At Sixty-five She Has Just Begun to Fight

MRS. W. L. CRANE, of Los Angeles, was sixty-five. Twice she had made a comfortable fortune—enough to take care of her in her old age, if she ever grew old—and twice fire had destroyed her all.

Was she discouraged? Did she say, "Luck's against me," and fold her hands and quit? Not a bit of it. Instead, this John Paul Jones of old—no, she isn't that, and never will be—of mature women, had just begun to fight.

And she didn't try to turn back the hands of the clock of time. She was right up with the latest news of the day, and when she began all over again she decided that, since the back-to-nature movement had sent everybody camping, she would try her hazard of new fortunes as a camp-stove maker.

Our photograph shows her at work on a stove of her own invention. She cuts the tin from which it is made, drills the holes in the supports, and has worked out a novel device for bending down the edges of the tin strips which enables her to turn her product out rapidly.

Of course she is successful; courage like that always wins.

And Now—the Crewless Submarine

MINE-FIELDS operate through the fear they inspire in the breast of the mariner and of my lords of the admiralty, not through any certainty of blowing up the craft trying to get through them. Drive twenty destroyers at a German mine-field off Heligoland, and five of them would probably get through, maybe more.

Consider, then, a fleet of twenty or thirty submarines cruising along with only a slim mast showing above the water, and absolutely devoid of that human weakness, fear, directed also by men who know that if the whole fleet went up in one grand hang not a life would be lost. Not even a German mine-field would stop all of them, because no mine-field can cover all the sea.

If the invention of Robert Morton of Los Angeles works out in practical application as it has worked out in the 800-pound experimental boat, then the problem of reaching the German base at the far side of Heligoland may be solved by an attacking fleet minus a human being within its steel walls.

In his experimental tank at Los Angeles not long ago the inventor of the new war machine spoke to the gray model afloat there by means of the purple flash of the wireless set up a score of feet away.

Promptly at the command of the crackling flash, there began astern a boiling of the water, and the boat slid quietly forward. Came another flash and crackle, the boiling redoubled, and the boat stopped and went astern.

Directed by the wireless, the boat gradually sank until only the slim mast and the aërial showed above the water, and thus submerged it moved in the tank

as the operator ordered. Then a torpedo darted from the bow tube and sped on its journey toward a phantom enemy. And no human hand had touched the boat or its machinery.

Inside the eight-foot hull there are three little motors, two electric pumps, some solenoids and relays, and other ungodly electrical devices, all operated by the wireless waves.

The starting of this motor and the stopping of that, the opening of the ballast valves or the closing thereof and the starting of the pumps, the release of the torpedo, and even the firing of the little gun on the superstructure, are done through wireless waves caught by the aërial mast.

The inventor calls the monster a radio submarine; but radio torpedo would be more to the point. He plans to use this creation of steel and wire and insulation that carries no man, but moves with human cunning, in two ways: as a submarine, to dash submerged into an enemy fleet and fire its torpedoes, and as a giant torpedo, a fearsome craft loaded with hundreds of tons of high explosives, guided into an enemy port and detonated by waves sent from an aëroplane soaring high above.

Ten of them, he says, can be built for the cost of one first-class human-inhabited submarine. Ten of them can be sent on forlorn hopes on which no commander would be justified in sending his sailors. And if all ten fail to survive the perils of mine-field and gun fire, the loss is no greater than that of one ordinary submarine, and no lives have been sacrificed.

EDWARD C. CROSSMAN.

On Meeting a Man Whom I Had Always Supposed I Disliked

I HEARD him make a speech one day, and something in his manner prejudiced me against him.

From that time, whenever I ran across a reference to him in the newspapers, my prejudice tended to deepen.

Once or twice I made critical comments about him.

But I never saw him again until last week. And then, at a dinner, I found myself sitting beside this man whom I had always supposed I disliked.

We fell to talking of various things. I discovered that we had mutual friends and mutual tastes. He began to tell me about his work. To my surprise, I found him, under the surface, an idealist.

The thing he is trying to do in the world is a truly magnificent thing. I left him with a real admiration.

And all the way home I kept saying to myself, "Let this be a lesson to you, young man.

"What can you know, from a casual meeting, of the hearts of your fellow men? How many other times have you been unfair, in your thought or your conversation, to a man who, if you really knew him, might prove to be one of the finest fellows in the world?"

A few days later I met a prominent newspaper publisher who had just come back from Washington.

"I had a long talk with Daniels," he told me. "It didn't change my idea that he is out of place as Secretary of the Navy. But it gave me an entirely new conception of him as a man. He's not half so bad as I've been telling my readers he is."

I repeated to him what a very powerful editor had once said to me:

"I make it a rule never to criticize a man on a matter of mere taste," this great man said. "So long as he is fundamentally honest, so long as he is trying to live up to his oath, I give him the benefit of every doubt.

"Take Senator X, for example. He is one of the queerest freaks in the world—egotistical, sophomoric, walking about as if he carried the world on his shoulders. I could, if I wanted to, poke fun at him in every issue of the paper.

"But when it comes to voting, he goes into a closet with his conscience, and no ulterior influence can reach him there. I'll never criticize him for his little faults, so long as he keeps right on the things that count."

Like every one else in the world, I was born very intolerant. It is the natural state of the human animal.

Gradually, little by little, as I meet more men I am striving to cure myself of this weakness.

I have found that almost any man, if you get to know him, has some very human and very likable qualities.

And almost every man thinks in his own heart that he is sincere.

"Is Billy Sunday sincere?" men ask me. Of course he is. He may be self-deluded: it may be that the money which he makes has more influence with him than he supposes. But, in so far as he knows his own heart, he believes that he is the messenger of God, doing a great and unselfish work in the world.

I am much slower to criticize than I used to be.

When I see a crowd that appears to consist of wild-eyed fanatics proclaiming a crazy faith, I say to myself:

"What must the crowd have looked like who followed the Carpenter of Nazareth? Do I really know these people well enough to be sure that there is no truth in what they advocate?"

When I see all the respectable people lined up on side of a question, and a few ragged agitators on the other, I re-member the crowd of the best citizens of Ephesus, who for two hours shouted at the top of their voices to prevent the Apostle Paul from being heard.

All of "our very best people" against one ragged outcast. But the one was right.

I have decided that, generally speaking, I will let other editors do the muck-raking.

So many people who seem to me to be wrong turn out in the end to have been right all the time: and so often, when I am surest that I know it all, I find that my wires are crossed.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

SOME SOLDIER'S MOTHER

THE crowd that has filled the street to watch the soldiers go by drops back to let her pass. She wears the badge which the authorities have issued to relatives of the marching boys: she is some soldier's mother.

Men go to war filled with varying emotions. There is the thrill of adventure; the sense of freedom in the abandonment of responsibility; there is the chance of conquest, and of glory and power. But to women war has meant only one thing. The letter printed on the opposite page, to which we have awarded the prize in our contest, expresses it all. It might have been written by any mother in any age.

But war's a game which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at,

said Cowper. The subjects of kings have grown wise; and before that wisdom kings, one by one, have disappeared.

Will war also with them disappear?

WHAT THE WAR MEANS TO ME

By THE READERS OF EVERY WEEK

The Prize Letter

BEING the eldest of nine children of a Civil War veteran, I know what war means.

My father left his sweetheart to enlist in 1862. He returned to her after the battle of Corinth, with his jaw shot away and otherwise wounded; but my mother married him just the same. They were poor—oh, always so dreadfully poor! I began working out when I was nine years old. I had to, that we might all have enough to eat.

When father died of typhoid fever, my mother was left with seven children younger than I and another on the way! Never, never can I forget how my poor mother worked and struggled to keep us together and from having to go to bed hungry.

I always worked—never knew anything but hard work until I married a good man who has given me a beautiful life. We have no child but L—, just ready to graduate from college.

When the order came last spring to close the school a month before time and put the young fellows at work in a munitions plant, I somehow felt that the news would soon come of his enlistment, and went around the house half dazed. When, after a time, the message came, my heart stood still. I was sick and faint, for L— is our all, our only child. I used to chum with him, play and study with him, and we are as proud as parents can be of our beautiful, clean, sturdy, loyal lad.

I speak no words of discouragement; I don't talk much about the war. I just think, and think. In my heart I say, "We must stand by our country, we must not hinder the President!"

And yet, O heart of mine, be brave! I know what war means. Through my tears I see a vision of a better world, of lives enriched by trial and unselfish endeavor, when the war is over; but oh, my woman's heart is like to break and suffocate me.

This is what this war means to me, with its pictures of suffering millions; and, though I speak naught, my heart stands still, and through long midnight vigils I grieve and pray.

I. T. J.

The War Made His Fortune, But—

SOME years ago I married a French girl in New York, and came to live on a farm I had bought in Ohio. We lived as any couple for some years. We had four sons, now ranging from sixteen to twenty-eight.

Since a year or so before the war my bank account has mushroomed into an enormous "pile." The war did it, owing to the high price of food-stuffs, etc. I raised enough money to purchase the farm next to mine. So it went until war was declared by the United States. By that time I owned several farms and had stores in different towns and in the city. I am very wealthy now.

"From farm-house to mansion" is my story. I have now every comfort that money can buy. Yet the vital thing is missing—happiness.

When the war began, my wife took two of our sons and left for France to bring over her folks. Since then I've not heard from them, except through the War Department. My two sons have been killed in the battles of the Marne, and of my wife nothing is known.

Now comes the United States' declaration of war. One of the remaining sons was drafted and the other has volunteered. No one is left. I am alone.

After years of toil, building up my fortune, my family is gone. Maybe my sons who are in the United States army will return. Of my wife, I feel I'll never see her again.

There is no one to comfort me—no relations, and I'm getting old. I pray every day that God will grant peace—lasting peace. I know there are millions of people here who think the same way as I do, and will join their prayers with mine.

This war has made me rich financially, but poor—very poor—in happiness.

This is my story, and I suppose there are hundreds more like it.

P. J. C.

From a German-American

I AM a German-American so far as national classification goes, but my religion is internationalism. I am equally proud of both sides of the hyphen,—I can not help it,—but I am prouder of my religion. Some pretend to see an element of disloyalty in the hyphen, but to me it merely indicates my German birth and parentage and my American citizenship. I have no more reason for concealing the former than the latter.

We are at war with Germany now, but that does not keep me from remembering the gentlest of German mothers, through whom I inherited a warm feeling for the fatherland. Every time my loyalty to America struggles to express itself at the expense of the people she loved, I feel as if I were giving her a stab right through the heart. I know how a child must feel whose parents, equally dear to him, are at enmity with each other. When courts decide against the one, does he commit

a crime if he still continues to love that one? There is much talk these days of how one ought to feel toward the "land of one's adoption." I have learned anew that human feelings can not be made to order, and do not change at the behest of the will.

There has been much talk of Pan-German propaganda, but I must say that I know nothing about it. Not a whisper of its workings has ever reached my ears. It may exist, but I don't know where. I heard a high-school teacher say recently that the teaching of German in the public schools was a part of the nefarious system. She may be right, but I can not prove it.

In my school days it was firmly impressed upon me that world-dominion was England's mission, and since my tenth year I have been informed now and then that English would be the universal language. I like English; still, I protest, for I don't want pan-anything. Nature likes variety, so does human nature. There is no nation so excellent that it should presume to fashion the rest of the world after its pattern—no nation so poor but that it has qualities which the world can not afford to lose.

We weep because the Alsatians must learn German, and then heap insults upon the Germans in our midst who do not at once speak English. If we were better linguists, we would know it is impossible to feel "at home" in a language acquired after childhood. People want to speak the language that is natural to them; it is not done in a spirit of defiance. Human beings have a right to be themselves, and their language is a part of themselves. Political freedom is not worth the sacrifice of every other kind of freedom, and we have no right to enslave a person, mentally and spiritually, because we hand him a ballot.

Some war prophets have declared that unless Germany be crushed she will conquer Europe, then cross the Atlantic and attack the United States and South America. This is a very flattering tribute to Germany's power, and if I could believe it my pride of blood would know no bounds. But I can not believe it, so I am condemned to regard myself as a bit of ordinary humanity. I can not believe it, in spite of the fact that Gerard says the Kaiser told him so. But, in either case, I wouldn't fear: for the German-Americans alone would defend the United States against invasion.

America and Germany—I am a part of both, and no amount of talk or no set of laws can change that. To love both is a vital part of me, and of several millions like me. We can not help it. We German-Americans—during these three years we have often felt like "the man without a country." Yet I can not help thinking that enough of German blood and toil, of German hope and aspiration, have gone into the development of this country as might earn for us—just as we are—a place of our own here.

We have been loyal to America, loyal through a severe test. It is not less to our credit that we have maintained that loyalty with hearts torn between two vital forces—natural bonds and the sense of duty. That sense of duty! Even while America is at war with Germany, it sometimes seems to me that she owes her a vote of thanks for that sense of duty. What I have of it I feel to be a distinct inheritance from my German parents. Believe me, our hearts have ached past all expression. I hope America will consider the full meaning of that, the story of which is yet to be written. She has asked for our loyalty at a heavy price, and, although we have protested, we pay and pay that price.

J. M.

A Woman of Courage

WHEN the company from our town was being recruited to war strength last spring, our son was not at home. I was glad, for I felt that many were being swept in by excitement. Fred was only eighteen, just through high school, and working to enter State University. My father had gone to war when quite a young man, and I knew something of what it had meant to him and to my mother. I was by no means sure that it was necessary for our country to enter this war. Perhaps it was true that the munitions men and others interested in making money had pushed us in. But, on the other hand, I had faith in our President, and I believed he would do what he thought best for our country.

Fred had spoken repeatedly of joining the militia, but he said he would not do it without coming home and talking with us first. It was after the company left here for the barracks that I wakened one morning and found Fred was in his room. He said he had tried not to waken me, for he knew I'd sleep no more that night. There was no doubt now what was coming, and I knelt there by my bed and asked God to keep any of us from making a mistake.

After the younger children went to school, Fred told us he wished to join the army. He had thought it over and tried to see it as we wished him to; but he felt we couldn't afford to allow Germany to treat us and other nations as she was doing, and that he must answer to the call that had been given for men.

---

His father tried very hard to dissuade him—told him of the horrors of war, and the questions in his mind as to the advisability of our entering. Fred listened, but was uninfluenced. He said, "You and I simply see the thing differently."

Then he turned to me and asked, "Mother, what have you to say?" I had little to say. If he felt that he ought to go, he'd be worth little not to go. He must be free to decide, and if he must go I wished to bid him good-by with a smile.

