Are You Industrious, or Merely Busy?

I PRESUME the stage is partly responsible for it. Or perhaps the earnest young novelists who live in small towns and write novels about American business.

Anyway, some one or something has given us a portrait of the Successful American Business man that is unlike any successful American business man whome i have ever happened to meet.

Our portrait represents him as snapping orders through a telephone while he munches his breakfast, stopping his automobile half way downtown to get off a couple of telegrams, rushing through a breathless day at the office, and dictating letters in his limousine all the way home.

As a matter of fact, nothing has impressed me as more characteristic of really big men than a certain suggestion of leisure, a kind of elevation above the little maelstrom of detail in which the average man is caught up and whirled through the day.

He does big business without appearing too busy. You know, from the record of his achievements, that he must get through an enormous amount of work in a day: yet there seems to be nothing on his mind, when you meet him, but the subject you have come to discuss: and he apparently has all the time that is needed to discuss it.

I talked last summer with President Wilson. His desk was piled with commissions and bills waiting to be signed; it was a time of great perplexity in foreign relations. I had rather expected to be warned by his secretary that I must leave in ten minutes, and to have those ten minutes frequently interrupted.

But the President talked for forty minutes. He pushed back from his desk and spoke of this thing and that, with no evidence of preoccupation, no more sign of being rushed or ridden by his job, than as if we were out fishing together, with the whole day before us.

Lincoln, of course, is the supreme example of the really great man's ability to carry his burden easily, with no suggestion of desperate haste.

The members of his Cabinet never grew fully reconciled to his habit of stoppign on his way to Cabinet meetings to play a moment with Tad and his goat.

They were so terribly busy themselves—they could not understand a man who could carry a greater load, and yet have plenty of time to be friendly and good-natured and sympathetic.

Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality (says Stevenson); while a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There are dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They can not be idle. Their nature is not generous enough, and they pass in a sort of coma those hours which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold mill. When they do not require to go to the office, they are not hungry and have no mind to drink; they whole breaking world is a blank to them. THis does not appear to me as being Success in Life.

Life is a good deal like a journey on a train.

Most of us go through it huddled in the same seat, our noses buried in our work.

And once in a while we glance up rather enviously at the big, genial-looking man across the aisle.

He, too, works. But every time the train stops to change engines, he seems to find time to get out for a little stroll on the platform. His work has not prevented him from having some fun with his kid, and learning a good deal about the country through which he is passing, and making some good friends on the trip.

We ask who he is, and learn that he is a Captain of Industry.

It is an appropriate title. He captains his industry—commands it: it does not command him. He organizes it, and fits it into its proper place in his scheme of life. He does not let it interfere with the important business of being sometimes idle.

He has learned to be effective and still unhurried.

To be industrious without being busy.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

WHAT WILL THE WAR DO TO MARRIAGE?

By GEORGE ELLIOTT HOWARD

THE two primal cravings that have urged the human animal to climb are love and hunger; and the stronger of these springs of action is hunger: The individual must eat, whether he wins a mate or not. The pangs of hunger and cold are more imperative than the love craving. The bread-and-butter question is the original problem of social evolution. It existed before the man-animal crossed the zoological line and, with free hands stood erect. Hunger is the tap-root of social institutions. It is the basic human craving; and it produced the basic human institution: the family. It required a stimulus more constant, more enduring, than the pairing impulse to discipline and organize the physical and spiritual interests centering in the trinity of personalities—the mother, father, and child.

In the origin of the family and marriage the love craving, however important, was a far less cogent genetic force than the economic necessity of a food supply. Throughout history, for good or for ill, the cost of food, measured in terms of human toil, has powerfully influenced wedlock and divorce. For example, the cost and mode of getting a living have I been chief factors in deciding whether lawfully a woman may have several husbands—polyandry; or whether lawfully a man may have several wives—polygamy; or even whether lawfully one man and one woman must be content with a mutual monopoly—monogamy.

The same factors are working to-day. In America and in Europe, economic conditions are vitally affecting matrimony. I do not refer to the "marriage of convenience"; to marriage as a woman's economic "profession"; or to modern "husband-purchase" or "wife-purchase" at the international bargain-counter. Moreover, it is not my present purpose to discuss race suicide or birth control—although it is well understood that economy of material goods is a principal cause of the conscious or unconscious limitation of the size of the family. Stated bluntly, it is usually a choice between more babies and a higher economic standard of living.

I am writing about economic influences more constant, more pervasive, but less generally perceived. How does the cost of living affect the marriage rate?

The Marriage Barometer

IT has long been observed that in Europe the marriage rate—that is, the number of persons marrying annually in each thousand of the population—falls in hard times and rises again on the return of prosperity. So impressed with this fact was the statistician, Dr. William Farr, that he called the marriage rate the "barometer of prosperity," which registers economic conditions "little less distinctly than the funds measure the hopes and fears of the money market."

According to all "experience," declared John Stuart Mill, "a great increase invariably takes place in the number of marriages in seasons of cheap food and full employment."

Various other European writers have observed a general variation in the marriage rate corresponding inversely with the rise or fall in the cost of the necessaries of life. In particular, war times are usually hard times; and in the past they have had a powerful influence in hindering marriages; while on the restoration of peace the loss has been largely or wholly recovered. Thus in 1864 "Denmark was at war with Prussia, and its marriage rate fell from 15.0 to 11.13" for each thousand inhabitants, "the lowest point it has ever yet reached; but in the next year, the war being over, rose to 17.8, and was higher than it has ever been again."

In 1866 "Austria was at war with Prussia; and, while the Prussian rate fell from 18.2 to 15.6, the Austrian rate fell from 15.5 to 13.0; but on the cessation of hostilities rose in 1867 to 19.3, a higher level than in any earlier year."

How the Barometer Works in America

MATRIMONY behaves in the same way in the United States. In Massachusetts, for the period 1850 to 1890—Dr. Walter F. Willcox has shown—the marriage rate was low in years of industrial depression and during the Civil War. Furthermore, the same statistician has proved that the average divorce rate for the whole country is affected in the same way, sinking in hard times and rising again on the restoration of business. Represented graphically, the curve for the Massachusetts marriages, and the curve for the United States divorces (1867-1886), with slight exceptions, uniformly ascend and descend together, reaching their lowest and highest points in the same years. In our country the high cost of living has a tendency to check divorce as well as marriage. People are loath to face the hazards of changing marital relations in periods of economic stress. In case of divorce, grave questions of alimony, division of property, care of children, and change of vocation may arise.

On the other hand, in England, at first glance, the divorce rate has hitherto seemed to disobey the economic law of variation; for in that land, while the marriage rate has fallen, the divorce rate has risen in hard times. But the apparent anomaly serves only to accent the close connection of the unmaking as well as of the making of marriages with the bread- and-butter question. For, notoriously, in England during three centuries divorce has been practically a luxury for the exclusive consumption of the rich, for whom industrial depressions have served but to hasten rather than to retard the crisis in their wedded life.

The great report of the Director of the Census on Marriage and Divorce for the two decades 1887-1906 reveals the marriage barometer still steadily registering the influence of the cost of living on matrimony. Each panic or commercial depression causes a fall in the marriage rate as well as in the rate of divorce. To take a single example, the panic of 1892 was followed by two years of depression in the marriage market; whereas in the third year (1895) there was an "exceptionally large increase, which, not improbably, represented the accumulation of marriages temporarily postponed."

But the social loss due to hard times seems never wholly to be made up on the return of economic prosperity. The permanent loss for the three years ending in 1895 produced a deficit of 36,000 weddings. If six years be taken, the size of the deficit is tragic, considering its possible menace to human welfare.

"If the average annual increase in marriages during the five years ending with 1892"—runs the Director's report—"had continued for the next six years, the

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aggregate number of marriages contracted during the latter period would have been 3,865,380; whereas, in fact, it was only 3,605,567—a deficiency of 259,813."

The Price of Wheat as an Index

IF the rate of marriage prevailing in a population is the barometer of prosperity, what economic factor may be taken as a convenient and sufficiently trustworthy index of prosperity—of good or bad times? Will the price of bread serve the purpose? It has been accepted as an adequate gage by various economists.

The middle and upper classes, says Fawcett, "do not often marry unless they have reasonable prospect of being able to bring up a family in a state of social comfort; but the laborers, who form the majority of the population, are but slightly influenced by such cautious foresight. Even a trifling temporary improvement in their material prosperity acts as a powerful impulse to induce them to marry; for it is a demonstrated statistical fact that the number of marriages invariably increases with the price of bread."

According to Farr, high prices of wheat depress marriages among laborers more than among the rich. Ogle, on the contrary, while agreeing entirely as to the favoring influence of prosperity and the depressing effect of hard times on the number of marriages, finds in England, since 1820, so far as the price of bread alone is concerned, that the reverse is true, more marriages there taking place among the laboring class when bread is dear. Since about 1870, he insists, the general marriage rate has varied, not inversely, but directly with the price of wheat: the higher the price, the more weddings. So he urges that in England the higher cost of bread may itself be an incident of in. creased industrial activity.

This he finds to be the case; for the British "marriage rate rises and falls with the amount of industrial employment, which in its turn is determined by the briskness of trade as measured by the value of exports, which also rise and fall concomitantly, and produce by their effect upon freights a simultaneous rise and fall in the price of wheat."

In other words, wages and the amount of employment, as well as prices, are essential factors of any safe index of the cost of living.

The European war is giving a surprising proof of this fact—at least, for Great Britain. Before the war it was impossible to realize nature's ideal, if that ideal means the possible mating of each woman with some man; for the social balance sheet of the British Isles (1911) shows the huge deficit of 1,337,208 males. The conflict has greatly decreased the number of men available for wedlock. If, in the past, wars, as the hardest of hard times, have lowered the marriage rate, what influence ought we to expect the most destructive conflict in the world's history to have? Surely a severe check must have been given to marriage.

Quite the contrary is the case in Great Britain. The registration report for the quarter ending June 30, 1916, shows that in the preceding three months 112,662 persons were married, being equal to a rate of 12.6 per thousand: a gain of 1.4 as compared with the average for the preceding decade. This increase is all the more surprising in view of the fact that the birth-rate (26.0) for the same quarter shows a shrinkage of 2.1 per thousand as compared with the average for the preceding decade, and is the lowest birth-rate recorded since the establishment of civil registration.

What is the cause of this remarkable condition? Has the marriage barometer ceased to work? Or is it possible that economically the war times are good times in the British Isles? Have full employment and higher wages, backed by "war brides'" patriotism, more than offset in the marriage market the heck of high prices? Such seems really to be the case.

"It is all to the good," exclaims Ethel Colquhoun that "prudence and calculation have been flung, for once, to the winds, and young hearts have come together under the shadow of war. Nature has had her way with many young folks in the last few months, and when we think how she has been starved and pinched and poked into the strait-jacket of worldliness in the last half century, since love-in-a-cottage went out of fashion, it is good to think that she has come into her own again."

Be that as it may, there is reason to believe that the new labor conditions, due to the war, have had much more to do with the rising marriage rate than has the release of young hearts from the restraints of prudence and calculation under the impulse of military sentiment. It is well known that, in the towns of both England and New England, when there is full employment for working-women at fair wages, the rate of marriage is exceptionally high. Now, one of the surprising results of the war has been to raise the material standard of living for working-women, both single and married.

Take the case of a wife whose husband is in the trenches. "A man," remarks the writer just quoted, "earning £1 per week, reservist, is called to the colors. His wife gets 16s., plus his allotment of pay, 3s. 6d., plus 10s. and food which his employer gives her for partially taking her husband's place. Total, 29s. 6d., and no food to find."

The wage-earning girl, too, is put in the way of contributing her share to the new household, should she wed.

"With clothing and munitions factory, agricultural work, and domestic service all competing for unskilled labor, while family incomes are unusually regular and the principal consumer is absent, there is no doubt that the working-class woman is in a very strong position."

The women of the professional and other well-to-do middle classes are not being affected in the same way. It is in those classes that bachelorhood and the one- or two-child family are usually found. A high standard of living is preferred to matrimony or to many children. Possibly this fact may partially explain why the birth-rate is falling in England, while the marriage rate is rising. "The passing of the child," declares another Englishwoman, "is the result of prosperity."

Decidedly, in the United States, the price of wheat for that of other necessaries may not be taken as the index of the present cost of living. We are enjoying "good times" in spite of high prices, because wages are rising and unemployment nearly vanished. In recent decades our marriage rate has been slowly rising, and it has stood nearly at the head of the list for the nations of the world. While the exact figures are not now available, is it not safe to predict that a full report would show that the marriage rate has increased during the war times?

Germany's Birth-Rate

IN Germany the birth-rate is swiftly falling. Is it possible that in Germany, as in Great Britain, wages, employment, and the war brides' sentiment may be sustaining or even accelerating the marriage rate? It may have been so in the earlier months of the war, though exact figures to determine the question are not at hand. But can the upward movement continue?

Not if the current press reports be true, that the German people are on the verge of famine. No amount of well paid gainful employment can tip the scale in favor of wedlock, if it must be weighed against an increased danger of starvation. What, then, must be the condition in the ravaged lands where, for many of the working classes,—whose marriage barometer always quickly registers the effects of hard times,—starvation is no longer a menace but a reality?

Will the Marriage Rate Rise or Fall When the War Ends?

IT is not easy to predict how the marriage barometer will behave after the soldiers return to their homes. Judging the future by the past, the marriage rate ought then to rise; for the end of a war has usually meant the close of hard times and the return of prosperity. But will the end of the present conflict spell "good times"?

First of all, how are the women to find husbands? Before the war, in Belgium, Hungary, Austria, France, Germany, and the British Isles, the aggregate surplus of females over males was 3,589,995; not to mention European Russia, where there were 1029 females to 1000 males. The conflict has probably doubled, trebled, or even quadrupled the deficit of males fit for right marriage. Many of the war brides will then be war widows and in need of new mates.

Again, what will be the economic conditions? Will the losses and hardships of the war continue to be partially or wholly offset, so far as their effect on the barometer of wedlock is concerned, by full and well paid employment? Will the host of women and children who have" taken up the work laid down by the men, continue to hold their jobs when the soldiers return?

Will there be an unprecedented demand for labor, raw materials, and factory products, to replace the billions that have been wasted? Or will the burden of war debts and, of the new taxes that may be needed to meet the cost of aiding those who have been impoverished by the war and to care for the human war wreckage be so crushing, as to check lawful marriage, increase prostitution, and force the birthrate downward; perhaps for generations?

Will the tide of emigration rise higher than before the war? If so, will it react favorably or unfavorably upon the family welfare on either side of the sea? Any of these suggested things may be on the cards. Of one thing only we may be sure: In some way, the net cost of this awful struggle will be taken out of the most precious assets which society has gathered in times of peace.

The Most Interesting Episode of My Life

IN looking back over my life from the safe and conventional viewpoint of a wife and mother, I can truthfully say that its most interesting episode was my courtship and marriage.

It all happened some ten years or so ago, before the dawn of the eugenic era; but even at that it was interesting—or at least we thought so.

