actual service?"

One morning, when Mr. Corbly was loading his truck, his two-year- old baby swallowed a cupful of kerosene. It was a mile and a half to a doctor. While Mr. Corbly cranked the heavy car, the mother caught up the baby and jumped on to the seat.

Once on the main thoroughfare, Mr. Corbly "opened her up." The heavy car roared, trembled, and swung from one side of the road to the other. Pedestrians and vehicles gave the flying auto-truck the full road. Two minutes landed them at the physician's office—not a minute too soon.

When the doctor had pronounced the

[photograph]

Photograph from Robert Walker.
child out of danger, he said: "Thank your automobile instead of me for your child's life."

When Mr. Corbly came in to supper that night after putting the truck up, Mrs. Corbly had a question for him:

"Do you think we've got our money back now on that truck, Dennis?"

"Just about five times over," said Dennis decidedly, as he lifted little Irene up into her high chair.

And It May Drive the Wolf from the Door

[photograph]

I HAVE been a foreman in a lead smelter for nearly four years. As every one must know, the fumes from a lead smelter make the immediate neighborhood a very undesirable place to live in. For this reason, my home was in a city twenty miles from the smelter. I had to travel forty miles each day—and I worked every day, including Sundays.

In one year I paid out in carfare—sixty cents a day—the sum of $210.

I would occasionally take pleasure jaunts into the country with my wife and children, at an expense of about three dollars, each trip, for livery hire. I figure that these trips averaged twelve a year.

Thus in two years my transportation expenses were as follows:

   
Street car fare for two years at
60 cents per day 
$438.00 
Twenty-four pleasure trips at
$3.00 each 
72.00 
$510.00 

Twenty-three months ago I became the owner of a "car"—a motor-cycle with side-car attachment. My neighbors said I was extravagant. But this is the result:

I now make the journey to work in fifty minutes—formerly it took two hours. On Sundays and holidays, instead of hiring a livery rig, I bundle my wife and babies into the car with me, and, at the cost of a little extra gasolene, we take all sorts of journeys that we never attempted formerly. Soon after I bought the car, the superintendent at the smelter arranged to ride back and forth to work with me, at fifty cents a trip. This is how my expenses footed up:

          
First cost of car $290.00 
Two new tires 18.00 
Inner tubes 7.00 
Gasolene 190.00 
Oil 85.00 
Repairs 11.50 
Tire patches 2.00 
License 4.50 
Incidentals 5.00 
Total $613.00 

Against this put the $510 that I saved in carfare and livery, and the $350 which I earned by carrying the superintendent as passenger, and you will see that, instead of plunging into debt for my car, as my neighbors seemed to think was likely, I have actually made $247 from it.

The "car" is practically as good as new and will last for years.

J. R. H.

The Man Who Wouldn't Make Shrapnel

By FRED C. KELLY

HIS competitors, whenever they have time to think about the matter at all, are still mystified by the strange action of the head of one of the most completely equipped steel plants in the country, who astonished the business world some months ago by refusing to take any shrapnel orders, on the absurd ground that he did not care to be a party to the wholesale taking of human life.

His friends reasoned with him at the time, and tried to show him that if he didn't take munitions orders somebody else would, and that he could make twice as much money as he could running his plant for ordinary pacific requirements.

But the man was thoroughly impractical—a mere theorist. Clarence Howard is his name, and his concern is the Commonwealth Steel Company of St. Louis. He is also president of the St. Louis Board of Trade. Being an impractical dreamer, he has risen from day laborer to the control of an enterprise employing a couple of thousand men. He has done this notwithstanding the handicap of proceeding along humanitarian lines. For he is as ridiculously humanitarian as any employer in the country.

One of His Impracticable "Ideas"

IT occurred to him one day that he might save his employees a great deal of money if he bought groceries and meats on a big scale and sold to them at cost. He did so, and the average employee in Howard's immense plant was able to live about $10 a month cheaper than he had before. Meat that cost 38 cents a pound in the stores, they could buy from the steel company for about 22 cents. Everybody was happy except the tradesmen. That was a phase of the thing that Howard had overlooked, and it worried him. So he sent for the various grocers and market men that his employees had dealt with, and suggested that they cooperate with him in buying goods.

"In that way," he said, "we can get an even lower price, because of the great bulk of the business, than I can obtain now, and you will have a much wider margin of profit."

