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Every Week3¢Copyright, 1917, By the Crowell Publishing Company.© January 1, 1917A Happy New Year to You! Gustav Michelson |
By H.E. ZIMMERMAN
THE United States government pays out annually thousands of dollars for purposes that not one in a thousand citizens knows anything about.
Although slave-trading is generally supposed to be a thing of the past, the United States contributes annually $100 as its share of the expense of keeping up at Brussels an institution known as the International Bureau for the Repression of the African Slave Trade.
Our government is deeply interested in ascertaining the size of the earth over which we stretch our mighty hand; so it pays annually to the American embassy at Berlin, Germany, its quota as an adhering member of the International Geodetic Association for the measurement of the earth, $1500.
At Brussels there is an International Bureau for the Publication of Customs; and the United States pays $1388 annually as its proportionate share of the expense. Also at Brussels every year $2270 is paid by this government as a contribution to the maintenance of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.
It costs the United States no less than $14,100 annually to provide prisons for American convicts in foreign countries. These prisons are under the immediate jurisdiction of the consular officers at various cities in China, Korea, Japan, and Turkey. They are seldom used, but they must nevertheless be maintained. The prisons, with the cost of rent and salary of keepers, are as follows: Bangkok, $1000; Shanghai, $1550; Yokohama, $1550; Turkey, $1000. For keeping and feeding such prisoners as may from time to time be confined in these prisons, $9000 is set aside every year.
The Secretary of the Treasury would doubtless experience no difficulty in finding plenty of men about Washington willing to spend a day without remuneration watching the destruction by maceration of United States securities. But, to save the Secretary any possible embarrassment, Congress has provided that he may pay the representative of the public—who, the law says, shall be one of the Committee to witness the reduction of the. securities to pulp—$5 a day for each day he may be so employed.
The United States has also to spend a few dollars every year to aid in keeping our sailormen from going ashore on foreign coasts. On the coast of Morocco, at Tangier, and at Cape Spartel, mariners used to experience great difficulty in avoiding disaster on account of the absence of warning night signals on the shore. Lighthouses were sadly needed; and, as the government of Morocco would not provide them, the great powers took the matter in hand in behalf of their shipping interests. Lighthouses were established, and the powers are assessed so much annually for their maintenance. The share of the United States in this expense is $325.
In addition to this, an annual appropriation of $4500 is made for expenses incurred in the acknowledgment of the services of masters and crews of foreign vessels in rescuing American seamen and citizens.
The people of Alaska who inhabit the islands of St. Paul and St. George receive special consideration at the hands of the government. Congress authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish them with food, fuel, and clothing, and for this purpose $19,500 is appropriated. Industrial and elementary education in Alaska costs the government $30,000 a year. To keep open the Washington Monument Congress allows an appropriation Of $11,500 yearly.
[photograph]
Just a bit of cardboard, and you can take baby's picture every time he grins—and keep out of the poorhouse too.
WOULD you be interested in decreasing the operating expense of your camera one third to one half? If so, here is a simple expedient which I have used for six months with splendid success, and with an average saving of at least $1 a month.
Nearly every one owns some kind of a camera. The kind most frequently used takes a picture 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches; that is, postal-card size. But I have often heard the Owners of these cameras say: "They cost too much to operate; I am going to get a smaller one." How much better to retain the facilities for securing the larger pictures, and yet at the same time be able to take smaller views, say 2 3/4 x 3 1/4. It can be done very simply, and two pictures obtained instead of one, by excluding the light admitted through the lens from part of the film or plate.
For instance, with a 3 1/4 x 5 1/2 pocket folding camera a piece of black cardboard cut to fit may be inserted in the groove just forward of where the film rolls across the opening in the back. It should extend half way across and close one half of the opening. When the back of the camera is removed for loading, the cardboard may be slipped into place just before placing the film in position. In making the exposures the film should be turned until the first number appears, then just half way each subsequent time, the numbers on the film appearing each alternate exposure. The number of turns of the spindle necessary for any camera may be determined by opening the back and running through a piece of paper instead of film.
Care should be taken to locate the image correctly on the finder in the use of films. With plates, the image appears automatically in the correct position on the ground glass. When plates are used the plate-holders are manipulated in the usual manner. After exposing the number of plates desired, remove the back of the camera, slide the cardboard to the opposite side of the opening, replace back, and make exposures on the other end of the plates by inserting the holders a second time. The holders should be numbered to avoid confusion. There is no changing of the cardboard when using films.
In taking head and bust pictures this method of utilizing the film can not be excelled for economy.
V. H. S.A LONG time has passed since the ownership of a motor-car was an evidence of wealth.
We all drive now.
Not merely bankers, head waiters, and master plumbers, but the lower classes also. Even editors of magazines.
The number of automobiles is being added to at the rate of more than a million a year: a million new cars mean two million new drivers.
If driving is to continue to be safe and enjoyable for all of us, it must be made so by a tremendous exercise of courtesy on the part of every one.
Let me set down here some observations founded, not on police law, but on common sense plus courtesy.
First. However unflattering it may be to the rest of humanity, I know of no better rule than always to assume that the other fellow is a bigger fool than you are.
Assume that he is going to turn the next corner without giving any signal.
Assume that his wife, who is with him, may at any moment take a fancy to a wild rose at the edge of the road, and have the car brought to an abrupt stop.
Assume, when you turn a corner, that he will be coming around from the other way, too fast and on the wrong side of the road.
In a word, keep a sufficient distance between his car and yours, so that nothing he can possibly do can involve you in trouble.
Second. A horn can be either the voice of salvation or an instrument of torture, according to how it is used.
The courteous driver can make his horn say either "Please be careful" or "Curse you, Charles Montagu, get off the road." His horn never says one when it should say the other.
Incidentally, the best drivers blow the horn least.
Third. The courteous driver stays just as close to the edge of his side of the road as it is possible for him to get. He never feels called upon to assert his dignity or to maintain his rights by edging as far out as he can.
He knows that the middle of the road belongs to no man.
Fourth. The courteous driver never uses his blinding headlights except on a road entirely unlighted: and he turns them down at the first sight of an approaching car.
Fifth. The courteous driver recognizes that pedestrians and horse vehicles have rights as well as he. He remembers—however irritating they may occasionally be—that, after all, the road belonged to them for years before it belonged to the motor-car.
It is the law of the sea that the sail-boat must give way to the rowboat. The power-boat must look out for the sail. Always the stronger must give way to the weak.
What is law for the sea ought to be the self-imposed and cheerfully accepted etiquette of the road.
Finally. The courteous driver—and his wife—make up their minds at what rate they like to travel best, and they jog along happily at that rate, enjoying the view, untroubled and untroubling.
If the occupants of another car desire to travel faster, they let them pass. They never race: never put on full speed when they hear a horn sounded behind them.
Never, under any circumstances, do they push ahead of a car in front by invoking a burst of speed, and then slow up so that their dust spreads over the car behind.
In all the category of meanness, there is no meaner trick than passing a car and then slowing down.
Let me see you drive and I'll tell you what you are.
I can stand by the side of the road and pick out the wife-beaters, and the fellows who are cheating the government on their income tax, the fellows that talk loud in theaters—
—and, thank God, the great overwhelming majority of good husbands and fathers, decent citizens, and courteous gentlemen—the wholesome folk who observe the etiquette of the road.
Bruce Barton, Editor.
This being the season of automobile shows, suppose you send me a nickel for our book, "Running Your Car at a Minimum Cost," by Ernest A. Stephens. It will save you money, no matter what car you buy. The address is 95 Madison Avenue, New York.
By ZONA GALE
Illustrations by George E. Wolfe
[illustration]
"Niel entered the library to scribble a note to Nita, and faced her and Brushby. It wasn't a nice minute."
AT the time I'm talking about, Nita had been engaged for a year to Niel Sargent.
"She's been engaged to me for a year," Niel liked to say, "but I've been engaged to her all my life."
It was one of those heaven-and-earth romances that every little town has. When I first went to live with the Northrups, Nita's people, Niel was drawing her home from school on his sled and putting apples in her desk. I used to take them both on the merry-go-round and buy them licorice. They called me Nunkie Nickie—the short cut for Uncle Nicholas Butterworth. Then the two of them went away to the same college, and kept it up—with history and mathematics and the like thrown in. Back home they came, and occupied that porch on which the family chanced not to be assembled. When their engagement was announced, everybody grinned and said, "Old stuff." But the town loved them.
The night I'm thinking of, I was sitting by the library fire to get away from the chatter in the living-room. Niel was shown into the library to wait for Nita, whom he was to take somewhere.
I was pretending to be asleep, and before I could wake with dignity, in came Nita, looking like roses in the dusk. She went to him, kissed him, and gave him her blue cloak. He held it for her, turned her about, buttoned the high collar, and took her face, collar and all, in his hands.
"Nita," he said, "what's this thing you're dragging me to? Let's stay here."
"Niel, the idea!" she cried. "You're getting fusty. You act married! You're my beau, and you come along with me."
"But it sounds bunk," says Niel. "A drawing-room talk on 'The Radicalism of To-morrow.' Piffle, Nita."
"Now, Niel!" said she, in several pitches. "Don't you go and be like that. I heard him at the Tuesday Club. He's wonderful. He makes you think of things that aren't that way at all," she ended.
"What the dickens does that mean?" asked Niel, and roared—but tenderly. "Nita, let's say this spring for sure," he went on, as if this belonged to any subject. "Let's say June. I wonder what made me think of June?"
"All you think about is marrying me," said Nita, like an accusation.
He stooped then, and looked in her eyes.
"Nita," he said, "don't make me wait."
"But," she cried, saucy as a squirrel, "there isn't time to be married before eight o'clock. We're late as it is. Come along."
I WOKE up then.
"Hold on here," I said. "Where's this fine talk going to be?"
It was to be, it appeared, at Mrs. Arlington Havens', and I would better go, dear, for he's tremendous.
"Who's tremendous?" I asked distastefully.
"John Brushby, his name is," Nita paused in the door to say solemnly. "He is," she said, "a prophet of the new order."
"Don't scare Nunkie Nickie if you want him to go," Niel warned her.
OFF they went, and I sat thinking how magnificently they paired it. Niel was big and gentle—you know, that combination can't be beat. Big and masterful gets a woman; but big and gentle holds her. Niel was good to look at, but you never thought of that first. He was just clean and fine and tender—the kind that doesn't say much; the kind that can't make a show to save its life. No fortune, just a prospect of being a junior partner in a live real estate business. And you pinned your faith to him. I am a man, and I'm seventy years old, and I would put all my trust in Niel Sargent in business, in love, and in all relationships. But there was one thing that ailed him, and that's what I'm coming to.
I was weighing the advantages of Mrs. Arlington Havens' yellow drawing-room against a nap by the fire, when Nita's father came in the library. Matthew Northrup is the big man of our town. Not much of a town; but it's a good deal of a trick to be the big man of any burg. He owns the bank and passes the contribution plate and is trustee and toastmaster of nearly everything. And he runs the factory and looks after the town dependents—fatherly, as if he made 'em. Especially those who live in a block of houses across the street from his factory and work for him.
"That you, Nick?" he said. "Come here; I've got something to show you."
He threw some papers on the table, and bent over them.
"I've been going over some plans," he said, and waved me to them: a block of plaster houses, half timbered, each with its little plot of ground, and made doubly engaging by the window-boxes and curving branches with which architects love to dally in design.
"It's for that Dawson block across from the factory," he said. "If I can buy it I'm going to use these English plans I've got hold of."
For a moment, as I looked at him, I caught the expansive, bright-eyed, parted-lipped look of a little boy.
"Good for you," I said. "Raises the rent on those people, though."
The big little boy swelled out. "No, sir," he said. "As I figure it, it won't raise the rent a dollar. Those twenty-four tumble-down shacks give an investment of eight per cent. now. I can buy the property, put up fifteen of these houses there, give each of those families a garden, and get four per cent. on my money."
"True for you," said I. "How'd you think of it?"
"I don't know," he answered diffidently. "I'd kind of like the game."
"Can you buy the block?"
"I think I can," he said. "Dawson's in Europe, but I'm after it now."
He showed me the interior plans—still the boy in his enthusiasm. It did not occur to him to begin to lift wages so that these people might come to own their own homes. All this Lord Bountiful manner irritated me, who love democracy. But it was still an enormous advance over the eight per cent. investment ownership down there now.
"I must go down there sometime with you," I told him. "That's the kind of Good Samaritanism that gets me. The oil and wine business never impressed me so much as this. Not the oil part, anyway," I added truthfully.
In the midst of this rather neat meditation of mine, Northrup snorted.
"Rot," he said. "Samaritanism nothing. I tell you, I like the game; that's all there is to it."
I withdrew in sufficient dignity to equal calling him a liar. I went over to Mrs. Arlington Havens'. And I find that whole evening tattooed on my memory.
Mrs. Arlington Haven's' great yellow drawing-room was filled with evening clothes—and with John Brushby.
HE was speaking when I got in. Do you know the man's voice that, in a room or a hall or over a telephone, gets at you like the brush of deep, thick fur? Yes, I mean fur. I could swear that some voices have fur on. And John Brushby's was that sort of voice.
I couldn't see him. The lady in front of me wore all that she had, and the ten rows in front of her had done very similar; and my chair was low. But I could hear every word—boom, ring, home, home, home! He talked like a cultured piledriver.
I'm bound to say that he talked excellent sense. He pitched into the whole crew of us—clean, fed, rested folk, who have things reasonably the way we like them. He said that we were well fed boa-constrictors, curled up in the sun, waiting for the next meal. That, like the boa-constrictor, we lived on what we called the lower orders. That the extreme radicalism of which we are so scornful means merely that the boa-constrictor class, as such, shall cease to exist at the expense of anybody but itself. He said more—far more. His language was varied, free, and it didn't care a tinker's tick whom it rapped.
He had frequent applause. The audience consisted chiefly of boa-constrictors who applaud this sort of thing, talk it, ask if-So-amid-So is "one of us," scorn charity, contribute largely to social work, and continue to feed and curl up in the sun at the expense of the species.
Old Charley Boyland woke up at one burst of applause, and grunted.
"Picturesque," said he to me.
"Humanesque," I corrected him gently.
"Humoresque," said he dreamily, and slipped asleep again.
Later he whispered to me: "I always come here for the whiskey and cigars. But, my word, I never had this to pay for 'em before. When are they, anyhow?"
When John Brushby got through, there was one thing I wanted. I wanted to get my eyes oil him. I subscribe to this kind of talk. I take three per cent. for my money rather than go down in most of the investment mud around me. I look for a new freedom. But, just the same, I always want to get my eyes on the man who preaches it. There are preachers—and preachers—of the new freedom.
I edged down to where he was. Thirty women were around him, but I could see him.
Huge, black, thick-haired, red-mouthed, powerful of shoulder and limb and thigh, and with magnetism that went out like possessing arms about those who surrounded him. And then that booming, furry voice, and a long, warm, close hand-clasp, and a look from deep eyes burning with some imperishable flame. I studied that flame. What was it?
I wanted a word with him, and I
[illustration]
"I remember Nita's face as she stood before John Brushby—the eyes and the tremulous mouth."
She was in yellow that night, gown and little gold shoes to match her yellow hair. Her gown and body seemed transparent. I shall never forget her as she looked that night. But I remember more than these. I remember the way that Nita's face looked as she stood before John Brushby. I remember the eyes that she lifted to his, and the tremulous mouth.
"Mr. Brushby—it was wonderful. I can not tell you—oh, it is a window in the world. I didn't know—I didn't dream—"
HE had her hand. Absently, and so that she would have seemed to be obtruding the trivial if she had observed it, his other hand was laid on hers. His head was bent—I could see the square, beautiful chin, the line of thick hair at the back of his bent neck. I could see the intentness of his fine, sad eyes. Then the voice!
"My friend," he said to her, I don't know your name. Why should I? But I can see that you feel this. If it has been my joy to awaken you, I thank God."
She cried: "But what can one do? What can I do?"
"So much," he said—"so much. Oh, how we need you! What can you do?"
"So little," said Nita; "so little that counts. You will have to tell me."
He reflected. Absently he dropped her hand, thrust his own in the pocket of his sack suit, stared at her with his lower lip outthrust.
"We can not do with less than one hundred per cent. efficiency from every soul who sees the need," he said. "Tell me: Shall I have you in my classes? I am to have a series of six mornings, here at Mrs. Havens'—"
"I didn't know;" said Nita. "Oh yes—oh, yes! I shall be here."
"Good, he said. "Then we shall find your way."
Nita passed without seeing me. I think that she would have passed Niel without seeing him, save that, down the room, he intercepted her. And, after all; I left without speaking to Brushby. I had his message; there was no reason why I should be mussed up with fur.
"Who is this Brushby?" I asked Charley Boyland, over by the punch table.
"Why, don't you know?" said he, in his sociable snarl. "He's Havens' nephew. He inherited a big slice of Havens' estate. He's on here for the settlement. I know, because I'm waiting to buy a part of what he drew. I wager he gives it all away to his fool hare-brained associates."
I listened, and went home. The conversation in the room was beginning to sound to me muscular and nervous rather than mental. And I thought about Nita.
IN those next days I thought about Nita most of the time.
Mrs. Arlington Havens' mornings were an immense success. She was in mourning—Havens had died only a little while before. "Mornings" and lectures were her only possible social outlet, and she made them smart. Not that I went to any of those mornings; but I gathered that between shopping for useless things and rushing off to expensive luncheons, the lady boa-constrictors were dropping in at Mrs. Havens' to hear what they should do about the new social order. Afternoons they discussed it all—or was it Brushby?—over bridge.
On one of these mornings—as it chanced, the day on which I was to go with Northrup to look at the Dawson block—I picked up Nita crossing the Square, blooming in brown velvet and marabou. She was the only girl in the town not wearing spats; and for this I stopped and invited her to lunch.
"Lunch—yes! she cried. "Not that I'm hungry, Nunkie Nick; but I want to talk to you."
We went to our grandest place for lunch,—it is known as the Kandy Kitchen!—and found a little side table before a mirror, in which Nita cast the most bewildering glances as we talked. I love those side glances of a pretty woman in a friendly mirror.
When we had sent away the waiter: "What then?" I asked her. "Mr. Brushby and his new social order—are they upon us?
She turned upon me her clear, reproachful eyes.
"It's about nothing," said she, "but Neil."
"Niel!" I exclaimed. "What's wrong with Niel?"
"Oh, Nunkie," she said, "I thought we thought alike about everything. I'm afraid we don't think alike about anything. Or not," she amended, "about enough."
"Don't," said I, "let that worry you. When you and Niel are married, if you think alike about nothing you will fight, but you may be happy. If you think alike about everything you will be happy, but you may be bored. You can not think alike about 'enough.' There is no 'enough.'"
She looked at me meditatively.
"I wonder," she said, "if you mean it the same? No, it can't be the same. Niel and I, of course, were a very special case."
"Of course," said I indulgently. And then that tense caught my ear. "'Were'!" I exclaimed.
She flushed.
"Oh, we aren't that far," she said. "But listen, Nunkie. You know how there come times when your whole idea of life changes—when everything seems different from all that you had ever dreamed? To most girls," said Nita, "it comes, I think, when they fall in love. It didn't come then to me, because Niel and I have always been in love. It came to me just when I knew Mr. Brushby."
My heart missed a beat. What was she saying? Did she realize how much more she might be telling me than she—poor child—knew herself?
"It seems to me sometimes, when I think of it," she continued dreamily, "as if I hadn't lived at all before I met Mr. Brushby, and knew about the things he knows about. Here I was living my perfectly contented life, not knowing or caring about the rest of the world. Charity, missionaries, the Christmas baskets—those made up what I thought was my duty to others. I never thought of preventing all those things—poverty, prisons, idiocy. Oh!" She drew her breath deep. "Mr. Brushby made me see the life I've been living."
"Well," I suggested. "And Niel?"
"Niel!" she cried. "For years he has gone with me every Christmas to take turkeys to the factory people. For years he has put his name down on my charity subscriptions. For years he has shared our box at the Charity Ball. And he'll go right on being contented with that up to our two deaths!"
She faced me tragically. No side glances in the mirror now!
"Nunkie," she said, "on these things Niel and I are a thousand Miles apart. He laughs at Mr. Brushby. He calls him a b-bag of wind."
At this I bristled.
"Well," I said, "all Brushby's doctrines, I certainly agree to. He's right. I tell you, he's dead right!" Then I bristled the other way. "But," said I, "I love Niel. And Brushby I can't abide."
"Nunkie Nick! Why?"
"I don't know," I mumbled. "I can't stand the way he mouths his hair and combs his words."
I mixed it quite by accident, but on second thought I left it that way.
