The Ghosts of Louis XIV and Napoleon Are with Wilhelm These Days

AS I write this, the Kaiser is hurling his divisions against the throats of the Allied guns: and the event is still in doubt.

Why does he take so great a gamble? Why not sit tight on the western front, and trust to time to wear the Allies' courage out?

The answer is that the Kaiser is a well read man: he has studied somewhat of history, and the memory of what he has learned haunts him in his quiet hours.

Around his bed at night stand the spirits of Louis XIV and Napoleon, shaking their heads and mumbling discouragement.

For Louis XIV twice arrayed himself against all of Europe, even as the Kaiser is arrayed against the world. The empire of Louis was incomparably rich. He had 19,000,000 subjects, against a meager 8,000,000 population on the British isles.

Yet in each war the Allies, captained by England, threw him back, and compelled him finally to accept peace on their own terms. Why?

Because the Allies controlled the sea.

The defeat of France proved [says Admiral A. T. Mahan] that a nation can not subsist indefinitely off itself, however powerful in number and strong in internal resources.... When the great strain came upon, the power of France, instead of drawing strength from every quarter of the globe and through many channels, and laying the whole outside world under contribution by the energy of its merchants and seamen, as England has done in like straits, France was thrown back upon herself, cut off from the world by the navies of England and Holland.... Nations, like men, however strong, decay when cut off from external activities and resources [in other words, from the sea].

After Louis came Napoleon, who likewise overran Europe, as Louis had done and as the Kaiser is doing.

He essayed to conquer Egypt and erect there a great Oriental empire.

And Lord Nelson, destroying his fleet at the battle of the Nile, cut his communications and compelled the great Napoleon to slip back to France like a thief in the night.

He hoped to destroy England, first by ruining her commerce, and then by an invasion of her shores. The battle of Trafalgar settled that hope forever.

So all of Napoleon's conquests on land availed him nothing: he bowed himself at last to the will of England, whose ships controlled the sea.

Read the history of warfare as set forth in Admiral Mahan's book, and you discover that victory has almost invariably rested on the side of sea power.

It looked like a dark day for little Athens when Xerxes came out of Persia with the greatest army that the ancient world had ever seen. But Themistocles, the prophet of naval expansion, met their navy at Salamis, and, having destroyed it, rendered the great expedition futile.

The Romans despised the sea: they were soldiers, not sailors. Yet their battles with Carthage forced them, against their will, to develop naval power: and it was their command of the sea that paved the way for Hannibal's defeat, even though he had invaded Italy and surrounded Rome itself.

Rest assured that the Kaiser has read Admiral Mahan's book, "The Influence of Sea Power on History," more than once. He could probably recite whole pages of it by heart. He knows that, unless he can force peace before our ship-building conquers the submarine, peace will never be made on terms agreeable to him.

Said Washington to Lafayette, in the memorandum that he drew up for the cooperation of the French and Colonial troops in the Revolution:

In any operation, and under all circumstances, a decisive naval superiority is to be considered as a fundamental principle, and the basis on which every hope of success must ultimately depend.

That paragraph, from the man who began the work of making the world safe for democracy, must be bitter reading these days to the man from whose arbitrary power Democracy is gradually being made safe.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

BURIED ALIVE

By CAPTAIN A. P. CORCORAN

IT is Christmas Eve in the year 1915 on the battle line somewhere north of the Somme. We have been here for months, enjoying an unusual rest cure allowed us by our good friends the Saxons. Not a gun has been fired in days. So, to profit by the leisure, I have undertaken some research work, experimentation with new methods of underground communication which the conditions of trench war-fare have made absolutely essential.

To-night is an ideal time for a test. On the line there is silence. All the noise is farther behind—in the mess-halls, at the company concerts, in the huts, where the men have gathered to celebrate the festival in proper fashion. There will be no one to disturb us; so I summon my two assistants, Corporal Blackmore and Private Weston, and tell them to meet me at about midnight at the mouth of our sap.

This sap—which is no more than a tunnel of four feet diameter—runs at right angles to the bottom of a communication trench connecting two support trenches, and leads into a gallery about ten feet long by six high. In this gallery, eighteen feet under the earth, we conduct our experiments.

After a peep in at a concert and a stiff glass of whisky-and-soda—it is a damp, cold night, and one needs a tonic—I repair to our place of appointment. Communication trenches are quiet places at the busiest times. To-night this one is deserted.

"Not a soul in sight, thank God," says Blackmore, as we descend. "There will be no one to disturb us."

And there wasn't. What agony that observation caused us later!

It is exactly midnight when we connect up our instruments. We have just begun work when "Weston, who has gone to the mouth of the sap, returns to report that the Boches have become unusually busy. Hardly are the words out of his mouth when the ground all round us quivers. There comes a shower of mud and dirt from the top of the gallery. We hear an explosion, a loud rumble, followed by a deep thud and a back draught of air which blows out our single candle.

"What the devil—" begins Blackmore.

Digging Through Solid Earth with Jack-Knives

WE light up again, go along the gallery into the sap to see what has happened, and find our passage blocked by a solid wall of earth. We look at one another stupidly—it takes time to realize disaster. No one speaks for a few moments. Then Weston breaks the silence.

"Let's dig this stuff away," he says, "before we go on with the work."

I notice a quiver in his voice, but I won't allow myself to dwell on it. Without further comment, we all three set ourselves to dig.

I look at my wrist-watch. The time is 12.17. Our only tools are two jack-knives and my revolver. We dig, dig, dig, nervously, earnestly, absolutely in silence. Almost involuntarily we avoid one another's eyes. I glance at the watch again, expecting to see that an hour has passed. It is exactly 12.22.

Meantime a chill fear has settled on me; my limbs shiver as if with cold. I stop work, and my action immediately halts the others. Simultaneously we sit down. Our eyes, widened with anxiety, voice for us the knowledge we dare not utter. We know now that thirty-five yards of solid earth must be shoveled away before we can get out into that support trench. We surmise that it, too, is blocked with crumbled clay. We know that not a man will come to-night anywhere in our vicinity; possibly no one will visit it even to-morrow.

A sickening sensation quivers along my stomach, a sensation of physical nausea. I tremble all over, though there is sweat on my forehead.

"Let's shout," says Weston.

A futile suggestion, but we welcome it. All we want is activity. We scream with all the force that our lungs allow; but that chamber permits no sound to pass it. The greater our efforts, the worse the echo in our own ears. Still we keep it up, until our throats are too hoarse to work longer.

"I'll try my revolver." I say, to break the new silence.

I fire one shot, and the reverberation from the narrow walls of the gallery almost split the drums of our ears. But even that is better than a flat acknowledgment of failure. One after another, I shoot the six rounds. Our ears are deafened and our heads buzzing with the noise. When I have finished, we sit a while in absolute silence, as if expecting an answer to our calls. But none comes. It was a foregone conclusion.

Weston Goes Mad

ONCE again we set to work—dig, dig, dig. Tiny handfuls of earth falling at our feet reward our efforts. Dig, dig, dig—perspiration half of fear, half of effort, pours off our faces. At least, we are keeping warm. Dig, dig, dig! I have almost lost consciousness of my companions, so concentrated is my attention on my job, so earnestly am I working to stave off the possibility of thought, when my ears suddenly catch a strange noise from behind. I turn. There is Weston squatting on the earth, singing to himself in a silly, soft voice.

"What the devil ails him?" I ask Blackmore testily.

"Looney," comes the brief reply.

"Looney?" I repeat the word stupidly after him.

"Yes; potty, you know—off his nut." He makes the announcement calmly, to be taken as a matter of course.

Great God! what if I should come to that? I look wildly at Blackmore, who is white-faced but steady-eyed. He gives me courage, and I grit my teeth. After all, I tell myself, I am these men's officer. I brought them here. I must set them a decent example.

I turn to work again. Dig, dig, dig! Another noise assails my ears—perhaps it was only the trick of a tortured imagination. Yet I could swear I heard a tapping close by.

The Boches mining near us! I have heard many tales of our tunnelers blown up by explosions beneath them. They close in on my memory like so many armed fighters, all ready to deal the fatal blow. I shudder away from them, as a line from "Lear" shoots through my mind:

That way madness lies.

I hear Weston behind me, still at his silly singing. Quite suddenly my fear turns to fury. I break aloud into curses. I call the Saxons foul names—heathen who would wait for Christmas night to surprise us with their dirty tricks!

Christmas night! My mind takes another turn. Out there men are reveling, singing, drinking. Out there, farther off, are my people at home. Christmas candles lighting the house. My mind goes back to early days. Christmas celebrations going on in restaurants—what a time we had in London last year! This Christmas! Next Christmas! That sickening sensation seizes me again. The muscles of my throat tighten for a scream; but I manage to shut my teeth in time.

Dig, dig, dig! Weston is still singing. His voice whips up my fear, which in turn spurs my imagination. My teeth grip my lips in an effort to steady my nerves, and I suddenly become conscious of a thick feeling in my tongue.

Merciful God! The fresh air is giving out. Again memory assails me with old tales of men thus caught—men who strangled for want of oxygen and died in horrible torment. I look round. There is Blackmore digging for his life, and Weston still sitting on the ground. As I turn, I catch his eye. It holds me for a moment, and I almost shrink from the wild hatred mirrored there. The next instant he is on his feet, shouting wildly and heaving at us handfuls of the loose earth.