Whenever possible, Howard lets his employees decide matters of business policy for themselves. Once during a slack season, he found that he must either reduce the hours of work or lay off part of his force. He put the proposition up to the men, and their decision was that all their number go on half time.

Common Sense Begins at Home

HOWARD'S "Golden Rule" policy works just as well in his home as in his business. His chauffeur and his gardener are both old personal friends with whom he worked when he was a laborer. A guest once offered Howard's chauffeur a dollar as a tip.

"No," the man said; "I'm sure Mr. Howard wouldn't like me to take it."

"But he won't know anything about it."

"Ah," insisted the chauffeur, "but I wouldn't feel like doing anything contrary to his wishes."

Somehow, everybody that works for Howard seems to feel that way about him.


everyweek Page 16Page 16

The Mystery at Woodford's

By WADSWORTH CAMP

Illustrations by Arthur I. Keller

FORTY years ago, the great actor for whom Woodford's Theatre was built died on the stage while playing his favorite role in "Coward's Fare." There is a superstition that his ghost, and that of his pet cat, haunt the theater. However, Arthur McHugh determines to revive "Coward's Fare," and chooses Richard Quaile to bring it up to date. Barbara Morgan is given the leading woman's part; and, to lend atmosphere, McHugh engages Dolly' Timken, who played in the original cast, and Woodford's property-man, Mike Brady. Woodford's own part is given to Harvey Carlton. McHugh, Quaile, and Brady go to look over the theater. As McHugh is making a skeptical allusion to Wood- ford's ghost, the lights go out; and in the darkness they faintly hear footsteps crossing the stage, followed by the patter of a cat. The lighting system is found in good order, and McHugh is puzzled. Some days later, at a rehearsal, Carlton tells Quaile he has heard a story that evil will follow any attempt to play Woodford's rôle. He says he has received mysterious warnings; but he promises to see the thing through. As the rehearsal proceeds, the actors show nervousness, and Miss Timken feels the presence of a cat. At the moment in the play at which Woodford died, Carlton, in the middle of a speech, topples to the stage, dead. The coroner's verdict is, heart failure under emotional strain. The manager has a plain talk with his company, giving an opportunity to leave the production; all promise to stick. He engages Tyler Wilkins for the famous role. McHugh, who was once head of a detective agency, is convinced that there is a reasonable explanation of the happenings that pursue his revival of "Coward's Fare." He gets Quaile to promise to go alone to the theater the following night for an investigation. The playwright, going from McHugh's office to his rooms, is greeted by a faint tinkle of the telephone and a ghostly message: "Keep away. I prefer to play my part to empty seats." Quaile attempts to trace the call, but the telephone company insists there has been none. In spite of McHugh's offer to release him from his promise, Quaile prepares for his visit to Woodford's, convinced that he will solve the mystery. After rehearsal next night, he returns to the theater, armed with a revolver and an electric flashlight, and enters by the stage door. He takes his place in a chair in the center of the auditorium. Suddenly the building is filled with the sound of wind, and after that has died away, Quaile is conscious of another presence near him. Then comes the sound of limping steps, followed by the patter of a cat. As the steps approach he tries to flash his light—without success. The presence passes him, and he follows it in the darkness to the stage. The, curtain is down! He makes his way to the passage behind the boxes. There is a kind of nebulous light in which he distinguishes a figure. Desperately he pulls the trigger of his revolver and is deafened by the explosion. The light is gathering shape for an attack.

[illustration]

"'You'd swear there was no one else on the stage when that picture was taken?' 'Certainly.' 'Look at this,' McHugh said hoarsely."

THROUGH interminable moments Quaile remained crouched in the passage, his eyes hidden by his arm, unwilling to look again at the growing splotch of unnatural radiance which he had fancied assuming the outlines of a human form. He was alone in the theater with this livid thing.

He had reached the point of surrender. Further effort on his part was futile. The ghostly ambush had been too carefully arranged.' The failure of his light, the mysterious lowering of the curtain, had driven him too certainly into this choking passage, where the limping footsteps still strayed, where the contented purring of the cat persisted. It was useless to retreat to the auditorium. It would be simpler to await the attack here, to resist it here if he could. He wondered if he would be more successful than Carlton, who had died. He knew it would come now, for the limping thing was closer.

