This is His Week

HE was a poor Scotch boy in a Glasgow cotton mill; but, while his fingers were busy at the looms, his mind was making far-away pictures of untrod lands. When he was ten years old the determination came to him to become an explorer. The ambition was not realized until he was twenty-seven, when the London Missionary Society sent him out to Africa as a medical missionary. He had been studying medicine for nine years, "out of hours," to fit himself for this work.

Livingstone arrived in Africa in 1840. He worked ten years as a missionary, however, before he began his explorations. He learned to know the natives, and he learned to know the language, Meanwhile he listened to rumors of undiscovered lakes and mighty rivers the white man had never seen—splendid waterways and mountains that lay "beyond."

These ten years, he tells us, were spent "building, gardening, cobbling, doctoring, tinkering, carpentering, gun-mending, farriering, wagon-mending, preaching, schooling, lecturing on physics, and holding down a chair in divinity to a college of three!" He saw things too, that saddened his soul in these ten years. He caught glimpses of gangs of slaves; he knew that deadly fevers lurked in the loveliest surroundings, and killed overnight; and everywhere was black superstition which must be fought.

To explore Africa was a gigantic undertaking, but nothing was too dangerous for the staunch heart of Livingstone. The natives were, in the main, friendly; but traders regarded him as an inquisitive, over-busy missionary, and the slave-dealers hated and feared him because he had begun to make war upon this traffic.

For the rest of his life, after this, save for brief returns to civilization, Livingstone was cut off from home, wife, children, friends. After discovering Lake Ngami and the Zambezi River, he paid a visit to England to sever his connection with the London Missionary Society. He was indifferent to the honors that fashionable London tried to heap upon him; anxious only to get back to the Africa that fascinated him more than fame or glory.

After discovering the Victoria Falls he became obsessed with the desire to locate the source of the Nile. He was gone so long that all England thought him dead, and the New York Herald sent out a relief expedition, headed by H. M. Stanley, to look for him. These were years of fever, hunger, drought, attacks from wild beasts, and treachery from natives and Arabs alike, for Livingstone. At Nyangwa he located the carefully hidden central slave market of the Arabs, and witnessed a massacre. When Stanley found him, he was being carried on a litter, too weak to walk. He died in May, 1873,—the Nile's source still undiscovered,—and the natives who loved him cut out his, heart and buried it under a tree at Ujiji.

Do Animals Feel Pain?

THE Dutch physician, G. van Rijnberk, has found that if you cut off the tail (the business end) or even part of the body of the bee, the creature will keep right on sucking honey. The twitching of the skin of a horse is probably not in response to a pain sensation, but a reflex action, which would occur even if communication with the brain were cut off—just as, when you tickle the body of a frog that has had its head cut off, it will raise its leg to push away your finger.

Quite serious operations can be done on large grain-feeding domestic animals while they are feeding and they continue their meal uninterruptedly. In our Civil War it was more than once observed that badly wounded horses cropped grass, if it happened to be within reach.

Van Rijnberk has found also that dogs, cats, and rabbits, after severe operations, are as lively and frolicsome as they ever were, as soon as the effect of the ether has passed off. I was once invited to witness a laboratory operation on a dog that had been in the hospital for some time. His whole right lung was removed. Being interested in the success of this operation, I called next day. After some time the dog was discovered engaged with unimpaired vigor in his customary occupation of chasing the hospital cat.

Even in man, the pain sensation appears to be restricted largely to the bodily surface, being a protective phenomenon. It is a question, indeed, whether sound organs in the chest or abdomen are sensitive to pain.

Van Rijnberk concludes that "to attempt to answer the question, 'Do animals suffer pain?' is to step on a treacherous trap-door which drops one into a hornets' nest of philosophy, psychology, and biology."

Which leaves us just about where we started.

JOHN B. HUBER, M. D.

Cripples That Should Not Be

MANY men and women are permanently crippled from rheumatism who never ought to be. The germ that causes the disease, implanting itself in unhealthy tonsils and upper air passages, in catarrhal middle ears, in tooth cavities, in an inflamed appendix, or in any other focus of infection, gets past such insecure defenses into the blood and lymph channels, and so establishes its colonies in the various joints, the heart tissues, the pleural cavity (in which lie the lungs), and other vital but vulnerable organs and tissues. Thus in a predisposed system is the rheumatic fever set up—seldom immediately fatal, but ever serious as to its complications.

As is very well explained by Dr. James T. Nix, under the title above, in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, recovery from an attack of acute rheumatism leaves the sufferer far from unscathed. For the irritant inflammation has invaded the delicate membranes, the ligaments, the cartilages, and the nerves of the joints. With every successive attack of rheumatic fever, fresh insult is offered.

Therefore no first attack of rheumatism should be neglected, nor should any focus of infection in which the disease may lodge be permitted to remain in the body, if it is possible to reach it, by surgery or otherwise.

That Fine Old Fake about the Good Old Days

SEVERAL years ago I had a talk with a veteran of the Civil War.

I can see him now as he sat on his piazza, stroking his white whiskers and talking to me lugubriously.

A crowd of high-school boys passed us, shouting and jostling each other: and the old man, watching them with sad eyes, made them the text of his dissertation.

"The moral fiber of our youth is deteriorating," he said sorrowfully. "Why, at their age I was carrying a gun in the defense of my country. When I look at those thoughtless boys and think what might happen to our country if another war should come, I give you my word, sir, I shudder."

The good old man is gone beyond all shuddering: but I wish so much he might have lived.

For another war has come.

And the poor old country that he worried about has nothing but those thoughtless boys to depend on.

Nothing but those thoughtless boys—indeed. Yesterday I picked up the local paper from that town, and there were their pictures—hundreds of them, all in uniform.

Transformed overnight from thoughtless boys into men by their country's need. Just as he and his companions were transformed, fifty years ago. The same sort of crisis, the same boy-stuff, and the same glorious result.

Of all the fine old fakes that have enslaved the human mind, there is none greater than the myth of the "good old days."

The Greeks were subject to it, looking back always to their fabled "Golden Age."

The Hebrews had it also. They worshiped the memory of Abraham who was dead, and made life miserable for Moses who was alive.

"Woe unto you! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous," said Jesus, "and are yourselves the children of them which killed the prophets."

We Americans are subject to the same delusion.

We look back to the great departed days of the Revolution, when every man was a patriot, and nobody thought of anything but the glory of his country.

Yet only the other day, in the letters of one of the founders of the Republic to another one, I read this sentence:

"What a lot of scoundrels we had in that second Congress, didn't we?"

A successful man recently said to me: "My partner is very gloomy about the national outlook. He thinks that the government is in the hands of fools, and that we face very disastrous times after the war."

And I said to him: "I have never met your partner, but I will describe him to you. He is about fifty-five years old, and his health is not as good as it was, and he has quite a good deal of property."

My friend acknowledged the portrait. "But how did you know?" he asked.

And I told him that you may guess a man's age by knowing in what direction his eyes are pointed.

Youth looks straight ahead into the future, firm-eyed and confident. Middle age is likely to look to the side, saying to itself: "So-and-So, who walks beside me, seems to be better off than I."

But this is the sign of old age—that it looks behind and talks sadly of the "good old days."

Let not that baneful sign be fastened on you: let no one convince you that the world does not progress.

For we live, as President Wilson says, in a time that calls for "forward looking men"—men who, looking through the eyes of faith and confidence, can see the coming of the "good old days" just over the next hill-top—straight ahead.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE MOST INTERESTING PERSON I KNOW

She Has Never Been a Hundred Miles from Home

By E. W. HOWE

EVERY year I make a little journey to see the most interesting woman I know: Mrs. Andy White, a farmer's wife, who has probably never been a hundred miles from the rural community in which she was born.

Mrs. Andy White is a natural-born lady. I once took a Governor and his wife to see her, and she received them with a gentle graciousness that would have been creditable in any household.

I don't care for Jane Addams, Sara Bernhardt, Susan B. Anthony, Joan of Arc, or Dr. Anna Shaw; but when I am in the presence of Mrs. Andy White I know what gallantry is. If any reader of EVERY WEEK wishes to see her, I will gladly take him out; I want to see her, anyway, and again admire her attitude toward her husband and children—and their attitude toward her. If all women were like Mrs. Andy White there would be no bachelors.

When I told her EVERY WEEK wanted her picture, she said it must be a mistake; that it was Andy's picture the editor wanted.

The wonderful Andy! How he is admired by his wife! And he doesn't amount to much. He has been in the legislature, and owns three hundred acres of land in the $150 class, but I know thousands of men equally entitled to admiration from wives who never get it.

Other women I know have a secret opinion of men that causes me to blush; and I have heard them say things indicating that they know us to be a hard lot. The only criticism I ever heard Mrs. Andy White utter of men was that they all like red. This was in connection with a cloak, lined with red, which her husband once bought her. It cost seven dollars; and she wanted to take it back because it seemed extravagant. Think of that, you town payers of dry-goods bills. I haven't been imposed on as much as some others, but I have paid $108 for a suit consisting of one skirt and jacket.

Mrs. Andy White has a good opinion of men because they have always treated her well particularly her husband and grown son. Women like Mrs. Andy White are always treated well by men.

All women were originally of the type of Mrs. Andy White, but we men have made them suspicious. When Andy White married Ida Donaldson as a girl of nineteen, she was so gentle, and had so much respect for him, that he behaved himself.

My heroine had no education beyond that to be obtained in the district school. She doesn't play the piano, or sing, and belongs to no clubs. But she is a great force in her home and neighborhood, although she doesn't know it. She is just a plain good woman, with her home and Andy (her husband) and Emmet and Stella (her children) to look after. And she does it; which is enough, and more than many do.

Sea-Cook and Philosopher

By COMMANDER W. A. MOFFETT

FOR twenty years or more I've rubbed shoulders with the strangest characters of all lands, to find, finally, right under my nose the most interesting person I have ever met.

Packy Swartz's unromantic calling of galley cook offers poor background for individuality—but his is a personality that will not "blush unseen"; and so Packy has blossomed into the champion of unguessed thousands of Jackies. We no longer regard him as an individual; he is an institution to us.

Interesting? Theodore Roosevelt asked to be introduced to him; he has entertained the Secretary of the Navy; and there's not a raw recruit in camp whose horizon isn't filled with Packy's bulk.

Packy's job, according to the Navy records, is to cook for recruits; but Packy's job. according to Packy, is far different. He is the big brother of the lad who wanders about camp, homesick and strange; and he has the biggest heart in Illinois. He considers a hungry recruit a personal insult.

"If you don't get enough the first trip here, come again," invites Packy. "We don't want anybody writing home and saying the Navy doesn't feed them right."

Packy's philosophy is worth repeating.

"A man's backbone is best reached through his stomach," he says; "and when these boys come to me they're in the balance. Whether they are going to like the Navy or not depends entirely upon their first impression. So I try to make them feel at home—and I feed them right. They can talk about a man not eating when he's in love, but I can prove that's all bosh. A good hot meal is a sure remedy for homesickness, love, or cold feet. Why, a coward would fight a lion if you fed him up to it."

But Packy doesn't stop at feeding them. He's a regular foster-father to the thousands of boys that pass through his hands every month. They stay with him only three weeks before being passed on to the big camp and thence to the Navy; but during that stay Packy stiffens their backbones and, when necessary, puts the fear of discipline in their hearts, too.

Packy has been cooking in the Navy for fourteen years, and is known to the entire service. Promotion has been offered him, but he prefers to stay where he is and cook.

A three-stripe officer asked him the other day why he didn't climb up to the chief petty officer rank, and then gulped at the answer.

"The woods are full of C. P. O.'s," said Packy, "but it's darned hard to find a first-class cook."

GENERAL MANAGER OF THE UNITED STATES

A Little Talk with William Gibbs McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury and Director-General of the Railroads

By BRUCE BARTON

FIRST of all, I can give the testimony of my own eyes that Secretary McAdoo is not as thin as his pictures make him appear. This is important: there is a popular prejudice against very thin men—a prejudice wholly unfounded, doubtless, yet coming down through history and finding its victims in every age. Julius Cæsar was not free from it:

Let me have men about me that are fat [he demanded];
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

One easily recalls to memory such names as Charles the Fat, Charles the Bald, and even Charles the Simple; but of Charles the Thin I do not remember any recorded mention. Nations have somehow hesitated to intrust their destinies to men of too little physical weight: and no one can say how many men of sterling attributes have failed of distinction because of the lack of fifteen or twenty pounds.

It was a satisfaction to me, therefore, to discover at the first glance that Mr. McAdoo is really heavier than he appears to be. He is spare, as Lincoln was, with that sharp, angular build that we assume to be typically Yankee. But he is well muscled and looks hard as an athlete; and as well colored as if he were not spending ten or fifteen hours a day in an office and getting hardly any exercise at all.

Articles of this kind usually begin: "I arrived at the Treasury Department at ten o'clock. To my surprise, I was shown into the private office of the Secretary almost immediately."

I should like to begin in the accepted fashion, but I am compelled to stick to the truth. And the facts are that the following gentlemen, having arrived ahead of me at the Secretary's office, got to the Secretary first on this particular morning:

9:30 The general manager of one of the largest insurance companies.

9:45 A United States Senator.

10:00 The head of the Japanese financial mission.

10:15 Two chairmen of important House committees.

10:45 The Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, with an armful of papers.

11:15 A bank president.

It was a long wait for me, but I rather liked it. For one thing, the janitors of the government buildings apparently have not been notified that a war is going on in the world, and I was thoroughly warm for the first time in several days. And it was pleasant, also, to watch the men come and go, and to think of the interesting events that must have taken place behind those walls. What conferences must have been held there in the dark days of the Civil War, when it was a question whether the people would buy enough bonds to keep the country going. What happened there in the panic days of '73? And in those trying hours when Grover Cleveland used to look despairingly at the Treasury statement and wonder where the money was coming from.