So he joined. That was a terrible night for me. I saw so many awful scenes; I remembered so much that my father went through; and the thought was so terrible that he was young and had come to us for counsel, and I could have prevented his going. Perhaps sometime he would wish I had. My only comfort was that I had asked God to help and I knew He would.

I am not unsettled in my opinion now. I feel that, in the name of humanity, we could do nothing less than enter this war. Perhaps the German people can not do other than the best of them are doing with the viewpoint their training has given them, but they can be helped to a new viewpoint.

I am sure God would lead us into the best for all without all this suffering if we would permit Him to. But, if the suffering must come, He will not leave us in it, but finally God will be triumphant.

MRS. Z. A. R.

Story of a Russian Refugee

WE were a family of six—my husband and myself, two sons of military age, one ten years old, and a daughter of three. We were poor farmers, living in Botslavick, a small village near Warsaw.

One evening a few months after the declaration of war, while we were having our supper, some one rapped on the door. Before I could bid them enter, the door was pushed open and two soldiers entered.

They told my two oldest sons to make ready and go with them. Amid cryings and embracings, my sons left, leaving behind them a family that had been dependent mainly upon them. The supper was not finished; and, though it's almost four years since that happened, I can never forget the scene: my husband sitting in a chair near the fireplace, staring into the fire, my two remaining children crying themselves to sleep.

Having put them in bed, I went to my husband. I found him lying on the floor. My screams brought the neighbors running in. We called the village doctor, and he declared that my husband was dead—death due to heart failure. Two days later my sons came back, on leave of absence, to attend their father's funeral.

The battles in Russia began nearing our small village. Russian soldiers were entering the village, making ready to make a last stand. They were not successful. German soldiers began to take the place of the Russians. The village of Botslavick was declared to belong to Germany, though there were only a few houses left standing after the battle, and most of the population were gone. Houses were in ruins, and the farms were trodden on and made camps of.

It was six months later—I was still living in the same place—when my daughter died. I had used up all the money that I had, and we had our feet tied up in rags, for shoes were not to be got. Though it broke my heart, I was thankful to God that He took my daughter. Thanked Him that He had relieved her from her pains and pangs of hunger. Thanked Him that He had taken her from her mother to her father, who, like her, did not feel the pains and sufferings that we did.

As you Americans say, "It never rains but it pours." My son, who was then eleven years of age, was suddenly taken ill. But that was not all. My first-born had already met his death on the battlefield, while my other soldier-boy was brought home wounded. Of a happy family of six only three remained—one of my sons at death's door, the other not getting better or worse, and myself ready to drop any moment.

My older son was just beginning to walk around, and my other boy was getting better, when I received a letter from my only sister in America, containing four hundred dollars and an urgent request to take the first ship for America. Having managed to get a passport after a little trouble, I took a few belongings which I cherished most, and with all that remained of my family I came to America.

My sister, who was the wife of a lawyer, took me and my sons to her home for a little while. My two sons being better now (the sea voyage was just good for them) are not worrying me. The elder of them, having secured a good position, supports his brother and myself.

People are often heard talking of how bad it must be in Russia, but have no idea how really bad Russia is. Though the old government was done away with, and that's a great relief from the yoke of a tyrannical ruler, it does not in any way relieve the lower class of Russians, who are dying of hunger, using rags for shoes, whose homes were broken up, who were parted from mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, children, and sweethearts. It does not in any way relieve them of their sorrows, seeing their former homes in ruins and relatives dead.

Americans grumble because they've got to go to Europe and fight. Americans, thank God that the Germans do not come to the United States to fight you. Thank Him that your land will be spared the pain of being invaded by Germans. Even though men will be parted from their homes, remember that, when they come back, they will always find their homes standing in the same place—not a bunch of ashes on the ground, or a house without a wall, or another without a roof, as most of the European soldiers will find.

Beginning Life Over Again

AT first I felt, like so many American wives: this war is horrible, but it can never touch me.

In April my husband wanted to attend the first officers' training camp. His unmarried brother applied, and I felt it a wonderful thing for single men, but could not bring myself to parting with my man. He had a good salary, we were paying for our home, so comfortable and happy, with a boy of three, and a maid.

I tried to be patriotic in other ways—letting the maid go, and studying conservation of foods. I saved money, and was able to subscribe to the Liberty Loan and give more to the Red Cross than previously.

Then came the draft. My husband lacked four days of being thirty-one, so he had to register. Then I began to realize that we were on the outside no longer, for my husband was one of the millions pledged to active service. However, I still felt there must be plenty of single men who would be called first, and again I objected to mine volunteering in the second training camp. I still felt so comfortable in my corner, and hated to be disturbed.

But my conscience began to hurt, and often to myself I admitted that I was selfish, and wished that I could attain the same measure of patriotism and feeling of personal responsibility that my husband had.

Meanwhile he had made a decision of his own, and one evening showed me a telegram from Washington asking him to report at a certain government navy-yard for shipbuilding.

I had the queerest mixed-up emotions—surprise, disappointment, pride, and relief all in one. But the feeling that surmounted, and that has stayed with me ever since, is pride.

He had felt so sure in his own soul that he must help in some way that he wrote enlisting for shipbuilding, in which he had had some experience, and later passed the examination. He no longer regretted giving up the glorious career of an officer, for he felt that in building ships to carry men and supplies he would be even more necessary, in these early months of preparation, than in the military branch of the service.

So he is in the navy-yard, wearing overalls instead of khaki, carrying a dinner-pail instead of a rifle. He is paid by the hour, working long hours every day for less money than he earned in seven hours as head man in an office.

It is a complete change physically and mentally—yes, and spiritually too. He writes that he never before felt such a satisfaction, such a sense of well being and right doing, as now.

While I, left behind with sonny, am trying to sell or rent our home, so that when daddy can afford to send for us we will be free to enter with him into a new life of sacrifice and happiness.

MRS. D. E. S.

"Grandmother"

I AM American born; but I come of German ancestors, and my German blood is very dear to me. German anniversaries, celebrated with all their quaint and beautiful customs at my grandmother's, formed a vital part of my childhood. What songs and stories she used to regale us with, and how wistfully eager she was for her grandchildren to learn her language! She never mastered English, and she longed to tell us in her own tongue of the wonderful country for which she suffered a continual Heimweh. How she laughed when I accosted her proudly with the polite Sie after I had begun to study German in school.

"Nein, nein, nein," she protested, smiling. "Du to me always, because you love me and I love you."

I guard as my choicest treasure her German Bible with its yellowed pages, prefaced by the family names in script. She carried it to her confirmation classes when she was a girl living in Hesse-Darmstadt.

I am glad my grandmother is not living to-day. I think I must have inherited her loyal German soul, for I took up German as my college speciality, and I have taught the subject ever since I received my degree. I am steeped in German literature. All the memories of my early life live within me. A German folk-song takes my heart by storm, and before the war broke out my greatest desire was to visit this Germany I had learned to love so greatly.

Naturally, in the beginning my sympathies, if anywhere, were with Germany. I disbelieve in war utterly; and when war was declared by the United States, against all reason my heart cried out: "If we must fight, let it not be with Germany, the fairyland of my childish dreams." I would not destroy that feeling if I could, and I do not think I am disloyal to my country in saying this. It has meant so much to me—my German heritage. My soul rises in white heat against those who seek to sully the name of the German people.

On the other hand, I know that the German government is at fault and must be overthrown. I, as an individual, have not the knowledge requisite to select the means. Likewise, I have an individual sorrow apart from the national and humane one that touches every American citizen.

I grieve for the Germany of my dreams. I don't want to see her desolate. It tortures me to have enmity between the land of my birth and the land of my heart's desire.

E. N.

Grateful to the Red Cross

WE are prone to think that a great organization such as the Red Cross is all business and cold-blooded system; but, for the comfort of other mothers who may have to pass through what I have, I want to say that my own family physician could not have been more kindly solicitous than were the officials of the Red Cross in the most trying experience I ever faced.

We live on a farm near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Our eldest son, Clifton, received an appointment to West Point; but, failing to pass the physical examination, he enlisted with the first Canadian Volunteers. He was in all the heavy engagements on the French front, Verdun, Ypres, etc., until September 4, 1916, when he received a compound fracture of the skull in the battle of Vimy Ridge.

Only a mother can picture the heartache of it all when I received the first news. My one thought was, "If I could only go to him!" The days passed somehow, but the nights were terrible. I could not sleep, nor even lie down. From midnight on I walked the floor nights and nights in succession. Later in the autumn, when the harvest moon appeared, I would go into the yard and pace its length hundreds of times. For was not that same moon shining on my boy?

All this time I was receiving word of his condition through the general offices at Ottawa, Canada; but when my anxiety became unbearable I would wire them between times. Upon receipt of my message they would cable the hospital in England, then wire me immediately that they had done so. Upon receipt of the cablegram they would wire me a second time. Every inquiry I ever made was answered promptly, with courtesy and manifest sympathy for a distracted mother.

I had letters from Clifton's nurse, the chaplain, the hospital surgeon, and later from visitors who had called. His wound resulted in complete paralysis of the left side, which has necessitated many months of hospital treatment. He has been removed to Montreal, much improved, though I have not seen him yet.

Yes, those streaks of gray in my hair have come within the past six months; but I can talk about it calmly now, for Clifton writes that, if he had been right here in his own room at home, I could not have done more for him. It is such a comfort to know that, and to have found out for myself what a great, loving, composite heart pulsates through the Red Cross movement.

Continued on page 18

PLAIN JANE

By JOHN FLEMING WILSON

Illustrations by Anton Otto Fischer

EVERY man worth while keeps his own secret. Archie Robertson, the steady, competent head of the Robertson interests, swore there was no mystery about his success. "Seven hours a day in the office," was his explanation.

San Francisco, recalling Archie's desultory youth, proclaimed that Kathleen Newcome had "made" him, thereby ignoring the indubitable truth that it takes several women to make one man worth while.

However, Kathleen was good-looking, clever, and well bred; rather high-spirited, her friends said, when it became too evident that she was slavishly devoted to the man whom she would sooner or later be engaged to. Robertson was solemnly receptive, wearing the garlands that the fair Kathleen wove for his brow much as a melancholy youth sports a necktie representing hours of toil by some tenderly liked relative.

"Seven hours a day in the office!" mocked his business rivals. "The man may think that's how he beat us on that Alaskan railroad scheme. Believe us, it was the evenings with Kathleen that gave him the imagination and the punch. That girl would make a national figure of Archie if he'd let her."

And they openly wondered that he should not instantly bind good fortune to himself forever by marrying her.

You see, Archie Robertson kept his secret. He smiled and nodded when Kathleen got the credit of his increasingly luminous achievements, but he did not ask her to marry him even though other eligible men made it plain that they wanted her. Of course, we all said that there was a private compact; else so proud a girl would never abdicate her royal prerogatives.

After a while there was pressure brought to bear on Archie—the subtle, steady thrust that women of the match-making kind know so well how to direct and control. The conclusion of this was that he deliberately set about making up a crowd for a trip in his yacht Cerberus to Honolulu, Kathleen to be the guest of honor, her mother a good second, and half a dozen of Kathleen's intimates for variety.

At last Archie was going to propose in due form. "Then we'll be invited to an ideal wedding," everybody said.

"Jack," Robertson told me, "I want you to drop your work and come along on the Cerberus. Of course there'll be a nice crowd to see the sights and keep Kathleen company. But I want somebody to talk to."

I was forty, and carried a few secrets of my own. I didn't answer, "My word, man, Kathleen will be there!" Instead I looked up at him and said casually: "I'd have to go down myself before long, anyway. Much obliged!"

WE were ten days from San Francisco to Koko Head, dropping across the parallels leisurely under perfect skies. And when that bold promontory lifted out of the windy sea I knew Kathleen Newcome for just what she was—as fine and splendid a girl as breathed, but—well, a trifle too perfect.

She was at once unaffected and delightfully poised. She accepted her difficult position of being on the Cerberus because before long its owner would ask her to marry him with a simplicity and grace that made me her devoted admirer. She showed Archie off to the best advantage, took pains to make the other girls contented, but went a little too far in assuming to marry me off to Beth Seymour, a dear girl whom every happy bride-to-be tried to show the road to equal bliss. Beth hates to be pitied that way, and the result of Kathleen's lovely and solicitous schemes was to make Beth cross and shut my lips on my secret— which I came nearly sharing with Miss Seymour.

"To fall in love with you would be heavenly," I told Beth one night, when I began to plan gaining the right to kiss her.

"But you refuse to be driven into love," she answered bitterly. Then she dropped the subject for good. "Did you ever see a couple so fitted to each other as Kathleen and Archie?" she remarked. "He is as solid as—as mahogany, and she is a good carpenter."

"The suggestion is wholly unworthy of you," I remonstrated.

"Is it?" Beth snapped, and left me.

THE Cerberus berthed at Wilder's wharf, and our lively crowd transferred itself to hotels.

"I know you'll excuse me," Archie announced to Kathleen that evening. "I have a little business to attend to. Not much—soon over with. Then we'll drop over to the Big Island and see the sights."

Of course it was agreed in a pleasant chorus that Robertson was, after all, a man of affairs and must play the part at times.

"Jack, you'll have to excuse yourself too," he told me. "I want your advice in a matter."

"Would it be fair to inquire what this matter is?" Kathleen asked, with an affectionate smile.

Archie straightened himself up in his chair, rose, and went over to Miss Newcome's side. He looked unusually handsome and alert.

"'Member Tommie Oswald?" he said. "Well, Tommie missed his step trying to finance a sugar plantation on Maui. It still looks a fair proposition to me. A couple of days and I'll be sure."

To me, smoking a final cigarette before turning in, Robertson remarked:

"Oswald is either a frightful dub or a genius."

"I know his sister," I said evasively.

"Since when?" Archie's voice was sharp. Then he coughed and went on: "All right. Read this."

I have the letter yet:

Makawao, 7th October.
Dear Mr. Robertson:

We know you are always interested in one-man investments. Since Tom has left me I'm in charge of his work on the island, and I believe I've got it into such shape you could take it over and make money out of it. I can hang on for a couple of months, but after that I'll have to let go unless Tom, who is in London, can interest Mackay & Company. But I don't see how it would be a good investment for them.

If you are interested, cable me.

Yours truly,
JANE OSWALD.

"I cabled, of course," Archie explained. "Couldn't let Tommie have a tumble if I could help it. Jane is a good kid. I remember her as a brown little girl who was always holding Tommie's hand when strangers arrived on the scene."