Without warning, a violent pounding reverberated in the meager space, shattering the silence that hitherto had been disturbed only by the stealthy manifesta tions of the theater. It grew in volume. It animated Quaile's frozen senses. For there was nothing immaterial about its urgency. A living person stood in the alley, demanding admittance at the stage door, offering him rescue from this shapeless, unseen antagonist. Only a few feet of darkness and the iron door separated him from safety. Somehow he must conquer that journey. He would do it in spite of the pallid thing that blocked his way.

He lowered his arm and opened his eyes. As if it had reacted subtly to the material noise, the luminous mass ahead was dimmer, less concrete in shape.

Quaile's muscles tightened. With outstretched hands, he stumbled forward against the fading thing, which did not fall back. He had a sensation of walking through a medium scarcely perceptible—less troublesome than the water that opposes a swimmer. As he pushed the passage door open, another sound keened in his ears—as nearly as he could define it, the groan of a man abandoned to an unbearable anguish.

He dashed across the wings, thrust the key in the lock, and threw his weight against the stage door, which swung back, precipitating him into the alley.

He drank in the cold, clean air. He responded to such a sense of freedom as a man must experience who is reprieved at the edge of the scaffold.

HE leaned against the wall of the loft building, staring back at the open door, which made a sable scar in the dim glow of the alley. From the street lively and familiar sounds reached him.

With the rapidity of a miracle the strain had been broken. The reaction threatened his restraint. For a moment he had an absurd feeling that it must falter into a sob of relief. To save that, since his emotion demanded some expression, he laughed. The sound, uncontrolled, neurasthenic, was restorative. It ceased abruptly, and, although he was still shaken as if by abnormal cold, he began to take stock of his position and to reason.

First of all, he was interested in the whereabouts of his rescuer. Surely, in the moment it had taken him to unlock the door and stumble into the alley there had been no time for any one to reach the street unseen. After all, McHugh was the only likely person, for who else had known certainly of his intention to remain in the theater?

"McHugh!" he called, in the strained voice with which one addresses a possible emptiness.

No answer came, and it occurred to


him that, in any case, McHugh would have had a key, would scarcely hay, raised that infernal racket at the door.

He examined the wall opposite more closely. There was just one hiding-place—between the open door and the side of the theater. Whoever had knocked must lurk there.

He took a step forward, grasped the door, and swung it shut. A figure darker than the wall shrank back. The light was insufficient to show him more, at first, than the form of a woman.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The woman did not reply. Then, before Quaile had seen her face, the truth came to him.

"Why do you hide there, Miss Morgan? Come out, please."

SHE stepped away from the wall, but still she said nothing, and, on his part, words were difficult. Instead of gratitude for the release she had brought him, he experienced a sharp regret. The disclosure of the young actress's identity for the first time offered a substantial reinforcement of McHugh's suspicions. For why should she have come at this hour? How could she have been so sure of his danger? On the other hand, the very fact that she had drawn him from that danger was in her favor. Her proximity, her continued silence, were eloquent advocates.

"Why are you so silent? Why did you come here at this hour? Why did you knock as you did at the door?"

She shuddered. At last she spoke:

"I heard the footsteps, and a shot, and something like a groan. I've been afraid to ask. I—I—you're not hurt?"

He shook his head.

"No one was hurt, as far as I know."

But he questioned if the groan he had heard at the last could have been the result of the shot. If so, plenty of evidence must remain in the theater.

The possibility encouraged him. He began to reach out again for a reasonable explanation of all that he had ex- perienced.

"Then," she said, "it was you who fired the shot?"

"Yes."

"Why?" she asked.

He attempted a laugh.

"An accident."

She turned away.

"You won't tell me the truth."

She faced him immediately again, with an air of accusation.

"You don't even thank me for coming when I did."

He was more than ever convinced of McHugh's mistake. She would not have had the courage to assume such an attitude.

"I do thank you," he said, "with all my heart."

"What were you doing in there?" she asked.

With difficulty he made himself follow McHugh's sarcastic advice not to let any one pull the wool over his eyes.

"Doesn't my question come first?" he said.

"You mean—"

"About your coming here at this hour."

She gestured impatiently.