SOMEWAY, when I left Nita—without, of course, having got anywhere—my heart was full, not of her, but of Niel. It seemed to me that I saw for the boy nothing but blackness and the death of his dream. So, when at Northrup's office I found Niel, I wrung his hand until he looked startled.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
"Oh, you're such a thundering blackguard," I told him.
We had to wait for Northrup, and while I was wondering how I could sound Niel on his danger, he plunged straight in.
"Nick," he said, "I'm worried about this Brushby."
"Kind of a tender concern for him, is it?" I inquired.
"Not—not noticeably," Nielconfessed. "Why, the way he has those women trailing after him is fierce. And the rot he gives them—"
"Rot nothing!" said I instantly. "The man's point of view is perfectly right—perfectly."
"You don't mean you're taken in by him?" said Niel, frowning.
"Call it what you like," said I. "The man sees the way our civilization is headed. He's a voice crying in the wilderness for us to get off the chests of the under dog. He's—"
"He's a donkey," pronounced Niel with conviction. "Ho has no possible solution or program. He merely bleats like a lamb."
"Somebody's got to bleat to wake some of you fellows up!" I shouted.
I shall never forget Niel as he stood before me then—sound, erect, compact, gentle.
"Uncle Nick," He said, "I may be wrong, but I figure that clean dealing and human feeling for the other fellow are going to get us about as close to this new-order business as Brushby's babble. I don't see anything so awfully the matter with this order, anyway." he ended. "All
I groaned—just that. Clean dealing and human feeling—yes! But—"nothing the matter with this order." Niel—well fed, well paid, about to become junior partner to Wade & Wallace, with twenty-five thousand invested, as I happened to know—feeling that everything would adjust itself!
"You talk like a baby!" I stormed. "It isn't what Brushby talks that I object to. It's Brushby. What we need is better prophets."
Northrup came bustling in.
"Come aboard!" he shouted. "Is the car here, Niel? It's Wade & Wallace I'm relying on to buy the Dawson block," he explained to me, "I've concluded to do it," he added, buoyant as a boy.
"The block doesn't belong to Dawson, by the way, sir," said Niel. "Arlington Havens held the mortgage, and he bid it in, through our firm, a month before he died."
Northrup stared.
"Then who does the block belong to now?" he asked.
"It belongs," said Niel, "to that nephew of his, John Brushby."
"That reformer chap!" cried Northrup. "Good enough. Mighty good. He'll be hot for this deal of mine, I'll warrant you."
AT this, and during our visit to the Dawson block, my heart thickened up to the general consistency of lead. I saw once more that look in Nita's lifted face as she had stood before Brushby at Mrs. Havens'. And now Nita's father was about to launch this dream of workmen's cottages—a hint, surely, of Brushby's new order. What more natural than that Brushby and Nita should put through the detail together, plan it together, dream it together, Nita all the time growing dangerously nearer to that man?
But oh, those houses! Horrible, squalid, dark dens, ill smelling, without sewerage, light, or life. Ill women, pale children, steaming wash-tubs— They made me ill. But when I chanced to look at Niel I forgot myself and thought of him. The boy suddenly looked as if he were living there himself.
"Think of it!" Niel said. "Women and kiddies, like anybody, Nick. Just like anybody!"
Northrup explained and expanded. Four-room cement cottages. Every man would have his little garden. They must get the sewerage down this way. It was curious to see that smug charity-monger blossom into a social unit without knowing it. He liked the game!
As we were leaving, there drew up in the block one of those wine-colored limousines in which lovely ladies lean at their ease; and out got Charley Boyland, like a bear from a boudoir.
"Hello, Charley," said I. "Did they put the wrong tag on you?"
He grinned and bobbed his head.
"Pretty spot," said he. He pronounced it "pret-ty." "Choice homes. Restricted area." He sniffed. "And varied airs."
He moved on; and Niel said, as we got back in the car: "I don't know whether I ought to tell you; but he's after the Dawson block."
Northrup laughed easily. "He's after the eight per cent.," he said. "But if Brushby owns it I'm all right."
Brushby again! Was it Nita's destiny that was here a-weaving? Must we all keep out? Were Nita and Brushby meant for each other, after all? I stared out of the motor and wished we had better prophets.
ALL of which was thrust in my face as I entered the house an hour later. Northrup and Niel had gone back to their offices, and I wandered home—for something to do. I pushed back the library curtains, entered, and found a tableau.
The tea-cart was drawn before the open fire. There Nita presided, bewitching in her brown velvet and marabou, her hands busy at the silver. Opposite her, in a low chair, his hands wedded before him, his eyes not on but in hers, sat Brushby. And, as I entered, I distinctly heard him saying:
"I am hungry for a soul that can hold me and fuse me with its white heat. I need you—I need you near me!"
Nita looked up, saw me, and her little laugh rang false.
"Tea, Nunkie Nickie?" she invited.
And, just to be cussed, I said yes.
I stayed for ten minutes—ten deliberate minutes. I sipped my tea, I ate a scone—I risked permanent indigestion and ate two scones. Then I nibbled at ginger and chatted affably and agreeably—to myself, at least.
"How much response do you find, Brushby," I asked him, "to the sort of talk you give?"
"Why, it's everywhere—the response," he answered. "People know in their hearts. They know the unfairness of it all is rotting us to the core."
"But how sincere are they?" I asked. "How much will they do? How far will they go? Is it all talk, or will they sacrifice?"
"That," said Brushby, "is what I'm wondering."
"There's no doubt," I went on sincerely, "that what you talk is the true doctrine for this age."
"How came you to be so good a radical?" asked Brushby, detaching his look from Nita fleetly.
"Oh, me!" I said. "I'm even radical about radicals. I want them to be thoroughbreds."
I set down my cup, rose, became nearsighted to Brushby's hand, did not look at Nita, and departed.
I WENT up to my room and walked the floor. I faced it. Why did I want Nita to marry Niel, who was so placidly sure that timings were adjusting themselves, and not go with Brushby, who had his eyes open, and had opened her eyes, to the great new spirit of the world? Disguise it, flout it, scorn it, ignore it, it is the great new spirit of the world. Why should I not want Nita to go with this
[illustration]
"She stood before him, her face shining. Then she put out her hand, tremulous, questing."
BRUSHBY'S last "morning" was put forward a few days, because of a summons to New York. On the morning of that day, Nita came to breakfast looking like stage sunlight when the calcium doesn't work. Little fool, I told myself savagely over my coffee, to cry for that great faun when she had Niel. I wanted to tell her so. I was delighted when she beckoned me into the little conservatory.
"Nunkie Nick," she said, when I followed her in, "Niel and I have broken everything off."
So it was not for the faun that she had been weeping, but for Niel! I put my arm about her. She cried on my shoulder.
It seemed that Nita and Brushby had had tea together—well, not often, but several times it had happened; and sometimes luncheon—accidentally, as it were. But the night before last Nita had telephoned to Niel, breaking an engagement for the evening. Niel had brought her some roses, had entered the library to scribble some after-thought to her, and had faced her and Brushby, with a litter of books about them. It wasn't a nice minute. Niel had bowed, laid down his roses, and left the house. Yesterday he had returned to it. And now they weren't engaged any more.
"It had to c-come," Nita sobbed. "I knew that. He doesn't see—he doesn't want to see—what I want to work for now. It had to c-come. But I didn't want it to c-come that way."
"Oh, Nita," said I, "no matter how it comes, that particular break always leaves you sore to the marrow—"
I stopped. There are things that one can remember as if it were yesterday.
"Anyway, said I, "you'll patch it up—"
"Oh, never, never, never!" Nita cried.
While we still talked, the telephone rang in the library, and we heard Nita's father's voice.
"Yes. Oh, good morning, Niel—"
On which Nita stopped breathing.
"What? Boyland? But, I say, does Brushby know? Well, I thought not. Yes, certainly; I think we ought to get together. You get Boyland and Brushby to your office. I'll be there any time you say. Brushby leaves to-night, you say."
Nita drew a deep breath and left me.
I walked into the library and observed:
"I've been eavesdropping. Has Boyland got after that property pretty hard? I see. Well, may I go with you to Niel's office when he appoints this meeting?"
For I have to make my diversions.
THERE is something about the faces of men met to discuss a business proposition which is never in their faces at any other time. Watch them at the theater, in a motor, on a yacht, or with women—and their faces are flexible, responsive, readable stuff. Watch them in an office over a "deal," and they are mere masks of men—wary, calculating, thrusting, parrying, quick of eye, but masked.
There were the four men in the office of Wade & Wallace: Northrup and Boyland, the fencers; Brushby, so to say, the holder of the stakes; Niel, the umpire. And I for spectator.
The last to arrive was Brushby. I looked at him eagerly. I confess that was wistful to see in his face that casualness, that lack of care for business detail, which I have known sometimes in the make-up of the great enthusiasts whom I have trusted most. And when I saw his face I felt a quick relief. He seemed casual, preoccupied. I found myself looking forward to Charley Boyland's failure to impress that bright preoccupation.
They went over the facts. Niel, whose simplicity and dignity I had never more admired, was the spokesman. Northrup followed. He had his plans. He explained to Boyland what he meant to do to those houses. He mentioned the sum—twenty-five thousand—which he proposed to invest there. Boyland listened, hunched, squinted, impervious.
"All very interesting," he said. "I hadn't happened to hear what you meant to do with the property. Personally, I mean simply to hang on to it as it is till a Chicago company of mine gets ready to build. Meanwhile, it's a good payin' investment."
Northrup turned to Brushby.
"Mr. Brushby," he said, "I assume that you are familiar with the workmen's cottages in England. I assume that you have seen your own property here. You have heard what I propose to do with it—and what Mr. Boyland's plans. What is your own idea?"
Brushby was still preoccupied, even absent. When he spoke his voice was so round and full and thick that it made the others' sound like flat tires.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I dare say that I look at these timings at a somewhat different angle from you."
That was a good beginning.
"In these matters," he went on, "it seems to me that I have very little concern. Circumstances have made me temporarily the trustee—the owner, if you like—of this property. What is property? Nothing. Mine to-day, yours to-morrow. A word, a symbol. I can not regard it seriously. Indeed, I can not."
Northrup smiled. Boyland stared. Niel waited.
"However," said Brushby, "I am this trustee. Time that I would far rather be giving to vital matters goes into these concerns. The less of this waste, the better. For this reason, gentlemen," said Brushby, "I must beg you to let me resort to the time-honored method in these matters. I am quite willing to sell—more than willing, since I do not care to own property. As is usual, I am willing that the property shall go to the highest bidder."
There was a moment's silence. Boyland broke it.
"I heard Northrup offer twenty-five thousand," he said. "My original offer
By EDWIN BALMER
[illustration]
"ENNIS is an idiot!" the sales-manager ranted. "A congenital, bred and brought up imbecile. He hasn't the intelligence of a tadpole with paresis. He's not only lost half of the best business in Des Moines, but he's put us in so bad throughout the State that it will take two good men a year to undo what he's done. And on top of that he's—"
"Somehow, it seems to me," the president of the company interrupted, "that if Ennis is even half so lacking as you say, the fact should have been somehow discoverable. Yet some one seems to have hired him and sent him out for us. Or did he steal our samples and route book and go out on the road for us entirely on his own initiative?"
The sales-manager loosened his collar to lessen the probability of apoplexy before he trusted himself to speak.
"You mean I hired him. Correct; and I defy you to find any one who wouldn't have been let in as badly as I was. I never saw a would-be salesman that looked any better—Al, anybody would have rated him. He put up a practically perfect line of talk about himself, and brought a satisfactory recommendation. We wanted a salesman: there he was. What else could I do but try him? Well, I did; and, not counting the mistakes still to be reported from outlying precincts, he's cost the company ten thousand dollars. And Groton"—Groton was the buyer for the concern—"says I'm overpaid. If I had the snap he has! When he wants a thousand yards of goods, he can test what's offered him; he can measure it, weigh it, analyze it; he can know exactly what he's got before he pays out any money. But me! I've got to take a chance! What test is there for men—especially salesmen—but sending them out and praying to providence?"
"Other firms seem to have found one."
"One what?"
"A test to show what men can do."
"Salesmen?"
"Salesmen among others."
"You mean to say there's a test for telling whether a man who comes to you can sell goods before you let him try it?"
"Exactly."
"You mean there's a way I could have found out that Ennis was an idiot before he lost us ten thousand dollars?"
"And a way you probably would have found the man to make us ten thousand."
The sales-manager staggered.
"What's that? How's that? When? Where?"
THE test is a fact—a demonstrated, proved fact, and fast becoming well known and generally accepted. It provides a method of selecting men by analysis, and offers a plan for putting the employing department upon as careful and scientific a basis as the other department where the money is spent—the buying department.
The discovery of the means of making the test—like all other epoch-making advances—came as the combination of the work of many men. There is no discoverable starting-point in any series of investigations; men achieve important ends gradually—not to say accidentally, often—and as the result of reactions and interactions between many experimenters.
Something over four years ago, Walter Dill Scott—professor of psychology at Northwestern University—was conducting theoretical experiments with graduate students in the psychological laboratory for the purpose of determining the native ability of different persons. The sales-manager for one of the largest automobile tire companies heard of the experiments, and, hoping against hope for some relief from the usual and apparently unbetterable "look-a-man-over-and-read-his-reference" method of picking salesmen, he asked Scott to try his experiments upon applicants for selling positions.
Dr. Scott was used to practical as well as theoretical work, having written the first real text-books on advertising, and having been for many years in close consultation with many business men upon their business problems. He knew that the selection of salesmen was one of the most difficult and expensive problems in modern business. He studied, therefore, means of making a test for native ability of the grade demanded of a successful salesman, and in April, 1914, he tried out his tests with the aid of the employment department of a great tobacco company. Almost simultaneously Professor Münsterberg at Harvard and Professor Thorndike at Columbia University were making similar experiments. Münsterberg directed his investigations toward tests for efficient seamen, and Thorndike attacked the practical problems of the selection of persons for clerical positions; his work perfected a test which one of the largest life insurance companies employs now for the selection of its thousands of clerks. Scott undertook the almost uncanny task of determining by a series of tests, all given in one day, whether "green" applicants, if sent on the road for the tobacco company, would be able to sell tobacco; and he succeeded in a most marvelous manner.
Further, in the last two years he has repeatedly demonstrated ability to select from a group of applicants for selling positions those men who, later employed and tried out, have excelled in selling the goods—whether the goods were tobacco, tires, silk, or what not. And he has been able to eliminate and prevent the employment of incompetents.
The firms in whose interest he made the tests have tried them out in every conceivable way. They have not only hired the applicants whom he recommended, and discovered that his recommendations were right: they have tried to trick the tests, if they could, by including among the applicants certain "ringers."
FOR instance, a specialty company desired to add twenty-five salesmen in one city. There were sixty applicants for Scott to test in a single day, all of them strangers to him. The company had one of its very successful salesmen appear as an applicant, and also one salesman who had been in the employ of the company for a long time, who had proved a failure, and who was about to be dismissed. After the try-out, the company found that Scott had ranked the successful salesman very high in native ability and had recommended him for employment; the failure
Read the general directions before you do anything else.
General Directions:
Do what the printed directions tell you to do.
Do not ask the examiner any questions about the examination.
Do not ask any other person who is taking the examination any questions or watch any one to see what he or she does.
Work as rapidly as you can without making any mistakes.
If you do make a mistake, correct it neatly.
Do 1 first, then 2, then 3, and so on.
1. Write your name and permanent address here.
Instructions for 2, 3, and 4:
After each word printed below you are to write some word, according to the further directions. Write plainly, but as quickly as you can. If you can not think of the right word in about 3 seconds, go ahead to the next.
2. Write the opposites of the words in this column, as shown in the first three.
| good— | bad |
| day— | night |
| up— | down |
| long— | |
| soft— | |
| white— | |
| far— | |
| up— | |
| smooth— | |
| early— | |
| dead— | |
| hot— | |
| asleep— |
3. Write words that fit the words in this column, in the way shown in the first three.
| drink— | water |
| ask— | questions |
| subtract— | numbers |
| sing— | |
| build— | |
| wear— | |
| shoot— | |
| scold— | |
| win— | |
| answer— | |
| weave— | |
| wink— | |
| mend— |
4. Write words that tell what sort of a thing each thing named is, as shown in the first three.
| lily—flower |
| blue—color |
| diamond—jewel |
| oak— |
| measles— |
| July— |
| shark— |
| quinine— |
| beef— |
| canoe— |
| banana— |
| Atlantic— |
| Alps— |
5. Add 17 to each of these numbers. Write the answers as shown in the first three.
| 29 | 46 |
| 18 | 35 |
| 60 | 77 |
| 64 | |
| 49 | |
| 62 | |
| 57 | |
| 68 | |
| 74 | |
| 53 | |
| 67 | |
| 25 | |
| 10 | |
| 61 | |
| 71 | |
| 33 | |
| 38 | |
| 28 | |
| 65 | |
| 41 | |
| 50 | |
| 42 | |
| 58 |
6. Get the answers to these problems as quickly as you can:
1. What number minus 16 equals 20?
2. A man spent ⅔ of his money and had $8 left. How much had he at first?
3. At 15 cents a yard, how much will 7 feet of cloth cost?
4. A man bought land for $100. He sold it for $120, gaining $5 an acre. How many acres were there?
5. If ³⁄₄ of a gallon of oil costs 9 cents, what wr11 7 gallons cost?
7. Write opposites for this column, as shown in the first three. If you can not think of the right word in about 10 seconds, go ahead to the next.
| bravery— | cowardice |
| friend— | enemy |
| true— | false |
| serious— | |
| grand— | |
| to win— | |
| to respect— | |
| frequently— | |
| to lack— | |
| apart— | |
| stormy— | |
| motion— | |
| forcible— | |
| straight— | |
| to hold— | |
| after— | |
| to float— | |
| rough— | |
| to bless— | |
| to take— | |
| exciting— | |
| clumsy— | |
| unless— |
8. Write in each line a fourth word that fits the third word in that line in the way that the second word fits the first, as shown in the first three lines. If you can not think of the right word in about 10 seconds, go ahead.
| color—red; | name—John |
| page—book; | handle—knife |
| fire—burns; | soldiers—fight |
| eye—see; | ear— |
| Monday—Tuesday; | April— |
| do—did; | see— |
| bird—sings; | dog— |
| hour—minute; | minute— |
| straw—hat; | leather— |
| cloud—rain; | sun— |
| hammer—tool; | dictionary— |
| uncle—aunt; | brother— |
| dog—puppy; | cat— |
| little—less; | much— |
| wash—face; | sweep— |
| house—room; | book— |
| sky—blue; | grass— |
| swim—water; | fly— |
| once—one; | twice— |
| cat—fur; | bird— |
| pan—tin; | table— |
| buy—sell; | come— |
| oyster—shell; | banana— |
9. Do what it says to do as quickly as you can, but be careful to notice just what it does say.
With your pencil make a dot over any one of these letters, F G H I J, and a comma after the longest of these three words: boy mother girl. Then, if Christmas comes in March, make a cross right here ......... but if not, pass along to the next question and tell where the sun rises ......... If you believe that Edison discovered America, cross out what you just wrote, but if it was some one else, put in a number to complete this sentence: "A horse has ...... feet." Write yes, no matter whether China is in Africa or not ......... ; and then give a wrong answer to this question: ...... "How many days are there in the week?" Write any letter except g just after this comma, and then write no if 2 times 5 are 10 ......... Now, if Tuesday came after Monday, make two crosses here ......... ; but if not, make a circle here ......... or else a square here ......... Be sure to make three crosses between these two names of boys: George ......... Henry. Notice these two numbers; 3, 5. If iron is heavier than water, write the larger number here ......... But if iron is lighter write the smaller number here ......... Show by a cross when the nights are longer: in summer? ......... in winter? ......... Give the correct answer to this question: "Does water run uphill?" ......... and repeat your answer here......... Do nothing here (5+7= ......... ), unless you skipped the preceding question; but write the first letter of your first name and the last letter of your last name at the ends of this line: .........
10. Place in the bracket preceding each English proverb the number of the African proverb to which the English proverb corresponds in meaning.
ENGLISH PROVERBS.
( ) Married in haste, we repent at leisure.
( ) Answer a fool according to his folly.
( ) One swallow does not make a summer.
( ) First catch your hare.
( ) Adding insult to injury.
( ) Curses come home to roost.
( ) Distance lends enchantment to the view.
( ) We can all endure the misfortunes of others.
AFRICAN PROVERBS,
1. One tree does not make a forest.
2. "I nearly killed the bird." No one can eat "nearly" in a stew.
3. Full-belly child says to hungry-belly child, "Keep good cheer."
4. Distant firewood is good firewood.
5. Ashes fly in the face of him who throws them.
6. If the boy says he wants to tie the water with a string, ask him whether he means the water in the pot or the water in the lagoon.