Colored attendants stepped in and out with stately tread. We have occasionally had members of the Cabinet of insignificant appearance, who might have been mistaken for doormen; but I have never seen a colored doorman in Washington who, if he were white, would not be mistaken for a member of the Cabinet. Serious-minded, dignified gentlemen they are, moving deliberately and with poise, each carrying on his shoulders the government of the United States.

A great pile of mail lay on the desk of the outer office. From nine o'clock until noon a private secretary was busy opening it; and whenever he seemed to be nearing the end of the pile, a messenger would arrive with a fresh batch.

It is the privilege of every citizen to address the President for whom he voted, at any time and on any subject. But recently the impression has gone through the country that the President has a number of matters on his mind these days, and that he does not find time always to answer all the mail addressed to him. What more natural, therefore, than that the citizen should turn to Mr. McAdoo? He is the Secretary of the Treasury, and therefore responsible for the financial troubles of the voters. He is director-general of the railroads, and if coal does not come promptly, or a trunk is lost in transit, or a shipment of eggs arrives in bad condition, he is of course to blame. So people write to him on all sorts of matters. While I was waiting, a lady called up, in great perturbation. She was planning to ship a pet dog from Washington to Houston, Texas, she said, and she would like to have the Secretary give her a priority order, so that little Fido might be sure of getting through safely and on time.

The mail was opened and divided into two piles. One pile, relating to railroad matters, was to be sent over to the Interstate Commerce Commission, where Mr. McAdoo has another office and another private secretary. No railroad matters in the morning: no Treasury matters in the afternoon. It is thus that he divides himself into two parts and keeps himself from falling under the wheels of the problems that come rolling toward him from all directions.

Mr. McAdoo was born fifty-four years ago near Marietta, Georgia, and he still speaks with a Southern accent. But there is nothing of the slowness sometimes associated with warm climates in his make-up to-day. "He gets things done," they say of him in Washington: and that seems to have been his reputation from the beginning. He gives part of the credit for that ability to General Sherman, who in McAdoo's early boyhood visited his section, and made it necessary for all the residents thereabout to go to work.

"I was brought up in Georgia in the path of General Sherman's famous march to the sea," he once said in a speech. "As Henry Grady once remarked, 'General Sherman was a bit careless with fire; and for this reason, among other things, he never has been a popular man in Georgia. For myself, however, I feel that I owe General Sherman a debt of gratitude. He produced conditions and an environment which made it necessary for the individual to develop every resource and every power with which nature had endowed him in order to exist. I believe that character is produced and developed to the highest degree by hardships, suffering, and poverty. I have never doubted that whatever of character and capacity I have developed has been, in a large measure, due to the surroundings and conditions which General Sherman forced upon the people of my section during that great war."

Mr. McAdoo's father became Professor of English and History in the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and it was there that the son had his college training. He studied for the law; became, after a few years, one of the counsel for the Southern Railway; and at the age of twenty-nine was president of the Knoxville Street Railway Company.

Those were hard days for the street railways. Electricity was just beginning to displace the horse, and the cost of electrification was high. Mr. McAdoo, to find funds for his little road, went to New York in 1892; and, liking the atmosphere of the town, opened an office and settled down to practise law.

Thousands of men, riding across the ferries from New Jersey to New York, must have said to themselves: "What a wonderful thing if tunnels could be put under the river, so that the trains might come straight through. What a saving of time if the thousands of commuters could ride to their homes in New Jersey in trains instead

Concluded on page 18

Mr. McAdoo's Message to Every Week Readers

YOU can do something to help the government solve the railroad situation.

Don't make a single railroad journey that can be avoided, for the present.

If you have to travel, don't take a trunk.

Don't ship anything that can wait.

If you must move, sell as much of your old furniture as you can, and buy new furniture at your new home.

Every pound of freight you keep off the roads gives that much more car space for essentials.

Most of all, be as considerate as you can of the men in the ticket offices and on the trains. They are working under great pressure. Remember that, while the war lasts, they are public servants, working for your government, which means you.

Help them to feel that you, as one of their employers, appreciate their difficulties and are doing your best to help.

It Takes a Brave Man to Go to Sea

ROYAL Transport engineers are not listed in the navy. But, for all that, they do a dangerous bit for their country. A Scottish engineer on a transport told Mordaunt Hall, in Sea Power, of a thrilling experience of his—and its sequel.

The ship on which this engineer worked was torpedoed, and all aboard were left floating about in open boats. "Hour after hour," said the engineer, "we baled and looked, rowed and baled. From dawn until nightfall we were there, out of sight of everything. A bite of biscuit was a meal. Then night came on.

"When the next dawn came, a man turned cold. He was better covered than the rest of us, and, after making sure that he was dead, we borrowed his coat, passing it around.

"The signs of the sun went westward, and still we were slopping around in a boat with a dead man. By the middle of the night a few of the men dropped off to sleep. There was a little chap at the tiller. He was so silent that I thought he had gone.

"Two hours after dawn we saw smoke on the horizon. We hoisted some clothes at the end of an oar. Soon the vessel showed signs of looking for us. It was a great sight to see the sleek destroyer near us. The details of getting aboard were over so fast that I did not trouble even to think about them. We just stood in front of the fires and thawed.

"A bit later we steamed into P—, and were permitted to go ashore. I had just reached the hotel when a woman came up to me. She said nothing, just looked at my face and clothes, and then handed me something which fluttered to the ground. It was a white feather."

Look Out for Treachery

AMERICAN soldiers in the trenches must be on the alert for German tricks that Allied troops long ago learned to look out for. One bloodthirsty joke is described by Thomas M. Johnson in the New York Evening Sun:

"A favorite trick was to leave one of the spiked German helmets that every Allied soldier covets as a trophy lying apparently innocently on the ground, and underneath a detonating device for a mine that would blow to atoms the soldier who picked it up."

The first great commandment of the trenches is: "Never go into a German dug-out, or a house once occupied by a German, or touch anything a German has left, without investigating first."

American soldiers have been warned:

"They will know that a loose board in a dug-out is a thing to be avoided, that bits of equipment lying on the ground should be left lying there, and that above all wires should be cut first and stumbled over afterward."

The most startling of all the German tricks is the "double coffin":

"Counting on the Allied troops desiring to give a decent burial to any dead they may find in captured places, the Germans place one coffin atop another. The instant the upper coffin is moved a charge of high explosive is detonated and the soldiers who suppose themselves about to perform the last office for a dead enemy are themselves killed."

The Native Fighter

By CAPTAIN A. P. CORCORAN

IT was a Gurkha who, for two hours, defended his section of trench, after all his companions had been killed, by bombing the approaching Boche.

It was a Senegalese who carried his wounded French officer on his back, after his own toes had been shot off, for eight kilos, under a burning sun.

It was the Dekka Horse who by such an exhibition of horsemanship as has probably never been equaled, justified the decision of the Allied staff to use cavalry in the early battles on the Somme. One of the favorite stunts, which I have seen them many times practise behind the lines, is to sling their bodies under the stomachs of the horses and shoot from this reversed position.

Arab, Pathan, Bhopal, Sikh—they are always with us in this war. "Savages," the Boche press called them at first, criticizing the Allies for their use of these "hordes." Since the advent of the terrible Turk on their own side, they have observed a discreet silence on this point. The Hindus have no Armenian massacres to their credit.

When the war broke out, there was some discussion as to whether it was worth the trouble to bring the Indian troops to France. Fighters they were, of course, but could they stand the climate and the unusual character of the war they would have to make? The battle of Neuve Chapelle was the answer. Here the Sikhs and Bhopals took part for the first time, and they never wavered, though they lost fifty per cent of their men.

What is the caliber of these men? The Gurkha, a small, wiry chap, needs a prop to get him level with the parapet. The Sikh, a strong, hardy hillman, is second

to none in physique. The Senegalese is a powerful person. One and all, of course, they are picturesque.

The Indian of India has his own method of attack, and he liked to use them at first. For a long time, it was a habit of the Gurkhas, when allotted to a place in the first line, to creep over the top in the dark, knife in mouth, and then crawl snake-fashion over No Man's Land, on the hunt for a German sentry. Sometimes he found one, and brought back evidence. Sometimes he did no more than give an alarm, which resulted in some uncomfortable and untimely activity on the part of the Boche. He was discouraged from these excursions, and they have been discontinued, I think, now. The enemy seem to have adopted them instead, as witness the throat cutting of the American sentry, of which the news reached us lately.

But to come back to our "natives"—

It was characteristic of the Germans, with their belief in applied psychology, to try out some tricks especially adapted to their conception of the Indian mind. Credulity was a characteristic with which they credited the colored man. They had a sneaking belief, too, in his lack of real patriotism. A few lessons taught them to think differently.

In the early days of the fighting, trenches were dug hastily, and the system, of course, lacked the perfect alignment it possesses now. Consequently it often happened that a Boche trench jutted so far forward as to be almost wedged between two of ours. To take one of these "scrape-outs," naturally, gave an advantage out of all proportion to the capture of a single traverse now.

On one occasion the projecting Boche position brought the enemy into line with a company of Gurkhas. It was on a dark, wet night that the Indian private on "sentry-go" was suddenly hailed by a man in the uniform of a British officer.

"Brigade orders," said a voice in a perfect London accent. "Your company is to move out of this trench right away to make room for others coming in."

The Gurkha looked at him. True, he was accustomed to taking orders issued with that accent. But why did not his own English officer issue them?

"Sorry, sir," he began.

But the other interrupted:

"The orders are to move right away. No time for the usual formalities."

While the Indian was still hesitating, his own British officer entered the trench. He did not see him at once, but the spy did, and immediately began to back into the enveloping darkness. The Gurkha, however, proved too quick. He covered the fake officer instantly with his gun, and the man was captured.

It was at Verdun that eight Zouaves went into their first fight. They were captured, and the Germans determined to use them. Once again it was some trenches that they coveted. The Zouaves were to be the instrument for the attack. With them as a shield, the attacking force marched to the encounter, convinced that the French would never shoot on their own men.

But they reckoned without their enemy!

When the defenders saw this strange force approaching, they hesitated, just as the Hun had calculated. What had happened? Had their comrades deserted to the other side? If not, what was the meaning of this assemblage? But the Zouaves did not leave them to doubt long.

Coming within hearing distance, one of them stepped forward and shouted:

"Shoot, boys, shoot for France!"

And the French, divided between sorrow and admiration, fired and saved their positions. Just one Zouave survived.

No, there is nothing to choose between them and the white men when it is a question of physical or moral courage. When you come to personal habits, however, there is some shrinking, perhaps on both sides: certainly on ours.

Watch a Senegalese in hospital when he gets the usual basin of water with which to perform his daily toilet. First he applies it to his feet, next to his face. If he is thirsty, finally he drinks it. The nurse tells him again and again that he must not act so. She turns her back, and he is at his old tricks.

Then there is another difficulty, connected with the matter of beds. He has never slept in one before. He distrusts one. Who will guarantee that he won't fall off in the night?

At first he takes precautions on his own account. He drags himself and his mattress on to the floor. By main force the nurse and doctor keep him in the more elevated position for a day or two. Then he becomes converted, and stays there without further argument.

His dressing is another matter that causes comment. Have you ever seen a Zouave don his turban? It is, as you probably know, just a long narrow piece of cloth. But he doesn't wind it on his head, as you might imagine. No, he whirls himself into it, much after the manner of a spinning top. So, in the wards where he is convalescing, this is one of the daily "attractions" for the poilu—watching the Zouave get himself into his clothes!

Greed is International

IT is always foolish to generalize about a whole nation: "All Americans are money-grabbers"; "All English lack humor"; "All Frenchmen are noble and patriotic." Human nature is about the same everywhere.

Going back from the front with his squad for a few days of rest, Henri Barbusse and some companions searched feverishly through the little town for a room that they might rent—there to set up a table and have their meals together. To eat for a week off a table—it was their dream of heaven.

And everywhere they found the peasants cold, suspicious, grasping. At length, at an enormous price, a surly old woman rented them a dirty shed, in which they set up an old door on sawhorses.

To them, as they sat in their shed, came the little son of a neighboring house. Barbusse tells it in his book, Under Fire (E. P. Dutton & Company):

"The door half opens and admits a streak of light. The face of a little boy is defined in it. We entice him like a kitten, and give him a bit of chocolate.

"Then, 'My name's Charlie,' chirps the child. 'Our house, that's close by. We've got soldiers, too. We always had them, we had. We sell them everything they want.'

"'Tell me, little one, come here a bit,' says Cocon, taking the boy between his knees. 'Listen now; your papa he says, doesn't he, "Let's hope the war goes on," eh?'

"'Of course,' says the child, tossing his head, 'because we're getting rich. He says by the end of May we shall have got fifty thousand francs.'

"'Fifty thousand francs! Impossible!'

"'Yes, yes!' the child insists, stamping. 'He said it to mama. Papa wished it could always be like that. Mama, sometimes, she isn't sure, because my brother Adolphe is at the front. But we're going to get him sent to the rear, and then the war can go on.'"

Salutes

How Lee Took Defeat

HOW soon after the war is over will the wounds heal? How long before the hate that it has engendered will die out of the world again? If every nation could be led by men as big and as wise as Robert E. Lee, the answer to those questions would be very heartening.

Even the harsh and cruel methods of the Reconstruction scarcely drew from his lips a word of remonstrance, says Randolph H. McKim in The Soul of Lee (Longmans, Green & Company). When indicted for treason, he declared himself ready to answer the charge, and wrote to his son: "We must be patient and let them take their course."