"'Ere, stow that!" orders Blackmore, and the old phrase brings back the old life. After all, we are not dead yet, and there is still work to do.

But Weston now demands all our attention. First he begins a mad gallop along the gallery, all the time emitting wild whoops. He stops a moment to step deliberately on our delicate instruments, which crumble with a soft crash beneath his heel. We watch him helplessly for a time; then I try authority.

"Stop that racket," I order, "and sit down if you like. But don't disturb us at our work."

Continued on page 20

WERE THERE REALLY ANGELS AT MONS?

DURING the retreat from Mons, when General French's "miserable little army," as the Kaiser called it, held back the horde of Germans, the men of that army performed prodigies of physical endurance and courage. It will always be a wonder how they stood what they stood and did what they did: and the story will never be adequately written, for most of the actors in it are dead.

Immediately after the retreat, however, a curious rumor began to pervade England. It was said that in the blackest hour of the retreat, when everything seemed lost, a group of angels appeared above the German lines, beckoning the English soldiers on. For half an hour the apparition was seen, and not by one or two soldiers, but by hundreds.

A strange tale it was. And, when the controversy about it was hottest, an author named Arthur Machen wrote an article explaining that he was responsible for the rumors. He had written and published a story named "The Bowmen," in which angels had appeared at Mons with drawn bows, to lead on the English. From this story, he said, the whole legend must have sprung.

But this explanation did not serve to quiet the talk. A newspaper man and skilled investigator, Harold Begbie, began tracing the evidence. Most of the soldiers who could give testimony had passed on; but in an English hospital Mr. Begbie found a lance corporal, wounded, who was present at Mons. He gave to a stenographer the following version of what happened there. Incidentally Mr. Begbie describes the corporal as a solid, substantial man, entirely unemotional.

"I was with my battalion in the retreat from Mons on or about August 28," said the corporal. "The German cavalry were expected to make a charge, and we were waiting to fire and scatter them.

"The weather was very hot and clear, and between eight and nine o'clock in the evening I was standing with a party of nine other men on duty, and some distance on either side there were parties of ten on guard. An officer suddenly came up to us in a state of great anxiety, and asked us if we had seen anything startling [the word used was 'astonishing']. He hurried away from my ten to the next party of ten. When he had got out of sight, I, who was the non-commissioned officer in charge, ordered two men to go forward out of the way of the trees in order to find out what the officer meant. The two men returned, reporting that they could see no sign of any Germans.

"Immediately afterwards the officer came back, and, taking me and some others a few yards away, showed us the sky. I could see quite plainly in mid-air a strange light which seemed to be quiet distinctly outlined and was not a reflection of the moon. The light became brighter, and I could see quite distinctly three shapes, one in the center having what looked like outspread wings. They appeared to have a long, loose-hanging garment of a golden tint, and they were above the German line, facing us.

"We stood watching them for about three quarters of a hour. All the men with me saw them, and other men came up from other groups who also told us that they have seen the same thing. I am not a believer in such things, but I have not the slightest doubt that we really did see what I now tell you.

"I remember the day, because it was a day of terrible anxiety for us.

"I shall never forget what I saw as long as I live. Of my battalion there are now only five men alive besides myself, and I have no hope of ever getting back to the front. I have a record of fifteen years' good service, and I should be very sorry to make a fool of myself by telling a story merely to please any one."

In his book On the Side of the Angels Mr. Begbie includes statements from several other English soldiers, and presents what seems to be conclusive evidence that the stories about the angesl at Mons had started and were in circulation before the publication of Mr. Machen's book. Were there, then, angels at Mons? Mr. Begbie leaves no doubt that thousands of otherwise hard headed people in England believe it. As to his own attitude, he for himself makes no direct answer. He leaves the reader to draw his own conclusion, with these words:

"Be sure of this, the war has powerfully changed the 'psychological atmosphere,' and the thoughts of a great multitude are turned towards the spiritual aspect of existence."

AND GENERAL SCOTT SLEPT ON

THE Battle of Bull Run, according to von Moltke's celebrated phrase, was nothing more or less than a fight between "two armed mobs." Neither army had had any real military training; and the officers were as raw as the troops. All day long the struggle raged back and forth, and for the first few hours the Northern troops seemed to have everything their own way. Encouraging telegrams were sent from the battlefield to Washington.

Both Lincoln and Davis were equally torn by anxiety, says James Ford Rhodes in his new History of the Civil War (Macmillan Company). After his return from church, Lincoln scanned eagerly the telegrams sent to him from the War Department and from the army headquarters. Impatient as he was to talk over the news, he repaired to General Scott's office, where he found the aged and infirm General taking his afternoon sleep. On being waked, Scott told him that such reports as he had already received possessed no value; but, expressing his confidence in a successful result, he composed himself for another nap.

Lincoln was partially reassured; but at six o'clock Secretary Seward appeared at the White House, pale and haggard.

"Where is the President?" he asked hoarsely of Lincoln's private secretaries.

"Gone to drive," they answered.

"Have you any late news?"

They read him the telegrams announcing victory.

"Tell no one," said he. "That is not true. The battle is lost. McDowell is in full retreat and calls on General Scott to save the capital."

WHY THE GERMANS KILL DOCTORS

WHEN a German shell drops on a hospital behind the Allied lines, it does not drop there by mistake. When an airplane swoops down, dropping bombs, and firing into a crowd of doctors, nurses, and wounded with its machine-gun, it is not because the airman fails to see the Red Cross on the hospital roof.

The Germans kill doctors with a coldly calculated and systematically executed purpose. A doctor may be able, through his ministrations, to restore a thousand or two thousand men to fighting service: therefore doctors must die.

WHAT SENDING HIM HAS DONE FOR ME

I REFUSE to believe that war is a robber. It offers a compensation if we are not too much blinded with our tears to appreciate and accept it.

A year ago I could not have even thought of my husband getting into this war. Like many other women, I considered it an awful war across the sea which touched me only through my pocket-book. Since I have sent him away with a smile at parting, I can hardly believe that the selfish, dwarfed spirit I showed a year ago was really mine.

By sending him my sympathies have been broadened. I have learned to love and understand many people who never before interested me. As, one by one, the service flags appeared in our neighborhood, we visited one another, leaving our calling cards and company manners at home. The thoughtful kindness of friends and acquaintances was a revelation to me. It took the greatest war in history to make me see what wonderful people were living all around me.

My conception of God has changed. He is no longer a great potentate whom I must approach in set forms, but an ever-present, loving Father to whom little son and I intrust the care of daddy. In some strange way I have become acquainted with God.

My husband's part in the war has given me a sense of relative values. My self-centered vision no longer magnifies trivial things. With a world at war and my dearest in it, the exact shade of my spring suit is a matter of small concern.

The victory that I gained over myself when together we faced the question of volunteering (my husband was not in the draft age) has given me a new feeling of strength. The satisfaction of having done our duty as we saw it means more to me than I ever could have imagined.

It has made me a better wife and mother. In that last night, when we talked things over in the face of all the uncertainties of war, we learned to know each other better than we ever did before. As I take the place of father and mother in the life of our son, I feel the added responsibility; but I am determined to make good.

While I miss him more than I can tell, I feel that I might have missed much in spiritual and psychical development if our peaceful life had not been interrupted. I thank God that the blessing is in proportion to the sacrifice required.

A. C. F.

GENERAL FOCH SPEAKS

HERE is some advice delivered by General Foch to a body of French officers which well illustrates the temper of the man and the spirit that inspires his country. It is strangely reminiscent, also, of the utterances of some American officers.

"Train their legs," he says, telling them how to handle their men; "train their arms, train their muscles, train their backs. You possess fine qualities; draw on them from the soles of your feet, if necessary, but get them into your heads.

"I have no use for people who are said to be animated by good intentions. Good intentions are not enough: I want people who are determined to get there, and who do. If you want to overturn that wall, don't blunt your bayonet point upon it: what is necessary is to break it, shatter it, and walk over the ruins—for we are going to walk over ruins. If we have not already done so, it is because we were not ready. . . . But we are going to do it—to swamp the enemy, strike him everywhere at once,—in his defenses, in his morale,—harass him, madden him, crush him. We will march over nothing but ruins."

"Listening to him," says Christian Malle in his Impressions and Experiences of a French Trooper (E. P. Dutton & Company), "was like experiencing a species of shock. He hammered out his words and scanned his phrases in a manner which made us feel ill at ease. His speech was a flagellation. His look seized upon and held us. He brought us to bay and then crushed us."

PERSIFLAGE

TWO Canadian soldiers were talking. Said one: "I hear the Australians were in Bethlehem on Christmas Day."

To which the other replied: "I'll bet you the shepherds watched their flocks that night."

THE OUTCAST

By R. N. WALL

Illustrations by R. I. Ryland

UNDER the wet red-and-white awning of the Greek confectioner at the corner, two men stood waiting for the Seventeenth Street shuttle-car. A muddy slush that had been snow was curb-high and the air was raw with sleet.

One of the men was about forty, broad-shouldered and erect, his wide firm face, wind-whipped to a ruddy color, keen and dominant. His big body was shielded by a thick overcoat; heavy shoes, the soles cased with new rubbers, protected his feet. He held a half-smoked cigar in his gloved hand, and his pigskin purse, as he opened it to buy a newspaper, showed a folded square of green and yellow bills.

