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Every Week

Published Weekly by Every Week Corporation,
95 Madison Avenue, New York
© October 30, 1916

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Speaking of the Theater

A NICE little old lady writes to me. She likes this magazine—for which may the fates reward her. But she wonders why such a good magazine should publish so many pictures of actors and actresses.

There are a number of reasons.

For one thing, the theater is one of our few topics of common conversation.

When this was a little country, and we all lived in country towns, and knew one another's relatives and one another's business, we had lots to talk about when we met.

Now, when two strangers meet on a train, for instance, they find they have very few common interests.

They can talk about the weather, and perhaps about politics—though usually not very intelligently; and then they almost always begin comparing notes about the different "shows" they have seen.

We mean, in this magazine, to have a good many articles of really helpful interest and value.

But no magazine can afford to disregard human nature.

And the truth is that we are by nature gossipy. Put us in a country town, and we gossip about Tom Simpson's girl that has just come back from Vassar, and how Sid Martin was seen buggy-riding with Cicely Anne.

Mary Pickford and Billie Burke and Douglas Fairbanks and the rest are our national Cicely Annes and the Sid Martins and Tom Simpson's girls.

Condemned to cities as we are, deprived of mutual friends about whom we can gossip, we gossip about these folks. They are our common property: they make the world a small town again.

In the preparatory school where I spent a year there was a rule book that ended with this sentence, which I shall never forget:

"In addition to the foregoing rules, all students are expected to refrain from dancing, card-playing, and theater attendance, and to obscure the other common rules of morality."

This rule book was a direct descendent of the Puritans. They forbade all pleasures. They opposed bear-baiting, as Macaulay tells us, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the audience.

The theater has survived the Puritans. It will survive all opposition, because it is founded on fundamental human cravings.

Deep down in every man is the love of a fight, inherited from his cave-man ancestors.

The successful play is always a contest between two characters. It lets us enlist our sympathies with one and against the other—it gives us the satisfaction of helping a hero and defeating a villain—without any attendant discomfort.

Another fundamental human craving to which the theater ministers is our desire to be something other than we are. AS children we play King and Queen; and Pirate; and Rich Man. As grown-up children we pay $2 for the privilege of losing our own little lives for a couple of hours, of putting ourselves in the hero's place, falling in love all over again, conquering a kingdom, playing with millions instead of counting dimes.

There are some things about the theater I do not like.

Chiefly this: It has helped to banish that fine old quality, reticence, out of modern life.

Young men and women now sit side by side and see questions discussed in public that their grandmothers would hve blushed to discuss in their own bedrooms.

In our anxiety to destroy prudery and harmful ignorance, we have almost destroyed the old-fashioned girl who could blush.

I should like to see her come back again.

I should like to see the theater go back to its legitimate job of providing clean amusement; and quit trying to be a laboratory of social reform.

Even you would like the theater—my dear little old lady who wrote me that letter—even you would like the theater if the men who run it would let it be the kind of theater that it ought to be.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

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What Have You Got?

By John Fleming Wilson

Illustrations by Anton Otto Fischer

[illustration]

"The sun broke through the flying clouds and shone down on the water-worn vessel, gleaming across the torn reef, lighting up the turbid lagoon."

THERE are reported to be 2671 separate islands and groups of islands in the South Pacific Ocean. There were, according to the census, 62,622,250 living people in the United States in the year 1890. Destiny, chance, providence, luck, or misfortune picked one of the aforesaid 62,000,000-odd Americans out of his continent, transported him 8453 miles, and set him down on the white beach of one of the Pacific islands. It is historical that the destined, chanced, provided, lucky, or unfortunate man stared at the broken circle of coral, glanced at the brilliantly blue sky, and then asked his sole white companion, the skipper of the schooner All's Well:

"What have you got?"

"One hundred and forty-eight degrees, six minutes, and fourteen seconds west longitude, and eleven degrees and thirty minutes north lettitude," responded Captain Snover, whose disdain of the natives with whom he constantly dealt had made him vary his own broad pronunciation into a mincing and (he thought) high-bred attenuation of the vowels of his natural tongue.

"All right," said the other. "Has it a name?"

Snover shook his head. "Been called several," he suggested. "None stuck. It doesn't metter. Call it what you lek."

"Over there 're the Paumotus," the questioner said, waving his arm. "We'll call this, not Pau, but Remotus."

"Remote goes with me," the skipper said. "Remote Island it is. Very remote, in fact. It'll be eight months before I call again."

Within two hours there had been a hasty discharging from the schooner riding outside the pass, a dozen trips of the whale-boat with high-piled boxes and bundles, a short parley between Captain Snover and an unctuous native whose appearance on the beach was the preface to a brief tale of marooning and a request for passage "back" to some sinister outlying group, and a final interchange between the stranger and his former associate.

"The Kaneka says he's been here three months," Snover suggested. "Kicked him off the whaling barque Silver Star. I'll tek him on. You'll hev it all to yourself. Where shell I esk for your mell?"

"All letters will be sent to Honolulu and addressed to B. Iliff, Esquire," was the answer.

"B. Iliff, Esquire," repeated the captain calmly. "Good-by and good luck!"

EIGHT months duly passed. The tale of the islands in the Pacific remained the same, while the United States added a million to its population. And, careless of both these phenomena, Captain Snover picked up Remote Island out of the vapor pouring along the trades, backed his top-sail just as the sun ended the annual birth-night of the kopang, and called his mate to him.

"Mister Grady, this is the island, and there's B. Iliff, Esquire, stending on the beach. Now, what d'ye thenk of it?"

Grady shot a dark, lowering glance across the melting seas at the inextinguishable brightness of the atoll.

"I see him," he growled. "I'd fill and be off. Who's B. Iliff, to be having little jewels sent down by parcels post to him?"

"The direction is written," his superior admonished him—"written down by the purser of the China on a red card, a proper ticket. 'Deliver immediately,' it says. I don't want to deliver."

"Nor I," the mate answered. "What sort of a fellow is this B. Iliff? Old-timer? Beach-comber?"

"Most likely beach-comber," Snover admitted. "Kem down with me last voyage. Never a word out of him from San Francisco to this island. He gev me the lettitude and longitude off a bit o' pepper."

"No trader," Grady said, indicating the barren islet with a broad gesture of contempt.

"But money," his superior reminded him. "Ped his way like a benker, and lies a couple of chests of the stuff with him. Barratry, most like. No plece like an island nobody ever picks up, for a men with too much gold and too little to tell."

"And what 're you going to do about—about—"

"I'll go off and hev a talkee-talkee with the men," Snover said with sudden briskness.

He pulled through the pass over shoals of lively mullet which played rainbow-wise in the flowing crystal, beached his boat with a flourish of an oar, nodded to his crew to stand by, and walked up the crisp sand to greet the man who was pacing back and forth in evident impatience.

"What have you got?" came the harsh call.

"The mell," Snover responded, taking off his limp straw hat and wiping his forehead. "A couple o' boxes and—and—a little jewel of a gell. A maiden o' six years with yellow hair. Expressed per steam-ship China."

There poured into B. Iliff's expression a flood of feeling so intense and striking that the schooner captain involuntarily drew back, groping with the toe of one canvas shoe for a sound footing in the sand. His pale lips opened to utter a single and deprecatory word:

"Ceptain!"

As if the name were his due and recalled him to a sense of what was fitting, Iliff forced himself to smile faintly.

You know me?" he inquired.

"I do not," Snover returned hastily. "I most distinctly do not! I'm only delivering packages as per manifest."

"Very well, then," Iliff continued. "Bring them ashore."

"The—the little gell too?"

Answering the intonation rather than the words, the other said more gently: "I'll not hurt her."

Snover seemed to have lost his restraint for the moment.

"If I thought thet you would," he said, with great precision in his ridiculous speech, "I should instently cut you into fine bits and feed you to the sherks."

"She's safe," Iliff responded. "Unexpected, but safe."

WITHOUT further parley, Snover stepped back to his boat; the Kanakas thrust off into the shining water of the lagoon, and pulled sturdily away through the pass. By the schooner's low side he paused only long enough to see several cases handed down, and then stretched up both arms and received from the grudging arms of the mate the form of a small girl dressed in white from linen hat to silk-shod feet.

"My dear!" said the captain. "Do you know the captain over there on that island?"

She lifted one while hand to shade her eyes under their delicate brows, and peered at the somber figure on the beach.

"Mamma knew him; she told me she did." she asserted.

Snover glanced meaningly at Grady, and then seated himself in the stern-


sheets, tucked the girl beside him, and nodded to his boatmen, who fell on their oars and made the light craft leap across the sparkling swells toward the pass.

Iliff received them without a trace of concern. After a brief glance at the little girl, he accepted her shyly proffered hand, clasped it loosely in his own, dropped it, and murmured: "Attend to you later."

With absolute indifference to Snover's sullen curiosity, he receipted duly for the goods, including the child, wished him a pleasant voyage, and saw him off from the beach.

The All's Well lingered off Remote Island for half a day, while Snover and his mate argued whether or not to put ashore again and recover their little passenger. In the end, toward dusk, they saw Iliff stalk down to the water's edge, the girl trolling by his side, and wade in till the crystal rose to his waist.

"'The gell—no, she en't going in," Snover muttered, polishing the lenses of his binoculars with one sleeve. "The men's crezzy.

"What's that he's doing? Heaving up something in his hand, sir?" demanded Grady.

"A small box," his superior said briefly, and then added: "Pitching it clear away. Yes, sir. Flung something right out into the lagoon. Something thet shines—thet shone as it fell."

The two figures rejoined each other on the beach, and the All's Well swung her booms. An hour later she was a slight, luminous feather aslant the dark horizon.

"AND that's the last of Captain Snover and Mr. Grady, Cynthia," Iliff said.

"I like Captain Snover and Mr. Grady," was the reply.

"Very probable," was the response. "Now you must go to bed."

"Yes, papa."

He turned on her with a savage grimace. "Who told you to call me papa?"

"Mama," she said hesitatingly. Then, "Why did you throw mama's jewel-box into the water?"

Without any answer, he took her small hand and guided her over the ridgy sand into a thin grove of palms, where a small house faced the lagoon.

Inside, the floor was littered with a disarray of small garments, lacy, intricate, beribboned. Iliff stared at them.

"I suppose you know your way about," he remarked. "Can pick out your things all right?"

"Of course," she responded.

"Get into bed, then," he commanded.

Outside, the man walked up and down, smoking vigorously, frowning into the starlit night, swinging his feet harshly. Presently to him came a faint call:

"Captain! Captain! I'm in be-ed!"

In the midst of the heaped-up finery he found her, clad in flimsy white stuff, her bare arms lying listlessly over the shimmering piña cloth he had dressed her cot with.

"Mama said you'd be glad to see me," she said querulously.

"Why do you call me 'Captain'?" he demanded.

"That's what mama always wrote on her letters to you," she answered. "But she said for me to call you papa, and you don't like it!"

"I never got any letters," he said.

"She never sent them," she told him, tossing her yellow curls. "We always put them in her jewel-case. What did you throw mama's jewel-case into the water for?"

He did not reply. A moment later she closed her eyes, and he walked stealthily out and down to the margin of the lagoon. The waning moon lighted his strange labor till at last he rose from the depths with the box dripping in his hand.

Opened, it displayed a small heap of water-soaked papers, a ribbon or so, a few gold ornaments, a locket, a wedding-ring, a small porcelain vase sealed.

By the light of his lantern, Iliff ran over these things, plucking slowly at the written sheets. At last he carefully opened one and read the hurried, bold script:

. . . When you went away, I swore to myself that I had forgotten you. I am sure I had. I took off the ring and put it into the jewel-box. I put everything that was too valuable to throw away into the jewel-box and shut it up. Then she came. It's funny to think that you don't know about her. You sha'n't, either. You shall never know anything about me, your wife, or of her, your child. That will be maddening to you. You, who always want to know what any one else has got. You won't know—never.

Another sheet was in a still more hurried hand:

It came suddenly, and there's nowhere else to send the child. I found out where you were. It can't be worse than where she would be here when I'm dead. She'll bring you all that's left of the little home we had six years ago where you and I planted the rose bushes together. Not much! Look in the vase. CYNTHIA.

With slow fingers B. Iliff took up the porcelain and scrutinized it.. What did that dark purple stripe around it mean? The huge black number incrusted on its surface? The indecipherable seal over its mouth? He held that queer object in his palm, and the sweat rolled clown his cheeks. Then he bent over a little and drew the lantern nearer. The lettering was faint and foreign:

Cynthia. . . May 26. . . Iliff. . . The Ashes. . .

TWELVE times in ten years did Captain Snover of the All's Well call at Remote Island. Each voyage he brought and left a heavier cargo and took away a longer tale of the miracles that were having their manifestation on that small and inconsiderable bit of world amid the waters. The sum of his story was that Iliff, now always entitled Captain, was gaining a big place in the island hemisphere as a trader and merchant. What-Have-You-Got Iliff, they called him.

Of his daughter much was indistinctly said. Snover swore that she was beautiful beyond the loveliness of women. His old-time mate, Grady, vowed that she was an angel, and ramblingly related her advent on the deck of the All's Well from out of the untainted waters of the open sea. Various Kanakas spoke of her as a goddess, and missionaries bound on the quest of souls reverently upheld her as an incarnation of saintly virtue.

Besides these, none ever saw her. What-Have-You-Got Iliff was inhospitable, men said. Others spoke darkly of a past that invited no examination. All agreed to leave his stronghold to himself.

"Efter all." Snover said. "the men is eble to tek care of both of them. I don't like him. He don't like me. It's the gell who keeps us from screpping. Some day—if I were a youngster, with a sound schooner under foot, I'd raise Remote Island and call on old Ceptain Iliff and bawl at him, 'What hev you got?' end, 'I've come for it.'"

And meanwhile the United States, careless of all but its own, increased in population from sixty-two-odd millions to a hundred millions. Out of this vast surplusage destiny plucked a single man, roughly shaped him to balance on his own feet, gave him a measure of boldness, and flung him out beyond the continent to match himself with What-Have-You-Got Iliff.

They met on the desk of the schooner All's Well.

"Grady hes a creft of his own, Ceptain," Snover remarked. "My new mate, Mister Syllonge. Mister Syllonge, Ceptain Iliff, the owner of this island, and our consignee."

Iliff glared at the tall, loosely knit, pleasant-faced seaman who was smiling at him, and turned his back. To Snover he said:

"No strangers allowed ashore here in Remote."

"I understand," the skipper said calmly.

"Bring another mate next time," Iliff continued.

"Eh? Who the dickens are you, to speak to me about me own officers on me own deck?" Snover snapped.

"Bring another mate—or I'll get another schooner to do my business."

"Mister Syllonge," the captain of the All's Well remarked, when Remote Island had vanished below the horizon, "you'll have to find another berth. You're a good men, but you don't suit Ceptain Iliff."

Syllonge laughed. "Some day I'll run his island down in a packet of my own, and take what he's got away from him. The miserable old tramp!"

Snover leaned forward, and his tone was low and discreet.

"I'd not say much like thet," he warned his mate. "Iliff is a men with a long reach. Efter all, it's his daughter thet he's watching out for, end you nor I is a men to associate with her. Nor any other bleckguard in these South Seas!"

"I only caught a glimpse of her," Syllonge answered, without a trace of resentment. "I expect to see her soon!"

FOR a year Iliff watched the arrival of the All's Well, a missionary steamer, a French man-o'-war hunting a pirate, and sundry craft of native build, and found no fault with any one who presumed to be his guest. But one day through the lagoon surged a smart boat manned by neatly clad Kanakas and commanded by the hated figure of Archibald Syllonge. Iliff instantly knew him, and strode down to the beach.

The two men stared at each other, the elder bending his gray brows till they met across his great beak. Finally Iliff spoke:

"What have you got?"

Syllonge smiled cheerfully.

"A schooner a hundred and fifty miles to lee'ard. Out of fresh provisions."

"Stay you here," the other said gruffly, and called to a couple of lounging natives who speedily departed, to return with a bag of biscuit, a couple of sacks of potatoes, bananas, and cocoanuts.

"Now go," said Iliff.

And, exactly as if a trip in a small boat over one hundred and fifty miles of open sea were an afternoon jaunt, Syllonge nodded, laughed, and embarked. But, as he crossed the lagoon toward the pass, he saw a moving form in the slender grove to his right, steered promptly for it, and leaped out on the sand in front of a girl who met his frank gaze as steadily as if he were a brother.

"And you're what he's got!" Syllonge breathed in a whisper.

Cynthia's cheeks took on a faint color which merely accented the perfection of her face. She swayed slightly on her feet, and held out one hand.

"Where did you come from?" she asked quietly.

"From an island to leeward," he answered. "I—I'm trading down here, and got out of fresh provisions. None on the island I touched at, and, as I'd heard of Remote, I dropped over."

"Heard of it?" she said, smiling. "You were Captain Snover's mate!"

"So I was," he replied. "I didn't think you saw me."

"Oh, yes! But I didn't like you."

Syllonge frowned. "So you told your father, and he got me discharged?"

"No, not at all! I like you now!"

A spat of white sand just in front of the young man's feet and the dull report of a rifle made them both step back.

"Your father seems to be prejudiced," Syllonge remarked. "I'm putting you in danger. Good-by! I'll be back soon."

"Soon?" she called.

He waved his hand. "To get you!" he returned.

UNDISCOURAGED, Syllonge—now Captain Archibald Syllonge of the three-masted schooner Mercy—came back to Remote Island six months afterward, bringing the mail. To Iliff he curtly reported that Snover had piled the All's Well up on a reef down Tonga way.

"And I've got your freight."

Perforce Iliff must let him come to the house and speak to his daughter, though he made it plain that the young man was there for the last time. Before Cynthia herself he took pains to remark: "There'll be no freight money for you if you come again."