Writing to General Early, he said: "I would recommend that you omit all epithets and references calculated to excite bitterness of animosity between different sections of the country."

An English nobleman, a sympathizer with the Confederacy, offered him a country seat in England and an annuity of £3,000. His reply was worthy of his noble soul: "I must abide the fortunes and share the fate of my people." Equally characteristic was his answer to a proposal to head a colony that was to emigrate to Mexico:

"The thought of abandoning the country and all that must be left in it is abhorrent to my feelings, and I prefer to struggle for its restoration and share its fate, rather than give up all for lost."

When offered the presidency of an insurance company at a princely salary, Lee excused himself on the ground that he knew nothing of the insurance business; and when he was told in reply that no duties would be required of him,—nothing was asked but the use of his name,—his answer was that his good name was all that he had saved from the wreck of the war, and that it was not for sale.

To another gilt-edged business proposition the old general made this sublime reply:

"I am grateful, but I have a self-imposed task which I must accomplish. I have led the young men of the South in battle; I have seen many of them die on the field; I shall devote my remaining energies to training young men to do their duty in life."

Rickety Bill

THEY called him "Rickety Bill" because, both physically and morally, he was a poor specimen. As soon as he donned a uniform he fell in love with a girl named Elsie, who, as Heine's song says, loved another.

This other, one Harry Dixon, was a muscular, upstanding chap, for whom Bill at once conceived an intense dislike. The more he disliked him, the more, of course, he drank. Then a Y. M. C. A. worker got hold of him.

At Ypres one of the first to get hit was Harry. He kept crying out for water, but none was to be had except from a spring out in the open. To go there was little short of suicide. And yet, Bill started, water-can in hand.

He had not gone far, when it dropped. Hit in the right arm! But he picked it up with the other, and got the water.

Half way back he doubled up. Hit again. Then, just as he reached the trench, he pitched forward. But—

"How's Harry?" he gasped.

Harry was dead.

They sent Bill to hospital. He recovered, and got leave. When he came back, they asked him if he had seen Elsie.

No, he said. He thought it wouldn't be the sporting thing to do. So now they have dropped his old nickname.

THE STORY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN FAMILY

WHEN the news came that our government had declared war, my heart was gripped with fear as I wondered if my boy would be needed, and how we could spare him. Our burdens were already too heavy.

Shortly before Henry's birth our baby daughter had become afflicted with asthma, which made it necessary for us to change the climate. We moved West. She improved for a while, then grew worse. We moved again, with a like result, and this continued for twelve years. We no sooner got a start in one place than we were compelled to try a new locality.

Eventually the trouble was conquered, and she became less of a care. And then I had a year of invalidism, after the birth of dear twin babies; and my husband found his hands more than full. In this hard year he laid the foundation for the affliction which has gradually overcome him, until now he is prematurely an old man and almost helpless.

As father grew worse, we came to depend more and more upon Henry, our son. For some time he had been earning a man's wages and with utter unselfishness turned his pay over to us. But when the call came he was fired with patriotism. He could not wait to be drafted. He hesitated only as to our welfare, and I could not refuse my consent. He was told that if he would enlist the government would look after his family.

He enlisted, passed the examination among the highest, took his training, and is now on his way "over there."

And what of his family? Henry had more than half his pay allotted to us, which makes our rent secure; but it is a hard pull. We have had some relief from the Red Cross, and friends are kind. I have rented rooms, taken boarders, worked out by the day, taken in washing, and done anything and everything that I was able to do. Thank God, my strength keeps up, and we have had food and clothing for our needs.

We miss our boy—his companionship as well as his help. Yet, even so, we would not have it different. We are proud that we have raised a boy to serve his country gladly. And for us—there will be a way.

R. L. H.

The Kind of Folks They Are

GO with me to Belgium," said Henry L. Rosenfeld, in a recent address. "Von Jagow, then German Foreign Minister, when asked in 1913 whether, in the event of war between Germany and France, Germany would respect the neutrality of Belgium, replied:

"'The neutrality of Belgium is guaranteed by international convention to which Germany is signatory, and Germany will abide by that convention.'

"Let that stand side by side with the answer of a German officer to me as we stood amidst the ruins of Louvain in November, 1914, when he asked me why America was prejudiced against Germany.

"I said I thought it was because of what had happened to Belgium, and his reply was:

"'What happened to Belgium that should not have happened? What right had she to stand in our way and block Germany's plans?'"

"Good-By, You Fellows"

DID ever the gay Gordons do a gayer or more. gallant thing than was done on the 29th of September, 1914, on the western front?" asks Professor G. T. W. Patrick in Medicine and Surgery, quoting from a correspondent's despatch. "Thirty gunners of a British field battery had just been killed or wounded. Thirty others were ordered to take their place. They knew that they were going to certain death, and they went with a cheery 'Good-by, you fellows!' to their comrades of the reserve. Two minutes later every man had fallen and another thirty stepped to the front with the same farewell, smoking their cigarettes as they went out to die."

HIS MASTER'S VOICE

The Pippin of Pike County

By CONRAD RICHTER

Illustrations by Robert Amick

WHEN Quit Baldwin landed in Big Silver—a civic community of four or five gaunt, naked buildings on the desolate, fire-swept slopes of the Bitter Roots—he found the place in a state of excitement.

The excitement was catching. The vein of the Big Silver Mining Company on the nine hundred foot level was expected to be struck any moment. A mining engineer from Mullan was coming down in a day or two to make a survey. West, the shirt-sleeve president and general manager of the Big Silver, was so hopeful of an immediate strike that his niece from the East was coming, to be on hand for the celebration. Her name, Baldwin heard, was June Pippin; she hailed from Pike County, Missouri; and she was just out of boarding-school.

Baldwin was on a side-door Pullman summer tour of the Cœur d'Alenes, Spokane, Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland, intending to winter between San Francisco, San Diego, and New Orleans—wherever a gentleman with no special vocation could catch a job until pay-day. Now he decided to delay his itinerary for a week and see the fire-works.

He promised West he would stick for a solid month. But when that official set him upon renewing acquaintanceship with two sworn enemies, the ax and the saw, up in the sticky hot, burned-out woods above the reservoir—ugh! As far as his eye could see, blackened trunks stood up bare and mute, like a forest of totem-poles. Nothing else was in sight except millions of tangled devilfish of crisped branches over a desert of gray-black ashes and under a glaring blue-white sky.

Baldwin changed his mind about staying a week. He decided to beat it that night. He wouldn't get his first day's pay: but sooner lose a fortune than go through the ordeal of another blister-raising day in this forest graveyard.

After supper he spent his time making friends with West's three Airedales, in the hope that they might recognize his not unpleasant face and make no outcry when he sneaked out of the bunk-house that night. Later he watched four night-owls play solo. When they put up their cards, he followed them up to the bunk-room and partly undressed. For more than an hour, perhaps two, he lay on his bunk, listening to the hubbub of snores. Moonlight came aslant through the small windows. A coyote barked from somewhere up on the mountain. Baldwin finally risked to venture downstairs. He found that sneaking down was a harder proposition than he had ever found sneaking up.

On the last step he hesitated. The Big Silver Mining Company owed him four dollars. He might as well take at least a part of it along. He had earned it: it wouldn't be robbery. Noiselessly he made his way to the kitchen. He managed to find half a loaf of bread and a pie. It was his favorite, apple pie. In feeling about, his fingers accidentally broke through the crust.

With the loaf under his arm and the pie held carefully in both hands, he hurried out over the moonlit steps, and started to tiptoe painfully toward where the railroad tracks threw back the light of the moon when a smooth young voice called from behind him:

"Just a moment!"

Baldwin whirled. The bread was still under his arm. The pie was in both hands. From the shadow of the boarding-house a girl stepped out. A traveling bag was in one hand, a moon-glinting revolver in the other. She was a generously bosomed girl, and so steadily erect it seemed to Baldwin that if he had the effrontery to give her a shove, she would balance back again, like a patent weighted match-holder. Her skin in the moonlight was amazingly white, touched here and there with something that Baldwin figured were freckles. He also had the presentiment that the hair under her mushroom hat was the same color as the freckles.

"Which is Mr. David West's house?" she asked coolly, keeping the revolver where he could see the hole.

"You—you think I'm a robber!" stammered Baldwin. "But you're mistaken."

"You wrong me," said the girl mildly. "I merely thought you were sneaking over there to feed the katydids and the crickets."

"I was going away," informed Baldwin. "A man has a right to go away when he doesn't like his job."

THE girl seemed to be studying him as if something in his plight or voice or eyes had interested her.

"How long have you been on this job that you're tired of?" she asked quietly, at last.

"A day," swallowed Baldwin. "I never work on a job longer than a couple days or a week—just to get enough to travel on again. I wouldn't make good here, anyhow. I've never yet made good anywhere. Likely I never will."

"You're what my grandfather calls a quitter," the girl reflected. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Uncle David wrote to me how be needed more men. And you, so big and strong and young! One would never think you were a quitter, to look at you."

"It's a free country," said Baldwin stiffly. "I can do it if I like, and nobody dare stop me."

"But you are stopped now," reminded the girl mildly. "Which did you say was Mr. West's house?"

"The second there." Baldwin reluctantly indicated with his chin.

"Lead the way," invited the girl. "Walk rapidly. Kindly keep those things in your hands right where you have them. You look more guilty that way."

She followed just behind him. Her bag swung in one hand; the revolver sagged up and down in the other. At her uncle's door she put down the bag and knocked loudly. The first answer was a chorus of yelps from the Airedales as they raced around from the rear. The next answer was West himself, in his shirt and trousers. His feet were bare.

"Hello, Uncle Davy," she greeted, with an affection that the situation couldn't down. "Just as I came up, this young man was absconding out of the front door over there, just as he is now. That house belongs to you too, doesn't it?"

"Slightly," assured West. "How the dickens did you get here, Juney? I'm mighty glad to see you."

She lifted her face to be kissed—not forgetting to keep her revolver on Baldwin.

"They told me down at Salt—Salty—Saltese I couldn't get a train until morning," she explained. "I didn't want to stay overnight down there. I got a man to bring me up with a horse and a buckboard. He charged me five dollars, but it was worth it. Aren't you going to do something with this man, Uncle Davy? I'm getting nervous holding the revolver."

"Go right in the house and make yourself at home," directed West. "I'll take this lad back to his bunk. No, thanks; won't need any gun."

"Uncle Dave," faltered the girl. She fumbled in the small hand-bag she had brought out of her grip. "I have something here from Grandfather Pippin I want to lend to him. Perhaps he'll get some good out of it."

"I wouldn't lend him anything very valuable," observed her uncle. "He's liable to get more out of it than he did out of this bread and pie."

"I'll take the risk," decided the girl. "Grandfather will give me another."

She held out a card. In the moonlight it looked like the leather-bound, celluloid-fronted tags that are strapped to hand luggage for identification.

Baldwin took the card like a bad little boy receiving a note for his mother from his teacher. Then West hustled him back to the bunk-house, where he instructed Lindmark, the assistant superintendent, to lock the upstairs door on the inside and keep an eye on Baldwin until the following evening. Baldwin went back to his bunk in disgrace. He lay wide awake long after the half-wakened men had gone to snoring again.

The leather-bound card was in his hand. As he touched it he could almost feel the girl's hand. He lifted it near his face. A faint fragrance like the delicate perfume of wild grape blossoms came to his nostrils. He wondered why she had given it to him, what it could be.

He got silently out of his bunk, and held it up in the moonlight. He could see that the celluloid front covered some writing. The moonlight was bright, but too ethereal to illumine the words. He lit a match, shielding its glow from the sleepers with his body. He saw now that the writing had been printed with a pen and green ink.

He read as far as the first few lines, then looked around cautiously. None of the men had stirred. He struck another match, and then another, carefully getting every word:

The Pippin Creed

You have the advantage of everybody else on earth. You can keep the game up longer than he can!

Because you don't find sign-boards up between the State of Failure and the State of Success, don't think you're beaten. You may be standing on the line! The day you want to quit a thing, you have one thousand more chances to make good on it than the day you started!

For a little while Baldwin stood motionless, looking down into the moonlit cañon below him. In the end, he lit more matches and read the card over again.

FROM the time the men started to get up next morning, Lindmark, the assistant superintendent, made life miserable for Baldwin. As West had directed, he accompanied Baldwin and his partner up to the fire-swept slope above the reservoir, tagging after his charge like a jailer.

At dinner his slurring observations and poor jokes made the meal a trial for Baldwin—until Baldwin lost his head and went back at his boss with two or three white-hot words. Lindmark's answer was a blow across the table. Baldwin returned it with the dregs from his cup. A few moments later the miners forgot their dinner as they hustled the pair out into the other room and formed an enthusiastic oval around them.

Too late Baldwin realized that Lindmark was considerably taller and heavier than he, and much harder. As the assistant superintendent came hotly at him, he began to duck like a monkey, running back at every escape, until he had gone around the room three or four times, bumping over benches, once tearing open his thigh on the corner of a table nailed fast to the floor, fearfully wondering what would be the outcome, how badly he would be beaten up.

Before long the men remembered that their dinner was in the next room, growing cold. "Close in on him!" they called to Lindmark. "Make him fight." "Don't let the quitter run like that."

Lindmark promptly started rushing the fight in earnest, and Baldwin's head went panicky. Desperately he edged toward the front door. He would make a break and beat it out of this hellish wild wilderness of a country.

BEFORE he got to that, however, West and his bronze-haired niece darkened the doorway.