The other man, although younger, was thin and stoop-shouldered. His face was keen, too—but hatchet-keen, pinched and sunken, above his turned-up coat collar. His clothes were of shoddy black, spotted and greenish, lacking a button here and there; his shoes were sodden wrecks; and his bare hands were thrust in his pockets as he hunched himself against the bitter wind.

The car poked its nose around the corner, and they climbed aboard, the prosperous-looking man first. He appropriated as by right and habit the left-hand front seat, over the radiator, and opened his paper.

The thin man thrust his blue, unshaven face at the conductor.

"This car go to Cowan Iron Works?"

"Yep."

"Let me off there, will you?"

"Sure. See that big man in front? That's Mr. Cowan. Just keep your eye on him, and when he gits off you can follow."

The shabby man wasted no words in thanks. He seated himself opposite Cowan, whom he watched with a malevolent stare. Although the entrance to the iron works was in the middle of the square, the motorman stopped his car flush with the front door. Cowan acknowledged the courtesy with a bluff smile and a hearty slap on the motorman's shoulder.

The thin man followed the manufacturer out, his mouth twisted in contempt.

"Privileges of the rich!" he sneered to the conductor.

Then he shuffled after the big man; and, as Cowan turned to see who followed him, he faced him with a curious cringing insolence.

"Any chance for me to get a job?" he asked hoarsely.

Cowan looked the man up and down with a quiet sureness that made the applicant wince. The iron-master started to shake his head; but something about the haggard, desperate face before him seemed to make him hesitate.

"What can you do?" he asked.

"Keep books, write shorthand, play on a typewriter," croaked the thin man, shivering. "I've had plenty of office experience. I can make wooden buckets and churns. Also, I can run a turret lathe. But I'm not strong enough for heavy work at present. I been in the hospital. Here's a card the doctor gave me—said he was a friend of yours, and that you used a lot of men."

"I do," said Cowan in his round, pleasant voice; "but they have to be steady, sober, and industrious."

"Of course you plutes want steady men," sneered the applicant. "How'd you make any money out of our blood and bone otherwise? But don't worry; I'm competent. I can do anything you put me at, if it don't take too much muscle. Try me; if I don't make good it won't cost you one cent!"

The ordinary employer would have sent packing in a hurry this insolent job-seeker with his burning eyes and trembling hands. But John Cowan was different. The very bitterness of the outcast compelled his interest.

"What's your name?'

"Stewart," answered the man.

"All right, Stewart; come along. I'll

introduce you to Mr. Gross, who has charge of the office. You aren't in shape for the factory."

They entered a wide, well lighted room. Around the walls ran a row of desks, all facing outward, so that in the center there was an open space, partly covered by a square of red drugget. A score of contented-looking people were at work; there was a pleasant, regular clatter of typewriter keys; and, even on this raw wintry morning, the office seemed a bright and comfortable place.

"Good morning!" Cowan boomed inclusively, in his hearty fashion. "Oh, Mr. Gross!"

FROM a big roll-top desk in one corner office manager rose and came forward. A short, heavy-set man, running to paunch and a double chin; brown eyes behind thick spectacles; a mustache and a graying imperial: this was Mr. Gross, who stood very stiff and straight, with the hint of something military in his carriage.

"Yes, Mr. Cowan!" he answered, in a way that was a salute. His short-sighted eyes regarded Stewart disdainfully.

"Here's a sort of a jack-of-all-trades. I think you said you needed a man—"

Gross snorted, frankly unfavorable.

Stewart faced the fat man with an ugly, uncompromising grin, utterly careless of his impression. He swayed a little in his sodden shoes.

"What can you do? Where have you worked?"

Stewart merely jerked his head toward Cowan.

"Oh, that's all right," interposed the president. "He's been up against it. Doctor Graves sent him. Put him at work."

The office manager grunted.

"Very well—if you say so. What's your name?"

"A good one. Stewart."

"Humph! Caldwell!"

A slightly bald young man rose from his desk.

"Here's an assistant for you!"

With no further introduction, Gross turned his back and strutted away.

"Well, Mr. Stewart," began Caldwell nervously,—for the sneering hatred in the newcomer's eyes made him ill at ease,—"ready to start in?"

"Ready as I'll ever be. That's what I'm here for."

A snicker ran around the office. A pretty stenographer leaned over and giggled to her neighbor. Cowan disappeared into his private office, his broad shoulders shaking slightly, as if amused at the hornet he had thrust, in his own original fashion, into this peaceful hive.

"You can hang your hat in the locker room," Caldwell hastily pointed. "Then take that desk. These are yesterday's invoices. Here's a price list. Figure out the value of the goods on these warehouse orders and see if they agree with the invoices."

Stewart seated himself and turned down his coat collar, exposing a triangle of soiled shirt and a frayed tie. He selected a pencil, sharpened it with a few expert strokes, and attacked the pile of orders.

He had not lied to Cowan. His thin, stained fingers, his beady black eyes, wrought upon the green and yellow sheets with the precision of machines. Before Caldwell had expected him to be half through, Stewart stood before him, two sheaves of invoices in his hands.

"Your billing clerk seems only remotely acquainted with mathematics," he sneered. "About every other one is wrong."

"Think you could do better?" asked the nettled Caldwell.

"Sure," said Stewart nonchalantly.

"I'll give you a chance, then," retorted Caldwell "Can you use a typewriter?"

"Use anything," boasted the outcast.

Caldwell led him to the billing-machines.

"Here, Glen," he ordered, "you've made a mess of these invoices. Correct them. This is Mr. Stewart; give him the bunch you are working on and let him make them out."

AT noon the clerks began to cover their typewriters, close their ledgers, and shut their desks. Stewart worked on.

"You can go to lunch now," said Caldwell, pleasantly enough, coming over to him.

"Can I? Thank you so much!" Venom dripped from the man's tongue. He ran another clip of sheets beneath his platen.

Caldwell departed in a crimson huff. In a few moments Cowan came out into the general office.

"How are you getting on?" he asked Stewart, slipping an arm into his over-

"All right," growled the man, without looking up.

"Better get some lunch now," suggested Cowan, and unobtrusively slipped a silver dollar on Stewart's desk.

Stewart looked up in surprise. For an instant something changed his face a little; then it fell into the old hard lines.

"I guess I've earned it," he grunted, shoved the dollar into his pocket, and, without further words, got his battered derby and went out.

He entered the first saloon, threw down his coin, and called for whisky. Two stiff drinks he swallowed, then crossed to the pinch counter and ate a bowl of hot and greasy soup. The food and the alcohol brought a little color to his sallow cheeks. He expanded a trifle, and something almost like a sigh escaped him. Then he bought a bag of cheap tobacco, rolled a cigarette, and walked meditatively back to the office, where he fell with fury upon the invoices again.

It was plain that the man was an expert. He never looked at the keyboard; he figured the extensions in his head.

GROSS walked over to him and stood watching, his pudgy stomach protruding, his brown eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles interested and observant.

"You've had some experience at that, my man," he said, with a clumsy attempt at approval.

"Huh? This is child's play!"

"Hardly," smiled Gross. "Then, as he caught a whiff of Stewart's breath, his brow furrowed. "You've been drinking."

"Drinking?" Stewart looked up in amazement. "I had a shot of cheap whisky before lunch; I needed it."

"That makes no difference," announced Gross. "We don't permit any drinking in business hours; nor do we have employees who drink habitually at any hours."

"Calm down," sneered Stewart. "I'll do any work you set me to quicker and better than you can get any one else to do it, but my personal habits are my own business. The sooner you learn that, the smoother we'll hitch."

Only Cowan's entrance saved Gross from apoplexy or the indignity of a brawl. As the president entered, Gross charged after him, while Stewart waited, chuckling with amusement. In a moment an office-boy told him that Mr. Cowan wanted to see him.

---

The president's office was a small, square room, plainly but handsomely furnished. Cowan sat at a desk in the center. Gross stood before him, his short arms waving.

Cowan looked up at Stewart as he entered, and fixed him with his large gray eyes. Before their intensity the beady black eyes wavered for an instant, but no more. Stewart stiffened his lean neck against his soiled collar and returned stare for stare.

"What's all this fuss about, Stewart?" asked Cowan, his voice so suddenly cold that Stewart winced. "Mr. Gross says that you have insulted him."

"He insulted me first!" cried Stewart, taking delight in letting his anger sweep him away. "I'm just out of a hospital; I sat all morning in my wet clothes, and when I went out I took a drink of whisky as medicine; and this fat old—"

"Stewart!" Cowan's voice leaped out like a sword. "None of that! I want to help you, but I demand from you restraint and respect. If I were not deeply sorry for the failings that you perhaps can not altogether help, I wouldn't bother with you. Now, you will apologize to Mr. Gross and we will forget the incident. That's all."

"But, Mr. Cowan!" protested Gross, his brown eyes blazing, "we can't have any such fire-brands about the place. We have important government contracts—"

Stewart pricked up his ears. The office manager halted. Cowan smiled gently and repressed him with a wave of his hand.

"Mr. Gross is waiting for your apology, Stewart," he said.

On Stewart's lips trembled a wild diatribe against authority, discipline, and capital, but something in Cowan's look checked him. There was a command in the boss's eyes—compassion too. Stewart could not define it, but the effect made him mumble the required apology and turn back to his work like a reproved child.

He hated himself for the defect in his character that had made him give in; he hated Gross because he hated every one and particularly those in authority; but most of all he hated John Cowan

for the strength that had exposed his own weakness. He assuaged his resentment by snapping at every one who approached him that afternoon. He did not have to snarl at anybody twice; for, Gross setting the example, he found himself avoided like the plague.