"Plain Jane!" I echoed.

"Hang it, she was really not bad-looking," Archie protested.

"And he's left her in charge?" I remarked.

Archie nodded in a melancholy fashion.

"Of all the craziest irrigation projects ever conceived in this country of dreams! He's spent all their money and three years trying to rebuild a prehistoric irrigation flume down a mountain, so as to reclaim a hundred thousand acres of land for sugar-planting. Then he wanders off to England to sell his dream to hard-headed British capitalists. And Jane sits down and tells me about it, and sticks in the truly Jane-like postscript that it would not be a good investment for Mackay & Co."

"Oh, that's like Jane," I answered. "Know her well?"

---

"Haven't seen her in five years," he returned. "But Tommie is an old friend, and I—well, I always hoped to have one half the far-sightedness he has. No business capacity, of course. But he's a wonder at picking out big things to do—and then turning them over to other people to finish. Sometimes I think it's Jane who has the ideas."

"I get you," I told him. "So you and I are off to investigate Jane's one-man proposition?"

"Exactly."

I thought it over a little; then I ventured to remark, as a feeler:

"Does plain Jane always come to you with her 'one-man propositions'?"

Archie sighed.

"I wish she would. But on this occasion I'm making it a two-man affair, for special reasons."

"We're to save Jane from being an object of pity?" I suggested.

"You know just what kind of a stir it would make, Jack," he answered, "if all these nice girls found out about Tommie's fix. Kathleen would never rest till I'd agreed to finance him and arrange it so his sister wouldn't have to struggle along. Kathleen is a howling good sport, but she can't always understand that business is business."

"And you're not down here on a charitable expedition?" I replied.

"I don't want Jane to get it into her head that I am," he said crossly.

When he was gone off to bed I sat on the gallery and smoked till the fresh morning wind began to breathe down from the pali. And in the end I determined still to keep my secret. It was Archie's play.

THE morning of the second day thereafter we landed through the bright surf on a rocky ledge, scrambled to our feet, and met Jane Oswald. Archie shook hands with her first, looking into her big brown eyes. As she stood there before me I shall always picture her—a slender, homely girl with dark hair, wide eyes, and the straight legs of a boy. I don't mean to say there was no feminine charm about her, but I must assert that she was anything but beautiful according to the accepted standards.

I sha'n't go into particulars, for she didn't invite examination on her good points. If I may say anything, it is that she was the exact antithesis of the nicely dressed, gracefully mannered, lovely girls we had left in Honolulu. I thought I saw just what Archie meant when he intimated that Kathleen would patronize her and make her the object of delightful, kindly attentions.

She turned and shook my hand shyly, as if she were more than surprised and a trifle embarrassed.

"Where is your ditch?" Robertson asked bluntly, when he had kicked the water out of his shoes.

"Right up there," she answered, indicating a far-away line of rough masonry that zigzagged down the face of a big cliff rising to blue heights above us. "Nearly finished. Two tunnels to be built and a lawsuit to fight."

"You're in charge absolutely?" Archie asked.

"Tom left it to me," she replied: "I can show you everything in a day and a half."

"And you think it would be a good investment for me?" he continued.

Jane laughed.

"They say you succeed in everything you try," she said simply.

Robertson frowned, an unusual expression on his good-humored face.

"Not always," he remarked brusquely.

She turned to me. "I didn't expect to see you," she said.

"Archie was coming and made up a party," I told her. "I took the opportunity. I intended coming, anyway."

Jane always did have fine eyes.

For two days we climbed and looked, under the guidance of Jane and a Hawaiian prone to burst into song when we breathlessly achieved some jutting crag. All that time the girl wholeheartedly descanted on the advantages that would inevitably accrue to whomever purchased the big project, frankly deferring to Archie when he would bluntly dispute a statement. Me she ignored.

When we had once more reached the shelf of shore, Robertson merely remarked:

"It's feasible. But, as you say, it's a one-man affair. I must have it alone. How much do you want for it, you and Tommie, to quit absolutely?"

"A million," she said promptly.

"And you'll step out entirely?"

"Now," she said.

"I'll give you forty thousand for the option," he returned. "It will take me sixty or ninety days to finance the new company.

"Done," Jane answered; and they sat down on a bit of rock and made their brief memorandum. Archie wrote a check.

"I suppose you'll want to go to the Coast," he remarked. "My yacht sails five days from now. Will you be our guest?"

"Gladly," she told us, clasping her knees with her slender arms and staring out over the gorgeously colored channel. "Tom will drop everything in London and meet me in New York. "

Archie turned to me. "See Miss Oswald to Honolulu, Jack," he said briefly. "I want to spend a couple of days looking over this by myself. Tell the steamer to drop a boat for me three days hence."

Jane rose. "Kai will be your guide, Mr. Robertson. You've seen most, but there'll be plenty more to see. Only, be careful!" She pointed to a crag far above us. "You know that place where a tunnel will have to be built? The ditch ends there, and when it rains as it does sometimes, all the water washes right over the trail around that rock and falls down the face of the cliff. It looks to me as if a kona were due. I don't believe anybody who didn't know the place as I and Tommie do could manage to keep a footing along there if the wind blew very hard. And if the ditch filled with water, even Kai would tell you one would find it bad going either way."

"Have you ever been up there in a storm?" Archie asked casually.

Jane wrinkled her nose.

"I have," she said, nodding. "There comes the steamer. Jack and I must be going."

ARCHIE drew me aside. "Since when have you been 'Jack' to her?" he demanded.

"Oh, well," I said, "it's merely a little reminder of old days. Fact is, I wanted to marry Jane. She told me distinctly that she would not be a good investment for me. Only that!"

"None of my business," Archie answered curtly. "But Kathleen told me you and Beth Seymour—"

"Of course," I told him coldly.

When we were aboard the inter-island steamer and away, Jane pointed again to the faint line that marked the ditch along the mountain-side.

"I spent forty hours up there at that tunnel place a year ago," she said. "A poor native who was with me was blown off."

"I've seen very little of you lately," I remarked. "What have you been doing?"

"Tommie and I were in Alaska before we started on this," Jane said, "on a railway project."

"Do you mean to say that it was you that got Archie into that deal where he made such a reputation and so much money?" I demanded.

"Tommie did it," was the calm reply. "Mr. Robertson relies on Tommie's judgment."

"And that Trinity County power business, before that?"

"Tommie," she said.

"It strikes me that Archie makes all his money and gets his fame by finishing things you and your brother begin," I growled. "After all, it's your brains that have made Archie a capitalist and a good catch for—"

Jane laughed. "Mr. Robertson is really a wonderful man," she said frankly. "He has—I hate the word, but it means a lot—vision. I think he's the biggest man in America in his line. Tommie thinks so, too."

"I know Tommie," was my brutal response. "It's you that think all these things out—and put them in Archie's way, so that he can gain a reputation and make a fortune and marry—"

"I understood he was going to be married," she returned briefly. "Who is the girl?"

"I had the pleasure of being of her company, over, " I replied. "She is stopping at the Princess Hotel, and you are to meet her to-morrow."

"Does she dress well?" came the eager query. "Do you know, I love nice frocks and gowns and things!"

"All right," I responded. "Kathleen Newcome has 'em, and wears 'em to perfection."

Jane glanced down at her rough white clothes, and sighed and departed.

SO the next evening I introduced Plain Jane to Kathleen and the others. They took to her instantly, but I saw Jane's dark eyes grow cloudy as they petted her. Why? Let Kathleen's speech to me suffice for explanation.

"She is so delightfully plain," she said gracefully. "It will make her dreadfully popular with the women, of course; but men won't see the splendid qualities of her."

The next morning I went to Waikiki for a swim, and found myself floating far out on the insweeping swells and staring into a strangely opaque sky, and vaguely knew that I was filled with a strange, unaccountable restlessness. I went back to the beach, and met Jane. She shook hands abruptly, gazed at the southern horizon, and came promptly to her point.

"Archie Robertson is still on Maui. A kona is blowing up, and it'll be three days at least before he can get off. He's not safe."

"How did you find me?" I demanded.

"I inquired for you at the hotel, and found you were gone. Of course you had gone for a swim. We must hurry back to Maui. On Mr. Robertson's yacht, this time."

"No steamer?" I suggested.

"They won't venture," she replied. "I called them up. But with the yacht we can make it in time."

There were a good many people on the beach, and I caught snatches of excited talk that told me all Honolulu was on tiptoe because of the coming tempest. I remembered the airy perils of Tommie Oswald's flume—no place for Archie in a tropical hurricane. So I agreed with Jane that the best thing to do was to get the yacht and save the day.

"You know, Mr. Robertson is—isn't resourceful," she said.

Now, that criticism, offered at such a moment, struck me as absurdly true. Everybody thought Archie a genius. He had been heavily successful—almost a magician. He was taken at Kathleen Newcome's valuation. But Plain Jane—whose ideas had really been back of Archie's triumphs—stated curtly that he was not resourceful. She made it clear as daylight that he was unequal to a contest (for his life) with a storm.

"You are the only person who ventures to think so," I suggested.

I was right. When we reached the yacht, where Jane had already been, asking for steam and readiness for departure, we met our rebuff. Kathleen had come down in response to the summons of the skipper—a careful soul who intended to keep his job—and she openly assumed the rights we had tacitly yielded her. She was kind but firm. Jane was a fool, she gently insinuated. It was out of the question to take Mr. Robertson's yacht to sea on a wild-goose chase.

"You don't know Mr. Robertson," she said to Jane, with kind finality. "I'm sure you would offend him."

Plain Jane stood on the bright deck, a slender figure of humility. She even received Kathleen's hint that Archie didn't like being made a fuss over as if she deserved that rebuke. And yet, I saw a great distinction between the two women—a distinction that had nothing to do with their difference in comeliness, dress, and manner.

Kathleen's clear, steady eyes saw nothing but the ridiculousness of a situation that she could handle; Jane looked beyond us all. At last she turned brusquely to the skipper, as one speaking on equality to a fellow seaman.

"You will go?" she demanded.

But the captain had had his cue. He was civil, but deferred to Miss Newcome. Jane let her big eyes rest on his smooth face a moment, and then turned to me with a simple gesture. We left the yacht, and stood together on the wharf.

"I suppose Kathleen is right," I said. "I fancy Archie would hardly like being rescued by his own yacht. It's putting too much emphasis on a little thing."

Jane merely stared and murmured, "We'll have to take a launch."

"That," I responded promptly, "will be more dangerous for you than it will be for Archie to camp along the flume for a couple of days."

"The wind will hold off till to-morrow morning, I think," Jane replied decisively. "We can make the landing by that time, and run for shelter to a harbor I know of."

"Is this an infatuation for Archie," I demanded, "or is it really so dangerous?"

Jane flushed. Then she held up her two small hands, palms toward me. I saw that they were criss-crossed with jagged white scars. "I was caught up there once. I held on. It's a thousand feet to the rocks below, some places. Mr. Robertson doesn't know that he must hold on and not try to move."

"But he'll probably be safely down," I protested. "That native would warn him."

"I hope so," she said. "But Mr. Robertson would be impatient with poor Kai. He wouldn't understand him."

"Archie is plenty able to take care of himself."

Jane glanced, quite involuntarily, back at the graceful girl under the yacht's awnings. It was exactly as if she murmured:

"He is not able to take care of himself. Look at her!"

NOBODY but Jane Oswald could have bargained with two Japanese sampan men and persuaded them to the mad trip we took. As it was, the sampan was smashed in the darkness of the early morning, and we landed through a boiling surf at the foot of the flume. The Japs rubbed their bruised limbs and philosophically accepted my assurances that they would be paid for their loss. Then they retired to a nook and dried themselves shamelessly over a small fire. Outside its circle, Jane and I discussed our problem. Archie and his companion were somewhere above us.

"I can't think what he meant by not coming down," I shouted above the uproar of the surf.

Jane put one hand on my shoulder and her lips to my ear:

"Kai knows that when the rain begins—and it's raining now up there on the mountain—the flume will fill and this place will be the bottom of a waterfall. It's eight hundred feet to the place where the ditch stops at that crag, and the trail all the way down will be flooded. We must go up and tell him to stop right where he is."

"Wait till daylight," I pleaded. "Likely enough, he'll get down before the water starts."

Jane raised her voice, and in answer to it a naked Jap came and stood before us, silhouetted against the ruddy fire. Briefly she explained to him the plight we were in. He calmly lifted his eyes to the dark, misty heights above us, and nodded. Then he retired briskly.

"You mean to say this cove will be overrun by the surf?" I cried. "Then this is not safe, either!"

A breaker boomed behind us, and the heavy spray swept over us. The fire

---

smoldered out, its last flickerings showing me the two Japs making their way up what seemed the sheer face of the rock wall.

"They will be safe up there in a little hollow," she said. "They can hang on there. We must be going, Jack."

SO the pitchy darkness we began our laborious ascent. For an hour we toiled upward, clambering along ledges giving on pure murk, clinging here and there to the rough sides of the flume, now crossing a crevasse, now slipping down sharp declivities that ended at the knife-edge of infinity. And over us the storm gathered with a noise of huge masses of air being displaced bodily, readjusting themselves with thunder or settling down with crunching vibrations. Dawn came like a blaze of pale fire, and with it a gush or wind tore across the sky.

Powerful as I am, inured to constant adventure, I was becoming exhausted before we topped the crag that marked the end of the upper flume. Under the sheer rise of the cliff we drew up and breathed. Below us the mists swirled over the sea. Now and then the hollow boom of a breaker rose to us, echoed from the heights above, and died away in the opaque cloud that steamed about us.

"Here's where we must hang on," Jane said.

"But where is Archie?" I demanded.

She flattened herself against the rock and pointed up the flume. I saw a figure crawling along its edge, and behind that figure a second. I held my breath. At that point the ditch spanned a cleft fifty feet wide. A loosened hand-hold, and those two men would tumble a thousand feet. It struck me that I should never get across, were it my ill luck to try. I was dizzy as it was.

"Why don't they keep in the flume on the bottom?" I asked.

Jane shook her head impatiently.

"They couldn't climb out if the water began to run down," she said. "Don't call!"

Slowly the two men crept on. The wind was now blowing furiously against the cliff, and I began to feel a little of its power. It seemed to me that it must soon catch Archie and the native and fling them overside. They were coming more slowly now, gripping at the rocky edge of the flume, now and again balancing themselves against the thrust of the gale. But the foremost figure was slowly losing his strength, and I was relieved when I saw that it was the native. He stopped and raised his contorted face just an instant, as if in blind prayer, before his strength failed and he slipped off silently into the void.