7. The ground-pig said: "I do not feel so angry with the man who killed me as with the man who dashed me on the ground afterward."
8. Quick loving a woman means quick not loving a woman.
Just as soon as you finish, give your paper to the examiner so as to get credit for having completed the work before time was called.
also had been discovered, having been ranked with those definitely recommended for rejection.
Another large company asked each of six bosses to rank twenty-six salesmen in the employ of the company who were well known to the bosses. Scott was then asked to test the twenty-six salesmen and give his estimate of their comparative ability. Understand that all these men were strangers to him: he had no access to their records, and he could not question them about their records. He simply gave them his tests, with this remarkable result:
He ranked those twenty-six men, as to native ability, almost exactly in accord with the combined judgment of the six officers in the firm who knew the men best. Moreover, his ranking corresponded with the ranking made by all the bosses more closely than the individual ranking made by any one boss conformed to the average ranking of all together. To put it in figures, the correlation of Scott's rank with the firm rank was above 88 per cent.; the individual ranking of no one boss so closely approximated the combined opinion of the six officials.
What are these tests which bring such astonishing results? On the opposite page is one of the original idea, given as one of a series.
The most brilliant adult applicants, Dr. Scott finds, complete this part of the test in about fourteen minutes. An applicant finishing in thirty-three minutes with a total of eighteen errors is assumed to have sufficient ability for a selling position in one organization; another company requires men who can complete the test within twenty minutes and with not more than eight errors. No person of a low degree of intelligence, says Dr. Scott, can complete this test accurately in thirty minutes.
It is amazing how many applicants can not complete this test satisfactorily within any reasonable time, and amazing how many of these incompetents would, by their appearance and "manner," have qualified for trial as salesmen under the old system—and doubtless have qualified as salesmen, with some company not requiring the test, and beyond any doubt have failed miserably, both to their own cost and to the cost of the company trying them.
FIRMS using the tests, of course, have not abandoned personal interviews with applicants for positions. On the contrary, they have developed the technic of the interview so as to make it a very exacting test in itself. And these firms also have adopted a new form of reference blank, which applicants are required to have satisfactorily filled.
The tests can not yet determine in advance whether an applicant will prove honest or dishonest; nor can they catch all kinks in character. But they can and do detect the presence of native ability when it is in one man, and prove its absence when another lacks it.
Only six months ago, a young man who had applied to thirteen sales-managers for a position, and who
[illustration]
Another concern gave the tests to a number of its employees, and discovered that one young man, to whom they had never offered much opportunity, graded with the best men; they therefore gave the man more of a chance, and they have since raised his salary twice and given him more important positions.
The tests have worked; they are working; and they have so impressed men of importance in our commercial affairs that not only are the tests coming into ordinary use, but thirty leading American firms—representing many diverse lines of business—have banded together to support a special Bureau of Salesmanship Research in connection with the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh. Already men who know call the scientific selection of salesmen the most important development in sales-management in the past dozen years; and the work is scarcely begun.
By ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE
Illustrations by A. I. Keller
SALE KERNAN, a young Kentuckian in charge of a string of horses at the Beaumont track, New York, is barred from the turf following disclosures to the newspapers of track fraud, and sails immediately for Mexico. On the boat he finds his assistant, Jerry Kenney. He also meets Roberta Leland, owner of Vivandière, a race mare with a bad record, whom she is taking South. The boat has a stormy passage, and the third night the passengers are ordered to the life-boats—the ship is sinking. Kernan wins the gratitude of Miss Leland by a heroic rescue of Vivandière, and accepts her offer to take charge of her racing stable. He and Jerry Kenney accompany Miss Leland and Mrs. Clarke, her chaperon, to Stephanie, Miss Leland's home, and Kernan begins his preparations for the Grantham (Florida) meet. He finds that kindness is all that Vivandière needs to make her a good racer, and that she will not take the whip. In January they move the string to Grantham, Miss Leland being accompanied by a party of New Yorkers that includes Mrs. Clarke's nephew, Carteret Dane, who is also related to Classon, one of the men accused by Kernan at the Beaumont track. In Vivandière's first race at Grantham the odds are five to one on Vivandière—to the mystification of Kernan, in whose opinion two to one would have been normal. The mare, ridden by a negro jockey, makes a splendid run, until the last quarter mile, when Kernan, from the grand-stand, is aware that something is going wrong. Through his glasses he makes out Vivandière's jockey using the whip. The mare stops, crashes into a fence, and loses the race.
IT seemed to me that within ten seconds after the numbers of Queen Molly, first; Bay King, second; Cresswell, third; had been put up, every pair of eyes in the crowd had found me and was glaring at me. I could hear my name running from mouth to mouth, and some of the language used was enough to make me want to fight. But I didn't do anything like that. My eyes were fixed on Miss Leland, and I was making my way down the grand-stand to her. She was pale, and a glint of anger was in her eyes. Beside her stood Dane.
"Well, Mr. Kernan?" she said.
"That jock has sold us out, Miss Leland," I told her. "He had his orders and—"
"So it seemed," put in Dane meaningly.
I turned to him. He was just about my size, maybe a little heavier, but I rather think I was harder. I put my hands behind my back, after looking him over coldly, and faced Miss Leland again. He was a friend of hers; that let him out with me—at present.
"The—the people seem quite angry, Mr. Kernan," she said.
"They have a right to be," I answered. "They're victims of as raw a deal as ever was pulled in Florida, and that means anywhere. They were coaxed to bet on the mare by the juicy odds, and all the time it was framed. You'll have to excuse me, Miss Leland; I've got to see that jock."
She laid her hand on my arm.
"He's only a poor, ignorant little negro," she said.
I bit my lip.
"I guess you're right," I admitted. "He isn't worth monkeying with; except for the purpose of making him talk. But—a trainer's protest doesn't amount to anything unless his owner sides with him. Will you give me permission to speak to the judges, Miss Leland?"
Dane butted in.
"You don't want your name mixed up in a nasty race-track scandal, Bobbie," he said.
That "Bobbie" angered me. It would have been bad enough for him to call her Roberta, but the pet name—
"I'll tell you, Miss Leland," said I coldly, "if I owned the mare, I'd rather have my name mixed up in open scandal and come clear, than have the scandal the gossipy kind and—"
"No one will gossip about Miss Leland," interrupted Dane. "The gossip will be about—her trainer."
I kept my temper.
"In that case," I said, "it seems to me that I should be given a chance to clear my name. Miss Leland, may I speak to the judges?"
The others in the box edged nearer to us. Mrs. Clarke put her hand on the girl's arm.
"Roberta, you don't care about the old race, anyway. We didn't lose much. And newspaper talk—"
The girl ignored this. She looked me straight in the eyes.
"The running of the race reflects on your good name?"
"You hear the crowd," I said.
She could hear them, all right: "faker," "trimmer," "framer-up"—those were the milder names the hard losers called me.
BUT I could see that Miss Leland didn't care for an investigation. The papers might make a lot of it; her name would be mentioned; whereas—well, the judges had ordered Queen Molly's name posted as the winner. Evidently they were satisfied. There'd be no scandal if matters were allowed to rest. I could see the struggle on her face between the dislike of being coupled with race-track notoriety and the desire to give me a square deal. Dane saw it, too.
"I say, Kernan; you're Sale Kernan, aren't you?"
"You know it," I answered.
"The Sale Kernan of Kentucky?" with a bit of a sneer.
"Yes."
He looked at the girl.
"I'd let the matter rest, Bobbie, if I were you. I—er—don't think that letting it rest can hurt—very much—the name of a man who has been ruled off the metropolitan tracks."
He turned his back to me, as if the incident were closed. I reached forth and gripped his arm, whirling him around.
"You know why I was ruled off, sir," I snapped.
He tried to throw off my grip of his arm, but I dug my fingers into his flesh.
"You know why," I said again.
I think he'd have struck me then and there, but for Miss Leland. She spoke to him sharply:
"Carter! You are unfair! Mr. Kernan's personal honesty, his racing honesty, has never been questioned! I know why Mr. Kernan is barred, as do you.. He is under the ban because of unproved statements made by him."
"Unproved? Isn't that a bit—er—mild—Bobbie? He deliberately—"
"Failed to prove charges, Carter."
His jaw dropped; he stared at her.
"But, Bobbie, Classon is Aunt Luella's cousin!"
"And Mr. Kernan is my trainer," she said haughtily. "I can not permit doubt of his integrity, or the integrity of my stable, to pass unquestioned. Mr. Kernan, you have my permission to interview the judges."
I bowed to her; I wanted to kiss her hand. I felt Dane's angry eyes bore into me. I think if looks could kill, the story of Sale Kernan would have ended then and there.
"I thank you, Miss Leland," I said, "for believing—"
"It is not a matter of belief," she said coldly. "It is a matter of justice."
My spirits, that had suddenly been high, were dashed again. I was too quick to read a favor that did not exist. Justice—that was it. Yet my heart warmed to her. In the name of justice, she did not hesitate to offend a favored suitor, to espouse the cause of her trainer against that of Classon. At least, she didn't side with Classon, for all that Mrs. Clarke was a cousin of the financier.
I paid no attention to the hooting crowd as I crossed the track to the judges' stand. The crowd, seeing me in conversation with my owner, and then seeing me start for the judges' stand, hung around. There was a chance that I'd been called before them, that the race might be declared off—bets canceled. None of them, of course, realized that I wanted the race called no race; that I, who had always run my horses honestly, could afford less than ever, now that I was under the ban, to have suspicion rest on my name. I could feel eight thousand eyes on me as I climbed the steep steps of the judges' stand.
THE race just ended had been the last, and the judges were writing the day's records as I came upon them. Old Colonel Buckmaster saw me first. His face colored—a little bit ashamed, he looked.
"Well, Misteh Kernan, what can we do foh yo'?" he asked.
"I wish you'd recall the numbers posted below," I said, "until after an investigation has been made."
The other judges looked up at me. One of them, Holt, spoke with apparent surprise:
"Recall the numbers? What are you driving at, Mr. Kernan?"
"In less than five minutes more this race will be history," I snapped. "Ten minutes after the race ends—on this track
Kendrick, the third judge, stared at me.
"Explain yourself, Mr. Kernan," he said sternly.
"I haven't had time to see my jock—yet," I said. "But he has been ordered, all along, never to use the whip on Vivandière. That's been his religion, as I've taught it to him. You saw him less than ten minutes ago. You saw him whip my mare until she threw away a race already won. I want the decision as to the result of the race held up until it's discovered who bribed my boy to throw the race."
"OH now, aren't yo' a bit excited, Misteh Kernan?" asked Colonel Buckmaster. I looked at him; his eyes seemed frightened. "Yoah boy is just a triflin', no-count niggeh, and—"
"He's a mighty intelligent boy," said I angrily. "He knew his orders. He got his for what he did! I know it, and I'll be able to prove it, I hope."
"You hope," said Holt. "Who bribed him?"
"I haven't had time to find that out," I replied. "But if you'll give me twenty-four hours—"
"I guess you don't know much about negroes, Mr. Kernan," interrupted Kendrick. "That boy of yours lost his head, that's all. We can't declare bets off because of a jock's poor riding."
"Foul riding," I corrected. "Not know them? Gentlemen, I'm from Kentucky, where they invented them! I know a bright negro when I see one. My boy's bright and—crooked! In justice to those who bet on my mare—"
"How big does your ticket read, Mr. Kernan?" inquired Holt, with a sneer.
I took the ticket from my pocket.
"It calls for eighteen hundred dollars," I answered; "and, just to show you where I get off—"
I tore the ticket to pieces and let the fragments flutter down to the track below.
"That shows where I get off," I said. "It isn't because I want my money. But when a gang of bookmakers sweeten a horse's price so's to gull the public, and then fix it for that horse to lose—that isn't honest! Gentlemen, before it's too late, before they've paid off on Queen Molly—I ask you to—"
"Honesty, eh?" said Kendrick. "And who are you, to come here telling us our duty?"
"You know who I am," I retorted. "I'm one of the trainers of this track that isn't owned by the betting ring. And, unless you want this track given a worse black eye than it wears already, you'll listen to me. You'll—"
"And you'll listen to us!" cried Holt: "How dare you come to the judges' stand and talk this way?"
"I thought you'd thank me, though I should have known better," I answered bitterly. "I thought honest talk would appeal to you. If it doesn't—"
"You've been ruled off the track up North, Mr. Kernan," said Kendrick coldly. "One more word of this sort of talk and we'll bar you here. We're willing to forget what you've already said; we realize that it was a hard race to lose. But—be careful, Mr. Kernan. We judges are competent to run things here without a sore-headed trainer squealing because his incompetent jockey gave his horse a bad ride. If you have one iota of proof now that there was a conspiracy on the part of the books to keep your horse out Of the money, say so!"
"All right," I retorted hotly. "I'll tell you—"
Then I paused. What had happened before the race? Nothing except that a bookmaker had been reluctant to take my bet; that a tout asked me an insulting question. In view of the remit of the race, those two matters became important, but—not evidence. Besides, Ikey had tried to do me a service. It would be a poor return for me to get him into trouble with the gang that ran the ring.
"Well?" said Holt.
I shrugged my shoulders.
"You hear the crowd, gentlemen. Evidently they think something was wrong with the race. They blame me."
"Crowds always act that way when a juicy good thing goes wrong," said Kendrick. "You're too old a horseman to mind the crowd, Mr. Kernan. You were going to tell us something?"
I looked at him; I looked at Holt. A man that knows horses is quick to sense things. I could sense that Holt and Kendrick were ready to hand me something if I didn't watch out. Why, I wasn't yet sure, though I was beginning to suspect the reason. All that I'd seen, all the little bits of gossip I'd picked up from other trainers since the track opened—all these I remembered—and grew cautious. It wasn't up to me, in bad up North, to get ruled off down here.
"Tell you something?"' I echoed Kendrick. "Why—er—gentlemen, if you're satisfied with the way that race was won, I suppose have to be. You're the judges; I'm just a trainer."
Kendrick and Holt exchanged swift glances. Kendrick pursed his lips.
"That's better, Mr. Kernan," said he. "Grantham is very glad to have a top-notch trainer down here; we should be sorry if resentment at losing a race should cause a repetition, down here, of the unpleasantness at Beaumont. We think that we are generous in not making your disbarment run here. Let us have no cause to repent our generosity. Poor sportsmanship, Mr. Kernan, is most offensive."
I didn't dare trust myself to answer. I started toward the steps that led to the track. As I did so, Old Colonel Buckmaster, who had kept silent after his first speech, caught my eye. His lips moved ever so silently, but I caught the words, "Hotel—to-night."
MORE puzzled than angry,—and I was fairly hot under the collar, at that,—I descended the steps to the track. The crowd hooted me a trifle; but, like all race-goers, already they were thinking of to-morrow. Their resentment at me had begun to die, and they were drifting out of the grounds as soon as it was evident that the result of the race stood. Something seemingly raw had been pulled, but—well, to-morrow was another day. I glanced toward Miss Leland's box. Somehow, just then I didn't have the heart to tell her that my protest had been summarily dismissed. I turned toward the stable, outside the track.
Jerry Kenney was rubbing down Vivandière. The mare was still a bit fractious, nervous, with nostrils dilated. I walked up to her and stroked her nose. She greeted me affectionately. I ran my hand down her quarters and felt the welts that the whip had raised on that glossy coat.
Jerry stared sympathetically at me.
"I saw ye go to the judges' stand, sor."
"Yes," said I, stroking the raw weals on my beauty. "Of course you knew why."
"I kind of guessed," said Jerry. "The jock got away from me, bad cess to the little thief! But we'll find him later. Did it do anny good, sor?"
"Devil a bit, Jerry! As raw as anything—you saw it! You know what our orders have been to that boy."
I told him all that had transpired since I left the mare and him just before the race. Also I told him about seeing Smiler Smith with Dane. Jerry whistled.
I can't see, it, sor," he said, "but I can smell it, it's that rotten."
He ceased applying liniment to the swelling muscles of the mare, and straightened up.
"Sure, Misther Sale," he said, "ye won't stand for it and ye can't buck it! What can ye do?"
"Keep on running the mare," I answered, "and be careful."
"This Clarke woman," said Jerry, "is afther bein' fond of her nevvy. Be the same token, she ain't fond of ye. And she's related to Classon, old Sam writes ye. And the gir-rl is fond of ye, so—"
"Don't be an ass, Jerry," I snapped. "She feels under an obligation to me, and she's on the square; that's all."
Jerry pursed his lips. He changed the subject.
"Me nevvy Mike—him that's exercise boy for old Sam, sor—I got a letter from him this mornin', sor. He says old Sam ain't engaged a trainer for next season yet."
"Well?" I demanded angrily.
"If—if there's anythin' in the wind down here, and ye try to smell it out—it might mean trouble, Misther Sale. Maybe we'd better dodge it. There's tin thousand a year, and real horses on real tracks—up North. If ye wanted to admit ye was mistaken last fall—"
"Jerry," I snapped; "you don't mean it!"
"'Tis you that knows I don't," said Jerry., "But—ye've come to me and told me all these things. And niver once have ye said that ye intinded to fight again' them. Here ye've allowed this man Dane to butt in, and niver said a wor-rd for ye'ersilf. Don't tell me I dinnaw what I'm talkin' about! I was a man grown before ye was bor-rn, Misther Sale! And lately ye've been moonin', mopin', and—if ye go afther the gir-rl 'tis Dane ye'll have to fight. And ye say ye saw him with Smiler Smith! So it's Smith, too, mebbe ye'd have to fight. And if a hint means annythin', it's Smith that's doin' business down here. So—behind Smith is the track officials, and—do ye want the gir-rl?"
I couldn't answer.
"Ye do," said Jerry emphatically. "And ye won't go hack North, and if ye stay here ye fear that there'll be more crookedness and ye'll have to buck it! Ye fear ye'll have to buck it! For if ye buck it somethin' might happen to ye wid the gir-rl—ye might be queered, and—where'sthe Irish in ye, Misther Sale, that ye can't make up ye'er mind, right or wrong, stay, or leave, and the divil fly away wid all again' ye? Two choices—stay, or apologize to thim back North.
"There's still Juarez," I said.
"Yes," said Jerry, with the least bit of contempt in his voice; "there's Juarez."
He began to rub the mare again, and shortly afterward I left the stable. I'm no detective; I'm not good at solving puzzles, at running down clues. This much I knew: there was crookedness at the Grantham track, and the race officials were cognizant of it. Carteret Dane had the inside track with Miss Leland, and I had seen him with a notorious New York bookmaker. Dane was a distant relative of Classon, who, I strongly suspected, was connected with the crookedness of the Beaumont starter O'Toole and the Classon trainer Connors.
Yet, what did it all lead to? Was there any connection between crookedness at Beaumont and the crookedness here? And, if there was, could I hope to buck it? Did Smiler Smith's flying visit to Grantham have anything to do with booking operations down here? If so, did his being with Dane have anything to do with those operations? Was Dane in any way connected, in racing business, with his cousin by marriage, Classon? Could I stay here and watch Dame carry off Miss Leland without a struggle? And, if I did fight, would I embroil myself with the powers here, and would I get it in the neck harder than at Beaumont? I hadn't answered any of these questions when I reached the hotel.
A LITTLE time helps thought. The patrons of the Grantham track were not rich. Even though the betting ring was allied with the track, not enough money came from the pockets of Grantham bettors to support the elaborate machinery of even such a dog track as this. Over my dinner I wondered. Here was a possible answer to the day's events:
Smiler Smith was commonly reported to own an interest in a country-wide chain of pool-rooms. Pool-rooms would pay big money to know in advance, not which horse would win, perhaps, but which horse was certain to lose. For, by offering juicy odds against that horse, they could tempt the public to forget its choice—poor enough at best.
I'd been suspicious before to-day. But this afternoon's events had crystallized suspicion. And with the crystallization my blood began to boil.
I thought of the many people who knew me, and who had placed bets on to-day's race, tempted by the combination of my name as trainer of Vivandière and the sweet odds against her. What would they think of me?
I looked sullenly about the dining-room. The head waiter was just escorting Miss Leland, Mrs. Clarke and her daughter, and Dane and his two friends to a flower-decked table whose conspicuous position in the center of the room was tempered by the potted plants that surrounded it.
Through the fringe of palms I saw Dane remove the girl's wrap. It seemed to me that his hands touched her caressingly. It galled me—into action. I forgot her squareness to me; forgot the camaraderie of Stephanie; forgot Jerry's scorn when I mentioned Juarez. I forgot everything except the fact that I loved her, and that I could no longer endure seeing another man proceed to win her to whom I hardly dared aspire. I was better out of Grantham—better out of it because staying only made it harder to keep unuttered my hopeless love; better because I should never have come to Florida, never should have allowed the name of Kernan to be connected with a track such as Grantham.