I was in my twenty-seventh year when it happened, and already my dearest friends were whispering in charitable asides that I would soon be over the border.

To be twenty-seven does not of itself constitute a fault; but to be twenty-seven and unmarried! In our town twenty was considered the marriageable age. Girls who could "get married" at eighteen, seventeen, or sixteen were enviously regarded, as being possessed of unusual charms. At twenty-four one was "getting on," and at twenty-seven one's case was considered almost if not quite hopeless.

To be perfectly frank, I had not arrived at this mature age unmated without inward protest. There are those who claim that marriage is a matter of propinquity or location. I think it is rather a matter of opportunity. And I am also old-fashioned enough to believe that Heaven provides the opportunity.

So I intrenched myself behind my orthodox belief that what is to be will be, and calmly kept on teaching. But often over my luncheon of soggy pie and cold pan-cakes there would come to me visions of a dear little home somewhere in the great big world, of a tea-kettle singing merrily, and a little round table set for two.

I had almost reached the conclusion that my affinity must have met with an untimely end, when my opportunity came. It was at a friend's house. He was seated at the table in his shirt sleeves, his shirt open at the throat, his clothes white with powdered stone, and on his face a look of utter weariness.

My friend informed me that he was an actor, stranded in the city, and doing anything that offered. At the time he was working for a stone mason, although he was a university man.

An actor and pounding rock! These two things represented the ends of the axis for me. My narrow, snobbish, Puritan views received a distinct shock.

I do not remember that he said ten words that evening. I was not in the habit of being interested in working-men. And yet, at the close of that memorable evening, I remember having grave doubts as to my intended husband being called, after all, to his reward.

Yet to think of Fate picking out for me an actor—worse still, an actor down on his luck! Here was I, a daughter of rugged Presbyterian stock, an orthodox school-teacher who had once refused an elder!

But who can refuse one whom Fate hath chosen?

The news of my marriage shook our little city to its sandy foundations. The question of my age was revived, and many averred that I had been plucked as a brand from the burning.

But, intrenched behind my defenses, I cared little for public opinion. My own family accepted my husband on his own merits, in spite of the fact that he was a Methodist and a Democrat.

I can look back through the maze of years to many interesting events of my life,—to my first long dress, to my graduation, to the proud moment when I received an important appointment, to that tender time when I held my first baby in my arms,—yet the most interesting of all was this episode I have narrated, in which I realized my girlhood dreams of a little home, a tea-kettle singing merrily, and a little round table set for—six!

A. B. D.

"My Marriage"

WE will pay $25 for the best letter of not more than one thousand words on "My Marriage"; $15 for the second best; and regular rates for any other letters that we find good enough to print. Here is a subject, surely, on which everybody has something to say. No names will be printed, of course, and the letters that are most frank and helpful will win the prizes. What problems of readjustment did you face in your marriage and how did you solve them? What has marriage meant to you, financially and spiritually? Does love last? Would you marry your wife—or your husband—if you were to live your life over again? Young men and women who are not married, but who have their own idea and ideal of what marriage ought to be, may contribute also. Certainly it's the great human-interest subject: what's the truth about it? No letter will be considered which is received later than October 6, 1917. Address the Editor, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York, and do it right away.

THE SUSPENSE ACCOUNT

By FRANK GOEWEY JONES

Illustrations by Edward L. Chase

THE moment Clinton Brooke opened the door of the general office, he realized that doomsday for his business had come. The male clerks were huddled near the bookkeeper's cage, in the dispirited attitude of men who had just lost their jobs. Half a dozen girls drooped round the filing table. They lifted woe-begone, tear-wet faces when their young employer entered. Clinton knew without asking questions what had happened.

A single head in the room bent intently over a desk. Mary Warren alone appeared to be working as usual. Brooke caught the message of undaunted courage his personal stenographer and confidante clicked to him from her typewriter. Brooke wheeled and called to the bookkeeper in the cage beside the front door:

"Mr. Hall! Come to my office, please!"

His explosive command scattered the flock of employees as if he had discharged a shot-gun. The spectacled, gray little man hunched on the high stool flopped off his perch and fluttered up the center aisle behind his chief.

Brooke marched swiftly the length of the room to the door of his private office. There he halted and made a sharp quarter-turn on his heels, facing his secretary, like a soldier saluting the guard he has come to relieve.

"Good morning, Miss Warren," he greeted firmly.

The slender young woman in the dark blue dress swiveled about in her chair to respond:

"Good morning, Mr. Brooke!"

She said it as blithely as she could, but there was no lilt in the sweet voice. Her brown eyes did not twinkle. The girl's cheeks were chalk white instead of their wonted creamy pink.

Brooke averted his face quickly to hide his own wince. He stalked into his sanctum. The wizened little accountant followed, closed the door, and looked up with the wistfulness of an old retriever. Hall had kept the factory books for Clinton's father for three decades before the young man inherited the run-down business.

"The bank telephoned, I suppose?" Brooke questioned bluntly.

"Yes, sir; Mr. Farlow himself. He inquired for you. I told him you hadn't come to the office yet, and asked if he wished to leave any message. He said to tell you the thirty thousand dollar demand note must be paid to-day."

The peremptory call made Brooke savage.

"Didn't you have better sense than to blab that in the office? You shouldn't have told any one but Miss Warren."

Hall winced.

"I was so anxious, when I'd telephoned everywhere and couldn't find you, that I went all to pieces."

Brooke instantly was ashamed of his harshness to the old employee.

"There's no harm done," Clinton muttered, half to Hall and half to himself. "It doesn't make any difference whether the bad news gets out now or this afternoon. The business is smashed."

"Oh, no, sir!" the bookkeeper implored the averting of the calamity that threatened to snatch the means of livelihood from his gnarled fingers. "Don't say that, Mr. Clinton! I am sure Mr. Farlow will keep the factory running. You can make terms with him. He drives a hard bargain, I know, when he has a man cornered. But, after he takes the business over to satisfy your father's old debt, he'll give you back a share of the profits to manage it for him. Half a loaf is better than no bread, Mr. Clinton."

Brooke scorned the craven advice. He thumped the desk.

"Farlow's got his chain now on half the formerly independent manufacturers in town; hut he'll never tie me up like a whipped cur to a kennel." He waved curt dismissal. "That's all, Hall. Tell Miss Warren I want to see her."

The timid little man seemed to be shriveled by sudden realization of his temerity in counseling the headstrong son of his old employer. He screwed backward out the door.

BROOKE jerked off his overcoat and hat; then raged to the opposite side of the room in the black wrath of futility. He glared out the rear window over the roof of the factory he had grown to love in the year since he inherited it. Clinton had fought hard to save his father's old business, but fate had beaten him.

Light, quick steps sounded behind him. The door-latch clicked after the footfalls entered his office. Brooke twisted about. When he faced the young woman the blaze in his eyes had flickered out.

"You've heard, of course, Miss Warren. I had a foreboding that Farlow would strike to-day. I took a tramp to the edge of town to brace myself in preparation for the jolt. But it's knocked me out, after all."

Clinton's secretary, like the faithful old accountant, was part of his father's legacy. On his death-bed the founder of the business had said to his son:

"Trust Mary Warren, boy. Ask her advice when you're worried. She'll help you, as she's helped me. That girl is a treasure!"

In the year of struggle just past Clinton had come to regard his shrewd, indefatigable aide as the most precious part of his heritage, but he had restrained his heart from speech. Whenever she looked into his eyes she rallied all his manhood.

"You're not beaten!" The girl's voice rang with the exultation of a pæan. "Andrew Farlow is driving you out of your father's factory, but you haven't been conquered. Why, Mr. Brooke, I never have been so proud of you as I am now!"

Fresh courage infused his blood at every word of the girl's praise. A new glow lighted his eyes.

"Ma—"

AS Brooke uttered the first syllable of the name he had never voiced to her before, he stretched out his hands and took a step forward. Recollection halted him abruptly. Her words did not change the fact that before nightfall he would be ousted from the precarious tenancy to which he had clung for a year. Though she declared to the contrary, he had failed in business, at any rate.

"Miss Warren—"

The formal address, familiar to his lips as it had been for twelve months, was awkward after his impulse to say "Mary."

"I appreciate your saying—what you did. It starches me. I needed it. I was getting pretty limp. That's why I called you in to talk things over."

Brooke choked; then lie went on bravely: "This will probably be our last confab. We must decide what is the best way to wind things up."

Although his aching eagerness to clutch her hands and hold them tight was nearly irresistible, Clinton merely moved a seat close to his flat-top desk for her. His fingers had to bite into the wood when she rested her knuckles on the hack of the chair. He walked around the table and dropped into his accustomed place on the opposite side. He felt a little calmer after the oak separated them.

"There isn't anything more we can do?" the stenographer questioned.

Never before had she so used the double pronoun. Clinton realized its significance now. He knew that she would have made no claim to an equal share of credit if the year-long campaign they planned and fought together had ended in victory; yet she took on her slight shoulders this morning half of the weight of defeat. Brooke showed her by his look and by his answer that he understood:

"No, partner."

Gratitude brought a rush of tears to the girl's eyes. Her joy shone through her wet lashes.

"Oh, thank you for calling me that! It's been glorious to fight side by side with you!"

Brooke reached across the table. The girl's hand flew to his palm, and he folded it in the strong yet tender clasp of comradeship.

"Mary, you're a wonderful partner!"

He gripped her fingers a little tighter; then resolutely loosed them and leaned away.

The girl drew her hand back over the desk-top very slowly, looking at it almost with reverence.

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Lest his yearning should find words first, Clinton hurried on to talk of business. The stenographer looked up, and blinked as if he had broken a spell. But she smiled raptly.

"The thirty thousand dollar demand note will be protested at three o'clock," Brooke stated. "The business will die then, so far as I'm concerned. I don't intend to sit around at a wake over the corpse. The best way to wind up my affairs is by making a straight-out voluntary assignment to Farlow, so that the factory won't be shut down on account of court proceedings. I'd hate to have the shop and office employees thrown out of work. If I don't kick up a rumpus, I guess Farlow will keep the plant going. He's grabbed the business because he is convinced it's a big money-maker."

"What are you going to do?" the girl asked bluntly.

"Clear out—to-night! I have a chance for a job with the Henderson Manufacturing Company at Walcott."

"And what am I to do?" she persisted.

"I want you to stay here and break in the new manager—whomever Farlow may appoint. Then—I'll come back, and we'll have a talk."

His words stumbled, but his look and the flush on his cheeks made his meaning plain to her. Her lashes lowered.

"I'll wait!" she promised softly.

ALL at once the girl flung up her head, her eyes flashing with purpose.

"You haven't any hope that we can save the business from falling into the clutches of Farlow?" she cried.

"Why, no!" said Brooke. Her manner astonished him.

"I have!" she retorted grimly. "It's a crazy idea—I wouldn't try it if I could think of anything else we possibly might do. I want you to come with me; I'm going to see Michael Dean."

Brooke stared at her incredulously.

"You aren't hoping to coax old Mike to put up that thirty thousand dollars, are you?"

"No. But he's the one business man in Farlowton who never knuckled to Andrew Farlow. He's the only man who's ever fought and beaten him. They hate each other. So I'm going to ask Mr. Dean's help in my scheme."

The girl sprang up and started for the door.

"You come along and see me through. I'll get my coat and hat and be ready in two minutes."

Clinton jumped to his feet in wild hope. He grabbed his derby and ulster.

"I'm ready now!"

There was no time for the girl to explain her plan in the short walk to the office of the eccentric Irish capitalist. Near the middle of the second block she and Brooke turned from the street and walked up the cinder path to the squat, box-like shanty where Michael Dean smoked his dudeen ten hours a day and pretended to himself that he still was actively engaged in the coal business that had made him rich. They found him, his pipe temporarily empty, dozing hefore a glowing stove.

The old man roused and hlinked owlishly at his visitors when the door opened. Through the window he had looked like a shapeless bag of second-hand clothes. But he was rejuvenated and vitalized at the sight of the trim, pretty girl who preceded the broad-shouldered young man into his room. He bounced from his chair. Despite his shock of grizzled hair and his baggy, worn Prince Albert coat, old Mike bore himself with the rakishness of a blarneying lad.

"On my soul, if it ain't Molly Warren!" he saluted. "And as handsome as her mither was when first she jilted me."

He held out a rather grimy hand to Brooke.

"The top o' the morning to ye, Clinton, my boy! Sure ye must protect me from whatever this witch is after; for I've no power myself to deny her."

The young woman sobered immediately.

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Mr. Dean," she seized her opportunity. "I came to ask your help in a plan I've made for Mr. Brooke."

The millionaire at once grew cautious.

MISS WARREN was not disconcerted. She proceeded to state her errand with every appearance of confidence that the coöperation she sought would be forthcoming.

"You probably know that when Mr. Brooke's father died a little over a year ago, the Brooke Manufacturing Company owed Andrew Farlow thirty thousand dollars on a note?"

Dean's hard blue eyes narrowed maliciously at the mention of his hated enemy's name, but the Irishman made no comment. The girl continued:

"That note fell due sixteen days ago. Mr. Farlow refused to renew it then, except 'on demand.' He pretended he wanted to make sure Mr. Brooke was running the business profitably, and he said to let the note stand from day to day until he could study the concern a little. He asked to see the books, and wanted to know about the costs of manufacturing, and the customers—everything, in fact.

"Mr. Brooke and I talked it over. We both suspected some underhanded scheme in the demands for all this information. Mr. Farlow knew perfectly well that Mr. Brooke was getting the business on its feet. We guessed his real purpose, but we couldn't see any way to avoid walking into his trap. So, in the hope that he might renew the note, Mr. Brooke told Mr. Farlow the situation exactly—the whole truth about the company."

"Ye never should trust Andrew Farlow," Dean interrupted, with curt sarcasm. "I misdoubt if he's spoke straight out of his crooked mouth once a year in all his life."

"I don't think he has," the girl agreed. "He lied to Mr. Brooke about his intentions, anyway. He just wanted to make sure the business was worth stealing!" she asserted hotly. "Yesterday we got a contract order that will pay at least eight thousand dollars a year profits for the next five years—the whole debt and interest. Mr. Farlow has been hinting that if Mr. Brooke could close that contract the note would be renewed. Instead he telephoned this morning that the thirty thousand dollars must be paid at the bank to-day."

"The dirty thief!" muttered Dean. "'Tis like him." Then he inquired cautiously: "What are ye going to do about it?"

"Mr. Brooke isn't able to pay the note, of course. There's only one way he and I can think of to stave it off. That's what we've come to ask your help about."

Dean showed acute suspicion of the girl's intention now. He backed away from her. But Miss Warren continued confidently:

"You are the one person in this town that Andrew Farlow is afraid of," she lauded the Irishman. "You beat him badly in that lawsuit over the flour-mill. Consequently he hates you. He'd do almost anything to balk you in something he believed you wanted.

"The only way to get Mr. Farlow to renew the note is to make him think you're going to take up the debt and buy in the business yourself on purpose to cut him out. He knows the Brooke Manufacturing Company would be a rich prize for anybody at thirty thousand dollars. It will hurt as much as pulling a tooth if he loses it himself. But it would almost kill him if he thought you were going to get what he'd lost. Rather than let you make the profit he's counting on, he'll probably consent to an extension of the note that will enable Mr. Brooke to save the business by applying its earnings on the debt. Farlow would have the satisfaction, he'd think, of foiling you.