"I guessed when I saw you prowling about the house during rehearsal that you were planning to take chances with Wood- ford's. Your manner later proved it. And after the others had gone I waited on the sidewalk some time for a taxicab. When I left you hadn't come out of the alley. Of course, it was none of my affair; but at home the thought of any one alone down here obsessed me. I might as well confess it. The place terrifies me as it does Dolly—as it did Mr. Carlton, and does you and the others. I am sure there's something going on here, Mr. Quaile, that we can't understand. It has proved itself dangerous."

Her voice faltered.

"It has made me say and do things unlike me—coming this way, for instance. But I couldn't bear the thought of any of you alone here, taking chances with what frightens me so."

His heart responded to her halting confession, but she hurried on defensively:

"It made no difference who was here; I felt I had to come. And you found danger. I know. Something happened that made you afraid, or why did you fire your pistol?"

HE tried to see her eyes. He longed to throw reserve to the winds. He wanted to talk now at random about an emotion he scarcely understood. His answer was pitched low. His tone, he felt, was an avowal.

"Suppose I was afraid? Isn't it unkind to remind me of my cowardice?"

"Would a coward have gone in there alone at night?"

He reached out quickly and grasped her arm. Uncalculated words were in his mind, crying for expression.

She sprang back, freeing her arm. Her quickened breath was audible.

"Wait," he urged her. "I was about to say things— You're probably right: they're better unsaid now. Perhaps you'll try to explain my impulse by my gratitude. Something did happen in the theater. I was glad enough to get out. You gave me my opportunity. By every law of reason, there's somebody inside. As you say, he's dangerous. I don't pre- tend to understand his magic, but that door is his only way out, and we haven't seen anybody leave."

"You're not going back!" she said quickly.

He did not yield again to his impulse.

"Not alone."

"Then why should I wait?"

"Because," he answered, "I want you to help me."

"You're too sure of a man," she said. "You're forgetting Mr. Carlton."

"I'm doing my best to forget everything except common sense," he answered. "I'm going to try to find the source of all I heard and saw in that house."

"I've no faith," she said, "but I'll help you. What do you wish?"

"As you see, I can't leave here. I want to watch that door. Would you mind telephoning McHugh for me? Tell him to hustle right down."

She nodded.

"That isn't bad. Let him take some of the responsibility."

"Then," he directed, "I want you to bring back the first policeman you can find. We'll put it up to him. We'll switch on every light. We'll search the place from top to bottom for that limping trickster and his cat, and, by gad, we'll find them. Don't you see? We must find them."

But she failed to share his enthusiasm.

"You won't go in until I get back with a policeman?"

He was honest.

"I've no desire to enter that place alone again."

"Then I sha'n't be long."

He watched her graceful figure go down the alley and into the lighted street.

He braced himself against the wall opposite the iron door, and, his hand on his revolver, waited.

It was pleasant to recall the girl's recent companionship. The new problem she had brought to him had a little modified the horror he had experienced in the theater. He could look forward with a real hope-to the approaching search. If his bullet should have struck a man!

IT was nearly a quarter of an hour later when Barbara conducted into the mouth of the alley a policeman—an elderly fellow, a relic, Quaile guessed, of the less sophisticated days of the force. He came up to Quaile and looked about with a slightly confused manner.

"You sent for me," he said. "The lady didn't quite make herself clear. Talked about a man hiding in there, then didn't seem so sure."

"It was difficult," Barbara put in. "Maybe you can understand."

Quaile attempted to explain.

"I've had a queer experience," he began.

He nodded at the closed door.

"I was alone in there—quite alone, I thought. I heard some one walking around."

"Couldn't you see who it was?" the policeman asked.

Quaile cleared his throat.

"There were no lights."

The policeman considered.

"This is Woodford's Theater," he commented, as if he had said a great deal.

"What of it?" Quaile asked.

The man lowered his voice.

"I read in the papers about that actor Carlton's dying inside. First and last, I've heard a lot of talk about Woodford's. Now, let me get it straight. You didn't see this man, but you must have felt him when he tried to stop you."

Quaile knew what the policeman was driving at. It was difficult to believe that the dread of Woodford's had run so far.

"I didn't feel him," he answered; "and, if you don't mind, I prefer not to be put on the witness-stand before I get to court."

"Seems to me," the policeman said bluntly, "we're three nervous people. I don't mind saying I've heard too much about this building to like it. That's all talk. As the lady says, it'll do no harm to go in and take a look around for your man."