I PUSHED back my chair back and walked toward their table. Miss Leland was first to see me. She smiled impersonally; the friendliness that had been in evidence at Stephanie was gone. The others, except Dane, paid no attention to me. Dane, I felt, was looking at me closely.
"Good evening, Mr. Kernan," said the girl. "You didn't come to the box to tell us what the judges said."
I didn't think it necessary, Miss Leland," I told her. "You saw that Queen Molly's number remained up."
"I saw. What did the judges say?"
"In effect," I answered bitterly; "that if I made charges I couldn't prove—on the spot—,I might lose my license. They don't want charges made, much less proved, at this track, Miss Leland," I went on. "And as I've always made it my business to run my stable for my owner and not for the betting ring, why—I'm leaving Florida—to-night!"
"Throw a stone and run away," sneered Dane.
"But I didn't throw it from behind a woman's skirts, Mr. Dane," I retorted.
That fetched him. He started to climb out of his chair, and the rest of the party grew tense at the imminence of trouble. Mrs. Clarke put her hand on her nephew's arm. But Miss Leland took command of the situation. Her face was suddenly angry as she looked at me. At the moment I'd told her of my suddenly acquired intention of leaving the State I had thought a shade of regret showed in her eyes. But every good woman hates to be made party to a scene. I had offended; she punished me. The regret was gone from her eyes, her voice was that of a mistress to her servant, as she said to me:
"Very well, Mr. Kernan. If you will be in the drawing-room at nine I'll give you a check for what is due you."
The grin of malicious triumph on Dane's face at her cool dismissal of me almost goaded me into angry answer. But I bit my lip and turned away. Whatever daring thoughts I'd had, whatever wild hopes I'd foolishly nourished—well, a horseman becomes used to disappointments after a while. He expects hope to fade away like a yellow-hearted plater in the fight for the wire.
In the hotel office I inquired about trains. The earliest one was the eleven-ten, and it was now not quite seven. I had plenty of time. Half an hour later my bags were packed and ready. So I had an hour and a half before meeting Miss Leland.
I wished I had gone to Juarez in the fall, as I'd intended doing when I left New York, and as I would have done but for fate and Vivandière.
Vivandière! My heart ached suddenly.
[illustration]
"She was pale, and a glint of anger was in her eyes. 'Well, Mr. Kernan?' she said. 'That jock has sold us out, Miss Leland,' I said; 'he had his orders—' 'So it seemed,' Dane put in meaningly."
I saw her some day winning a big stake at Beaumont, and—well, there were tears in my eyes as I swung from the trolley fifteen minutes later and made my way to the group of rickety stables that bordered the track.
"Where's Jerry?" I asked of the young negro who slept with the horses, but who was now shooting craps with other exercise boys, in the light of a lantern that swung from the open stable door.
"He done went in town, Mist' Ke'nan, seh," answered the boy. "Prob'ly gone to ohe of dem pictuah shows, seh, he added.
"Mare all right?" I asked.
"Yasseh, she's all right, seh. I'll show yoh—"
But I didn't want him to see my parting with Vivandière.
"It's all right; never mind," I snapped at him. "You find another lantern."
I TOOK the lantern from the hook over the door and entered the stable. Only five stalls in it, and I passed by the first four. Platers, that's all; no speed to amount to anything, and, what was worse, no heart for the game. I didn't mind leaving them. But my beauty, Vivandière—I thought I heard a rustle up by her feed-box. I swung the lantern forward, and its light showed me a crouching figure at her fore feet. Suspicion, anger, possessed me. The mare wasn't entered in to-morrow's races, but—
"Come out of there," I cried. "Come out or I'll let a bullet into you!"
A figure crawled by the mare's feet, and its owner whined:
"'Foh Gawd, Mist' Ke'nan, I ain't doin' nuffin' to Vivandière. I on'y wanted to see her and tell her dat—"
It was my jock—the little coon I'd brought from Stephanie, made a rider of, and who'd sold me out that afternoon. I reached down and gripped his collar. My hand passed over his cheek and it was wet.
Only his small size prevented me from thrashing him.
"You tell me what you're doing in this mare's stall, or, by the Lord Harry, I'll lace you until you howl!"
"Go on, Mist' Ke'nan, whale me," he said. "I dese'ves it, seh. Jest bust ma worfless haid open, Mist' Ke'nan, seh; it's a-comin' to me. But don't yoh b'lieve I was aimin' to do dis baby hawss no hahm, seh!"
"Then what are you doing here?" I demanded.
"'Pologizin', Mist' Ke'nan. 'Pologizin' foh doin' her dirt when I jest plumb had to, seh! I been in there askin' an' pleadin' an' beggin', but she won't listen to me, seh. She won't nuzzle me, nor whinny-talk a-tall. It's about bustin' ma heart, Mist' Ke'nan, to have dat baby girl think I hit her out ob debilment, seh. It won't matteh much if yoh busts ma haid!"
The boy was telling the truth; he'd done the mare dirt and was in her stall trying to square himself, with the childishness of his race. Crooked as he'd shown himself, I was sorry for him. But I shook him until his ivory teeth rattled in his head.
"What about apologizing to me? Explaining to me?" I asked. "Haven't I treated you right? Weren't you a dirty little exercise boy until I gave you the leg up on Cloverleaf?" (One of Miss Leland's platers.) "And then didn't I pick you from all the jocks at the track to ride Vivandière? And then you knife me in the back, you ungrateful dog! Why? How much did you get for that foul ride? Who paid you?"
"No one, Mist' Ke'nan, seh. I didn't get a jitney from no one, seh."
He was telling the truth. Maybe he thought he deserved to have his "haid busted open," but he wasn't anxious for his deserts. The fear of death was in him.
"Then why did you whip her? Why?"
"I jest had to, Mist' Ke'nan, seh. I had to! He told me if I didn't—"
"Who told you?"
But something even stronger than the fear of death gripped him now. The whites of his eyes gleamed in the light of the lantern. His skin was an ashy gray.
"Don't ask me dat, Mist' Ke'nan, seh; yoh can frazzle me right now if yoh wants. But, Mist' Ke'nan, I wouldn't answeh yoh dat if yoh cut my heart out. I jest simply don't dast, and dat's Gawd's honest troof. Yoh can kill me, Mist' Ke'nan, but dat's all yoh can do! But de gemman what made me—go on, Mist' Ke'nan, skin me alive if yoh wants! I done used yoh rotten. But—I ain't said nuffin', and I won't!"
Well, you can't hit a little coon. If he'd been big— Even though my strong suspicions, amounting to positive belief, were verified now, I turned him loose. I was leaving in a few hours. That Vivandière had been "framed" was nothing to me now. The boy scampered away, and I turned into the stall.
Yes, I kissed her! Right on the star in the middle of her forehead. Then I left her and went back to the city. In the moving picture theater across the river that splits Grantham in two I saw Jerry, staring fascinatedly at a reel whereon the poor shop-girl was scorning the millionaire. I asked an usher if the pictures were about over.
"Just started," he told me.
And I wouldn't have dragged Jerry away from an unfinished film play for a thousand in cold cash. So I pointed Jerry out to the usher and asked him to tell my faithful follower to come to the hotel when the performance was over. That would give us plenty of time. Jerry never had any packing to do.
ONCE more I passed through the gorgeous grounds of the hotel. A flight of steps descended, beneath the main porch, to the bar. I thought a drink would cheer me up, and went down there. The usual crowd of touts and bookies and "sports" was there. I nodded coolly to a few I'd met, and went to one end of the bar where I might drink alone.
I glanced along the polished surface of the bar. At the far end stood old Colonel Buckmaster. He caught my eye; he seemed to signal me. I remembered what I had forgotten—his almost inaudible whisper to me in the judges' stand. I nodded carelessly. A moment later he finished his drink, left the group he'd been with, and departed from the bar, going up the stairs that led to the main lobby.
A couple of minutes later I, too, finished my drink. But the old Colonel's manner showed a furtive desire for secrecy. So I left the bar by the stairs leading to the garden, and took the elevator a minute later, at the far end of the long hotel corridor, to the third floor. If the Colonel feared to be seen talking with me—and it seemed he did—I'd humor him. There was no one to see as I knocked upon his door.
By SEWELL FORD
Illustrations by F. Vaux Wilson
[illustration]
"At the first tinkle a door opens and in comes a butler pushin' a tea-wagon."
I EXPECT I should have been stickin' around the Physical Culture Studio, seein' that Swifty Joe handled some of my Saturday reg'lars tender, and otherwise nursin' along the gate receipts. Instead of that, though, I let myself get rung in on this week-end stuff and help the aristocracy discover Mrs. Jim Trikett. They don't quite agree on Mrs. Jim, either.
"Perfectly delicious!" is Mrs. Westerley Kipp's verdict.
"How can you, mother!" sniffs Lady Dundee. "That utterly silly person!"
But then, that seems to be Lady Dundee's long suit, disagreein' with mother. You know the kind, one of these peevish young queens with a cameo face and a tabasco disposition. Course, you got to make some allowance for all she's been through lately. For there was quite a spell, you know, when they wasn't quite sure whether Sir Freddie had really gone and got himself hopelessly mussed up with shrapnel or not.
Seems he hadn't signed on as Sir Frederick Dundee when he'd pulled his hero stunt of slippin' off sudden and joinin' an ambulance corps, and the reports from the base hospital was kind of vague. The patient in cot 139 might have been him, or it might have been only his valet, whose name he'd pinched. You see, Pringle was missin', too. It turns out, though, to be Sir Freddie sure enough. Lady Dundee had been stunnin' in black for over a year now, and when mother had helped her close up Dundee House and brought her over here to recover from the shock and all, she'd been fairly swamped with sympathy.
It was one of Pinckney's batty ideas for an off-season trip up to that Berkshire Hills joint he's so bugs over. At first I tells him to count me out.
"May seem odd to you," says I, "but now and then I have to tend to business."
"My dear Shorty," says he, "if one can't neglect one's own business occasionally, whose business can one neglect? Besides, a day or so in the country is such a tonic."
"G'wan!" says I. "I can't work up any appetite standin' around watchin' you idle richers play quarter-a-point bridge all night. And, if I did, all I'd have to satisfy it would be them fancy dishes your French chef lugs up there with him. Country! Huh!"
"I am rebuked," says Pinckney; "and justly so. Yes, there is something in your subtle criticism. What is needed for an affair of this kind is the rural touch. I have it! We will have a whole roast pig served for dinner, Eh, what?"
"That wins me," says I. "What train did you say?"
BUT his plan is for us to motor up in the limousine, lettin' the other guests go by rail. But it seems at the last minute Mrs. Westerley Kipp had accused him of being selfish, so he'd included her and Lady Dundee. We was makin' a nice, easy run of it too, barrin' a few snappy debates between mother and daughter, and we was rollin' along up through the pie orchards about as fast as eight cylinders could, turn over, when we had to branch off the State road for a construction detour. We'd bumped over a mile or so of mighty uneven goin' before we hit this side-hill thank-you-ma'am that snapped two leaves of a front spring.
So it was a case of scoutin' for a 'phone. The chauffeur hikes one way while I goes the other, and that's what fetches me to this cute little hamlet where there's a tall iron smokestack and maybe a couple of dozen houses stragglin' along the main street. It was a loose-jointed youth pushin' past on a creaky bicycle who stopped long enough to say maybe I'd find a 'phone at Jim Trikett's.
"Fine!" says I. "But just who is Jim and which is his house?"
"Aw, Jim's th' engineer at th' shingle-mill," says the youth. "First place on yer left."
It's a nice, neat little near-bungalow, too; all painted up fresh, with potted plants in the front windows, some different from the bare, weather-beaten shacks beyond and across the road. So I hammers on the door hopeful. I was about givin' it up when some one calls out from an upstairs window:
"Just a minute, please. I'll be right down."
Sort of a pipin', childish voice it was, and I was lookin' for some fifteen-year-old girl ; but what finally opens the door is a female twice that age, I should say. Course, in a jay cross-roads like that I was expectin' some one to show up in an apron, maybe with traces of biscuit dough on her hands. But say, this party ain't costumed anything like that. She has little pink ribbon bows at her wrists and neck, net sleeves to her dress, pink satin slippers on her feet, and a spray of artificial rosebuds pinned into her hair on one side. A soft, fluttery-motioned, big-eyed, baby-faced female person, who glances at me sort of timid but curious.
"Mrs. Trikett?" I asks.
"Oh, yes," says she, starin' at me expectant.
Then I sketches out this broken spring disaster of ours, and asks can I ring up the nearest garage. I will say she was nice about it. Said she was so sorry, but all the 'phone connection they had was a private wire to the shingle-mill.
"One that Mr. Trikett rigged up himself," she explains, "for—for me."
Also she adds that the nearest reg'lar 'phone was at a farm-house half a mile back, or at the store half a mile further on, and that there wasn't a garage for eight or ten miles in either direction.
"Looks like we're out of luck, then," says I. "I might as well go back and tell the ladies to settle down for a long wait."
"Ladies?" says Mrs. Trikett, perkin' up. "Now isn't that too bad! It will be dark soon, and it's quite chilly out. Now wouldn't they like— I—I'd love to have you all come up here and wait."
"Why, that's decent of you, Mrs. Trikett," says I. "I'll tell 'em what you say."
I finds that the chauffeur has worked the farm-house 'phone and has a wreckin' car on the way, but that there's a two-hour hang-up ahead of us. Mrs Westerley Kipp hails the invite enthusiastic, so of course daughter has to knock it.
"Go into one of these wretches' houses! Ugh!" says Lady Dundee.
"A very interesting display of delicate sensibilities," comments mother, "particularly from a young woman who was born in Calumet, Michigan. Professor McCabe, you say the place looked clean?"
"Neat as a new bath-tub," says I. "And Mrs. Trikett seemed real anxious to have you come."
"Then I'm going to risk it," says she, "and if Eleanor chooses to mope here by the roadside, she may."
Eleanor didn't, though. She sputtered about not knowin' what horrid disease one might catch, but she trotted right along with the rest of us. I'd merely told 'em how this was where the shingle-mill engineer lived, without tryin' to describe Mrs. Jim. I kind of wanted to spring her on 'em.
WELL, I did. I sprung a heap more'n I'd planned. She must have been watchin' from the window, for she has the front door open as soon as we strikes the steps; and, with some birch logs blazin' away in the fireplace and a couple of lamps lighted, the livin'-room does look sort of cheerful. But that ain't all the surprise she hands out. Mother has hardly stepped inside before Mrs. Jim Trikett sort of gasps out:
"Why—why, it's Mrs. Westerley Kipp, isn't it?"
Mrs. Kipp rolls her eyes at me accusin' and admits that it is.
"Then," says Mrs. Jim, turnim' to daughter, "you—you must be Lady Dundee, I suppose?"
"Naturally," snaps daughter. "I didn't know that Mr. McCabe was going to announce us."
"Honest, I didn't," says I. "How did you guess, Mrs. Trikett?"
"I didn't," says she. "I knew. And I'm sure this is Mr. Pinckney Ogden Bruce, too."
"It's so nice of you to remember," says Pinckney, "and quite stupid of me not to recall where we—that is—"
"Oh, no, it isn't," laughs Mrs. Trikett. "You couldn't be stupid if you tried. And now, if you will make yourselves comfortable, I'll see if we can't have some tea. You'll excuse me, won't you?"
Mrs. Kipp and Pinckney both protests that she mustn't bother; but away she flutters towards the back of the house, leavin' us to make ourselves to home. Course, the first thing they does is to pitch into me for sayin' I hadn't told who was in the party, and it was while I'm right in the midst of registerin' my alibi that Lady Dundee makes this discovery.
"My word!" says she. "No wonder the woman knew us, mother. Look!"
We hadn't noticed the walls before, which was a little odd, seem' the startlin' way they was decorated. From the chair rail to the ceilin' there wasn't a vacant space. And all pictures of people, framed with strips of gilt cardboard.
Mrs. Westerley Kipp leaves the fire and walks over, adjustin' her lorgnette.
"As I live!" says she. "In our court gowns, too! From À la Mode, June, 1910. And I remember the photographer assuring me confidentially that I looked truly regal. I can repeat what it says underneath without reading: 'The noted American social leader and her beautiful daughter, who recently became the bride of Sir Frederick Dundee.' Come here, Pinckney, and tell me I don't look a day older."
"By Jove!" says he, takin' a glance. "That photographer chap wasn't spoofing, you know. Regal's the word. But how do you suppose this Mrs. Trikett happened to—"
"Hey!" I breaks in. "You've made the grade yourself. How about this of you at Piping Rock, watchin' the polo game?"
"Really?" says Pinckney. "Where? Well, well! Come, Mrs. Kipp. Your turn. Was I not majestic in that style of top-coat? Ah, me! That was the season I was having such a desperate affair with that stunning blond from Rich-
[photograph]
"I LIVED three months upon a bun, and so escaped—the only one." Mr. Mackay is the sole survivor of the crew of the Powhatan, the American man-of-war on which Commodore Perry signed some of the papers with the Japanese opening Japan's ports to the world. Said an American present at those negotiations, "There live the happiest people in the world"—pointing to the Japanese shore. "And now the white devils have got them."
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WITH five arrow wounds, four bullet wounds, and a spear wound, George H. Benjamin was pulled by the Indians from under his dead horse after the battle of the Little Big Horn, and subjected to every species of torture that the noble Red Man knows, being finally left by them on a red ant-hill. White men rescued him, but for three years Benjamin was insane. Now he can pass a cigar-store Indian without a tremor.
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ANY young lady wishing to make a lone man happy may address herself to "Ishi," care of this office, and her letter will be forwarded. Ishi means "man" in the language of the Deer Creek Indians, and the Ishi shown above is the last survivor of the tribe which warred so fiercely against the early California settlers that they finally wiped it out, men, women, and children. Only Ishi survived, and sheer lonesomeness compelled him some years ago to come in and give himself up.
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IT looked as if the Confederates were about to wipe the Northern navy off the map and bombard Washington, when suddenly around the corner came what appeared to be an iron cheese-box on a raft. The Monitor—for so it was—steamed up and opened fire on the Confederate Merrimac. In a little while the Merrimac was sinking, and the Union was saved. William A. Durst is the last remaining man of those who sailed the Monitor on that eventful day.
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IF one would live to ripe old age, the way to do it, apparently, is to enlist on a battle-ship and go through a fight to the death or two. Here's George A. Russell, hale and hearty. When he went away to sea, plenty of mothers shook their heads and thanked heaven their boys were going to be sign-painters and plumbers. But George went through the battle between the Kearsarge and the Alabama, and still waves, while most of his sign-painter school-mates have let signs fall on their heads, and the plumbers are dead from lack of exercise.
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A FEW hundred Dr. John Pickerings, and the Mexico problem would have been ironed out long ago. Dr. John enlisted with Sam Houston and the little band of fighters that had sworn to make Texas independent of Mexico. The doctor is the sole survivor of the battle of San Jacinto, where Santa Aña was captured and his army decisively beaten. Dr. John is ninety-six now.
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IS it lucky to be born on the thirteenth? The chairman recognizes Mr. Freeman Dorse, the old gentleman pictured above, who will reply to the question. Mr. Dorse's answer is, "No." He was born on April 13, 1809, and has seen three fine wars, one of which—the Civil War—he fought all through himself. He is probably the oldest surviving veteran, having just celebrated his hundred and seventh birthday.
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WE never were good in English literature but for one thing—we know Charles Dickens wrote blame good scenarios. Do you remember how, in "The Tale of Two Cities," Sydney Carton took the place of Charles Darnay under the guillotine because he loved Mrs. Charles Darnay's happiness better than his own ineffectual life? He was the impecunious English barrister who drank because he was melancholy and was melancholy because he drank. When Darnay was condemned by the Revolutionists, Sydney bribed his way into the prison cell, drugged Darnay, changed clothes with him, and told the jailer to "carry out Citizen Carton, who has fainted." "It's a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done," were his last words.
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WHEN old Martin Chuzzlewit fell sick at the Blue Dragon Inn, his relatives from all over England gathered around his bedside like solicitous vultures. Among them came Mr. Pecksniff (middle) and his two daughters, Mercy and Cherry, of whom he used to say: "In the nose of my eldest and the chin of my youngest, Mr. Chuzzlewit, their sainted parent (their mother, not myself) lives again." Mr. Pecksniff's benevolent smile and flow of oiled words won Chuzzlewit's confidence and induced him to banish young Martin, the hero, to the United States—which, according to Dickens, was a land of chewing, spitting, swearing Uncle Sams.