"Then"—Miss Warren dangled her most tempting lure before the Irishman—"when Mr. Brooke gets the note renewed and is safe, you could tell everybody in town how you'd fooled Farlow out of his scheme, and that you never intended to invest a cent. It would be the richest joke ever heard of. Of course Mr. Brooke and I would admit the trick; so you'd have the laugh on Farlow without any come-back. Now I hope you'll help us and give us a chance to save the factory—the only chance there is left."

"Ye don't actually expect me to take up that note for ye in case Old Andy should happen not to fall into your scheme?" Dean asked cunningly.

"No," the girl assured him. "If the ruse doesn't work, Mr. Brooke will make an assignment of his stock and give up the company to Farlow. We know you don't intend ever to make any more investments that might worry you. All we ask is that you pretend you mean to take up the note."

Dean at once reached for his battered slouch hat and overcoat.

"I'll go right over to the robber's roost and speak him a piece of my mind," he promised. "I'll not he gone long. Ye'd best wait here for me to give ye the tip what the chances are of shenaniganing the robber."

He hobbled away on his errand, like a boy starting some mischief.

BROOKE sprang toward the girl as their new ally banged the door shut. He caught both her hands and wrung them in the fervor of confidence.

"Old Mike will bluff Farlow!" he cried. "I know he will! Oh, you wonderful partner! You've saved us!"

Miss Warren had turned pessimistic as suddenly as her employer veered from skepticism to faith. She slumped into the chair the old Irishman had vacated, and dragged her fingers from Brooke's grasp. Her hands fell limply to her lap.

"It's just a crazy idea!" she quavered. "It can't actually work. Mr. Farlow will see through it. I don't believe anybody ever fooled him about a business deal. I'm afraid that Mr. Dean will overplay his bluff. If Mr. Farlow guesses what he's up to, he'll take diabolical delight in frustrating him. You might have been able to make some arrangements if

you'd gone down to the bank yourself. I've spoiled your chances now."

"The only proposition I'd have got from Andrew Farlow would have been to put on one of his dog collars, with a chain attached to a kennel," Brooke used again the metaphor he had blurted to the factory bookkeeper. "Your plan may not work; but it's the only chance I have—Mary."

When the man spoke her name the girl's trembling ceased. The word had a miraculous effect. She looked up wistfully as Brooke stooped over her.

"I'm so glad you called me that—again," she told him softly.

Clinton forgot the impending disaster—forgot that he was ruined. He knew only that her lips were close to his. He bent slowly—so slowly that she lifted her mouth a little—and kissed her. Then all the world beside ceased to be of any importance.

THEY still were telling each other the wonder of their love when the door banged open. Dean stormed in. If he had not been so furious he would have noticed how the girl and the young man blushed as they started from their seats.

"The spalpeen laughed at me!" the old Irishman raged to Brooke. "He said I never would put thirty thousand dollars in with ye! Farlow called my bluff! He pulled out your note from a drawer and dared me to pay it him!"

Miss Warren flashed one glance at Brooke's dismayed face. Then she sank into the chair as if the sudden confirmation of her intuition had crushed her.

"I just knew it would turn out this way!" she gasped.

Dean whirled on her ferociously.

"Yis!" he hissed. "Ye knew I'd tangle

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myself up in your slick scheme, like the old fool I am. Ye planned I should have to let Andy Farlow make me a laughingstock in the sight of all the town, or else I must pay him off."

His hot fierceness lighted hope in the girl's eyes.

"You did take up the note!" she cried.

"I did not!" the Irishman quenched her flicker of delight. He reverted viciously to Brooke. "But I'll have to pay it or be mocked by Andy Farlow the rest of my life as a welcher. I told him to be at the bank in an hour and I'd come there with ye to close my deal. 'Twas the only way I could think of to avoid backing down right then. He may call ye on the telephone meantime to make a settlement with ye, for he doubts now I was bluffing. If he does not renew the note for ye before eleven o'clock, I'll be at his office prompt with my cheek. Andy Farlow shall have no chance to grin out of his crooked mouth at me—the spalpeen!"

"Oh, Mr. Dean!" cried the girl,and clung to his coat. Brooke clutched the old Irishman's hand.

DEAN shook them off with bulldog ferocity.

"I'm not meaning to save ye!" he de- nied vindictively. "Ye schemed to get me in a fix, so I'd have to back down before Andy Farlow or else help ye out of his grip. But I'll do neither. I intend to pay the money to him; then I'll take the business myself. Ye'll be worse off than ye would have been with him, Clint' Brooke. He'd give ye a job, maybe, bossing the place, like he has other men that've failed running factories he had mortgages on. Ye'll get no such chance from me. The minute I have my hands on that note, out ye go! Ye tried to double-cross me, the both of ye, with your slickness. Well ye knew I'd not back down from Andy Farlow, and ye thought to trick me in with ye. If I was not a blithering idiot, I'd have seen through your smart scheme."

Brooke was angry now. The accusations of the old Irishman were not so much against him as against Miss Warren. Clinton stepped before the girl defensively.

"You won't get a chance to throw me out, Mr. Dean! And you'll not have to put up any money, either. We told you the truth when we said we had no idea of your actually paying the note. I'll prove we did not intend to double-cross you. I'll go straight over to the bank now and make an assignment of the business to Farlow. That will let you out."

Dean glared at the young man for nearly a minute; then his features softened a little.

"I can believe ye did not mean to rope me in, after all," he admitted gruffly. "For I did not think of such a pickle myself. Make that assignment, Clinton, and I'll know ye have not played me a trick."

The girl interposed a vehement protest as Brooke turned toward her and gestured in the direction of the door.

"No! There's still a chance Mr. Dean's bluff might work." She whirled on the Irishman. "You didn't say to Mr. Farlow that you would go to the bank right away to take up the note. You told him eleven o'clock. Mr. Brooke can let you out then as well as now, and meanwhile Mr. Farlow may telephone to him. Our plan has a bare chance to succeed yet. If it fails—as it probably will—we'll go to the bank with you at eleven, Mr. Dean. You can pretend you've come to take up the note. Then Mr. Brooke can say, what's the use of changing undertakers—that his chance to keep the business himself is just as dead if you get hold of the factory as it would be if Farlow should take it. He can throw down his assignment and walk out of the bank as if he was disgusted with the whole mess."

Dean considered this briefly. It was evident he coveted the slight remaining possibility of fooling his enemy. The Irishman jerked his head in decision.

"The rascal might renew for ye in preference to having me grab the plum away from him," he soliloquized rather than spoke to Clinton. "We'll go to the bank if he does not fix things up with ye bechune now and eleven. Be sure," he adjured, "that ye have the assignment all made 'out when ye throw it in front of Andy Farlow, so that he'll have the factory tight. There is no other reason he'd let me off from paying the thirty thousand. But if he sees he has the trump card in his own hand, he'll not take my money. He's itching to get hold of the business: though he would not let me bluff him."

THE younger man had no faith that Farlow would telephone. He went back to the factory with Miss Warren, and waited in hopeless gloom at his desk until ten minutes before eleven. Then he and the young woman set out again for the coal office, to meet the Irishman. Promptly at the appointed hour the three entered the bank.

On the way Dean had informed his companions that he carried in his pocket a certified check for thirty thousand dollars, which he wanted to flourish under Farlow's nose to confound the derision of the bank president.

"Mind now," old Mike cautioned, "while I'm waving it in his face and calling him names is the time when ye are to throw down your papers and walk out on me, like ye was disgusted."

"I understand," Brooke growled.

IN fact he did feel disgusted, and was impatient to have the ordeal over with. He bent to whisper to the girl beside him, whose white face was twitching.

"Never mind, partner!" he consoled. "We'll start all over again."

Miss Warren bit her lips.

"But it's so hard to lose!" she choked out, as they entered the bank.

Old Michael Dean blustered across the lobby to the president's room. Brooke and Miss Warren trudged closely after him with leaden steps, like captives.

"So ye thought I was bluffing, did ye!" the Irishman sneered at the knobby, bald mummy behind the big desk. "Where is that note? I've a certified check for thirty thousand dollars here to pay it. I'll trouble ye to go bring me that bit of demand paper ye have."

This was the cue for Brooke to fling down his assignment before Farlow. He reached into his coat for the document. But, before he could say a word, the little man behind the desk leaned forward suddenly and snatched the check from Dean's fingers. He glanced at it, then thrust it into a drawer of his desk; the spring lock clicked. Farlow jerked the note from his pocket and threw it to his enemy.

"Get out!" he snarled, and pointed to the door.

His actions and words were so swift that Dean had time only to make one frantic grab for his check before the bank president ordered him from the office. But now the old Irishman screamed his rage:

"Give me back my money!" He spurned the note beside his hand on the desk. In his panic he betrayed himself to the banker. "Ye had no right to yank the check out of my hand! I had not paid it to ye!"

Farlow's snarl twisted into a grin.

"You were bluffing, just as I thought!" he exulted. "You meant to trap me, but you caught your own foot when it slipped. You have the note you asked for. Take it away."

"I tell ye, I did not pay it!" screeched Dean. He crouched over the desk and shook his gnarled fist at his grinning foe. "Until I let go of the check, ye had no right to it, which ye know as well as me is the law. Hand it back this minute, or I'll sue ye for a hundred thousand dollars damages."

"I'm ready for you," the banker defied. "You said the check was to pay the note; and you tendered it to me, as I have two witnesses to prove." He waved his skinny hand toward Brooke and Miss Warren. "I accepted your tender according to law, before you retracted it."

"Ye snatched the check out of my hand!" yelled the half crazed Irishman.

"You shoved it at me," the bank president retorted. "Then I took it, as I had a right to do. There's a fine point of law involved, Mike Dean; and I'll fight you on it to the Supreme Court of the United States."

"I'll get that money back, with damages to boot, if I spend twice as much suing ye!" pugnacious Dean at once struck back. "There is no law that will let ye grab a check off a man like ye was a pickpocket—which ye are no better."

"I'll sue you for slander on that!" Farlow shouted. "Take your note and leave my office, or I'll have you thrown into the street." He pressed a signal button.

BROOKE and Miss Warren had stood as if paralyzed while the vocal shrapnel burst on both sides of the desk. But now the young man drew the girl through the open door into the lobby. Clerks were running toward the president's office. In the confusion neither of the quarreling enemies saw the two witnesses slip away.

"Let's get out!" Brooke whispered excitedly into Miss Warren's ear.

The pair scurried from the bank and turned the corner into a side street. Clinton chuckled as he looked down at the anxious, bewildered girl.

"We're all right now, partner!" he declared. "Those two bulldogs will fight for years. Neither Farlow nor Dean will admit he has any interest in the thirty thousand dollar note while they are suing each other. So neither will dare to take any legal proceedings against the Brooke Manufacturing Company. if either should demand payment of the note, he'd practically confess he was wrong in his litigation with the other. We'll hold that debt in the suspense account on our books until the long lawsuit is settled. Meanwhile the factory will earn the money to pay it off."

Amazement stunned the girl for a minute. Then she stared at the young man.

"Oh, are you sure they won't quit fighting?"

"Positive! Those old scrappers would rather win that case than anything else in the world. Your 'crazy scheme' got twisted a bit; but it's saved the business, partner Mary."

They Simply Have to Have It

TOBACCO has played its part in every American war, and undoubtedly it will fulfil its mission in the great struggle in Europe when the American troops go forward. General Grant was a great smoker; during the battle of the Wilderness he smoked twenty-four strong cigars. It was during a lull in the battle of Spottsylvania, smoking a cigar at the time, that he wrote the famous despatch: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

It was said of Grant that when he loaded up well with cigars in the morning, it usually meant that the enemy was going to have on hand as much work as it could conveniently attend to that day.

Tobacco fills a big place in war; its solace, historians have recorded, has won and lost battles. Battle sometimes hinges on tiny incidents, if those who write history long years afterward are to be believed; and tobacco has had its victories.

Not only in American wars, but tobacco—in the form of cigars, cigarettes, or in the pipe—has played a part in every battle from Waterloo to the Somme. One of the first moves of Germany, when the war started on August 1, 1914, was to seize all cigar, cigarette, and tobacco factories. No town in Belgium or France was ever occupied by the Germans without demanding huge supplies of "my lady nicotine."

Soldiers ask first for tobacco when they start out; and when wounded their first request is for the consolation that comes from a whiff of the pipe, the puff of a cigarette, or the taste of a cigar.

The reason is obvious: With the soldier's system in a ceaseless state of tension from danger and excitement, tobacco becomes a real solace and joy when he can find the time for this well earned indulgence.

Practically in every city and town in the British Isles, in France, and in Belgium unoccupied by the Germans, in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Russia, and the other nations at war, one of the common sights is to see boxes for the public to contribute its surplus cigars, cigarettes, and tobacco.

When the Regulars and the National Guard troops went to Mexico, and a censorship was put on all news from the flying columns sent to "get Villa," one of the first messages o. k.'d by the censor aide to General Pershing was the appeal to relieve the strain by sending some "Missouri meerschaums" to the men in Mexico.

In the charge before Saarbrücken, the Brunswick Hussars galloped into the encounter with cigars in their mouths.

Bismarck was almost as fond of cigars as was Grant. Whether there is any truth in the legend of Bismarck's "last cigar" there is no way of telling; but it is related that Bismarck told of it in this way:

"At Koniggratz I had only one cigar left in my pocket, which I carefully guarded during the whole of the battle, as a miser guards his treasure. I did not feel justified in using it. I painted in glowing colors in my mind the happy hours when I should enjoy it after the victory.

"But I had miscalculated my chances. A poor dragoon lay helpless, with both arms crushed, murmuring for something to refresh him. I felt in my pockets, and found that I had only gold, which would be of no use to him. But stay—I had still my treasured cigar. I lighted it for him and placed it between his teeth. You should have seen the poor fellow's grateful smile. I never enjoyed a cigar so much as I did the one which I did not smoke."

Sergeant Bowler of the Fifth Signal Troop, Royal Engineers, paid this tribute to General Sir Philip Chetwode:

"I have watched him calmly smoking a cigarette when shells have been dropping all over the place. I think, if all the German army were firing at him, he would carry on as usual, smoking his cigarette and giving his orders as if he were in his club."

There have been innumerable instances of men, wounded almost to death, submitting to operations without anesthetic of any kind if merely they had a cigarette in their mouth to get a "grip on themselves."

The French soldiers say that in trench fighting the pipe has become an indispensable accessory to trench life, where anything that will help kill time is welcome. It is at the same time a distraction and an occupation, and, as one soldier puts it, "it has the advantage of keeping the end of your nose warm."

How valuable cigarettes are regarded, when no more can be had for a time, was witnessed in Flanders when three boxes were put up by auction among the officers. After two boxes had been sold, the third box was opened and the cigarettes sold individually. The last cigarette brought $34.53. —Alex. McD. Stoddart.