About five o'clock the president appeared again.

"Stewart," he said kindly, "I suppose you would like an advance? Have you any place to stay?"

"I could get one if I had the price."

Cowan took out a ten-dollar bill. "This will help you out, then. I'll talk to Gross about your salary. You seem to be competent, and we'll keep you if you behave yourself. You can return this when you find it convenient."

"I'll do it out of my first week's wages," snarled stewart. "I'm no man to lie under an obligation."

"Ah, Stewart," returned Cowan, with a whimsical smile that softened his strong face, "obligation is the one thing in the world that no man can avoid."

"I hope you don't think you're putting me under any obligation in giving me a job!" cried Stewart fiercly. "Do you think I want to stay cooped up in a hole of an office, pounding out silly little figures on a machine, all day long? If there was any justice I wouldn't have to. What we need in this world is a square deal for the under dog."

"Stewart," Cowan said simply, "I'm sorry for you." He turned away. "What we need is a world with more love in it."

When the office closed, Stewart took his sullen way to a "stag" hotel of doubtful character, where he made a small deposit with the bartender, who acted as clerk, and obtained a dark and foul room. It had a bed in it; that was sufficient. After supper Stewart had a drink or two in the room at the rear of the bar, and then, hunched over one of the round, glass-ringed tables, he wrote a letter.

STEWART appeared at the office in the morning, as silent and touchy as ever, and attacked the invoices with unslackened energy. FOr a man who hated work, he seemed to fraternize with it at need.

As the days went on, the office became tolerant of Stewart; yet he still remained an outcast. He incased himself in an armor of sneering reserve, so that every one except Mr. Cowan shrank from personal contact. To him Stewart gave a grudging politeness. He did his work well, and Caldwell was glad to let it go at that. Gross never personally addressed him. Many of the Cowan employees had volunteered for service in the army, others had been drafted, a large number had left to seek fancy wages. Almost any man was welcome at the Cowan Iron Works.

Self-deprived as he was of intercourse with his fellow workers, Stewart's ears were sharp, and he did not fail to sense an air of something unusual that soon came to fill the place. Brisk, efficient-looking men, having an atmosphere of authority about them, were closeted for hours with Cowan. He heard the words "from Washington" whispered. Extensive alterations of the plant were begun. Rolls of mysterious-looking blue-prints were in evidence, carefully guarded, and kept at night in the big safe, in an innter compartment to which only Cowan and Gross had keys.

The preparations about the plant became more strenuous. Cowan wore a preoccupied look; he kept his secretary working late; and Stewart heard that Gross, with the factory department heads and one or more of the military-looking strangers, often held conferences in the president's office that reached far into the night.

Steward was curious. He imagined that they were planning to manufacture munitions—certainly it was government work. At noon-time he wandered about the shops; but he was promptly challenged when he attempted to enter the part of the factory that was being remodeled. Not to know what was going on piqued his uneasy mind.

When all the changes in the building had been made, machinery began to arrive. Then Caldwell, almost splitting with importance, told Stewart in a burst of confidence that the plant was going to make a new cannon the parts of which would be interchangeable with and take the same ammunition as the famous French seventy-five. He had heard that the safe even now contained the working drawings of that wonderful gun, furnished by the French war office.

"You can see," Caldwell explained proudly, "that if our troops use guns that take the same shell as the French, in case one runs short—"

"A child could see," sneered Stewart.

He pretended to hold the news lightly; but his nerves grew tenser as he studied the self-important young man who seemed already sorry he had spoken.

"You're a regular information booth, ain't you?" Steward jeered. "How'd you nose this out?"

"Mr. Gross told me in confidence," said Caldwell. His large ears began to turn pink.

"And you're telling me?"

"But you won't let it go any farther?" Caldwell begged nervously. "You'd be a mean, low-down—"

"That's as far as you go," Stewart began, his voice deadly as an acid. "I didn't ask you any questions. You come bleating to me, and then—"

His voice died to a snarl. Behind Caldwell a man dressed in the garb of an elegant lounger was strolling through the office toward Cowan's room. His costume and manner, however, were in ill accord with his sharp nose, thin mouth, and cold gray eye. The eye fell upon Stewart even as he subsided into his chair and crouched over his machine. Then, a little smile hovering about his lips, the visitor stepped into Cowan's office.

Stewart rose like a released spring and looked feverishly about him. Before he had taken two steps the stranger reappeared at the door, the little smile still in evidence under his close-cropped mustache. With one hand he motioned Stewart toward him. The other hand rested lighly on his hip. Behind him Gross peered with his myopic eyes.

"Come here a moment," the stranger invited. "Mr. Cowan wants to see you."

Stewart stood trembling. Slowly he mastered himself, then, with a defiant toss of his head, marched coolly in. The stranger softly followed, closing the door.

COWAN sat at his desk, wearing much the same expression he had worn when he had told Stewart that he must apologize to Gross. The lines of his face were stern, but his gray eyes were sad.

"Sit down, Stewart," he said quietly. Stewart slumped into a chair opposite his employer. His beady eyes roved from Cowan to Gross, firmly planted on his flat feet at Cowan's right, to the stranger, who leaned against the door-jamb. The visitor's eyes never left Stewart, and his hand still rested negligently on his hip.

"Stewart," said Cowan, his voice quite low, "this gentleman is Mr. Marsden, of the government secret service. He recognizes you, he thinks."

"I know it," interrupted Marsden. "We're tolerably old acquaintences, eh?"

Stewart did not answer.

"Stewart," said Cowan patiently, "you've been a problem to me ever since I took you in; but, as far as I know, you've done your work well and behaved yourself. I want to get the truth, that's all. I'm not your judge; but I am your employer, and I have the right to know. There are many burdens on my shoulders, and great interests involved."

"Sure," said Stewart, with his wicked leer. "I know. Seventy-five at least."

"You hear!" Gross turned excitedly to Cowan. "That's what he's here for, no doubt—to spy! I distrusted him from the first."

Marsden leaned forward intently. Cowan fixed Stewart with his eyes that cowed him.

"Look at me, Stewart!" he ordered; and his voice, scarcely raised, was like a primitive force.

Stewart, with his diseased, enfeebled body, his faltering if keen and tricky mind, had no guard for this radiation of strength. Slowly he raised eyes that hardly masked the hatred seething in his heart.

"Stewart," repeated Cowan, "I want the truth. Have you ever been in jail?"

A lie hovered on Stewart's lips and stopped there.

"Look at me!" ordered Cowan, not loudly, but his voice seemed to have sparks in it. "Have you ever been in jail?"

A slow red suffused Stewart's sallow face as the answer was torn from him.

"Yes!" he hissed. "Yes!"

"How many times? For what?" Cowan pursued in his calm and even way.

Again Stewart moistened his lips, but the lie he wanted to frame would not come.

"Stewart, look at me! I want the truth."

The man twisted in agony. Sweat started from his forehead, and he seemed not so much to speak as to have the words forced from him by some superior agency.

"All right!" he groaned. "Have it all, if you must. I don't know how many times! What you going to do about it? I'm not wanted now. Your law took me, a green kid, for swiping ten dollars from an old thief who was working me to death for five a week. You took me, you plutes, and made a convict of me. Look at your work!

"That's what you did," he went on recklessly—"you and your infernal judges and your courts of law and your government! For the offense of a boy, you've made a hunted beast of the man! You've never let up. No matter where I went, it's been the same story. Get a job—get found out—get fired! I'm square now, I tell you! I've paid! No one has a thing on me now!"

"Is that true, Marsden?" asked Cowan. "Is he wanted, or is his time square?"

"So far as I know," said Marsden, pulling out a cigar and biting off the tip. "But he's just out of the Atlanta pen, and he's no man to have around."

"That is for me to say," returned Cowan coldly. "I may not be always wise, but I try to be just. You and Gross go out."

"Mr. Cowan! Surely you have no idea of permitting him to remain—especially at this time!" puffed Gross.

"He's dangerous," Marsden warned. "Let me frisk him, at least."

Cowan waved them out.

Alone with Stewart, he turned toward the trembling man.

"I wonder," he began, half to himself, "if you mean what you say. Being crooked doesn't pay: you've found that out."

"I've been making good here. You know that. Ask Caldwell; ask Gross, the fat old—"

"That's your trouble," reprimanded Cowan. "You put yourself at odds with the whole world!"

"Who started that?" demanded Stewart, his voice rising. "What's the world ever done for me? Everybody hates me, despises me, picks on me. Every time I get a job, some hound like Marsden—"

"There you go again."

"But everybody condemns me unheard!"

Cowan rose from his chair, walked to the window, and turned his back upon the man whom Marsden had warned him was dangerous. In the silence Stewart could hear the cheerful clatter of the typewriter keys without; from the shops came the rumbling of machinery, the clang of iron, the sharp burr of high-speed steel upon the lathes. Somehow, the place had grown accustomed, homelike; and now he would be thrown out. He'd take something with him, though!

Then Cowan turned. His face was softened by sympathy.

"Not every one, Stewart," he said gently, "has condemned you. Go back to your desk!"

Astounded, half unable to believe, Stewart rose, his weak body trembling.

"You mean you'll keep me on?"

"As long as you behave yourself and do your work properly," said Cowan, with sudden gruffness. "Don't you understand, man? I'm trying to trust you, in spite of it all—to give you a chance!"