As Baldwin glimpsed them, like the snap-shot of a camera, green-inked words printed on his brain:

You have the advantage of everybody else. You can keep it up longer than he can.

In his excitement he had forgotten about that. Something he never knew he had freshened up automatically inside of him. Why couldn't he refuse to give up? No matter how often he were knocked down! No matter if his face were pummeled to jelly! Such things wouldn't matter a whit if he would win in the end. It doesn't matter how badly the winner is beaten up. That's all to his credit—just so he's the winner.

He felt so encouraged, he manœuvered deliberately away from the door, and tried a swing at Lindmark's red, perspiring face. He didn't more than graze it, but it made the assistant superintendent grunt with rage and swing back wildly.

To his delight, Baldwin found that the other's wild swing had made him cooler. He laughed and kept on retreating, but

---

not so readily as before. "Something in that Pippin idea," he said to himself grimly.

Now and then he stopped on the rough uncarpeted floor to give battle.

An old boxing admonition flew to his mind. He watched his chance. It didn't come at once, and when it did, Lindmark had worn himself down. Baldwin punched with his left straight into the pit of the assistant superintendent's stomach. Then he started to swing with his right up at the other's jaw. To his joy, he found the old rule working like a tested family recipe. Lindmark doubled up from the blow in his wind. His jaw came down to meet the upcoming fist. The impact was staggering.

Baldwin thought his knuckles had been split open. He had raised his whole weight with the blow. It was the difference between the smack of a tennis ball and the jolt of a rock. Lindmark toppled and half spun, and went down on the unpainted plank flooring. Flushed and half bewildered, Baldwin waited above him.

"That Pippin idea is a nugget," his thought panted.

THE remainder of the dinner passed in something like restraint. No one came after Baldwin when he went back with his partner to the burned forest above the reservoir. Heeling down to the camp for tobacco for his partner that afternoon, he decided that it was time he gave back the card the Pippin girl had lent him. He knew the creed, word for word, now; he could never forget it.

With his partner's favorite blue package of tobacco in his pocket, he knocked on the office door. He found West poring over a mass of creased blue-prints. The girl was by the window, reading.

"I'd like to give back this card," Baldwin began stammeringly. "I want to—"

A sudden footfall sounded on the tamarack step outside. The door opened, and a man who was a stranger to Baldwin hurried in. Something in his tense step seemed to stiffen West in his chair. Baldwin himself could sense it, whatever it was.

"You look excited, Berger!" West's eyes narrowed keenly.

The newcomer took off his hat. Baldwin guessed it was the mining engineer from Mullan. He had heard that somebody was going to eat with West and his niece after the men had finished dinner.

"I'm sure sorry, West, but Jim La Mont's put a bull over on you. Gave you the wrong angle."

West in his chair stared bewilderedly.

"Wrong angle?" he repeated, as if he had forgotten that such a thing were possible.

"Right where you started the first cross-cut from the south to the north vein," explained Berger. "He put you about fourteen degrees too far to the right."

For more than five minutes the president of the Big Silver sat rooted in his chair, trying to comprehend.

"Does it mean you'll have to do some work over again, Uncle Davy?" queried the girl sympathetically.

"It means," uttered West huskily, looking at no one in particular—"it means we drilled twenty-one or -two hundred feet plumb to nothing. It means we're farther to-day from the vein than two years ago when we started that cross-cut. It means—I guess"—his voice faltered—"I guess there isn't going to be any Big Silver."

"Isn't going to be—any—mine?" repeated June.

"It took two whole years to put in those twenty-two hundred feet," said West, choking. "It took thirty thousand of our stockholders' good money. There's only something like sixteen hundred dollars left."

NO one said anything. It seemed to Baldwin that there was nothing that could be said. After a little, West got to his feet, slipped on his coat and hat, and dropped a revolver from the drawer of his desk to his pocket.

"What now, Uncle Davy?" pleaded June, edging between him and the door.

"I'm going down to Wallace to find Jim La Mont," muttered West.

"Man! You don't want to do anything like that," protested Berger gravely. "The law don't look big to you now, but it will later on."

"There isn't any law to make an engineer pay for the mistakes he makes for somebody else," said West grimly. "But there's a little private law that's going to take him along down on the dump with me."

"But you're not going down on the dump," insisted June. "What do you mean? Your vein hasn't flown away anywhere. Your ore is still in there where it was all the time. You still have sixteen hundred dollars in the bank."

"Sixteen hundred!" laughed her uncle bitterly. "It wouldn't take us a hundred and fifty feet. Why, our pay-roll alone is sixty dollars a day.

"Don't have any pay-roll," answered June. "You spoke last evening about a man who has miners working for stock in his mine. Why can't you do that here? Give them just their board. Don't have any such thing as a salary. How much are you paying Charley here? Well, I'll take his job and cook, and you won't have to pay me a penny."

"You cook for the camp!" exclaimed West. "Why, you just came from college! You couldn't stand it. Your hands will get red and sore, and your feet like lead, and—"

"I said I would cook for the camp, Uncle Davy," said June. "Now, don't talk foolishly about my hands and feet."

West looked about dazedly. Apparently for the first time since Berger had come in, he remembered that Baldwin was present.

"We won't need you any more, Baldwin," he announced. "You're free to beat it whenever you like."

Baldwin flushed and shuffled one foot.

"I don't know much about mining," he volunteered. "But, till you find that ore you're after, I'll take some man's job and do what I can, and you won't need to pay me anything till you strike it."

"That's me, too," said the engineer from Mullan. "Count on me for what surveys you want. I'll take stock in payment."

West's eyes had started to kindle. He looked eagerly from one to the other.

"No miner would ever try it here with sixteen hundred dollars. But I'm as game as you." He threw off his coat. "I'll find out in a few minutes how many of the boys will stick for grub and stock. The rest'll have to call it their last day. We'll start the new gang to-morrow. I'll take a machine myself for a shift a day."

West found three Swedes and one American who were willing to take a chance on the Big Silver. The same night June left her young-lady attire in her bedroom, and appeared at the boarding-house in a suit of her uncle's clothes. The next morning Baldwin made the acquaintance of slicker outfits, drifting machines, and the suffocating smoke from powder underground.

AS the new days went by, Baldwin, deep down in the main tunnel, with the cold dripping walls about him, began to feel the inexpressible satisfaction and joy of having every cell of his body and mind at last working together on a single thought. It was a strange, wonderful life. He felt like a giant craftsman pitted against the mountain itself, wresting out treasures that for thousands of years had been secreted under millions of tons of rock. The face of the tunnel, in the candlelight of the lamps stuck in the rough walls, seemed to him like a shrine. Day after day he uncovered virgin rock that had never before been seen by man.

The new cross-cut bit steadily deeper into the heart of the mountain. But a four-and-a-half by a seven-and-a-half foot tunnel means time. And time means grub and supplies. And sixteen hundred dollars does not last forever. So none of the little band was incredulous when West, one noon, came into the boarding-house where June was feeding several of them.

"We gave the stockholders a run for their money," he announced grimly. "But we've got our fingers on the last inch of rope. Berger's just made another survey. We're still over fourteen hundred feet from the vein, and we haven't seventy dollars left to work on. I can't see anything else but good night to the Big Silver."

"'The day you want to quit a thing,'" reminded Baldwin quietly, "'you have one thousand times better chance of making good on it than the day you started.'"

June gave him a glance that sent something rushing warmly through his blood.

"But we're not quitting," declared West. "Our money is quitting us."

"There's more money where that money came from," replied Baldwin soberly, taking a fresh bite of June's unexcelled bread.

"It isn't as easy as that," answered West. "It took three years and only the Lord knows how much blood and gall to raise the forty thousand I did. And, every day since, every stockholder has been keeping his eye on the mail man, looking for a report that the mine has made the strike I promised. Do you think I could go back and tell them I threw away their money in a hole in the wrong direction that no power on earth can change back to their money again? They wouldn't understand. How do they know that a miner's as blind as a mole after he turns an angle underground —that he has to depend on his surveys like a sailor does his chart? They wouldn't let me in their office two minutes."

"You can accomplish anything," came back Baldwin. "'Because you don't find any sign-boards up on the line between the State of Failure and the State of Success, don't think you're beaten. You may be standing on the line.'"

"There's only sixty some dollars in the bank," persisted West. "That wouldn't more than pay my carfare one way."

"All the better," spoke up June gently. "Then you know you can not come back until you raise some."

"You people couldn't get along here alone without money or supplies or nothing. I'd never go away and leave you here alone, June."

"I've already written home that I won't be back for a year," said June.

"No harm will come to her here," declared Baldwin steadily.

IN the end, the president and general manager of the Big Silver Mining Company put his jaws together and made ready to go East. He took his suit of town clothes from his piano-box of a trunk, June packed his brown satchel, the color of molasses candy, and he climbed from the gray rocks of the Bitter Roots to the platform of the next down-grade passenger train.

For several months the little community of Big Silver heard no more of him. Meantime Baldwin put himself and the remaining men at cutting the choice fire-singed timber and selling it to a Missoula firm for cash, keeping the camp in provisions, and even enabling them to put in an occasional week in the face of the tunnel. Then, one day, without warning, West stepped from the Missoula train.

"Eleven thousand cart-wheels!" he cried grimly, shaking hands around. "All from two men—men who turned me down

---

flat till I told them the whole story, Pippin creed and all. Then they took half of the treasury stock between them. How are things? How did you live? You look really better than when I left. How does she look in the cross-cut? Could you do anything?"

TWELVE and a half months afterward, blasts drilled by Baldwin's own machine broke through the finest foot-wall West declared he had ever seen. Hardly stopping to eat or sleep, they cut across the vein, and found that from foot-wall to hanging wall she was a whale for size. Here and there was some milling ore, spots of it clean. But there was not enough to pay to sort.

June, with a light stuck in the jagged wall, hacked incredulously in the heart of the vein, so disappointed that Baldwin was sure she was going to cry.

"Don't worry, boys," she spoke up bravely, at last. "It was a good gamble, and we lost; that's all."

"'Because there aren't any sign-boards up on the line between the State of Failure and the State of Success, don't think you're beaten,'" quoted West, with a grin. "This is only the east end of the surface showing. The rake of ore in this country generally lies to the west. I think she'll get better than this."

And she did, at every shot, until, after drifting two hundred feet along the vein, they broke into a body of silver-lead streaked with copper and zinc, a hundred and eighty feet long, from five to fifty feet wide and nobody knew how deep.

The day that completed the laying out of the ore body, West telephoned good news telegrams to every stock-holder on the

books, June celebrated with the biggest dinner she had ever attempted, and Baldwin dried the dishes.

"Now that the game's over and the score's chalked up, I guess I'll go home," announced Baldwin quietly, as he polished a big cracked plate. "My mother has never seen me in decent clothes or with more than ten dollars to my name since I left school. It'll be as fine a present as I could give her, though I'll take other things along."

JUNE'S hands had suddenly become motionless in the foaming dish-water of her pan.

"What then?" she asked, looking quietly into the rough, doorless cupboard above the wooden sink. Baldwin thought again how delicately contoured the line of her cheek was.

"I guess you're anxious to get back home," he ventured. "A year and a half is a long time for a girl to be away from the folks of folks like you. If—if I'd think you'd ever come out here to the mine again, I'd take the superintendent job your uncle offered me."

"There isn't anything more I can do out here," said June—so faintly that Baldwin scarcely heard her.

"There's—there's something," braved Baldwin.

He reached straight down into the water of the great camp dish-pan and put his hand over hers.

"Some day—some day I figured I'd ask you to take a little apple ranch with me down here near Missoula. And I thought—maybe—we'd raise a new kind of rosy-cheeked apple. We'd have to call them Baldwins, but I'd be hoping they'd be Pippins straight to the core. If—if I'd ask you something like that, could you give me an idea what chance there'd be for a bum like me?"

"'The day you want to quit a thing,' she answered tenderly, "'you have one thousand more chances to make good on it than the day you started.'"

A Mother's Letter About Her Boy

I AM the mother of two boys, one nineteen and the other sixteen. They are strong, healthy, and true blue, and I am proud of them.

My oldest boy enlisted in the navy last April. I was very proud of him, but nevertheless it seemed as if my heart would break when he told me.

I had been very ill all winter suffering from spinal trouble and was advised by my physician to enter the hospital at once for treatment. I was determined that I would bear up and send my boy away with a smile, and I did; but it was the last one for a long time. A week later I was taken to the hospital. I continued to grow worse, brain fever developed, and the following two months are a blank to me.

I have been almost totally deaf for years, and during those two months of fever my eyesight failed, and incidentally my courage. There was not an ounce of it left. They sent for my son, and he stayed three days. In the first two visits I saw him very faintly; the third and last day I was in absolute darkness and could not see his face at all. But I had to let him go. His heart as well as mine was aching, for he never expected to see me again. I was critically ill for a long time.

Finally, when the fever abated, I had no desire to get well. I knew that I had done faithfully all that I could for my boys. They were almost men, and already one had left me; I felt that it would not be long before his brother would do the same. I did not see how I could be of any further use to any one. It is my disposition to want to be needed, and I thought my work was done and no one could possibly need me any more. I just prayed to God to take me home.

My husband brought me quantities of beautiful flowers from my own graden, but I could only feel them—I could not see them. He brought letters from my son and his picture in uniform, but I could not see them. Nothing in the world made any difference. Then, very gradually, my sight came back, but in no other way did I gain.

All through my illness I had wanted to see the flag: even in my delirium I had asked for it, the nurses told me. But now I did not think of it.

One afternoon, after more than three months' illness, when my eyes had become a little better, I saw the reflection of the flag in a window of one of the hospital buildings. I can not describe the wave of feeling that went over me. I was much too ill and weak to feel very much emotion of any kind, but somehow I knew it was something I had wanted to see. I watched it for a long time until it got dim, for my eyes were still very weak.