THE MELTING POT

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

MAKING COUNTRY LADS INTO SAILORS

IF there is one thing which the American war machine does quickly and well, it is the making of a man-o-war's man. The United States is the only country in the world which can take thousands of farmer boys from the prairies, who have never seen anything more formidable than a river skiff, and make them into the best sea-fighters in the world, not barring even the pick of the British and German sailors. The bright, fresh greenness that these boys bring with them to the Newport naval training school for apprentice seamen is their greatest asset; for it enables the wise naval psychologists to put into actual practice some of the modern principles of training youths, says Harry Merrill Hitchcock, late ensign U. S. N., writing in the Navy and Merchant Marine.

Infinite tact and patience and a profound knowledge of boy nature enter into the making of a sea-fighter out of the raw material, but the navy prefers this sort of material to the boys who have some smattering knowledge of seamanship which they must unlearn.

"For instance, the fact that boys will often learn more if they don't know they are being taught, and think they are only playing, has long been known to our practical psychologists," says the author. "Consequently, most of the drill apparatus—the boats, the field pieces for artillery drill, the dummy guns, and so on— are artfully left within plain sight and easy reach, with somebody, perhaps, lounging near by to see that they are not damaged by young enthusiasm, and to answer questions of young curiosity.

"It might surprise you to know that boys from inland, who never before saw a navy cutter, at the end of a long day's drill are so curious and so eager that they go down themselves, lower a boat, and spend an hour or so pulling it around the harbor, learning how to row for the fun of it; but it does not surprise their instructors. That boat was left there for the purpose."

American mothers need have no fear as to the methods used in training their young boys for naval service. This is how the miracle is worked, as described by a naval officer:

"Remember that, if you make a man comfortable and happy, you are going t6 get out of him all that is in him, and that there are ways of handling men so that you can get an immense amount of knowledge into them without their realizing any effort on their part."

And the United States is the only government on earth that has made the military drills used in training men for the navy "play" for its boys.

GERMAN PRISONERS

FOUR types of German prisoners: in the upper left-hand corner, a Viking, with fine, intelligent, fierce eyes; beside him a philosopher and a scholar, tragic and broken by the war; the men below—perhaps they were delicatessen-store keepers.

Alan Seeger, who loved France more than anything else, believed that French soldiers are nobler men than the Germans:

"He is a better man, man for man, than the German. What a contrast with the Germans, on whose faces was nothing but terror and despair. It is inconceivable that a Frenchman, forced to yield, could behave as I saw German prisoners behave—trembling, on their knees, for all the world like criminals at length overpowered and brought to justice. Such men have to be driven to the assault, or intoxicated."

MORE BOYS THAN GIRLS BORN IN EUROPE

NATURE is one of those unpleasant but dependable old ladies. She may not be generous, but she is at least just. While science is busy destroying men in the Great War, Nature rises to the emergency and increases her annual output of boys.

"The war has brought about an increase in the number of boy babies born as compared with the number of girls," writes Gilbert V. Seldes of London to the Philadelphia Public Ledger:

"In the first full year of the war, 415,000 fathers were made proud by the announcement that 'It's a boy.' Only 400,000 girl babies arrived. That is, for every 1000 girls, 1040 boys were born. In 1916, when every birth was entirely under war conditions, there were from 1045 to 1051 boys to every 1000 girls. The general average for this year is 1047 boys to every 1000 girls. It is the highest recorded in the last fifty years of English history.

"The peculiar thing about these statistics is that they support a popular superstition. Scientists have scoffed at it. They have asked for definite figures, and no figures were to be had. And now comes the most careful set of figures in the world to confound them. Sir Bernard Mallet, registrar-general of vital statistics, has recognized the glad tidings in his official report. The silly old superstition is apparently right."

ARE THE NEWSPAPERS SPORT-MAD?

WHY is it that our newspapers do not give as much reading space to business and to bargain sales as they do to ball-players—especially since there is business to be gained through the use of newspaper columns for these purposes? Says a writer in Commerce and Finance:

"Nothing in newspaper making is more remarkable than the slavishness of the newspapers to 'sport.' A plug-ugly who poses as a boxer gets more attention than the greatest painter, sculptor, banker, preacher, poet, economist. Touts and jockeys, pitchers, catchers, infielders, outfielders, and coaches have their doings chronicled with far greater elaboration than the Schwabs, Garys, Fords, Baruchs, etc., of the world of industry.

"We have heard many wails about shortage of paper and high prices of paper; yet there scarcely is a metropolitan daily of large circulation that has not given a minimum of one page of space to baseball, prize-fighting, and racing gossip, winter and summer, spring and fall. All through the winter the newspapers print a mass of stuff about ball-players. Most of it is slush. They get practically no advertising to 1000 lines of pure reading matter. There is no money in newspaper circulation. Why, then, do the newspapers give so much free advertising?

"If you tell the average editor that every woman is interested in bargain sales, and that ten, times—possibly fifty times—as many women go to the department-stores as there are men who go to prize-fights, baseball games, and horse races combined, he will tell you that it is so, but the conditions are different.

"They are not, except as the newspapers have made them. If the newspapers throw their columns wide open to baseball, they should throw them wide open to business. If they make business pay for publicity, they should make baseball, prize-fights, and racing pay for publicity."

HOW TO GIVE A PRESENT TO THE WAR DEPARTMENT

PERHAPS, after laboring day and night for weeks to find some means of ending the reign of the submarine, you failed even to receive a polite acknowledgment. Well, there's a reason, according to H. Gernsback, editor of the Electrical Experimenter.

"I receive from twenty to thirty letters a day," writes Mr. Gernsback, "to be transmitted to the government if, in my estimation, the device is practical. And not two of these ideas are submitted in a presentable or even an intelligent manner.

"If you have an idea that you think is worthy, this is the way—the only way—to proceed: First, you should take your plan to a trusted friend who is versed in mechanics or electricity. Invite criticism.

"If the expert advice convinces you that you really have a worthy device, have some one typewrite your idea in a neat and clear manner, and make it short. Don't attempt to make your own drawing, unless you are thoroughly familiar with drafting instruments. Find a draftsman who will make a creditable drawing in China ink upon a bristol board. Then sign your name and address to both description and drawing, and mail flat.

"Last but not least, don't worry our officials with torpedo or submarine catchers which depend upon magnets. The majority of ideas submitted are based upon this popular delusion. Here are the facts: if you had an electro-magnet that would attract one million pounds (no such animal was ever built), a steel torpedo rushing by it at a distance of twenty feet would not be deviated one inch from its course. For the largest electro-magnet exerts practically no tangible force a few feet away from its poles."

SIDELIGHTS ON THE FOOD PROBLEM

From Punch

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IF ONE COULD WALK ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

THE safest way, this year, to cross the ocean almost might seem to be to walk. Dr. Arthur Everett Shipley, in his Studies of Insect Life (Dutton), gives a chapter on what sort of a stroll to expect if we should set out bravely from the coast of Spain. At first we should progress along a shallow incline, passing through a region "peopled" with sea-anemones, polychromatic worms, limpets, mussels, periwinkles, dog-whelks, starfish, sea-urchins, and smail crustacea, certain inshore fishes and certain seaweeds. Proceeding ever west toward the depths of the Atlantic, we should soon lose sight of the sea-weeds, and the nature of the invertebrate fauna and the fish, would change. The sea floor would cease to be rocky, gravelly, or stony, and change into soft muds or oozes of various colors. Beyond this shelf lies the Continental Slope, something of a gentle mountain-side, but sometimes something of a precipice, which descends smoothly or in terraces until the depths of the Atlantic at about 2000 fathoms are reached. We are now at the bottom of the deep sea—a monotonous flat, featureless, grayish buff expanse of uniform scenery, stretching for 2000 miles. There are pockets in the ocean, approximating to the height of the highest mountain of land. The greatest depth yet recorded is 5348 fathoms.

The pressure under which animals live on the Continental Slope is enormous. At the surface of the ocean it is fifteen pounds per square inch. At 3000 fathoms it is three and a half tons. The bottom of the sea is added to by all sorts of mud carried from the land by rivers and winds; broken off ends of glaciers—icebergs carrying with them chunks of rocks—contribute larger particles. Pumice stone of various kinds plays, at any rate in certain parts of the ocean, a conspicuous role in the bottom deposits. The most bulky and widely distributed materials that drop down from above are skeletons or shells of innumerable organisms which live on the surface or a little below the surface of the ocean. Calcareous algæ, corals, mollusks, crustacea, skeletons of fishes and of seals and whales, are perpetually falling on to the ocean bed.

At the bottom of the Atlantic a darkness prevails which would make the blackest night on land seem comparatively twilight. The only light is due to the phosphorescence of certain of the deep-sea organisms. At times in the bottom of the sea we should see a blurred glare at ourfeet, and a fish would pass, gleaming from prow to stern with a row of lights like a miniature liner with all her port-holes ablaze.

The bottom of the sea is fairly well populated. Animals with legs and tentacles have in the depths developed longer legs and longer tentacles. Many have become sightless, while others develop more efficient eyes, standing out in their heads like binoculars, or borne on the end of stalks.

ARMY MEDICAL CORPS AS A CAREER

A CAREER in Army Medical Corps has advantages little known to the public. A medical officer is not only a physician, the Canadian Journal of Medicine and Surgery quotes a writer from Washington, D. C. He is also a soldier. He is an administrator and a sanitarian.

"The army medical officer is a specialist even when a student candidate in the Army Medical School; and later, after qualifying, he is encouraged to specialize still further. The successful candidate is commissioned as first lieutenant in the reserve corps. He is assigned to post or field duty, and later takes his tour of travel, either in Alaska or the Philippines for two years, or in the Canal Zone, Hawaiian Islands, or Porto Rico for three years.

"The routine duties here are the same as those at home, but each officer is expected, as far as he can, to take up the study of the peculiar disease of the country. Opportunity for travel to near-by countries is allowed, and everything that can be done by the medical department to aid the worker is given. Leave-for study is granted when possible, and, prior to promotion, captains .are assigned .for one year to medical centers for the 'purpose of study and research."

If a lieutenant or a captain fail, he is honorably discharged with one year's pay. Pay ranges from $2000 a year for a first lieutenant to $5000 a year for a full colonel.

There are also allowances for quarters, fuel, and light. Retirement is provided for, in case of disability or age, at three quarters pay.

TEACHING FRENCH CHILDREN PATRIOTISM

"THERE are people," says a French schoolmaster, "who say, 'One does not learn to love one's country.' They deceive themselves; one learns to love one's country as one learns anything else." It is in France that children are taught to love, their country, just as they are taught arithmetic and spelling.

"Into the heart of the little boy sitting on the bench of the village school is instilled the ideal of defending his country as he would his family, as he would his mother," writes Jonathan French Scott in Patriots in the Making (D. Appleton & Company). "But it is not for war's sake that these writers teach. They do not attempt to attract the support of youth to the policy of conquest by veiling in a mist of glory the miseries and horrors of battle. Of .this sort of patriotism they have had their fill before 1870." The children are warned against glorifying the aggressions of Napoleon against Europe, of Louis XIV against Holland.

"However painful the sacrifice may be, young people, it is necessary to denounce this war-loving spirit. France is now at an age when the serious work of the brain is being substituted for violent action. Let the war-loving spirit yield to the military spirit.

"The military spirit is that of a people resolved not to make any attempt against the independence of its neighbors."

The author has little hope of seeing the day when war will be regarded as butchery. So French school boys are prepared.

"In war, courage and steadiness are necessary every minute. To march in weather icy cold or burning hot, often with wounded feet, to lie on the damp earth, to suffer thirst and hunger: all this must be endured gaily. Those who complain are bad comrades, for discouragement is contagious.

"In the day of battle, the terrible roar of the cannon makes the heart beat and brings the cold sweat; . . . but the brave quickly recover their coldness. They save their cartridges. If possessed of a hundred riflemen perfectly calm, a regiment would be invincible. A story is told of a battle in 1881 where it took 41 cannon shots and 33,000 rifle shots to kill seventy Arabs. In Afghanistan, the English at 300 meters fired 50,000 times, and killed twenty-five enemies! Twelve calm men who aim tranquilly are worth a regiment of fools."

Thus, from very early years, the French lad is taught the meaning of courage and coolness.

LETTERS OF ALAN SEEGER

IN the second month of the war Alan Seeger joined the Foreign Legion, and fought with the French armies for nearly two years. In the charge on Belloyen-Santerre, the Legion was assailed on its flank by German guns. Almost the entire battalion was mowed down. Alan Seeger, mortally wounded, shot himself. Whether he killed himself because he knew he had only a few hours to live, or because he knew the Germans always kill the soldiers in the Foreign Legion when they capture them, nobody knows.

Here are a few extracts from Letters and Diary of Alan Seeger (Charles Scribner's Sons):

"We went out, fifteen men, a few nights ago, to reconnoiter a new ditch that had appeared on the hillside.

"The night was warm and windless. There were fruit trees all about this part of the hillside. They were clouded with bloom, reminding one of Japanese prints. But another odor, as we advanced, mingled with that of the blossoms—an odor that is becoming more and more intense as the warm weather increases. Among the breaths of April, fragrant of love and life, it intrudes, the sickening antithesis,—pungent, penetrating, exciting to madness and ferocity, as the other to tenderness and desire, the odor of carrion and death.

"We had not gone fifty steps when they began to appear, these disturbing relics of the great battle that terminated September last. From that day, not a living soul had been in this area in daylight.

"Single or in heaps, Frenchmen and Germans alike, they lie as they fell seven months ago, some shielding their heads from the hail of shrapnel, many with the little 'first aid' package of bandages in their hands with which they have tried to stanch their wounds.

"The sight is one which may well be unnerving the first time, but one soon gets used to it, and comes to look upon these images of death with no more emotion than on the empty cartridge-cases around them."

NO MORE WOODEN CARS BEING BUILT

HAVEN'T you felt much safer as you traveled about the country in ordinary trains in the last year or so? And haven't you noticed the decreased number of wrecks on the best railroads? A writer in the Railway Age Gazette explains that the remarkable improvement in providing safe accommodations for travelers is due to the use of steel cars for passenger trains.

"The recommendation of the Interstate Commerce Commission, 'that the use of steel cars in the passenger train service be required,' seems in a fair way toward being carried out without any further effort on the part of the Commission. A bulletin recently issued by the special committee on Relations of Railway Operation to Legislation shows that only three wooden cars for passenger train service were built in 1916, and only ten wooden cars for passenger train service were under construction on January 1, 1917.

"The building of wooden passenger train cars has practically ceased. Those now in service are being retired at the rate of about 2000 a year. Nearly 9000 have been retired since January 1, 1912, and 2213 were retired during the calendar year 1916. This showing is of special interest, since the substitution of steel cars for wooden cars is a measure of safety rather than a profitable undertaking. The first cost of the steel car is higher, and it is probable that the cost of maintenance is higher."

The Abandoned Room

By WADSWORTH CAMP

Illustrations by Robert McCaig

(Continued)

THE odd, mournful crying lost itself in the wind.

"What was that?" said the coroner. "I didn't believe there could be a woman around here."