HELPLESSLY we watched Archie come on. If he saw the tragedy, he gave no sign. But his strength too was failing. Before he was across the crevasse he slipped into the flume.

Jane and I caught him as he slipped down with the first rush of water, and got him safely on the shelf of rock, with nothing worse than a broken arm.

Archie seemed rather dazed. He explained that he and Kai had spent the entire night feeling their way down.

"I hoped the yacht would be below, waiting for us," he murmured.

Jane squatted beside him, back to the wind, and in a calm voice told him what had happened. She laid emphasis on the fact that Miss Newcome had forbidden the use of the yacht. She did not explain, however, how she and I happened to be where we were. Archie seemed in much pain, and did not ask further.

The refuge we were on had an extent of possibly twenty-five square feet. It was a mere foothold chipped out of the cliff, not more than three feet wide anywhere. As the wind grew fiercer it was apparent that we, should have difficulty in hanging on. Archie was entirely helpless, and Jane and I huddled over him.

At noon by my watch, Archie suddenly roused himself to say peevishly: "We sha'n't get out of this!"

Jane leaned over him with a strange look of solicitude on her face. To me she said, "He blames me."

"The fact of the matter is, he did this for your sake," I responded. "I believe the man has been in love with you all this time!"

A glimmer of humor struggled to her lips.

"That's why I did my best to save him for Miss Newcome. Why does a man always trust a woman who loves him to save him for the woman he loves?"

I puzzled over this until illumination came.

"Oh," I said. "He thinks you love him?"

She did not answer, but adjusted his injured arm with infinite solicitude.

THAT night, as we clung with bleeding fingers to the crevices in the rock, Jane encouraged me to survive. We lay across Archie's body; for only our united weight kept him on the ledge—he was unconscious.

"Jane," I said, my mouth to her ear, "how long is this going to last?"

She twisted her head so that she touched my cheek with her lips.

"Till to-morrow night," she said.

"We can't hold out," I said. "The wind is tearing me loose."

I fancy I repeated this at intervals for hours. Each time Jane would shake her head, and I would feel her hair blow across my face. But at last, in the interminable hours, I began to see why I had come, and why I was glad that the shelf gave over a thousand feet of storm. My secret was soon to be told. I felt that when I had spoken it I would let go, leaving the girl I loved to Archie.

I painfully gained an inch closer to the cliff, and again put my lips to Jane's ear.

Did she hear? I felt the incredible tugging of the wind, and my hands turned numb. I was slipping. I managed to say:

"I must let go. There will be more room for you."

But in the instant I felt a strong arm about me; Jane's lips moved in my ear:

"We must save him."

"But me?" I cried.

Jane laughed, unbelievable murmur amid the tempest. I was stung to fury. Careless of the terrific wind, I flung my weight forward and held them both against the cliff. And presently Jane turned her head a little in the darkness, and I heard her whispering:

"How funny men are!"

For that I kissed her roughly. Then amazement overtook me. I laughed, too. I held them both in safety.

At noon Archie opened his eyes and stared at the swirling mist that enveloped us. Then his gaze concentrated on Jane's wet face lying on his breast.

"Jane," he croaked, "I want you to remind me, when this is over, that I must marry no one else but you."

Presently he went on—she did not stir—as if he had forgotten me:

"I've thought of you ever since you were a kid. You've been an inspiration all these years. You have ideas. Of course I know I ought to marry Kathleen. She expects me to. Everybody expects me to. But I determined to see you again before I made up my mind. And this settles it. I must marry you. You are the only girl who can help me with—with ideas."

He stopped, smiled tenderly on her, and relapsed into unconsciousness.

Jane did not move. The gale died as quickly as it had risen. The sunset was a tumult of splendor, and just at nightfall the stars cleared up and shone brightly over the peak of the mountain.

Hours later the gleam of a vessel's lights rose above the horizon. I pointed to them. Jane gazed thoughtfully.

"Miss Newcome and the yacht," she said at last.

"I suppose it will be my place to tell her," I said.

Jane sat up and brushed her hair out of her eyes with a weary gesture.

"All right," she said quietly. "But be sure you tell her the straight of it."

"Leave it to me," I responded.

IT was indeed the yacht; but Miss Newcome was not on board. I found her, on my arrival in Honolulu the next evening, quite composed and listening to the band playing at the Royal Hawaiian. Clothed in the garb of civilization, I addressed her and gave my news.

"He couldn't write because his arm is broken," I told her. "I volunteered to do my best to explain."

"He knew this—this Miss Oswald long ago!" she murmured. "He never mentioned her to me!" Then she raised her fine eyes to me. "I wish him happiness," she said with sudden bitterness. "I didn't dream she was the kind of woman to attract men like Archie and you."

"Me?" I asked in amazement.

Kathleen leaned forward and laughed in my face.

"You wanted to marry her yourself!"

Later she walked out with me on the lively street.

"I understand that Miss Oswald is rather a genius at thinking up big schemes. Not so feminine, do you think?"

At last she swept a little nearer to me and demanded: "Why did you let Archie have her?"

"I?" I responded casually. "I didn't. He hadn't heard the news when he sent that message to you. I married Jane a couple of hours ago."

She slowed her pace, gazing downward. I saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

"Poor boy!" she murmured. "Poor Archie!"

Then she looked up bravely.

"You will not tell him, please, that you told me what he asked you to. Miss—your wife will understand." She smiled gallantly. "I fancy we all have secrets to keep. Let this be Archie's and mine. I'm sure your wife will be generous—and let him—not let him see what a—a compromise it will be to marry me."

"A compromise!" I ejaculated.

Then the purity of her proposed self-sacrifice overwhelmed me. She was going to persuade Archie to believe that she had been—was his guiding star and inspiration. He was wholly to forget that moment's illumination wherein his clear-sighted soul had seen Plain Jane as his inspirer. Kathleen, fully aware that the man she loved owed his position in this world to a woman who cared nothing for him, and knowing that this was no secret, was going to finesse gloriously. I believe I began to say something appreciative.

"You don't have to excuse Archie," Kathleen said. Her fine lips quivered with the last sign of weakness she ever displayed. "I—I will try to make him happy."

I was silent. What a magnificent creature she was! She left me, and I looked after her as she proceeded, smiling regally, a heroic and splendid figure amid the gay, unthinking crowd.

And Archie Robertson, they say, owes his brilliant success to his wife Kathleen. But Jane and I wonder sometimes whether he wouldn't do bigger things if he weren't ultra-conservative.

Archie has lost his old élan.

Vee Goes Over the Top

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Arthur William Brown

"BUT listen, Vee," says I. "If Hoover can't pull it off, with all the backin' he's got, what's the use of a few of you women mixin' in?"

"At least, we can try," says Vee. "The prices this Belcher person is charging are something outrageous. Eggs ninety cents!"

"We should worry," says I. "Ain't we got nearly a hundred hens on the job?"

"But others haven't," says Vee. "Those people in that row of little cottages down by the station. The Walters, for instance. He can't get more than twenty-five or thirty dollars a week, can he?

"There's so many cases you can't figure out," says I. "Maybe he scrubs along on small steaks or fried chicken."

"It's no joking matter," protests Vee. "Of course there are plenty of people worse off than the Walters. That Mrs. Burke, whose two boys are in the Sixty-ninth. She must do her marketing at Belcher's, too. Think of her having to pay those awful prices!"

"I would," says I, "if workin' up a case of glooms was any use; but I can't see—"

"We can see enough," breaks in Vee. "The new Belcher limousine, the additions to their hideous big house. All made, too, out of food profiteering right here. It's got to stop, that's all."

Which is where I should have shouted "Kamerad" and come runnin' out with my hands up, but I tried to show her that Belcher was only playin' the game like every one else was playin' it.

"He ain't springin' anything new," says I. "He's just followin' the mob. They're all doin' it, from the Steel Trust down to the push-cart men. And when you come to interferin' with business—well, that's serious."

"Humph!" says Vee. "When it comes to taking advantage of poor people and depriving them of enough to eat, I call it plain piracy. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Torchy, standing up for such things."

SO you see I was about as convincin' as a jazz band tryin' to imitate the Metropolitan orchestra doin' the overture to "Lucia." If I hadn't finally had sense enough to switch the subject a little, there might have been a poutin' scene and maybe a double case of sulks. But when I got to askin' where she'd collected all this grouch against our local meat and provision octopus, she cheers up again.

Seems she'd been to a Red Cross meetin' that afternoon, where a lot of the ladies got to swappin' tales of woe about their kitchen expense accounts. Some of 'em had been keepin' track of prices in the city markets and was able to shoot the deadly parallel at Belcher. Anyway, they ditched the sweater-knittin' and bandage-rollin' for the time bein', and proceeded to organize the Woman's Economic League on the spot.

"Sounds impressive," says I. "And what then? Did you try Belcher for treason, find him guilty, and sentence him to be shot at sunrise?"

Vee proves that she's good-natured again by runnin' her tongue out at me.

"We did not, Smarty," says she. "But we passed a resolution condemning such extortion severely."

"How rough of you!" says I. "Anything else?"

"Yes," says Vee. "We appointed a committee to tell him he'd better stop."

"Fine!" says I. "I expect he'll have everything marked down about forty per cent by to-morrow night."

Somehow, it didn't work out just that way. Next report I got from Vee was that the committee had interviewed Belcher, but there was nothing doin'. He'd been awfully nice to 'em; even if he had talked through his cigar part of the time.

Belcher says he feels just as bad as they about havin' to soak on such stiff prices. But how can he help it? The cold-storage people are boosting their schedules every day. They ain't to blame, either. They're bein' held up by the farmers out West who are havin' their hair cut too often. Besides, all the hens in the country have quit layin' and joined the I. W. W., and every kind of meat is scarce on account of Pershing's men developin' such big appetites. He's sorry, but he's doin' his best, considerin' the war and everything. If people would only get the habit of usin' corn meal for their pie crusts, everything would be lovely once more.

"An alibi on every count," says I. "I expect the committee apologized.

"Very nearly that," says Vee. "The sillies! I just wish I'd been there. I don't believe half of what he said is true."

"That's one thing," says I, "but provin' it on him would be another. And there's where Belcher's got you."

COURSE, I like to watch Vee in action, for she sure is a humdinger when she gets started. As a rule, too, I don't believe in tryin' to block her off in any of her little enterprises.

But here was once where it seemed to me she was up against a hopeless proposition. So I goes on to point out, sort of gentle and soothin', how war prices couldn't be helped, any more'n you could stop the tide from comin' in.

Oh, I'm some smooth suggester, I am, when you get into fireside diplomacy. Anyway, the price of eggs wasn't mentioned again that evenin'. As a matter of fact, Vee ain't troubled much with marketin' details, for Madame Battou, wife of the little old Frenchman who does the cheffing for us so artistic, attends to layin' in the supplies. And, believe me, when she sails forth with her market basket you can be sure she's goin' to get sixteen ounces to the pound and the rock bottom price on everything. No 'phone orders for her. I don't believe Vee knew what the inside of Belcher's store looks like. I'm sure I didn't.

So I thought the big drive on the roast beef and canned goods sector had been called off. About that time, too, I got another inspection detail handed me,—and I didn't see my happy home until another week-end.

I lands back on Broadway at 9 A. M. Havin' reported at the Corrugated general offices and found Old Hickory out of town, I declares a special holiday and beats it out to the part of Long Island I'm beginnin' to know best. Struck me Professor Battou held his face kind of funny when he saw me blow in; and as I asks for Vee, him and the madam swaps glances. He says she's out.

"Oh," says I. "Mornin' call up at the Ellinses', eh? I'll stroll up that way myself, then."

Leon hesitates a minute, like he was chokin' over something, and then remarks: "But no, M'sieur. Madame, I think, is in the village."

"Why," says I, "I just came from the station. I didn't see the car around. How long has she been gone?"

Another exchange of looks, and then Battou answers:

"She goes at seven."

"Whaddye mean goes?" says I. "It ain't a habit of hers, is it?"

Leon nods.

"All this week," says he. "She goes to the meat and grocery establishment, I understand."

"Belcher's?" says I. "But what—what's the idea?"

"I think it would be best if M'sieur asked Madame," says he.

"That's right, too," says I.

You can guess I was some puzzled. Was Vee doin' the spy act on Belcher, watchin' him open the store and spendin' the forenoon concealed in a crockery crate or something? No, that didn't sound reasonable. But what the— Meanwhile I was leggin' it down towards the village.

IT'S a busy place, Belcher's, specially on Saturday forenoon. Out front three or four delivery trucks was bein' loaded up, and inside a lot of clerks was jumpin' round. Among the customers was two Jap butlers, three or four Swedish maids, and some of the women from the village. But no Vee anywhere in sight.

Loomin' prominent in the midst of all this active tradin' is Belcher himself, a thick-necked, ruddy-cheeked party, with bristly black hair cut shoe-brush style and growin' down to a point in front. His big, bulgy eyes are cold and fishy, but they seem to take in everything that's goin' on. I hadn't been standin' around more'n half a minute before he snaps his finger, and a clerk comes hustlin' over to ask what I'll have.

"Box of ginger-snaps," says I offhand; and a minute later I'm bein' shunted towards a wired-in cage with a cash slip in my hand.

I'd dug up a quarter, and was waitin' for the change to be passed out through the little window, when I hears a familiar snicker. Then I glances in to see who's presidin' at the cash register. And say, of all the sudden jolts I ever got! It's Vee.

"Well, for the love of soup!" I gasps.

"Twelve out—thirteen. That's right, isn't it? Thank you so much, sir," says she, her gray eyes twinklin'.

"Quit the kiddin'," says I, "and sketch out the plot of the piece."

"Can't now," says Vee. "So run along. Please!"

"But how long does this act of yours last?" I insists.

"Until about noon, I think," says she. "It's such fun. You can't imagine."

"What's it for, though?" says I. "Are you pullin' a sleuth stunt on—"

"S-s-s-sh!" warns Vee. "He's coming. Pretend to be getting a bill changed or something."

It's while I'm fishin' out a ten that this little dialogue at the meat counter begins to get conspicuous: A thin, stoop-shouldered female with gray streaks in her hair is puttin' up a howl at the price of corned beef. She'd asked for the cheapest piece they had, and it had been weighed up for her, but still she wasn't satisfied.

"It wasn't as high last Saturday," she objects.

"No, ma'am," says the clerk. "It's gone up since."