Cynthia, apparently accustomed to her father's whims, withdrew herself from Syllonge's society. He made bold to plead with her, and received a startling response.

"What have you got that's worth my while?" she demanded. "I know you want to marry me. Father is rich, and I'll have his money when he dies. What have you got?"

Dumfounded, he turned away. Iliff sped him:

"You South Pacific tramps better keep away."

"Did you like that fellow?" Iliff demanded of his daughter.

"I don't think I did," she returned. "At any rate, he's a poor stick. He never said a word when I asked him what he could give me if I married him."

"What?" roared Iliff.

Cynthia repeated what she had said, and her father looked at her as if a miracle had transpired beyond his knowledge to this day. She found him uncommmnicative for the next week.

"So that's the fashion you have of considering marriage," he broke out finally. "A man's got to have something besides gall and nerve?"

She involuntarily pressed her hands across her bosom. "Something!" she cried. "I don't know what it is!"

Iliff broke a silence that had lasted for years:

"Your mother didn't know, either—nor find it."

"In you," she said simply.

The passions repressed for a life-time blazed up. He shook his great band before his daughter.

"Was there anybody else? A-a-ah!"

Frightened and yet unintimidated, she drew back. "What is it to you?"

"You were only six—you couldn't know!" he growled.

Cynthia laughed and vanished.

"It's time I rid myself of her," Iliff meditated, when he was calmer. "I'm getting fond of the girl. I swore never to be fond of any woman again. My daughter! Her daughter! Before I miss her too much, I'll marry her off!"

Later he announced his purpose.

"And not to any cheap schooner skippers or drunken traders, either," he concluded.

"I hope not," she responded simply.

"With your good looks you can marry anybody," he continued.

"And your money," she added.

"A fiend!" he muttered. "Like her mother!"

ARCHIBALD SYLLONGE studied the astounding question Cynthia Iliff had propounded while his vessel crossed the Pacific and threaded her way into an interior port of Japan. It was still unanswered when he quitted the Japan Sea for Port Townsend; and he had no light until the Mercy drifted into a berth in Honolulu, and Captain Snover came aboard for a visit.

The visitor's earliest inquiries were for the people on Remote Island, and when he found Syllonge uncommunicative and sullen, he dropped all formalities and said: "Fallen in love with her, of course! Nobody could help it!"

"She—she's splendid!" Syllonge mumbled. Then he added, as if to himself: "Always asking, 'What have you got?'"

Snover picked up the clue and pondered it.

"That's the way Iliff looks at it. I know. I've met his kind of people in other places. Heng it all! Syllonge, the men med the mistek of his life when he esked the question of his wife. It was his wife, Cynthia's mother. I mek it the woman hed given him everything, and he esked her, 'What hev you got?'"

The two were silent a little while; then the former skipper of the All's Well continued:

"End he's been esking thet ever since."

"He has," was the grim assent.

"He has," Snover repeated. "Then the gell remembers her mother, and she puts the thing the other end to, and she probably esks any man that comes along, 'What hev you got?' Which is a very unleddylike thing to esk, but netural in a gell thet's lived fifteen years with Ceptain Iliff. End I believe some day she'll get the proper enswer."

"From some rich fellow," Syllonge remarked.

Snover shook his head gravely.

"It depends on what she wishes," he


said. "What con a men offer her that Remote Island hesn't got?"

"Excuse me, Captain," Syllonge said hastily. "My crew is slower than tar this day. I must be out of here by the morning tide."

"Where bound?"

"Remote Island, sir."

Four weeks later Captain Syllonge hove his schooner to right abreast the pass into the lagoon of Remote Island.

Iliff met him on the beach, and, to the young man's astonishment, greeted him amiably.

"The news brought you, did it?" Iliff inquired. "You're not the first. Cloke is here. Know Cloke?"

"Pearl-fisher? What news? Just in time for what?"

"My daughter's marriage," Iliff said, with apparent satisfaction.

Syllonge stared, and then laughed.

"Is that so? When does it come off? To Cloke?"

"Maybe to Cloke," Iliff responded, balancing his muscular body on his strong legs. "It'll be decided by her. I've sent the news around for four months, now, that she was ready to marry the man who could make the best showing. They're coming. Cloke dropped off the missionary steamer week before last. I'll bet a dozen schooners are on their way to this island now."

"Count me in," Syllonge said quietly.

CYNTHIA greeted him calmly, and introduced him to Cloke, whom Syllonge instantly set down to be no mean antagonist: a full-blooded, suave, handsome man, reputed to be extremely well-to-do.

For three days he strove to get a quiet talk with Cynthia, and failed—until one night he came upon her walking in the darkness along the outer beach, where the wind boomed incessantly and the surf roared. He drew her roughly within the shelter of a creaking palm.

"I came to get my chance," he said bluntly. "You asked me what I had to offer. I have a schooner and"—he paused breathlessly—"my love for you."

"That is a great deal," she admitted.

"My love!" he repeated, trying to catch her hand.

"It's a great deal!" she answered, withdrawing.

"Not enough?" he said bitterly.

"Not enough," she told him quietly.

He hung his head awhile, striving to think of some other thing in his power to offer this magnificent woman.

"I know you aren't looking merely for money," he said. "I don't know that I've got anything else to offer."

She slipped away.

WITHIN a week other schooners hove to off Remote, and smart boats came ashore and landed men of many kinds. Among these Syllonge found himself edged to one side, then ignored, at last markedly a stranger. Cynthia held her court, and smiled and spoke and looked beautiful without reference to his presence.

He sought her out.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you weren't worth the trouble," he said curtly. "But you are worth the trouble. When are you going to answer those people out there? When's the wedding?"

Cynthia smiled faintly. "What right have you to ask?"

"Am I to be the bridegroom?"

She colored. "I have told you that I can say nothing till I decide."

"Then I have a chance—yet?"

Again she escaped him.

With a growl, Syllonge left the house, ignored a sardonic invitation from Iliff to stay for tea, and made his way out to the Mercy, where he took counsel with himself till midnight.

At last he was roused by a new note in the mate's voice, just down front hauling the schooner about on the other tack.

"Blow," said that worthy.

"Blow? Nonsense," Syllonge snarled.

"Barometer fallen two tenths since eight bells, sir."

Syllonge leaped to his feet, surveyed the glass, and took the steps to the deck in three strides. There he sniffed the heavy air and tasted the salt on the slow breeze that swept in gusts from the south.

"You're right!" he whispered to the mate. "Any other craft about?"

"Two—Badger's schooner and Thompson's brigantine were to windward at sundown. I think they won't get back very soon. Wind's veering."

Just before dawn the two men consulted again.

"If the glass tells the truth, we're in for a proper hurricane," the mate remarked. "In that case, sir, it'll be—"

Syllonge nodded.

"You say the other packets were standing to windward last night? That means that unless they're back here by sunrise they'll stand little chance of fetching the island again till the blow's over."

He leaned out over the rail and studied the shadow, low-lying and dense, that marked Remote.

"Get your ship ready, Mr. Mate," he said brusquely.

Alone he stood and gazed at the little ellipse of coral taking shape under the graying light—watched it till the sudden glare of day flung open its every crevice and laid it momentarily like a relief map under his eyes. Then he looked up at the zenith, obscured with vapor, and compressed his lips. Beyond the island he could see the slow seas flinging up great jets of spume as they hurled themselves with strange vehemence on the reef.

Very shortly the bright sun grew ruddy, and then went out behind a bank of swirling clouds. Syllonge shook his head at the repeated suggestions of his mate that they send the Mercy along and out of the lee, which would soon be dangerous.

"Wait," he said. "They're getting busy ashore."

"We'll be too busy ashore the moment this wind starts from the other direction," the mate said aggrievedly. "It'll just pick us up and throw us at the reef. I've been through these storms before."

"So have I," was the tart response. "I'm going ashore."

"You're crazy, sir!"

"When I signal you from the beach, run for the head of the island, and then get as close to the reef as you can. That'll be the lee side then."

Earnest alarm was in the mate's tones now. He had no intention of being left short-handed on the schooner to manage by himself through a gale which might last three or four days.

"I'll be back," Syllonge told him. "I have business ashore. The schooner will be perfectly safe for an hour to come."

A moment later he was alone in the small boat, pulling for the pass. Once inside the lagoon, he pulled to the beach in front of the grove, hauled his boat up a way, and strode up the sands just as the first gust of the gathering gale howled across the atoll, bending the palms and scattering the white coral in dusty clouds. Without a signal of any kind, Syllonge tramped up on the wide veranda and through the open door.

CLOKE met him, showing astonishment. "You must be mad, Captain!"

Behind him Iliff showed a face distinctly worried.

"This is likely to be a hard gale," he muttered, glaring around at the flimsy walls of the house.

"Very likely," Syllonge said briefly. "Where is Miss Iliff?"

"Here," she replied in a calm voice from the shadow.

"I couldn't go away without thanking you for your hospitality," he told her, ignoring the others and their impatience.

"Man, your schooner will be ashore in five minutes!" bawled a voice.

"So anxious to see me off!" Syllonge laughed, clasping Cynthia's hand. "Won't you step with me to the beach?"

Without any reply to the prompt demur of her father, and eluding the frantic

[illustration]

"She met his frank gaze as steadily as if he were a brother. 'And you're what he's got!' Syllonge breathed. 'Where did you come from?' Cynthia asked."


grasp of Captain Badger, who was entering and roaring various kinds of advice, Cynthia walked out with Syllonge. When they reached the shore of the lagoon it was already ruffled into whiteness, and the small boat rolled uneasily.

Syllonge thrust it off with one foot, glanced at the murky sky, swept one arm around the waist of the girl beside him, leaped out, and landed in the rocking boat. An instant later he was thrusting it furiously out toward the pass, his captive standing poised before him, silent, past words of protest or astonishment.

Dim shouts came up the wind. He pad no attention to them.

The schooner was already heeling over to the blast when Archibald Syllonge grasped a line, pulled alongside, and lifted Cynthia to the rail. An instant later he was at the wheel, shouting orders which the natives of the crew obeyed with a swiftness that made even the mate stare. Just as the Mercy finally yielded to the terrific press of the breaking gale, the whole of Remote Island was swallowed up in a cloud of swirling mist and boiling spume.

THIRTY-SIX hours later, Archibald Syllonge thrust open the cabin scuttle and let himself down into the warm, close air.

"Cynthia!" he cried.

She came out of a room on the port side, her face composed, her eyes steady.

"I thought we'd better have a talk," he said. "I've been too busy till now."

She looked into his bloodshot eyes—eyes that still flashed, under the lamp swinging in its gimbals. She saw the salt crusted on his cheeks, the pallor of his soaked flesh. There was neither sympathy nor admiration in her glance.

"It was a narrow shave," Syllonge went on awkwardly. "But the old Mercy hung together, and we're safe."

"I should have been much safer—and more comfortable—on Remote Island."

"I—maybe so," he answered. "I thought it was for the best. They didn't know. There was no time to explain. I just took you."

"Why?"

"I wanted to tell you that," Syllonge went on, ill at ease. "You won't be offended?"

"How could I be more offended?" she demanded coldly.

"That's it," he said. "You are offended. But I couldn't come down here during the storm, and—and I had to leave you alone. I had to," he repeated, "to save the schooner. All hands, of course. And now I've got to be honest with you. That'll offend you more. I didn't take you off the atoll because I wanted to marry you. Not at all. I haven't anything to offer worth your taking. I haven't got what you want. I know it now. You're offended, of course. You had every right to think that I had found something worth your while—when I walked off with you that way. But there was no time to explain."

Cynthia laughed, the color high in her cheeks. Her eyes flashed dangerously.

"Explain what?" she demanded. "Is there anything that can be explained?"

"I think there is," he said simply. "In the morning. Good night!"

HE disappeared slowly up the steps, and she watched him go, her lips parted in a cry that was never uttered.

In that hour she knew, at last, what it was that her life was empty of, which would have filled it to the lip of the lovely cup. And she would never have it! Her mother had never had it. She wept for the destiny of women.

In the morning she saw Syllonge again. He entered the cabin, and took off his sou'wester with a curiously humble gesture.

"I can explain now," he said. "The storm is over. Come on deck."

On deck, she looked about her. The sea was a gray, leaping thing, crested, foaming, rushing onward to the dull and dim horizon. Nothing was in sight. She shuddered.

"You'll see pretty soon," the man at her elbow said huskily. "Right ahead of us, maybe a couple of points off the star-board bow."

"What?" she demanded.

"Remote Island," he answered.

Slowly her unaccustomed eyes picked it out of the welter ahead of them, a mere patch of darker gray in the universal waste. Her fingers crept out and took hold of his jacket. The wind blew her hair across her throat in dark wreaths, veiling the leaping of her pulses. But there was no word needed to tell her sudden thrilling realization of the destruction the storm had wrought. Blank, sea-washed coral, torn here and there by the teeth of the surf, a broken ring of barren, sterile bone, was all that the hurricane had left.

"You knew?" she whispered.

"I was afraid," he told her. "I saw one such storm over in the Solomons."

"And father, Mr. Cloke, Captain Badger—didn't they know?"

"I don't—no one can tell," he said.

She laughed at last.

"No wonder you didn't take me off because you wanted to marry me! I'm poor! I haven't a thing left in the world! Now I understand."

"You are offended," Syllonge responded patiently. "I don't blame you. It was this way: I saw you running a risk, and you didn't like me, and I had nothing to offer you worth while—only myself and this schooner. Not enough! But I wasn't going to see you die with those—those people. Not any sense in their heads! Why, to see that man Cloke lording it around when the sea was getting up! And Badger bawling useless advice! It fair sickened me! Sent their vessels off-shore to ride out the hurricane! And you without any chance at all! Says I to myself, 'She shall have a chance and see the world, where there are plenty of good men—not worth her while, but better than these.' That was what I wanted to do—give you a chance. Not to have you drown in the surf off Remote Island, with a Badger bawling in your ear."

She looked at him with a strange expression on her face.

"I'm sure that's the best I can say it," Syllonge went on. "And all my life I've wanted just such a woman as you. The moment I saw you, I knew I'd always love you. I always shall, of course."

She turned a tragic face to his.

"My father! Was it—did one big wave—did they go suddenly?" she whispered. "It seems awful! And he hated them all, Badger and Cloke and the rest. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at them. Why did he hate everybody so?"

"Why?" echoed Syllonge.

The atoll now became plainer, showing a little fledging of tree-stumps along the rim of the lagoon where the grove had stood. Captain and mate glanced keenly at this, and drew apart, while the girl, bemused and silent, dreamed unknown things.

Then Syllonge took the binoculars and studied the fringe of coral intently, at last snapping the glasses into their rack with a curt order.

The Mercy swung off, and the atoll seemed automatically to alter its position till it was broad on the port bow. Fifteen minutes later Syllonge touched Cynthia on the arm.

"I'm going ashore," he said. "Will you come?"

SHE obeyed his gesture, and stepped down into the tossing boat. The Kanakas pulled away for the pass—no longer a gentle gate into the peaceful lagoon, but a dull gap in the wrecked ring of coral. They entered it, and were momentarily caught in the swirl of a great eddy, rocked violently in a tide-rip, and then' released to slip up on the beach.

"Here we are," Syllonge said briskly. "Now for a look around."

She drew back. "There is nothing here I want."

He shook his head. "Better come with me."

He led the way up the shelving sand, up to where an irregular cavity in the coral marked the house site.

As they topped the rise, Cynthia drew back, startled. A head had appeared out of this hollow and dipped back.

"Your father," Syllonge said. "We saw him from the deck of the schooner."

"Father!" she repeated. "Safe?"

"Quite safe," he answered. "A little upset, I reckon. Must have been a tough siege. But there he is!"

Again the disheveled head was thrust up. Cynthia looked into the face of Iliff, strange and distorted. The eyes seemed unconscious of what they saw.

"Better speak to him," Syllonge said.

"Father!" she called.

Instantly the figure straightened up. The voice came to them harshly, cracked with thirst, strained with suffering:

"What have you got?"

Syllonge answered briefly:

"Your daughter, Captain Iliff."

The old man rubbed his sand-scarred eyeballs and stumbled forward.

"Cynthia? Has he got you, Cynthia?"

"Safe," she said quietly. She turned to the man beside her.

"You will always keep me so—always safe?"

Syllonge met her direct, womanly glance, and threw his bare head backward.

"I can—I will!" he responded.

In the magnificence of their future, they stood silent, oblivious to the old man, who held in his shaking hand the fragment of a broken vase.

Why You Pay $2 for a Theater Seat

By Hiram Kelly Moderwell

[illustration]

"There are the summer months, when an actor's chief occupation is borrowing. Is it surprising that he boosts his price?"

WHY does a play cost two dollars a seat? The answer is that it doesn't. It costs about seventy-five cents (with the cheapest seats, say, at about twenty-five). The remaining dollar and a quarter is, from your point of view, thrown away.

Last season America spent millions of dollars for its "first-class" theaters—not counting motion pictures, vaudeville, and burlesque. New York City alone expended close to ten millions. Between thirty-five and forty thousand actors and actresses in this country were working in the "legitimate," stock companies included. Half a dozen plays in New York took in more than half a million dollars each, and at least two or three "road shows," with several companies, took in a million.

These plays cost two dollars a seat, or at least one-fifty. There are cheaper seats, to be sure; but a theater lives on its two-dollar seats. And it is the two-dollar people, not the great public, whom the theater managers aim to please.

It is on Broadway, the country's theatrical producing plant, that your two dollars is apportioned. The first-class plays that tour are a sort of extension course of Broadway. The money spent on the theater at Columbus, Ohio, goes chiefly to foot Broadway deficits. The books are kept on the Great White Way, and there the theater money is distributed among managers, actors, authors, real estate owners, and press agents.