It was some time afterward—at least, it seemed so to me—when I thought I smelled gunpowder; then all at once I heard a band playing. It was playing martial music, though it seemed to be nothing with which I was familiar. Then again, as I listened, it started to play "America." Just then I saw company after company of soldiers and sailors marching—first, a company of khaki-clad soldiers, then a company of blue sailor boys, then a company of sailors all in white. Then came the band, and it was so plain I even saw a small dog running beside the drum-major. After that another company of blue-clad sailor boys; and as I watched them passing I saw my own boy among them. And now there was the greatest cheering, as if thousands of voices were cheering; I could even hear the high treble of small boys. I could see a great throng of people.

Other companies were coming, but I could see only the one in which my boy was marching. They passed a huge grand stand in which some one was reviewing them. After they passed they separated, and the soldiers went in one direction while the sailors followed a street that led to the docks. I saw them reach the docks, and there I saw a great gray battleship (I did not know then that our battleships were gray). They went on board, and the sun was just going down. I could see it sinking slowly across the water, and just as it was nearly out of sight I saw the sailors, with my boy among them, lower the Stars and Stripes. Then they all faded away.

While I was seeing all this I can not explain how I felt, except that I thought that all the wonderful cheering was for my own boy, and I felt so proud of him. It seemed as if I did not deserve to have such a son.

I was not asleep when all this happened. It was more like a beautiful vision. It was glorious. When it was over I was in an extremely weakened condition for some time. The doctor said that it lasted more than an hour, and during that time I had not moved or scarcely breathed.

I can not begin to explain the cause of it, but I honestly believe God sent that beautiful vision to show me how wicked it was for me to want to die and leave this world before He was ready for me. I was so ashamed to think that I, the daughter of a soldier and the mother of a soldier, was almost a slacker. It is easy enough to die; it is living that is hard; and I was praying to shirk the hard part and take it easy. It brought all my courage back, and I made up my mind, if I could not do anything else, I would be here to help and encourage my boys and any one else that needed a word of courage.

From that day I began to gain. Even the doctors noticed the change for the better. A few days later my bed was taken out on the balcony, and I have lived out here now for six weeks. The beautiful flag is right in front of me. But, even if it were not I should not lose my courage again. It has been a long, tedious convalescence, but now I can walk a very little; and if I do not soon get back into the ranks again it will not be for want of trying.

My doctor thinks that I am a miracle, but I am not: I am just a woman who got her courage back in a rather singular manner.

Mrs. Estella McElhiney.

Is Your Wife Your Worst Customer?

IF you run a grocery or any other retail business, look out for your wife! Unless you watch her she will be the most unprofitable customer you have. The Grocers' Magazine has been investigating this question, and finds Friend Wife a poor credit risk—especially where your store is downstairs and your home above it. For your wife and children may step in at any time, helping themselves to goods, unless you deal with your family more strictly than you do with any other customer.

Taking goods soon becomes a habit, and leads to very definite losses, especially where no records are kept. Some merchants are very strict with their families. One grocer in particular, who does a strictly cash business, will not allow his family credit in the store. He gives his wife her weekly allowance to run the table in cash, and out of that she must pay cash for everything she buys from him.

Investigation among grocers who live near their stores shows that a surprising number of them are strict in this matter. Laxity leads to a double leakage—where goods are taken for family use without record the grocer never knows what his actual profits have been in the store; and he does not know what it costs him for family expenses.

THE FAITHFUL SHAVERS OF THE GREAT

Photographs from Betty Shannon

SMART FOR THEIR AGE

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TRUE LOVE STORIES

The House of Torchy

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Arthur William Brown

THIS trip it was a matter of tanks. No, not the ice-water variety, or the kind that absorbs high-balls. Army tanks—the sort that wallows out at daybreak and gives the Hun that chilly feelin' down his spine.

Accordin' to my credentials, I was supposed to be inspectin' 'em for weak spots in the armor or punk work on the gears. And I can tell you now, on the side, that it was 90 per cent bluff. What the Ordnance Department really wanted to know was whether the work was bein' speeded up proper, how many men on the shifts, and was the steel comin' through from the rollin' mills all right. Get me? Sleuth stuff.

I'd been knockin' around there for four days, bein' towed about by the reserve major, who had a face on him like a stuffed owl, a nut full of decimal fractions, and a rubber-stamp mind. Oh, he was on the job, all right. So was everybody else in sight. I could see that after the first day. In fact, I coded in my O. K. the second noon and was plannin' to slip back home.

But when I hinted as much to the Major he nearly threw a cat-fit. Why, he'd arranged a demonstration at 10 A. M. Thursday, for my special benefit. And there were the tests—horse-power, gun-ranges, resistance, and I don't know what all: technical junk that I savvied about as much as if he'd been tryin' to show me how to play the Chinese alphabet on a piccolo.

Course, I couldn't tell him that, nor I didn't want to break his heart by refusin'. So I agrees to stick around a while longer. But say, I never enjoyed such a poor time doin' it. For there was just one spot on the map where I was anxious to be for the next few days. That was at home. It was one of the times when I ought to be there too, for— Well, I'll get to that later.

Besides, this fact'ry joint where they were buildin' the tanks wasn't any allurin' spot. I can't advertise just where it was, either; the government wouldn't like it. But if there's any part of Connecticut that's less interestin' to loaf around in, I never got stranded there. You run a spur track out into the bare hills fifteen miles from nowhere, slap up a row of cement barracks and a few acres of machine shops, string a ten-foot barbed-wire fence around the plant, drape the whole outfit in soft-coal smoke, and you ain't got any Garden of Eden winter resort. Specially when it's full of low-brow mechanics who speak in seven different lingos and subsist mainly on cut plug and garlic.

AFTER I'd checked up all the dope I'd for, and durin' the times when the Major was out plannin' more inspection stunts for me, I was left to drill around by myself. Hours and hours. And all there was to read in the Major's office was engineerin' magazines and the hist'ry of Essex County, Mass. Havin' been fed up on mechanics, I tackled the hist'ry. One chapter had a corkin' good Indian scalpin' story in it, about a Mrs. Hannah Dustin; and say, as a short-order hair remover she was a lady champ, all right. But the rest of the book wasn't so thrillin'.

So I tried chattin' with the Major's secretary, a Lieutenant Barnes. The Major must have picked him out on account of that serious face of his. First off, I had an idea Barnes was sad just because he was detailed at this soggy place instead of bein' sent to France. I asks him sort of sympathizin' how long he's been here. He says three months.

"In this hole?" says I. "How do you keep from goin' bug-house?"

"I don't mind it," says he. "I find the work quite interesting."

"But evenin's?" I suggests.

"I write to my wife," says he.

I wanted to ask him what about, but I choked it back. "Oh, yes," says I. "Of course. Any youngsters at home?"

"No," says he prompt. "Life is complicated enough without children."

"Oh, I don't know," says I. "They'd sort of help, I should think."

He shakes his head and stares gloomy out of the window. "I can not agree with you," says he. "Perhaps you have never seriously considered just what it means to be a parent."

"Maybe not," says I, "but—"

"Few seem to do so," he breaks in. "Just think: one begins by putting two lives in jeopardy."

"Let's pass over that," I says hasty.

He sighs. "If we only could," says he. "And then— Well, there you are—saddled with the task of caring for another human being, of keeping him in good health, of molding his character, of planning and directing his whole career, from boyhood on."

"Some are girls, though," I suggests.

He shudders. "So much the worse," says he. "Girl babies are such delicate creatures; all babies are, in fact. Do you know the average rate of infant mortality in this country? Just think of the hundreds of thousands who do not survive the teething period. Imagine the anxieties, the sleepless nights, the sad little tragedies which come to so many homes. Then the epidemic diseases—measles, scarlet fever, meningitis. Let them survive all those, and what has the parent to face but the battle with other plagues, mental and moral? Think of the number of weak-minded children there are in the world; of perverts, criminally inclined. It is staggering. But if you escape all that, if your children are well and normal, as some are, then you must consider this: Suppose anything should happen to either or both of the parents? What of the little boy or girl? You have seen orphan asylums, I suppose. Have you ever stopped to—"

And then, just as he had me feelin' like I ought to be led out and shot at sunrise, the old Major comes bustlin' in fussy. I could have fallen on his neck.

"All ready!" says he. "Now I'll show you a fighting machine, young man, that is the last word in mechanical genius."

"You can show me anything, Major," says I, "so long as it ain't a morgue or a State's prison."

And he sure had some boiler-plated bus out there champin' at the bit. It looked just as frisky as the Flatiron Buildin', squattin' in the middle of the field, this young Fort Slocum with the caterpillar wheels sunk in the mud.

"Stuck, ain't she?" I asked the Major.

"We shall see," says he, noddin' to one of his staff, who proceeds to do a semaphore act with his arms.

AN answerin' snort comes from inside the thing, a purry sort of rumble that grows bigger and bigger, and next I knew, it starts wallowin' right at us. It keeps comin' and comin', gettin' up speed all the while, and if there hadn't been a four-foot stone wall between us I'd been lookin' for a tall tree. I thought it would turn when it came to the wall. But it don't. It gives a lurch, like a cow playin' leap-frog, and over she comes, still pointed our way.

"Hey, Major!" I calls out above the roar. "Can they see where they're goin' in there? Hadn't we better give 'em room?"

"Don't move, please," says he.

"Just as you say," says I; "only I ain't strong for bein' rolled into pie-crust."

"There's no danger," says he. "I merely wish you to see how— There! Look!"

And say, within twenty feet of us the blamed thing rears up on its haunches, its ugly nose high as a house above us, and, while I'm still holdin' my breath, it pivots on its tail and lumbers back, leavin' a path that looks like it had been paved with Belgian blocks.

Course, that's only part of the performance. We watched it wallow into deep ditches and out, splash through a brook, and mow down trees more'n a foot thick. And all the time the crew were pokin' out wicked-lookin' guns, big and little, that swung round and hunted us out like so many murderous eyes.

"Cute little beast, ain't it ?" says I. "You got it trained so it'll almost do a waltz. If I was to pick my position, though, I think I'd rather be on the inside lookin' out."

"Very well," says the Major. "You shall have a ride in it."

"Excuse me," says I. "I was only foolin'. Honest, Major, I ain't yearnin.'"

"Telegram for you," breaks in Barnes, the secretary.

"Oh!" says I, a bit gaspy, as I rips open the envelop.

It's the one I'd been expectin'. All it says is: "Come at once. VEE." But I knew what that meant.

"Sorry, Major," says I, "but I'll have to pass up the rest of the show. I—I'm called back."

"Ah! To headquarters?" says he.

"No," says I. "Home."

He shakes his head and frowns. "That is a word which no officer is supposed to have in his vocabulary," says he.

"It's in mine, all right;" says I. "But then, I'm not much of an army officer, anyway. I'm mostly a camouflaged private sec. Besides, this ain't any ordinary call. It's a domestic S. O. S. that I've been sort of lookin' for."

"I understand," says he. "The—the first?"

I nods. Then I asks: "What's the quickest way across to Long Island?"

"There isn't any quick way," says he, "unless you have wings. You can't even catch the branch line local that connects with the New York express now. There'll be one down at 8.36 to-morrow morning, though."

"Wha-a-at!" says I, gawpin' at him. "How about gettin' a machine and shootin' down to the junction?"

"My car is the only one here," says he, "and that is out of commission to-day—valves being ground."

"But look," says I; "you got three or four of those motor-cycles with a bathtub tacked on the side. Couldn't you let one of your sergeants—"

"Strictly against orders," says he, "except for military purposes."

"Ah, stretch it, Major," I goes on. "Have a heart. Just think! I want to get there to-night. Got to!"

"Impossible," says he.

"But listen—" I keeps on.

WELL, it's no use rehearsin' the swell arguments I put up. I said he had a rubber-stamp mind, didn't I? And I made about as much headway talkin' to him as I would if I'd been assaultin' that tank with a tack-hammer. He couldn't see any difference between havin' charge of a string of machine shops in Connecticut and commandin' a regiment in the frontline trenches. Besides, he didn't approve

---

of junior officers bein' married. Not durin' war-time, anyway.

And the worst of it was, I couldn't tell him just the particular kind of ossified old pinhead I thought he was. All I could do was grind my teeth, say "Yes, sir," and salute respectful.

Also there was that undertaker-faced secretary standin' by with his ear out. The prospect of sittin' around watchin' him for the rest of the day wasn't fascinatin'. No; I'd had about all of Barnes I could stand. A few more of his cheerin' observations, and I'd want to jam his head into his typewriter and then tread on the keys. Nor I wasn't goin' to be fed any more cog-wheel statistics by the Major, either.

All I could keep on my mind then was this one thing: How could I get home? Looked like I was up against it, too. The nearest town was twelve miles off, and the main-line junction some thirty-odd miles beyond that. Too far for an afternoon hike. But I couldn't just sit around and wait, or pace up and down inside the barbed-wire fence like an enemy alien that had been pastured out. So I wanders through the gates and down a road. I didn't know where it led, or care. Maybe I had a vague idea a car would come along. But none did.

I MUST have been trampin' near an hour, with my chin down and my fists jammed into my overcoat pockets, when I catches a glimpse, out of the tail of my eye, of something yellow dodgin' behind a clump of cedars at one side of the road. First off I thought it might be a cow, as there was a farm-house a little ways ahead. Then it struck me no cow would move as quick as that, or have such a bright yellow hide. So I turns and makes straight for the cedars.