"Worse luck," says she, pokin' the piece with her finger. "And this is nearly all bone and fat. Now couldn't you—"

"I'll ask the boss, ma'am," says the clerk. "Here he is."

Belcher has come over and is listenin', glarin' hostile at the woman.

"It's Mrs. Burke, the one whose sons are in the army," whispers Vee.

"Well?" demands Belcher.

"It's so much to pay for meat like that," says Mrs. Burke. "If you could—"

"Take it or leave it," snaps Belcher.

"Sure now," says she, "you know I can't afford to give—"

"Then get out!" orders Belcher.

At which Vee swings open the door of the cage, brushes past me, and faces him with her eyes snappin'.

"Pig!" says she explosive.

"Wha-a-a-at!" gasps Belcher, gawpin' at her.

"I—I beg pardon," says Vee. "I shouldn't have said that, even if it was so."

"You—you're discharged, you!" roars Belcher.

"Isn't that nice?" says Vee, reachin' in for her hat and coat. "Then I may go home with my husband, I suppose. And if I have earned any of that princely salary—five dollars a week, it was to be, wasn't it?—well, you may credit it to my account: Mrs. Richard Tabor Ballard, you know. Come, Torchy."

SAY, I always did suspect there was mighty few things Vee was afraid of, but I never thought she had so much clear grit stowed away in her system. For to sail past Belcher the way he looked then took a heap of nerve, believe me. But before he can get that thick tongue of his limbered up we're outside, with Vee snuggled up mufflin' the giggles against my coat sleeve.

"Oh, it's been such a lark, Torchy!" says she. "I've passed as Miss Hemmingway for six days, and I don't believe more than three or four persons have suspected. Thank goodness, Belcher wasn't one of them. For I've learned—oh, such a lot!"

"Let's start at the beginning," says I. "Why did you do it at all?"

"Because the committee was so ready to believe the whoppers he told," says Vee. "And they wanted to disband the League, especially that Mrs. Norton Plummer, whose husband is a lawyer. She was almost disagreeable about it. Truly. 'But, my dear,' she said to me, 'one can't act merely on rumor and

Continued on page 20

THIS PAGE FOR WIVES ONLY

WHAT A FINE BUSINESS—TO GET OUT OF

---

AT HOME WITH THE CLOWNS

Photographs by Brown Brothers

Youth Challenges

By CLARENCE B. KELLAND

Illustration by Lucius W. Hitchcock

(Continued)

THE building of the new shops Bonbright left to Mershon, knowing himself incompetent. He knew what sort of shops he wanted; Mershon knew how to produce them; and Mershon was dependable. Bonbright had implicit confidence in the engineer's ability and integrity, and it was justified. The new mills were rising.

But Bonbright's chief interest was not in producing a plant to manufacture engines, but in producing a crew of men to operate the plant—not merely hiring capable workingmen, but in producing a condition where himself and those workingmen would be in accord, where the men would be satisfied, happy in their work—a condition millennial in that the thing known as labor unrest should be eliminated.

In the beginning he had fancied himself as capable of working out the basis for ideal relations between himself and his employees as any other. He soon discovered himself to be all but unequipped for the effort. It was a saving quality of Bonbright's that he would admit his own futilities. Therefore he called to conference the country's greatest sociologist, Professor Witwer.

"What you want to do, as I understand it," said the professor, "is merely to revolutionize the world and bring on the millennium."

"What I want to do," said Bonbright, "is to formulate a plan that will be fair to labor and fair to me. I want a condition where both of us will be satisfied—and where both will know we are satisfied. It can be done."

"Um," said the professor. "Are you by chance a socialist?"

"Far from it."

"What are your theories?"

"I haven't any theories. I want facts—working facts. There's no use palavering to the men. What they want and what I want is something concrete. I want to know what they want, and how much of it will be good for them. I want something that will work in dollars and cents, in days' work, in making life more comfortable for the women and children at home. If merely paying wages will do it, then I'll pay the wages."

"It can't be done by giving them rest rooms with Turkish rugs, nor porcelain bath-tubs, nor by installing a moving-picture show for them to watch while they eat lunch," said the professor. "It can't be done with money alone. It would work in isolated cases. Give some men a sufficient wage, and they would correct their ways of living; they would learn to live decently, and they would save for the rainy day and for old age. I don't venture an estimate of the proportion. But there would be the fellows whose increased pay meant only that much more to spend. Mighty little would filter through to improve the conditions of their actual living. In any scheme there will have to be some way of regulating the use of the money they earn—and that's paternalism."

"Can it be made to work? It's your honest opinion I'm after."

"I don't believe it, but, young man, it will be the most interesting experiment I ever engaged in. Have you any ideas?"

"My basic idea is to pay them enough so they can live in comfort."

"And then you've got to find some machinery to compel them to live in comfort."

"I'd like to see every employee of this concern the owner of his home. I'd like to feel that no man's wife is a drudge. An astonishingly large number of wives do washing or work out by the day. And boarders—the boarder is a problem."

"You have been thinking," said the professor. "Do I understand that you are offering me the chance to work with you on this experiment?"

"Yes."

"I accept. I never dreamed I'd have a chance to meddle with human lives the way you seem to want to meddle with them."

So they went to work, and day after day, week after week, their plan grew and expanded and embraced unforeseen intricacies. Bonbright approached it from the practical side always. The professor came to view him with amazement—and with respect.

"I'm sticking my finger into the lives of twenty thousand human beings!" the professor said to himself many times a day, with the joy of the scientist. "I'm being first assistant to the world's greatest meddler. That young man is headed for a place as one of the world's leaders or for a lamp-post and a rope. I wonder which?"

The thing that Bonbright asked himself many, many times was a different sort of question: "Is this the sort of thing she meant? Would she approve of doing this?"

He was not embarked on the project for Ruth's sake. It was not Ruth who had driven him to it, but himself and the events of his life. But her presence was there. If he had never known her he would have done the same thing. Some day she would know this, and understand it. It would be another irony for her to bear. The man she had married so that she might influence him to ameliorate the conditions of his workingmen was doing far more than she had dreamed of accomplishing herself—and would have done it if she had never been born.

RUTH was living now in a boarding-house on the lower side of the city, where a room might be had for a sum within her means. It was not a comfortable room; but it was in a clean house, presided over by a woman of years and respectable garrulity.

Six days of the week Ruth worked, and the work became daily more exhausting, demanding more of her nervous organism as her physical organism had less to give. She was not taking care of herself. She had been slight; now she was thin. No one now would have dreamed of calling her "the girl with the grin."

She had not so much as a nodding acquaintance with most of her fellow lodgers. At first they gossiped about her. Some chose to think her exclusive, and endeavored to show her by their bearing that they thought themselves as good as she—and maybe better. They might have saved themselves their trouble, for she never noticed.

MRS. MOODY alone had tried to approach Ruth. Ruth had been courteous, but distant. She wanted no prying into her affairs; no seekers after confidences; no discoverers of her identity. For gossip spreads, and one does not know what spot it may reach.

"It hain't healthy for her to set in her room all the time," Mrs. Moody said to the girl who helped with the cooking. "And it hain't natural for a girl like her never to have comp'ny. Since she's been here there hain't been a call at the door for her—nor a letter."

"I hain't seen her but once or twict," said the helper. "If I was to meet her face to face on the street, I hain't sure I'd know it was her."

"She didn't look good when she come, and she's lookin' worse every day. First we know, we'll have her down on her back. And then what? S'pose she was to be took sudden? Who'd we notify?"

"The horspittle," said the servant callously.

"She's sich a mite of a thing, with them big eyes lookin' sorry all the while. I feel sort of drawed to her. But she won't have no truck with me—nor nobody. She hain't never left nothin' layin' around her room that a body could git any idee about her from. Secretive, I call it."

"Maybe," said the girl, "she's got a past."

"One thing's certain: if she don't look better 'fore she looks worse, she won't have a long future."

That seemed to be a true saying. Ruth felt something of it. It was harder for her to get up of mornings, more difficult to drag herself to work and hold up during the day. Sometimes she skipped the evening meal now and went straight home to bed. All she wanted was to rest—to lie down. One day she fainted in the office.

Later, one morning, she fainted as she tried to get out of bed, and lay on the floor until consciousness returned. She dragged herself back into bed, and lay there, gazing dully up at the ceiling, suffering no pain—only so tired!

Mrs. Moody had watched her going and coming for several days with growing uneasiness. This morning she knew that Ruth had not gone out; and presently the woman slap-slapped up the stairs in her heelless slippers to see about it. She rapped on Ruth's door. There was no response. She rapped again.

"I know you're in there," she said querulously. "Why don't you answer?"

INSIDE, Ruth merely moved her head from side to side on the pillow. She heard; but what did it matter?

Mrs. Moody opened the door and stepped inside. She was prepared for what she saw.

"There you be," she said, with a sort of triumphant air, as of one whose prophecy had been fulfilled to the letter. "Flat on your back."

Ruth paid no attention.

"What ails you?"

No answer.

"Here, now,"—she spoke sharply,—"you know who I be, don't you ?"

"Yes," said Ruth.

"Why didn't you answer?"

"I am—so—tired," Ruth said faintly.

"You can't be sick here. Don't you go doin' it. I hain't got no time to look after sick folks."

She might as well have spoken to the pillow. Ruth didn't care. She had reached the end of her will, and had given up. It was over. She was absolutely without emotion.

Mrs. Moody approached the bed and felt of Ruth's hand. She had expected to find it hot. It was cold, bloodless. It gave the woman a start. She looked down at Ruth's face, from which the big eyes stared up at her without seeming to see her.

---

"You poor mite of a thing," said Mrs. Moody softly. Then she seemed to jack herself up to a realization that softness would not do, and that she could not allow such goings on in her house.

"You're sick, and if I'm a judge you're mighty sick," she said sharply. "Who's goin' to look after you? Say!"

The tone stirred Ruth.

"Nobody," she said after a pause.

"I got to notify somebody," said Mrs. Moody. "Any relatives or friends?"

Ruth seemed to think it over, as if the idea were hard to comprehend.

"Once I—had a—husband," she said.

"But you hain't got him now, apparently. Have you got anybody?"

"Husband," said Ruth. "But he—went away. No, I—went away—because it was—too—late then. It was too late—then, wasn't it?" Her voice was pleading.

"You know more about it than me," said Mrs. Moody. "I want you should tell me somebody I can notify."

"I—loved him, and I didn't know it. That was—queer—wasn't it? He never knew it."

"She's clean out of her head," said Mrs. Moody irritably. "And what'll I do? Tell me that. What'll I do, and her most likely without a cent and all that? Why didn't you go and git sick somewheres else? You could of. You'll go packin' to the horspittle, that's what you'll do. Mark my word."

Mrs. Moody's method of packing Ruth off to the hospital was unique. It consisted in running, herself, for a doctor; it consisted in listening with bated breath to his directions; it consisted in giving up almost wholly the duties of conducting her boarding-house, and in making gruels and heating water and sitting in Ruth's room, wielding a fan over Ruth's ungrateful face. It consisted in spending of her scant supply of money for medicines, in constant attendance and patient, faithful nursing—accompanied by sharp scoldings and recriminations uttered in a monotone guaranteed not to disturb the sick girl.

Perhaps she really fancied she was being hard and unsympathetic and calloused. She talked as if she were; but no single act was in tune with her words. She grumbled—and served. She complained—and hovered over Ruth with clumsy, gentle hands. She was afraid somebody might think her tender. She was afraid she might think so herself.

The world is full of Mrs. Moodys.

Ruth lay day after day with no change, half conscious, wholly listless. It seemed to Mrs. Moody to be nothing but a waiting for the end. But she waited for the end as if the sick girl were flesh of her flesh—protesting to heaven against the imposition ceaselessly.

IF Bonbright's handling of the Hammil casualty created a good impression among the men, his stand against the unions more than counterbalanced it. He was able to get no nearer to the men. Perhaps, as individuals became acquainted with him, there was less open hostility manifested, but there remained suspicion, resentment which Bonbright was unable to convert into friendship and coöperation.

Frequently the professor discussed Bonbright with Mershon.

"He's a strange young man," he said. "He is made up of opposites. Look you, Mershon, at his eagerness to better the conditions of his men, and then place beside it his antagonism to unionism."

Mershon was interested at that instant in the practical aspects of the situation.

"The unions are snapping at our heels. Brick-layers, masons, structural steel, the whole lot. We've needed men, and we've got a big sprinkling of union men. Wages have attracted them. I'm afraid we've got too many—so many the unions feel cocky. They think they're strong enough to take a hand and try to force recognition on us. He won't have it." Mershon shrugged his shoulders. "I've got to the end of my rope. Yesterday I told him the responsibility was one I didn't hanker for, and put it up to him. He's going to meet with the labor fellows to-day. And we can look for fireworks."

"If I were labor," said the professor, "I think I should leave that young man alone—until I saw where he headed. They're going to get more out of him than organization could compel or even hope for. If they prod, him too hard they may upset things. He's a fine capacity for stubbornness."

The labor representatives were on their way to the office. When they arrived, they asked first for Mershon, who received them and notified Bonbright.

"Show them in," he said. "We may as well have it over."

There were four men whom Mershon led through the door into Bonbright's office; but Bonbright saw but one of them—Dulac.

He half rose from his chair, then sat down with his eyes fixed upon the man into whose hands, he believed, his wife had given herself.

"Mr. Dulac," he said, "I want to—talk with you. Will you ask these—other gentlemen if they will step outside for—a few moments? I have a—personal matter to discuss with—Mr. Dulac."

DULAC was not at his ease. He had come in something like a spirit of bravado to face Bonbright, and this turn to the event nonplussed him. However, if he would save his face, he must rise to the situation.

"Just a minute, boys," he said to his companions; and with Mershon they filed into the next room.

"Dulac," said Bonbright, in a voice that was low but steady, "is she well and—happy?"

"Eh?" Dulac was startled indeed.

"I haven't kept you to—quarrel," said Bonbright. "I hoped she would—wait the year before she went—to you; but it was hers to choose. Now that she has chosen, I want to know if it has—made her happy. I want her to be happy, Dulac."

Dulac came a step nearer the desk. Something in Bonbright's voice and manner compelled, if not his sympathy, at least something that resembled respect. "Do you mean you don't know where Ruth is?" he asked.

"No."

"You thought she was with me?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Foote, she isn't with me. I wish she was. I've seen her only once since—that evening. It was by accident, on the street. I tried to see her. I found the place empty, and nobody knew where she'd gone. Even her mother didn't know. I thought that you had sent her away."