From last season's offerings "the provinces" will be given a handful of popular plays in wholesale lots. "Fair and Warmer" will have nine road companies. "It Pays to Advertise" has been having five, and "Twin Beds" the same number. "Common Clay" will have four or more; and so on. By this means the New York successes have for the past ten years been fed to "the provinces." "The Lion and the Mouse" had six traveling companies, "Paid in Full" five, and "Within the Law" nine. Broadway gets the last possible dollar out of a successful piece. The plays seen in stock theaters outside New York are those New York has tired of.

It is true that the motion pictures have cut into this road business. The number of road companies has greatly diminished in the past two seasons. But the most successful plays are wholesaled to as great an extent as ever. There may not be as many two-dollar bills paid to the theater as formerly, but those that are paid still go chiefly to New York.

If a play proves to be a "success" there is plenty of money for every one. Ordinarily it costs from five to fifteen thousand dollars to produce a play, and something like four or five thousand a week to run it, everything included. A "success" will take in from eleven to fifteen thousand a week for an almost unlimited number of weeks (in some cases as many as seventy-five). It is easy to see what a huge margin of profit there is.

One manager this season has taken in nearly half a million in clear profit from a single company. When you have such a profit multiplied several times by road companies, as in the case of "Within the Law," you can easily understand why there is money to pass around to everybody. "Within the Law," according to well based estimates, has taken in more than five million dollars.

In New York, each season, there are about two hundred productions of plays and musical comedies. Of these, two out of three are flat failures, and only one in seven is a distinct success. When a play fails, does its manager go into bankruptcy? By no means. The actor may experience that discomfort, but seldom the manager. One play out of seven is forced to pay the producing expenses of four other plays, costing from five to twenty-five thousand dollars each.

The business of producing plays isn't a business at all. It is a gamble. Nobody who plays it has any idea how he is coming out. Two of the most spectacular successes of the last ten years—"Paid in Full" and "Within the Law"—were refused by manager after manager as bad risks. Henry B. Harris had $680 in the bank when he produced "The Lion and the Mouse," which made him a clear million in profit, in addition to $300,000 in royalties to the author, Charles Klein.


[illustration]

"When you buy a theater ticket, you are paying for the show you see and four others, dying but unlamented."

George Tyler, a year or so ago, was in the receiver's hands, and risked everything on a $60,000 production which would either make him bankrupt or make him rich. He became bankrupt. Bayard Veiller, after peddling "Within the Law" among the managers, after seeing it "revised" by an expert and performed to cold houses, sold the manuscript and its rights for a $5000 check. A year or so later the Shuberts brought suit in court against another company for one quarter of the royalties that Mr. Veiller would have received had he hung on. This quarter they estimated at $150,000. The play is still making money in stock companies.

Theatrical producing is not a business. In a business a man invests a certain amount of money, puts on the market an article for which there is a demand or for which he believes a demand can be created, and looks for a fair percentage of return on his investment. In a gamble he throws his money on the red or the black, and expects to lose it all or win it back five times over.

Don't suppose that managers particularly enjoy this gambling business. But the rules of the game are fixed for them. Any American manager who played for a ten per cent. profit on each investment would be a fool. But the manager is not the only gambler in the theater. He has taken care to distribute the risks all around, and nearly every one connected with him takes his chance. The actor gambles, the theater owner gambles, the star gambles, the author gambles. No one expects to get pay for services rendered. Each looks for a fortune from a turn of the wheel.

How to Starve on a High Salary

GAMBLING is an expensive occupation; and in a case like this it is especially expensive for the consumer. To begin with, an extravagant proportion of your two dollars goes to the actors. A parlor-maid with two or three lines to speak gets sixty or seventy-five dollars a week; a competent actor, without any special genius or reputation, easily gets $200 or $300; and many a player who could not aspire to stardom gets $500 or more. There is hardly another profession in America in which the remuneration is so inflated.

[illustration]

"The day is past when a playwright is content with a garret and a pittance."

But the actor does not get the benefit of these salaries. He receives his pay only while the play is going on. He rehearses six or eight weeks for nothing, provides his own costumes, accepts cuts in his salary whenever the manager sees fit—and is dismissed on two weeks' notice or none at all when the play closes. And two out of three plays, remember, close before four weeks' salaries have been paid.

In other words, the actor usually gives from eight to ten weeks' work in return for from two to four weeks' salary. Many weeks of each busy season he is obliged to spend hunting for a job, and, unless he is one of the few who are always in demand, he must usually wait until he can find a part that "fits" him. Then, there are the summer months, in which many an actor's chief occupation is borrowing. Is it surprising that they boost their price? What it comes to is this: The average actor spends two thirds of his time either rehearsing without pay or looking for a job. Taken the year around, the actor's salary is only a moderate living wage. He does not grow rich from it. But the public, which supports him for twelve months of the year, receives in return only some four months of his services.

Some Tricks with Real Estate

HOW much of your two dollars, you may ask, goes to the rent of the theater building? Surely you don't suppose that the theater owner rents his building! Did you suppose he plans for a six per cent. net return on his investment? By no means. He too gambles on the play. In New York he divides the gross receipts fifty-fifty, except in the case of musical comedies, when he is usually content with thirty-five. On the road, where real estate values are lower, he is also likely to accept thirty-five with thanks. Thus from 70 cents to $1 of your money goes to the item of real estate. In New York, when a play runs a solid season, as frequently happens, the owner of the theater may receive as his share a quarter of a million dollars.

There are about forty "first-class" theaters in New York, each representing an original investment of a quarter to half a million dollars. The seating capacity is usually between 1100 and 1400, yielding a little more than that number of dollars. Thus, with six night performances and two matinées, the average New York theater can take in about $11,000 a week, and one or two can show a solid $20,000 each Saturday night. There is considerable leeway between these figures and the $6000 that represents the maximum total running expense of the ordinary play (theater charges included). And the leeway represents solid profit, for it costs no more to play to 1400 persons than to 400. But, whether there is a profit or not, the theater owner gets his percentage. If a play does not show $6000 a week within two weeks it is given peremptory notice to get out. If you figure it out you will find that $3000 to $5000 a week for thirty-five weeks makes a pretty good income on an investment of a quarter or half a million dollars, all overhead charges, repairs, etc., included.

But this is not all. In New York and many other large cities the "theater owner" of whom we have been speaking is usually also the "manager." He receives from himself half the gross receipts in return for the privilege of letting himself have his theater. More than that, he probably doesn't "own" the theater at all; he is, as you have suspected, only gambling on it. He is risking no capital; he is merely leasing the building for a short term on an eight or ten per cent. basis. Thus, with that portion of your theater money that goes to real estate you not only pay the interest and upkeep: you also help to create a fat speculative profit on land.

Why the Stars Shine

PERHAPS you have wondered, in musing about a star who is applauded from coast to coast, what her (or maybe his) salary comes to. It may be large, but it isn't the salary that buys the limousine. It is the profits. In the majority of cases the star, like the manager, gambles.

Laurette Taylor received only a modest salary of $600 a week for playing the lead in "Peg o' My Heart." But in her contract she inserted something about a share of the profits, and these continued to flow into her stocking for eighteen continuous months in New York and almost as many in London. In her case it is perhaps a family arrangement, since she happens to be the wife of the author, Mr. J. Hartley Manners. When she undertook the play she probably wrote her husband down as a block of watered stock.

But, even when there is no member of the family to speculate on, the star usually gets his share of the profits. He figures rightly, that his reputation alone is part of the capital of the production. Besides, every actor accepts a very real risk when he undertakes a new part. If the play fails, he is out on the street, looking for a new job; and three or four successive failures are almost enough to wipe him off the theatrical map.

Bertha Kalich and Nance O'Neill, two of the ablest actresses in the country, are almost exiled from the boards because they were put into hoodoo plays. There are not more than seventy-five actors in the country (outside of vaudeville and stock) who have long-time contracts. Speculation, in fact, is the star's one means of securing a remuneration comparable to the salaries paid in the movies. The $3600 which Gaby Deslys drew each Saturday night from "Stop, Look, Listen" can not be duplicated in the "legitimate," where $1500 is usually the limit.

The Highest Paid Author

WHEN a playwright submits a play like "The Lion and the Mouse" or "Within the Law," he is offering a commodity worth to him from $300,000 to $500,000. He is the world's most highly paid author. Theodore Roosevelt is said to have received from Scribner's Magazine a dollar for each word he wrote about his African lion-hunt. The successful playwright, if you care to figure it by words, gets a rate twenty or thirty times as high. Even in the old days, before Broadway began to crack the whip for the nation, successful plays brought royalties in the hundred thousands. Augustus Thomas cleared $175,000 from "Arizona," and later did even better with "The Witching Hour."

Margaret Mayo is the most successful woman playwright in America, and hence in the world. From her plays and farces, "Polly of the Circus," "Baby Mine," and "Twin Beds," she has cleared not less than half a million. George Cohan used to receive money from his plays in the four capacities of author, actor, theater owner, and manager.

Merely to accept five per cent. of your play's gross receipts is not gambling. But the author is not asleep. He may turn in his play as watered stock to the extent of from ten to twenty-five (or even fifty) per cent. of the total capitalization. Besides, many of the playwrights whose names are on the bill-boards are not the authors of the plays from which they receive their royalties. They are often only experienced hacks who have rewritten somebody else's manuscript and have taken most of the credit as well as the cash. The day is past when the author was content with a pittance and a garret for his genius. The American playwright understands the ins and outs of his business, and he is a rare person if he hasn't a share in the rewards.

Do You Believe What You Read?

THERE is still another big hole made in your two dollars. That is in the item of advertising. On the average, you spend about a tenth of your ticket money to persuade yourself to come to the show. Advertising in itself is a legitimate part of any business. But theatrical advertising does not confine itself to announcing its wares on their merits. It makes extravagant claims for each and every

[illustration]

"One manager last season took in nearly a million in clear profit from a single company."

article. In New York about a million dollars a year is spent for it in the newspapers by the "legitimate" alone. It seeks to convince the reader that each play is something superlative.

"The most gripping play New York has seen in ten years." "The greatest musical show on earth." "Dramatic sensation of the year." "Most fascinating comedy of the day." "Smartest comedy in town." These examples were taken from a single issue of a New York newspaper. It is noticeable that the most definite success of the season made no such claims for itself: it had merely to announce its existence.

But when a manager is desperate he sometimes throws ten thousand dollars or more into the newspapers in an effort to save his show. There are newspapers in New York which stand ready to use their editorial columns to boost any play, good or bad, that will pay their price. One exceptionally poor comedy last season eked out many extra weeks of life by this means.

Theatrical advertising performs no service to the consumer. It is not meant to help him make up his mind. It is too often intended to hypnotize him into coming to a play that he does not want to see. But he pays the bill all the same. If the rules of the game permitted theatrical advertising to come to a businesslike basis, nearly ten per cent. could be deducted from the price of your theater ticket.

Overproduction is perhaps the principal cause of all this extravagance. The theatrical manager, producing two or three times as many plays as the market warrants, is obliged to extort from each successful play two to three times its cost price and running expenses. If production were limited to demand, if actors were engaged by the season, if theater buildings were situated a few blocks from the high-rent district,—most of all, if the American public could decide for itself what it wants to see,—your two-dollar theater ticket could be bought for seventy-five cents. As it is, the American system of theatrical production, with its huge prizes, its wild risks, and its extravagant waste, is the most expensive in the world.

[illustration]

"A theater lives on its $2 seats. The others are a by-product."


everyweek Page 8Page 8

Reg'lar and Parlor-Fashion

By Avery Abbott

Illustrations by O. F. Howard

MINNIE TEEFY felt the man's direct stare like a slap against her face. It was an impact as definite as the heat from the huge coffee-urn, that steamy wave which struck her each time she passed it on her way toward the mirror-faced wall, which flatteringly repeated the café's interior while it discreetly kept to itself the secrets of the kitchen.

For man, as he had come under her observation, Minnie had a classification of her own. Some men, as they gave their orders for food, leered, broadly patronizing, into her face; others, glancing ferret-like off the menu, estimated her, from the top of her fawn-blond head to the toes of her flat-heeled shoes; a few saw her not at all, and were curt, even brutal, in the tone of their commands; but many

[illustration]

Under his steady gaze her cheeks took on not the faintest tinge of color. 'Will you order, please?' she finally repeated."

employed her as they employed an elevator or a telephone, then gave her no further thought. For these last she was grateful.

To all of them the girl showed the same unvarying face. Under the steady gaze of her present patron her cheeks took on not the faintest tinge of color, and her lowered eyelids, faintly blue from long hours, were quite steady, though he lifted his head to regard her for what seemed an insolently long interval.

"Will you order, please?" she finally repeated, in a voice as still and small as was ever the most accommodating conscience. The antagonism that always rose within her against this particular species of the genus blazed with a white fire and made no sign.

"'Porterhouse, double extry,'" ordered the individual specimen—whether from choice, ignorance, or haste Minnie disdained to consider.

A few men there were to whom she would have made the quiet suggestion that this order was served in a portion intended for four people. In this case she coolly reflected that double extra porterhouse was three dollars, and she slipped away toward the region of mirrors before the man could notice his error, if he were capable of doing so. How, since he was at a table alone, was she to know that he was not expecting a party?

WEAVING her return between the chair-backs, with the heavy tray held high, she bent a practised glance upon the man she was serving: enormously broad square shoulders, large hands resting lumpily upon the table-cloth, a stubborn-looking brown head, fortunately turned away. Minnie stood as far off as her small arms permitted, while she set before him the various side dishes and deposited in the center of the cloth the exuding brown platter of steak.

At the same time she slipped his check a trifle out of sight under the platter's edge, and smiled demurely, when her back was turned, because he had again fixed his eyes upon her and had not noticed the slip of cardboard.

When she returned to the table after he was safely outside the revolving doors, her satisfaction in the half dollar beside his plate was more than tinctured with disgust; for a good two thirds of the enormous steak had disappeared. She stacked the cluttered greasy dishes with clicking precision, lifted the weighty tray, and bore her burden kitchenward.

"When you get rid of them, kid, I want to see you." A girl piling butter chips on a side-table spoke over her shoulder.

Minnie gave no sign of having heard, but shortly reappeared, and stood silent. This being the time after the noon hour when the few late comers require little attention, there was opportunity between the waitresses for something approaching conversation.

NO one looking at the two girls would have suspected that they were sisters. Aurelia Teefy was less tiny, less quiet, less most of those qualities that marked Minnie. She was even less her original Christian name, having concluded some years before that Aurelia suited her style better than Jennie. Facile, both in subtraction and addition, was Aurelia.

It occurred to Minnie now, as she surveyed her relative, that Aurelia's ornamental additions had recreated her in striking likeness to a certain china doll that had been their joint property when they were children. Startlingly black and white and red had been the doll, with eyes possessing the same wide stare as Aurelia's. The doll's career had terminated with a broken head, and Minnie remembered yet the shock she had endured when she viewed the emptiness of the awful cavity within. Would Aurelia's head—?

Minnie interrupted her own thoughts. "What did you want?" she curtly questioned.

"Gosh!" exclaimed Aurelia, who had not seen her approach. "If you ain't the creepingest thing!" She arranged the piles of butter chips into safer equilibrium before she opened her subject.

"I'm moving. I won't stay in the same room with that Kate Flannery another night! She's a cat! There's a room I found on Twenty-seventh Avenue that's swell for the money; but I gotta have a room-mate. Thought maybe you'd like to come in with me. We can go look at it before dinner."

Minnie did not answer at once; then she said: "Why don't you have a room to yourself?"

"Room to myself!" Aurelia sniffed elegantly. "'Cause I ain't that big a fool! To spend every cent I make when I'm working, on a hole to crawl into when I ain't working. I gotta have something to dress on. I ain't going skimping around, the way you do, in a last summer's skirt that looks like a length of stove-pipe, when everybody that is anybody is wearing shirrs!"

Minnie glanced down at her slim lines in the old skirt, and then at Aurelia's shirrs, gathered about hips that were obviously compressed to the danger point. Aurelia saw the glance.

"You've got such a good figger, too, for the new styles," she admitted grudgingly. "But you won't never make nothing of yourself. You got about the sperrit and ambition of one of these here white mice. Go on; stick in your old room if you want to. I can get plenty girls to go in with me. I wouldn't live alone, the way you do—I'd go dippy! Besides, it don't look respectable."

Minnie took another survey of Aurelia, considered as a champion of discretion and good form; seemed about to speak; then closed her lips and walked away.

PERHAPS it was an inherent taste for quiet, or more likely a revulsion from the crowding hurry and clatter of the restaurant, that always brought to Minnie Teefy, as she turned the key in the door of her shabby room, the sense of having gained a blessed haven. When four dingily papered walls, one dusty window, an oak bureau, an iron bed, and two inhospitable chairs become invested with that sheltering emotion called home, they must be manifest through an aura projected by the occupant. Minnie went on duty at six in the morning and returned at eight in the evening. As she closed her flimsy door each night, she shut out with relief the bitter jangle of the world, and stood upon her faded ingrain rug—her own Minnie Teefy.

Whether it was some heritage from her unknown parents, or merely a reaction against having been reared with Aurelia in the impersonal huddle of an orphanage, this trait had made inevitable her cleavage from the sister of easy and gregarious tendencies. The same quality colored her feeling for the rest of humanity, especially the masculine half, against whose advances all her tiny, tremulous forces were arrayed. The other girls did not understand Minnie Teefy; and, having a youthful distaste for complexities, they let her alone.

However, the small but sharp problems that made up her existence did not seem to her especially hard. To her experience a bit of good fortune was a foreign ingredient in life, and, as such, immediately to be distrusted. Minnie had never known anything that was easy. So she was not disturbed nor especially annoyed when the man of the double-extra porterhouse came regularly to feed himself at one of her tables, staring at her covertly but persistently, and making ponderous attempts at light conversation.

"Been to the Hippodrome this week?" was one of his first delicate social advances, while he ostensibly studied the menu, to the apparent exclusion of designs upon anything but dinner.