He grasped the handle of the door and pulled. He turned, a little surprised.

"You must have locked it when you came out. Where's the key?"

QUAILE could not believe his ears.

"What are you talking about?"

"This door is locked," the policeman said.

"Nonsense!" Quaile cried.

He sprang forward and tugged at the handle; then stepped back, bewildered.

"You didn't lock it?" the policeman asked.

"No, no," Quaile answered. "I left the key on the inside."

He remembered how the door had stood open until he had swung it shut to discover Barbara's shrinking figure. It offered testimony, apparently beyond dispute, that there was indeed a man in the building. He spoke of that to the policeman, who could only agree.

"Then you'll have to break the lock," Quaile said. "Try your night-stick."

But the policeman shook his head.

"You don't own the building?"

"No."

"Or hold the lease?"

"No."

"Then you'll have to get me authority. I won't break in without it."

Quaile tried to urge him; but Barbara interrupted:

"He's right."

"Then what about McHugh?" Quaile asked her. "You got him?"

"Yes. He hadn't gone to bed. He said he would start right away. He shouldn't be long now."

McHUGH didn't keep them waiting. He stormed through the mouth of the alley, pausing just inside.

"It's dark as Egypt. Quaile! You there? Come, lead me up."

Quaile resented the shallow stratagem. He knew that the manager desired to talk to him apart from Barbara. It was wiser to obey, so he hurried down.

"Well? Well? Quick! What's happened? What's the girl doing here?"

In a few words Quaile told him of the sound as of wind, of the limping footsteps through the darkness, of the failure of his light, of the pallid ambush in the passage.

"It was like a figure in cold white flame. Then she came or I don't know—"

"She came, eh?" McHugh snorted. "How did she guess?"

Quaile paid no heed to the question.

"I fired at the thing, McHugh. A few minutes afterwards I heard a groan. I thought it was meant to frighten me, but I might have hit. The queerest thing—the door's been locked from the inside as we stood in the alley."

McHugh found a cigar and bit on it. "Fine! Fine! Then I guess maybe you did hit. I knew you'd do well, my boy. Now we'll get somewheres. Who's that? There's somebody with the Morgan girl."

"A policeman," Quaile said.

"That's good. You're bright, Quaile. Come on. Looks as if we had something up a tree at last."

He grasped Quaile's arm and strode to the policeman.

"I'm Arthur McHugh," he announced. "Break that lock if you can. Maybe you can't unless you've got some loose dynamite about your clothes."

"Do my best," the policeman said.

He raised his night-stick and took hold of the door-handle. Then he started back, crying out. The door swung lazily back.

"Thought you said it was locked," McHugh grumbled.

"Tricks!" Quaile muttered. "Deliberate mockery!"

"I didn't hear any key turned," the policeman said, "but we know he's there."

The strange and derisive incident angered Quaile.

"Then let's get him."

McHugh struck a match, and the policeman and he entered.

Quaile stepped to the sill. Barbara, after a moment's hesitation, joined him.

"You needn't, you know," he said. "If you'd rather go—"

"I want to stay," she whispered. "I want to see."

They watched the match cast huge, distorted shadows. The progress of McHugh and the policeman made a hollow sound which loosed many echoes. It had little in common with the limping steps Quaile had heard. Then the manager was at the switchboard, and light flashed against the tawdry walls and exposed the void of the auditorium.

Quaile took a step forward.

"The curtain, McHugh!"

"Why, yes," McHugh drawled. "Seems to be up, just as I left it."

He directed the policeman to search the auditorium and the galleries.

"Try every door," he said. "Search every corner."

He strolled back to Quaile.

"Thought you said the curtain was down. You been dreaming?"

"The whole thing seems a nightmare," Quaile answered. "The door, too; but I've witnesses of that."

"So you have," McHugh mused. "That's no dream, anyway."

FOR the first time he spoke to Barbara, facing her with a brutal abruptness:

"What you doing here?"

Quaile studied the girl anxiously, expecting an awkward and insufficient excuse. The rapid ease of her reply, therefore, astonished him.

"I guessed Mr. Quaile was coming ghost-hunting to-night. I couldn't resist the temptation. I hoped he might let me join him, but I got here too late."

McHugh chewed thoughtfully at his cigar while he considered her face. It expressed only surprise at, his manner. At last he took the cigar from his bps and smiled genially. His attitude no longer threatened an inquisition. Quaile had an uncomfortable feeling that both Barbara and the manager were masked.