FOR once, Dulac was not theatrical. Perhaps it was because the matter lay as close to his stormy heart as it did to Bonbright's.

"Haven't you had any word—anything?" Dulac was becoming frightened himself.

"Nothing—nothing."

Bonbright leaped to his feet and took two steps forward and two back. "I've got to know," he said. "She must be found. Anything could have happened—"

"It's up to us to find her," said Dulac, unconsciously coupling himself with Bonbright. The anxiety was equally theirs.

"Yes," said Bonbright.

"Call back the boys. Let's get this conference over, so we can get at it."

Bonbright nodded, and Dulac stepped to the door. The men reëntered.

"Now, gentlemen," said Bonbright.

"We just came to put the question to you squarely, Mr. Foote. We represent all the trades working on the new buildings. Are you going to recognize the unions?"

"No," said Bonbright.

"More than half the men on the job are union."

"They're welcome to stay," said Bonbright.

"Well, they won't stay," said the spokesman. "We've fiddled along with this thing, and the boys are mighty impatient. This is our last word. Mr. Foote: Recognize the unions or we'll call off our men."

Bonbright stood up.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," said he.

With angry faces they tramped out—all but Dulac, who stopped in the door.

"I'm going to look for her," he said.

"If you find anything—hear anything—"

Dulac nodded. "I'll let you know."

"I'll be—searching too," said Bonbright.

Mershon came in. "Here's a letter—" he began.

Bonbright shook his head.

"Attend to it—whatever it is. I'm going out. I don't know when I shall be back. You have full authority."

HE all but rushed from the room, and Mershon stared after him in amazement. Bonbright did not know where he was going, what he was going to do. There was no plan, but his need was action.

Suddenly he thought of Hilda Lightener. He had not seen her for weeks. She had been close to Ruth; perhaps she knew something. He drove to the Lightener house, and asked for her. Hilda was at home.

"She's lost!" said Bonbright, as Hilda came into the room.

"Whom are you talking about?"

"Ruth. She s not with Dulac. He doesn't know where she is. She was never with him."

"Did you think she was?" Hilda said accusingly. "You—you're so—oh, the pair of you!"

"Do you know where she is?"

"I haven't seen or heard of her since the day—your father died."

"Something must have happened. She wouldn't have gone away like that—without telling anybody, even her mother."

"She would," said Hilda. "She—she was hurt. She couldn't bear to stay. She didn't tell me that, but I know. And it's your fault for—for being blind."

"I don't understand."

"She loved you," said Hilda simply.

"No. She told me. She never—loved—me. It was him. She married me to"

"I know what she married you for. I know all about it. And she thought she loved him. She found out she didn't. It all came to her that day—and she was going to tell you. She was going to you and tell you, and ask you to take her back. And then I came and told her your father was dead. That made it all impossible—don't you see? Because you knew why she had married you, and you would believe she came back to you because—you owned the mills and employed all those men. That's what you would have believed, too."

"Yes," said Bonbright.

"Bonbright, if you find her—what?"

"I don't know. I've got to find her. I've got to know what's happened."

"Are you going to tell her you love her—and take her back?"

"Let's not—talk about that part of it, Hilda. Will you help me find her?"

"No," said Hilda. "She's where she wants to be. I'm not going to torture her by finding her for you—and then letting her slip back again—into hopelessness. If you'll promise to love her and believe she loves you—I'll try to find her."

Bonbright shook his head.

"Then let her be. No matter where she is, she's better off than she would be if you found her—and she tried to tell you and you wouldn't believe. You let her be."

"She may be hurt, or sick."

"If she were she'd let somebody know," said Hilda. But in her own mind was a doubt of this. "I won't help you," she said firmly.

Bonbright got up slowly, wearily. "I'm sorry," he said. thought you—would help. I'll have to hunt alone, then."

And before she could make up her mind to speak, to tell him she didn't mean what she said, and that she would search with him and help him, he was gone.

The only thing he could think of to do was to go once more to their apartment and see if any trace of her could be picked up there. Somebody must have seen her go. Somebody must have seen the

---

furniture going or heard where it was going. Perhaps somebody might remember the name on the van.

He did not content himself with ask- the janitor and his wife, who could tell him nothing. He went from tenant to tenant. Few of them even remembered that such a girl had lived there. But one woman, a spinster of the sort who pass their days in their windows and fill their lives meagerly by watching what they can see of their neighbors' activities, gave a hint. She was sure she remembered that particular removal on account of the young woman who moved looking so pale and anxious. Yes, she was sure she did, because she told herself that something must have happened.

"It was a green van; I'm sure it was a green van," she said, "because I was working a centerpiece with green leaves, and the van was almost the same shade."

"Wasn't there a name on it? Didn't you notice the name?"

The spinster concentrated on that.

"Yes, there was a name. Seems to me it began with an 'S,' or maybe it was a 'W.' Now wasn't that name Walters? No, seems more as if it was Rogers, or maybe Smith. It was one of those, or something like it."

That was the nearest Bonbright came to gleaning a fact. A green van. And it might not have been a green van. The spinster's memory seemed uncertain. Probably she had worked more than one centerpiece, not all with green leaves. But Bonbright had no recourse but to look for a green van.

He drove to the office of a trucking and moving concern, and asked if there were green vans. The proprietor said his vans were always yellow. Yes, there were green vans, though not so good as his, and not so careful of the furniture. He told Bonbright who owned the green vans. It was a storage house.

Bonbright went to the huge brick storage building, and persuaded a clerk to search the records; a bill from Bonbright's pocket-book added to the persuasion. An hour's wait developed that a green van belonging to the company had moved goods from that address.

"Brought 'em here and stored 'em," said the young man. "Here's the name—Frazer. Ruth Frazer."

"Did she leave any address?"

"Nope."

IT had been only a cul-de-sac. Bonbright had come to the end of it, and had only to retrace his steps. It had led him no nearer to his wife. What to do now?

He went to Mrs. Frazer. But Mrs. Frazer only sobbed and bewailed her fate and stated her opinion of Bonbright in many confused words. It seemed to be her idea that her daughter was dead or kidnapped, and sometimes she appeared to hold both notions simultaneously. Bonbright got nothing there.

Discouraged, he went back to his office, but not to his work. He could not work. His mind would hold no thought but of Ruth. He tried to pull himself together.

"I've got to work," he said. "I've got to think about something else." But his will was unequal to the performance. "Where is she? Where is she?"

The question repeated itself over and over.

There was a chance that a professional might find traces of Ruth where Bonbright's untrained eyes missed them altogether. So, convinced that he could do nothing, that he did not in the least know how to go about the search, he retained a firm of discreet, well recommended searchers for missing persons. With that he had to be content.

Bonbright felt that his plans would bridge the gulf between him and his employees—that gulf which seemed now to be growing wider and deeper instead of disappearing. Mershon's talk was full of labor troubles, of threatened strikes, of consequent delays.

"We can finish thirty days ahead of schedule," he said to Bonbright, "if the unions leave us alone.

"You think I ought to recognize them," Bonbright said. "Well, Mr. Mershon, if labor wants to cut its own throat by striking—let it strike. I'm giving it work. I'm giving it wages that equal or are higher than the union scale. I'm willing to do anything within reason, but I'm going to run my own concern. Before I'll let this plant be unionized I'll shut it down. If I can't finish the new shops without recognizing the unions, then they'll stand as they are."

"You're the boss," said Mershon, with a shrug. "Do you know there's to be a mass meeting in the armory to-night? I think the agitator people are going to try to work the men up to starting trouble."

THE strike must be headed off if possible. It would mean a monstrously costly delay; it might mean a forfeiture of his contract with Lightener. It might mean that he had gone into this new project and expended hundreds of thousands of dollars to equip for the manufacture of engines in vain. The men must not strike.

There seemed no way to avert it but to surrender, and that Bonbright did not even consider. He called in the professor.

"The plan is practically complete, isn't it?" he asked.

"I'd call it so. The skeleton is there, and it's covered with flesh. Some of the joints creak a little, and maybe there's an ear or an eyebrow missing. But those are details."

Bonbright nodded. "We'll try it out," he said. "To-night there's a mass meeting—to stir our men up to strike. They mustn't strike, and I'm going to stop them—with the plan."

"Eh?" said the professor.

"I'm going to the meeting," said Bonbright.

"You're—young man, you're crazy."

"I'm going to head off that strike. I'm going there and announce the plan."

Bonbright went early in order to obtain a good position in the hall, a mammoth gathering place capable of seating three thousand people. He entered quickly, and walked to a place well

---

toward the front. The street before the hall was full of arguing, gesticulating men. Inside were other loudly talking knots, sweltering in the closeness of the place. In corners, small impromptu meetings were listening to harangues not on the evening's program. Already half the seats were taken by the less emotional, more solid men, who were content to wait in silence for the real business of the meeting.

Bonbright was not accustomed to public speaking; but, somehow, he did not regard what he was about to say as a public speech. He was there to talk business with a gathering of his men, that was all. He knew what he was going to say, and he was going to say it clearly, succinctly, as briefly as possible.

IN half an hour the chairs on the platform were occupied by chairman, speakers, union officials. The great hall was jammed. The chairman opened the meeting briefly. Behind him Bonbright saw Dulac, saw the members of the committee who had waited on him, saw other men known to him only because he had seen their pictures from time to time in the press.

Bonbright had planned what he would do. It was best, he believed, to catch the meeting before it had been excited by oratory, before it had been lashed to anger. He arose to his feet.

"Mr. Chairman," he said distinctly.

The chairman paused. Bonbright's neighbors turned to stare. Men all over the hall craned their necks to have a view of the interrupter.

"Sit down!" "Shut up!" came cries from here and there.

Then other cries—angry cries: "It's Foote." "It's the boss." "Out with him—out with him!"

"Mr. Chairman," said Bonbright, "I realize this is unusual, but I hope you will allow me to be heard. I have something to say which is important to me and to you. I ask you to hear me. I will be brief."

"Out with him!" "No, throw him out!" came yells from the floor.

The chairman, familiar with the men dealt with, acted quickly. He turned to Dulac and whispered, then faced the hall.

"Mr. Foote is here uninvited," he said. "He requests to be heard. Let us show him that we are reasonable, that we are patient. Mr. Dulac agrees to surrender a part of his time to Mr. Foote. Let us hear what he has to say."

Bonbright mounted the platform and advanced to its edge.

"I am here," he began, "to lay before you a plan I have been working on. It is not perfect, but as it stands it is complete enough so that you can see what I am aiming at. This plan goes into effect the day the new plant starts to operate."

"Does it recognize the unions?" came from the floor.

"No," said Bonbright. "Please listen carefully. First, it establishes a minimum wage of five dollars a day. No man or woman in that plant in any capacity shall be paid less than five dollars a day. I have set an arbitrary minimum of five dollars because there must be some basis to work from."

The meeting was silent—nonplussed. It was listening to the impossible.

"Does that mean common labor?"

"It means every one," said Bonbright. "It means the man who sweeps out the office, the man who runs the elevator, the man who digs a ditch.

"I want every man to live in decent comfort, and I want his wife and babies to live in comfort. With these wages no man's wife need take in washing or work out by the day to help support the family. No man will need to ask his wife to keep a boarder to add to the family's earnings."

The men listened now. Bonbright's voice carried to every corner and cranny of the hall. He told them what he wanted them to do to coöperate with him: of an advisory board, to be elected by the men, sharing in deliberations that affected the employees; of means to be instituted to help the men to save and to take care of their savings; of a strict eight-hour day.

"That's all, men," Bonbright concluded. "Think it over. This plan is going into effect. If you want to share in it, you can do so, every one of you."

Bonbright turned and sat down in a chair on the platform, anxious, watching that sea of faces.

Dulac leaped to his feet.

"It's a bribe!" he shouted. "It's nothing but an attempt to buy your manhood for five dollars a day. We're fighting for a principle—not for money. We're—"

But his voice was drowned out. The meeting had taken charge of itself. It wanted to listen to no oratory, but to talk over this thing, to determine what it meant to them.

Dulac shouted, demanded their attention. He might as well have tried to still the breakers that roared upon a rocky shore. Already men were hurrying out of the hall to carry the tidings home.

AN old man detached himself from the mass and rushed up on the platform.

"It's true? It's true?" he asked, with tears running down his face.

"It's true," said Bonbright, standing up and offering his hand.

That was the first of hundreds. Some one shouted hoarsely, "Hurrah for Foote!" and the armory trembled with the shout.

The thing he had come to do was accomplished. There would be no strike.

Dulac had fallen silent, was sitting in his chair with his face hidden. For him this was a defeat—a bitter blow.

Bonbright made his way to him.

"Mr. Dulac," he said, "have you found her?"

"You've bribed them. You've bought them," Dulac said bitterly.

"I've given them what is theirs fairly. Have you found any trace of her?"

Even in this moment, which might have made him drunk with achievement, Bonbright could think of Ruth. Even now, Ruth was uppermost in his mind. All this mattered nothing beside her.

"Have you got any trace?" he asked.

"No," said Dulac.

To be concluded next week

What the War Means to Me—

Continued from page 6

Not a Matter of Reason

I AM a Chicago newspaper man. For a matter of four months—or ever since war was declared by America—I have not written a "story" that wasn't, directly or indirectly, concerned with the world's great war. I have written about the business of war from almost every conceivable angle, and have studied it from dozens of various viewpoints. I have dined at banquets with multi-millionaires who were feasting French (or Belgian, British, Italian, or Russian) war commissions, and who were acquiring untold millions from war profits; I have "covered" the exemption boards, where men were being drafted; I have eaten mess with the sailors at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station and bunked with the rookies at Fort Sheridan. Every day for nearly two weeks I was assigned to dig up "a good recruiting story," and this acquainted me with the people who are making the supreme sacrifice in this horrible business. (Parenthetically, they were a grateful relief after my association with the flag-waving, speech-making politicians and their bunk patriotism.)

I am, in brief, soaked through and through with war—so thoroughly saturated with it, in fact, that my every act and thought is in some degree influenced by it. Troubled friends of mine, bewildered by the swift rush of events, appeal to me for "inside information," such as, "When will the war end?" and "Is Germany winning and are the newspapers keeping it dark?" etc. They seem to think that the newspaper men have confidential information which is not divulged to the public. But I am just as much bewildered as they. And so is my managing editor, and the city editor, and all others on the staff. The owner of my paper could no more forecast the end of this war than could the greenest copy boy in the local room.