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TESS D'URBERVILLE (Mrs. Fiske) is thinking of her terrible past and her wicked gentleman cousin, Alec d'Urberville. You remember how she put off confessing to this ardent young man, Angel Clare, until the night they were married, and how he couldn't forgive her then, but went away. Years later, when he came begging her to take him back, it was too late. She had murdered Alec d'Urberville. Then the deputies found her and marched her away to the scaffold.
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IN "Quo Vadis," when Nero lived and sang and overate, one of the handsome young men about Rome fell in love with a beautiful Christian barbarian girl. Public opinion against Christians ran high in those days, and the lovely Lygia was consigned to the arena. Here are the Christians meeting secretly in a deserted wine shed and praying that torture won't persuade them to say a good word for Jupiter. In the middle background is Vinicius, the hero. In the end, you remember, Lygia is saved by her body-guard, the giant Ursus; and, Vinicius giving up his all-week banquets, they have an Early Christian wedding.
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THIS is Uncle Tom's last minute in the Cabin. "Let us think on our marcies," he says to his wife and children, like a good, obedient, grateful slave. Everything went well for the Uncle Tom family at first, because the Shelby plantation was an ideal spot for slaves. But finally Mr. Shelby needed money and had to sell some live stock. Haley, the slave-trader, still warm from chasing Eliza across the ice, took faithful Uncle Tom down the river, where he died after years of homesickness and suffering. No, that isn't little Eva on the bed.
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THE Prince and the Pauper met and compared experiences. "In summer, sir," said Tom from the Merry English slums to Edward, Prince of Wales, "we wade and swim in the canals, and each doth duck the other. We do fairly wallow in the mud, sir—saving your Worship's presence." All this was a great eye-opener for the Prince, who had a clean ruff pinned on every morning by a marquis and who couldn't go out in the yard without twelve yeomen of the guard tagging after him. They changed clothes,—just for the deuce of it,—and it took the poor Prince the rest of the book to get back in his own satin shoes.
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"TO Have and to Hold" is about the Jamestown colonists who imported a shipful of wives from England, and this shows the great day when Captain Ralph Percy, colonist, insults the exquisite Lord Carnal, a villain with carefully trained curls and a lace collar. Jocelyn Leigh, clinging to the parson, was a high-born lady in England, and life was one long unmarred cotillion until the King told her to marry Lord Carnal. Zounds! she hated him, so she embarked on the wife-ship, and—just as a matterof convenience—married Captain Ralph.
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BEAUTIFUL but blind—Greek dress on—hair fixed with a filet? Right; it's Nydia the slave girl, and here are the "Last Days of Pompeii" filmed. Glaucus never noticed that Nydia trembled and blushed when she heard his step. He bought her to carry love letters to Ione. On the last day of Pompeii it rained hot lava; and Glaucus and Ione, led by Nydia, escaped to a boat. While they were asleep, Nydia drowned herself. "On waking they wept as for a departed sister." Poor Nydia! How that sister stuff had always irritated her!
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IN the Prisoner of Zenda, you recall, the young King of Ruritania was drugged and imprisoned by his wicked uncle, Black Duke Michael, who fancied being king himself and marrying the beautiful Princess Flavia. Luckily Colonel Sapt and Fritz von Tarlenheim (right) found an English gentleman traveling in the country, who had the same red hair. So when his Highness disappeared just before the coronation, they crowned Englishman Rudolph instead and nobody caught on. After Michael was killed and the true King restored, Rudolph returned to England and thought over how pleasant it had been to kiss the Princess Flavia.
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JULES VERNE was our favorite author in the seventh grade, but when he said there was good hunting "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" (figure it out for yourself), "you've got to show me!" was our attitude. Well, here's a movie of it. While the submarine Nautilus is resting in a garden of sea-weed, the captain takes his guests shooting in the sub-sea forest of Crispo. Gun in hand and air-bag on chest, they hunt sea-spiders, octopussies, otters, filet of sole, and green turtle soup.
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PUT the Fairbanks twins on the Fairbanks scales, and there isn't an ounce of difference between them. Put them in the movies—which, by the way, is where they earn their living—and the picture looks as if it were made with trick photography. You see two girls where you think you should see only one. We like these Fairbanks twins, but we warn them right now that they have no chance of marrying us. We don't want to be upset by having our wife walk in the door when we know she is a thousand miles away visiting her mother.
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MARK TWAIN used to tell the pathetic story of his childhood. It seems, according to the story, that Mark was born twins. He and his twin looked so much alike that no one, not even their mother, could tell them apart. One day, while the nurse was bathing them, one of them slipped in the bath-tub and was drowned. No one ever knew which twin it was that was drowned—and therein, says Mark, was the tragedy. "Every one thought I was the one that lived," he said, "but I wasn't. It was my brother who lived. I was the one that was drowned." All of which leads to the natural reflection that John and Charles Briggs of Chicago are twins, as the picture proves.
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THE "heavenly twins," as the Lamkins are called, are the official expressmen for the State Normal School at Bellingham, Washington. Four generations of their ancestors have worn beards, hence the twins have followed suit—or hirsute (pun). Though several hundred prospective school-teachers pass through the school every year, the twins still remain in a state of single blessedness. Long may they rake the fragrant hay, and may their whiskers never get caught in the mower.
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BELOW, and to the right, we have Joe Shannon and Maurice Shannon, the celebrated "sorrel-top" twins to whom New Haven owes much of its baseball glory. Being twins has its disadvantages. Last year, when the team was in Florida for its spring training, Joe Shannon went into the dining-room and ate his dinner. A few minutes later enter Maurice—or rather attempt to enter Maurice. The head waiter took one glance at him, and leaped to close the door, claiming that the team's contract provided for serving only one dinner to each player each day.
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A LADY having a bibulous husband decided to attempt to cure him by the power of the human eye. When he came home late one Saturday in his usual condition, she sat him down in a chair, set her own chair before him, and silently stared into his eyes. Finally he spoke. "G-gosh!" he said, "if you two g-girls don't look enough alike to be t-twins." The Dolly Sisters look enough alike to be twins; are twins; and draw a large income from theatrical managers for that and other reasons.
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YOU have heard of the play called the "Three Twins." Doubtless you imagine that the play was founded on this picture: but you are wrong. These are not three twins. They are two twins—A. M. and C. F. Glessner, of Urbana, Ohio, and their elder brother, whose age is ninety-four. The question is, which are the twins and which is their elder brother?
mond. Yes, there she is in the background with Ollie Blair. Poor Ollie! He got her, you know, and now—"
"Please," puts in Lady Dundee, "mayn't we look at some of the others? Here's mother again, at Newport this time. Truly, did you ever wear a hat like that, mother? And here is Mrs. Stuyve Burgess in all the glory of her pearl ropes. The Countess Zitka, too! What a mixed lot!"
"But all persons of some social importance, you will kindly note," adds Pinckney. "I wonder if our hostess can have—"
"Sh-h-h-h!" warns Mrs. Kipp as Mrs. Jim Trikett comes floatin' in.
"Ah!" says Mrs. Jim, laughin' nervous. "Now you can guess how I recognized you. I suppose you know many of them very well, do you?"
"Oh, yes," admits Mrs. Kipp.
"Just think!" says Mrs. Trikett, drawin' a long breath. "That—that must be wonderful."
It's the real gaspy stuff. She stands there starin' at Mrs. Westerley Kipp, them big baby eyes of hers opened up like pansies and her slim, ring-covered fingers gripped together tight. Then all of a sudden she comes to.
"Oh," says she. "I'm forgetting. I must ring for tea."
She don't get it off easy and natural, but more like she was rehearsin' lines for a play. And as she takes a little silver bell off the mantel she kind of hesitates, as if she was workin' up courage. At the first tinkle, though, a door opens and in comes a butler pushin' a tea-wagon.
THEN the gasp act is up to us. You don't look for such things in little crossroads bungalows, you know. But here's a perfectly good tea outfit, with dainty china cups, dinky hemstitched napkins, and a tray full of cross-cut sandwiches. There's even sliced lemon and a squatty little cut-glass rum jug. What if the butler's Tuxedo was a little tight across the shoulders and a trifle short in the sleeves? There he was, throwin' his whole soul into the job, with one eye on the sandwich tray and the other on Mrs. Trikett, watchin' for signals.
She's some flustered herself about just how to do it, and springs that panicky little giggle every time she speaks; but she don't make any bad breaks that I can see. She has the regulation line of social chat, askin' Mrs. Kipp and Pinckney about their friends: where the Norcross Paynes were this season; was it true that Leonora Blair had really tried to enlist as a French aviator; and did they think the ice-skating craze would last through the winter?
All the time, though, she's watchin' the butler close, and when every one has been helped she gives him the nod, remarkin' crisp: "That will do, James."
He's hardly faded through the door before Mrs. Kipp opens the cross-examination.
"Now, my dear," says she, "tell us all about it."
"Why," says Mrs. Trikett, glancin' around scarey, "about—about what?"
"First," says Mrs. Kipp, "about this remarkable collection of pictures. Have you ever known any of these persons?"
"Not—not really," says Mrs. Jim. "I—I've read about them, though. Such a lot about you, for instance."
"H-m-m-m !" says Mrs. Kipp, eyein' her close. "What a sad waste of time! So much of it wasn't so. But you must subscribe for all the smart magazines, the English ones as well?"
"Yes," says Mrs. Trikett. "One must to keep up. They cost such a lot, too."
"And you've been doing it for years."
Mrs. Jim nods. "Ever since I was married," says she.
"Why?" demands Mrs. Kipp.
Little Mrs. Trikett looks around the circle of curious eyes, then shrugs her shoulders sort of helpless.
"Oh, you wouldn't understand," says she. "You couldn't. You don't know what it is to be a nobody, hopelessly unknown—living nowhere, going nowhere. seeing no one, nor being seen. Why, I was born within five miles of Kelly's Mills; so was Jim—er—Mr. Trikett. And we've hardly been away from here all our lives. He hasn't seemed to mind; he's real sensible. But I—I'm flicketty, I guess."
"Pardon me," puts in Mrs. Kipp. "You're what?"
"Flicketty," says Mrs. Jim. "You know, that's what the boys and girls at the Academy used to call me—Flicketty Flora. They said I read too many novels and put on airs. Perhaps I did. But I wanted to be different. Of course, I didn't know how, except from what I'd read. But I'd made up my mind that some day I would be like—like—well, like one of those women Mrs. Humphry Ward puts in her books. That was silly, wasn't it?"
"No sillier than for Mrs. Humphry Ward to write about 'em," says Mrs. Kipp. "She knows that no such persons ever existed: you don't. But let's have the rest. You couldn't be an English governess and marry a young lord or elope with prime minister, so you took Mr. Trikett. Engineer at the shingle mill, isn't he?"
"Yes," Mrs. Jim admits, kind of sobby. "It was either that or go on teaching in the district school. I hated teaching. Oh, how I did hate it! I didn't care so nuch for Jim, either. I told him I never could. But he's been awful good to me. He has humored all my flicketty notions. Do you know, he even made me promise never to give up hoping."
"Hoping for what?" asks Mrs. Kipp.
"That sometime I might be—be somebody," says Mrs. Trikett. "Anyway, for a little while, perhaps no more than a day, just to see what it was like. So we—we have gone on making believe that it would happen, and getting ready. This is part of it—the pictures. 'You'll want to know who's who and all that,' Jim said.
"So I began cutting these out of the society magazines and putting them on the walls where I could see them every day. Then I read the social notes about you and—and all the others. Having the pictures helped. And from the novels I got ideas about what you did and how you talked and what you had to eat and so on. That's where I learned about serving tea. Tell me, Mrs. Kipp, did—did I do it so very badly?"
"My dear," says Mrs. Kipp, "you did it perfectly. What I can't understand, though, is how, out here in the country, you can find such a well trained butler."
"Oh!" says Mrs. Trikett, flushin' up pleased. "Did he do well? I am so glad. And he—well, I think he'll be glad, too. He—he's just Jim, you know."
"Wha-a-at!" gasps Mrs. Kipp. "Your—your—"
Mrs. Trikett nods.
"I didn't mean to tell that part," says she. "But you've made me so happy and so proud. You see, we have practised it a lot, all by ourselves; so I should know how to act, you know, if I should ever be where there was a real butler. And then, when you were stranded down the road there, and I found that you might come up here,—some real ladies and gentlemen,—I 'phoned for Jim to hurry home from the mill. We had a hard time getting him into his suit,—it's one he bought second-hand in Hartford and never was quite big enough for him,—but he got all fixed up and was helping me with the sandwiches when you come. Won't he be surprised, though, when I tell him that the folks he waited on were—well, the real thing."
"You delightfully absurd person!" says Mrs. Westerley Kipp. 'Do you know what I wish I might do? I'd like to make the whole of that utterly foolish dream of yours come true—to let you be a real somebody just for a few days."
With that she shoots a knowin' look over at Pinckney. And say, you don't have to jab him in the ribs for Pinckney to get a hint. He's a sport, too.
"Why not do it, then?" says he. "There's an extra seat in the car."
I thought for a minute there that Mrs. Kipp was goin' to give him the fond clinch, right before everybody. All she does, though, is to put a hand on either shoulder and look him straight in the eye.
"Pinckney darlint, "says she, droppin' into the brogue she can do so well, "do ye mane it? Oh, the grand big heart of ye! Mrs. Trikett, Mr. Bruce presents his compliments and begs you to spend the week-end with us at Hickory Top. Get your bag ready."
MRS. TRIKETT, she just gazes from one to the other of 'em like she don't know whether they're joshin' her or not. But they finally convinces her that the invite is straight goods.
"Why," says she, sort of dazed, "I—I'd love to go, of course. But—but there's Jim. I don't know whether Jim would like it or not."
"Shorty," says Pinckney, "can't you find Jim and discover?"
"I can make a stab," says I. "Kitchen's out this way, ain't it? Just a minute."
He looks mighty foolish, too, when I catch him in his shirts-sleeves stirrin' up some scrambled eggs for his supper.
"Hello!" says I. "You can double as cook, can you? But say, that was a perfectly good buttling act you put over, take it from me."
He gawps at me for a minute without sayin' a word. And, come to look at him close, he is sort of a rugged, hand-hewed party, specially about the face. Yet somehow there's a soft touch around the mouth corners, and the wide-set eves are kind of gentle and mild. You could guess they hadn't always been that way—that something had mellowed him down a lot.
"Flora told, did she?" says he, as if he was a bit disappointed.
"She didn't mean to," says I. "It came out. No harm done. And the folks in there want to take her along for a little visit with them. How about it?"
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"'Don't mind me. Run on and—and have a good time.'"
"What folks? Who are they?" demands Jim.
"Then you ain't studied the wall pictures as close as Mrs. Trikett," says I. "She knew 'em right off the reel. Spotted Mrs. Westerley Kipp first, then Lady Dundee."
"Honest?" says Jim, droppin' the egg fork in the pan. '"Are—are they there?"
"Uh-huh," says I. "And up at Hickory Top there'll be a lot of other head-liners—the Twombley-Cranes, Reggie van Cort, Mrs. Jack Lardner; in fact, the pick of your gallery. And Mrs. Kipp wants Mrs. Trikett to come too."
Jim studies that over for a minute; then all of a sudden his eyelids narrow suspicious and his big fists get bunchy.
"See here," he growls hoarse; "you—you're not doing this to—to make fun of her, are you?"
"Mrs. Westerley Kipp ain't that kind," says I. "Why, she started in a little Michigan minin' town herself, and if she hadn't happened to marry a copper king in the bud she'd been there yet. No, Jim; it's just because she understands what Mrs. Trikett wants. I'm givin' you my word for that. And, say, she'd like to go mighty bad."
"Then she shall," says Jim.
It was him packed her bag, too, and helped her on with her wraps when the limousine drives up. He'd followed her out to the front steps, and was standin' there lookin' dumb and longin' after the excited, fluttery little woman that was bein' sort of kidnapped, you might say, by a lot of strangers. And just then she glances back. Next thing we knew, she was rushin' towards him.
"Oh, Jim!" says she, grabbin' him around the neck; "I—I do love you, Jim. But—but I want to go so much."
"I know; Flo," says he, chokin' up some and pattin' her on the shoulder. "You're goin', too; that's all there is about it. Don't mind me. I'll get along all right. Now run on and—and have a good time."
DID she? Say, I wish you could have seen her at dinner that first night, after Mrs. Kipp and Sadie has fixed her up one of Lady Dundee's evenin' gowns. Them pansy eyes of hers just beamed for joy every minute. She didn't say much. She took it out in watchin' and listenin', and bet there wasn't a detail, from the gold service plates to the wax taper Lady Dundee lit her cigarette from, that she lost. And she was like that all the time until we dropped her again at Kelly's Mills on our way back.
When she got through huggin' Mrs. Kipp, she thanked us all, includin' me and the chauffeur.
"I don't care now," says she. "What if I do have to live the rest of my life at the Mills? I've had what I wanted. And besides—well, I've learned to love Jim."
"Then you've learned the best lesson in the world, my dear," says Mrs. Westerley Kipp. "Good-by."
"Oh, well," I says to Pinckney, "sometimes these women hand each other the truth, don't they?"
"Do they?" says Pinckney. "Or is it that they indulge in emotional lapses?"
Not quite followin' his remark, I just let it ride. Maybe it was deep stuff. More likely, though, it was something be thought sounded clever.
"AS penniless as O. Henry usually was, and as eager as he always was to know the feel of money in his pocket, you could not move him a hair's breadth by dangling money before him," writes C. Alphonso Smith in the O. Henry Biography (Doubleday, Page & Company). He quotes the following anecdote, told by Mr. Clarence L. Cullen:
"I was with him [O. Henry] at the Twenty-sixth Street place one afternoon when a batch of mail was brought to him. One of the envelops caught his eye. On the envelop was printed the name of one of the leading fiction publications in all the world, if not indeed the most important of them all. Many times during the years, when he had been struggling for a foothold as a writer of short stories, he had submitted his tales, including the best of them, to the editor of this publication. Always they had come back with the conventional printed slip.
"He ripped open this envelop which attracted his eye. There was a note and a check for $1000. The note asked him briefly for something from his pen—anything—with that word underscored—check for which was herewith inclosed. If the thousand dollars were not deemed sufficient, the note went on, he had only to name what sum he considered fair and the additional amount would be remitted to him.
"Porter, who was probably the least vainglorious writer of equal fame that ever lived, smiled a sort of cherubic smile as he passed the note over to me. When I had finished reading it, without comment, he, saying never a word, addressed an envelop to the editor of the publication, slipped the check into the envelop, and went out into the hall and deposited it in the drop. Not a word passed between us about the offer."
"Two things," says Mr. Hall, "stirred his indignation: a salacious story and the offer of a plot. 'Don't you know better,' he would say, 'than to offer me a plot?' It was a necessity of his nature to manufacture his products from the raw material.
"'When I first came to New York,' he once said, 'I spent a great deal of time knocking around the streets. I used to walk at all hours of the day and night along the river-fronts, through Hell's Kitchen, down the Bowery, talking with any one who would hold converse with me. I never met any one but what I could learn something from him."
O. Henry was forty-eight when he died. He was perfectly conscious until within a few minutes of his death, and knew that the end was approaching.
A few minutes before he said, with a smile, to those about him: "Turn up the lights; I don't want to go home in the dark."
WHAT are the horrors of Siberia to those of Russia?
A famous actress who recently had the temerity to kiss her mother in a street-car in Russia was fined $7—which, according to the Pall Mall Gazette, is the price of a kiss on public conveyances. "A kiss in the street is penalized to the extent of $5, and a declaration of love sent by post-card is punished to the extent of $3.50."
The important feature seems to be, however, not the kind of caress, but its background.
If a kiss is worth $7 on a street-car, would the price rise on top of a Fifth Avenue bus? And if it costs $7 to kiss a mother, how much would it cost to kiss a mother-in-law?
IT'S much pleasanter to be queen of some little kingdom, where you can call your subjects by their given names and see that all the new babies get a proper start in life, than to reign over a mighty domain. The Queen of Rumania would not change places with any monarch in the world. She loves her tiny kingdom, and wants every one else to love it too.
"Twenty-three years I now have spent in this country," she says in the Chicago Tribune. "I have moved about among its humble citizens; have freely entered cottages and asked questions as I took new-born babes in my arms.
"They are poor and ignorant, these peasants, neglected and superstitious; but they possess the grand nobility of their race. They are frugal and sober. In springtime the cottages are half buried in fruit trees, which foam with blossoms. Chickens, geese, and newly born pigs sport hither and thither.
"Early hyacinths and golden daffodills run loose in the untidy courtyards. Half
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Rumanian subjects always have their evening meal "fit for a Queen's taste." They never know at what moment she may drop in on them.
"The Rumanian peasants are never in a hurry. In summer their carts and in winter their sledges move in an endless row, slowly and resignedly. If night overtakes them the oxen are unyoked and the carts drawn beside the ditch until dawn.