"Nervy girl!" McHugh grinned. "I like nervy girls myself. clad to know there's one in the company who isn't afraid of Woodford's spook."

She smiled placidly back at him.

"I'm much more afraid of you—naturally."

"What's that? Oh! Now maybe you'd better run home and get your beauty sleep."

He waved his cigar.

"Not that you really need it."

"I'd like to stay and see the excitement," she said.

With quick daring she placed herself on unassailable ground.

"Then perhaps somebody will see that I get home."

McHugh didn't disguise from Quaile his gesture of distaste.

"If that's the way you feel, all right." He drew the stage door shut, locked it,


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and removed the key. He examined the key closely before dropping it in his pocket.

"Just the same," he said, "this door's worth guarding. The cop doesn't seem to be finding much out there. Suppose you run through the dressing-rooms and the lofts, Quaile. Maybe I'd better do it myself. You stay by this door."

IT was obvious that the manager wished Barbara kept under observation as much as the door. Quaile nodded. McHugh took a handful of matches from his pocket and climbed the iron staircase.

Barbara's face had lost its vivacity. With a troubled frown she watched the man go.

"He makes me feel that I'm in the way. Why? Do you know?"

Quaile wanted to throw reserve to the winds. It seemed only fair to tell her of McHugh's suspicions. He forced a laugh.

"The riddles of the sphinx are simple compared with a manager's whims."

"I suppose I'm a fool to stay," she said.

All at once she seemed to grow very tired. He brought a chair. She sat down, sighing.

"Thanks. I'm stubborn enough to wait. I do want to see what they'll find. It's all so queer."

She rested, half closing her eyes. For a long time they waited without words, listening to McHugh and the policeman as they prowled about, constantly on the alert for an alarm.

At last the two searchers met on the stage, and with puzzled faces descended to the cellar.

"They've found nothing yet," Barbara said.

Quaile clenched his hands.

"Then they will. Surely down there—"

But McHugh and the policeman returned empty-handed.

"But I heard a groan after I had fired," Quaile insisted.

"There's no blood," McHugh answered. "Every door's locked. We've been in every rat-hole."

"Except the passage," Quaile reminded him.

He went forward and glanced through. McHugh peered over his shoulder.

"Where did you stand when you fired?" he asked.

Quaile entered, and at a distance of several feet faced the manager. In the narrow space the acrid odor of the powder still lingered.

"And where was your figure?" McHugh went on.

"A little in front of where you're standing. Just inside."

McHugh turned and hurried to the rear of the stage, where he supplemented the vague light with matches.

"Come here, Quaile," he snapped.

Quaile walked over, the policeman at his heels.

"No dream about that," McHugh said.

He indicated a groove in one of the iron steps, then led them to the brick wall, which in one place had been newly flaked.

"Your bullet's there," he announced. He thrust his finger into a small orifice.

"I can feel it."

Quaile moved uneasily.

"Then it wasn't a man in front of me. He would surely have been hit."

BARBARA had watched and listened restlessly. McHugh glanced at her. Quaile knew the manager wouldn't catechize him as to the details of his experience in the girl's presence.

"Suppose you'll have to see her home," McHugh said under his breath. "So come to the office the first thing in the morning. I want every little thing that happened while you were alone."

He raised his voice.

"I'm stumped, Quaile. Who locked that door? Who raised that curtain? Not here now, anyway. So we might as well all go home and sleep on it. Better pick up that lamp of yours."

Quaile vaulted the footlights and walked up the aisle to the seat where he had waited for the thing that limped. The cover was pushed back, as he had left it. The flashlight, too, was where he had remembered hearing it roll beneath the seats.

As he arose he pressed the control perfunctorily. He braced himself heavily against the seat. A brilliant path of light tore across the auditorium to the farther wall. He snapped it off. The shadows jeered at him.

"McHugh!" he shouted.

The manager sprang from the wings, scrambled over the footlights, and ran along the aisle.

"What's up now, Quaile?"

Quaile saw Barbara step on the stage and look anxiously in his direction. He held up the cylinder.

"This," he said. "I told you when the limping thing went by it wouldn't work. Just now, when I picked it up—look!"

He pressed the control. The light glared. McHugh snatched the cylinder from his hand.