"Yes, sir," said Minnie promptly, eyes down.

"Most of them shows will bear seeing twice, won't they?" continued the man guilelessly, as he ran an absorbed finger along the meat list.

"No, sir," came the reply; and then, "Will you order, please?"

The man transferred his attention from the meat list to the smooth fawn-colored head and as much as was permitted him to see of the small, immobile face. In the expression of his gray-blue eyes was a quality that might have looked like innocent bewilderment, if he had not been unmistakably a man of some years and experience. Minnie Teefy did not see the expression. She saw a spot of mustard on the table-cloth, and she heard the man speak.

"Porterhouse, double extry," was all he said.

CONSUMING his steak, he watched Minnie Teefy. He liked the swift lightness with which she moved; the birdlike motions of her head; the dexterous capability of her small hands. To some of the patrons who sat at her tables she appeared to extend a friendliness which she had not vouchsafed to him.

Especially he noticed one group: a young father in clumsy clothes, good-natured, ineffectual, abashed; two boisterous, clamoring small children; and a sickly, immature mother, visibly distressed by the shortcomings of her offspring.

With an interest that was evidently genuine, Minnie advised them in deciding upon their meal, and solved the difficulty of satisfying two children without a full order for each. When the boy would have attacked the sugar bowl, she rescued it tactfully, and then, with a smile and a pat on his round cheek, gave him two

[illustration]

"'You've got such a good figger for the new styles,' Amelia admitted. 'But you won't never make nothing of yourself.

lumps. She even had time to pick up the baby's spoon cheerfully whenever it dropped, which was often.

The man at the side table observed, wondered, and was a little hurt. But the set of his head and shoulders precluded his being easily disposed of. Three meals a day recur with inconsiderate frequency, and at each of them recurred the man, with his huge imperviousness and his persistent, futile attempts at conversation.

Swinging in through the revolving doors


one shining noon in May, he sat down with reckless force in his accustomed chair, and seized the lunch card.

"Bet it's a great day in the country," he observed to the attendant Minnie. "Ever been there?"

"Yes, sir."

"Beats this all to thunder, don't it?" he exulted.

"No, sir."

The man glanced up, then down, got out his handkerchief and mopped his face.

"Hot to-day, ain't it?" he ventured, oblivious of the electric fan ruffling his brown hair.

"No, sir," clipped off Minnie, reckless of consequences.

This time he looked straight at her with something very like a flash in the blue glance.

"Well, by— Excuse me. Pork and beans," he said.

SURPRISING to state, it was Minnie who opened their next conversation. Stepping softly near to take his dinner order, she planked a silver dollar upon the table beside his plate.

"I never take more'n fifty cents from one party. Maybe you left this by mistake."

"No, I didn't," declared the man. "Strikes me you're the one that's making the mistake."

"I never take more'n fifty cents from one party," reiterated Minnie.

The big fellow gave the dollar a shove that landed it against the oil cruet.

"Somebody will take it handy enough," he observed. "Just leave it lay."

As promptly Minnie secured the coin and dropped it into her pocket.

"I'll take it for to-day too. Don't leave any more," she admonished.

Once again the man stared at her.

"Well, I'll be—" He drew a long breath. "Ham and eggs," he concluded.

When he had removed the ham and eggs and Minnie had removed the dishes, she presented herself before Mrs. Waughton, head waitress. At the moment that lady was on her way to the kitchen, intent upon tracing a patron's complaint to the last filament of its final root. In the path of Mrs. Waughton, Minnie looked perilously inconsequential; but that functionary brought herself to a halt with the nice calculation of a streetcar at a railway crossing.

Rigid mechanism and a stern resolution had done their best for Mrs. Waughton's figure. Instead of looking like a goblet pin-cushion, she was the walking facsimile of a concrete monument. It was a matter, not of taste, but of mode. From the top of the monument a broad face, where good nature was oddly puckered into the set lines of authority, looked down upon Minnie. Mrs. Waughton was a martinet by force of circumstances, but a mother by instinct.

"Could you change my station, if you please?" requested the girl.

"What's the matter?" was the curt interrogation.

"I'd rather have a different station," Minnie faltered.

"Mebbe you would," remarked Mrs. Waughton, not unkindly. "I asked you why."

Minnie flushed so young a pink that the woman involuntarily smiled.

"There comes always to that side table a man I don't like." The words fell over each other.

"Now, girlie, you ain't hired to like 'em. An' as for transferrin' you, he could as easy change too. Just you mind your platters and plates, an' if he gets fresh you see me; I'll settle him. As for his comin' always,"—the monument shook,—"we run this café to keep 'em comin'."

With this scant reassurance Minnie was flicked to one side as a fluttering moth might have been whisked away by the brush of a bovine tail, and Mrs. Waughton resumed her portentous way toward the kitchen.

Nothing could have been farther from Minnie's mind than any expectation of having her complaint remembered; yet next day, whcn the large, round-headed man was bent upon the

[illustration]

"She was not surprised to find him waiting outside. 'If you've got no objections, I'll walk your way—now that we've been made acquainted,' he laughed."

destruction of a double extra, Mrs. Waughton, at three judicious intervals, marched solidly past that side table. The man himself glanced at her finally, and, having looked once, looked again—seemed even to study her, as one who ponders.

THE steak wrecked to the bone, he rose deliberately, threw his napkin into his chair, and, walking half across the café, addressed Mrs. Waughton quietly and at some length.

What could he be saying? Minnie would never have guessed; even Mrs. Waughton was not a little astonished.

"Beg your pardon, ma'am," he began. "Minturn is my name. I have been gettin' my chuck at this beanery—I'm a regular. I'd like to ask a favor."

Mrs. Waughton eyed him with professional interest.

"Anything we can do for you—sure!" she told him.

"I wanted to ask you to make me acquainted, all genteel and parlor-fashion, with that little girl over yonder. Waits on those tables by the wall. Kind of taffy-colored hair."

With an air of impregnable respectability, Mrs. Waughton essayed to freeze him:

"Pardon me, young man, but you're in wrong. This is a first-class café. I'm most particular how my young ladies deports theirselves."

Instead of appearing suitably refrigerated, Minturn looked belligerent.

"Well, ain't I particular? That's why I'm asking you to introduce me regular. Has she got a mother?"

"No."

"Then perhaps you could tell me some better way I could go about it?"

At his evident sincerity Mrs. Waughton was nonplussed; she was also interested.

"Go about what?" she asked.

The big fellow flushed, lumpily removed his hands from his pockets and squeezed them back again.

"I got a good ranch out in Pawnce County. I got most things a man wants, except—well, it's lonesome sometimes. There ain't so all-fired much fun doing things, if you got nobody to do 'em for; and so—"

He stopped, half turned away, turned back, and like a shamefaced boy, wanting and yet not wanting to show his feelings, he confessed:

"I like that little girl."

Deliberately Mrs. Waughton looked him over. She noted the clean brown face of him; how thick and fine and shining was his rather long hair; above all, how blue were his eyes and how direct their gaze. She laid a fat hand upon his coat sleeve.

"I believe you're on the level," she said. "Leave it to me. I'll make yous acquainted."

Meanwhile, Minnie had fled to the kitchen without clearing Minturn's table. What could the man have been doing? Was he making a complaint? She stayed in that odorous retreat, blue with the smoke of frying fish, as long as she dared.

When she emerged, cautiously, the man had disappeared. To her surprise, Mrs. Waughton did not look as if she meditated a reprimand, and by the next day Minnie's trepidation had vanished.

She stood waiting for the man's lunch order with her usual indifference. She did not even lift her eyes at the approach of Mrs. Waughton, until surprised into attention by the voice of authority.

"How de do, Mr. Minturn?" Minnie noted that Mrs. Waughton's tone had a singular social flavor. "Swell day, ain't it? Guess you haven't met Mr. Minturn, Miss Teefy. Make you acquainted."

Where another girl would have turned red and conscious, Minnie, at this most unprecedented happening, blenched, looking at the head waitress in an astonishment too great for dismay. Then the man, who had turned in his chair with an expression meant to be easy and ingratiating, found himself watching a trim disappearing figure and a fawn-colored head held more than commonly erect.

Minnie let the kitchen door swing shut behind her before she realized that she had not taken his order. She asked another girl to do it for her.

"Nothing doing!" was the only formulation Minnie Teefy was able to make of her feelings. Mrs. Waughton might discharge her. What of it? She didn't care!

WHEN, an hour later, she felt rather than saw the approach of that weighty figure, she braced herself and inwardly vowed she would be glad to give up her job.

Mrs. Waughton stopped at the buffet where Minnie was polishing tumblers, put up a hand to straighten the doily depending from an upper shelf, found that her satin sleeve would not permit the reach, gave it up with a middle-aged sigh, and said:

"Now, girlie, don't you get sore. That young man walked straight up to me as if I'd been your own

[illustration]

mother, an' asked me would I make him acquainted. I told him it wasn't reg'lar, an' in general I would be the last one to approve. He said if I could suggest any way more proper he'd be glad to take my advice. He talked some more— No," with finality, as Minnie looked up; "I ain't a-goin' to tell you what he said. But I got just two things to say to you. I ain't been in this business ten years not to know a real man when I see one. An' a real man is mighty handy to fall back on, as I've realized many a day since I buried Waughton."

She finished with solemnity, and pivoted slowly to depart, but turned back to smile a feminine indulgence:

"Now, dearie, don't you go flyin' in the face of your own bread and butter!"

Her bread and butter! What had anything so commonplace to do with this, to Minnie Teefy, utterly new experience? Here was a man who had felt for her respect; after his own manner, he had meant to show her deference. At once she thought of his big hands and his broad shoulders in quite a different way—strength being brutal or beautiful, according as we fear or trust it.

Minnie wished that she had really looked at the man's face. Very childish and silly she must have seemed to him when she ran away. She made up her mind that when he came to his dinner she would greet him properly. And then—he did not come!

But she was not greatly disappointed. She went about her work with blithe self-possession. The man would have been a disconcerting circumstance; the fact of his recognition without the embarrassment of his presence was good to dwell upon. Probably she would never see him again.

YET, when she left the café at eight o'clock, she was not surprised to find him waiting outside. She recognized those shoulders at once; but she thought the face was different from what she had expected—kinder and, somehow, younger.

He lifted his broad-brimmed hat as he caught step with her.

"If you've got no objections, I'll walk your way. Now that we've been made acquainted," he laughed,—but, since he did not look at her, she forgave him,—"now that we've been made acquainted reg'lar, maybe you'll let me tell you that I ain't been comin' to that restaurant so frequent because I was so pleased with the grub. I can make flapjacks myself. They may not be any better than the ones they make down here, but they taste better after you've been out riding the range in the fresh air all morning, and heard the calves a-bawling, or maybe the whirr of a prairie chicken. Do you like the country?"

"I don't know much about it," breathed Minnie; but the man was watching her lips, and he heard.

"That's too bad. It's great."

After a pause, he added, in a tone that he tried to make altogether offhand, as if he had not studied and chosen what he wanted to say to her:

"I'm running a right likely bunch of steers out on Snake Creek, Pawnee County. Don't have to keep much saddle stock any more—not like we used to, when the country was all free range."

Somewhat stiffly he went on:

"The horse market is good now. Shouldn't wonder if more money was to be made in horses than in cattle. Leastways, I judge so. Lots of stock, you see, has been shipped out of the West for the French and English armies. But none of my horses went that way. Couldn't spare any, and wouldn't want to if I could. War, as I figger it, ain't no fit place for a horse."

Minnie slid a comprehending, shy


glance at him, then asked demurely: "I guess a man and his horses are—well, kind o' friends, ain't they?"

"They are, for a fact. Once I was out after strays, when a norther caught us. Sleet, and then snow, and a blizzard hitting it up all night long. No chance to get back to the wagon. So we got down in a coulée, my horse and me, and kept each other from cashing in. Slept together under the same blanket, with the snow drifting over us. And me, I come out of it awful lucky, with only a few little frost nips." After a reflective pause the ranchman added: "He's old now—not worth his fodder. But I wouldn't sell him, not for any price."

Minnie looked directly into the man's steady eyes, then turned her face away, saying nothing; and awhile afterward he was quietly adding:

"You're easy to talk to. You listen and keep still, and—and—other girls don't act that way. But then, I was dead sure you was different. From the first time I laid eyes on you, I could see you was. I was tearing my shirt to get back to the ranch, after shipping in a few cars of feeders; but after I dropped into that eating joint for one meal, seems like I got over being in such a stampede. Made up my mind, right off, that I had business in this town. Might be you've noticed how double extrys and me have been getting thicker'n fleas on an Injun dog."

He laughed sheepishly. Minnie Teefy reddened to the nape of her white neck. He did not want to, but he could not help looking to see how the pink and white flickered in her face.

"I could even stay a day or two longer," he ventured, "if there was anything doing. I was thinking—this is such great weather—we might take a spin out in the country. Could that lady, the one at the restaurant, could she go along, do you suppose?"

Did he mean a ride in an automobile? Minnie's pulse beat fast.

"After two o'clock maybe she could."

"And could you get off for a couple of hours? Would you like to?"

He looked down eagerly for his answer.

"If Mrs. Waughton—" began Minnie.

But the man did not wait for her to finish.

"Never you mind about her," he said. "I'll fix it."

MINNIE marveled at such assurance. She was still marveling when, the next day,, they stood beside a long, shining car that waited before the café. Over Minnie's old hat was drawn a strip of new and gauzy pink, which cast rosy lights upon her face. At her elbow, Minturn was speaking to Mrs. Waughton.

"If you'll just get in here," he indicated the place by the drier, "you can see better from the front seat."

He slipped a firm hand beneath Mrs. Waughton's elbow, and she mounted heavily.

Putting Minnie into the cushioned cave at the back, he settled himself beside her with a smile of content that did not in the least apologize for any obstruction of the view.

Then they slid away, through curving, tree-bordered boulevards, out into the open country, where quivered the ineffable living green of spring. The rush of sweet air was like a liquid element through which they flew.

From the front seat came an occasional disjointed scrap of talk. Mrs. Waughton conversed comfortably, now and then, with the chauffeur. But the two on the back seat scarcely spoke at all. At intervals Minturn drew the girl's attention to something along the way—it might be a shining glimpse of the river, or a promising field of even-rowed corn. To him they were alike beautiful, and to her the whole softly billowing landscape was the unreal and hurrying loveliness of some dream.

When they had turned again toward the city, and the man beside her laid a hand over hers and kept it there, she merely looked up at him and smiled.

"Thank you for the ride," she said primly, when, with a long curve, they glided up to the front of the café.

"Thanks ain't coming my way," answered Minturn significantly; but Mrs. Waughton was suitably voluble.

In the car with its twinkling brasses he was whisked off along the smooth paved street, and he did not return for his dinner. Minnie was, somehow, grateful. It was easier to meet him in the lukewarm darkness of the spring evening, just outside the revolving doors, where the bluish arc lamp had begun its sputtering struggle with the night. She found him puffing at the last of a cigar, which, as it was tossed into the gutter, spurted forth a little shower of yellow sparks where it struck.

FOR a girl who has been on her feet many hours, who has served many a fussy patron, and who has borne with aching arms many a trayful of heavy dishes, her step seemed unaccountably light. She felt both lively and hushed, but not tired, not wearied in the least, now that the hour of rest, the time for going home, had come.

The man fell into step with her as a matter of course, and began to talk. He talked of his ranch, of his work, of his plans. He told Minnie about himself and his prospects, as if she were the one person on earth most interested. When he told her he was leaving next day, she looked up into his face with a sudden concern.

"I'll be running down again in a couple of weeks or so," he added quickly—"that is, I will if you'd like to see me. I shall—I shall have some business."

"Yes?" said Minnie.

"Yes what?" persisted Minturn.

"Yes, sir," teased the girl, and laughed. She was forgetting her shyness; but it returned when she found herself halting in front of the warped gray house where she had her room.

SHE was obliged to take tight hold of her courage before she could lift her eyes. The light of a street lamp was full upon her face, which was wistful.

"I'd be pleased to ask you in, Mr. Minturn," she began with formality; "but there isn't—I can't—I haven't any place."

"Yes, I know." His tone was gentle as he held out his hand for good night.

"But if you say I can come back in a couple of weeks, then maybe you'd let me make a place for you. It wouldn't be in the city, but there'd be plenty of air to breathe, and all the sky there is. Would you like to see that place?"

The girl's lips trembled, but they did not unclose.

"Tell me, would you?" Minturn insisted.

"I'd love to," said Minnie.

Will These Boys Go to Work After the War?

By Anne Herendeen

[photograph]

They tried to make a sailor of Prince Humbert of Italy, but he was seasick; and when they took him to a bull fight, he fainted. He might go into the educational movies.

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The Prince of Wales officially greeted the citizens of Llanerchymedd, Blaenau Festiniog, and Dolwyddelan in their native tongue. Which qualifies him for a good job as train announcer.

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Nicholas of Rumania isn't worried as yet by the cares of state; so he wouldn't know what he had missed if the exigencies of war should lead him into the grocery business.

[photograph]

It isn't every family that can boast a male quartette like this one of the German Crown Prince. Surely any concert bureau would be glad to book them.

WITH the beginning of the second winter of the great war, the powers that be talk even more vociferously than ever of "a fight to the finish"—meaning, of course, the other's finish.

What would they do, these prince chaps, if the dreams of each others' dads came true?

It is highly probable that the four young Germans would fare the best, for they have always been taught that every royal Prussian is master of a trade. One of their uncles is a blacksmith—although he has never practised. Perhaps he would take Louis Ferdinand (the third step) in with him. One of their cousins is a carpenter. He would probably be glad to have little Friedrich (the lowest step) to run errands and sweep up the shavings. When Hubertus, the second step, was christened, no less a person than Count Zeppelin acted as his godfather, and gave him a lovely model of a dirigible balloon to hang in his nursery. Undoubtedly, then, Hubertus could get a job taking parties of Canadian visitors up, a dozen at a time, in Zepp jitneys to show them what remains of the Fatherland.