He held out a big, warm hand, and Stewart hesitatingly grabbed it. He did not even say thank you as he slouched out.

IN the general office, Marsden and Gross stood talking a few feet from the door. Stewart gave them a defiant stare.

"Bunk! Soft stuff! I wonder what Cowan wants of me!" he sneered to himself.

He returned to his desk and went mechanically to work, his warped brain wrenched with puzzling thoughts. Was Cowan honestly on the square with him?

His face was still damp with sweat as he wrestled with the beasts. He thought

---

of the things he had done, some of them matters of record, and some of them—the blacker ones, perhaps—buried among the secrets of his brain.

He looked up, to find Cowan standing over him. The office was deserted; the six o'clock whistle must have blown, but Stewart had not heard it.

"Still working?" asked Cowan in his normal, kindly way, as if he had forgotten the morning's events.

"Yes," grunted Stewart.

Cowan smiled, laid his hand on the other's shoulder, and passed out.

STEWART finished his work and left the office, his mind still a maze. In spite of himself the months spent at the Cowan Iron Works had changed the man. He was better dressed, his hair kempt, his face shaven; but the change went deeper. His shoulders had a squareness they had lacked that raw morning when he had applied for work; and there was about him at least the semblance of self-respect. His eyes burned as fiercely as ever; but some vague quality, confused and wistful, mingled with their fires.

He was thinking, with a sort of wonder, that after to-day nothing could touch him. With a sudden lift of his spirit, he realized that at last he had a chance. Cowan knew the worst of him, and Cowan was his friend. Then the old thoughts surged back—the contempt for kindness, the hatred of authority, the revulsion of his own weakness for the strength embodied in John Cowan. He could afford to be soft, the smug, canting hypocrite—he had never been despised and rejected of men!

He entered the "stag" hotel where he slept. The bartender-clerk nodded to him. "Friend of yours here to see you," he said.

Stewart wondered. He had no friends.

"Where is he? What's he look like?"

"Big, beefy guy. I give him a room next to yours—eighteen."

Then Stewart remembered the letter he had written the night he was hired. He walked slowly upstairs, a scowl upon his face, and paused at the door of number eighteen. His hand, lifted to knock, fell at the sound of voices behind the panel. If the man he expected to find had visitors, he would wait until they were gone. He entered his own room.

A sealed door connected his quarters in number twenty with number eighteen. Above this door a transom showed a square of light, and through the flimsy partition sounds came quite plainly.

The first words that Stewart heard again held his hand as he started to turn on the light in his room.

"You don't, eh?" croaked a raucous voice. "My old pal Slim Kinney is in town—he'd do."

Stewart could not distinguish the more softly spoken answer.

"I tell you," the harsh voice continued, "I got to have a lookout."

Another incoherent reply, to which the hoarse, jeering answer flew:

"You don't trust nobody, do you? Aw, what do I care? Lam him on the head and leave him when we're done. If there's anything left, they'll think he done it."

With the agility of an acrobat, Stewart placed a foot on the knob of the connecting door, lifted himself lightly, and flattened his face against the unlighted side of the transom.

On the bed, facing him, sat a loosely built man in a soiled light suit and a flashy tie. His left eyebrow, strangely askew, gave a sinister touch to the coarse and pimply face. His companion occupied a chair so placed that Stewart could get only an indistinct view of a bulky form swathed in an ulster.

"Twelve o'clock, then," said the man in the light suit. "I'll bring Slim."

As they rose Stewart slid gently to the floor. He heard the door of the next room open, and the footsteps of one man go down the hall. For a little time he waited, his face set in thought. Then he slid quietly out, and knocked at the door of eighteen.

Footsteps crossed the room, the door opened, and the hard-faced man looked out. His features twisted into a grin.

"Hello, Slim!" he said. "Come in!"

"Hello, Mike! You got my letter, then?"

"Yes, I got your letter; but you wa'n't awful definite. How are you, huh? Sit down."

Stewart took the chair, and the other man lounged on the bed.

"What you doing?" he went on.

"Working," said Stewart shortly. "Place I wrote you about."

"You're looking good," commented Mike. "Work must agree with you."

HE seemed to consider this a tremendous joke, and laughed loudly. Then, with a sinister change of countenance that his crooked eyebrow heightened, Mike leaned forward and spoke from the corner of his mouth.

"Kinney," he said, "I dunno what you got on, but I got something better. I'm

in a new game—a big game—the biggest yet. How do you stand on this war business?"

"It don't worry me," said Stewart. "I'm too old to be drafted, and I haven't anything to pay taxes on."

"I don't mean that," shrugged Mike. "Who do you want to win?"

"What do I care?" sneered Stewart. "The under dog gets it in the neck, either way. What I want to see is the finish. When the war is over there'll be red ruin—and pickings!"

His black eyes glittered, his sallow face flushed, as if all that was worst in him stirred.

"You don't have to wait for that to get pickings," whispered Mike in his whisky-hoarsened croak. "Have you read about them munition plants that was blown up?"

"Yes. Why?"

"That's my game!" bragged Mike.

Stewart stared. "You mean—? How?"

"Listen, Slim," said Mike earnestly, his eyes aglare with fanaticism. "Mind me telling you, years ago, of the Dublin riots, and my old mother thrown in the street, and my father beat to death by the constabulary? I've hated England all my life. There's no evil turn I wouldn't do her. And now"—in spite of his caution, his wicked voice rose a note—"I've got the chance. I'm killing two birds with one stone. There's scads of coin in this country to pay for the work I'm doing. Feather your pocket and beat England too! Want to go in?"

A wooden look had settled upon Stewart's features.

"Go in what? You ain't explained yet."

"I will. When I left Atlanta, a week before you did, I beat it to N. Y., and holed up. The guy that runs the joint tells me a guy wants a job done. He knew how I stood on the war, and that I'd handled explosives. So I meets this guy, and he tells me where to go, who to see, and what to do. I've pulled off three jobs slick and clean, and every one has paid me three thousand bucks. Get that, Slim? Now, I was sent here to meet a certain party, and I seen him just before you come up. He works in the plant that's to be boosted."

"Why don't he do it himself?" inquired Stewart.

"Aw, he don't know nothing about the actual work, and it must look like an inside job. I'm to meet him at midnight. He opens the safe, gets some papers he wants; I take whatever cash there is as a bonus—and then we shoot the place!"

"I see," said Stewart soberly. "But where do I come in?"

"For a lookout. All these other jobs, I've had help. I told this guy I had to have some here, but he didn't know no-body he could trust. I told him my old pal Slim Kinney was in town, and he said it was all right with him if I'd stand for you. So it's up to you."

"I'm in on it," declared Stewart. "What place is it?"

"The Cowan Iron Works."

THE wooden cast of Stewart's features did not change, but his heart jumped—although he had fancied, from the beginning, that the Cowan works must be in question. His eyes gleamed and his face darkened as he thought of the irritating Caldwell, the overbearing Gross, the high-and-mighty Cowan.

"I know where it is," he mumbled. "Say, this is dry talk. Let's go down and get a drink and some supper."

"Have it brought up here," suggested Mike.

"Think you're at the Waldorf?" sneered Stewart. "They don't serve no meals up here. Why so select?"

"I got the stuff in a satchel," Mike in dicated, with a nod toward a brown bag beneath the bed, "and I don't like to leave it alone. A chambermaid might come in, or a bell-hop. Tell you what," he considered. "If you'll stay here until I come back, I'll go down and get a drink and a bite. Then you can get yours, and afterwards we'll talk over the details. By the way, you got a gat?"

"No," said Stewart.

Mike grinned. "I can outfit you, then—there's three in the top drawer. One for you, one for me, and one for Smith."

"Who's Smith?"

"The guy that works in the shop and thinks he's bossing this job."

Stewart knew two men named Smith at the works—a lanky, red-headed drafts-man, and an elderly, quiet man, a foreman in the pattern room. From the build of Mike's visitor, he guessed it must be the latter. It puzzled him to know how the foreman could open the safe—but then, these people had hands everywhere.

"All right," he told Mike. "If you want to eat first, go ahead and get back—I'm hungry."

He threw himself on the bed; and he was there, apparently half asleep, when Mike returned.

Stewart went down and came back.

The long evening passed wearily enough. The two men told each other what they had been doing since they parted, recalled old crimes and lighter diversions, and, after some slight argument, settled the division of the spoils.

AT half past eleven they descended to the street. Mike bore gingerly the bag that held the explosives, and in his side pockets Stewart carried his own gun and the one for Smith. In the shadows of an alley that bordered the iron works, they donned rough masks that they had fashioned, and waited until a powerful car slid smoothly to the alley's mouth. The driver, a short, stoutish man, his face masked by cap and goggles, joined them.

This black and narrow alley was used for trucking purposes, and there was a gate, leading into the factory yard, to which Smith produced a key. They stole silently to the back door of the office, a two-story building of brick. It was a converted dwelling house, and it had a back porch on which a door and several barred windows opened. Through one of these they peered into the dimly lighted office. In a chair tipped back against a desk was seated a watchman, smoking a pipe.

"There are two other watch-men in the plant," said Smith softly. "We've got to be quiet. I'll go back to the street door, knock, and the watchman will let me in. Here's the key to this door. While he is letting me in, open it easily,—it was oiled to-day,—sneak up on him from behind, and hit him. Can you knock him out with one blow?"

"Trust me!" grinned Mike.