"You found it exactly where you dropped it?"

"Yes."

"Then you were too excited. You couldn't have worked it right."

"Don't think that, McHugh. You can't do any more than snap the button back as far as it will go. I did that time and again."

"This is the strangest thing yet," McHugh mused. "I'm glad you came, anyway, Quaile. You've given me a lot to think about."

"Can we go now?" Barbara asked, as they climbed to the stage.

"In a hurry?" McHugh wanted to know.

She shivered.

"It's cold here. I—I'm afraid. I want to go."

"All right. You and Quaile open the stage door while I put out the lights. Here's the key."

Quaile took the key and led Barbara to the iron door.

"It can be dark in here," McHugh said, with an uncomfortable laugh. "Got me guessing. No one's gone out, so no one could have been here."

As if in defiant contradiction, through the darkness behind them came the sound of limping footsteps.

For a fleeting moment Barbara shrank against Quaile.

McHugh stiffened.

"Good God! You hear that?"

CLOSE beside them Quaile caught a gentle padding. From out the pit-like night of the theater a tiny lean black body glided past him, slipped into the alley, and, before he could touch it,—before he could convince himself that it had actually been there,—had slunk from sight close to the wall. At the same moment the limping footsteps ceased.

Barbara faltered into the alley. Quaile and McHugh followed. While the manager slammed the door and turned the key, Quaile ran up the alley as far as the fence. He found no sign of a cat. He came back, speaking with reluctance. His eyes had had no chance to accustom themselves to the new darkness. The thing had been so rapid, so unexpected. He wasn't confident that the others had seen what he had.

"I thought I saw—" he began.

McHugh nodded.

"Then I did, but it went by so quick."

"A shadow," Barbara whispered. "Can't we go? I want to get away from this place."

Quaile realized the futility of entering again the building which he had twice assured himself was empty, yet which had just given them fresh proof of habitation, mysterious and not to be accounted for.

"We can't do anything more to-night," McHugh agreed, and led them to the sidewalk.

He turned from an unseeing stare at the

Copyright, 1916, Every Week Corporation: John H. Hawley. President; J. F. Bresnahan, Vice-President; Bruce Barton, Secretary; R. M. Donaldson, Treasurer; 95 Madison Avenue, New York. All rights reserved. Subscription terms in the United States, its dependencies, Mexico, and Cuba, $1.00 a year. In Canada. S1.25. Foreign countries, $1.75. Entered as second-class matter June 14, 1915, at the post-office at New York, N. Y , under the Act of March 3, 1879.

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arc light on the corner to Barbara. His manner toward her, which had been harsh and contemptuous, altered. He attempted a rough kindness.

"You look sort of sick, Barbara. Remember, you're a nervy girl. If old Woodford is walking around inside, he's got nothing against you. Don't you worry. And, until we find out what went on in there to-night, you keep your mouth shut. Don't you let any of it get to Wilkins."

Her answer conveyed a reproach:

"You can trust me, Mr. McHugh."

"That's all right," he said. "Now run along home. Quaile will see that nothing troubles you."

She had controlled herself. She followed Quaile silently across the street and entered a cab. When he was seated beside her, the girl's attitude urged on him an increasing sympathy.

"You are nervy," he said softly. "Most women would have screamed—made a scene."

Her hand moved, but she didn't answer. For most of the ride, in fact, she remained withdrawn in her corner. He fancied that a more profound emotion than fright held her so. He became a trifle ashamed of that unguarded moment in the alley. In a sense, he was glad when the cab drew in a quiet side street before a big apartment-house. He helped her to the sidewalk, and followed her to the door, glancing up at the façade of the apartment-house—a new building, evidently expensive.

"This is where you live?"

She nodded.

"I wonder," he went on hesitatingly, "if sometime I might—"

"When things are a little more settled," she interrupted. "Perhaps after the opening. I'd like you to come to tea."

"You make it too remote," he objected. "So much has happened to throw the opening into doubt."

"Then soon, if you wish," she said, and frankly offered her hand.

It was cold and lifeless in his grasp. She drew it away and walked past the waiting hall-boy at the door.