That leaves only the top step to be worried about. A few years ago a gentle old lady came upon a very brown, busy little boy building forts and digging trenches in the sand on the seashore.

"And what is your name, my little man?" said the gentle old lady—not that she cared at all, but just for conversation. The brown baby—with nothing on at the time except a very abbreviated pair of trousers—scrambled to his feet, clicked his bare heels together, and brought his hand to his head in the stiff military salute. "I am Wilhelm Fourth," he said, and looked at his future subject severely. Wilhelm is ten now, and more than ever aware that he bears the name of his father, the Crown Prince, and his grandfather, the Emperor, at whose command 100,000 loyal subjects have given up their lives.

It is difficult to think what kind of job there is which his proud spirit could brook. If he doesn't inherit his grandfather's bad throat, and if he doesn't oversmoke like his dad and stunt his growth, perhaps he could he a traffic cop. He is used to wearing white gloves, and the kingly gesture would come naturally to him.

However, there are a number of very strong-minded people who don't intend that Germany shall be beaten: among them this princeling's papa—who has never minded anybody, even his royal father, since the days when our own Geraldine Farrar told him what was what—and Cecile, his dashing mama, who made the supreme sacrifice for her country when she gave up her French gowns.

Consequently it may be the considerable group of Allied princes who will have to take stock of their talents and training, and plunge, like the rest of us, into the daily bout with the high cost of living.

There were a hundred and nine fortunate boys born in Italy twelve years ago on the same day as Prince Humbert, all of whom through that happy accident received their education from the State. A hundred and ten handsome young Italians just of High School age are a very good bunch. Young Humbert is an enthusiastic Boy Scout. What more practical idea than that their ex-prince lead them past the Statue of Liberty into the Land of the Free, whither so many of their compatriots have preceded them, and secure for them all a booking on one of the big vaudeville circuits? There, to the accompaniment of their one-time national airs, they could go through their drills and daily demonstrate to the youth of America "the glory that was Rome's."

The world knows nothing at all of the tastes of Nicholas, King Ferdinand's younger son, who is here dressed in peasant garb. The photographer evidently wants us to believe that he is musical; Carmen Sylva, his grandmother, was certainly a lover of poetry and the gentler arts. Well, there is always a chance for an artist to make good over here, especially if he can cultivate a funny walk or something. Nicholas had better come over too and begin his artistic career—if there is no objection by the Gerry Society.

All of these chaps would undoubtedly have a much better time of it if their fathers should lose their king jobs. Prince Arthur of Connaught would have given all his chances at a crown to be a humble watchmaker. Queen Victoria finally cured him of this vulgar taste by making him wind all the clocks in Windsor Castle, accompanied on his tedious rounds by seven footmen with step-ladders.

England's Crown Prince Edward, familiarly known as "Sardines," wanted very much to be a doctor when he was small, and not long ago he said that he would be quite happy with a good job in some automobile firm. But he would make an ideal telegraph messenger boy—having been taught since babyhood to "obey in silence and at a run."

There is plenty of chance for smart young men to make their mark in this country, and if they had good references and industrious habits it is improbable that any American employer would discriminate against any of these young foreigners.

Except perhaps Alexis, the next possible "Little Father" of all the Russias. It is stated of him that he has never been refused anything in all his life. Need we say more?


everyweek Page 11Page 11

GETTING MARRIED

[photograph]

International Film Service.

NO more of that old bow-and-arrow stuff for Cupid. He's right there with the aëroplanes and wireless. And speaking of wireless reminds us of Miss Ada Chambers of Cambridge, Ohio (who is also the dancer, Mlle. Androva), who receives every day by wireless a poem in Spanish from Enrique Gomez. The story is that Enrique was being pursued across the arena by a bull, when Miss Chambers waved a red flag in the bull's face and saved Enrique's life. Miss Chambers will become Señora Gomez this winter.

[photograph]

Vitagraph.

"MADDALINE, in spite of her dear mother's tears, sets fire to the old farm"—thus read the caption, and immediately there flashed on the screen the picture of our heroine, Dorothy Kelly, known as the "Irish Quakeress" of the screen. To Harvey H. Hevener, a wealthy Brooklyn lumber dealer sitting in the audience, it seemed that Dorothy looked straight at him. The next day he was early at the Vitagraph Studio, seeking an introduction; and not long afterward Dorothy became Mrs. Hevener. Showing what even five cents, wisely invested, will do.

[photograph]

Photograph by Underwood & Underwood

FOUR years ago Miss Dora Keen went into the wilds of Alaska to climb Mount Blackburn. Seven men started up the craggy, ice-girded slopes, but one by one they dropped behind from exhaustion, until only Miss Keen and one—George W. Handy—remained. Down to safety he brought her again. No one suspected that a romance could sprout so high above sea level and so low below zero. But in June Miss Keen surprised society by leaving again for Alaska—and Handy. This picture of Miss Keen and a guide was taken on the summit of a mountain in France.

[photograph]

International Film Service.

JOSEPHINE DUBE was a little Boston modiste. James Scollay Whitney was a Back Bay aristocrat. One day a revolving door in a big department store, hungry for romance, stuck fast, and inclosed Josephine and James. Together they pounded against their prison walls with their fists; and together their hearts pounded against their ribs. And, of course—

[photograph]

Copyright, International Film Service.

THEY met in a theater corridor. Two days later they were married; and Thomas F. Manville. Jr., gave to a waiting world this formula for winning a bride: "Be impetuous. Marry her before she gets her breath." The trouble is that you can't keep them breathless forever. A little later they are likely to draw in a deep breath and say: "Judge, please excuse me from this marriage." Which is what happened in Thomas's case.

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Copyright, International Film Service.

"I LOVE your girl more than you do, and I know that she loves me," quoth James F. Curtis to Theron E. Catlin, Missouri Congressman. "I will leave that to her," Catlin answered gallantly—and confidently, too. Who, think you, won? Years before Miss Merriam, the girl in the case, had had her fortune told by a gypsy. "You will be twice engaged and once married," the gypsy said. One can not battle against the decrees of the fates. The picture shows Mrs. Curtis playing saleswoman for charity.


everyweek Page 12Page 12

PEOPLE WHO HAVE TOLD US ALL

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IF you're keeping a diary you'll have to make it pretty intimate if you expect people to read it after you are dead. Here's the sort of thing, for instance, that Richard Wagner, the composer, put into his two volumes labeled "Mein Leben": "In my school days I racked my brains all day to devise means of getting money wherewith to gamble at night. I could never master a restless inclination to deviate from anything that was regarded as conventional." Afterward he married and lived unhappily ever after. Here's his own explanation of how he wrote some of his music: "A tinker lived opposite my house and stunned my ears with his incessant hammering. It was precisely my rage over that tinker that in a moment of agitation gave me the theme for Siegfried's furious outburst against the bungling Mime."

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RACHEL (-FELIX), the great tragedienne, wanted to keep, the story of her life dark—or, at least, under indirect lighting. But one mysterious Mme. de B—— decided that what she knew about Rachel would fill a book, so she wrote one—"The Memoir of Rachel." "She received of Heaven a great gift, but with it she had neither heart nor brains." Rachel had the knack of turning a penny, Mme. de B—— has explained. She procured a cheap guitar and hung it on her wall in a black silk net. Visitors asked her about the instrument. "That," said Rachel casually, "is the guitar with which I earned my first pennies in the cafés of Lyons." And of course an eager gentleman bought it from her for a group of thousand dollars.

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"WHEN our first child was born," Jean Jacques Rousseau confesses blandly, "we deposited him in the foundling hospital. The year following a similar inconvenience was remedied by the same expedient. Our five children were all disposed of in this way." As for his wife—"she had a mind not susceptible of cultivation. She never could enumerate the twelve months of the year in order." Even harder things Rousseau confessed. "I could never learn the minuet." he says; "for, being plagued with painful corns, I had acquired a habit of walking on my heels, and of this habit my dancing teacher could never break me.

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"UNFORTUNATELY for me, I have never been able to tell a woman to whom I was really indifferent that I loved her, even knowing it was the convention to do so, and that she wouldn't be fooled." Alfred de Musset wrote a book to tell all that he had found out about women in a fairly busy life of investigation. "The Spanish women," he said, "love faithfully, but they carry a stiletto in their bosoms. The English are exalted and melancholy, but cold; the Germans tender and sweet, but monotonous. The French are witty, elegant, and passionate, but they lie like demons." Poor Alfred never came to America, we gather.

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Photograph from Charles L. Ritzmann.

OUIDA—"dressed in green silk, with her hair down, small hands and feet of which she was inordinately proud, and a voice like a carving knife"—wrote a novel entitled "Friendship," in which she is the heroine and an Italian nobleman she loved was quickly recognized as the hero. She has told us all. But enough of that. Ouida preferred dogs to human beings, and, though as a novelist was astonishingly successful, she was extravagant and died in proud poverty, writing at the end that her life "was destined to be like that of an old horse—all misery."


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MODJESKA came into the world bashful, and remained bashful for a score of years. "Oh, that horrible shyness which sent all the blood to my cheeks and made me look like a boiled lobster!" Nevertheless she wanted to go on the stage, and at an early age began speaking pieces with gestures, nobody looking. "We were not allowed mirrors in our rooms. Instead of a mirror I used to place a lamp in the middle of the room, and, standing in between it and the wall, I could see distinctly the silhouette of my whole body, which I twisted into all sorts of impossible poses." Thus she became a great actress, and, although dead, she is still one of the idols of the Poles.

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"IF I should not live long enough to win renown, this journal will interest psychologists," wrote Marie Baskirtseff in a bulky diary full of yearnings. "I love to be alone before a mirror, that I may admire my hands—they are so white, so small, and with a faint pink flush on the palms. When I think of what I shall be when twenty I am filled with delight. At thirteen I was too fat. Now at sixteen I am well formed and remarkably curved, perhaps too much so. I compare myself to all statues and I find nothing so well curved." Step forward, Marie, and meet Mary McLain.

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GOOD old Samuel Pepys left nothing out of his diary. When he kicked his cook-maid he admitted that he was not sorry for it, but was sorry that the foot-boy of a worthy knight with whom he was acquainted saw him do it. When he went to dinner with a friend, he put down on paper that "the rogue had no more manners than to invite me and let me pay my own bill." As for his sovereign Queen, "she is a very plain old woman. The Princess Henrietta is very pretty, but much below my expectations, her hair frizzed short up to her ears. My wife, standing near her with two or three black patches on and well dressed, did seem to me much handsomer than she."

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SHE came to Russia an obscure little German princess, and by adroit silence and tact became Empress Catherine the Great. In her Memoirs she explains how she did it, even to the imprisonment of her husband the Czar, who died (by request) soon afterward, leaving her Little Mother of All the Russians. "I was born with a great sensibility and a face that was interesting and pleased at first sight," she confesses. "As for character, having impulses of strict probity, I venture to assert in my own behalf, I was a true gentleman, though I was anything but masculine, for I possessed the charms of a very agreeable woman."

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THE majority of Benvenuto Cellini's murders took place in a casual way like this: "Pompeo, I had just been told, boasted of the insult which he fancied he had put upon me; but, be that as it may, it was to his misfortune. I drew a little dagger and laid my hands on his breast so quickly and coolly that none of his defenders were able to prevent me. Fright made him turn his head around and I stabbed him just beneath the ear. He fell stone dead at the second blow. I had not meant to kill him, but, as the saying goes, knocks are not dealt by measure." Another time this naïve artist was angered by a model "who prated loud of her husband. I seized her by the hair and dragged her up and down my room, kicking her until I was tired. I perceived later I had acted very wrongly, for when I saw her body all torn and swollen I reflected that I should have to put her under medical treatment before I could make drawings of her again."


everyweek Page 14Page 14

OUR GENTLE READERS

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Vitagraph.

WE are proud to introduce Miss Alice Mary Moore, our first and youngest reader. When she was three days old she said quite distinctly to her parents, Alice Joyce and Tom Moore: "Don't think of staying home from the studio on my account. I may come over myself later." Mary Pickford is her favorite aunt.

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Famous Players.

PAULINE FREDERICK has become so identified on the screen with ladies whose hearts rule their heads that her artless days of playing "When Knights Were Bold" and "It Happened in Nordland" are all but forgotten. Yet this passionate tragedienne once disported without gloves in roaring farces.

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Triangle.

NORMA TALMADGE used to be one of the reasons why everybody went to Niagara Falls. But when her family moved to Brooklyn, she thoughtfully went into the movies, and now comes to see her friends all over the United States at once, whenever a new play of hers is released.

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International.

HOW is it that all of the moving-picture stars come from convents or Quaker boarding-schools? Ask Betty Howe. Two years ago she was wearing sailor suits and painfully trying to baffle the binominal theorem, and now she is teaching her own thousand-dollar pup how to bark in the Romance languages. At present the best place to find Betty is in one of the episodes of the "Beatrix Fairfax" series.

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Lasky-Paramount.

THE only shower California had last season was when Marie Doro and her husband Elliott Dexter opened their new home at Hollywood. All the guests brought along something without which no home could be complete. Charlie Chaplin presented the bride with a motion picture camera specially made for her; and now Miss Doro has the finest collection of personally posed screen stars that there is anywhere from coast to coast.

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Famous Players.

ANN PENNINGTON, alias Susie Snowflake, alias the Rainbow Princess, has been working just about twenty-four hours a day for the last few months, holding down both her motion picture job and the polished floor at the Ziegfeld "Follies." Still, she doesn't neglect her reading. It makes something to do while people pin medals on one, don't you know.


everyweek Page 15Page 15

The Triflers

By Frederick Orin Bartlett

Illustration by George E. Wolfe

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"'He loves you.' breathed Beatrice. 'No. No—not that!' 'You don't know how much,' went on the girl excitedly. 'Oh, he'd never forgive me if he knew I was talking like this!'"

READ THIS: THEN START THE STORY

MONTE COVINGTON, an American, thirty-two years old, finds himself in Paris before the season. He is bored for the first time in his ten years of leisure and travel. One evening he meets, coming from the opera alone, Marjory Stockton, whom he has long known as a girl devoted to an elderly aunt. The aunt is dead, and Marjory, inheriting her fortune, is tasting freedom for the first time. This freedom is marred by admirers offering marriage, the chief offender being Teddy Hamilton, a music-hall favorite, whom she met on the boat coming over. To get rid of him and the others, Monte makes a strange proposal—that Marjory marry him for protection and as a camarade de voyage, with no further obligation on the part of either. Marjory accepts it. In an encounter with Teddy, Monte is wounded in the shoulder. Soon after this Marjory and Monte go through the marriage service in pursuance of their strange compact. Their first day is spent in a round of gaiety. On the next day they start on an automobile trip in the direction of Nice, taking Marjory's maid Marie, and a chauffeur, and stopping each night wherever Marjory's fancy directs. Marjory begins to take a certain pleasure in looking after Monte's comfort—in getting down early, for instance, to direct the making of his morning coffee. Monte bends all his efforts toward giving Marjory the perfect freedom she has never enjoyed. In this way, perfect comrades, they arrive at Nice, and go to Monte's favorite Hôtel des Roses. Marjory excuses herself from dinner, and Monte dines alone, afterward going out on the quay for a stroll. Here a messenger finds him and hands him a note: "I've gone to the Hôtel d'Angleterre. Please don't try to see me to-night. MARJORY."

HENRI, who was greatly disturbed, explained to Monte that madame came downstairs shortly after monsieur left for his walk and asked for him. Being told that monsieur had gone out, she too had gone out, wearing a light shawl—to meet monsieur, as Henri supposed. In some fifteen minutes madame had returned, appearing some-what excited, if it were permissible to say so. Thereupon she had given orders to have her luggage and the luggage of her maid removed at once to the Hôtel d'Angleterre. Henri had assured her that if her rooms were not suitable he would turn the house upside down to please her.

"No, no," she had answered; "it is not that. You are very kind, Henri."

He had then made so bold as to suggest that a messenger be sent out to find monsieur.

"By all means," she had answered. "I will give you a note to take to him."

She had written the note and Henri had despatched it immediately. But, also immediately, madame and her maid had left.

"I beg monsieur to believe that if there is anything—"

Monte waved the man aside, went to the telephone, and rang up the Hôtel d'Angleterre.

"I wish to know if a Madame Covington has recently arrived."

"Non, m'sieur," was the response.

"Look here," said Monte sharply. "Make sure of that. She must have reached there within fifteen minutes."

"We have had no arrivals here within that time except a Mademoiselle Stockton and her maid."

"Eh?" snapped Monte. "Repeat that again."

"Mademoiselle Stockton," the clerk obeyed.

"She signed the register with that name?"

"But yes. If monsieur—"

"All right; thanks."

"You found her?" inquired Henri solicitiously.

"Yes," nodded Monte, and went out into the night again.

THERE was nothing he could do—absolutely nothing. She had given her orders, and they must be obeyed. He returned to the Quai Massena, to the shore of the sea; but he walked nervously now, in a world that, as far as he was concerned, was starless and colorless. He had thought at first, naturally enough, that Hamilton was in some way concerned; but he dismissed that now as wholly unplausible. Instead of running away, in that case, she would have sent for him. It was decidedly more likely that this was some strange whimsy springing from within herself.

In looking back at the last few days, he recalled now that upon several occasions she had acted in a way not quite like herself. Last night, for instance, she had been disturbed. Again, it had been most unusual for her not to dine with him to-night. He blamed himself for not having seen that something was troubling her.

She had run away as if in fear. She had not dared even to talk over with him the cause of her uneasiness. And he—blind fool that he was—had not detected anything unusual. He had gone off mooning, leaving her to fight her own fight. He had been so confoundedly self-satisfied and content because she was here with him, where heretofore he had always been alone, that he had gone stone blind to her comfort. That was the crude fact.