"Then you, what's your name—Kinney?—you stand guard at this door while we open the safe. We'll attend to the other watchmen later—don't let one of them steal up on us. You have a pistol for me, Ryan?"

"Kinney's got 'em—I had enough to carry."

Stewart passed over an automatic. The leader slipped it into his pocket and disappeared through the alley. They waited, their key in the lock. They heard Smith knock. Stewart, slipping to the window, saw the guard rise and go to the door. An instant later the watchman came back into his field of vision, his face turned toward the man who had been

Concluded on page 19

What His Home Town Thinks of General Pershing

By MERLIN MOORE TAYLOR

In Laclede, a little Missouri railroad town, the war, so far as the United States is concerned, centers around "John." Only a stranger in Laclede will be mystified as to the identity of "John." To the natives there is only one John—General John Joseph Pershing. Laclede is the town where he was born, and where he lived until the day he packed an old-fashioned telescope and departed for West Point on the first lap of the career that has made him America's most famous living soldier.

They called him "Towhead" Pershing when he was a youngster, because his hair was almost white. He became "Jack" after a while; but now to the whole idolastrous town he is "John." For General Pershing still calls Laclede "home."

He came back to it one Christmas as a cadet, in all the glory of his uniform and the gallantry that induced him to skate with every girl on the town pond one night, laying him up for two days. He came back to it as a dashing lieutenant and seasoned Indian fighter at thirty, and the whole town was at the depot to meet him. He also came back as a brigadier-general, the hero of the Philippine campaign that had led President Roosevelt to jump him from a captaincy over the heads of some three hundred other officers, in defiance of all the army's hide-bound traditions and precedents.

But let Aunt Susan Hewitt tell of that time. Ever since the days when her apple pies first lured the barefooted boy to her home, she has been one of his closest friends.

John was famous all over the country then, and we were delighted when we got word he was coming to Laclede," she says. "The town was all decorated, and there was to be a reception for him. Along in the afternoon he slipped away from them and came over to my house. I was an invalid then, and I didn't get out much; and when he missed me he came around to look me up.

"'Aren't you going to the reception, Aunt Susan?' he asked. I told him I couldn't go, and I made all kinds of excuses.

"He didn't say much, but about five o'clock that afternoon he drove up to the house in a buggy.

"'I've come to take you to the reception,' he said.

"'Do you really want me to go, John?' I asked, all a-flutter.

"He threw his arms around me and kissed me. 'Aunt Susan,' said he, 'you are the best friend my mother and I ever had, and when I tell you I want you to go I mean it. So you might as well get ready.'"

Aunt Susan put on her best and went.

General Pershing came back, too, after his dash into Mexico on the trail of the elusive Villa. He was on the way to Washington to get his orders before leaving for France. His train was to stop only a few minutes at Laclede, and the General sat up until morning in order that he might get another glimpse of the town.

No one in Laclede knew he was passing through, and the only one on the station platform besides the agent was Jordan Parks, an aged negro whose hotel duties compel him to deep hours with the owls. He saw the General, and ran toward the train with a cry of "It's Mr. John!" For fifteen minutes a sympathetic conductor kept the train waiting while the army general and the old negro sat on a baggage-truck and talked the soldier sending messages to his old friends.

"Tell the young fellows I'll see them over there," called General Pershing as he swung back upon his car—which may explain why the draft board for Linn County didn't have anything to do with Laclede. For Jordan Parks spread the message broadcast, and the next day he was loaded down with cigars and soda pop by those who wanted the latest word about "John."

Charles R. Spurgeon was Pershing's most intimate boyhood friend. The future General taught school to earn money so he could study law. Once he taught a negro school for half a term because the regular teacher was sick and Pershing didn't want the colored children to lose out. He asked Spurgeon's father to recommend him to the school board of Prairie Mound. The chairman, a practical, hard-headed old man, strongly antagonistic to "newfangled notions," read over the letter from Spurgeon, looked over the youthful Pershing, and said:

"You'll do, young man; but you had a close call. There was another young fellow over to see me Sunday, and what do you think? The dude had on kid gloves. Think of it, Mr. Pershing—a man wearing kid gloves in June!"

And Pershing wondered what the old man would say if he knew that he too had a pair of kid gloves in his pocket, but had shed them as a result of his knowledge of human nature.

"John had no intention of becoming a soldier," says Mr. Spurgeon. "He wanted to go to West Point to finish his education, and after he had repaid the nation by remaining in the army several years he intended to resign and take up law.

"'There'll be no more great wars,' he said to me once when he was a lieutenant. 'War will be replaced by arbitration soon, and if I stay in the army I'll never get much beyond what I am now.'"

And that from the man who is now

a central figure in the greatest war in history.

Laclede doesn't know in which of two houses the General was born. Some believe it was in a little place in which the family lived when the elder Pershing was a section foreman. Others point out a house in town itself. In order to make no mistake, the towns-people make a shrine of both.

The boy who sells the daily papers from the big cities in Laclede is getting rich, in a small way. Every one buys a paper lest some of the things "John" is doing escape them. If the American soldiers "over there" figure in anything, it is always, "Well, I see John made the Germans hike back to their own trenches"; or, "John sent a bunch of the boys out to raid the Boches." And any big order that Pershing issues brings forth a responsive "Attaboy, John!" in his home town, except from the colored population, which chimes in with "Attaboy, Mr. John!"

It Never Rains But It Pours

When I Married the Second Time

WHEN my wife died, the world went black. One who has not suffered as I have can hardly appreciate what it means for a man to lose his wife and be left alone with five little children. The year dragged itself drearily away. The house was desolate.

The nurse I got for the children grew lax about having them dressed before I left for my office in the morning, and when I returned home at night they were in bed. Sunday was the only time that I saw them, and then I found them irritable, rude, and disobedient, as they had never been while they had their mother train them.

After seeing them in their little beds at night, I would walk the streets for hours, wondering what I was to do. I attempted to console myself with all I could find to read on the nearness of the departed spirits, how they come back to us to comfort us. But I would lay down my book and remember that my wife was dead. She was not a departed spirit to me: she was simply gone into a silence that was a horror of blackness.

Then the children began to droop, to look unhealthy. I consulted my physician. He said they were not really ill, but missed the intelligent and tender care to which they had been accustomed. What could I do? My life, as well as the life of my little ones, was indeed a problem.

While visiting an old friend of mine, I met a sweet, brave girl, and she was sorry for me. I will not deceive myself into believing that I fell in love with Laura at first sight, for I did not. I acknowledge that her feeling for me was at first a surprise to me. She asked me to bring my children to see her, for she was fond of children. She got in the habit of calling to take them walking on pleasant afternoons. They talked constantly to me of her.

I was certain that my friends thought she was angling for me. I knew better. When a man begins to see how much his children love another woman, and she loves them, he can understand that she is not angling for him.

Were all women as necessary to their husbands as my first wife had been to me?

I asked a friend this question. He looked at me compassionately, and laid his hand on my shoulder. "Dear old chap, marry again," he urged.

I threw off his hand angrily.

"I do not suppose you mean to insult me," I said, with forced calmness. "But this is an insult. I am not that kind of a man."

Another friend said the same sort of thing several days later.

"I know just how you feel," he said. "I lost my first wife, you remember. At the end of a year I married again; I simply could not stand the lonliness."

To my enraged self I remarked that he could not have loved the first wife much. He seemed to me coarse and brutal. My heart, I felt, was buried in my wife's grave, and there was no resurrection for it. But Laura's tender sympathy and her affectionate regard were like a soothing hand laid on a throbbing head. Still I shrank from the idea of remarriage, until there would come the thought of my young children and my awful desolation. So I asked her to marry me, to be a mother to my lonely little children, a companion to my still more lonely self.

Perhaps the hardest thing I had to do was to move my wife's belongings. In my room were dozens of photographs, taken on our summer vacations. I took them down from the wall reverently and laid them away. Laura must not see them there. I changed all the furniture in the room that had been ours. The couch and chairs were reupholstered. The house was "done over." When a man resolves to marry again, he must bury a great and sweet part of his past life.

In spite of all this, I did not regret the step I was taking. For a while after my second marriage the heartache often returned, but I did not let my wife suspect it. There must always be concealments from the new wife. She must be allowed to think that she is the only woman her husband has really loved with the depths of his nature. Some men tell their wives this. I did not, but I let her think it true. At first this seemed a justifiable deception, and now I do really love Laura dearly. This affection I do not compare with that I had for my first wife, for it is different. You remember what Edmund Clarence Stedman wrote of "that first wild thrill." The first wife receives that, I think.

WHAT ONE GREAT ARTIST THINKS OF ANOTHER

A Portrait of Joseph Pennell

by F. Walter Taylor

A GROUP of educators were once remonstrating with Arthur Brisbane about the yellowness of the Hearst newspapers.

"Why," exclaimed one of them, "only this morning you compressed that wonderful speech of President Eliot's into a few lines and gave a whole column to James J. Jeffries."

"That is true," answered Mr. Brisbane; "and I will tell you something else. There are two doors leading into this room. If I were to point to that right-hand door and say, 'There comes President Eliot,' and to the left-hand door and exclaim, 'There comes James J. Jeffries,' ninety per cent of you cultured gentlemen would turn first to the left-hand door."

Brisbane was right. Educators are interested in prize-fighters. Almost invariably, when we ask a man to tell us about the most interesting person he knows, he picks some one outside his own profession.