"Many a hearty welcome has been given me, the peasants receiving me with flower-filled hands. As the rustic riders gallop out to meet me the bells ring and gayly clad women and children flock out of the houses to strew flowers.
"The church generally stands in the middle of the village. Here the priest receives the queen, cross in hand. There is no awkwardness nor shyness, neither is there pushing or crushing. The Rumanian peasant is dignified and is seldom rowdy.
"On a burning summer's day I came to a tiny town that was almost entirely of Turks. They became excited at sight of a woman in strange attire, called me sultana, and wanted to touch my fingers and my clothes. They patted my back, and even chucked my chin, and jabbered and fought over me, overwhelming me with kind wishes."
By BEATRICE REDPATH
(From the Forum.)
BEING bad is a habit, just as good manners are, and, just as it's easier to say "ma'am" to company the second time, a boy who steals cookies once will probably do it again.
In other words, according to an article by Dr. John Adams Colliver in the Journal of Sociologic Medicine, our actions, such as laughing, crying, lying, and so forth, which are caused by impulses received from the outside world, become fixed habits.
All ordinary nice boys have certain characteristics—playfulness, curiosity, destructiveness, and so on—which if carried too far become downright badness. Desire for ownership is a strong boyish trait. Many boys interested in electricity have been brought into court for picking up discarded wire in vacant lots.
A boy who is destructive is certainly bad if he applies this trait to automobile tires or a grand piano;
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The fundamentals of goodness and "badness" are mostly the same thing—curiosity, initiative, and pep.
Curiosity will make a boy sit under an old engine, forgetting home and school. This, according to Parents' and Teachers' Associations, is skipping school—one of the worst of childhood sins. Too much ambition has led boys to steal the teacher's book-marker and stamps to improve their own record.
A boy who has never been bad can't be quite healthy, for goodness is attained only after long training. Ninety-five per cent. of the bad boys come from "broken homes," which have given them precious little guidance of any sort.
"If you tell a bad boy he is bad, he will probably laugh at you. Rather, show him something better in his own terms. Get his interest, keep him busy, and don't preach!"
"THE field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. . . . Behind them a desolate wilderness," sang the prophet Joel of the plague of locusts. With the outbreak of the great war a similar scourge stripped Palestine, adding to the miseries of the Jews who were driven protesting into the Turkish army.
"While I was traveling in the south, from the Sudan came the locusts in black clouds that obscured the sun," writes Alexander Aaronsohn in With the Turks in Palestine (Houghton, Mifflin Company). "They came full grown, ripe for breeding; the ground was covered with the females digging in the soil and depositing their egg-packets, and we knew that when they were hatched we should be overwhelmed; for there was not a foot of ground where the eggs were not to be found."
Even the Turks stationed in garrisons were perturbed, and, realizing that they also would be pinched by the famine, a campaign was begun.
"It was a hard task. The Arabs are lazy and fatalistic. They can not understand why white men should try to fight 'God's army,' as they call the locusts. In addition, the Allies' blockade had cut off the supply of petroleum and galvanized iron necessary for the campaign.
"Thousands of Arab soldiers were put to work digging trenches in which the hatching locusts were driven and destroyed; for, once the larvæ get their wings, nothing can be done with them. It was a hopeless fight. While the Jewish people of the villages struggled on to the end, the Arab farmers sat by with folded hands. Finally, after two months, the fight was given up, and the locusts broke in waves over the countryside."
Every green leaf was devoured; the trees became stark white skeletons; the fields blackened, while the old men who had given up their lives to their land came praying and wailing to the synagogues.
"I have seen Arab babies, left by their mothers in the shade of sonic tree, whose faces have been devoured by the oncoming swarms of locusts before their screams have been heard. I have seen the carcasses of animals hidden from sight by the undulating, rustling blanket of insects. Yet the Arabs accepted the plague as a necessary evil. As a matter of fact, they love to feast on the female locusts. They gathered piles of them and threw them on burning charcoal; then, squatting around the fire, devoured the roasted insects with gusto. I saw a fourteen-year-old boy eat as many as a hundred at a sitting."
"DON'T shoot your criminal horses," says Lieutenant R. Mike Rimington, Remount Department of the English Army. "Send them to me. I'll tame them." So to the Underdale Hall stables in Shrewsbury, says the London Graphic, come the truant horses and mules of the army, all savage and many of them murderers, escorted by terrified grooms. They are put into the stocks to be shod. And then Lieutenant Rimington, spurless, with a cigarette between his lips, and his two girl assistants in riding-breeches lead them into the stable-without-a-whip, where they grow normal again.
Twenty at a time, not more: for no helper can approach these animals until Rimington has made them feel at home and among friends. When they arrive they are turned into a big field to talk to the animals already there—especially to an old mare, once the wildest of the wild, but now gentle and motherly, whose charm and tact, Rimington believes, have a great deal of influence over the newcomers.
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It's just plain horse sense that makes these animals prance on two legs. They have conscientious scruples about marching up to the mouth of a cannon.
Nothing but kind words. "Whoa!"—a fear-inspiring sound—is never heard. Instead, "That's-all-right. That's-all-right." Part of the course is to talk to the animals constantly in a low, confidential, friendly voice.
For hours Rimington will stand behind them while they kick, and will dodge their hoofs till they learn the futility of it. Sometimes he stops a savage strike by seizing the leg with a firm hand. The kick is turned into a handshake, and from a big pocket comes a handful of "love"—or, in our language, oats.
S'Nice, once a murderer, is now a peaceful mule and one of Rimington's best assistants. New horses are hitched to an army wagon with S'Nice, who jogs along like a patient martyr beside a charging animal, and seems to enjoy giving lessons in horse manners.
"Lieutenant Rimington has jumped a savage mule over a thin straight wire, difficult to see and meaning a bad smash if it is missed. This winter he intends to hunt on mule-back."
WHY are happy marriages so rare? With wisdom gained from a hundred and fifty cases of marriage, that he knows more or less intimately, W. L. George has published "Some Notes on Marriage" in the Atlantic Monthly.
Women after marriage are apt to be disappointed because their husbands lose the eagerness they had as lovers. A married man, happy and satisfied, settles down to his pleasant routine of work and sports and meals; his wife, on the other hand, develops a deeper love and a fierce desire to make him love her more.
Romeo on the Stock Exchange is busy in the pursuit of money, while Juliet has nothing to do but insist on a deep, satisfying love, all of which makes her very difficult for puzzled Romeo.
Women suffer more from boredom than men. "In the heart of every man worth anything at all, love has rivals in art, science, ambition. A woman may have frocks, skating-rinks, and Saturday anagrams, but these are but froth to the things from which men draw their life and happiness."
Proximity also sets up terrific irritations. Listen to case M 14.
"I was very much in love with him, and only at the end of our engagement I noticed how hard he blew his nose. After we were married I thought: 'Oh! Don't be silly and notice such little things; he's such a splendid fellow.' A little later: 'Oh! I do wish he wouldn't blow his nose like that. It drives me mad!' And now I find myself saying to myself, with an awful feeling of doom: 'He's going to blow his nose.'
"When women have important work to do, marriage will become what every young lover anticipates."
Meantime there are excellent things to be done toward a happier partnership.
"1. Do not open each other's letters, and try not to look liberal if you don't even glance at the postmark.
"2. Vary your pursuits, your conversation, and your clothes. If required, vary your hair.
"3. If you absolutely must be sincere, let it be in private.
"4. Once a day say to a wife, 'I love you'; to a husband, 'How strong you are!' If the latter remark is ridiculous, say, 'How clever you are!'
"5. Forgive your partner seventy-times seven. Then burn the ledger."
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Have other things in your lives to worry about besides whether your husband still loves you, says W. L. George, then you won't drive him to deeds like this.
CHILDREN who grow up with thick lips and ugly hands are fully justified in blaming their mothers, says Anna Steese Richardson in her book, Better Babies and Their Care (Frederick A. Stokes Company). Every baby is a potential beauty. If your infant daughter has thin eyebrows or badly shaped hands, or a nose that is going to "pug," it is your business to see that these defects are corrected.
"Your child has a right to all the beauty with which you can endow it," says Mrs. Richardson. "If your baby has thin eyebrows and lashes, try to encourage their growth. Feed the eyebrows with a little cocoa butter or vaseline. If you are very careful, you can even touch the lashes with a tiny camel's-hair brush dipped in melted vaseline.
"It is absolutely criminal to allow a child to distort his mouth by sucking thumb or fingers. I have seen mothers actually start this fatal habit by giving babies a 'pacifier' or rubber nipple.
"The tendency to suck the thumb is easily checked. From the very start, remove the thumb or finger and lay the little hand firmly down at the baby's side as he drops asleep. If he persists, then immediately—not after the habit is almost iron-clad—have him sleep with his hand in a mitten. Thumb-sucking thrusts the teeth out, and in some cases gives the entire lower part of the face the shape of a rabbit's.
"Even badly shaped hands and stubby fingers can be remedied. Press them firmly, steadily, into shape a few minutes at a time, every time the baby wakens."
IF you plan to spend the winter in Hawaii, don't set your heart on having your raw fish, poi, and coffee served by a houla-houla singing to her ukulele. For Hawaiian servants are not Hawaiian, but Japanese. And the Japanese cooks, moreover, are everything but cooks.
"The Japanese cook," says Katharine Fullerton Gerould in Hawaii (Charles Scribner's Sons), "will water your flowers and clean your car, raise your vegetables and press your clothes. If he is married, his wife will do that part of the work which he least likes, and between them you will be singularly comfortable. Your children will have Japanese nursemaids, your yard-boy will be Japanese as well."
But you will be wise to choose a Portuguese chauffeur; the steering wheel is no place for a romantic Jap who is trying to make the car keep pace with the flight of his imagination.
"He will break his or your neck with the most devoted abandon. It is terrifying to meet a car-load of Japs in a narrow place. It is even more terrifying to be driven by a Jap, yourself, round a mountain road with a pali on your left and the sea 500 feet below on your right. At the steepest point the Jap is sure to turn and tell you that this is a very dangerous place—not relaxing, meanwhile, his speed. If you are not impressed, he will, very likely, add a dramatic account of how he was attacked at this very spot by a band of Filipino marauders, all armed; how, finally, by dint of coolness, courage, and speed, he got away. He becomes too excited by his own romance to proceed. Luckily the Jap likes to toot his horn: it is your only safeguard."
THE apartment-house has invaded upper Fifth Avenue. The poor millionaires can't afford private houses in New York any more, and are moving into apartment-houses on Fifth and West End Avenues.
"It is no longer a mark of distinction to have your own house," says the New York Herald.
"Country life is exerting its influence. It is fashionable to live the greater part of the year out of town. To many it is also more agreeable. The upkeep of both a town and country house of extravagant proportions is a weariness to the spirit, whatever service the possession of unlimited means may command.
"'The Avenue,' as Fifth Avenue below 59th Street is commonly referred to, has passed as a residential thoroughfare. The maintenance of the Vanderbilt mansions and those of their connections and a few others along the busy mart simply emphasizes their isolation."
When it was assured that wealthy people really wanted apartments, builders began planning to give them as luxurious surroundings as they would have in private houses.
If a man pays $30,000 a year for rental, what does he get? Herbert L. Platt, according to the Chicago News, will pay that sum for the whole top floor of an apartment-house now being erected.
His drawing-room, library, and dining-room run one length of the house. The drawing-room is forty-six feet long. Large, light chambers have dressing-rooms that most of us would thankfully accept for bedrooms. No housekeeperly heart could wish for more closets. Even the cedar-lined room is there. The servants' quarters are as removed from the master's as if they were in a Southern mansion. The kitchen, pantries, and service rooms have blue-and-white rubber blocked floors, white-tiled walls, and white marble casings. In addition to the laundry in the basement, there is a separate laundry with a drying porch. What more could a private house give?
[illustration]
"Is everything aboard?"
"No, Captain; the customary three Americans have not yet arrived."
BEFORE a female mosquito will lay her eggs she usually demands three complete meals of human blood. If she is a malaria carrier she may make as many as eleven persons ill in order to get them. A mosquito is like a machine gun. Because she has bitten you once as, you lie awake in your bed, do not give up the chase, because she may get you ten more times before the night is over.
In order to determine how many persons one mosquito can infect with malaria, M. Bruin Mitzmain, technical assistant in the United States Public Health Service, conducted a series of tests on seventeen volunteers. Dr. Mitzmain says:
"Although it has been found that an anopheline mosquito may survive for a period of sixty-seven days without partaking of blood, a typical member of the genus requires a blood meal approximately every three days in order to thrive and perpetuate its kind. When a full meal is not taken, due to an interruption on the part of mosquito or host, it is necessary to consummate its purpose in a further attack on the same or a different host. In this way, the anopheline mosquito becomes an important factor from the point of view of disease transmission."
The experiments were conducted by allowing several mosquitoes to bite an individual who had malarial fever in a mild form at the time of the experiment. Examination of his blood showed that there was not much for the mosquito to get, because there were six hundred and sixteen leucocytes to only one of the offending particles. Leucocytes are the "battle-cruisers" of the blood, which destroy foreign armies of germs. But that one was enough: for, of the seventeen volunteers who allowed themselves to he bitten by mosquitoes that had previously bitten the malarial victim, fourteen contracted the fever. It made little difference whether the mosquito had a long or a short bite, and it was proved absolutely that one carrier could infect as many as three persons and probably many more.
These acts, obtained under rather unfavorable circumstances in a season of the year when malaria is not prevalent (February, 1916), show that in malarial districts a few mosquitoes can do an immense amount of damage. In labor camps, for instance, a number of persons sleep in a single room that is not screened and is open in many places for the entrance of insects. Even though but one individual present has malaria, he can, with the aid of the vicious mosquito, infect all of the others.
The cost of malaria to the South is enormous; and it can be wiped out, just as typhoid and yellow fever and malaria were wiped out by Gorgas in the Canal Zone. Smallpox has been made almost non-operative by vaccination. Adequate drainage and the application of oil to the surface of all possible mosquito-breeding places is completely effective in killing off the insect. Without the mosquito malaria can not exist to any extent. Parts of New Jersey have been completely rid of the pest, especially in the neighborhood of Asbury Park on the coast, which at one time was famous for it. Let's get busy and stop scratching.
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The new trunnion bascule bridge, which has been erected near New Orleans, can be easily lifted by two men, who seem no bigger than ants standing beside the huge structure.
ARCHIMEDES asked only a place to put his lever and he would move the world; two men, pigmies beside their great hundred-foot bridge, can swing it skyward in a moment if necessity arises. The bascule bridge, because of its great mechanical efficiency, is becoming the most common type used where waterways must be cleared for the passage of vessels. One has recently been installed over the commercial canal that connects New Orleans with Lake Ponchartrain, and it is so finely balanced by a concrete counter-weight weighing more than half a million pounds that a very small electric motor is utilized to lift it to a vertical position.
Should the current for the electric motor that operates this great railroad bridge ever fail when it was necessary to raise the structure, the two bridge-tenders would seize the handles of the mechanism and grind it to its vertical position in the twinkling of an eye. The work is done by the counter-weight, on the same principle as the counter-weights that do most of the lifting of a heavy window for you when you open it.
CHRISTMAS trees this year cast their glow exclusively in American style. A patent suit was recently decided in favor of the American manufacturers holding the patents on tungsten filaments, and now Holland can send us no more cheerful little globes. Until this decision was handed down, a large portion of the small tungsten lamps used for decorating Christmas trees, in automobile head-lights, hand search-lights, and small signs were manufactured in Holland. Before the war Germany and Austria exported large numbers to the United States.
Until 1914 we were unable to meet the low prices at which imported miniature tungsten were sold in this country. The suit was begun to validate the claims of the American patent-holders because of this discrepancy in price; but at the same time improvements in methods of manufacture were made, so that local manufacturers were able to meet foreign prices; and now, between the patent rights and the low prices at which our lamps are sold, the foreign-made articles have been completely smothered. The largest importing firm handling the product made in Holland has gone out of business.
WHO wants work? There has never been such demand for machinists, machine operators, and tool-makers as during the past and present year. The supply is far short of the demand, and manufacturers have been obliged to take in farmers, street-car conductors, bartenders, and other likely men, and train them to become operators. Machinery.
DOES any one present know where Chewinggumland is 'situated? The answer is, British Honduras. Spike a sapota tree in B. H., and chewing-gum juice leaks out.
THE old burning oil treatment, given to traitors, murderers, and wife-beaters, has come into its own in the realm of modern science. A modification—the hot wax bath—is being used on wounded soldiers to take the stiffness from injured parts, and also on sufferers from inflammatory rheumatism. Some remarkable cures have been effected.
"To take a full bath," says the London Chambers's Journal, "the wax is heated to a temperature ranging from 120º to 125º Fahrenheit, which the patient is able to bear without discomfort." (The ordinary hot-water Saturday night bath is rarely warmer than 110º.) "Indeed, if limbs only are involved, the temperature may with safety be as high as 165º Fahrenheit. Immersion lasts about a quarter of an hour."
The effect of this bath on soldiers has been almost miraculous. Immediately after taking it a great stimulation is felt, which has not so far been found to have any deleterious reaction. The chief result is a great increase in the action of the circulatory system, which probably carries away poisons, and under all circumstances limbers up the affected parts of the body.
French physicians have experimented with the hot wax treatment on various forms of rheumatism, and found that it is of little use in chronic cases; but they have recorded one case of the inflammatory type that showed recovery in two days. There are many installations in France, but only one in England.
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This machine may lake the miner's job away from him. It pumps a vein of coal to the surface like so much oil.
TAKING a tip from the fact that both oil and sulphur are taken from the ground without the help of miners, in liquid form, two New York inventors have built a machine which they claim will pump solid veins of coal to the surface as a thick mixture of fuel and water. There goes the miner's job. No other machine has ever been invented that replaced him, and he has looked safe enough for all time—as long as the earth did not tumble down and crush him.
The new machine is a cutter, driven by a large electric motor, that crawls up a vein of coal, tearing its heart out. Two huge knives revolve and slice into the coal as a buzz-saw eats through a pine hoard. A heavy stream of water is directed against the face of coal to keep the cutters cool and to help wash away the coal. The mixture of coal dust, water, and lumps is sucked up, in turn, by pipes such as are used by sand dredges, and delivered to any place desired for drying.
Not only is the miner—except for the man who attends the machine—completely eliminated, but no explosives are needed, there is no danger from mine dust, and speed of production is greatly increased. Should the machine be adopted, coal ought to cost about fifty cents a ton at the mouth of the mine. The use of the cutter and the water in conjunction with each other results in the vein being stripped clean from top to bottom, even though the knives do not extend nearly so close to the edges of the coal. The water breaks it off from the layer of undesirable material against which it rests. By using the machine to make narrow rooms in the mine, leaving narrow pillars, timbering can be almost eliminated in some mines, doing away with one of the largest items of expense.
THE first intelligent use of blinkers for horses is in the form of a gas mask for eye protection.
The only horse gas mask in existence, and the only form of blinkers the law ought to allow, is worn by an animal employed in a Los Angeles plant where fuel briquettes are manufactured from the residue of a gas plant. In that city gas is made from crude oil, and the refuse, a heavy asphaltum, is compressed into fuel. Although the work is done out of doors, the heavy fumes of sulphur lie in a layer just above the ground all over
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Just one horse in the world has been distinguished by a gas mask, and he works in a coal-yard. In this case it is to protect eyes instead of lungs.
Protection from the sulphur fumes was obtained by using mica goggles. These are held in place on the horse by a large leather hood which fits comfortably over his head. Europe, with all its inventions and improvements for war purposes, has yet to make a gas mask for horses.
By OCTAVUS ROY COHEN
Illustrations by Hazel Roberts
EVER been rescued? Rescued from drowning, that is? Your first sensation, after it's all over, is that you've swallowed the Atlantic Ocean and the universe has conspired to divorce it from your in'ards.
The emotion that follows immediately on the heels of the physical is entirely mental, but in its place no more pleasant. It is the feeling that your life no longer belongs to you, but to some one with a cooler head, a stronger stroke, and a bit of luck.
My heroine was of just that type of blondness which blended most artistically with the bathing suit she imagined she wore; and be it said for the genuineness of her pulchritude that she still—to resort to the vernacular—looked good to masculine eyes. Her name was Billie Barton, and was no uncommon sight along the whitest portions of the White Way. In brief, she uplifted the two-a-day at one thousand dollars per week of uplift. She was reputed to have been the first female single to bill herself as a "singing comedienne," and the first to desert that type of advertising when the rankness of her thousands of imitators became obnoxiously apparent. The long and short of it is that she was one of the best known stars in vaudeville—which is saying a very great deal indeed.