QUAILE returned to the cab, and, as the chauffeur drove him rapidly off, fell into a revery, discontented, almost morbid. At first his latest memories crowded his mind. He no longer questioned the fact that to-night a new element had entered his lef. He wa snot at all sure it was a welcome one, that its ultimate resolution wouldn't mean unhappiness. For he could not think of Barbara without recalling McHugh's misgivings. They served to remind him, too, that he really knew nothing about the girl except that she was beautiful and possessed of a personality that had always appealed to him. Whom she lived with, what interests her non-professional life centered about, he had no idea. At the first opportunity he would accept that invitation, which he had to all purposes forced from her.

Somewhere there must be an explanation of her moody and undependable actions. He had a sudden fear that they past might harbor it. Carlton's death had changed her. Did that suggest an answer? Could there have been between Barbara and Carlton a sympathy concealed from the rest of the world?

He tried to put her from his mind. He told himself that the reaction from his experience in the theater, the dusk of the alley, the strangeness of her presence there, the anxiety it had suggested for him, had all combined to fill him with a sentimental folly without real foundation, which consequently could not survive. He was glad it had not carried him too far. Nevertheless it worried him that her bearing had forecasted an unfavorable response.

At least, the incident had served for a time, drug-like, to deaden the mental pain of his vigil in the theater. That surged back now with its impossible details, its impotent horror. He entered his apartment with callous indifference. So much had happened in the last few hours that the prospect of the occult bell had ceased, for the moment, to terrify him. Silence, however, pervaded the place.

In his bedroom, he faced a mirror. His hands tightened on the edge of the bureau. The countenance that stared back was gray and marked by unfamiliar lines. They eyes were blood-shot, the lids twitched. Suddenly the face broke into a cynical smile. There had flashed into his mind the time-worn simile, "Like a man who has seen a ghost."

He was glad that the others had, in one way or another, experienced the manifestations of the house. Otherwise, standing there, his brain turbulent with incredible memories he could easily have doubted his sanity.

He hurried to bed and, thoroughly exhausted, slept.

The noisy life of the street awakened him. He gazed from his window at the dawn of a perfect day. His will was stronger. He would not argue the merits of last night's adventures, which had the savor of a bitter dream, until he had talked with McHugh.

EARLY as he was at the office, the manager waited for him. He sat at his desk, staring at the wall with an expression suggestive of a new bewilderment. He seemed, however, surprisingly fresh. The signs of age and discouragement that had followed the sound of the footsteps and the appearance of the cat had vanished. The fact was a tonic for Quaile.

"You seem to have slept well, McHugh," he said.

The hand that held the customary unlighted cigar shook.

"I thought I had hold of myself," the former detective said. "I was beginning to use my thinker again, when just now—"

He broke off, fumbling among a pile of photographic proofs on his desk-top.

"I've just got the prints of those pictures we took last night."

He glanced up—a trifle ashamed, Quaile thought.

They're good?"

All but one," McHugh answered slowly.

He passed a bundle of proofs to Quaile, but his hand covered one that remained on the desk.

"These are clear enough," Quaile said, beginning to suspect. "But where's the one of the big scene? You had it taken for a poster."

McHugh raised the picture he had withheld, but he kept its face hidden.

"You don't mean there's something wrong with that?" Quaile cried sharply.

McHugh nodded. "Who was on the stage when that picture was taken?"

"Why, Miss Morgan," Quaile answered, "and Dolly, and Wilkins."

"You'd swear there was no one else?"

"Certainly. You could see as well as I. You know as well as I do."

"I thought I saw. So did Tommy and Mike and the photographers. Just take a look at this."

With a quick gesture he turned the proof of the big scene—that same grouping that had seen the death of Woodford, and, forty years later, Carlton's similar end.

Quaile snatched the picture from McHugh's hand and bent close above it. It challenged his reason as deliberately as teh figure in cold white flame had done last night. For it contained, where he knew there had been only three, a fourth form standing close to Wilkins—indistinct, scarcely outlined, as if out of focus; and crouched at its feet was a small black ball, like a cat.

"Look at this," McHugh said hoarsely, while Quaile's widened.

He handed him a faded cabinet photograph of a dark-faced, repellantly handsome man.

"That's Woodford," he said—"made the year he died."

Quaile compared it with the unaccountable figure in the picture taken the previous night. Although that was nebulous, like a thing seen through fog, its resemblance to the jealous Woodford's forty-year-old likeness was arresting, imperative, on no account to be denied.

To be continued next week

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