F. Walter Taylor, the artist, is the first exception to the rule. When we asked him to name his most interesting friend, he replied with this wonderful portrait of Joseph Pennell.

"Mr. Pennell is an American institution," says Mr. Taylor. "He is the man who has blazed the way whereby the best artistic talent in America has been placed at the disposal of the government. He is the great interpreter of the power and beauty and romance of modern industry."

Perhaps you have seen some of his recent etchings of our munitions factories and shipyards and aeroplane works.

As Millet, thirty years ago, turned his back on the court favorites who wanted flattering portraits painted, and directed his genius toward interpreting the peasant life about him, so Pennell has given us a new sense of the bigness and majesty and poetry of the work and workers of to-day.

TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP, THE GIRLS ARE MARCHING

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SOMETHING IN LIFE BESIDES MONEY

Lusitania Night

By JOHN COLTON

Illustration by Jack Flanagan

ON the fifth floor of an old walled house off the Wilhelmstrasse, in the early evening of the seventh of May, 1915, the old Gräfin Jenny von Tauchlitz-Messerborn lay cat-napping, as usual. For the last ten years, now, she had never been very much asleep or very much awake, so far as those who watched her could tell. Since the year 1905, in fact, she had not spoken; neither had she seen or heard to any intent or purpose—just sucked her broth when it was fed her, and dozed fitfully, as is the way of one who has lived one hundred and eighteen years of life,—more, some said,—at least seventy years of which had been most exciting.

It was a gusty May in the Kaiser's city. A stiff north breeze rattled the boughs of the linden tree against the old Jenny's window-pane, and drifted the new blossoms of her weedy garden. Beyond the iron grill of her gates the city's populace were celebrating that day's news of the sinking of the enemy's Lusitania. But so high was the room in which the old Jenny slept, so skilfully was it muffled, that the sounds penetrated only as echoes or far-away murmurs of unreal worlds.

It was excessively warm in the room; heat emanated from a snappy fire of soft Westphalian coal in the grate, and radiated from two gas-burners; nevertheless, the old Jenny lay under seven blankets and two goose-feather quilts. These many years she had suffered from a chill that never left her.

As she shook, her bones creaked a little, for the age of the Gräfin Jenny was no legend. She had sparkled through half a dozen monarchies in half a dozen capitals, and had outlived the marrow in her bones. How or why she continued to live was a mystery anthropologists of note were even then inscribing in a tome of Kultur in the University (vide: Herr Professor Mauerbauer: Fall 17: "Die Gräffin von Tauchlitz-Messerborn").

As a little French clock on the mantel—it had been a present long ago from Madame Rachel—chimed eight, the drapery that kept the hall drafts out swung back, and a big-busted, peasant-faced girl tiptoed into the room, bearing a bowl of broth.

Very specter-like was the Gräfin Jenny, lying there under the slow, dull stare of the girl. With her high nose and pointed chin all but meeting as a bridge over her toothless mouth, her fringe of elf locks defying the baldness of her yellow pate, her cheeks so cleft and puckered that they resembled only dabs of wrung out cloths, no one would have credited her with haying been a beauty in her day.

On the walls of her room, however, a hundred pictures attested to it. They conned over the toll of the old Jenny's years, and all but chronologized the fashions of the century. There were miniatures by this one and that one, and daguerreotypes (a new invention in her prime), and a dozen canvases by great names. She had been fondest of the one by Contuli, which showed her as a shepherdess à la Greuze, and it held the place of honor over the mantel, sharing the space with Destrée's sketch of Napoleon Bonaparte, which scandal-mongers averred the old Jenny had stolen from the Countess Walewska when that unfortunate woman lay dying. Jenny as a Directoire belle; Jenny a l'Empire; Jenny in crinoline; Jenny in hoop-skirts; Jenny in bustles; Jenny in tie-backs—but after this epoch there were no more pictures. She was so old then that people doubted that she had ever been beautiful. A few years later she had become a wonder. Now she was a miracle. A hundred and eighteen years old—a friend of the great Bonaparte's—But, truly, the vicariousness of the old Jenny's life was too long past for even scandalous comment.

It, was not of the old Jenny's cynic history, however, that the peasant-faced girl was thinking as she bent over the old woman, the steaming broth in her hands. It was that something was queer here, without doubt, to-night. The girl had seen six years' service in the house, and, though she had seen the old one's face ten thousand times and knew it line by line, it had never been quite as this, she reflected.

They were roasting onions in the kitchen in honor of the housekeeper's son, home from France, and the girl was anxious to get back to the good company there. Later they would all drink beer to a greater death list on that Lusitania. Nevertheless, she paused to wonder if the old thing were about to die, before she placed a broad palm, not unkindly, under the bones of the specter's back.

"Your soup, old thing."

THE eyes of the old Jenny opened slowly, as if invisible fingers were drawing the sockets back. They had no sight in them, but they served to differentiate somewhat between the sleeping and the wakeful state. The sense of smell the old Jenny had, however. Her nostrils contracted a trifle to the tang of the broth.

"Your soup, old thing."

The old Jenny opened her mouth, and the girl fed her. It was good broth. There was the best of everything procurable in the old Jenny's kitchen. The estate saw to that. She was rich—very, very rich. She had amassed shrewdly, making no mistakes. A disreputable great-great-great-grand-nephew would inherit when she died; but he had grown old while his miraculous aunt mischievously eluded death.

She had seen to it, however, before she lost her wits, that his eagerness to become an heir should in no way hasten her footsteps on the way.

The old Jenny finished her soup. "Du Lieber Gott!" cried out the girl suddenly.

The soup, boiled of ham knuckles, pullets, a hank of beef, and thickened with eggs, had brought to the old Jenny's face the far-away ghost of a glow; but it was not this glow the girl cried out at.

"She hears something—I swear it."

From below, in the Wilhelmstrasse, the nervous murmur of the newsboys reached the room:

"Die 'Lusitania' ist versenkt snit drei Tausend der Feinde!"

There would be good laughter in the kitchen as the further details of this victory came in. Hans, the housekeeper's son, was a funny, fellow: he could imitate people drowning to the life they always died drolly, he said, these enemies who so foolishly hoped to annihilate the father-land. But the girl lingered—and suddenly gasped:

"She is listening!"

The old thing was listening. Her head, with its silly elf locks, was cocked to one side; the lips were moving, though no sound came from them. She was talking to something. There was no doubt of that. She was seeing something, too. Here the girl strangled a shriek.

They were making eyes at each other, the old thing and the Napoleon portrait on the wall!

"Ich verstehe (I understand)," announced the old Jenny suddenly, in a loud, queer voice—the first words that had passed her lips in ten years.

"Mu—mu!" squeaked the girl, and dropped the bowl.

The old Jenny wrenched her eyes from Destreé's sketch of Napoleon, and regarded the trembling wench.

"You!" she said quite distinctly, though it was more of a rattle than a voice. "You fetch me that silver box under the cupboard over there!"

"Wunderbar!" gasped the girl, terrified into obedience.

Her knees shook as she procured the box and laid it on the bed. She watched warily while the old thing drew a long breath and seemed to gather strength.

"Fetch me likewise my robe, my jewels, and my wig," the Gräfin commanded. "I am going on a visit."

To the speechless wonder of the girl, the old adventuress tousled out of bed, and sat shaking and shivering on the edge, poking at the silver box upon the counterpane. It flew open as she found a spring.

"Why do you stand there like a gawk?" croaked the Gräffin. "I said my robe, my jewels, and my wig! Likewise, noodle, my lotions and my paint—they are all in the closet. I must prepare a toilet."

IN the silver box were a thousand things: letters and slippers and fans, shoes from which champagne had been drunk, bouquet-holders, buckles, more letters, other letters, opera programs, poems in script, miniatures, Sweetmeat containers—the sentimental accumulation of three-score years of love, mischief, intrigue, and vanity. But the old Jenny scattered them this way and that way. She was looking for something that lay at the bottom of the box, and which she lit upon at last—a yellowing enclosure with a broken purple seal. This she scanned once, patted, and placed on the pillow beside her. Then:

"Why don't you hurry?" she screamed at the girl. "The wig is in the green box; you will find the paste replicas of my jewels in the little cedar chest—there is no time to get the others from the bank; that peony padusoy will do—with the ermine—I have so little time."

HORROR struck, the girl watched her settle the golden wig over the straggling wisps of gray.

"That is better, eh?" asked the Gräfin, smirking. "Now my paints!"

She painted the wrung-out rag of her face carefully, as one performing a rite. She drew a cupid's bow of crimson where the lips should have been, and smudged her sockets with kohl, and the unbelievable spectrality of her swarmed suddenly upon the girl's dull consciousness.

"My jewels!"

The command was half whispered, as if the old Jenny were taking care now to fan the faint life flame that found fuel so strangely in the all but disinhabited body. And the girl hung them on her bones.

"I am ready now," announced the Gräfin. "Go call my coach!"

"Wo geht ihre Hoheit hin?" whimpered the girl.

The old Jenny smiled at the Destrée's portrait.

"I carry a message from one poor fool to another poor fool!"

In the old adventuress's smile there was some tiny spectral remnant of the love of mischief which had characterized most other doings during the span of her activities.

"I am commanded to call upon the Kaiser," she said; almost she chuckled.

"Listen!" she went on. "I got this letter once—a century ago—how time flies! It was a healthy letter from a madman who had recovered his sanity. He asks me to pass it along." She mused. "Poor fool—I think he loved me, in his way."