The district attorney looked at Bobby and Graham.

"That's the voice you heard from the house?"

Graham nodded.

"Perhaps not so far away."

"Only a madwoman would wander through the woods, crying like that, unless there was something behind it. This man Paredes has left the house and come through here. I'd guess it was a signal."

"Graham and I had thought of that," Bobby said.

"Howells was a sharp one," Robinson mused, "but he must have gone wrong on this fellow. He 'phoned me the man knew nothing."

"Howells," Graham said, "misjudged the case from the start. He wasn't to blame, but his mistake cost him his life."

Robinson did not answer. It was clearly Paredes who, at the moment, filled the district attorney's mind.

"Go after him," he said shortly to Rawlins. "If you can get away with it, bring him back, and whoever you find with him."

Rawlins hesitated.

"I'm no coward; but, after what happened to Howells, I don't want to walk into an ambush. It would be safer not to try to run him down alone."

"All right," Robinson agreed. "I don't care to leave the Cedars for the present; perhaps Mr. Graham—"

But Graham wasn't enthusiastic. Bobby knew that he was not afraid. Graham, he supposed, wanted to stay near Katherine.

"I'll go, if you like," said Dr. Groom.

And Bobby, mastering an uncomfortable pang of jealousy, offered to go too.

"All right," Robinson said. "Go with 'em, if you want, Mr. Blackburn."

The others turned toward the house. The three men faced the entrance of the path alone.

"No more loud talk now," the detective warned. "If he went on tiptoe, so can we."

EVEN with this company, Bobby shrank from the dark and restless forest. From time to time the detective stooped close to the ground, shaded his lamp with his hand, and pressed the control. Always footprints indicated the presence of Paredes ahead of them. The underbrush grew thicker.

They slipped to the open space near the lake. The moon barely distinguished for them the flat, melancholy stretch of water. They listened breathlessly. There was no sound. Bobby again had the feeling of being watched. He tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the darkness across the lake, where he had fancied the woman skulking. But the detective's keen senses were satisfied.

"Dollars to doughnuts, they're not here. They've probably gone on. I'll have to take a chance and show the light again."

Fresh footprints were revealed in the narrow circle of illumination. They made a straight line to the water's edge.

Rawlins exclaimed:

"He stepped into the lake! How deep is it?"

"It's deep enough in the center," Bobby answered.

"Shallow around the edges?"

"Yes."

"Then he knew we were after him," Groom said.

Rawlins nodded, and ran his light along the shore. A few yards to the right, a ledge of smooth rock stretched from the water to a grove of pine trees. The detective rose and turned off his light. "He's blocked us," he said. "He knew he wouldn't leave his marks on the rocks or the pine needles. No way to guess his direction now."

Dr. Groom cleared his throat. In a hesitant manner, he told of the queer light in the deserted house.

"I was thinking," he explained, "that Paredes alone saw the light give out. It was his suggestion that he go to the front of the house to investigate. This path might be used as a short cut to the deserted house. The rendezvous may have been there."

"How far is it?" asked Rawlins.

"Not much more than a mile."

"Then we'll go," the detective decided.

WITH Groom in the lead, they struck off through the woods. Bobby, who walked last, noticed the faint light of dawn behind the trees in the east.

Suddenly he paused and stood quite still. He felt an overwhelming impulse to call out to the others, to tell them what lie had seen. For—there was no question—he had accomplished the task that had seemed so hopeless yesterday. He had found the spot where his consciousness had come back, momentarily, the night of his grandfather's death, to record a wet moon, trees straining in the wind like puny men, and a figure

in a mask which he had called his conscience.

And, as he gazed, his hope became an unforeseen disappointment; for that figure, on the discovery of whose identity he had built so vital a hope, turned out to be merely the trunk of a tree shattered by some violent storm. The dead leaves at the top were like a cloth across a face. There had been no conspiracy against him. Paredes was innocent, as far as that was concerned. Bobby had wandered about the Cedars alone.

Rawlins turned back suspiciously, asking why he loitered. Bobby continued almost indifferently.

As they crept up to the deserted house, everything looked as Bobby remembered it. At the front there was no decayed wood or vegetation to strengthen the doctor's theory of a phosphorous emanation.

The tangle of footprints near the rear door was confusing, and the three men were some time examining them. There could be no doubt that Paredes had been there recently; for that matter, he might still be in the house. But inside they found nothing except burnt-out matches strewn across the floor, left from their earlier search. The fugitive had evidently left more carefully than he had come.

"I guess he knew what the light meant," the detective said, "as well as he did that queer calling. It complicates matters that I can't find a woman's footprints around here. Let's get back and see what the district attorney makes of it."

As they returned along the road in the growing light, the detective talked almost as much to Bobby as to the doctor. It was evident that his suspicions had veered sharply toward Paredes.

"He's shown us that he knows something," he declared. "I don't say how much, because I can't get a motive to make it worth his while to commit such crimes."

He smiled blandly at Bobby.

"While, in your case, there's a motive at least—the money."

The sun was up when they reached the Cedars. Katherine had gone to her room. The coroner had left. Robinson and Graham had built a fresh fire in the hall, and sat there, talking.

"Where you been?" Robinson demanded. "We'd about decided the spooks had done for you."

The detective described their failure. The district attorney listened with a frown. At the end, he arose and, without saying anything, walked to the telephone. When he returned he appeared better satisfied.

"Mr. Paredes," he said, "will have to be a slick article to make a clean getaway. And I'm bringing another man to keep reporters out. I don't want that foreigner reading in the papers what's going on here. I'd give my job to have him in that chair for five minutes now."

Graham cleared his throat:

"I scarcely know how to suggest this, since it is clear that you have Mr. Blackburn under close observation. But he has a fair idea of Paredes' habits, his haunts and his friends in New York. He might be able to learn things that the police couldn't. I've one or two matters to take me to town. I would make myself personally responsible for his return—"

The district attorney interrupted:

"I see what you mean. Wait a minute."

He clasped his hands and rolled his fat thumbs one around the other. The little eyes, surrounded by puffy flesh, became enigmatic. All at once he glanced up, with a genial smile.

"Why not? I haven't said anything about holding Mr. Blackburn as more than a witness."

His tone chilled Bobby as thoroughly as a direct accusation would have done.

"And," Robinson went on, "the sooner you go, the better. The sooner you get back, the better."

Graham was visibly puzzled by this prompt acquiescence. He started for the stairs; but the district attorney waved him aside.

"Coats and hats are downstairs. No need wasting time."

Graham turned to Dr. Groom.

"You'll tell Miss Perrine, Doctor."

The doctor showed that he understood the warning Graham wished to convey.

The district attorney walked to the stable to see them off. Graham gestured angrily as they drove away.

"It's plain as the nose on your face. I was too anxious to test their attitude toward you, Bobby. He jumped at the chance to run us out of the house. He'll have several hours in which to turn the place upside down, to give. Katherine the third degree. And we can't go back."

"Why should he give me a chance to slip away?" Bobby asked.

But before long he realized that Robinson was taking no chances. At the junction of the road from Smithtown, a car picked them up, and clung to their heels all the way to the city.

"Rawlins must have telephoned," Graham said, "while we went to the stable. They're still playing Howells' game."

HE drove straight to Bobby's apartment. The elevator-man verified their suspicions. Robinson had telephoned the New York police to make a search. A familiar type of metropolitan detective met them in the hall outside Bobby's door.

"I'm through, gentlemen," he greeted them impudently.

Graham faced him in a burst of temper:

"The city may have to pay for this outrage."

The man grinned.

"I should get gray hairs about that!"

He went downstairs. They entered the apartment, to find confusion in each room. Bureau drawers had been turned upside down. The desk had been examined with a reckless thoroughness.

Graham was frankly worried.

"I wonder if he found anything. If he did, you won't get out of town."

In the lower hall the elevator-man handed Bobby the mail that had come since the night of his grandfather's murder. In the car again, he glanced over the envelops. He tore one open with a surprised haste.

"This is Maria's handwriting," he told Graham.

He read the hastily scrawled note aloud in a tone that failed toward the end.

Dear Bobby [it ran]: You must not, as you say, think me a bad sport. You were very wicked last night. Maybe you were so because of too many of those naughty little cocktails. Why should you threaten poor Maria? And you boasted you were going out to the Cedars to kill your grandfather because you didn't like him any more. So I told Carlos to take you home. I was afraid of a scene in public. Come around. Have tea with me. Tell me you forgive me. Tell me what was the matter with you.

"She must have written that yesterday morning," Bobby muttered. "Good Lord, Hartley! Then it was in my mind!"

"Unless that letter's a plant," Graham said. "Yet how could she know there'd be a search? Why shouldn't she have addressed it to the Cedars, where there was a fair chance of its being opened and read

Continued on page 15

UNHAPPY AS A QUEEN

PLEASURES WE CAN'T ESCAPE

---

UNKNOWN—BUT EVERY ONE A HERO

—Continued from page 10

by the police? Why hasn't my man made any report on her? We've a number of questions to ask Maria."

But word came down from the dancer's apartment that Maria was not at home.

"When did she go out?" Graham asked the hall man.

"Not since I came on duty at six o'clock."

Graham slipped a bill in the man's hand.

"We've an important message for her; we'd better leave it with the maid."

When they were alone in the upper hall, he explained his purpose to Bobby:

"We must know whether she's actually here. If she isn't—if she hasn't been back for the last twenty-four hours—don't you see? It was yesterday afternoon you thought you saw a woman at the lake; and last night the woman crying—"

"That's going pretty far, Hartley."

"It's a chance."

A MAID opened the door. She studied them with frank disappointment.

"I thought—" she began.

"That your mistress was coming back?" Graham flashed.

There was no concealment in the girl's manner.

"You remember me?" Bobby asked.

"Yes. You have been here; you are a friend of mademoiselle's. You can, perhaps, tell me where she is."

Bobby shook his head. The girl spread her hands, and burst out excitedly:

"What am I to do? I have telephoned the theater. There was no one there who knew anything at all, except that mademoiselle had not appeared last night."

Graham glanced at Bobby.

"When," he asked the girl, "did you see her last?"

"It was before luncheon yesterday."

"Did she leave no instructions? Didn't she say when she would be back?"

The girl nodded.

"That's what worries me, for she said she would be back after the performance last night."

"She left no instructions?"

"Only that, if any one called or telephoned, I was to make no appointments. What am I to do?"

"For the present, I advise you to do nothing," Graham said. "You can leave all that to her managers. I am going to see them now. I will tell them what you have said."

The girl's eyes moistened.

"Thank you, sir. I have been at wits' end."

Apparently she played no part to confuse the dancer's friends.

On the way to the managers' office, with the trailing car behind them, Graham reasoned excitedly:

"For the first time, we seem to be actually on the track. Here's a tangible clue that may lead to the heart of the case. Maria pulled the wool over the maid's eyes, too. She didn't want her to know her plans; but her instructions show that she had no intention of returning last night. She probably made a bee-line for the Cedars. It was probably she you saw at the lake, probably she who cried last night. If only she hadn't written that note!"

At the theater, they found a man in shirt-sleeves pacing, with an air of panic, a blatantly furnished office.

"Well!" he burst out, as they entered. "My secretary tells me you've come about this temperamental Carmen of mine. Tell me where she is. Quick!"

"Then she has definitely disappeared?" Graham said.

"Disappeared! Why did I come down at this ungodly hour, except on the chance of getting some word? She didn't even telephone last night. I had to show myself in front of the curtain and give them a spiel about a sudden indisposition. And believe me, gentlemen, audiences ain't what they used to be. Did those ginks sit back and take the show for what it was worth? Not by a darn sight. Flocked to the box-office and howled for their money back. If she doesn't appear to-night, I might as well close the house. I'll be ruined!"

"Unless," Graham suggested, "you get your press agent to make capital out of her absence. The papers would publish her picture, and thousands of people would look her up for you."

The manager ceased his perplexed massage of his forehead. He shook hands genially.

"I'd thought of that, with some frills. 'Has beautiful dancer met foul play? Millions in jewels on her person when last seen.' Old stuff, but they still rise to it."

"THAT will help," Graham said to Bobby, when they were in the car again. "The reporters will find Maria quicker than any detective. My man evidently fell down because she had gone before I got him on the case."

At his office they learned that was the fact. The detective had been able to get no clue as to the dancer's whereabouts.

Always followed by the car from Smithtown, they went to the hotel where Paredes had lived—to a number of his haunts. Bobby talked with men who knew him, but learned nothing. Paredes' friends had had no word since the man's departure for the Cedars the day before. So they turned their backs on the city, elated by the significance of Maria's absence, yet worried by the search and the watchful car which never lost sight of them. When they were in the country, Graham sighed his relief.

"You haven't been stopped. Therefore nothing was found at your apartment. But, if that wasn't planted, why should Maria have sent an incriminating note there?"

"Unless," Bobby answered, "she told the truth. Unless she was sincere when she mailed it. Unless she learned something important between the time she wrote it and her disappearance from her home."

"Frankly, Bobby," Graham said, "the note and the circumstances under which it came to you are as damaging as the footprints and the handkerchief; but it doesn't tell us how any human being could have entered that room to commit the murders and disturb the bodies. At least, we've got one concrete fact, and I'm going to work on that. And I'm going to try to find out what your grandfather was afraid of the night of his murder."

After a time he glanced up.

"You've known Paredes for a long

---

time, Bobby, but I don't think you've ever told me how you met him."

"A couple years ago, I should think," Bobby answered. "Somebody brought him to the club—I've forgotten who. Carlos was working for a big Panama importing firm. He was trying to interest this chap in the New York end. I saw him off and on after that, and got to like him for his quiet manner and a queer, dry humor he had in those days. Two or three months ago he—he seemed to fit into my humor, and we became pretty chummy, as you know. Even after last night, I hate to believe he's my enemy."

"He's your enemy," Graham answered, "and last night's the weak joint in his armor. I wonder if Robinson didn't scare him away by threatening to question him? Paredes isn't connected with that company now, is he? I gather he has no regular position."

"No; he's picked up one or two temporary things with the fruit companies. More than his running away, the thing that worries me about Carlos is his ridiculous suspicion of Katherine."

He told Graham in detail of that conversation. Graham frowned, and opened the throttle wider.

As they hurried up to the house, Bobby saw Katherine at her window, doubtless attracted by the sounds of their arrival. Her face brightened, but she raised her arms in a gesture suggestive of despair.

"Does she mean that the evidence has been found?" Bobby asked.

"More likely Robinson has worried the life out of her since we've been gone. I oughtn't to have left her. I set the trap myself."

WHEN they were in the house, their curiosity was lost in a vast surprise. The hall was empty, but they heard voices in the library. They hurried across the dining-room, pausing in the doorway, staring with unbelieving eyes at a picture they had least expected to see.

Paredes lounged on the divan, smoking with easy indifference. His clothing and his shoes were spotless. He had shaved, and his beard had been freshly trimmed. Rawlins and the district attorney stood in front of the fireplace, studying him with perplexed eyes. The persistence of their regard even after Bobby's entrance suggested that the evidence remained secreted, that the officers were scarcely interested in his return.