After living through four months of this, and noting the war enthusiasm among the wealthy and the lack of enthusiasm among the poor,—after knowing it is the wealthy who will most benefit and the poor who will most suffer from the war,—I am persuaded that this war is primarily for the interest of the rich. And, since I am far from rich, I should then be opposed to the war.

So I tell myself. And yet, despite this sort of reasoning,—despite my knowledge that America refrained from entering the war till the interests of the rich were endangered,—I can not deny a small inner voice which bids me:

"Enlist!"

I can not begin to explain this phenomenon. I only know that I am ruled by some primitive impulse and not by my reasoning faculties; and, although Uncle Sam has not yet called me to the colors (I am past the draft age), and notwithstanding I have a well paying job and a home to keep up, I am even now opening negotiations to enter the second reserve officers' training camp.

And that's what the war means to me.

A Canadian Letter

I AM writing this out on the wind-swept commons of Niagara, the location of the large Canadian military camp of last summer. To-day the place is deserted, and there are no signs of military activity. The field kitchens, mess-tents, cook-houses, orderly rooms, have all vanished. The trenches have either caved or fallen in. Over the thousands of bare places made by the tent floors the grass has grown, and in the distance they are using the commons for golf.

As I write, the notes of a bugle break the silence—sounding from Fort Niagara across the river, where twenty-two thousand soldiers are taking their reserve officers' training course. The other side seems very close. Over the tree-tops the American flag floats, and beneath it khaki-clad figures are moving about. I can not tell you how glad we all are that the Americans have entered the war, or how proud we are to have them as an ally.

Last summer my two Canadian brothers trained in Niagara. To-day they are overseas, and one has already had the misfortune to have been wounded in an advance drive of the famous Vimy Ridge battle. He was wounded about four in the morning, by shrapnel which exploded as he was crawling out of a shell-hole to inspect the machine-guns for their section.

News came to us of his wound, by cable, as we were seated around the breakfast table. "Regret to inform you that Lieutenant — has been wounded," was the only information that it gave.

It was three days before we could get any particulars, and the suspense of waiting and not knowing was perhaps the hardest part of all. Fortunately, the wound was not considered a dangerous one.

Immediately after my brother was wounded, word came for my second brother's unit to go overseas. He was very young, scarcely of military age, but very eager to go. Twice he had been turned down for heart palpitation; but, determined not be left behind, he went up for a third examination, when the board finally passed him.

To-morrow will be the third anniversary of the war. It has been a long three years, but now that the war outlook is so much better, it seems nearer the end.

In a recent letter from my brother he speaks of the peace prospects as seeming so much brighter. He adds that he has very good reasons for saying so, though he could not give them by letter. That, from him, means rather a lot, as he never speaks without due consideration.

From one who waits at home.

L. M. B.

A Chance for You After the War

HUNTING for the gold-laden Spanish galleons that were sunk centuries ago off the Spanish main will be nothing to salvaging submarined ships after this war. The wealth of the former was estimated in millions of dollars; but the latter is running into the billions. There are huge fortunes in ships awaiting the successful company that can haul them up from the bottom of the sea, and greater fortunes in the cargoes sunk.

The great hunting ground for sunken ships after the war will be off the English and Irish coasts, in the Mediterranean Sea, and along the French littoral. Sunken wrecks strew the bottom of the ocean in these well defined zones so thickly that the question of locating them will be the least of the problems.

The English Admiralty has a big war map of the seas which few are allowed to see. On it is marked the approximate location of every ship sunk by mine or submarine in this war. The preparation of this map was for war purposes, to guide the Admiralty in working out the most dangerous points. But after the war it will be of inestimable value to a salvaging company. It is inconceivable that a maritime nation like England should count all these ships and their cargoes as total loss without making some effort to reclaim them when peace comes.

Three salvaging companies have been organized in England, with a total capitalization of several millions, for the purpose of beginning operations the moment peace is declared. A French concern is likewise considering the possibility of hunting for ships sunk along that coast, and an Italian company purposes to scour the bottom of the Mediterranean.

Statistics gathered during the war show that a large percentage of the sunken ships lie at the bottom, where the depth ranges from one hundred to three hundred feet. A few are in much deeper water, and these will be neglected or left until the last.

England's sunken-ship map is furthermore being improved and changed weekly by observations made by seaplanes. If a submarine can be spotted from the air when submerged at a depth of from fifty to two hundred feet, a sunken ship can likewise be located just as exactly. The weekly observations of the airship pilots are thus used for keeping this map up to date. France's and England's great fleets of airships after the war will be put to work immediately to locate and buoy the sunken ships, and then the work of salvaging the hulls or cargoes will begin in earnest.

The work will be divided into two parts—salvaging the valuable cargoes, and raising the sunken hulls. Cargoes of a perishable nature will be ignored; but hundreds of ships carried cargoes that will be as valuable after the war as now—copper, aluminum, pig-iron, coal, gold and silver, and metals of all kinds. The demand for these years after hostilities cease will be so great in Europe that a single cargo may net the companies enough to pay them for their operations. Besides this, hulls will be tremendously valuable.

The English companies propose salvaging the valuable cargoes in the orthodox way; that is, by divers and derricks. Huge derricks, armed with scoops, will tear open the sides of the ships that are worthless, and haul up the coal, copper, or other metal. One concern is preparing an endless-chain equipment which, with the help of divers, can work continuously to scoop up all that is of value.

Salvaging the hulls of the sunken ships offers the greatest problems in this work. The most approved method so far used has been to sink huge pontoons or caissons on either side of the wreck, connected by chains or wire ropes adjusted to the under side of the hull by divers, and then pump the water from these and fill them with air. The lifting power of such pontoons is enormous, sufficient to raise the ordinary 4,000-ton ship from the bottom at the rate of twenty feet a day. When the ship is raised so that its deck is awash with the surface of the sea, she is towed into port and repaired.

One ingenious inventor in England has proposed to recover coal from the sunken ships by means of powerful suction pipes. These pipes, a foot or more in diameter, are flexible enough to adjust to suit any contingency. When a hole is blown in the side of a coal-laden wreck, the end of the suction pipe is admitted, and placed against the heap of coal. Powerful rotary pumps are then started up, and along with the sea water drawn up will be a steady stream of coal. It works very much like a vacuum cleaner, drawing up everything within reach. Once started, the stream of coal would continue steadily until it all was recovered.

The metal cargoes, and even the plates of the steamers, may be recovered by huge magnets. These powerful electromagnets are similar to those used in big blast furnaces and steel-mills, which pick up tons of scrap iron or enormous steel plates and transport them back and forth where needed. But, to overcome the action of the water on the magnets, they are protected by waterproof coverings and insulations, even the face of the magnet being thus protected until ready for operation. A powerful blast of air escapes from a circular hose around the magnet, which temporarily forces the water from the face of the steel plate and creates a vacuum. The face of the magnet is uncovered at the same moment, and fastens itself to the object to be hauled up.

It will be cheaper and quicker after the war to recover ships from the sea's bottom than to build them on the shore. The variety of hulls range from the small steamers of a few hundred tons burden up to the big liners and great warships worth several millions each. What more romantic work could be imagined than the salvaging of this the greatest fleet ever sent to the bottom of the ocean?

George Ethelbert Walsh.

Continued from page 10

prejudice. If we had a few facts or figures it might be different.' And you know that sour smile of hers. Well! That's why I did it. I asked them to give me ten days. And now—"

Vee finishes by squeezin' my arm.

"But how'd you come to break in so prompt?" I asks. "Did you mesmerize Belcher?"

"I bought up his cashier—paid her to report that she was ill," says Vee. "Then I smoothed back my hair, put on this old black dress, and went begging for the job. That's when I began to know Mr. Belcher. He's quite a different person when he is hiring a cashier from the one you see talking to customers. Really, I've never been looked at that way before—as if I were some sort of insect. But when he found I would work cheap, and could get Mrs. Robert Ellins to go on my bond if I should turn out a thief, he took me on.

"Getting up so early was a bit hard, and eating a cold luncheon harder still; but worst of all was having to hear him growl and snap at the clerks. Oh, he's perfectly horrid. I don't see how they stand it. Of course, I had my share. 'Miss Blockhead' was his pet name for me."

"Huh!" says I, gratin' my teeth.

"Meaning that you'd like to tell Belcher a few things yourself?" asks Vee. "Well, you needn't. I'd no right to be there, for one thing. And, for another, this is my own particular affair. I know what I am going to do to Mr. Belcher; at least, what I'm going to try to do. Anyway, I shall have some figures to put before our committee Monday. Then we shall see."

YEP, she had the goods on him. I helped her straighten out the evidence: copies of commission-house bills showin' what he paid for stuff, and duplicates of sales-slips givin' the retail prices he got. And say, all he was stickin' on was from thirty to sixty per cent profit.

He didn't always wait for the wholesaler to start the boostin', either. Vee points out where he has jacked up the price three times on the same shipment—just as the spell took him. He'd be readin' away in his Morgen Blatherskite, and all of a sudden he'd jump out of his chair. I'm no expert on provision prices, but some of them items had me bug-eyed.

"Why," says I, "it looks like this Belcher party meant to discourage eatin' altogether. Couldn't do better if he was runnin' a dinin'-car."

"It's robbery, that's what it is," says Vee. "And when you think that his chief victims are such helpless people as the Burkes and the Walters—well, it's little less than criminal."

"It's a rough deal," I admits, "but one that's bein' pulled in the best circles. War profits are what everybody seems to be out after these days, and I don't see how you're goin' to stop it."

"I mean to try to stop Belcher, anyway," says Vee, tossin' her chin up.

"You ain't got much show," says I; "but go to it."

JUST how much fight there was in Vee, though, I didn't have any idea of until I saw her Monday evenin' after another meetin' of the League. It seems she'd met this Mrs. Norton Plummer on her own ground and had smeared her all over the map.

"What do you suppose she wanted to do?" demands Vee. "Pass more resolutions! Well, I told her just what I thought of that. As well pin a 'Please-keep-out' notice on your door to scare away burglars as to send resolutions to Belcher. And when I showed her what profits he was making, item by item, she hadn't another word to say. Then I proposed my plan."

"Eh?" says I. "What's it like?"

"We are going to start a store of our own," says Vee—just like that, offhand and casual.

"You are?" says I. "But—but who's goin' to run it?"

"They made me chairman of the subcommittee," says Vee. "And then I made them subscribe to a campaign fund. Five thousand. We raised it in as many minutes. And now—well, I suppose I'm in for it."

"Listens that way to me," says I.

"Then I may as well begin," says she.

And say, there's nothin' draggy about Vee when she really goes over the top. While I'm dressin' for dinner she calls up a real estate dealer and leases a vacant store in the other end of the block from Belcher's. Between the roast and salad she uses the 'phone some more and drafts half a dozen young ladies from the Country Club set to act as relay clerks. Later on in the evenin' she rounds up Major Percy Thomson, who's been invalided home from the Quartermaster's Department on account of a game knee, and gets him to serve as buyin' agent for a week or so. Her next move is to charter a couple of three-ton motor-trucks to haul supplies out from town; and when I went to sleep she was still jottin' things down on a pad to be attended to in the mornin'.

For two or three days nothin' much seemed to happen. The windows of that vacant store was whitened mysterious, carpenters were hammerin' away inside, and now and then a truck backed up and was unloaded. But no word was given out as to what was goin' to be sprung. Not until Friday mornin'. Then the commuters on the 8.03 was hit bang in the eye by a whalin' big red, white, and blue sign announcin' that the W. E. L. Supply Company was open for business.

Course, it was kind of crude compared to Belcher's. No fancy counters or showcases or window displays or cracker-boxes. And the stock was limited to staples that could be handled easy. But the price bulletins posted up outside was what made some of them gents who'd been doin' the fam'ly marketin' stop and stare. A few of 'em turned half way to the station and dashed back to leave their orders. Goin' into town they spread the news through the train. The story of that latest bag of U-boats, which the mornin' papers all carried screamers about, was almost thrown into the discards. If I hadn't been due for a ten o'clock committee meetin' at the Corrugated, I'd have stayed out and watched the openin'. Havin' told Old Hickory about it, though, I was on hand next mornin' with a whole day's furlough.

"It ought to be our big day," says Vee.

It was. For one thing, everybody was stockin' up for over Sunday, and with the backin' of the League the Supply Company could count on about fifty good customers as a starter. Most of the ladies came themselves, rollin' up in limousines or tourin' cars and cartin' home their own stuff. Also the cottage people, who'd got wind of the big mark-down bargains, begun to come in bunches, every woman with a basket.

BUT they didn't swamp Vee. She'd already added to her force of young lady clerks a squad of hand-picked Boy Scouts, and it was my job to manage the youngsters.

I'd worked out the system the night before. Each one had a typed price list in his pocket, and besides that I'd put 'em through an hour's drill on weights and measures before the show started.

I don't know when it was Belcher begun to get wise and start his counterattack; but the first time I had a chance to slip out and take a squint his way, I

---

saw this whackin' big sign in front of his place: "Potatoes, 40 cents per peck." Which I promptly reports to Vee.

"Very well," says she; "we'll make ours thirty-five."

Inside of ten minutes we had a bulletin out twice as big as his.

"Now I guess he'll be good," says I.

But he had a scrap or two left in him, it seems. Pretty soon he cuts the price to thirty.

"We'll make it twenty-five," says Vee.

And by eleven o'clock Belcher has countered with potatoes at twenty cents.

"Why," gasps Vee, "that's far less than they cost at wholesale. But we can't let him beat us. Make ours twenty, too."

"Excuse me, ma'am," puts in one of the Scouts, salutin', "but we've run out of potatoes."

"Oh, boy!" says I. "Where do we go from here?"

Vee hesitates only long enough to draw a deep breath.

"Torchy," says she, "I have it. Form your boys into a basket brigade, and buy out Belcher below the market."

TALK about your frenzied finance! Wasn't that puttin' it over on him! For two hours, there, we went long on Belcher's potatoes at twenty, until his supply ran out too. Then he switched to sugar and butter. Quotations went off as fast as when the bottom drops out of a bull market. All we had to do to hammer down the prices of anything in the food line, whether we had it or not, was to stick out a cut-rate sign—Belcher was sure to go it one better; and when Vee got it far enough below cost, she started her buyin' corps, workin' in customers, clerks, and anybody that was handy. And by night if every fam'ly within five miles hadn't stocked up on bargain provisions it was their own fault; for if they didn't have cash of their own Vee was right there with the long-distance credit.

"I'll bet you've got old Belcher frothin' through his ears," says I.

"I hope so." says Vee.