It was a thick, bushy clump. I climbed the stone wall and walked all the way round. Nothin' in sight. Seemed as if I could see branches movin' in there, though, and hear a sound like heavy breathin'. Course, it might be a deer, or a fox. Then I remembered I had half a bag of peanuts somewhere about me. Maybe I could toll the thing out with 'em. I was just fishin' in my pockets when from the middle of the cedars comes this disgusted protest.

"Oh, I say, old man," says a voice. "No shooting, please."

And with that out steps a clean-cut, cheerful-faced young gent in a leather coat, goggled helmet, and spiral puttees. No wonder I stood starin'. Not that I hadn't seen plenty like him before, but I didn't know the woods was so full of 'em.

"You were out looking for me, I suppose?" he goes on.

"Depends on who you are," says I.

"Oh, we might as well come down to cases," says he. "I'm the enemy."

"You don't look it," says I, grinnin'.

He shrugs his shoulders.

"Fact, old man," says he. "I'm the one you were sent to watch for—Lieutenant. Donald Allen, 26th Flying Corps Division, Squadron B."

"Pleased to meet you," says I.

"No doubt," says he. "Have a cigarette?" We lights up from the same match. "But say," he adds, "it was just a piece of tough luck, your catching me in this fix."

"Oh, I ain't so sure," says I.

"Of course," he says, "it won't go with the C. O. But really, now, what are you going to do when your observer insists that he's dying? I couldn't tell. Perhaps he was. Right in the middle of a perfect flight, too, the chump! Motor working sweet, air as smooth as silk, and no cross currents to speak of. But, with him howling about this awful pain in his tummy, what else could I do? Had to come down and— Well, here we are. I'm behind the lines, I suppose, and you'll report my surrender."

"Then what?" I asks.

"Oh," says Allen, "as soon as I can persuade this trolley-car aviator, Martin, that he isn't dead, I shall load him into the old bus and cart him back to Mineola."

"Wha-a-at!" says I. "You—you're goin' back to Mineola—to-night?"

"If Martin can forget his tummy," says he. "How I'll be guyed! Go to the foot of the eligible list too, and probably miss out on being sent over with my division. Oh, well!"

I was beginning to dope out the mystery. More'n that, I had my fingers on the tail feathers of a hunch.

"Why not leave Martin here?" I suggests. "Couldn't you show up in time?"

"It wouldn't count," says the Lieutenant. "You must have an observer all the way."

"How about me subbin' in?" says I.

"You?" says he. "Why, you're on the other side."

"That's where you're mixed," says I. "I'm on the wrong side of Long Island Sound, that's all."

"Why," says he, "weren't you sent out to—"

"No," I breaks in; "I'm no spotter. I'm on special detail from the Ordnance Department. And a mighty punk detail at that, if you ask me. The party who's sleuthin' for you, I expect, is the one I saw back at the plant, moonin' around with a pair of field glasses strapped to him. You ain't captured yet; not by me, anyway."

"Honest?" says he. "Why, then—then—"

"Uh-huh!" says I. "And if you can make it back to Mineola with a perfectly good passenger in the extra seat you'll qualify for scout work and most likely be over pluggin' Huns within a month or so. That won't tickle you a bit more'n it will me to get to Long Island to-night, for—"

WELL, then I tells him about Vee, and everything.

"By George!" says he. "You're all right, Lieutenant—er—"

"Ah, between friends, Donald," says I, "it's Torchy."

At which we links arms chummy and goes marchin' close order down to the farm-house to see how this Martin party was gettin' on. We finds him rolled up in quilts on an old sofa that the folks had shoved up in front of the stove—a slim, nervous-lookin' young gink with sandy hair and a peaked nose.

"Well, how about you?" asks Allen.

Martin he only moans and reaches for a warm flat-iron that he'd been holdin' against his stomach.

"Still dying, eh?" says Allen. "Why didn't you report sick this morning, instead of letting them send you up with me?"

"I—I was all right then," whines Martin. "It—it must have been the altitude got me. I—I'd never been that high before, you know."

"Bah!" says the Lieutenant. "Not over thirty-five hundred at any time. How do you expect me to take you back—on the hundred-foot level? You'll make a fine observer, you will!"

"I've had enough observing," says Martin. "I—I'm going to get transferred to the mechanical department."

"Oh, are you?" says Allen. "Then you'll be just as satisfied to make the trip back by rail."

Martin nods.

"And you won't be needing your helmet and things, eh?" goes on the Lieutenant. "I'll take those along, then," and he winks at me.

All of a sudden, though, the sparkles fade out of his eyes. "Jinxed again!" says he. "There'd be no blessed map to hand in."

"Eh?" says I. "Map of what?"

He explains jerky. This scoutin' stunt of his was to locate the tank works and get close enough for an observer to draw a plan of it—all of which he'd done, only by then Martin had got past the drawin' stage.

"So it's no use going back to-night."

"Ain't it?" says I. "Say, if a map of that smoky hole is all you need, I guess I can produce that easy enough."

"Can you?" he asks.

"Why not?" says I. "Ain't I been cooped up there for nearly a week? I can put in a bird's-eye view of the Major in command; one of his secretary, too, if you like. Gimme some paper."

And inside of five minutes I'd sketched out a diagram of the buildin's and the whole outfit. Then we poked Martin up long enough for him to sign it.

"Fine work!" says Donald. "That earns you a hop, all right. Now buckle yourself into that cloud costume and I'll show you how a 110-horse-power crow would go from here to the middle of Long Island if he was in a hurry."

"You can't make it any too speedy for me," says I, slippin' into the sheepskin jacket.

"Ever been up before?" he asks.

"Only once—in a hydro," says I; "but I ain't missed any chances."

"That's the spirit!" says he. "Come along. The old bus is anchored down the field a ways."

I COULDN'T hardly believe I was actually goin' to pull it off until he'd got the motor started and we went skimmin' along the ground. But as soon as we shook off the State of Connecticut and began climbin' up over a strip of woods, I settles back in the little cockpit, buttons the wind-shield over my mouth, and sighs contented.

Allen and I didn't exchange much chat. You don't with an engine of that size roarin' a few feet in front of you and your ears buttoned down by three or four layers of wool and leather. Once he points out ahead and tries to shout something I don't know what. But I nods and waves encouragin'. Later he points down and grins. I grins back.

Next thing I knew, he's shut off the motor, and I gets a glimpse of the whole of Long Island behavin' odd. Seems as if

---

it's swellin' and widenin' out, like one of these freaky toy balloons you blow up. It didn't seem as if we was divin' down—more like the map was rushin' up to meet us. Pretty soon I could make out a big open space with a lot of squatty buildin's at one end, and in a couple of minutes more the machine was rollin' along on its wheels and we taxied graceful up towards the hangars.

IT was just gettin' dusk as we piles out, and the first few yards I walked I felt like I was dressed in a divin' suit with a pair of lead boots on my feet. I saw Allen salute an officer, hand over the map, and heard him say something about Observer Martin wantin' to report sick. Then he steers me off toward the barracks, circles past 'em, and leads me through a back gate.

"I think we've put it over, old man," says he, givin' me the cordial grip. "I can't tell you what a good turn you've done me."

"It's fifty-fifty," says I. "Where do I hit a station ?"

"You take this trolley that's coming," says he. "That junk you have on you can send back to-morrow, in my care. And I—I trust you'll find things all right at home."

"Thanks," says I. "Hope you'll have the same luck yourself some day."

"Oh, perhaps," says he, shakin' his head doubtful. "If I ever get back. But not until I'm past thirty, anyway."

"Why so late?" I asks.

"What would get my goat," says he, "would be the risk of breakin' into the grandfather class before I got ready."

"Gee!" I gasps. "I hadn't thought of that."

So, with this new idea, and the cheerin' views Barnes had pumped into me, I has plenty to chew over durin' the next hour or so that I'm speedin' towards home. I expect that accounts some for the long face I must have been wearin' when I finally dashes through the front gate of the Lilacs and am let into the house by Leon Battou, the little old Frenchman who cooks and buttles for us.

"Ah, mon Dieu!" says Leon, throwin' up his hands and starin' at me bug-eyed. "Monsieur!"

"Go on," says I. "Tell me the worst. What is it?"

But no, M'sieur," says he. "It is only that M'sieur appears in so strange attire."

"Oh! These?" says I. "Never mind my costume, Leon. What about Vee?"

"Ah!" says he, his eyes beamin' once more and his hands washin' each other. "Madame is excellent. She herself will tell you. Come!"

Upstairs I went, two steps at a time.

"S-s-sh!" says the nurse, meetin' me at the door.

But I brushes past her, and the next minute I'm over by the bed and Vee is smilin' up at me. It's only the ghost of a smile, but it means a lot to me. She slips one of her hands into mine.

"Torchy," she whispers, "did you drop down out of—of the air?"

"That was about it," says I. "I got here, though. Are you all right, girlie?"

She nods and gives me another of them sketchy, happy smiles.

"And how about the—the—" I starts to ask.

She glances towards the corner where the nurse is bendin' over a pink and white basket. "He's splendid," she whispers.

"He?" says I. "Then—then it's a boy?"

She gives my hand a little squeeze.

And ten minutes later, when I'm shooed out, I'm feelin' so chesty and happy that I'm tingly all over.

DOWN in the livin'-room Leon is waitin' for me, wearin' a broad grin. He greets me with his hand out. And then, somehow, because he's so different, I expect, I remembers Barnes. I was wonderin' if Leon was just puttin' it on.

"Well," says I, "how about it?"

"Ah, Monsieur!" says he, givin' me the hearty grip. "I make to you my best congratulations."

"Then you don't feel," says I, "that bein' a parent is kind of a sad and solemn business?"

"Sad!" says he. "Non, non! It is the grand joy of life. It is when you have the best right to be proud and glad, for to you has come le bonne chance. Yes, le bonne chance!"

And say, there's no mistakin' that Leon means every word of it, French and all.

"Thanks, Leon," says I. "You ought to know. You've been through it yourself. I'll bet you wouldn't even feel bad at being a grandfather. No? Well, I guess I'll follow through on that line. Maybe I don't deserve so much luck, but I'm takin' it just as though I did. And say, Leon, let's us go out in the back yard and give three cheers for the son and heir of the house of Torchy."

The Animals Have Come to Town

WHEN W. H. Dunton, whose pictures of the once wild West have made him famous, wants to make sketches of buffalo, bear, mountain lions, and elk to place in his striking Western landscapes, he leaves the wilderness behind him and starts for New York.

The big city may seem a strange place to go to study wild life; but while the plains and hills are enduring things and Mr. Dunton can still find picturesque Indians and an occasional range rider near his studio in the Indian village of Taos in New Mexico, the buffalo, bear, and mountain lion have either disappeared entirely or have acquired very exclusive habits.

So when the painter wants wild animal models he goes to the Bronx Zoo. There he gets on intimate terms with his subjects, and through the magic of his brush transports them back into the world that was once their own.

Mr. Dunton knows his West well. He has been cowboy as well as artist. Born in Maine, he had followed Horace Greeley's advice before he was eighteen. He loved the life in the big open spaces; but presently there came a time when he felt he must tell about what he had seen. Pictures seemed the best way, and he came to New York to study. You have probably seen copies of his "Custer's Last Stand" and "In Cattle Land."

The General Manager of the United States

Concluded from page 5

of taking the ferries." And some of those men with the vision had actually tried to work it out. In 1878 a man named DeWitt Clinton Haskins had begun the construction of a tunnel to unite New Jersey and New York, and succeeded in boring eighteen hundred feet before his money gave out. Later another company started in where he had left off, and pushed ahead another nine hundred feet before they too confessed defeat.

Then the project relapsed into the class of those good things that everybody knows ought to be done but which everybody supposes are impossible.

Mr. McAdoo—not an engineer; not a railroad man; just a lawyer from the South—made up his mind that it could be done. So he went forth from office to office, and by the force of his conviction raised $70,000,000 to do it. The McAdoo tubes, as they are still called, through which hundreds of thousands of Jerseyites are carried to and from their homes to New York and back every day, are a monument to his vision and his ability to "get things done."

WHEN Brand Whitlock was elected Mayor of Toledo he wrote to Tom Johnson, Mayor of Cleveland, and asked him for some advice about handling an executive job. Johnson wrote two or three sentences of sound common sense in reply, and among them this one:

"Decide quickly, and be right fifty-one per cent of the time."

Mr. McAdoo operates on that principle. Nobody in Washington claims that he is always right: he would be the last to claim it for himself. But he does have the faculty of coming to a decision with amazing swiftness, and putting it into very vigorous effect. And that ability to cut knots, in these days when the whole transportation system of the country seems to be so badly knotted, is exceedingly valuable. Moreover, the impulse of it runs down through the organization of the Treasury Department and the railroads, inspiring all along the line an instinct for prompt and effective action.

He stood at his desk, as I walked in, tall and straight, and looking very brown and fresh in spite of the two Congressmen and the others who had been at him. I asked him what in his recent experiences had impressed him most.

"The wonderful spirit of the American people," he answered at once. "Here we are engaged in a great war. Our government is demanding tremendous financial sacrifices. Our transportation system is so tied up that the business enterprises of thousands of people are interrupted. And yet, we have almost no complaint. Every man and woman with whom we come in contact is simply waiting to be told how he or she can do their part—what they can do to help.

"Just before Christmas I had a delegation of jewelers who came on here from New York. Their business, being a luxury, has been very seriously interfered with.

"They showed me a very grave condition, and asked me whether I could not let up on the War Savings Campaign until after their holiday trade was over with. Of course I couldn't do that; and, just as frankly as I could, I told them why.