However, accusing himself did not bring him any nearer an explanation of her strange conduct. She would not have left him unless she had felt in some danger. If Hamilton were eliminated, who then remained by whom she could feel menaced? Clearly it must be himself.

The conclusion was like a blow in the face. It stunned him for a moment, and then left his cheeks burning. If she had scuttled away from him like a frightened rabbit, it could be for only one reason: because he had not been able to conceal the truth. And he had thought that he had succeeded in keeping this danger to himself.

He turned in the direction of the Hôtel d'Angleterre. He did not intend to try to see her. He wished only to be a little nearer. Surely there was no harm in that. The boulevard had become deserted, and he was terribly lonesome out here alone. The old black dog that had pounced upon him in Paris came back and hugged him closer.

He squared his shoulders. He must shake himself free of that. The thing to keep in mind was that he did not count in this affair. She alone must be considered. If he had frightened her, he must find some way of reassuring her. He must take a tighter grip than ever upon himself, face her to-morrow, and laugh away her fears. He must do that, because he must justify her faith in him. That was all he had of her—her faith in him. If he killed that, then she would go.

After this last week, to be here or anywhere else without her was unthinkable. He must make her believe that he took even this new development lightly. He must come to her in the morning as just Monte. So, if he were very, very careful, he might coax her back a little way into his life.

That was not very much to hope.

MONTE was all wrong. From beginning to end, he was wrong. Marjory had run away, not from him, but from some one else. When she left the hotel she had


been on her way to join monsieur, as Henri had correctly surmised. From her window she had been watching him for the matter of half an hour as he paced up and down the quay before the hotel. Every time Monte disappeared from sight at the end of a lap, she held her breath until he appeared again. Every time he appeared again, her heart beat faster. He seemed such a lonely figure out there that her conscience troubled her. He was so good, was Monte—so good and four-square.

She had left him to dine alone, and without a protest he had submitted. That was like him; and yet, if he had only as much as looked his disappointment she would have dressed and come down. She had been ready to do so. It was only the initial excitement that prompted her at first to shut herself up. Coming to this hotel, where for ten years he had been coming alone, was almost like going back into his life for that length of time. Then, Monte had signed the register "Monsieur and Madame Covington." With bated breath she had watched him do it.

After that the roses in her room and the attention of every one to her as to a bride—all those things had frightened her. Yet she knew they were bowing low, not to her, but to Madame Covington. This was what made her ears burn. This was what made her seek the seclusion of her room. She felt like an impostor, claiming honors that did not belong to her. It made her so uncomfortable that she could not face even Marie. She sent her off to her room.

SITTING by the open window, she watched Monte as he walked alone, with a queer little ache in her heart. How faithfully he had lived up to his bargain! He had given her every tittle of the freedom she had craved. In all things he had sought her wishes, asking nothing for himself. It was she who gave the order for starting every morning, for stopping at night. She chose this inn or that, as pleased her fancy. She talked when she wished to talk, and remained silent when she preferred. If, instead of coming to Nice and Etois, she had expressed a desire to turn in some other direction, she knew he would merely have nodded.

It was all one to him. East, west, north, or south—what was the odds? Married or single—what was the odds?

So she also should have felt. With this big man by her side to guard her and do her will, she should have been able to abandon herself utterly to the delights of each passing hour—to the magic of the fairy kingdom he had made for her. It was all she had asked for, and that much it was her right to accept, if he chose to give it. She was cheating no one. Monte himself would have been the first to admit that. Therefore she should have been quite at peace with herself.

The fact remained, however, that each day since they left Paris she had found herself more and more at the mercy of strange moods: sometimes an unusual and inexplicable exhilaration, such as that moment last night when Monte had turned and seized her arm; sometimes an unnatural depression, like that which now oppressed her. These had been only intervals, to be sure. The hours between had been all she had looked forward to—warm, basking hours of lazy content.

To-night she had been longer than ever before in recovering her balance. She had expected to undress, go to bed, and so to sleep. Perhaps it was the sight of Monte pacing up and down there alone that prolonged her mood. Yet, not to see him, all that was necessary was to close her eyes or to turn the other way. It should have been easy to do this. Only it was not. She followed him back and forth. In some ways, a bride could not have acted more absurdly.

At this thought she withdrew from the window in startled confusion. Standing in the middle of the room, she stared about as if challenged as to her right there by some unseen visitor. This would never do. She was too much alone. She must go to Monte. He would set her right, because he understood. She would take his arm, his strong, steady arm, and walk a little way with him and laugh with him. That was what she needed.

She hurried into her clothes, struggling nervously with hooks and buttons as if there were need of haste. Then, throwing a light shawl over her shoulders, she went out past Henri, on her way to Monte.

MONTE had been all wrong in his guesses. She had actually been running toward him instead of away from him when, just outside the hotel, she almost collided with Peter Noyes and his sister.

Peter Noyes did not see her at first. His eyes were covered with a green shade, even out here in the night. But his sister Beatrice gave an exclamation that brought him to attention and made him fumble at the shade as if to tear it off. Yet she had spoken but one word:

"Marjory!"

She whose name had been called shrank back as if hoping that the dark would hide her.

"Marjory!" cried Peter Noyes. Beatrice rushed forward, seizing both the girl's hands.

"It is you," she exclaimed, as if Marjory sought to deny the fact. "Peter—Peter, it's Marjory Stockton!"

Peter stepped forward, his hand outstretched hesitatingly, as one who can not see.

Marjory took the hand, staring with questioning eyes at Beatrice.

"He worked too hard," explained the latter. "This is the price he paid."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Peter!" she cried.

He tried to smile.

"It's moments like this I mind it," he answered. "I—I thought you were in Paris, Marjory."

"I came here to-day."

She spoke nervously.

"Then," he asked, "you—you are to be here a little while?"

Marjory passed her hand over her forehead.

"I don't know," she faltered.

Peter looked so thin! It was evident he had been long ill. She did not like to see him so. The shade over his eyes horrified her. Beatrice came nearer.

"If you could encourage him a little," she whispered. "He has wanted so much to see you."

It was as if she in some way were being held responsible.

"You're not stopping here?" gasped Marjory.

"At the Hôtel des Roses," nodded Beatrice. "And you?"

Peter with his haggard, earnest face, and Beatrice with her clear, honest eyes, filled her with sudden shame. It would be impossible to make them understand. They were so American—so direct and uncompromising about such affairs as these.

Beatrice had the features of a Puritan maid, and dressed the part, from her severe little toque, her prim white dress reaching to her ankles, to her sturdy boots. Her blue eyes were already growing big at Marjory's hesitancy at answering so simple a question. Marjory had been here once with Aunt Kitty—they had stopped at the d'Angleterre. She mumbled that name now.

"Then I may come over to-night to see you for a moment, may I not?" said Beatrice. "It is time Peter went in now."

"I—I may see you in the morning?" asked Peter.

"In the morning," she nodded. "Good night."

She gave him her hand, and he held it as a child holds a hand in the dark.

"I'll be over in half an hour," Beatrice called back.

IT was only a few blocks to the Hôtel d'Angleterre, but Marjory ran the distance. Happily the clerk remembered her, or she might have found some difficulty in having her excited excuse that she was not quite suited at the Roses accepted. Then back again to Henri and Marie she hurried, with orders to have the luggage transferred at once.

In her new room at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, Marjory dismissed Marie and buried her hot face in her hands. She felt like a cornered thing—a shamed and cornered thing. She should not have given the name of the hotel. She should have sought Monte and ordered him to take her away. Only—she could not face Monte himself. She did not know how she was going to see him to-morrow—how she was ever going to see him again. "Monsieur and Madame Covington," he had signed the register. Beatrice must have seen it, but Peter had not. He must never see it, because he would force her to confess the truth—the truth she had been struggling to deny to herself.

She had trifled with a holy thing—that was the shameful truth. She had posed here as a wife when she was no wife. The ceremony at the English chapel helped her none. It only made her more dishonest.

The memory of Peter Noyes had warned her at the time, but she had not listened. She had lacked then some vision which she had since gained—gained through Monte. It was that which made her understand Peter now, and the wonder of his love and the glory and sacredness of all love. It was that which made her understand herself now.

She got to her feet, staring into the dark toward the sea-shore.

"Monte, forgive me—forgive me!" she choked.

She had trifled with the biggest thing in his life and in her life. She shouldered the full blame. Monte knew nothing either of himself or of her. He was just Monte, honest and four-square, living up to his bargain. But she had seen the light in his eyes—the eyes that should have led him to happiness. He would have had to go such a little way—only as far as her outstretched arms.

She shrank back from the window, her head bowed. It had been her privilege as a woman to be wiser than he. She should have known! Now—the thought wrenched like a physical pain—there was nothing left to her but renunciation. She must help him to be free. She must force him free. She owed that to him and to herself. It was only so that she might ever feel clean again.

Moaning his name, she flung herself upon the bed. So she lay until summoned back to life by Marie, who brought her the card of Miss Beatrice Noyes.

MARJORY took the time to bathe her dry cheeks in hot water and to do over her hair before admitting the girl; but, even with those precautions, Beatrice paused at the entrance as if startled by her appearance.

"Perhaps you do not feel like seeing any one to-night," she suggested.

"I do want to see you," answered Marjory. "I want to hear about Peter. But my head—would you mind if we sat in the dark?"

"I think that would be better—if we are to talk about Peter."

The phrase puzzled Marjory, but she turned out the lights amd placed two chairs near the open windows.

"Now tell me from the beginning," she requested.

"The beginning came soon after you went away," replied Beatrice in a low voice.

Marjory leaned back wearily. If there were to be more complications for which she must hold herself accountable, she felt that she could not listen. Surely she had lived through enough for one day.

"Peter cared a great deal for you," Beatrice faltered on.

"Why?"

It was a cry in the night.

Impulsively the younger girl leaned forward and fumbled for her hands.

"You didn't realize it?" she asked hopefully.

"I realized nothing then. I realized nothing yesterday," cried Marjory. "It is only to-day that I began to realize anything."

"To-day?"

"Only to-night."

"It was the sight of Peter looking so unlike himself that opened your heart," nodded Beatrice.

"Not my heart—just my eyes," returned Marjory.

"Your heart too," insisted Beatrice; "for it's only through your heart that you can open Peter's eyes."

"I—I don't understand."

"Because he loves you," breathed Beatrice.

"No. No—not that!"

"You don't know how much," went on the girl excitedly. "None of us knew how much—until after you went. Oh, he'd never forgive me if he knew I was talking like this! But I can't help it. It was because he would not talk—because he kept it a secret all to himself—that this came upon him. They told me at the hospital that it was overwork and worry, and that he had only one chance in a hundred. But I sat by his side, Marjory, night and day, and coaxed him back. Little by little he grew stronger—all except his poor eyes. It was then he told me the truth: how he had tried to forget you in his work."

"He—he blamed me?"

Beatrice was still clinging to her hands.

"No," she answered quickly. "He did not blame you. We never blame those we love, do we?"

"But we hurt those we love!"

"Only when we don't understand. You did not know he loved you like that, did you?"

Marjory withdrew her hands.

"He had no right!" she cried.

Beatrice was silent a moment. There was a great deal here that she herself did not understand. But, though she herself had never loved, there was a great deal she did understand. She spoke as if thinking aloud.

"I have not found love—yet," she said. "But I never thought it was a question of right when people loved. I thought it—it just happened."

Marjory drew a quick breath.

"Yes; it is like that," she admitted.

ONLY, she was not thinking of Peter.

She was thinking of herself. A week ago she would have smiled at that phrase. Even yesterday she would have smiled a little. Love was something a woman or man undertook at will. It was a condition to choose as one chose one's style of living. It was accepted or rejected, as suited one's pleasure. If a woman preferred her freedom, then that was her right.

Then, less than an hour ago, she had flung out her hands toward the shadowy figure of a man walking alone by the sea, her heart aching with a great need for the love that might have been hers had she not smiled. That need, springing of her own love, had just happened. The fulfilment of it was a matter to be decided by her own conscience; but the love itself had involved no question of right. She felt a wave of sympathy for Peter. She was able to feel for him now as never before. Poor Peter, lying there alone in the hospital! How the ache, unsatisfied, ate into one.

"Peter wouldn't tell me at first," Beatrice was running on. "His lips were as tight closed as his poor bandaged eyes."

"The blindness," broke in Marjory. "That is not permanent?"

"I will tell you what the doctor told me," Beatrice replied slowly. "He said that, while his eyes were badly over-strained, the seat of the trouble was mental. 'He is worrying,' he told me. 'Remove the cause of that and he has a chance.'"

"So you have come to me for that?"

"It seems like fate," said Peter's sister, with something of awe in her voice. "When, little by little, Peter told me of his love, I thought of only one thing: of finding you. I wanted to cable you, because I—I thought you would come if you knew. But Peter would not allow that. He made me promise not to do that. Then, as he grew stronger, and the doctor told us that perhaps an ocean voyage would help him, I wanted to bring him to you. He would not allow that either. He

Continued on page 21


everyweek Page 17Page 17

WHAT SCIENCE IS DOING

To Roll This World Along

WILL A ZEPPELIN CROSS THE ATLANTIC?

IN spite of the success that has met the efforts of the London air defenders in shooting marauding Zeppelins out of the sky, these gigantic birds of prey continue to haunt the coasts of England.

The persistency of the ghostly invaders, coupled with attempts at long-distance dirigible flights before the war, has inspired Baron Ladislas d'Orcy to venture a prediction, in the Scientific American, that before long Count Zeppelin will send a transatlantic flier to America.

Years ago, before the war, it was Count Zeppelin's desire to discover the North Pole by dirigible. Walter Wellman cherished the same ideal; but Admiral Robert E. Peary got there ahead of then both. Then Count Zeppelin turned his attention to the realization of a dream almost as great—to cross the Atlantic. The voyage of Wellman and Vaniman, although a failure, inspired him, because the America broke the world's endurance record by staying in the air seventy hours.

Count Zeppelin is aware that two air conditions of vital importance must be taken into consideration in planning a transatlantic flight by dirigible. The winds must be of limited intensity, and the temperature and barometric pressure must be reasonably constant.

The chief difficulty met by dirigibles in long flights is occasioned by the expansion and contraction of the gas. A diminished air pressure or heat from the sun causes the gas to expand; contrary influences cause it to contract. Modern Zeppelins counteract this effect by means of a double skin, or covering, about the gas compartments. Between the skins a current of air circulates. This draught is maintained at a constant temperature. A still later plan involves the use of pumps that exhaust and store the excessive gas.

The Germans have developed an airship capable of flying at a speed of seventy-five miles an hour. The transatlantic flight would probably take place between Ghent, Belgium, and Bangor, Maine, as that is the shortest aërial distance—3200 miles. A crew of fifteen men would be necessary, and a crossing could be made in about fifty-two hours. This allowance provides a safety margin of seven hundred miles in case of unfavorable winds. Baron d'Orey doubts whether a safety margin of seven hundred miles would be sufficient.

TAKE THE BABY ALONG

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Photograph from Frank C. Doig.

No baby could object to such luxury as this. When lunch-time comes the baby is removed, the canopy lowered, and the contrivance becomes a luncheon table.

HAVE you a baby, or a loaf of bread, or a blanket, or something, that you would like to take along on your next motor trip, but which you are forced to omit because of lack of room? Your problem is neatly and nicely solved by a shelf-like arrangement which partakes liberally of the design of our militia-man's "pup-tents," and at the same time resembles a dignified hammock.

The tent-like features are there to keep the sun, dust, and harsh winds from the baby occupying the miniature hammock beneath. This hammock pup-tent affair is full of all sorts of eleven tricks. By letting down the canopy the thing becomes a lunch table. The hammock can be used to store lunch, extra wraps, etc.

TO REDUCE THAT SINKING FEELING

There may be something in the statement of the unknown scientist who claims that death by one's own trigger finger is infinitely sweeter than death at the hands of a sleepy and fidgety firing squad at sunrise. At all events, the principle is to be tried on a very small scale in the dental profession.

Most of us have experienced that terrible sinking feeling in the region known as the pit of the stomach when a grim-jawed dentist advanced on us with a gas mask breathing horrid sweet gas. A Cleveland dentist-inventor has gone to the very bottom of this sinking feeling, and he has a theory that if we administer our own laughing gas we will dance and sing in anticipation as we go to have our wisdom teeth yanked out, instead of praying for death.

Dr. Floyd B. Jones has backed up his theory with an odd-looking apparatus. Nothing could be simpler. Dr. Jones merely attaches the tubes from the gas-tank to the patient's nose. Then he gives the word, and the patient turns on the gas. As soon as the world starts slipping from consciousness the friend of the public's teeth begins operating. If the patient awakens before the operation is concluded, he simply reaches for the gas valve and measures off a few more yards of the dreamy stuff.

The happiest part about this contrivance is that it is impossible for anybody to take an overdose. As soon as a patient becomes reasonably unconscious, his hand falls limp from the valve and the gas flow ceases. And as soon as our castles in Spain start to tumble again, and we feel the disillusioning anguish of a tooth preparing to depart—we just turn on a little gas.

[photograph]

Photograph from Lester Sargent.

They say that this eases the patient's mind.

ONE SOLUTION OF THE GASOLENE PROBLEM

NOT long ago a man whose word can be relied upon made the statement that if a solution to the gasolene problem is not found soon, Henry Ford will not be able to sell his cars, even if he brings the price down as low as $1. Oil men predict that the price of gasolene will go up to fifty cents a gallon before long. Then what?

Enterprising chemists and engineering men have been advancing one theory after another to meet this crisis, but so far none of them seems to have encountered an overwhelming amount of success. The process of the Columbia University scientist seems not to have materialized commercially as yet; the excitement aroused by the Long Island inventor's green powders has subsided; other equally fascinating projects have somehow fallen through.