The followin' Monday, though, he comes back at her with his big push. He had the whole front of his store plastered with below-cost bulletins.

"Pooh!" says Vee. "I can have signs like that painted, too."

And she did. It didn't bother her a bit if her stock had run out. She kept up on the cut-rate game, and when people asked for things she didn't have she just sent 'em to Belcher's.

MAYBE you saw what some of the papers printed. Course, they joshed the ladies more or less, but also they played up a peppery interview with Belcher which got him in bad with everybody. Vee wasn't so pleased at the publicity, stuff, but she didn't squeal.

What was worryin' me some was how soon the grand smash was comin'. I knew that the campaign fund had been whittled into considerable, and now that prices had been slashed there was no chance for profits.

It was botherin' Vee some, too, for she'd promised not to assess the League members again unless she could show 'em where they were comin' out. By the middle of the week things looked squally. Belcher had given out word that he meant to bust up this fool woman's opposition, if it took his last cent.

Then, here the other night, I comes home to find Vee wearin' a satisfied grin. As I comes in she jumps up from her desk and waves a check at me.

"Look!" says she. "Five thousand! I've got it back, Torchy, every dollar."

"Eh?" says I. "You ain't sold out to Belcher?"

"I should say not," says she. "To the Noonan chain. Mr. Noonan came himself. He'd read about our fight in the newspapers, and said he'd be glad to take it off our hands. He's been wanting to establish a branch in this district. Five thousand for stock and good will. What do you think of that?"

"I ain't thinkin'," says I; "I'm just gaspin' for breath. Noonan, eh? Then I see where Belcher gets off. And if you don't mind my whisperin' in your ear, Vee, you're some whizz."

How I Made a New Profession for Myself

AT thirty-five I found myself a widow with a bank balance of $300. I had no other resources, but a liability in the form of a son seventeen years old who had just entered a school of technology to study mining engineering.

My husband had been handicapped in life by lack of education, and I was determined that my son should have every advantage I could give him.

I was considered a good housekeeper, although I had no special training in domestic science. All I knew I learned from experience and by reading. I knew a balanced menu, and I knew what it should cost people to live, and the difference between a poorly managed home and an efficient one. To use my knowledge of housekeeping to earn a living, I found that the highest wage I could get was $600 a year and living expenses—that is, room and board with the family for whom I worked. I decided I could earn more money than that and also keep a home for my son.

It was four years ago that I took up the work of "housekeeping expert" for the public, and increased my earning capacity $1000 a year on what I could have earned as a housekeeper for the individual family. Here is my story:

Every Saturday night for one year I inserted this advertisement in a local newspaper:

The Housekeeping Expert. Let me hire your help, do your shopping, close or open your house between seasons, help with a luncheon or dinner, act as chaperone to your daughter, keep house while you visit, pack, edit accounts, pay bills, etc. Rates, $5 per day or $1 per hour.

Advertising at first seemed expensive, but it was cheap in the end. At the end of a year I had built up a fine business, and now I have more work than I can handle. The variety of things I have been called upon to do would fill a book. I have two patrons for whom I do all their children's shopping. In one day I do a season's buying for four children. Before going to the stores I arm myself with a list, including sizes, prices, and quantity. My five dollar fee is shared by the two families. Goods are sent on approval and charged.

I have been consulted by women—women with well filled pocket-books—asking me how they could reduce their household bills. In one family I suggested an electric washer instead of a laundress four days a week. With the washer installed, the laundress came only twice a week, saving the family $4.50 a week or $234 a year.

Tuesday of every week for the last year I have gone to a family where there are two young children and where no regular servant is kept. I keep house exactly as if I were the mother of that family, while a very worn little woman departs for the city, where she shops in the morning, has lunch with her husband, and goes to a matinée. These are her doctor's orders—complete change one day a week.

Those who read this must not consider that I am blessed with any degree of brilliancy, or that I know more than the average intelligent housekeeper. In my work I use what knowledge I have, and I am always seeking for more in the daily papers, books, and periodicals that have columns and papers devoted to the business of the home.

My work has paid well, has enabled me to put my son through college, and to live comfortably. I owe my success to courage and persistency and to advertising, and I do not work any harder than I would have to, to get only $600 a year. My income last year was, $1600, and I hope next year to make it $1800.

Don't Shout at the Deaf

IT is not true that misery loves company; but it is true that misery finds interest in misery. Not until one has sustained a similar loss is there a full appreciation of that loss or a wide knowledge of the numerous instances where it is an experience in common.

A few years ago the writer of this article had the misfortune to become partially deaf while the best of life was still before her. Setting to work to readjust herself to her handicap, she was soon aware that partial deafness is an affliction not confined to old people. It is her hope that what has been gleaned from her experience may prove useful to people in their effort to approach partially deaf people.

It is without doubt a natural thing for people to feel a sense of awkwardness in expressing what they have to say in a louder tone than they are accustomed to use. A desire to evade the deaf rather than to approach them becomes the impulse of the moment. There need be no sense of awkwardness if people adjust themselves to this particular condition in the following simple ways:

First, instead of using a louder tone of voice, a more effective way is to use a stronger tone.

By stronger tone I mean to speak your sentences as if each word had weight, or body, to it. This strength of tone can invariably be heard by persons partially deaf, and, in turn, it benefits the speaker's voice, giving it much the same quality that is found in a cultivated speaking voice. An actor's voice, which from the stage sounds like a merely natural tone, is the result of training. There are very few speaking voices that could not be improved on.

A second way of making it easier for the partially deaf person to understand you is to speak in a medium tempo. It is as confusing to follow words spoken in too slow and measured a time as it is when they are spoken very rapidly.

A third suggestion is to note the particular voice that the deaf person catches most readily, and to let that voice serve as your model. You will notice that many people, without undue effort, are able to make deaf persons hear. It is because they possess a good carrying voice. Imitate that voice as to tone, but do so by giving strength to your tone rather than by banging it out with unnecessary noise.

When you shout, a deaf person gets the same effect that any one does when listening to a voice that shouts in telephoning. A partially deaf person is sensitive to too loud a tone; and is conscious of energy

unnecessarily expended—though the kindness of the effort is appreciated.

A person deprived of hearing to any extent is bound to make some ludicrous mistakes; and it is better for the one afflicted to face this fact frankly, and not to be over-sensitive. I see no reason why we should not be laughed at if we make ludicrous mistakes, providing that people laughing tell us of our error, that we may laugh too.

Deafness often claims intellect that is keen, personality that is strong, and charm that is rare; and if allowed to be included instead of excluded, there are those among the deaf who would hold their own among the most brilliant conversationalists. This leads to a fourth way of approaching the deaf:

If you find them inclined to talk, give them the lead in the conversation. Do not do all the talking when a deaf person is present. Be a listener enough of the time to give a deaf person the opportunity of losing sight of his or her handicaps and of feeling an old-time ease and naturalness in contact with people.

Those whom deafness has claimed do not ask sympathy, but they do appreciate courtesy and consideration. The greatest courtesy and consideration you can show is to learn how to speak so as to lessen the handicap.

Mary Campbell Monroe.

If You Have an Aquarium

SELECT the size aquarium you desire. Clean it thoroughly. Then almost fill it with rain water or water from the creek. Personally I prefer stones rather than sand in the aquarium, because sand always becomes foul-smelling. Cover the bottom several inches deep with small stones.

Every aquarium must contain water plants to supply oxygen to the fishes. There are many varieties, all of which are good; for the small globe I would suggest "Washington" grass, a feathery variety that can be found growing in ponds and lakes. Water plants can be purchased from any pet store. The water hyacinth is a plant intended more for beauty than its ability to impart oxygen. The roots and not the leaves are under water.

The proper proportion of plants can be known only by trial; although a few sprays are never advised. One gallon of water at least must be given for each fish, and let me caution you not to crowd the aquarium with fishes. Two or three well selected varieties will give better results than a number.

It is never necessary to change the water. Add fresh water regularly; but don't change the entire volume. Any sudden change of temperature kills the fish.

To clean the tank take a small rubber hose long enough to reach the bottom of the globe and extend out over the side below the level of the stones. Place a bucket on a chair beside the tank and fill the hose with water by placing it under water till bubbles stop coming to the surface. Then, holding both ends of the hose tight, place one end under water in the globe and drop the other end into the bucket. The water in the globe will begin to siphon off. Now direct the end under water to the corners of the globe, where the debris usually lodges, and it will be carried off by suction. Guide the hose round the globe till all refuse is drained. Then lift the hose. Add fresh water to balance the quantity removed.

When a globe is kept in the direct rays of the sun a green slime will form on it. It can easily be removed by folding a clean cloth over the hand and wiping the glass with it. Do that always before you siphon the tank.

I prefer to feed my fishes rolled oats rather than the prepared fish food. First I crumble the oats, and then wash them several times in water to remove the milky substance, and then I drop the oats into the tank. Fishes like them, either raw or boiled. The boiled oats remain in bulk and can readily be removed if all of them are not consumed.

The Other Side of the Picture

By CHARLES R. BROWN

YOU have heard often enough of the huge fortunes made in Wall Street during the war period. You have seen Bethlehem Steel systematically rushed up from the low point of 29½ just before the war started in 1914, to 700 in 1916, and United States Steel common stock, which sold as low as 8⅝ during the 1907 panic, advance to 136⅝. In other words, any one investing less than $900 for 100 shares at the low price and selling out at the top would have netted close to $13,000. Of course very few operated at these figures and secured the maximum gains.

But what of the other side of the picture—of the war stocks that have broken down, of the bubbles that have burst, turning large paper gains into real losses? These, too, are numerous and furnish still another instance of the 99 per cent of risk that is contained in get-rich-quick schemes. As a broad proposal, it has been the man investing regularly and conservatively the few dollars he could save who has been the real winner.

Operators who have been successful in some stocks have themselves plunged and lost in new enterprises. Taking advantage of the unbridled speculative enthusiasm, "new" Bethlehem Steels were created and exploited. Large orders for munitions were available for any one who could fill them. The Allied governments were only too anxious to give everybody a chance to furnish the supplies which were so badly needed. All that was demanded was a Surety Company's bond guaranteeing deliveries per contract of reasonably accurate rifles and reliable fighting materials of various kinds.

A vital point was overlooked by our manufacturers and bankers in entering into these contracts. They could readily get advances of funds from Britain, France, and Russia to enlarge their factories, to purchase raw materials, and to pay out large sums for labor pending deliveries of the finished product. But there was one thing which could not be bought, because it did not exist—namely, an adequate supply of skilled labor. It takes men who are highly skilled and experienced to produce rifles and other munitions that will work with dependable accuracy.

No one would think of placing the production of high-grade watches, for instance, in the hands of inexperienced men.

Yet that is precisely what happened in the early part of the war when our manufacturers were assuming responsibility for contracts of war material. Needless to say that the work was not acceptable. Many millions of dollars' worth of contracts were rejected. It would have been little less than deliberate murder to send men to the front armed with any one of hundreds of thousands of rifles which were produced under these circumstances. Hence, deliveries were rejected, and the cost of labor, of raw materials, not to mention the anticipated large profits, were the sources of severe losses to the corporations themselves and to speculative holders of their securities.

Midvale Steel, while it may hardly be described as a bubble, has nevertheless been a keen disappointment. It was brought out by some of the largest banking interests in New York. Many clerks of one of the most prominent of Wall Street national banks subscribed freely to the stock because their superiors were identified with the enterprise. It was expected to rival Bethlehem Steel. But Midvale, which started out in 1915 at close to par (on the New York Curb Market), began at once a steady decline, until the price touched 50 in February of this year. Since that date there has been a moderate recovery. Canadian Car & Foundry, which secured many millions of dollars' worth of war orders, had a similar experience.

Large interests who did make money on war contracts used their funds to boom securities of other companies and then sold out at the top. American Graphophone Company, for instance, was one of these, selling close to $200 a share and falling to $78, though in the meantime the capital stock had been nearly doubled.

Chevrolet Motors was another property taken in hand by these same speculative interests, who forced the stock up to $278, took large profits, and now (late in October) the quotation is down to about 70.

Space is not available to give anything like a complete list of the bubbles of the war boom period. But a few of the more spectacular which flourished for a short time will readily be recognized when mentioned. Kathodian Bronze, which was an ambitious "war order" stock, and which was exploited by large advertisements in the newspapers, was forced up to $68 per share. There recently has been a small demand for it at about $1.

Maxim Munitions, once selling at $15 per share, has virtually no market price. Triangle Film, which was exploited and forced up to $7 per share, is in the $1 class, as, too, is World Film. The Butler Chemical Company, which sold on the New York Curb Market at 7⅝ last year, now has no market. Emerson Motors, after selling at $7.50 a share, was placed under the control of the court, which has just ordered the transfer of all the assets to a new corporation, called the Campbell Motor Car Company, in accordance with an elaborate plan of reorganization.

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

How customer-ownership is strengthening public-utility securities is interestingly shown in a 24-page pamphlet entitled "Rational Public Ownership" which is being distributed by H. M. Byllesby & Company, Inc., 218 South La Salle St., Chicago, 1219 Trinity Building, New York City.

If you are interested in the investment of your savings in sound securities, write to John Muir & Co. Ask for their booklet entitled "The Partial Payment Plan." A copy will be sent upon application to their main office, 61 Broadway, New York City.

In this period of financial readjustment bankers and business men require clear and concise information concerning important events. This may be obtained by consulting the Bache Review, which is widely known for its sound and unprejudiced opinions on financial matters. Copies will be mailed free on application to J. S. Bache & Company, members of New York Stock Exchange, 42 Broadway, New York City.

You can bank by mail with the oldest and largest trust company in Ohio and get 4 per cent interest on your money. Write the Citizens Savings and Trust Company, Cleveland, Ohio, for free booklet "P."

When confronted with a mass of technical and statistical information concerning stocks and bonds, have you ever wanted a terse and readable publication with honesty and ability in which you could have confidence? The Odd Lot Review, published weekly, aims to fill this field. Sample copies will be sent on request to the Odd Lot Review, Inc., 61 Broadway, New York City.

The Oklahoma Farm Mortgage Company of Oklahoma City has issued an interesting booklet regarding the First Farm Mortgages which it has for sale on improved Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana farm property. This booklet together with list of offerings will be furnished free on request. Ask for list No. 207.

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 & Company, 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.

Perkins & Company, of Lawrence, Kansas, make their loans upon personal examination of security and guarantee titles perfect. They mail their interest drafts to their investors to reach them the first of the month, so that there are no delays in interest payments. Write for circular No. 721.