Past the stage of physical anguish, Billie Barton allowed her eyes to rove through the forest of legs that surrounded her. An exceedingly stout gentleman, with an exceedingly abbreviated surf costume, made mystic passes in the atmosphere.
"Give 'er room!" he chortled. "Give 'er air!"
The crowd pressed back momentarily, to crowd closer for another inspection. The rescuer was pressing to the foreground; and a typical rescuer he was. Save for a rather weak chin and a pair of narrow-set eyes, he might have been mistaken for one in the rescuing business, especially as he exhibited no false modesty regarding the thanks that were due him.
IN the twenty minutes that had elapsed between the time when he saved Billie Barton from a watery grave and the present calcium moment, he had managed to rearrange his pompadour and fold his arms in that nonchalant, unpremeditated manner which causes the biceps to bulge past the point intended by nature; and now he dropped with studied ease to his knees beside the very attractive form of her who owed him her life.
"You are feeling better, I trust?" he queried, with precisely the correct modulation of tone.
Billie Barton, at all times an actress, smiled sufficiently to exhibit her justly famous dimple.
"I think so. I want to thank you—"
"No thanks are necessary. Any man would have done what I did. There were some others nearer to you, but they didn't seem—ahem!" he paused modestly.
A dapper young person with pencil poised over a pad forced his way through the crowd. His eyes met those of the prostrate woman.
"Billie Barton!" he gasped.
The woman smiled affirmatively, and the young man who had done the rescuing let his jaw drop for the fraction of an instant.
"Billie Barton!" he echoed. "Not the Billie Barton?"
The newspaper man rattled off confirmation to his remark.
"Yes, sir; this is the Billie Barton; head-lined this week at the Alhambra, and next week at the Palace. But say, Miss Barton—is this on the level, or is it press stuff?"
His eyes twinkled wisely.
"Press stuff?" The woman smiled wanly. "Young man, when I have to come near suicide to get my name in the news columns, I'll quit the stage. You evidently didn't see me when they were pumping the Atlantic Ocean out, else you wouldn't ask such a question."
"I guess its the real stuff, all right. But, you know, a city editor is a terribly cynical guy, and he's liable to ask for a dozen affidavits from me before he runs this story."
He turned to the young man.
"Would you mind telling me your name?"
"Mind? Er—no, I don't mind. My name is Chester Bainbridge, of Bainbridge & Carson, Singers and Dancers; booked solid on the Moonstone Circut."
[illustration]
"One hour later—in the most secluded corner of a large restaurant."
"Wait a minute! Wait a minute! A theatrical man rescues a theatrical woman—No, sir! The city editor will fire me for writing such stuff. Sorry—"
"Listen here."
The senior partner of the booked-solid team of Bainbridge & Carson spoke with consuming earnestness. "This ain't any press stunt—honest. I didn't even know who the lady was until you recognized her, she not usually appearing in this sort of a costume. It's good news stuff, and you ought to run it. The public is interested in the doings of me and Miss Barton, and they oughtn't to be deprived of such good news, as this."
"What do you say, Miss Barton?" The reporter addressed the young lady, who now reclined on one elbow.
She shrugged indifferently.
"Suit yourself; but I'm handing it to you straight when I say there was no frame-up about this. It's just a coincidence that we both happen to be in the profesh."
The newspaper man stared first at one and then at the other.
"Well," he sighed at length, "I'll try it; but if it don't get across, don't blame me. My city editor—well, he used to be a press-agent once, and a darned good one, and he's terribly skeptical."
Chester Bainbridge assisted Billie Barton to her silk-shod feet, and elbowed
[illustration]
"For some reason—or for no reason—Peggy broke down and sobbed."
"I should like to see you again—" she started.
"How long will it take you to dress?"
"Forty minutes."
"Good! I'll meet you here in forty minutes, and we'll get a bite together. How about it?"
Miss Barton signified that it was all right about it: there was nothing else she could do. She had become acutely conscious of the fact that she would be wearing even less than her present wardrobe, and sprouting wings, had it not been for the slender young man beside her. The debt of a human life is a hard one to cancel; and Billie was nothing if not conscientious—and appreciative of the value of what the young man had saved from the fishes.
ONE hour later they gazed at each other across a table in the most secluded corner of a large restaurant. Billie blundered:
"If there was only some way I could show my appreciation for what you have done—some practical way—"
"Well?"
"I'd love to do anything—"
"'Anything'?"
"Why, certainly. I owe you my life."
"Yes, that's right. You do owe me your life. You'd have been a dead one long ago if I hadn't of been Johnny-on-the-spot. That's a fact. You really mean you'd like to show your appreciation? Really mean it?"
"Certainly. Just tell me how."
"I will." The young man lighted a perfumed cigarette and leaned confidingly closer. "I'll tell you how you can cancel the debt and at the same time be better off yourself—of course, I know it's asking a heap; but then, if it hadn't been for me—"
"I know," she interpolated a bit impatiently. "You saved my life, and all of that."
"Exactly. Now, I reckon you heard me tell that reporter that I was in the profesh, too—Bainbridge & Carson, Singers and Dancers?"
"Yes, I heard."
"It's a fact. I been behind the foot-lights
[illustration]
"An exceedingly stout gentleman in surf costume made mystic passes in the atmosphere. 'Give 'er room!' he chortled. 'Give 'er air!'"
"Now, don't get the idea. I'm stuck on myself, because I ain't. I realize my limitations as nobody else does—because nobody else can see 'em. They know I've got the makings of a Palace head-liner. But Biff Harrington and that bunch around the Moonstone offices always hold good things down.
"I'm just tellin' you all this, so you'll know I ain't asking you to team up with no lemon— What's the matter?" For Miss Billie Barton had choked very suddenly.
"Matter? Nothing. Say that over again, Mr. Bainbridge, will you? I don't think I got you right."
"I said that I was explainin' all this so you wouldn't think I was asking you to team up with no lemon."
"I—I'm afraid I don't understand. You are suggesting that we team up—you and me?"
"Sure. Why not? Didn't I just pull you out of the drink, and almost drowned myself doing it? And where would you be if I hadn't? Playing with the other angels by now, I guess. And you was saying that you wanted to do something practical to show your appreciation. Well, here's your chance. I wouldn't make no such proposition if I didn't know I could deliver the goods. Why, good heavens! inside of a month the team of Bainbridge & Barton will be the most celebrated—"
"Bainbridge & Barton?"
"Sure. We—"
"Bainbridge & Bar—"
"Sure."
"Your name ahead of mine?"
"I tell you, I'm there with the stuff. You'll be glad you got me for a partner—mighty glad."
Billie Barton rose abruptly.
"Come to my hotel in New York tomorrow morning, will you? I—I've got to think it over. It's a bit sudden, as it were."
"So was my rescue. If it hadn't of been for that you'd be plumb dead now—and you know it."
"Yes, I know it. By the way,"—as they started for the door,—"didn't you say your team was Bainbridge & Carson?
"Yes."
"Man or woman?"
"Woman. Peggy Carson."
"Your wife?"
"No, sirree!"
"What'll you do with her if you team up with me?"
The young man shrugged.
"Drop her. She ain't nothing but small-time stuff, anyway. I've always thought it was her holding me back. She ain't got
"Oh!" Billie Barton's eyes narrowed. "Is that so? She cares for you?"
He smiled deprecatingly; he smirked.
"Of course she likes me—but that don't mean nothing. I've always been pretty popular with the ladies."
THAT night Billie Barton took counsel with herself in the confines of her private suite. Already she detested the young man who had saved her life. She detested him for his act of putting her irretrievably in his debt, and she detested him for his caddish self. Bainbridge & Barton: her name playing second fiddle to that of a three-a-day ham-and-er! How Broadway would gasp! That much of it, anyway, was out of the question. It now remained for her to decide whether her debt to him was sufficiently binding to warrant teaming with him at all.
Billie's chief fault was conscientiousness. She oozed it at every pore; and her battle with herself was lost before its commencement. She realized that the man who exacted reward of his own naming for doing what any decent man would have done (theoretically, of course) was without the pale. But the stark fact remained that he had saved the life of one of Broadway's idols, that he had craved a boon, and that it was within her power to grant his favor.
Duty—the word loomed up to Billie with a big "D." Well, she shrugged, she'd take him on for a limited engagement in the smaller time, then drop him. She knew that he wanted the advertising value of her name. Once she had vouchsafed it, she would feel that the debt had been canceled.
She faced him next morning, with her dimple invisible, her
[illustration]
"'What's the joke?' 'Nothing.' 'Then what you laugh for?'"
"Mr. Bainbridge," she said somewhat curtly, "I've been thinking over this teaming proposition, and have arrived at a definite, unalterable decision. Briefly, it is this: I do owe you a debt for saving my life, and I have never been one to shirk a just obligation. I have seen Len Haslett, my booking manager, and he has agreed to attend to double bookings for us for a short season. He has obtained a two-act for me from a writer friend of his. We will put this into rehearsal at once, and start in Bayonne next week as head-liners. I shall give you a two weeks' trial. If you make good—"
"Not a chance that I won't," grinned the young man.
"—you can stick." She ignored the interruption. "Otherwise it's all off. And on one fact I am determined: the team name will be Barton & Bainbridge."
"I say—"
"That goes as she lays. Take it or leave it."
"Well—I suppose beggars mustn't be choosers."
"Righto!"
"And when you see what I can do—"
"That may alter cases. And now, how about the solid bookings you and this Carson girl have? How'll you get around that?"
He waved his hand airily.
"Cinch. Besides, Peggy has had an idea for a long time that she'd make a good single. Of course she wouldn't. I've tried my best to discourage her. I've made her feed me all the laughs in our two-act, so as to knock that fool notion out of her head. She's got a fair enough voice, but shucks! she ain't there—like me or you. Understand what I mean?"
"Yes, I understand. And now, Mr. Bainbridge—"
"Chester, please."
"Mister Bainbridge—when'll we get busy on rehearsals?"
FOR the sixth time, Peggy Carson tripped lightly before the footlights and bowed acknowledgment of the wild applause from the crowded, stuffy little theater. It was her fifth show of the day, and she faced three more. The bill on which she worked boasted three other acts only, and as Peggy was working single, her task was arduous.
For more than a week now she had been working alone, and for more than a week she had been marveling at the fact that her act seemed a sure-fire hit. Somehow, when Chester Bainbridge deserted her she had imagined that her days in vaudeville were numbered; but she had worked doggedly to make good on her own hook, and results had startled her. And gradually she had come to love the work. She acquired poise and a bit of the personality that emanates from perfect confidence, a sense of security that the audience is one in spirit with the performer; and on this night she had achieved her greatest triumph—she had completely won the audience, composed of laborers and their families, with an act as completely devoid of smut as a Sunday-school recital.
That had always been a bone of contention between Peggy and Chester. He had insisted that any audience, no matter how puritanical of reputation, enjoyed off-color jokes; songs with a single meaning—and that meaning the wrong sort; and an appalling lack of costume. Peggy had agreed with him because she regarded him as an oracle. But, now that he had risen above her head and gone to the top rank of the profession, she put her own theories into practice.
"It'll never get me anywhere," she told her reflection one tired night, "but it sure is better than the rough stuff we used to pull."
TO-NIGHT she was tired. Her feet ached from much hard dancing; her throat felt sore—for the audiences had been insistent on their encores. She brushed idly past two greasy stage-hands to her smelly little box of a dressing-room, there to seat herself at a disordered dressing-table—not to remove her make-up: she faced three more shows, and there was nothing to do but sit and await her next turn.
On the dressing-table was a picture of the thin, supercilious face of Chester Bainbridge. She took it in her hands and stared intently at the narrow-set eyes. He had gone to the top—the partner of the renowned Billie Barton. Be it said for Peggy that she was loyal, even in thought, to Chester. It did not occur to her that his rescue of the famous star had been
[illustration]
"'I think you're doing a foolish thing, letting me go this way. I get across, and you know it. But it's your funeral—'"
They—Barton & Bainbridge—were playing an adjoining town that week, head-lining a strong bill, and Peggy had yearned to get over to see their act. But it was out of the question; her own work did not permit any such luxury, and she needed the forty-five a week she drew for her eight shows a day in the musty little houses of the circuit.
She sat and stared at Chester's picture, and wondered why he had not come to see her. And there came a knock at the door.
"Come in." Her voice was listless.
The door opened promptly, and a woman stood framed on the threshold. For a minute Peggy stared, then rose to her feet with the natural color showing even under the liberal supply of grease-paint.
"Miss Barton," she stammered. "I— Come in—come in."
Miss Barton came in. She closed the door behind her, walked across the room to Peggy Carson, took her face between her two hands, and kissed her flush on the lips.
And for some reason—or for no reason, for women do not always require reasons—Peggy broke down and sobbed.
BILLIE BARTON was speaking sharply, incisively. Her eyes held those of the young man steadily, and he was squirming under the tongue-lashing she so mercilessly inflicted.
"To my mind," she said slowly and distinctly, "my debt has been squared. Not that I think I have paid for my life by teaming up with you, but simply because I have paid the price which you set upon your services. A man would have asked no reward; but you took advantage of something you had done to demand that I pay your price. Well, I've done so—as cheerfully as I could. Now we're finished. We break up at the end of the week. You have attained some little advertising as the partner of Billie Barton: you will have not the slightest trouble getting bookings. And of course you will bill yourself as being 'formerly the partner of Billie Barton.' That ought to cover a multitude of sins. One more piece of advice I have to give—and that is that you return to that little partner of yours, Peggy Carson. The other night I went over and watched her work; and, believe me, Mr. Bainbridge, she has the stuff. She's got a real personality, and she gets across strong."
"Rot!" he snapped. "Utter rot. She's raw amateur. I trained her and drilled her and taught her everything I knew, and she couldn't get across. I had to take all the good stuff in the act in order to get it over. Of course I'll go back to her. The kid'll be so glad to see me it'll be almost worth while. As for us—I think you're doing a foolish thing, letting me go this way. I get across, and you know it. But it's your funeral—"
"Thank Gawd!"
"No need to be nasty about it. Now, how about giving me the act that you and me have been using?"
"Give you the act! Of all the nerve—"
"Didn't I save your life? Wouldn't you have been dead now if it wasn't for me? Ain't it little enough to ask you to give me the act, so Peggy Carson and I can work it? Of course, I'll change the lines so I'll get the fat part; but I have to do that, because Peggy hasn't got the stuff. You see—"
"Take the act and welcome. Get out. I used to think my life was worth a lot. But next time, Mr. Bainbridge, I'll thank you kindly to let me drown!"
The following morning Mr. Chester Bainbridge, former partner of Billie Barton, received the greatest surprise of his self-satisfied life.
Peggy Carson refused flatly to team up with him.
"But look what you're turning down," he gasped, scarcely believing the evidence of his senses: "a chance to team up with the man who's been starring with Billie Barton, and in the very same act."
"I suppose," she snapped, "that we'll use the act just as you and Billie Barton had it?"
"No, of course not; that's out of the question. Billie didn't give me a real chance. Having a rep like she has, she had to hog most of the laughs, and of course I'd have to twist that around—like we used to do. Now, we—"
"There's no use talking, Chester. You and me are finished; done, through. I've been going good single—
"Seven or eight shows a day."
"I've been doing it, and I know I can do pretty well. That's final."
"But—Peggy, I thought you used to care for me."
The girl flushed.
"Yes—"
"Well?"
Her eyes glinted.
"I used to!"
His pasty face flushed crimson and he rose angrily to his feet.
"Sometimes, Peggy, I get angry with you. To-morrow or the next day you'll come running to me, begging me to give you this chance. Well, there won't be no use—get that under your hat. I'm through—finished. When a woman turns down an offer to team up with me in an act like this, especially after I had to almost fight with Billie Barton to get her to let me break up our combination and take the act,"—he did not notice the knowing smile on the girl's lips—"she don't get another chance.
"I'm surprised at you, Peggy; but then, you never did know a good thing when you saw one."
"No, Chester, I never used to; that's why I latched on to something counterfeit."
CHESTER experienced an uncomfortable feeling that she was sneering at him, but—pshaw! Peggy Carson sneer at him' The very idea was preposterous, and he laughed it aside and made his getaway with as much grace as possible.
And when he had gone the little woman stood rigid, staring at the closed door; and then suddenly she dabbed at her eyes with a balled-up handkerchief of linen and lace, and choked back the tears.
The former partner of Billie Barton secured a team-mate without any considerable trouble, and the bookings, too, came
IT was less than two weeks later, at the time when Miss Riley had begun to entertain serious doubts as to the wisdom of her move in teaming up with Chester Bainbridge, that she ran across a new copy of the Mirror. An item therein caught her eye, and she laughed aloud. Chester, smoking, in violation of fire rules, in the corner of his dressing-room, looked up surlily. "What's the joke?"
"Nothing."
"Then what you laugh for?"
"I saw something funny here in the Mirror."
"What is it?"
Miss Riley's eyes twinkled.
"I'll read it to you—listen: 'After one rather unfortunate experience with a partner, Billie Barton seems to have uncovered a rare gem in the person of winsome little Peggy Carson, who appears with her on this week's bill at the Palace. Miss Carson yet lacks big-time poise, but she has that rarest of all theatrical virtues, personality, and we hopefully predict that within the next few months she will make a fully adequate partner for Miss Barton. That being said with a full appreciation of the fact that, in our opinion, Miss Barton is one of the greatest of vaudeville artists!'"
The earth ceased its revolutions, chaos reigned: and from it Chester Bainbridge groped frantically for a strangle-hold on some fact that might give him poise. Miss Riley twinkled at him, and waited. At length Chester spoke. His voice sounded a bit harsh and unnatural, and he did not meet her eyes; but to the casual listener he might have carried conviction.
"Peggy teamed up with Billie Barton? I thought you knew she was goin' to—thought I told you last week. Why, it was me that arranged that. They wanted me with 'em too—but nothing doing. And gee!" He paused and then finished dramatically: "Billie Barton sure did hate to have me leave her act!"
By FRED C. KELLY
IN the office of the managing editor of a big newspaper, one morning along about 2.20 o'clock, or about ten minutes before press time, the managing editor and a young reporter sat talking about nothing in particular. They were enjoying the relaxation that comes with the knowledge that the day's work is practically over. As they sat visiting with each other, the foreman of the pressroom came rushing in, greatly excited, to tell of grave difficulties down below.
"The water main out in the street has burst," said he, "and can't possibly be repaired for several hours. And there's not enough water in our boilers to run the engine for the presses. How are we goin' to get any water? Goodness knows; I don't." And he made a despairing gesture.
It was indeed a serious situation. Even a few minutes' delay in going to press would mean that the earlier editions of the paper would miss their trains and that thousands of subscribers would not have their paper at the breakfast table. A longer delay would be vastly worse.
"Well, I'm at the end of my string," declared the press-room foreman. "Maybe you can think of something to do. It'll have to be done quickly."
THE young reporter was horrified at the responsibility that had been placed on his boss. He had been handed the burden of doing the impossible, and, moreover, he must do it instantly.
The one person who took the whole thing calmly was the managing editor, Edward B. Lilley, now publisher of the St. Louis Republic.
Whistling softly to himself with apparent unconcern, Lilley turned about in his swivel chair to the telephone, and called a number. Having got his number, he asked for a man he knew.
Briefly he told this man what had happened, and asked:
"Couldn't you give us a line of hose long enough to reach up the street to some other main, so we can got our presses started? We'll appreciate the favor."
The man at the other end said he would, and the conversation ended.
Lilley had simply called up a friend at the fire department. In a few moments the rattle of a hose wagon could be heard outside, and the problem was solved.
The young reporter was breathless with admiration over such calm resourcefulness, but Lilley had not the slightest idea that he had done anything unusual. To him it was simply one of a great many items in his day's work calling for the application of common sense. That was all it was—just doing the simple, obvious thing, that anybody else could have thought of just as readily as Lilley did. There was only one place to get help in such an emergency—the fire department. And so, naturally enough, that was the one Lilley sought. Whenever you hear of an example of resourcefulness, it is likely, when you sift it down, to be nothing but the simplest kind of elemental gumption.
It has frequently been noted that a good newspaper man can often handle a difficult situation with surprising success. The answer is that his training has been to meet the unexpected. If a thing can be done at all, there is a way to do it. If one way fails, there must be some other way, even though it is not visible to the naked eye. The way, when found, is apt to be absurdly simple.
Byron R. Newton, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, had been a newspaper man for about twenty years at the time he was appointed to his present position. He had never had the slightest business training except that which he had picked up by observation as he went about his journalistic tasks. But the endless variety of his work had given him an elastic mind. Consequently, although Newton has one of the most difficult jobs in the government service, he handles it as well as it has ever been handled before.
Shortly after he became Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Newton received a call one morning from a delegation of distinguished business men and lawyers to discuss a matter which they preferred to talk about only in abstract legal phraseology. Newton listened to them for a time, then arose, went to the window, and pointed to the Washington Monument off in the distance.