While we have been waiting for some-thing in the way of a spectacular discovery of a substitute for gasolene, a number of dingy gas plants have been struggling with a slow but interesting experiment. In Motor Age, C. L. von Berg discloses the fact that, as far back as 1904, gas plants in this country were working upon the theory that gasolene could he extracted from natural gas. Some of then have been successful.

The author believes that many of the methods now employed are wasteful, and that the United States Bureau of Mines should institute research work, with the view of reducing the process to a commercial basis. There are three processes now commonly in use. In one of them the gas is compressed and cooled by water and air. In the second the gas is simply cooled. The third method is a combination of the other two. The first treatment is the most efficient; from one thousand cubic feet of gas four gallons of gasolene can be extracted.

In the Mississippi River oil fields alone there are 250 gasolene distillers of this nature. Other plants are scattered thickly through the oil fields of California, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

WHEN IS HALF-PAST EVA?

[photograph]

The man who owns this watch tells time by the twelve faces of his family. What would he do if the twelve became thirteen?

A CONTRACTOR who lives in Missouri has a watch with tiny photographs of the members of his family pasted over its numerals. The pictures represent his wife, himself, and their ten children. Every time Mr. Humberd pulls out the timepiece he has the unique pleasure of seeing his entire family.

Mr. Humberd himself is one o'clock. His wife is two o'clock. The children are arranged in order of their birth, beginning with Carl, who is oldest, at three o'clock, and continuing around to midnight, or noon, as you please, which is baby Edith. Mr. Humberd arises at Albert o'clock in the morning; has luncheon at half past Edith, and is usually home by Bertha P.M.

BISMARCK'S TROUBLESOME DREAM

EVER since Bismarck's time, Prussia has been trying to realize his dream of an Imperial German State Railway System. The war has not stifled this desire by any means, says the Railway Gazette, but it has led to petty squabblings in regard to the administration of the railways that may terminate before long in a serious issue. The only imperial railways in Germany now are those in Alsace-Lorraine, and the only other State to submit to the Prussian railway dictation is the unimportant one of Hesse.

At the outbreak of war all German States agreed to submit to railway imperialization as a war-time expedient; but they made it clear that the measure was to endure only throughout the war. Now Prussia wants to make the Prussianized railway system permanent. Unquestionably, friction will result.

SHORT AND INTERESTING

THERE are 508,677 more motor-cars in use to-day than there were on January 1, 1916. There are over three million automobiles in use in the United States to-day, including both passenger cars and trucks.

The Automobile.

IN forty-five days elapsed time, or twenty-five days working time, the frame for an eight-story Philadelphia building has been built. On March 1 the site was occupied by fifty-one brick tenements, and on July 17 a manufacturing company began to turn out its products in the new structure.

Engineering Record.

THE director of the Prussian State railways has issued a new order in regard to female railway employees. Women conductors and guards must in the future wear the ordinary service uniform, including "dark gray wide trousers."

Railway Age Gazette.

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OUR OWN CARNEGIE LIBRARY

On These Two Shelves—The New Books and Magazines

WHO IS THIS NEW POET?

WHO is Corporal Joseph Lee? "A young Scotchman," say his publishers, rather vaguely. Further than this, and the fact that he is fighting "somewhere in France," nobody seems to know anything about the man who has just written one of the most interesting books of verse published since the war began. Ballads of Battle (Dutton) is true poetry: genuine in feeling, perfectly unconventional, intensely personal. Here is one of the best ones:

SOLDIER, SOLDIER

Wastrel, wastrel, standing in the street,
Billy-cock upon your head; boots that
show your feet.
Rookie, rookie, not too broad of chest,
But game to do your bloomin' bit with
the bloomin' best.
Rookie, rookie, growling at the grub;
Loth to wash behind the ears when you
take your tub.
Rookie, rookie, licking into shape—
Thirty-six inch round the buff showing
by the tape.
Rookie, rookie, boots and buttons clean;
Mustachios waxing stronger;
military mien.
Rookie, rookie, drilling in the square,
Britain's ancient glory in your martial air.
Rookie, rookie, swagger-stick to twirl;
Waving hands to serving maids; walking
out the girl.
Soldier, soldier, ordered to the front,
Marching forward eager-eyed, keen to
bear the brunt.
Soldier, soldier, bidding her good-bye—
"When I come back I'll marry you, so,
darling, don't you cry!"
Soldier, soldier, sailing in the ships,
Cigarettes and curious oaths betwixt your
boyish lips.
Soldier, soldier, standing in the trench;
Wading through the mud and mire, stifling
in the stench.
Soldier, soldier, 'mid the din and dirt,
More than monastic tortures moving in
your shirt.
Soldier, soldier, facing shot and shell;
Jesting as you gaze within the open Gate
of Hell.
Soldier, soldier, charging on the foe,
With your comrade's dying cry to urge
you as you go.
Soldier, soldier, stilly lying dead,
With a dum-dum bullet through your
dunder head.
Soldier, soldier, with a smile of grace,
Breaking through the grime and grit on
your blood-swept face.
Soldier, soldier, sound will be your sleep,
You will never waken, though you hear
her weep.
Soldier, soldier—
How I love you!

THE HARDSHIPS OF BEING A DUKE

[photograph]

Photograph of the Duke of Manchester by Underwood & Underwood.

"Hello, young fellow. What's your name?" The poor shivering newcomer to Eton said: "The Duke of——" "Ah!" exclaimed his future schoolmate, "I have never kicked a duke. Here's my chance!" And he took it.

THE Duke of Manchester wants to get a little sympathy for those unfortunates born to dukedoms. In Pearson's Weekly he gives us to understand that these scions of great houses have a life of unutterable misery from the day of their heralded birth to their final resting in the family vaults.

"Get to know the tenants," is the unrelenting dictate to the eldest son. Not that the tenants are not delightful persons, but even a commoner can understand what it means to a young boy to be dragged away from cricket to meet Mr. Peppercorn, the oldest tenant on the estate. Mr. Peppercorn inevitably recalls long anecdotes of one's ducal grandparent's valiant youth, and is inclined to shake his head over the "stock" of to-day.

School in democratic England is not kind to dukes. One duke, a first-year man in the bargain, informed an upper-classman that he was "The Duke of——." Whereat the upper-classman retorted:

"Good. I've never kicked a duke. Here's my chance, ain't it?" And he took it.

At the varsity the principal difficulty is that his ducal position leads all the tradesmen to charge him double rates, and demands that he tip twice as much as the normal person. His Grace of Manchester declares, however, that he was reproved for tipping too much in a Fifth Avenue hotel. This not altogether commonplace rebuke was tendered him, says the Duke, by a black waiter.

"He smiled, so I gave him two shillings, the ordinary tip being one shilling.

"His face fell, and, still holding it out, he said:

"'Here, boss, what's this?'

"I am still puzzled to know what he expected, but in the heat of the moment I took back the two shillings, apologized humbly, and gave him one shilling."

The Duke regrets the absence of a business training among his species. To manage their estates would be sufficient education certainly, but they are compelled to hire managers who do that for them. Will no one rescue the Duke from those unavoidable difficulties, dodging camera men for Sunday supplements, the bore of long, formal court ceremonies, and the birthday parties of Mr. Peppercorn?

WOULD WOMEN LIKE TO BE MEN?

IS it true that every woman would be a man if she could be, while no man would be a woman if he could help it? A writer in the Unpopular Review answers the question thus:

"Every woman knows this is not fact but falsehood, yet knows also that it is one of the falsehoods on which depends the stability of the universe. The idea that every woman is desirous of becoming a man is as comforting to every male as its larger corollary is alarming, namely, that women as a mass have resolved to become men."

Eve, the author goes on, was created to stimulate Adam. She had a fourfold purpose in being: first, to educate Adam; second, to conceal his education from him as the only practical way of developing in man the self-esteem necessary to keep him in his sex; third, to keep him from being bored by keeping him guessing; and fourth, to keep from boring herself. And in the new trend toward "feminism" the author sees simply a different method of accomplishing what Eve sought to do.

"Man," she goes on, "is a timorous, self-distrustful creature who would never have discovered his powers if not stimulated by woman's weakness. Probably prehistoric woman voluntarily gave up her own muscle in order that man might develop his in serving her. It is only recently that we have dared to be as athletic as we might, and the effort is still tentative enough to be relinquished if we notice any resulting deterioration, muscular or moral, in men. Women, conscious how they hold men's welfare in their hands, simply do not dare to discover how strong they might be if they tried, because they have so far used their physical weakness not only as a means of arousing man's good activities, but also as a means of turning them to nobler directions. Men are naturally acquisitive—compelled to work for gold and gain. Unable to deter them from this impulse, we turn it to an unselfish end; that is, we let men support us.

"Not only for the moral advantages gained by men in supporting us do women preserve the fallacy of physical feebleness, but also for the spiritual exaltation men may enjoy by protecting us from perils. For this purpose, it is quite unnecessary that man should think the peril real, but it is absolutely necessary that he should think the woman thinks it real. It does a man more good to save a woman from a mouse than from a tiger, as contributing more to the sense of superiority so necessary to him.

"The truth is that women are not really afraid of anything, but they perceive how much splendid incentive would be lost to the world if they did not pretend to be."

ARE YOU A SLAVE TO FOOD?

ARE you living almost exclusively on bread, meat, eggs, cereals, tea, coffee, desserts, and confectionery? And have you a distaste for green vegetables, salads, and raw fruit? Then there is great danger that you have become a food inebriate. The food inebriate, says Dr. J. H. Tilden in his book, The Philosophy of Health, is as much a slave to food as the alcohol, drug, or tobacco fiend is to his habituation.

"The food inebriate," he continues, "must have food that gives him the stimulation his nerves require. It is this sort of a transformed human being that can not eat fruit, can not eat green vegetables; but he can eat meat, bread, beans, desserts, and confectionery, and he can drink coffee, tea, chocolate, etc."

The following is a list of "inebriate foods" most commonly in use: beef and other meats, eggs, oatmeal, wheat flour, whole wheat, rice, bacon, and corn.

"When those foods are eaten to the exclusion of base-containing foods—those that are potentially alkaline—they produce over-stimulation, acid intoxication. Over-stimulation from this style of eating brings on enervation; after which elimination is impaired, and auto-intoxication from retained excretions is added to the acid intoxication from the food.

"It can be said that food inebriates are in line to be affected by any and all disease-provoking influences. This is the autotoxemia that I have declared, and now contend, is the fundamental cause of all diseases."

Dr. Tilden emphatically criticizes the ordinary breakfast of fruit, loaded with sugar, oatmeal and more sugar, bacon, eggs, bread, etc. He recommends uncooked fresh fruits. For lunch, he suggests baked potatoes and a combination salad, or fresh fruit and toasted bread.

For dinner, Dr. Tilden would choose meat, fish, or fowl, with properly cooked vegetables, and a salad. Cooking of vegetables and fruit should be carefully done, or they will be made to join the foods that are potentially acid.

MORE FRIGHTFULNESS

[illustration]

Drawn by G. L. Stampa. From London Opinion.

Short-sighted Lady: "I wonder you girls aren't ashamed of yourselves! Your skirts are too short—but as for your sister there—I refuse to look at her!"


THE FOUR DAUGHTERS-IN-LAW OF THE KAISER

[photograph]

Photograph by Paul Thompson.

The Crown Princess Cecile, perhaps the most popular woman in Germany.

"THE German Emperor always favored early marriages, and is naturally inclined to be a matchmaker," writes Princess Catherine Radziwill in The Royal Marriage Market of Europe (Funk & Wagnalls Company).

But in spite of the fact that the Empress had trained her sons to believe themselves but instruments in the Emperor's hands, the Crown Prince rebelled openly against his father. He not only disapproved of his father's methods of government, but refused to be dictated to by his father in the matter of choosing a wife.

There were plenty of German princesses, but none of them pleased the fastidious young man, who insisted on a pretty wife. Then, one summer, the Crown Prince met the Duchess Cecile of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, sister of the Queen of Denmark.

"She was about eighteen years of age, not perhaps regularly beautiful, but witty, clever, and charming in all her manners and ways. It is true that the Duchess Cecile had been brought up in France by her mother, the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia, and that she was credited with French sympathies and an overweening love for French modes; but this did not prevent her from being an exceedingly captivating little creature. The Crown Prince was immediately enthralled, and on his return to Berlin informed the Emperor that at last he had met the one being whom he liked well enough to ask to become his wife."

His father objected—not to the captivating Cecile, but because he was not on speaking terms with her mother. He only relented on condition that his son's mother-in-law should promise never to return to Berlin after the marriage of her daughter.

Except in her love for French modistes, the Crown Princess showed herself even a more rabid German than her husband, for:

"Ever since she had been married she had instilled into the mind of the Crown Prince that the Emperor was getting old, and had lost part of his former audacity and energy. It was high time, therefore, she perpetually told the Crown Prince, that he should take matters in hand himself and try to give new impulse to German politics, to lead his Fatherland forward toward a new era, in which Germany should have dominion over the whole world.

"The Crown Princess is to-day perhaps the most popular woman in the whole of Germany."

The match-making monarch was again frustrated when Prince Oscar announced his intention of wedding his mother's lady- in-waiting, the Countess Ina von Bassewitz.

"His father," writes Princess Radziwill, "put a veto on this virtuous intention. Nevertheless, the Prince kept firm in his intention to ally himself to a simple countess, and he succeeded in winning over to his side his sister, who in the end induced the Emperor to yield to his son's desire."

Of the other two married sons, Prince Eitel Fritz married the Princess Sophy Charlotte, who was much older than he, was pretty, rich, and supposed to be very clever.

The Kaiser's only success as a matchmaker—and this was really the success of his wife—was in the marriage of the fourth son, Prince Augustus William, who was wedded to his mother's niece—the fair, fat "Deutsche Hausfrau."

WHAT WOMAN DETECTIVES HAVE TO DO

A LITTLE advertisement was read one morning by two women in different parts of New York. One was an immigrant, the other a detective. The notice brought the two women together in a few days; their meeting sent the man who wrote the notice to jail.

The story is told by Frederick J. Hoskin, New York correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, in an article describing the perilous pleasures of a woman detective.

The advertisement was that of a "Professor" who claimed that for one dollar he would tell one the occupation for which he was best fitted, reveal the names of his enemies, and dispel all evil influences.

The detective who read it was Mrs. Isabella Goodwin. She filed the notice and laid her traps.

The immigrant who read it was the wife of a marble polisher who had recently been promoted to twenty-five dollars a week. By living in the same frugal manner as she had when he was making ten dollars, his wife had saved enough money to buy a grocery store, which she managed. With their savings she had put $3500 in the bank, and they were planning to buy a poultry farm. Without consulting her husband, she called on the "professor." He warned her against the perils of poultry, gave her the names of unknown enemies, cleared the air of malign spirits, and found, upon consulting the stars, that her future lay in stocks. She brought him all the money she had, mortgaged the store formore, and in return for a twenty-five-dollar fee he handed her some beautiful gold-sealed documents testifying to her share in mines that had never existed. Then he quietly left town. That was when the immigrant and Mrs. Goodwin came together.

By the end of the week the "professor" was in jail.

How did the detective find him? As a maid in the home of one of his former neighbors, she learned that he had a doctor. She got in touch with the doctor, and found that the professor had cancer of the stomach. She then did a little Sherlock Holmes act and deduced that he would stay in large cities, near specialists. As for the other steps, she doesn't want them known, for you yourself may be a criminal and she may be put on your case.

[photograph]

Photograph by Brown Brothers.

No one will ever know for certain whether this lady has a face or not; for she has never listened to the birdie and been photographed properly as other people are. And therein lies part of her great value to a big police department.

ONE AUTO TO EVERY 25 AMERICANS

YOU and I and twenty-three other people in the United States own an automobile. There is one machine for every twenty-five of us—or, at least, there will be by January 1. The fact that the other twenty-three people use it most of the time doesn't alter the truth of the statement.

"If any argument were needed to clinch the fact of the huge prosperity of these United States,." says the New York Times, "it could be found in this one item of national investment.

"If one puts the average cost of an automobile at $500, which is considerably lower than the true average, the value of the 2,445,664 cars which the government census recently announced were registered in the United States in 1916, reaches in the aggregate $1,222,832,000.

"In a careful compilation of the figures for the first six months of the year, made by The Automobile, our factories were found to have produced 754,902 passenger automobiles. It is not hard to see that with the speeding up of the production usual in the second half year the 1,500,000 mark is sure to be attained.

"When these 1,500,000 cars are added to those in operation on January 1 last, it will be seen that at least 3,945,664 automobiles will be owned in the United States. This total will represent an investment of $2,000,000,000 in round figures."

FOR THE MAN WHO STEPS ON A RATTLER

SNAKES are getting more numerous and more peevish and more hungry every year. Perhaps fewer victims survived to tell the story in former days. At any rate, now six or eight people in the United States every year "shuffle off their mortal coil" just because they failed to see the snake coil first.

Dr. J. T. Case, in the Literary Digest, has given some splendid advice to people who anticipate being bitten by a snake.

Of course, the regular anti-venom serum is the most reliable remedy; but this is not always available. At all events, you should carry with you a first-aid pack including a ligature of rubber tubing, a small tube of crystals of potassium permanganate, and a hypodermic syringe. Not a second should be lost after the snake bite is inflicted.

First fix the tourniquet above the wound so as to prevent the spread of the poison. Enlarge the punctures made by the snake by cutting into them at least as deep as they are, to encourage a flow of the poisoned blood. It is not dangerous for any one to suck the poison from the wound, providing there are no sores or abrasions in the mouth or on the lips.

Scatter the permanganate crystals freely over the wounds, and, if there is water at hand, fill the syringe with a solution made of the crystals, and inject it into the flesh all around the affected part.

When the wounds have beern thoroughly bled and washed, the ligature may be removed, but not until every measure has been employed to draw out the poison.