"Carlos! What the deuce are you doing here?" Bobby cried.

The Panamanian expelled a cloud of smoke. He smiled.

"Resting after a fatiguing walk."

"Where did you come from? What were you up to last night?"

There was no accounting for Paredes' daring, he told himself—no accounting for his easy gesture now, as he drew again at his cigarette and tossed it in the fireplace.

"These gentlemen," he said, "have been asking just that question. I'm honored. I had no idea my movements were of such interest. I've told them that I took a stroll. The night was over; there was no point in going to bed, and all day I had been without exercise."

"Yet," Graham said harshly, "you have had practically no sleep since you came here."

Paredes nodded.

"Very distressing, isn't it?"

"Maybe," Rawlins sneered, "you'll tell us why you went on tiptoe. And I suppose you didn't hear a woman crying in the woods."

"That's just it," Paredes answered. "I did hear something like that, and it occurred to me to follow such a curious sound. So I went—on tiptoe, as you call it."

"Why," Robinson shouted angrily, "you walked in the lake to hide your tracks!"

Paredes smiled.

"It was very dark. That was chance. Quite silly of me. My feet got wet."

"I gather," Rawlins said, "it was

chance that took you to the deserted house."

Paredes shook his head.

"Don't you think I was as much puzzled as the rest of you by that strange disappearing light? It was as good a place to walk as any."

"Where have you been since?" Graham asked.

"When I had got there, I was tired," Paredes answered. "Since it wasn't far to the station, I thought I'd go on into Smithtown and have a bath and rest. But, I assure you, I've trudged back from the station just now."

"What hotel did you go to in Smithtown?"

"It's called the 'New.' Nothing could be farther from the fact."

"Shall I see if that's straight, sir?"

The district attorney agreed, and Rawlins left the room. Paredes laughed.

"How interesting! I'm under suspicion. It would be something, wouldn't it, to commit crimes with the devilish ingenuity of these? No, no, Mr. District Attorney. Look to the ghosts. They alone are sufficiently clever. But I might say, since you take this attitude, that I don't care to answer any more questions until you discover something that might give you the right to ask them."

He lay back on the divan, languidly lighting another cigarette. Graham beckoned Robinson. Bobby followed them out, suspecting Graham's purpose, unwilling that action should be taken too hastily against the Panamanian.

AS he joined the others, Graham, with an aggressive air, was demanding the district attorney's intentions.

"If he could elude you so easily last night, it's common sense to put him where you can find him in case of need. He's given you excuse enough."

"The man's got me guessing," Robinson mused, "but there are other elements."

"What's happened since we left?" Graham asked quickly. "Have you got any trace of Howells' evidence?"

Robinson smiled enigmatically, but his failure was apparent.

"I'm like Howells," he said. "I'd risk nearly anything myself to learn how the room was entered, how the crimes were committed, how those poor devils were made to alter their positions."

He stepped to the front door, opened it, and looked around the court.

"Paredes knows something," he mused. "Maybe you're right, Mr. Graham; but I wonder if I oughtn't to go farther and take you all."

HE led the way back to the library. Paredes was no longer in the room. Bobby was about to speak; but Robinson shook his head angrily, raising his hand in a gesture of warning. All three strained forward, listening; and Bobby caught the sound that had arrested the others—a stealthy scraping that would have been inaudible except through such a brooding silence as pervaded the old house. It came from behind the closed door of the private staircase.

"We've got him," Graham whispered.

Robinson's bulky figure moved cautiously toward the door. He grasped the knob, swung the door open, and stepped back, smiling his satisfaction.

Half way down the staircase, Paredes leaned against the wall, one foot raised and outstretched, as if an infinitely quiet descent had been interrupted. The exposure had been too sudden. His face failed to hide its discomfiture. His laugh rang false.

"Hello!"

"I'm afraid we've caught you, Paredes," Graham said; and triumph blazed now in his voice.

What Paredes did then was more startling, more out of key, than any of his recent actions. He came precipitately down. His eyes were dangerous.

As Bobby watched the face whose quiet had at last been tempestuously destroyed, he felt that the man was capable of anything, under sufficient provocation.

"Got me for what?" he snarled.

"Tell us why you were sneaking up there!"

Paredes straightened. He shrugged his shoulders. With an admirable effort of the will, he smoothed the rage from his face; but, for, Bobby, the satanic suggestion lingered.

"Why do, you suppose I'm here?" he said in a restrained voice that scarcely rose above a whisper. "To help Bobby. I was simply looking around for Bobby's sake."

That angered Bobby. He wanted to cry out against the supposed friend who had at last shown his teeth.

"That," Graham laughed, "is why you sneaked, why you didn't make any noise, why you lost your temper when we caught you at it? What about it, Mr. District Attorney?"

Robinson stepped forward. "Nothing else to do, Mr. Graham. He's too slippery. I'll put him in a safe place."

"You mean," Paredes cried, "that you'll arrest me?"

"You've guessed it. I'll lock you up as a material witness."

Paredes swung on Bobby.

"You'll permit this, Bobby?"

Bobby flushed.

"Why have you stayed? What were you doing up there? Answer those questions. Tell me what you want."

Paredes turned away. He took a cigarette from his pocket and lighted it. His fingers were not steady. For the first time, it became evident to Bobby, Paredes was afraid.

Continued on page 22

Helping Your Boy to Find His Place

By CAROLYN SHERWIN BAILEY

THERE had been no one to help Terrence get a job. He had answered an advertisement for call boy in a broker's office in Wall Street, and his honest eyes and the need of him got him the place. But his days there had been little tastes of purgatory. The smooth system frightened him; it was too smooth. His hands were too big to hold the letters. He hadn't been able to sharpen a pencil without crushing the lead to powder. He had tried to fit into the quiet routine that even he knew to be surcharged with the greatest power in the world; but it was like trying to run an engine without tracks.

The day of his wreck was like all the others.

An impatient ring brought Terrence to his feet and sent him slouching across the polished floor of the outer office. One of the brokers wanted him, and in a hurry. He caught his feet in a rug, stumbled, then remembered what was likely to be called for—the pile of mail he had been clumsily sorting. He went back for it, and tried to gather the letters and papers in his big hands. Half of them dropped. Another ring, a buzzing snarl this time, warned him as he clawed the scattered, slippery envelops. He was almost six feet tall, and giant broad in his chest and shoulders; but his heart thumped like a drum as he crossed the threshold of the private office and laid the disordered mail on his employer's neat desk.

An impatient ring brought Terrence to his feet and sent him slouching across the polished floor of the outer office. One of the brokers wanted him, and in a hurry. He caught his feet in a rug, stumbled, then remembered what was likely to be called for—the pile of mail he had been clumsily sorting. He went back for it, and tried to gather the letters and papers in his big hands. Half of them dropped. Another ring, a buzzing snarl this time, warned him as he clawed the scattered, slippery envelops. He was almost six feet tall, and giant broad in his chest and shoulders; but his heart thumped like a drum as he crossed the threshold of the private office and laid the disordered mail on his employer's neat desk.

The man looked at Terrence's flushed face, at the chair he had displaced in entering the room, at the mail. The latter he gathered into a basket and put into the boy's awkward hands.

"Don't you want it, sir?" Terrence stammered.

"No," the broker explained. "It happens to be Blake's mail. Send one of the other boys in with mine, and get your cap, Terrence. You haven't intelligence enough to be even a call boy."

DOWN in the street, Terrence felt dizzy as he stood at the entrance of the gigantic brokerage building, looking up and down. Unless he kept his hulking figure close to the entrance, the maelstrom of the morning Wall Street rush would engulf him. But the doorman spoke to him:

"Move on. You're blocking the door!"

As he moved, Terrence hit the crowd right and left. An unmanly mist blinded him.

Lunging east, he heard deafening repetitions of the sentences:

"You haven't intelligence enough to be a call boy."

"Move on. You're blocking the door!"

Terrence slouched over as far as the Elevated. Overhead the trains thundered by, and he looked up, every line of him straighter as he admired the network of suspended rails and the glide of the heavy cars over them. Watching, for a moment the boy forgot his trouble. Neither did he see the motor-truck heading for him as it turned a corner. Within a foot of Terrence the driver stopped it, swearing. But the boy did not hear him. His great hands clenched, aching to grip the wheel. There was a job for one, he thought—to thread the traffic of the streets with an iron monster, and drive it or stop it at will.

As the truck went on, Terrence put his hand in his pocket and touched a paper headed "Find Yourself." He had forgotten that it was there—had not opened it since it had been given to him the night before in the billiard room of the West Side Young Men's Christian Association. Leaning against a post of the Elevated, Terrence read:

"What is your present work?"

He laughed a bit at this. Then he read on:

"If you could start at once to follow just the occupation you now think you would like, what would be your choice?"

Terrence took a pencil stub from his pocket, and, holding the paper against the post, wrote engineering in answer to the last query. He put his name and address on the paper and mailed it.

The receipt of the self-analysis blank that Terrence had filled out set several men connected with the newly launched Find Yourself Campaign of the West Side Y. M. C. A. of New York City thinking. Mr. Kaiser, Secretary of the boys' work, read Terrence's replies to its queries, and learned a good deal about Terrence.

They told that the boy had not been a success in his last work, but that he was willing to try, had been honest and careful in it, although he had been discharged.

He showed a lack of education, but an interest in the big things of life. Terrence had noted on the blank, as a bright spot in his life, a hike he had once taken. He did not care for movies, but he did like baseball and swimming. He remembered having liked arithmetic in school, and was willing to go to night school. Then came the big interest—engineering.

THE next man who thought about Terrence was one of New York's most successful engineers, who believed that the development of his company to its highest degree of efficiency was dependent upon the adaptability and interest of the workmen. He wanted men at the bottom who had capacity for getting up to the top. And he liked boys. This man sent for Terrence to come and see him.

A few weeks after Terrence's discharge from the job that he never should have taken because he was not interested in it, he was at work in an automobile factory, was going to night school, and was showing the power that had been asleep in his apparently clumsy hands.

Terrence is one of more than a hundred misfits in work who have been plugged into round instead of square holes through the Find Yourself Campaign.

The West Side Y. M. C. A. of New York has an Employed Brotherhood Division. It is made up of about seventy-five boys, ranging in age from fifteen to twenty, who work for their living. Once a week they meet at the Y. M. C.A. to discuss, with the assistance of a men's committee, how to get the most out of themselves and other boy workers in the way of vocational guidance and character-building.

Frank discussion on the part of the boys, and the interest shown in them by the men who act on the committee, have uncovered a phenomenally big pile of driftwood in the timber of to-day's business structure.

Early this year Mr. Kaiser and his advisers—who include Philip Le Boutillier, Cameron Beck, Charles Starr, Harold Munson, E. G. Denison, and other prominent men in the business world—decided to put this study of misfit workers on a more analytic basis. That started the Find Yourself Campaign.

The movement is based on three principles of success in any line of business: the latent interest and capacity for specialization in a certain kind of work by the worker, providing this interest can be discovered; the possibilities for self-analysis on the part of the employed; and the desire of the employer to replace his dead material by that which is alive. Finding yourself begins for a boy in his own earnest analysis of himself. He fills in a blank that records his personal history, parentage, education, present work, number of jobs and reasons for having given them up, reading, study, bank account if any, insurance, investment, and health.

After the boy has made this analysis of himself, a personal interview is arranged for him with a man who is an example of success in the line of work in which the boy has indicated an interest. This is brought about through the voluntary cooperation of a board of about forty well known business men of New York City, who represent almost as many interests. These boys' advisers include lawyers, physicians, heads of corpora tions, engineers, railroad men, insurance men, printers, efficiency engineers, automobile salesmen, mechanics, plumbers, and carpenters. In every case, a boy has a chance to face the man he wants to be like, to shake hands with him, to talk it out, and have his career guided, if this is possible.

IT was thought at first that this radical campaign among the employed would meet with the disfavor of the employer. Would he want his shop, his factory, or his office so disrupted in a wholesale attempt at vocational guidance? A surprising fact it is that the employers of these boys welcome the Find Yourself movement. The man at the head of any industrial organization to-day finds his greatest problem to be the man problem. He has no difficulty in putting in the highest type of machine; he does experience the greatest difficulty in finding workmen who can adapt themselves to the changed conditions that surround organization and construction.

The results of this man-to-boy coöperation are almost phenomenal. In three months sixty-five boys out of a hundred were plugged into the right holes. A boy who was a born pianist was taken out of a soap factory, where he was a "scourer," and is studying music in a conservatory, doing work in the building to pay for his instruction. He was suffering an emotional death in the soap factory. Now be has a bright future in either orchestral work or music teaching.

Several boys have left work to finish their course in high school or to go to college. They come from homes of comfort, but their ambitions led them into work too soon. Interviews with the men who had made good in their several lines of interest showed them that they must have technical training. In similar cases, boys are taking night school course to help them in bettering their present positions. One boy, who thought that he wanted to be a journalist, had a talk with the editor of one of New York's big news papers. The editor explained the hard work, the long hours, the length of the newspaper man's ladder, and the boy decided that he had made a mistake.

Out of hundreds of replies received an studied by the men's committee of the New York Find Yourself Campaign, ever one has shown earnest consideration ant determination on the part of the boy t grasp his opportunity to better himself.

"The replies tell us the boy's character," Mr. Kaiser says. "To answer the questions truthfully, he must get outside of himself and study his own personality as he would that of another; whether he does this consciously or not."

My Experience in the Submarine Zone

By LOUISE BRYANT

FROM the very first, an air of tragedy hung about our ship. As we backed out into the river, the pier was black with silent people looking after us yearningly. We felt that they were afraid they would never see us again. To us the war was just then a little thing; nothing was so important as leaving America and all our most loved. The rest would follow as a matter of course.

Later we wrote letters furiously, saying all the things we forgot at the last moment. And, after they were written, we tore them up and threw the pieces into the sea.

We were a motley crew: an American millionaire and his wife, several actors and actresses, American and French, a composer, a painter, a famous cabaret dancer and his partner, a musician or two, some nurses, and about two hundred recruits for the American Ambulance.

At first everybody was hysterically gay as America sank away behind; and then a morbid, nervous atmosphere settled down over the crowd. When any one laughed, it seemed out of place. People were aloof, seemed to fear to speak to each other, as if they might tell all their secrets, as if they might confess how much they feared the sly death that lurked under the pretty blue water.

All but some of the Ambulance boys, many of them college freshmen, blissfully ignorant, who were bound on a grand lark. They sang college songs on the upper deck at night; and tried to flirt with the nurses. One of the youngest confided that he was going over because he and his fiancée wanted an excuse for her to go abroad. "We've always liked the idea of a foreign wedding," he said.

A little man who sat opposite me at table was not interested in the war at all. He was going abroad to buy lace in Italy, and bemoaned the fact that he must stay four years. He discussed the advantages of Italian filet over Irish point as if it were the most important thing in the world.

A few of them felt it. One boy with a white, tense face, who wore the Ambulance uniform, kept by himself and stared at us civilians with a resentful bitterness, as if to say: "You fools, why are you here? You didn't have to come!"