"Gentlemen," said he, "if you will pardon the interruption, there stands the Washington Monument, erected to commemorate the name of a great man, noted for his truthfulness. I can not sit here at my desk in the shadow of that monument and tell you a lie. Therefore, I make haste to say to you frankly, that I don't know a blamed thing about such matters as this. However, if you will state your case briefly, in plain language, I feel certain that we can come to some understanding."
The visitors took the hint. They were won over by the astonishing frankness of Newton's confession, and thenceforth tried to help instead of to becloud his judgment.
SOME years ago a young man named William A. van Benschoten found himself alone and penniless in the city of London. He had gone there on a cattle-boat with two companions. When it came time to return home, the three discovered that they had just enough money, altogether, to get two of them back across the Atlantic. They cast lots to see who should stay behind, and the hard luck fell to van Benschoten. He went to the dock to see his friends off, and he was not in any jubilant mood when the last farewells had been sounded and he set out to ascertain what the free-lunch routes held in store for him. London is rather a cold and distant city to a penniless lad within its gates.
The first thing to do, obviously, was to find work. To-day van Benschoten is Washington correspondent for the Detroit Free Press, but at that time his newspaper experience had been confined mostly to "cub" work in the summer vacation season. However, he headed for a newspaper office in quest of a job, as the line of least resistance. But here was the difficulty: He could not see the city editor of any paper. Moreover, he did not succeed in getting inside a newspaper office.
In this country a man applying for a job on a paper may not be able to confer with the editor, but usually he can at least reach the editorial floor and get an office-boy to take in his card. In London every paper that van Benschoten tried occupied a building all to itself, and there was a liveried guard at the front door to keep out all who seemed to lack plausible reason for entering.
Van Benschoten determined that his best chance was with the London Daily News, because it was more like an American paper than any of the others, and he devoted his entire attention to trying to break in there. After repeated calls, he gradually made friends with the big watchman at the front door, who looked like an officer of the King's Guard. He persuaded the guard to give him a wink when the city editor passed out the door on his way to lunch. In that way van Benschoten overcame obstacle number one.
Hurriedly, while tagging after him, he made his wants known to the city editor. He explained that he was a bright young journalist who would be a rare find for the paper if the paper chose to take advantage of its opportunity.
"Any ideas?" laconically asked the city editor.
Now, it is disconcerting to be asked all of a sudden if you have any ideas. Sometimes it is difficult to think of bright ideas right off the reel.
"Ah, yes," replied van Benschoten, however; "a great many ideas. I am a perfect mine of ideas. Ideas are what I make a specialty of."
He said all that in order to give himself time to think up some ideas.
"Well, what could you write right now that would be interesting?" asked the city editor.
For a minute the city editor had all the best of it, but, as luck would have it, an idea rolled out of the slot in van Benschoten's mind.
"Well, how would this be?" began Billy. "You know there was to be an eclipse of the sun to-day. For all I know, it occurred on schedule time, but this fog is so dense that nobody would ever know whether there is an eclipse going on or not. I believe I could write a good feature story about how London didn't see the eclipse."
"Write it," said the city editor.
"How'll I get into the office?" quickly asked Billy.
"That's a pretty good question," remarked the editor man, smiling for the first time. "I'll give you a card that will let you in."
BILLY wrote the eclipse yarn well enough to get one more assignment.
"Go out and get up a good story to run three quarters of a column about the latest developments in the telephone situation," were his instructions—just that and nothing more.
And, mind you, Billy didn't know anything whatever about the telephone situation. He didn't even know there was a situation.
But he asked no questions, and started out. For a while he stood on the street corner. Then he walked up to a policeman and asked him:
"Where can I find a lawyer?"
"A what?" asked the cop.
"I said a lawyer," repeated Billy. "I wish to consult a lawyer—or a solicitor I guess they're called over here mostly."
"There's a bunch of 'em in that building yonder," said the cop, pointing.
[illustration]
"Tagging after him, he told the editor that he was a bright young journalist who would be a rare find for the paper if the paper chose to take him on."
The building proved to be a regular hive of lawyers, or solicitors. Billy roamed the corridors, peering in at every open door, until he noticed a particularly benevolent-looking, elderly lawyer, and then he walked in.
Briefly he told the lawyer how he happened to be trying for a job and about his assignment to write up the latest development in the telephone situation.
"And what I want," he explained, "is some kind-hearted person like you appear to be to tell me what's up in regard to the telephone business. What all has happened so far? Then maybe I can find out what is coming next."
It happened that the lawyer was a man who kept himself informed on current events, and he was able to start in at A and explain the telephone troubles right through to Z.
Billy thanked him, and went to the telephone company for still later particulars. He was able then to write a story that made a hit in his office and was on the first page of the paper the next day.
Then he learned that the city editor
[illustration]
"What could have been more simple than to look in the telephone book?"
Yet he had done nothing especially brilliant. Whatever of resourcefulness he had exhibited was actuated by the simplest kind of reasoning.
DETECTIVES frequently are obliged to show the same kind of resourcefulness. Most detective problems are solved by doing something so simple that anybody could have done it—if he had only thought of it. For example, William J. Flynn, chief of the government Secret Service operatives, once had to trace down the source of a flood of counterfeit pennies.
Up to that time nobody had thought to bother with counterfeiting so small a coin as a penny, but as a matter of fact it had proved rather profitable to the guilty person, because the difference in the value of a penny and the raw copper in it allows a wide margin of profit. Moreover, it is not difficult to pass spurious pennies, for nobody pays much attention to them.
Without any clue to work on, and without the remotest idea, even, of what part of the country the bad pennies came from, Flynn's task looked difficult. But it occurred to him that there are just so many plants manufacturing copper in this country, and that the chances are no two plants put out copper of quite the same alloy.
He got samples of copper from every plant, and had them tested until he found one exactly the same as that in the counterfeit coins. Then he went to that concern and got a list of all their customers. Most of these were above suspicion, but a few were uncertain quantities.
Flynn investigated one after another of these customers, until he learned that a certain peddler had been buying surprisingly large quantities of copper, which could not easily be accounted for. He went to the cellar under a place this man had formerly rented, and found some of the counterfeit pennies lying on the floor. With this definite lead, he had little difficulty in proceeding until the man was brought to justice. The whole thing was simple enough; yet it had appeared at the first size-up like attempting the impossible.
It will be recalled that, the year of the Chicago World's Fair, the steamship Bourgogne turned turtle in the Mediterranean, and nearly all on board were drowned. There were no wireless outfits in those days, and news of the disaster spread slowly. Rumors reached points in Europe and England, but were not taken seriously. David Graham Phillips, later well known as a novelist, happened to be traveling in Europe at the time, and heard the vague rumors. He determined to confirm these if possible. And he did so by means of a simple plan that he had learned as a cub reporter in Cincinnati. When a piece of news happens in a small village, and a newspaper can not reach anybody else there, it frequently gets in touch with the telegraph operator and asks for information.
That is exactly what Phillips did. He sent cable despatches to various points along the coast of the Mediterranean, asking if anybody had learned of any big steamship wreck. It happened that a survivor had reached shore at an obscure port in Algiers (I think it was), and his story had been learned by an English tourist, to whom the cable operator handed Phillips' message. The tourist sat down and wrote a graphic account of the disaster. Phillips cabled this story to his New York paper. It was denied by all the London papers—but later was confirmed.
Phillips had scooped the entire world on one of the most appalling ocean accidents that had ever occurred, and he had done it by applying a simple little scheme known to almost every newspaper man in the business.
A few years ago there was a big balloon race from St. Louis east across the continent. The winning aëronaut, a German, got as far as New Jersey, where he safely landed. He refused to say much about his jaunt, but it was learned that he was coming to New York. However, none of the New York papers was able to ascertain what train he would take. Bob Heinl, reporter on one of these papers, was told, nevertheless, to be sure and see the aëronaut the moment he struck town.
At first thought, the assignment seemed a good deal like baiting a hook and casting it into the ocean to catch one particular fish.
But Heinl started out. He got timetables of all the railroads that could bring a man to town from New Jersey. After eliminating the commuters' trains from near-by points, he found that there were not so many trains but that he could meet them all.
He simply met these trains, one after another, until he saw, among the passengers leaving one train; a man who looked unmistakably like a German aëronaut. The whole thing was really simple enough.
A friend of mine, just recently, happened to be calling at a home where there was a serious illness. The family greatly desired to get hold of a certain doctor. This doctor confined himself to office practice, and purposely made no effort to be within telephone call outside of office hours.
THEY called his office and his home, but the operator reported that there was no answer. Then it was learned that the doctor had rented a cottage in the country for the summer. It was impossible to obtain his telephone number there from the information operator, because the telephone was in the name of the people from whom he had rented the cottage, and none of the inquirers knew what this name was.
This friend of mine then undertook to get hold of the doctor. He looked for "Physicians" in the classified list of subscribers in the back of the telephone
[illustration]
"It was this man's custom to pay all bills on the tenth of the month."
[illustration]
"He found some of the counterfeit pennies on the cellar floor."
Obviously the two offices must be close together. He called that number, and asked the doctor there if he could find the telephone number of Dr. Smith. The doctor said he would inquire of Dr. Brown across the hall, who happened to be an intimate friend of Dr. Smith. In a few moments he returned with the much desired number.
This little feat was looked on as the work of a wizard; yet what could have been more simple?
Two salesmen recently were trying to sell a certain manufacturer a lot of machinery. The one who finally sold him did so because he had the forethought to avoid talking to him about the transaction except when the calendar was exactly right. He made inquiries, and found that the man's concern followed a custom of paying all bills on the tenth of the month.
It struck him that a business man is in no mood for spending money in large slices just after writing checks for the regular monthly assortment of bills. So he made it a point to present his proposition just a few days before the tenth—when his prospect had about recovered from the pain of paying off the previous month's obligations.
The man's bank account was then at its highest point. The idea of spending money for new equipment seemed less repugnant to him then than at any other time.
Everybody knows that most firms pay their bills on a certain day each month, but comparatively few salesmen think to make use of so simple a bit of knowledge in a big way. They lack resourcefulness.
ONE dollar a week is not a great sum for you to save, but it was a small fortune to the old negro washer-woman in Georgia who, by the hardest kind of self-denial, gathered the dollar together, a few pennies at a time.
And each week a young colored boy in Brown University received in his mail a soiled envelop, addressed in a crude hand, containing a crumpled dollar bill. It was his mother's contribution to his preparation for usefulness in the world.
The boy was John W. Gilbert. By snow-shoveling and odd jobs of many kinds he worked his way through the university, the only person of his race to win a scholarship at Brown.
The single dollar that came from his mother at the beginning of every week was pitifully inadequate to meet the need for which it was intended; but Gilbert never let her suspect that fact. Each week there came to him, with the letter, a vision of that tired but untiring old lady, bending over her tubs, determined that her boy should win, whatever the cost.
That vision was the impulse that carried the boy through.
After he had completed his education Gilbert became principal of Paine College in Augusta. Georgia; and later, at the invitation of the Southern Methodist Church, he set forth for the heart of Africa with Bishop Walter Lambuth, to open a mission there.
Once in the field, Gilbert decided to remain. He has mastered six languages, and is now engaged in preparing a dictionary and grammar of the Batelela tribe of Africa, among whom his mission is located.
The old lady whose labor and devotion inspired him to persevere through the hard years of college has long since passed away, but the memory of her sacrifice remains to brighten the lives of a whole people in the heart of the Dark Continent.
One dollar a week—a pathetic, hopeless little sum. Yet it carried a boy through college and made him a force for good in the world. No amount of money is enough to win success for those who have no purpose; but, given character and determination, even a dollar a week is enough.
Any young man or woman who wants college, and who turns back from its doors for lack of funds, ought to read the story of John W. Gilbert and take courage. There is no college in America where a boy or girl can not work his or her way, if the proper stuff is in them.
And if, in the home behind them, there is the sort of devotion that was in the heart of the washerwoman of Georgia who could give to her son only one dollar a week.
was twenty-six thousand. That settles it, don't it?"
Brushby was looking dreamily down. "It would," said he, "appear to do so."
Northrup spoke sharply.
"Brushby," he said, "do you take into consideration that I mean to make these hovels into model cottages? These are to be rented by my men at eight dollars a month—just what they are paying now for the hell-holes they live in."
Brushby smiled.
"'My men,'" he repeated. "That, Mr. Northrup, is pure paternalism. We don't regard this sort of reform as fundamental. My thought is on the whole economic movement. I can not bother with petty reforms."
"So Boyland is the purchaser?" asked Niel evenly.
"But, man!" Northrup cried. "Don't you understand? Every man is to have a little garden!"
Brushby shrugged.
"This terrific industrial conflict," he said, "you would solve by giving every man his little garden? My dear Mr. Northrup, we don't want to placate them. We want to teach them to think!"
"So Boyland is the purchaser?" Niel said again, wearily.
"Wait a minute," Northrup cried. "I'll give the twenty-six thousand!"
Boyland edged forward to his feet.
"I'll have to get my firm on the telephone, long distance," he said. "I haven't a doubt they'll raise you."
Brushby shrugged, and rose also.
"I am superfluous," he observed. "Settle it yourselves, gentlemen. I'm leaving at nine to-night. You will forgive me? I've no head for business."
I left then. So did Northrup. "Not a cent over the twenty-six," said he to Niel.
We went home to luncheon. And Northrup fell upon his daughter Nita.
"Never let that creature Brushby enter my door again," said he, and said no more.
He ought to have been warned—we ought all to have been warned—by Nita's look. Her face, her exquisite little face, was turned to her father; and her look was stone.
NITA was not at dinner that night. I inquired for her, somewhat uneasily, I own, but there was some commonplace reply. Afterward we are always remembering how vital moments wear the aspect of the commonplace.
Later Northrup and I sat in the library. Northrup has a restful way of not talking things over. We merely sat and smoked. At last he said:
"Don't you think we ought to tell Nita about that talk there this morning?"
I did think so; I had just been thinking so. Northrup rang the bell and asked the maid to let him know as soon as Miss Nita came in. I remember the maid's blank look, eyebrows up, lips parted.
"Why, Miss Nita went out with a satchel, sir," she said.
Northrup was wonderful. He merely nodded, and repeated, "Let me know when she returns." And when the maid went, he slipped out and, I knew, up to Nita's room. He was back in a moment, sheet-white and trembling, threw me the note he had found on her table, and leaped for the telephone to call his car.
Dear Father [Nita said]: You will not understand. I could never live any other life after what he has opened to me. We have gone away together, to work together. Dear father, you will not understand. But try to forgive me. NITA.
Perhaps Northrup didn't understand—I don't know about him. But I know that I understood, down to the ground.
I ran after Northrup to the hall.
"Where you going?" I blurted stupidly.
"Going?" yelled Northrup. "We'll motor to the Junction and catch the through, as they will. It's a chance—we've twenty minutes—eighteen—"
He was out the door. I put on somebody's hat, caught down somebody's coat, and followed.
"The Junction—go the limit—catch the through," said Northrup to the man.
We went. It was a gray night of midwinter, dirty snow, drab rain. It was a good twelve miles to the Junction, and the roads were thick.
It became evident presently that a motor in the road before us was on as wild a flight as we. It plunged and careered and showed topheavy and tipsy. It was, I discerned at length, a wine-colored limousine.
"Northrup," I said, "that limousine—"
"I've been watching it." said he.
"Do you suppose—" said I.
"I dare say," he replied.
The Junction platform came in sight. It held some stragglers, and a 'bus or two backed up beside it. The track was empty. The through had not passed.
The wine-colored car drew up at the station before us. No defiant Nita and complacent Brushby were emerging—but Boyland. And he began looking carefully about for some one. Northrup and I kept together, and under soggy, silk-smelling umbrellas we peered and passed. Farmers and produce men and their wives, Junction shoppers and their husbands, crying babies, lunching children—and at last, under the hood of the baggage-room, by a high-piled truck, a group of three, two of whom we sought. Boyland had found them first. Northrup and I came round the corner of the truck. And we heard what Boyland was saying:
"—to do me some dirt. Yes, Niel Sargent. I don't know what—he was so very darn superior. So I come straight to you. Now, I can offer you twenty-seven thousand for that block, see, if you accept straight, now, and wire the agents. Northrup won't better that, believe me. What do you say?"
Brushby's voice came a bit high-pitched and irritable:
"This is all very well, Mr. Boyland, but you ought not to annoy me with it now."
Boyland's mouth opened frankly.
"Well, Mr. Brushby," said he, lips loose and head wagging, "what's more important than twenty-seven thousand dollars, when Northrup's likely to cut in on me? Not that I think he will."
"I can wire Wade & Wallace from town," said Brushby, "to close with your offer unless you are outbid at once. Now good night."
"Northrup is going to cut in for a moment, all the same," said Northrup.
Nita was marvelous. She paled, but she faced her father as quietly as if they were at breakfast.
"Nita," said Northrup, "I want to make sure that you perfectly understand. Mr. Brushby is selling the Dawson block to Mr. Boyland because he outbids me by a thousand dollars. Mr. Boyland will leave the men's homes as they are."
"Why didn't you tell Mr. Brushby that?" said Nita to Boyland.
"I did tell him," said Boyland. "We all told him."
Nita lifted her face like a flower to Brushby, and waited. Far down the track I heard the through whistle.
"Nita," Brushby said, "these people hound me with affairs which do not concern me. We agree, you and I, that these little reforms amount to nothing. We seek the fundamentals. What more have I to say?"
Nita looked at him with a curious in-gathering of attention, the like of which I have never seen. It was as if her vision passed suddenly from the eye of the soul to the eye of the mind.
"You are going to let Mr. Boyland prevent those men's houses being remade because he offers a thousand dollars more than my father?"
Brushby lifted his hand.
"Nita! You understand me, surely! These little efforts are nothing to me—nothing. You don't expect me to be a little two-penny reformer—"
Nita flushed and looked swiftly at her father. And Northrup had the heaven-sent wit to hold his peace.
"May I speak to Mr. Brushby alone about this?" said Nita.
We drew away and stood there, Northrup and Boyland and I, with the rain from the baggage-room cornice coursing down our necks.
I overheard Brushby say "cosmic" and "bourgeois." Then his voice dropped, and I knew that he was pleading for his life.
"I understand," Nita said at last, and turned. "Father, I am so sorry that you have lost this."
She went to him, stood beside him, slipped her hand in his arm.
And there was the train on the track.
"But you know that I will let it to your father if you wish it," Brushby cried.
"To please me?" Nita said distinctly. "That reason means nothing."
She turned like a flash, and Northrup and I followed.
They were shouting, "All aboard." A hideous pan was being pounded for dinner.
"Nita," I heard that furry voice. Then Boyland shouting: "You'll wire Wade & Wallace? Sure? No slip-up?"
We got in the car, and Nita leaned to me. "Nunkie Nick," she said, "let Mr. Boyland get started, and then you bring my bag from under that truck."
WHEN we let ourselves in the front it was not yet half past nine o'clock. It had been a silent ride; no foolish, forced talk. We were all chilly, and, seeing a fire dancing on the library wall, we went in there.
Some one had been making up the library fire. He stood before it now, warming his hands, and it was Niel.
He flushed and his eyes lighted when he saw Nita; but it was Northrup to whom he turned.
"I've got good news, sir," he said. "I find that Wade & Wallace, when they made that transfer from Dawson to Havens, paid for an option on the Dawson block for one year, at twenty-five thousand. The year hasn't expired. The firm doesn't care to buy, but I didn't take a chance. I bought it, in the name of the firm. Now you can buy it from us, if you like—at the twenty-five thousand."
"Niel!" said Northrup. "Oh, Niel Sargent!"
That was all, except his hand-clasp.
"It's nothing," said Niel, fire-red. "But I couldn't forget those women and kids."
Then we fell unaccountably silent. For quietly, and as if none of us was there but Niel, Nita was looking at him. Something in the air of the room told him so. His eyes sought hers, but it was as if they had been seeing nothing else. Never, never shall I forget her as she stood before him. For the light with which she had looked at Brushby was to this light now shining in her face as candle-light to the sun.
"Niel," she said, "Niel."
Then she put out her hand, tremulous, questing. And upon him there fell some mysterious glory.
Northrup and I slipped out. We stood in the hall and shook each other's hands like old idiots, and let go, and then shook again. I could hardly see the tears in Northrup's eyes for the tears in my own.
I climbed to my lonely room in a maze of happiness and a maze of wonder. And through all and in all the great question of it beat in me like a pulse. And I don't know the answer.
For Brushby knew something that Niel didn't know and never will know. But Niel—I tell you, unless a man has in him a seed of living fire such as Niel had, what will it profit him if the new order comes on him overnight?
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