"There was one man in the crowd whom I watched as I talked, because his face was so stolid, so unresponsive. I got the habit of picking out one individual in a group when I used to address juries years ago. From one man's expression, if you study it closely, you can gather a very good idea about the sort of progress you are making. So I watched this man. His face showed nothing—no trace of emotion at all. I felt a little disappointed: it seemed as if I must be failing to get my point across.

"After a bit the conference broke up. They rose to go; and, as they did so, that one stolid individual came over to me and said:

"'Mr. Secretary, if you could come to New York and say to the convention of the jewelers of the country just what you have said to us, there isn't a man in our business in the United States who won't support you unanimously.'

"They had come down here to ask the government to subordinate its plans to their business needs: they went away to urge their associates to subordinate everything to the needs of the government. That is the spirit of America to-day.

"I have always found that people are reasonable if you let them understand what you are trying to do. We learned that in running our railroad in New York.

"The willingness of folks to do the right thing—even to sacrifice, if necessary—provided you take them into your confidence in advance—that is one thing that I learned years ago in operating a single railroad: it is the principle on which we want to operate all the railroads as long as they are under government control."

We see their names in the papers so often,—Wilson, and Lloyd-George, and McAdoo, and Baker, and Clemenceau, and all the rest,—they become little more than names to us. We think of them as some sort of impersonal beings, removed from the ordinary influences and problems of every-day life. "It's all very well for them to make such and such regulations," we say. "They don't have the common man's problems. It's all very well for them to say the war must go on—they in their warm offices. But suppose they were doing the fighting!"

IT interested me to see that the only picture on Secretary Daniels' desk is a picture of his boy in the uniform of the navy. And, as I was ushered into Mr. McAdoo's office, one single letter was taken in and and laid on his desk. Just one letter—the first to reach him out of all the mass outside. I watched him as he picked it up, glanced at the handwriting, and tore it open.

Doubtless, this is very important, I said to myself: something to do with the war.

And so it proved to be—something very important, and having to do with the war.

"You will pardon me just a moment," said the Secretary—and a new and different look came into his face. "This is a letter from my aviator boy."

And then, a moment later:

"It's very hard—this war. His chum, his very best friend, who was flying with him, was killed last week in a fall from his machine before my boy's own eyes."

Putting Lowes on High

EVERY night, when we go home with our dinner-pail in hand, we have the proud feeling that—though we ourselves are obscure and unknown—we have helped to make somebody famous.

A few weeks ago we published an article by Ellis Parker Butler on his friend Clarence M. Lowes, a "Sixty Man-Power Man." A few days later the author of "Pigs is Pigs" called us up:

"How much circulation did you say that magazine of yours has?" he asked.

We told him modestly that, while we claim only half a million, the actual circulation is quite a bit larger.

"You must have counted wrong," Mr. E. Butler protested. "You're away off. Why, Lowes has already received more than a million letters, telegrams, and telephone calls. He hasn't heard from President Wilson yet, or Carnegie; but every one else has written and he's expecting word from them any minute."

We were pleased, and said to our wife that night: "We have been a good Boy Scout to-day and done one kind deed. We have placed a man named Lowes on high."

Where Eels Come From

By PROFESSOR JOHN PAUL GIVLER

FRIED eels are quite unromantic, yet the basis of the fry has the most interesting life story of the fishes. Yes, an eel is a fish, despite its somewhat disconcerting resemblance to the serpent.

Did you, when a boy, put horsehairs into water in the belief that they would change into young eels? if you did you were acting unconsciously in accord with a world-old legend, a folk-tale of many peoples, born of the attempt to account for the eel. In fact, the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who was curious about eels two thousand years ago, shared that notion, or one very like it; for he decided that the young eels sprang from slime.

Where do the eels come from—the "eel problem," as naturalists called it—was one of the unanswered questions until very recent years. Only two things were known: that in the fall the older female eels pass down the streams and out into the open sea; and that in the spring multitudes of baby eels, called elvers, make their way upstream, overcoming obstacles that their brethren among the fishes would never attempt.

These elvers sometimes appear in great armies, moving in dense columns along the shore, crawling over stones and even crossing stretches of dry land, driven onward by their instinct to seek those parts of the rivers where the larger eels are found. At a certain time in the spring thousands of these baby eels may be seen stranded on the rocks at the foot of Niagara Falls or making the attempt to ascend the great cataract.

Man has got along in the world by being curious about the things around him, and no one ever saw this march of the eels without putting the old conumdrum, "Where do they come from?" Long after Aristotle made his guess, fishermen on many seas had the idea that other kinds of fishes gave birth to the eel. On the German coast they catch a fish which they call the Aalmutter—mother of eels. The Sardinian fishermen still believe that young eels come from a whirligig beetle; others cling to the horsehair theory, or believe that the young eels spring from the skins of old eels, are born of the dew, or even that they may be created by placing two bits of damp sod together and leaving them in the sun.

These fictions were no stranger than the truth, and for a century the scientists who had been guessing with the rest had in their hands the answer to the puzzle.

About a hundred and fifty years ago, naturalists in England first noticed a curious little creature known as the glass-fish, christened Leptocephalus by the scientists. Found swimming on the surface, Leptocephalus is transparent, a flattened little fish not more than two inches long and having a very small head. An American naturalist, Theodore N. Gill, was the first to suggest that the glass-fish might be related to the eel. Later the French zoölogist Delage, who had been keeping an eye on Leptocephalus for some tune, actually saw one turn into an eel. And finally Grassi, an Italian, cleared up the whole matter.

Grassi's study made it clear that the older female eels, loaded with roe, but worn out in body, migrate down the rivers to the sea, where, "in the dark, plantless depths below the 500 fathom line," the young eels have their cradle. There the eggs are laid, and as they begin to develop pass to the surface as the tiny glass-fish, eating nothing and growing smaller rather than larger. For a year they masquerade thus; and then, in the spring or early summer, they undergo a transformation into young eels, and at once start their pilgrimage to the freshwater streams whence came their mothers. But for the mothers there is no returning: the journey that is to give life to their offspring is the end of life for them.

Why Do They Do It?

HOW do young birds, born in Northern nests, know their way through the trackless air deserts when migration time comes? What was it that urged the young eels, just emerged from the glass-fish stage, to seek at all hazards the fresh-water home of their mothers? What teaches the mole to store in his burrow against winter need great numbers of earthworms, beheading them so that they may not crawl away, yet still remain alive to provide fresh food?

Since the world was young, men have noticed these things and wondered. They have seen in them the working of a divine providence, or tried to explain what they have named "instinct" on more material grounds. Herbert Spencer defined instinct, but he could not tell the "why" of it. He said that instincts were but "compound reflex actions," meaning that when we jerk back our hand from a red-hot stove we act without the necessity of having to think.

But most instincts seem to arise from something inside of us rather than from outside causes, and the late Professor Whitman, of Chicago University, has shown that certain instincts of the leech depend on whether it has eggs within it or young to protect. William Paley defined instinct as "a propensity prior to experience and independent of instruction": which is only a dignified way of saying that he gave it up.

But if we can not as yet solve the puzzle, we have some facts to start on. For one thing, we know that instinct is not always infallible. Mark Twain wrote of the imbecility and wasted efforts of the ant that Solomon held up as a bright example, and we all know that a hen will try patiently to hatch a china door-knob.

Darwin interested himself in the development of instinct. He decided that in the beginning of things instinct didn't amount to much, but that it grew stronger by natural selection as the creatures with the best instincts got ahead in the battle of life, just as do those with the best teeth, claws, or brains. Other scientists agreed with Darwin and developed his theory, but none of them has answered the question: "If the higher instincts arose by evolution, how did the first and simplest ones arise?"

The great naturalist Lamarck decided that instinct was "inherited habit"—the ways of the elders handed down to the children; and there he stopped.

It is plain, then, that, although there are many things in the study of instincts that may be explained, there are, down below it all, many others that remain entirely unknown. There is abundant room left for reverent respect and wonder as instincts take hold on the very beginnings of things; for they are the dynamic complexes of "action, reaction, and interaction" in terms of which Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn states the problem of the origin and evolution of life.

J. P. G.

Are You Interested in Your Husband's Business?

"IF more women understood their husband's business, there wouldn't be so many helpless widows, nor so many divorces." So says Mrs. S. C. Tallman. She has a right to talk, for she learned her husband's business, and it wasn't a ladylike trade at all, for her husband was a plumber. Now she owns her own shop in Rutherford, New Jersey, and is the boss of twenty men.

"I wanted to be a school-teacher," she says, "but could not be spared from home. I was married at twenty-three. My husband was twenty-one and apprenticed to a tinsmith. He decided that there were better opportunities in plumbing, so he used to bring home his firing-pot and practise in the kitchen in the evenings. That is how I first learned to wipe a joint.

"I always took an interest in whatever he did, and then an unsuspected mechanical turn cropped out, and I began to take an interest in the business for its own sake. Four years after our marriage we opened a shop together, and from that day to this I have managed financial end of it. Many a trade journal I've read while putting the baby to sleep.

"Often I've had to do my housekeeping and take care of my children myself; for there was no competent help to be had, and I couldn't have them neglected. It was always one or two o'clock before I got to bed, and I've never been a strong woman. But my husband was not strong, either.

"Since his death I have followed my own ideas, and the business has grown. We had four men in the shop then; we have twenty now. I draw all my own plans, and do my own estimating. And, of course, I understand the practical part of it. The other day a workman did a bit of wiring that didn't suit me, and I told him so. He couldn't see what the trouble was, so I took the snips out of his hands and showed him how. Afterward I heard him telling one of the men that I knew more than he did about the plumbing business.

"Other plumbers try to find out how I locate leaks in mains, but I won't tell. I have my own systems for a good many things, for I keep up my reading and my experimenting. I have a good many ideas about little things in household plumbing that my years of housekeeping have taught me. A man may be a master plumber, but if he never washed dishes how could he know that the kitchen sink should be high? If he never did a family wash, how does he know how to economize on steps in the arrangement of the laundry tubs?

"I don't want to say anything against the men in this business, however, for they have always been kind to me. No woman who has a living to make should be kept out of it by the belief that the men will be hard on her. They won't be. I have found them always just and kind.

"I am a grandmother; I love my home, but do not have as much time to spend in it as I should like. Though my business is unusual, I am glad to tell about it, in the hope that it may help some other woman who must travel the same road.

"I believe the woman in business is often happier than the woman at home. I am sure her interests are greater and her sympathies broader."

Who is She?

SHE is an American actress.

She has never been divorced. She has never married, as far as any one knows. No one has heard that she ever had a love affair. She has never had her diamonds stolen; she has never lent her features to the advertisement of tobacco or any product.

Although refusing to court publicity, she nevertheless has got it by miles of columns.

She is as inaccessible as the Emperor of Japan, more mysterious than the veiled lady of Thibet.

You could stay at her hotel a year, and never see her; you could wait at her stage entrance, and never behold her arrival or departure. Her matinees are filled with children, delighted old men, and gentle old ladies. In many families the annual visit to her performance is in the nature of a rite. Her plays are wistful and whimsical. She has never appeared as a bad woman.

She has been at the height of her career for twenty years. Her early days, we are told, were filled with an unbounded persistence in the path of pathetic difficulties.

She arrived at a famous manager's office one rainy morning twenty-seven years ago, carrying a big umbrella. Asked what she could do, she gulped and whispered that she had danced and sung and tumbled about in farce comedy, and had even once tried to jump through circus rings. She had played Juliet ever since she was a babe in arms, when her mother carried her on to her first scene. She could do anything that any actress could do, she said. Then she vibrated, stretched out her thin arms, and cried in her own peculiar, throaty voice: "Give me a chance."

The voice decided it. It was one in a million. The chance was given her—though she was a pale little creature without even a complexion. Her charm lay in the fact that she was direct and alive; now melting, now drooping, rippling always elfishly with fantastic spirits.

Five years later she was the most popular actress on the American stage.

Who is she?

You Can Have this Bad Law Changed

IF you would like to perform an act of real service to your country, at a cost of just three cents to yourself, read this little article through. And then take your fountain-pen in hand and write.

The magazines that come to your home every week or month are facing a very unpleasant necessity, through the action of Congress at the last session.

The necessity is this: either they must stop coming to your home, or they must charge you more for every copy.

Moreover,—and here is the unjust feature of the law,—they must charge you more in proportion as you live farther from the place of publication.

As most of the magazines are published in New York, this means that if you live m the Middle West or the Far West or the South, you are penalized by Congress under this law.

North Carolinians will have to pay more for their magazines than Virginians: and Alabamans will have to pay more than North Carolinians.

Folks in Iowa will have to pay more than people in Illinois: and people on the Coast and in Texas will have a tremendous fine laid on them.

In a country where letters are delivered by the government to every citizen at the same rate, and where the union of the different sections is so important a national asset, we believe a law like this to be unwise, unjust, and destructive.

If you agree with us, then, as a citizen in the democracy, don't leave your duty for some one else to do. Make up your mind that in this important matter you are going to do your part to make our laws what they ought to be.

If you will write to your Senator, saying: "Dear Senator: I think the Zone System of Second Class Postage, as passed by Congress at its last session, is wrong in principle and will work injury to the country, and ought to be repealed"—if you will say that in a letter to-day, you will have done your share.

If every one of the 500,000 subscribers of this magazine will do that, there is not the slightest doubt in the world that the law will be changed.

No Congress will legislate against the expressed wishes of half a million thoughtful American citizens.

Let us—the readers of this magazine—change that law. EVERY WEEK is a youngster among the magazines. Let us prove how strong a youngster it is—strong enough, through its loyal friends, to speak to the Congress of the United States and be heard.

Here is a list of the Senators of the United States. Write to one of them from your State to-day, and if you want to do a thorough job, write to both of them.