And then poor Carl Fleming, who went crazy.

Fleming had been working hard in the Boston office of the Ambulance, and the war had preyed on his mind until he saw German spies everywhere. He began, the first day, by accusing Oliver Schaff, head of the Ambulance corps, of being a German agent; and then he went around the boat discovering secret plots to blow us up, and charging us all with treason. Finally they locked him up in a room back of the guns, where at last he became violent, and jumped overboard as we came into Bordeaux harbor, being rescued with difficulty, and fighting his saviors with savage screams.

One night a little fat man came into the salon where I sat writing, sat down, and heaved an unhappy sigh.

"I can't stand this," he said. "It's too terrible, too dull. Every one is so unfriendly and cold. I've traveled all over the world, but I've never seen people like these."

"They're not cold," I said; "they're worried and sad, that's all."

"When I left New York, when I came on board, I knew I should never see home again. I didn't want to. I wanted to die!"

"And you wonder why every one is cold, when almost all these people feel just as you do!" I told him.

It seemed to comfort him enormously to know that the rest were unhappy too.

As the ship approached the dreaded submarine zone, the tension grew greater. The boats were swung over the side, and in the afternoon we held boat-drill. My life-preserver was too big, but a French dressmaker who belonged to my boat crew cut it down so that it fitted very fashionably.

Rumors ran over the boat in waves. Now it was a report that the wireless operator had word of some disastrous battle; again, that one of the stewardesses had dreamed that we were to be torpedoed at three o'clock Friday afternoon. There was no use trying to entertain. One night we had a magic-lantern show; but everybody was -so nervous that by the intermission the audience was all gone. It was beautiful, smooth, clear weather; but there was no comfort in that. All one could say was, "Nice day for submarines."

Strangely enough, it was Friday, at exactly three, when we sighted the first periscope. We were all dozing in our chairs on deck, when suddenly a woman near me said energetically, "There's a submarine! There's a submarine!"

I looked up and saw a periscope cutting the water toward the ship, like a little stick full of venomous intelligence. It was just like that. No one got any more excited than we did. The thing seemed only a hundred yards away, but as a matter of fact it was out of gunshot.

Immediately there were shouts from the bridge, bells jangling, a buzz of tense voices. The ship trembled with full speed ahead, and lurched suddenly as the helmsman threw the wheel over and we began to zigzag to foil the torpedo.

I immediately started for my cabin,

three decks down. No sooner had I arrived at my door than boom! a terrible detonation bellowed out. "Hit!" I thought, and waited for the explosion, all the while calmly putting on warm clothes and my life-preserver. But it was our own gun firing.

A child was shrilly weeping in the corridor.

A white-faced Ambulance boy caught my arm and shouted over and over: "What's the matter? What's the matter?"

I tried to tell him, but he didn't seem to hear me. I told him to get his life-preserver, and he obediently darted into his state-room.

As I came up on deck again, we fired the second shot. People were standing, each by his own life-boat, perfectly calm, watching the game. At the third shot a little yellow puff of smoke rose from the periscope, which suddenly disappeared. We thought it had been hit—and what a wild cheer went up! But in a few minutes it emerged again, this time farther away. We fired twice more, and then it vanished for good.

In the excitement there was a good deal of tragi-comedy. The cabaret dancer came on deck, clasping in his arms his little Pekinese dog—having forgotten all about saving his wife, who was in her cabin, powdering her nose! The boy who wanted a foreign wedding was leaning against the rail, very white and sick. "It's terrible to have a fixed purpose and stick to it," he said. But on the whole the passengers, especially the women, behaved with wonderful calmness.

Shortly after six o'clock, while we were all dining, the gun began firing again, and again we rushed to the boats. But no one was sure that it wasn't a barrel the lookout had seen.

Anyway, we did not go down to our state-rooms that night—nor the next; but remained in our chairs on deck, pretty sleepless, in the utter dark.

In Bordeaux harbor, next morning, we learned that a big South American steamer, which had passed us an hour before we were attacked, had been torpedoed and two hundred people drowned. She had called to us for help, but we had not dared to turn back. For now, on the sea, it is "Every one for himself, and the devil take the hindmost!"

How the Czar Was Forced into War

RUSSIA'S youth learned that the Japanese War was the blackest spot in the military history of the nation. They felt that they must wash it clean when the next occasion arose.

A military spirit haunted the young officers; the military party was its result, started first by a few whose ambitions were awakened, and who had learned that the time was past when other nations could be frightened by the acrobatic ability and the wild aspect of the Cossacks.

The military party grew and grew and became mighty. The Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievitch headed it. From Bulgaria he brought Radka Dimitrieff, a general who was his adviser in the modern training of the army. And, as no party ever was created without becoming hungry for deeds and losing its sense of proportion, it not only "prepared," but longingly and fanatically sought an opportunity for action.

Nicholas's first army act was to gather masses of soldiers at the Austrian border, apparently not for a short maneuver, but as a permanent institution. The soldiers irritated and provoked with their idle observations the Austrian soldiers, who were at the frontier in pursuance of duty.

This was in September, 1913. Critical days followed. A clash with Austro-Hungary seemed inevitable, especially in the light of the unsettled Balkan questions.

Nicholas passionately worked upon the Czar to declare war against Austria; but the Czar—thanks to the president of the ministry, Kokowzow, a peace man who had not much faith in Nicholas's organization, and to Rasputin,—stood steadfast. By special messenger the old Emperor of Austria sent a letter in his own handwriting to the Czar, imploring him to prevent war between the two nations.

Every one was convinced that the dangerous tension was past. Life went daily on its accustomed course; on the surface all seemed serene. Behind the scenes, however, feverish preparations began. Nicholas secretly worked his machinations. He paid visits to the Balkans, where his father-in-law, the King of Montenegro, inflamed his ambitions for the Russian throne. But the Russian crown was not to be gained by Nicholas even through a cleverly plotted assassination of the Czar. There were other pretenders.

The King of Montenegro suggested that the only road to an overpowering popularity for his son-in-law was to become a war hero! The secret heart's desire of the grand duke was fed by Mr. Iswolsky, the Russian ambassador in Paris. (It was the same Iswolsky about whom the representatives of other powers said that it was repugnant to sit at the same table with him.) He longed to revenge a personal matter that went back to the time when he led the foreign

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affairs in Austria. Despite his resistance and the interposed interests of Russia, Count Berchthold, the former Austrian prime minister, made a coup d'état by the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which Austria fostered for more than twenty years. Iswolsky was dismissed for the failure of his mission, and made a vow to revenge this incident.

He stirred up the fire of continuing and increasing misunderstandings between the nations when the Balkan questions were discussed in Paris, and awoke in every diplomat the unpleasant dread of a poison spider which is only waiting for the proper moment to throw the cobwebs of its miserable intrigues over Europe. And so it was. How far his personal influence went in the plot of Serajevo, history perhaps will reveal. Rubbing his hands, with a wide smile on his broad, unpleasant face, he exclaimed, when the declaration of war was made public in Paris: "That's my little war!"

Promenading in the sunshine of Bordeaux, enjoying life, he proudly entertained whoever cared to listen with a recitation of the result of his diplomatic slyness, while his brothers were slaughtered by the million for the trick he played on Austria.

The earth was prepared: the seed was planted. It was easy enough to accelerate events that would shake Austria to action; to buy subjects in Serbia, to murder the Crown Prince of Austria. The first blood was shed, and its odor was a contagion, poisoning the excited minds of the people. War was in the air; everything breathed for war. Nicholas Nicolaievitch became the hero of the hour.

He changed the whole system in one day. He, the general-in-chief of the army, commanded everything, everywhere. No longer was there the ministerial power of yesterday; the Duma's opinion no longer counted. There was only Nicholas. With him or against him? To be against him was to be summarily executed. He commanded the palace of the Czar. The Czar himself was considered only a necessary figurehead. He was locked up in the palace without being allowed to see one of his old advisers. The document, the declaration of war, lay on his desk for him to sign. In his heart's depression he stipulated with Nicholas to see Prince Scheremetzeff, his oldest and most sincere friend, after which he would sign the fateful paper.

On the morning of July 31 he sent for his old friend, the prince. The Czar's message never reached the prince: that very morning he was found dead in his bed.

The Czar was broken by this news. He saw not only his power strangled, but his own person. When the grand duke entered with the ministers and the generals of the great staff, the Czar stood erect, deadly pale, and set his name upon the death-sentence of the people for the second time during his reign. Nicholas Nicolaievitch had triumphed.

He returned to his palace and summoned the generals, and they sped in gala attire to pay their tribute to the victor to be. The entire staff waited in the imposing reception-room.

The door flew open, and the grand duke entered. He was accompanied by his private adviser, the Bulgarian general. He paused in front of the assembled staff, and said in a voice that whistled through the air like a whip:

"I merely wish to say to you that any one who steals will be hanged."

Thus he spoke, then turned and left the room, the lobster-red generals remaining behind. The audience was over. Nicholas had in his generals eighteen bitter enemies the more, who instead of being his supporters were to become his curse.

What My Father Did With His Life

FRIENDS of my father have remarked that he made a remarkable success of his short life. I know little about my father except through his achievements, for when he died I had not reached the age of understanding.

Though my father never attended school in America for even one day, though he worked at the barber's trade all his life and died at the age of, thirty-nine, he left an estate that has supported his wife for twenty-five years and educated his two children. When he was thirty-five years old, he inherited $1000. This has grown to $30,000, and is still growing slowly and surely.

My father was born in Germany. And when the shy boy of fourteen landed in London, he had little money, no trade, and could not speak one word of English. The only thing he had was opportunity. His brother—a keen business man, who liked to read and think—was the owner of a barber-shop. From his brother my father learned a trade, and by the use of his brother's library he learned to speak and write the English language.

But father was never dissatisfied with his lot, and the gifts that he had he used in his business. I have heard men say that what attracted them to my father's shop was his pleasant voice and quiet manner.

When he was twenty-one years old, father came to America. On wages of twelve dollars a week a man could not go far in starting a business even in those days. Five dollars for room and board left but seven dollars for expenses and saving. My father got the habit of keeping an account of income and expenses. Hie pleasure money went for books and theater tickets. And he was more generous than most men are to those less fortunate than himself.

When he was twenty-five he bought a half interest in a small barber-shop; the next year he bought the other half. The same year he was married. After buying the furniture, some of which was secondhand, and which he varnished and reupholstered himself, he and my mother had $300 left.

But the $300 took wings, and it built a home that has sheltered us ever since. And one day—months before mother expected it—father gave her a surprise: the receipt for the last payment on their home. For mother was the sharer of his struggles and successes. She scrubbed, sewed, cooked, and took care of two babies. Father had wished for a business and a home, and his wishes had come true. Then he wished for a building for his shop.

No one can get along without friends, is an old saying. Father could never have succeeded without them. By his thrift and his ability he won the confidence cf the community. The banker had faith in him and gave him financial support.

One day father's ship came in. It had just $1000 for him—his share of an inheritance from a brother's estate. This was the only money he did not have to work for. Father opened his eyes and looked around for a place to put it. Real estate men were looking for snaps then, just as they are now. He waited for his opportunity.

It came when the heirs to a building half a block from his shop filed a partition suit. The place would be sold at a disadvantage; $5000 would buy it. Father had his gift of $1000 and $1000 in a loan. This would hardly pay for the improvements on the run-down place. But a banker came to his aid and he assumed a debt of $5000.

When father lay upon his pillow with the death sweat upon his head, his ambition had been realized, to leave his family a means of making a living. There was a debt of $2800, but this was canceled by an insurance policy.

Now our city's population has doubled, the property value has increased six times, money has made money. And I sometimes hear mother say to young men that it is possible to succeed in life with nothing to start on but the determination to be a success.

Counting the Cost in Brain Cells

"THE human body is an electrical machine. In my opinion it is not merely like an electrical machine: it is one. The brain cells are the batteries. The nerve wires carry the electric force to all parts of the body. Impair the batteries by fatigue or worry, and the whole machine suffers. Every hour of doubt, overstrain, exhaustion, means a loss of vital energy that may never be fully regained. No man ever comes out of a hard experience unscathed."

Such are the conclusions of Dr. George W. Crile, the Cleveland physician who will be remembered as the discoverer of "shockless surgery." In recent experiments Dr. Crile has revealed some startling facts concerning the care that every man should give to his own brain.

The experiments included a critical study of the brains of animals before and after fatigue, before and after fear, before and after violent physical exertion. In every case, after the strain, many of the brain cells were found to be pale and broken, some of them being exhausted beyond all hope of recovery.

It seems that we start life with about three million brain cells. We can never add to our supply. We start out like pioneers into the wilderness, bearing all our resources with us. We may squander our possessions quickly, or we may save them and make them serve us time and time again.

A hundred brain cells may be spent, like dollars, in a single hour of exhaustion or overstimulation. Once dead, they are dead, and there can be no resurrection. So the cost of a night's dissipation or a day's overwork, says this eminent physician, must be counted in brain cells as in dollars. Just so fast as we exhaust these tiny batteries that supply the blood with electric energy, just so fast do we approach a sort of mental old age, when thoughts come slowly, actions drag, and moral convictions lose their fire and vigor.

"The effect of the emotions upon the body mechanism," says Dr. Crile, "may be compared to that produced upon the mechanism of an automobile if its engines are kept running at full speed while the machine is stationary. The whole machine is shaken and weakened, the batteries and its weakest parts being the first to become impaired and destroyed, and the length of usefulness of the automobile being correspondingly limited."

Other emotions—fear, worry, hate, passionate love, jealousy, envy, grief, disappointment, anxiety—are similar to anger in their influence upon the body. The effect is injurious in proportion to the duration and intensity of the emotion. Chronic emotional stimulation exhausts and disintegrates thousands of the tiny brain-cell batteries, and is the frequent cause of cardiovascular disease, indigestion, Graves' disease, diabetes, and even insanity.

Don't worry! Don't fear! Don't get angry! Don't overstrain! Your brain cells are your capital. You may put that capital out to interest in moderate work and healthful exercise. But never squander it in either physical or emotional "riotous living"; for brain capital is unlike any other capital, in that, once spent, it can never be replaced.

William Price.

A Couple of Home-Made Wars

IT is not only in France and on the high seas that the United States is making war. We have on hand at present two internal wars: the war against the water hyacinth, and the war with gophers.

Hyacinth plants grow with such rank luxury in some of our Southern States that navigation is completely blocked at certain seasons of the year. Also, cattle are led to an early death by this poet flower. For, while the plant has little or no food value, there is a certain relish about it, and the animals in their efforts to reach it are lured beyond their depth.

The first method used to destroy the plant was by means of powerful acids.

This proved very effective, but had the disadvantage of being deadly to the cattle as well. Last year, army engineers made use of mechanical destroyers to eradicate the hyacinths in St. John's River, Florida. As soon as a growth formed it was cut away and the tangled mass pushed into the current to float downstream.