Try to get to a doctor, but if this is not possible, continue to take every precaution. Pack small bits of gauze into the wounds to keep them open and draining, and dress over them with gauze saturated with the permanganate solution. Continue this treatment for at least two weeks, no matter how favorable the symptoms.

[photograph]

Photograph by Paul Thompson.

It takes a brave man to sit up like this and have a tourniquet tied, just as if a rattler had really bitten him.

THE MOST EXPENSIVE SHOPS IN THE WORLD

DOES your husband complain of the high cost of living? Then let him have a sample day in South America. There he would expend 50 cents on a stick of soap for his morning shave, the same price on a cake of Pears' for his morning tub, another half dollar for a tooth-brush, 4 cents for his daily paper, and 40 cents for a plain linen handkerchief. As for his morning egg—well, if any temperamental hen thinks her creative ability is unappreciated in the United States, let her move to that Promised Land where each egg will sell for 15 cents.

This expensive scale is due in part to high rentals and taxes, says William A. Reid in the Pan American Union, and in part to the habit of fine clothing. For in the South American business world personal elegance is not a luxury, but a necessity; and, while in mining and farming regions you may wear shoes that cost only 20 cents, in business life, if you would meet with any success, you must pay $11 for your shoes, with the rest of your toilette proportionately expensive and fashionable. All of which brightens the life of the merchant.

The stores of South America differ from those of North America in several respects other than that of costliness. Here, a store builds upwards; there it builds outwards—one store in Argentina spreads over so many acres that you may drive through the establishment in your automobile. Here the merchant will spend money freely for a brilliant night display; there shop windows are always shuttered at night.


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One Hundred Girls with Spanish Eyes

By Paul Henry Dowling

[photograph]

Crops are going to waste for lack of harvesters; the railroads can't get enough men to handle their freight. But hundreds of able-bodied citizens stand around outside the motion picture studios. Sometimes they get a dollar for appearing in a scene like this: sometimes five dollars. But the sometimes don't come often enough.

WANTED—Five hundred people for work in motion pictures. Apply at Municipal Employment Bureau, 9 A. M. Tuesday.

THIS advertisement appeared in a Los Angeles morning paper a few weeks ago; and at eleven o'clock a squad of policemen, aided by the directors of the moving picture company, drove away from the doors of the bureau a crowd of 4500 people who clamored and fought for a place to "work in the pictures" at a dollar a day.

There were men in the crowd from all of the professions and trades: doctors and lawyers, ministers and undertakers, actors, and just plain bums. Some came because they were "down on their luck," and some because they wanted to see themselves in the films. Others wanted a job, and wanted it badly; while still others came for fun; or because they were trying to "break into the game."

Within a short time a thousand men were hired, taken to a tract of open fields not far from the studio, installed in a camp, and drilled assiduously for two weeks by officers from the National Guard. At the end of the period of training and rehearsals, cameras were set up, smoke bombs set off, and the men carried their guns into the "movie" battle. It was a magnificent undertaking—this transformation of a thousand men, ninety per cent. of whom had never faced either a gun or a camera, and marshaling them in the course of a few days so that, to all appearances, in the completed picture they marched, ran, fought, and fell dead as realistically as actual battle-scarred veterans.

"Ten thousand people in this city," declared a California moving picture director, "are looking for a chance to work in the pictures." From three to five hundred applicants come to the office of D. W. Griffith's studio every week. More than that number apply at Universal City.

Weeding Them Out

WEEDING out the applicants for "extra" work is an interesting process. Each person who applies for a job in moving pictures is sent to the employment office, where the manager—sometimes a matron when the applicants are girls—takes down a card full of data about experience, color of hair and eyes, information that interests him about the photographic qualities of the face, and, most important of all, the particular type.

Close-Ups" Get $5 a Day

IF the director of a film company at four o'clock in the afternoon decides that he wants eighty or a hundred people at eight o'clock the next morning in make-up for a picture of Spanish setting, he goes to his employment man and orders as many as he wants of the required type. Immediately the employment department turns to its card files, and telephones and summons the extras for work. Those who have never worked before are put in charge of a make-up man, who gives them their first lesson in the rudiments of wearing paint and whiskers, those important impedimenta of the camera profession.

If an extra is well suited as a certain type, he is placed in a close-up position and given five dollars for his day's work. Such a one considers himself fortunate. But his services may not again be needed for a month, for the pictures can not use his type all the time.

Little parts are given to those who show ability, and it is certain that the extras who exhibit promise or possibilities of development are remembered by the director, for it is a great feather in his cap if he makes a genuine "discovery" and develops a star.

Extras are paid a greatly varying scale of prices for their work. With some companies the wage is from one dollar to five; with others from three dollars to five. The lowest prices are for "atmosphere" only, that is, a mere appearance in a mob scene with no distinguishing actions on the part of any particular person. Three dollars is for "close-up" work in make-up. Five dollars is for types. Good types always draw five dollars a day, and, what is more important, will be remembered for future work. Naturally, the people who are chosen for "close-up" work have to be picked with care. One careless move on the part of an extra can spoil an entire scene, often requiring a make-over at a cost running up sometimes into thousands of dollars.

The benches where the applicants wait outside the studios are always filled with an interesting assortment. A lot of regulars report every morning as promptly as the actors, take their places, and wait until they are called to work, which is sometimes once a week, sometimes five times, and sometimes not at all. On the benches are widows forced to support themselves, old men who have outlived their usefulness in other professions, men and women from the stage; and professional men and laboring men of every class, young men and girls—the good and the bad, the ambitious and the indifferent.

On one of the benches under a palm tree at Universal City three motherly-looking middle-aged women sat with their knitting. Now and then, eager for glances of recognition, they looked up as a star or a director passed. After an hour or two, a director came from the office, carrying a board on which was fastened a lot of loose sheets of paper—the scenario and cast for a picture then in preparation. "Mrs. Brown," is all that he said, as he looked toward the bench. Mrs. Brown dropped her knitting into her hand-bag, hastened toward the director, received her instructions in a few words, and was off to the wardrobe room.

A little farther down the walk, a gaunt-faced, hollow-eyed man of thirty leaned against the trunk of a palm tree. He had about five days' growth of beard on his face.

"Are you working now?" I asked, by way of conversation.

"Naw," he answered with some disgust. "I only work in under-world pictures, and there don't seem to be much doin' in my line right now."

Whole Families in the Business

You can see whole families in the ranks of the extra people. Sometimes you'll find four people in a family getting work the same day. Some days none of them will get on.

Over at one side of the big stage, swinging his legs over a rail, was a weather-beaten-looking extra. He told us he was a rider, working mainly in Western pictures. When he works he makes five dollars a day, and five dollars extra for "falls." In scenes in which the director wants a certain number of falls from the horses, he offers the chances to his regular riders. If he needs any more, he may ask for volunteers. For particularly hard falls he may offer ten dollars in addition to the regular daily check. Naturally, as the falls can't all be on beds of roses and attain the air of realism, the extra man earns his five or ten dollars extra pay.

They Don't Do Their Shopping by Telephone

[photograph]

Photographs from A. E. Churchill.

Turn eastward off the Bowery some morning below Houston Street, New York, and watch what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. No charge accounts, delivery service, or fancy wrapping complicate shopping here. By cutting the rotten part away this dealer thought to get one cent each for these apples. Not while Mrs. Levinsky lives.

[photograph]

Photographs from A. E. Churchill.

Pocketed somewhere within these voluminous skirts is the only cash register known hereabouts—a grimy handkerchief bulging with money. For a nickel an expert shopper can buy, in season, a cucumber, two oranges, and a canteloupe. With two nickels—and a little finesse—she can carry off half a dozen eggs, perfectly good except for a few cracks.


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Cat's Paw Cushion Rubber Heels

The Triflers

Continued from page 16

thought you were in Paris, and insisted that we take the Mediterranean route. Then—we happen upon you outside the hotel we chose by chance! Doesn't it seem as if back of such a thing as that there must be something we don't understand; something higher than just what we may think right or wrong?"

"No, no; that's impossible," exclaimed Marjory.

"Why?"

"Because then we'd have to believe everything that happened was right. And it isn't."

"Was our coming here not right?"

Marjory did not answer.

"If you could have seen the hope in Peter's face when I left him!"

"He doesn't know!" choked Marjory.

"He knows you are here, and that is all he needs to know," answered Beatrice.

"If it were only as simple as that."

The younger girl rose and, moving to the other's side, placed an arm over the drooping shoulders.

"Marjory dear," she said, "I feel tonight more like Peter than myself. I have listened so many hours in the dark as he talked about you. He—he has given me a new idea of love. I'd always thought of love in a—a sort of fairy-book way. I didn't think of it as having much to do with every-day life. I supposed that sometime a knight would come along on horseback—if ever he came—and take me off on a long holiday."

Marjory gave a start. The girl was smoothing her hair.

"It would always be May-time," she went on, "and we'd have nothing to do but gather posies in the sunshine. We'd laugh and sing, and there'd be no care and no worries. Did you ever think of love that way?"

"Yes."

The girl spoke more slowly now, as if anxious to be quite accurate:

"But Peter seemed to think of other things. He had so many wonderful plans in which you were to help." She lowered her voice. "It was of a home and of children he talked, and of what a fine mother you would make. He talked of that—and somehow, Marjory, it made me proud just to be a woman! Oh, perhaps I shouldn't repeat such things!"

Marjory sprang to her feet.

"You shouldn't repeat them. You mustn't repeat anything more! And I mustn't listen!"

"It is only because you're the woman I came to know so well, sitting by his bed in the dark, that I dared," Beatrice said gently.

"You'll go now?" pleaded Marjory. "I mustn't listen to any more."

Silently, as if frightened by what she had already said, Beatrice moved toward the door.

Marjory hurried after her.

"You're good," she cried, "and Peter's good! And I—"

The girl finished for her:

"No matter what happens, you'll always be to me Peter's Marjory," she said. "You'll always keep me proud."

MONTE, stepping out of his room early after a restless night, saw a black-haired young man wearing a shade over his eyes fumbling about for the elevator button. He had the thin, nervous mouth and the square jaw of an American.

Monte stepped up to him.

"May I help you?" he asked.

"Thank you," answered Noyes; "I thought I could make it alone, but there isn't much light here."

Monte took his arm and assisted him to the elevator. The man appeared half blind. Monte's heart went out to him at once.

As they reached the first floor the stranger again hesitated. He smiled nervously.

"I wanted to get out in the air," he explained. "I thought I could find a valet to accompany me."

Monte hesitated. He did not want to intrude, but there was something about this helpless American that appealed to him. Impulsively he said: "Would you come with me? Covington is my name. I'm just off for a walk along the quay."

"Noyes is my name," answered Peter. "I'd like to come, but I don't want to trouble you to that extent."

Monte took his arm.

"Come on," he said. "It's a bully morning."

"The air smells good," nodded Noyes. "I should have waited for my sister, but I was a bit uneasy. Do you mind asking the clerk to let her know where I am when she comes down?"

Monte called Henri.

"Inform Miss Noyes we'll be on the quay," he told him.

WALKING in silence, they presently reached the boulevard bordering the ocean.

"We have the place to ourselves," said Monte. "If I walk too fast for you, let me know."

"I'm not very sure of my feet yet," apologized Noyes. "I suppose in time I'll get used to this."

"Good Lord, you don't expect it to last?"

"No. They tell me I have a fighting chance."

"How did it happen?"

"Used them a bit too much, I guess," answered Noyes.

"That's tough."

"A man has so darned much to do and such a little while to do it in," exclaimed Noyes.

"You must live in New York."

"Yes. And you?"

"I generally drift back for the holidays. I've been traveling a good deal for the last ten years."

"I see. Some sort of research work?"

The way Noyes used that word "work" made Monte uncomfortable. It was as if he took it for granted that a man who was a man must have a definite occupation.

"I don't know as you would call it exactly that," answered Monte. "I've just been knocking around. I haven't had anything in particular to do. What are you in?"

"Law. I wonder if you're Harvard?"

"Sure thing. And you?"

Noyes named his class—a class six years later than Monte's.

"Well, we have something in common there, anyhow," said Covington cordially. "My father was Harvard Law School. He practised in Philadelphia."

"I've always lived in New York. I was born there, and I love it. I like the way it makes you hustle—the challenge to get in and live—"

He stopped abruptly, putting one hand to his eyes.

"They hurt?" asked Monte anxiously.

"You need your eyes there," he answered simply.

"You went in too hard," suggested Monte.

"Is there any other way?" cried Noyes.

"I used to play football a little," said Monte. "I suppose it's something like that—when a man gets the spirit of the thing. When you hit the line you want to feel that you're putting into it every ounce in you."

Noyes nodded.

"Into your work—into your life."

"Into your life?"

"Into everything."

Monte turned to look at the man. His thin lips had come together in a straight line. His hollow cheeks were flushed. Every sense was as alert as a fencer's. If he had lived long like that, no wonder his eyes had gone bad.

Yet last night Monte himself had lived like that, pacing his room hour after hour. Only it was not work that had given a cutting edge to each minute—not life, whatever Noyes meant by that. His thoughts had all been

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of a woman. Was that life? Was it what Noyes had meant when he said "everything?"

"This bucking the line all the time raises the devil with you," he said.

"How?" demanded Noyes.

The answer Monte could have returned was obvious. The fact that amazed him was that Noyes could have asked the question with the sun and the blue sky shut away from him. It only proved again what Monte had always maintained—that excesses of any kind, whether of rum or ambition or—or love—drove men stark mad.

Blind as a bat from overwork, Noyes still asked the question.

"Look here," said Monte, with a frown. "Before the big events the coach used to take us one side and make us believe that the one thing in life we wanted was that game. He used to make us as hungry for it as a starved dog for a bone. He used to make us ache for it. So we used to wade in and tear ourselves all to pieces to get it."

"Well?"

"If we won it wasn't so much; and if we lost—it left us aching worse than before."

"Yes."

"There was the crowd that sat and watched us. They didn't care the way we cared. We went back to the locker building in strings; they went off to a comfortable dinner."

"And the moral?" demanded Noyes.

"Is not to care too darned much, isn't it?" growled Monte.

"If you want a comfortable dinner," nodded Noyes.

"Or a comfortable night's sleep. Or if you want to wake up in the morning with the world looking right."

AGAIN Monte saw the impulsive movement of the man's hand to his eyes. He said quickly: "I didn't mean to refer to that."

"I forget it for a while. Then—suddenly—I remember it."

"You wanted something too hard," said Monte gently.

"I wanted something with all there was in me. I still want it."

"You're not sorry, then?"

"If I were sorry for that, I'd be sorry I was alive."

"But the cost!"

"Of what value is a thing that doesn't cost?" returned Noyes. "All the big things cost big. Half the joy in them is pitting yourself against that and paying the price. The ache you speak of—that's credited to the joy in the end. Those men in the grand-stand don't know that. If you fight hard, you can't lose, no matter what the score is against you."

"You mean it's possible to get some of your fun out of the game itself?"

"What else is there to life—if you pick the things worth fighting for?"

"Then, if you lose—"

"You've lived," concluded Noyes.

"It's men like you who ought really to win," exclaimed Monte. "I hope you get what you went after."

"I mean to," answered Noyes, with grim determination.

They had turned and were coming back in the direction of the hotel when Monte saw a girlish figure hurrying toward them.

"I think your sister is coming," said Monte.

"Then you can be relieved of me," answered Noyes.

"But I've enjoyed this walk immensely. I hope we can take another. Are you here for long?"

"Indefinitely. And you?"

"Also indefinitely."

Miss Noyes was by their side now.

"Sister—this is Mr. Covington," Peter introduced her.

Miss Noyes smiled.

"I've good news for you, Peter," she said. "I've just heard from Marjory, and she'll see you at ten."

Monte was startled by the name, but was even more startled by the look of joy that illuminated the features of the man by his side. For a second it was as if his blind eyes had suddenly come to life.

Monte caught his breath.

To be continued next week

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You Can't Get Anywhere Unless You Save Money

By Albert W. Atwood

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SEVERAL months ago the editor of this magazine suggested as the subject for an article the following question: "Can a man get to the top in finance by brains alone?" It is not proposed to answer this question now, but it can be stated in the most emphatic manner that unless a young man (or a woman) accumulates some capital of his own, he can not possibly overcome the lead of the inheritors of wealth. More and more young people do start with inherited money, and the millions that haven't any are handicapped to begin with.

This article might be called "How Fortunes Begin." But it might just as well be called "How a Happy Life Begins," or, "How a Little Business May Become Successful."

To be successful, a business enterprise and an individual alike need a backbone of money. The American Bankers' Association, through its Savings Bank Section, recently published an article that said:

Whether it is a million-dollar corporation or a corner grocery, there must be a foundation, the investment of the proprietor. The man who starts out on a "shoestring" fails. No matter what he may have in the way of borrowing facilities, there may come a time when he finds the avenues of borrowing closed against him. Then his reserve capital comes into play.

This is both a spendthrift and a borrowing age. People are making money easily. Wages are high, and attractive ways of spending it more plentiful than ever before in the world's history. Facilities for borrowing are constantly increasing.

There is the Federal Reserve system to enable the banks to borrow more easily, a new farm loan system, a Morris Plan for small wage-earners, and everywhere discussion and agitation to increase still further the means of borrowing.

The Backbone of Business

BUT don't forget that the backbone of every business, of every farm, and of every individual life, is the saved (or inherited) capital of the proprietor. More business failures are due to lack of capital than to any other cause, nearly one third of all failures being accounted for in this way.

Bankers know from bitter experience what this means. Before making a loan they like to see two dollars of quick assets to one dollar of quick debts. They require that the borrower keep several hundred dollars on deposit before they will lend him a thousand—not that they want the extra money, but they do want to be certain that the borrower has ample working capital, something to meet emergencies, something left over in the way of cash if all the debts had to be paid in a hurry.

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