In doing so, you will be rendering to your country a real public service.

Alabama
Oscar W. Underwood
John H. Bankhead
Arizona
Henry F. Ashurst
Marcus A. Smith
Arkansas
William F. Kirby
Joe T. Robinson
California
Hiram W. Johnson
James D. Phelan
Colorado
Charles S. Thomas
John F. Shafroth
Connecticut
George P. McLean
Frank B. Brandegee
Delaware
Josiah O. Wolcott
Willard Saulsbury
Florida
Park Trammell
Duncan U. Fletcher
Georgia
Hoke Smith
Thomas W. Hardwick
Idaho
John F. Nugent
William E. Borah
Illinois
Lawrence Y. Sherman
James H. Lewis
Indiana
Harry S. New
James E. Watson
Iowa
Albert B. Cummins
William S. Kenyon
Kansas
Charles Curtis
William H. Thompson
Kentucky
J. C. W. Beckham
Ollie M. James
Louisiana
Robert F. Broussard
Joseph E. Ransdell
Maine
Frederick Hale
Bert M. Fernald
Maryland
Joseph I. France
John W. Smith
Massachusetts
Henry C. Lodge
John W. Weeks
Michigan
Charles E. Townsend
William A. Smith
Minnesota
Frank B. Kellogg
Knute Nelson
Mississippi
John S. Williams
James K. Vardaman
Missouri
James A. Reed
William J. Stone
Montana
Henry L. Myers
Thomas J. Walsh
Nebraska
Gilbert M. Hitchcock
George W. Norris
Nevada
Key Pittman
New Hampshire
Jacob H. Gallinger
Henry F. Hollis
New Jersey
Joseph S. Frelinghuysen
New Mexico
Andrieus A. Jones
Albert B. Fall
New York
William M. Calder
James W. Wadsworth, Jr.
North Carolina
Lee S. Overman
Furnifold McL. Simmons
North Dakota
Porter J. McCumber
Asle J. Gronna
Ohio
Atlee Pomerene
Warren G. Harding
Oklahoma
Thomas P. Gore
Robert L. Owen
Oregon
George E. Chamberlain
Charles L. McNary
Pennsylvania
Philander C. Knox
Boies Penrose
Rhode Island
Peter G. Gerry
Le Baron B. Colt
South Carolina
Ellison D. Smith
Benj. R. Tillman
South Dakota
Edwin S. Johnson
Thomas Sterling
Tennessee
Kenneth D. McKellar
John K. Shields
Texas
Charles A. Culberson
Morris Sheppard
Utah
William H. King
Reed Smoot
Vermont
Carroll S. Page
William P. Dillingham
Virginia
Claude A. Swanson
Thomas S. Martin
Washington
Miles Poindexter
Wesley L. Jones
West Virgina
Howard Sutherland
Nathan Goff
Wisonconsin
Robert M. LaFollette
Wyoming
John B. Kendrick
Francis E. Warren

THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY, Publishers of Woman's Home Companion, Farm and Fireside, The American Magazine, Every Week

THE EDITOR ANSWERS

NOTHING irritates me more than these hotels that print "Old Fashioned Rice Pudding" on the menu card; and when the waiter brings it to you, you discover that there are no raisins in it.

I am president of the S. R. R. R. P.—the Society for the Restoration of Raisins in Rice Pudding. All friends of humanity desiring to join, please communicate with me.

A Good Thrift Idea

Dear Sir:

Let me suggest an idea. If subscribers to EVERY WEEK would save the double sheets of photographs, they could make them into a fine scrap book, as we are doing. Something of value for future reference and entertainment.

M. A. R., Washington.

And in the same mail a letter from the chaplain of a prison in Connecticut tells how much his "boys" appreciate the occasional copy of EVERY WEEK that drifts through the iron gates: and several letters from soldiers who write to express their thanks for copies which subscribers have forwarded to them.

These are thrift days. Make your EVERY WEEK go as far as it can.

Another Soldier Made Happy

Dear Editor:

I am inclosing a picture that may interest you. I had it taken for a young lady who takes your paper regularly, and who has been kind enough to stamp and mail it to me, and, wishing to know where they went, put her name and address in one. So, thanks to EVERY WEEK, we have become very good friends.

E. R. C., Camp Upton.

Our Esteemed Contemps

Dear Sir:

The issues since you went to a nickel have been better than ever; and this week's seems to me to reach the high mark. I like your idea of publishing so many short articles; and I see that Collier's and Everybody's are coming around to your way of thinking.

B. V. C., Cedar Rapids.

Well, well, B. V. C., let 'em come. You'll stick to us, anyway, won't you? Even if you could go elsewhere and get more pages and more automobile advertisements for the same money?

Showing You Can't Please

Dear Sir:

I want to thank you for the fairness and sympathy with which your publication has always treated the colored race. As a teacher for several years in a Southern school, I know how much such treatment means, and how much encouragement it brings to a loyal and unappreciated people.

(Mrs.) E. H. G., Wilmington, Delaware.

And in the same mail this—brief and to the point:

Sir:

I consider the page of pictures of negro women in your last issue an insult to the white race. I hope never to see or read your magazine again.

A READER, Winston-Salem, N. C.

Often we wonder to ourselves whether those folks whose pride in the white race is most vehement are those in whom the white race feels most pride.

That Homely Woman Letter

Dear Sir:

In answer to Mrs. K. T.'s complaint regarding man's injustice to the homely woman, let me say this: My experience has been that not infrequently the woman not blessed with good looks is minus the essential quality of optimism and good nature that makes women attractive to men. Frequently she is avoided, not because of her looks, but because her dissatisfaction with her lot creates an unhappy atmosphere about her.

P. D. K., Deadwood, S. D.

All we can say to you, P. D. K., is that we won't tell them your name, no matter how many write in to demand it. We are too wise to take sides in a controversy like this: and we hope no harm comes to you.

All Right, Old Top

Sir:

I feel like addressing you as "Old Top"—not to be presumptuous, but in a spirit of friendliness, because I like the way you say things in your magazine.

P. B. M., Pittsburgh.

Who are we to stand on our dignity? It's your nickel a week that keeps us going: call us anything you like.

Speaking of Beauty

REFERRING again to the subject of feminine beauty, raised by Mrs. K. T., and commented on by our friend from Deadwood, let us say that we have some of those books of Dr. Bowers' on hand. "First Aids to Beauty" they are called; and while we really ought to charge more for them, we will mail them out as long as they last at a nickel apiece.

Score One for Us

Dear Sir:

I am inclosing a photograph of my garden, taken just before the frost put the finishing touches on it. I want you to know that the garden was a direct result of your editorial, "On Lying on My Back and Reading a Seed Catalog." "Thoroughness combined with faith" has made this garden a source of much enjoyment to my friends and a tonic to tired nerves. It has made some of the old-timers sit up and take notice. Good luck to you.

J. E., LeRoy, Michigan.

A letter like that gives us such a warm feeling around the insides that we hardly care whether Mr. McAdoo succeeds in delivering any coal at our house or not.

From a Husband

Dear Sir:

There is a lot of horse sense and human philosophy in your editorial on marriage. But how did it happen that so many of the married people who wrote to you were the unhappy ones? Among all my married friends, I know of only one couple that are not happy: do you suppose my experience is unique?

J. H. D., Battle Creek, Michigan.

I do not, J. H. D.; I believe that a very great majority of married people are happy—that if all marriages were to be automatically dissolved at 12 o'clock tomorrow, ninety per cent of the husbands and wives would take a couple of deep breaths, say to themselves, "Isn't it wonderful to be free?" and promptly marry each other again.

But it's the unhappy ones we hear about—bad news travels so much faster than good. If I were to fall heir to a fortune to-morrow, for instance, you might possibly hear about it in the course of the next ten years. But if I were to be arrested for picking a pocket on Broadway, two or three readers of this magazine would call you on the telephone and tell you about it before nightfall.

Finale

WHICH leads me to remark again that the five-cent price seems to be a great success.

For which, believe me, from the bottom of our heart we thank you.

What Will Happen When Peace Returns?

THERE is one subject to-day on which your opinion is just about as good as any other man's. That is the question of when the war will end.

Soldiers say: "Two years, if we have to wait for a military decision." Socialists say: "Within ninety days." And Wall Street—whose opinion, to be sure, has been wrong as often as right about the war—has had the strong feeling in these last weeks that it is "in the air" and that the war will not go through another winter.

Six stock-market experts met, a few weeks ago, and held an informal "peace conference," as the Magzine of Wall Street calls it in reporting what took place. They asked themselves, first of all, what the effect of an early peace will be on the prices of Liberty Bonds: and on this point they were unanimously agreed. The Liberty Bonds will almost immediately begin to climb, they said, until they approach a 3 per cent basis. That would mean that the 3½'s would sell at from 106 to 110, and the 4's at 117 or thereabouts. Every holder of Liberty Bonds holds a real, dependable profit if the war ends this year.

And, as government bonds set the pace for all others, it was agreed that good bonds which are now selling so low would range themselves about on this basis: municipal bonds, 4 per cent; high-grade railroads, 4½ per cent; high-grade industrials, 5 to 5½ per cent; second-grade rails, 5 to 5½ per cent; preferred stocks of sound railroads, 5½ per cent; common stocks of sound railroads, 6 per cent.

Since many of these are now selling on a 6 to 8 per cent basis, this means substantial advances in price all along the line.

The six agreed, also, that the return of peace will bring an immediate slowing down in industries of nearly all lines, particularly those that have engaged largely in war work. the stocks of these are likely to sell lower; and certain industries—such as steel, for example, where the production has been forced far beyond normal—may experience very serious readjustment pains.

That the great relief of the world at the coming of peace will be reflected in an immediate rise of the security market as a whole, these men thought likely. But, following that, they expect reactions and adjustments of prices to lower levels.

After that reaction the great opportunity of the investor with a little money in the bank will come. It was in such times that Russell Sage and Hetty Green, always with ready cash on hand, made their great profits. And smaller investors with courage and patience enough to keep a little money free—and to wait—can apply the same rule to their own advantage.

All Banks Ought to Do This

WE published in this magazine a couple of years ago an editorial entitled "Most of Us Common Folks Are Afraid of Banks." We pointed out that little progress could be expected in the encouragement of thrift in the country as long as the banks presented the appearance of jails on the outside, and met the new depositor with a policeman at the door and a receiving teller with the look of a district attorney inside the cage.

The Liberty Loan campaigns have been a great thing in jarring banks out of their ultra-conservatism in the treatment of the public. More and more the invitation is being extended to the man or woman who can save a few dollars a week to come in and make the bank his bank, and use its facilities and consult its officers.

And here and there over the country a bank is addressing its readers through the newspapers in language that it can understand. Read this statement of the Fletcher Savings and Trust Company, of Indianapolis, which we have slipped from the Bankers' Monthly. See how simple and understandable it is. If your bank is still putting out the old Sanskrit type of statement, clip this little article out and send it to the president; it may do some good.

John D. Does His Bit

"WALL STREET hears that John D. and William Rockefeller sold fully $50,000,000 of investment securities last year, and have pledged probably $30,000,000 additional as security for loans the proceeds of which they are jointly using for the purchase of Liberty Bonds—all the non-taxable 3½ per cents," says the Financial World.

"The Rockefeller agents have orders in for Liberty Bonds which are in excess of the available supply. They do not bid for the bonds, but take them as they are offered in large blocks, and they are delivered to the two rich men in blocks of $100,000 each. The brothers divide them equally, it is said.

"It is not known what losses the two oil men have taken on their corporation bonds, but it is practically impossible for them to have made any profits on any of their holdings sold in 1917; and on some of the bonds, bought in years when money was exceedingly abundant and bond prices were away up in the clouds, they must have taken heavy losses."

Financial Booklets that Will Help You

A NEW booklet entitled "Your Liberty Bond" has been issued by John Muir & Company. It contains complete information concerning Liberty Loan procedure. Ask for booklet H 33, which will be sent upon application to their main office, 61 Broadway, New York.

R. C. MEGARGEL & COMPANY, 27 Pine Street, New York, members of the New York and Chicago Stock Exchanges, will send you booklets entitled "The Part Payment Plan" and "Securities Suggestions." The latter is published semi-monthly, and the current issue contains an interesting article on "The Oil Industry, Past, Present, and Future." Write them for these booklets, which will be sent free of charge upon request for A.

THE Bache Review is a guide to business men in this period when great changes in the business structure are taking place, due to enormous expenditures on winning the war. In a recent issue the efforts of the new War Finance Corporation in supplying additional business credit is discussed. Copies may be had on application to J. S. Bache & Company, members of the New York Stock Exchange, 42 Broadway, New York.

THE Citizens Savings & Trust Company, Clevgland, Ohio, will send you, free on request, a copy of booklet "P" giving full details of this bank's plan of banking by mail at 4 per cent compound interest. This institution is the oddest trust company in the State of Ohio.

THE investment bargain possibilities in sound public-utility securities are described in literature which will be sent upon request by H. M. Byllesby & Company, 218 South La Salle Street, Chicago, and 1219 Trinity Building, New York.

A USEFUL booklet entitled the "1918 Traders' Companion," which contains a calendar of dividend dates and approximate ex-dividend dates revised to January 1, 1918, and other useful information for the investor, has been issued by Louchheim, Minton & Company, members of the New York Stock Exchange, 71 Broadway, New York. Copy mailed on request.

THERE is a small weekly paper which reflects investment opportunities from the small investor's standpoint. It is written in plain English in terms which the average man can understand. It avoids useless technicalities and explains technicalities which are essential. Sample copies will be sent on request to the Odd Lot Review, Inc., 61 Broadway, New York.

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.

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