Speaking of frightfulness—the war against gophers must not be reported to the Hague Tribunal. A regular band of gopher fighters is employed by the United States government. Their duty is to locate the runways, and to drop a piece of potato or carrot, poisoned with strychnine, where the gopher will be sure to find it. Or a hole in a fresh mound is opened, and a strong little steel trap inserted. The brave little gopher,running out to shut off the light, dashes into the trap. One man can operate a dozen traps, capturing from fifteen to twenty-five gophers a day, at an aver age of eleven cents apiece.

It's cruel business; but if the United States is to have any forests at all, trees must be planted, and protected from the gopher, which spends all its busy days eating the roots.

When the Coal Is Gone

WHAT are we going to do when the coal fields are exhausted? At the present rate of consumption the visible coal supply will last hardly more than a century, it is said; and after that, what? What will drive our steamships, run our railroad trains, light our cities, and, more important still, heat our homes and cook our food?

Water-power has been suggested, the development of the possible millions of horse-power now unused; but, even admitting the possibility of utilizing all the sources, there is still some question as to its adequacy to meet all our needs. When one considers that even in an ordinary-sized house furnace energy must be liberated by burning coal at a rate of something like twenty horse-power on cold days, the total expenditure of power for this item alone would be enormous.

The most attractive scheme for the development of power is that of utilizing in some direct way the heat from the sun. The "solar constant of radiation," so called, is defined as the amount of solar energy received a minute on a single square centimeter (about one sixth of a square inch) of surface facing the sun outside the earth's atmosphere. A great many determinations have been made of this quantity, and the best measurements indicate that it is about two calories a minute (the calory is a small unit of heat such as would warm one sixteenth of an ounce of water through one degree F.).

Rather more than a quarter of this heat is absorbed in passing through the atmosphere, even at noon and on a bright day; so that we get at the earth's surface only about one and one fourth calories to the square centimeter a minute. But this means some 10,500 calories over a square yard, and this is almost exactly the equivalent of a horse-power. On one acre this becomes 4840 horse-power, the equivalent in power of one of the largest steam engines, while a square mile could produce 3,000,000 horse-power. Of course power could be generated at this rate only in clear weather and for part of each day.

It is possible that the solution of the problem may come from the electrical side. It is a familiar fact that if a junction of two dissimilar metals, copper and iron, be heated, a feeble electrical current may be produced. The voltage given by a single junction is small; but by combining enough of them, thousands if necessary, almost any desired voltage could be obtained. The metal bars would have to be very heavy and connected so that every other junction would be exposed to the sun, the alternate ones being underneath and kept cool in some way, either by shading or by other means; for in this way only could a current be developed.

L. I. Rose.

The Abandoned Room

—Continued from page 16

Rawlins came back from the telephone. He took in the tableau.

"What's the rumpus?"

"Run this man to Smithtown," Robinson directed. "Lock him up, and tell the judge, when he's arraigned in the morning, that I want him held as a material witness."

"He was at the hotel in Smithtown, all right," Rawlins said.

He tapped Paredes' arm.

"You coming on this little joy ride like a lamb or a lion? Say, you'll find the jail about as comfortable as the New Hotel."

Paredes smiled. The evil and dangerous light died in his, eyes. He became, all at once, easy and impervious again.

"Like a lamb. How else?"

"I'm sorry, Carlos," Bobby muttered. "If you'd only say something! If you'd only explain your movements! If you'd only really help!"

Again Paredes shrugged his shoulders.

"Handcuffs?" he asked Rawlins.

Rawlins ran his hands deftly over the Panamanian's clothing.

"No armed neutrality for me," he grinned. "All right. We'll forget the bracelets, since you haven't a gun."

Puffing at his cigarette, Paredes got his coat and hat and followed the detective from the house.

ROBINSON and Graham climbed the private staircase to make another systematic search of the hall—to discover, if they could, the motive for Paredes' stealthy presence there.

Bobby accepted this opportunity to find Katherine, to learn from her, undisturbed, what had happened in the house that morning.

"Robinson questioned me for an hour," she said, "principally about the heel-mark in the court. They cling to that, because I don't think they've found anything new at the lake."

"You don't know anything about it, do you, Katherine? You weren't there? You didn't do that for me?"

"I wasn't there, Bobby. I honestly don't know any more about it than you do."

"Carlos was in the court," he mused. "Did you know they'd taken him? We found him sneaking down the private stairway."

"I am glad, Bobby. The man makes me creep, and all morning they seemed more interested in you than in him. They've rummaged every room—even mine."

She laughed feverishly.

"That's why I've been so upset. They seemed—"

She broke off. After a moment she looked him frankly in the eyes and continued:

"They seemed almost as doubtful of me as of you."

Bobby recalled Paredes' suspicion of the girl.

"It's nonsense, Katherine. And I'm to blame for that, too."

She put her finger to her lips. Her smile was wistful.

"Hush! You mustn't blame yourself. You mustn't think of that."

She touched his hand, and the wistfulness of her expression increased.

"I wish you wouldn't think of me, Bobby. It's you we must all think of."

But the sisterly anxiety of her attitude chilled him. He turned away.

"Why do you go?" she called after him.

He gestured vaguely without turning around.

HE didn't see her again until dinner-time. She was as silent then as she had been the night before when Howells had sat with them.

Robinson's mood was very different. He talked a great deal, making no effort to hide his irritation. His failure to find any clue in the private staircase after Paredes' arrest had clearly stimulated his interest in Bobby. The sharp little eyes, surrounded by puffy flesh, held a threat for him. Bobby was glad when the meal ended.

Howells' body was taken away that night. It was a relief for all of them to know that the old room was empty again.

"I dare say you won't sleep there," Graham said to Robinson.

Robinson glanced at Bobby.

"Not as things stand," he answered. "The library lounge is plenty good enough for me to-night."

Graham went upstairs with Bobby. There was no question about his purpose. He would not repeat last night's mistake.

"At least," he said, when the door was closed behind them, "I can see if you do get up and wander about in your sleep. I'd bet a good deal that you won't."

Bobby yawned.

"I ought to sleep now, if ever. I've seldom been so tired. Two such nights!"

He hesitated.

"But I am glad you're here, Hartley. I can go to sleep with a more comfortable feeling."

"Don't worry," Graham said. "You'll sleep quietly enough, and we'll all be better for a good rest."

For only a little while they talked of the mystery. While Graham regretted his failure to find any trace of Maria, their voices dwindled sleepily. Bobby recalled his last thought before losing himself last night. He tried to force from his mind now the threat in Robinson's eyes. He told himself again and again that the man wasn't actually unfriendly. Then the blackness encircled him. He slept.

ALMOST at once, it seemed to him, he was fighting away, demanding drowsily:

"What's the matter? Leave me alone."

He heard Graham, unnaturally subdued and anxious:

"What are you doing, Bobby?"

Then Bobby knew he was no longer in his bed. He was standing, instead, in a cold place; and the meaning of his position came with a rush of sick terror.

"Get hold of yourself," Graham said. "Come back."

Bobby opened his eyes. He was in the upper hall, at the head of the stairs. Unconsciously he had been about to creep quietly down, perhaps to the library. Graham had awakened him.

It seemed to offer the answer to everything. It seemed to give outline to a monstrous familiar presence that drowned his real self in the black pit while it conducted his body to the commission of unspeakable crimes.

He lurched into the bedroom, and sat shivering on the bed. Graham entered and quietly closed the door.

"What time is it?" Bobby asked hoarsely.

"Half past two. I don't think Robinson was aroused."

"What did I do?" Bobby whispered.

"Got softly out of bed and went to the hall. It was uncanny. You were like an automaton. I didn't wake you at once. You see, I—I thought you might go to the old room."

Bobby shook again. He drew a blanket about his shoulders.

"And you believed I'd show the way in and out; but the room was empty, so I was going downstairs—"

He shuddered.

"Good God! Then it's true. I did it for the money. I put Howells out to protect myself. It's true. Hartley! Tell me. Do you think it's true?"

Graham turned away.

"Don't ask me to say anything to help you just now," he answered huskily. "For after this I don't dare, Bobby. I don't dare."

To be continued next week

Why Our Millionaires Have Been Selling Bonds

By CHARLES R. BROWN

ONE development attending the entrance of the United States as a participant in the war which does not appear to have been widely appreciated is the enormous selling of gilt-edged securities by our millionaire and multi-millionaire classes—investments that have been locked up in strong boxes for years. It is a feature that has special interest for those of us who are not so fortunate as to be included in those classes. The incentive for this huge selling by the capitalists has been the opportunity to use their funds to better advantage.

What really has happened is that war taxation is in the financial markets working in favor of the smaller people. If some one should inform you that our new Liberty bonds have two different and distinct values, he would not improbably excite your skepticism. Yet such is undeniably the fact. I refer now to income values, not to prices; for the latter are a matter for Stock Exchange record. The explanation lies in the fact that incomes derived from the government's new bond issue are exempt from all taxation, municipal, State, or national, except inheritance and similar imposts. The higher a man's income, the heavier the super-taxes. Hence there is a keen inducement for rich men to transfer their funds from securities subject to the ever-increasing taxation that will be necessary to carry the war to a victorious conclusion.

Thus to the large capitalists our new national 3½ per cents yield a much more attractive return than many other securities they have been carrying for years. Conversely, these gilt-edged investments that now are being so freely released have a correspondingly greater investment value for persons of moderate means, to whom the tax exemption feature is not so important. Let us see how this interesting situation has arisen.

The new war revenue law has not, at the date of this writing, been finally enacted. But Wall Street, using the term in its broad sense, does not await such developments—it anticipates and discounts them. Men of large affairs, as soon as they began to realize how preponderating is the share of the cost of conducting the war that must be placed on their shoulders, began at once to sell securities whose incomes would be subject to super-taxation.

Estimates that were current soon after we entered the war suggested that the income taxation of some of the largest people would run as high as 40 per cent.—that is to say, 40 per cent. on such part of their incomes as exceeded, say, $500,000. The bill may change this somewhat.

Without being technical, an illustration showing how this transfer would prove attractive may be given by citing a 5 per cent. bond selling at par. Obviously, the super-tax of 40 per cent. would bring the net return to a millionaire of this 5 per cent. bond down to 3 per cent., from which further State taxes must be deducted. On the other hand, the Liberty Loan, with its net return of 3½ per cent., is a much more profitable war-time investment.

Below are presented some of the high-grade investments whose prices have been forced down by heavy selling:

                  

INVESTMENT ISSUES—BONDS			1917
	High			Low
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé. gen. 4s	97	Jan. 20		87¾	July 13
Baltimore & Ohio, refunding 5s	101½	Jan. 9		96	May 17
Central Railroad of New Jersey 5s	120½	Jan. 18		109	June 4
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, gen. 4s	97⅛	Jan. 12		89	April 18
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, gen. 4½s	105¼	Jan. 18		93½	July 20
Chicago & Northwestern, gen. 3½s	86⅜	Jan. 23		75	July 23
Delaware & Hudson, convertible 5s	106⅝	Jan. 19		95½	May 31
Louisville & Nashville, col. tr. 5s, 1931	106⅞	Jan. 31		100½	July 25
Norfolk & Western, convertible 4½s	135	Jan. 16		118½	May 10
Norfolk & Western, gen. 6s	122	Jan. 9		110	July 17
Northern Pacific, prior lien 4s	96¾	Jan. 16		86½	July 5
Pennsylvania Railroad, convertible 4½s	107¾	Jan. 13		100	June 27
Reading, gen. 4s	96⅝	Jan. 12		89½	July 5
Southern Pacific, convertible 5s	104½	Jan. 16		96¾	May 14
Union Pacific, first 4s	100	Jan. 12		91	July 9
United States Steel, sinking fund, 5s	107⅛	Jan. 16		104	June 29

                   

INVESTMENT ISSUES—SHARES			1917
	High			Low
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé	107½	Jan. 8		98½	May 9
Atlantic Coast Line	119	Jan. 4		107⅞	July 3
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul	92	Jan. 4		65½	July 5
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, pfd	125½	Jan. 29		108	July 5
Chicago & Northwestern	124½	Jan. 29		108	July 3
Chicago & Northwestern, pfd	172½	Feb. 16		144⅞	July 7
Consolidated Gas	134¾	Jan. 18		104⅜	May 10
Delaware & Hudson	151⅞	Jan. 19		106	May 4
General Electric Co	171¾	Jan. 26		149¾	July 19
Great Northern, pfd	118¼	Jan. 4		101¼	July 5
Louisville & Nashville	133¾	Jan. 4		119	May 4
New York Central	103⅝	Jan. 4		86	May 9
Norfolk & Western	138⅝	Jan. 24		116½	May 9
Pullman Palace Car	167½	Jan. 26		136	June 20
Reading	104¼	Jan. 3		83⅝	May 9
Southern Pacific	98½	Mar. 24		88¾	May 9
Union Pacific	149⅜	June 6		128⅞	May 9

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

Partial-Payment Combinations, a circular which gives definite suggestions for the purchase of time-tested stocks on the partial-payment plan, has been issued by John Muir & Co. Copies may be had on application to the main office of the firm, 61 Broadway, New York City.

Bond Messenger, an unusually interesting and "meaty" magazine, and "Systematic Saving," a timely and valuable booklet for large and small investors—both sent on request by writing Liggett & Drexel, members New York Stock Exchange, 61 Broadway, New York City. Ask for booklet E-16.

Any one interested in the security market should send to L. R. Latrobe & Co., No. 111 Broadway, New York, for their statistical books on Copper Stocks, Motor Stocks, Standard Oil Stocks, Investor's Guide (270 pages), or Weekly Market Letter. This firm will mail you any one of these books free on request. Partial-payment plan.

The Citizens Savings & Trust Co. of Cleveland, Ohio, will furnish to our readers, upon request, booklet P, which contains some very interesting information on banking by mail.

Information of value for the average investor on $100 bonds and other securities yielding 3 to 7 per cent. is supplied by Coleman & Reitze, 50 Broad Street, New York, through their weekly market letter, The Financial Review, which will be supplied if requested. Address Department E. W.

Events of the time have more significance for the investor than for the general reader' of news, for they often seriously affect financial interests. The meaning of what is happening is made clear in the Bache Review, the widely known publication, which also presents investment suggestions. Copies mailed free on application to J. S. Bache & Co., members of New York Stock Exchange, 42 Broadway, New York.

The Odd Lot Review, published every Saturday, aims to reflect in brief and comprehensive style the principal developments affecting values in standard securities. Sample copies will he sent on application to the offices of the publication, 61 Broadway, New York City.

Their booklet, "We're Right on the Ground," outlining in a comprehensive way the advantage of farm mortgages as a safe investment, won for E. J. Lander & Co., Grand Forks, North Dakota, third prize in the contest at the recent St. Louis Convention of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the world. Offered free to readers of this magazine.

The safety of the first mortgage loans of Perkins & Company, of Lawrence, Kansas, has been fully established by over 40 years of successful business. Interest paid promptly each six months. Their saving certificates. yielding 6 per cent., are convenient for small investors. Write for circular No. 721.

High-grade farm mortgages are growing more and more popular among investors. The Oklahoma Farm Mortgage Company of Oklahoma City has issued a booklet on 6 per cent. first farm mortgages in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Free copies will be furnished on request. Ask for list No. 201.