The teeth of the girl clacked together in her fright.

"I'll read it to you," condescended the old woman, "and then you shall call my coach."

Holding in her gauzy hands the yellowing inclosure with the purple seals, the old woman then began to read, very beautifully and exquisitely in French,—she had talked a dozen languages in her prime, a letter. She had thrown back her head, and for once her voice was strong and clear. Indeed, it rang out solemnly.

("Undoubtedly she was fair once," thought the girl wonderingly.)

"From St. Helena in exile. I greet thee, Jenny, so sweetly young, so kindly lovely," read the old Jenny. "Ave and vale! I may not write again. I tell thee, Jenny, I was deluded—I who thought that I was the minister of God's power and His image on earth—and am now no better than the butcher that they call me. What I sought to do, can not be done. Others will try it, but like me they will suffer a disaster. In the end the world will punish them. Let them be warned. There is no such word as 'Victory' as I spelled it.*

"THY BROKEN EAGLE."

The voice of the old Jenny trailed and broke. Suddenly she toppled over. "Die 'Lusitania' ist versenkt mit drei Tausend der Feinde," sang the merry-makers in the streets below.

Covering her face with her hands, the girl scuttled downstairs as quickly as her feet could carry her, and, blubbering, spilled into the housekeeper's room. They had just finished a toast to the Kaiser and his Gott; but they followed her upstairs.

Unfortunately, they fed the fire that heated the water that washed off the indecent paint from the dead old Jenny's face with Napoleon's letter to a lady. It was written in French, anyway—and the language was verboten.

THE MELTING POT

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

AMERICAN TRACTORS FOR THE "DARK PEOPLE"

IF we really want to help Russia, we must not forget the "dark people," says Ernest Poole in his new book which he calls by that name (Macmillan Company). They are the great voiceless masses back in the villages and on the farms. They are tired of revolution, tired of war. What they want is peace, and more land, and freedom.

Unless the rioting masses in the cities quiet down and go to work, the "dark people" will not feed them, Mr. Poole adds, and quotes some of the peasants to prove it. They are the great force that silently is working, and will work, for the return of stability; and they are unalterably against the Germans.

"If America wants to help, let her send over an army of tractors," said a farming expert who knows the "dark people" well. "Let them start work early in April in the rich black belt in the south. In a line of about two thousand miles let them work slowly up with the season, offering to plow everywhere the land that now yields nothing. The peasants will gladly pay for the work."

Bolsheviki talk does not interest the "dark people," continues this expert:

"As a rule, when we talked to them of the war and of the revolution, of politics and the elections for the coming National Assembly, the peasants were apathetic. Plainly they were sick of all that. But then I would draw out from my bag a huge old tattered catalogue with pictures of American plows and reapers—and instantly they were different men. Alert and keen, they fired their questions, and talked of more land and better machinery."

BE CAREFUL IN CROSSING THE STREETS OF WASHINGTON

TWO years ago Washington was one of the safest cities for pedestrians in the United States. To-day it is one of the most dangerous. What has happened?

Eighteen thousand people have come into it—that is the great thing. And they are the kind of people who are accustomed to do business quickly, who demand taxi-cabs or use their own automobiles.

"The city boasts of a population of not many over 400,000 persons, even with the vast army of war workers who have been called to labor for their country," says Automobile Topics. "Nevertheless there are approximately 15,000 passenger auto-mobiles in the city owned by the permanent residents. To this have been added at least 1,000 more cars by the business men who have been drafted from all sections of the country to assist Uncle Sam. In other words, there is in Washington to-day at least one automobile to every twenty-five persons, including women and children."

Washington has all the symptoms of the regulation boom town: high rents, crowded hotels and streets. It lacks the gun duels and stabbings of the boom towns of earlier days, but the automobile accidents are doing their part to make the mortality record all it ought to be.

THE PAVLOVA OF THE AIR

WHAT THE ARMY SHOWS ABOUT MEN WHO QUIT SCHOOL TOO SOON

A LOT of interesting facts are being brought out by the study of the millions of young Americans gathered in cantonments. Never in the history of the world has it been possible to have so many men under scientific observation; and the information that has been gathered about young Americans is going to be very useful in the solution of problems of education and employment after the war.

Every man entering the cantonments fills out a personal blank, showing his education, occupation, the various jobs he has held, and the salary he has received. So it has been possible for the army officials to answer immediately the call for skilled men to handle any particular job by merely picking out of their files a sufficient number of men experienced in that special line.

And these records have proved again what all industrial experience has been proving so constantly in recent years—that every added year of education is an added insurance of success.

"The relation between educational and occupational success was most striking," says C. R. Dooley, manager of the Educational Department of the Westinghouse Company, who had charge of the classification of the men at Camp Sherman. "Scarcely one man in a thousand who had not finished High School or its equivalent had achieved success. The man with little education generally had jumped from one thing to another in such a haphazard way that he did not have even an accumulated experience to his credit. On the other hand, a man with a good education was holding a good position, and, further, had a continuity of purpose running all through his early history." It pays to stay in school.

WHY NOT RAISE 10,000 SNAILS?

IF you are weary of raising the homely potato or cabbage, and yet want to increase your country's food supply, why not try snails? Do not imagine that snails are acceptable only in times of famine. For many years they have been considered a great delicacy in France, and there is a large and growing market for them in this country. Bolton Hall, in Three Acres and Liberty (Macmillan Company), says the business is a very profitable one. He describes the best methods of snail culture, and says:

"The snail lays from fifty to sixty eggs annually. They are deposited in a smooth round hole prepared for them in the ground, and hatched within twenty days. The snail park is made by inclosing a plot of damp, limy soil with smooth boards, coated with tar to prevent the snails from climbing out, and held in place by outside stakes strong enough to withstand the wind. The boards must penetrate the soil to the depth of eight inches at least, and at a level with the ground they must have a sort of shelf to prevent the snails from burrowing under them. When the snail encounters an obstacle in its path, it lays its eggs.

"Ten thousand snails can be raised on a plot of land one hundred by two hundred feet. The ground is plowed deeply in the spring; the snails are placed on it, and covered with from two to four inches of moss or straw, which is kept damp. They must be fed daily with lettuce, cabbage, vine leaves, or grass; as they eat at night, they are fed shortly before sunset. Aromatic herbs like mint, parsley, etc., are planted in the inclosure to improve the flavor of the snails.

"In October the snails, having become fat through the summer, retire into their shells, the mouths of which they close with a thin gelatinous covering. They are now ready for picking, and are put on screens or trays, which are piled together in storehouses, where they remain for several months without food. When the fast has become sufficiently prolonged, the shells are brushed up and the snails cooked in salt water in a great pot holding about ten thousand. When cooked they are immediately sent to the consumer in wooden boxes holding from fifty to two hundred."

STILL GOING STRONG AT EIGHTY-SEVEN

AT eighty-seven Amelia Barr has published another novel, and has still another one about ready for the press. This alone would be a remarkable achievement: but when one remembers that Mrs. Barr's first novel was published when she was fifty-three, and that she has published more than seventy books in the intervening years, her record becomes one that is not likely soon to be approached.

She was born in England in 1831, according to a recent sketch published in the New York Sun; and because of the failure of her husband's business the family came to this country about the time of the Civil War. Hard luck dogged their footsteps; they wandered from city to city in the South; and in Galveston, in 1867, yellow fever laid them all low. When Mrs. Barr recovered, it was to discover that the disease had cost her the lives of her husband and her three sons.

With her three daughters, she struck out for New York; and there, submitting to a publisher a story that she had written for the amusement of her children, she was amazed to receive thirty dollars for it. "Why," she exclaimed, "I can write three or four like that a week."

Those were trying days. Often the little family had only a few cents at the close of a day. But Mrs. Barr's pen moved sturdily ahead; and in 1884, with "Jan Vedder's Wife" she achieved success that put her at once into the front rank of American novelists.

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WHERE CARPENTERS EARN $16 A NIGHT

HOG ISLAND, four or five miles south of Philadelphia, was a muddy, uninhabitable island in the Delaware. In September the Government let out a contract to build 120 merchant-ships, and Hog Island was the spot chosen for the enterprise.

Three weeks after the contract was signed, Hog Island, the mosquito marsh, the undisturbed home of muskrats, was agog with industry. We approached it across the flats in a company car, the only way to get to it from Philadelphia. At the entrance bridge our passes were examined. There we crossed two miles of brand-new crushed stone road fairly smooth. After that a mile of mud that concealed holes and pools into which the machine sank to its doors. The last mile was a clean new wooden road, wide enough for two trucks to pass and lined with bright wooden buildings—so new looking you imagined you smelled them.

Beyond the village was the Delaware, dark blue in a high wind, and outlined against it were a hundred tall pile-drivers.

"These buildings," said the chauffeur, gesturing to the right at barracks, hospitals, lunch-rooms, offices, and time-keepers' shacks, "were put up last night."

Beyond were new tracks, and innumerable little shunting engines plied back and forth, while on the main road there streamed a steady line of trucks and mule teams, the drivers, except for the singing and laughing negroes, swearing horribly. Time-keepers on horseback, wearing sombreros, were everywhere.

Now Hog Island is a great unkempt city. It has gas and electric lights, 73 miles of railroads, and there are 23,000 workmen. They come on special trains, on special street-cars, in buses and in trucks, and by big steamboats from Philadelphia. And they come from all over the country, be-cause here are found the most dazzling wages in the history of labor. It was found, the other day, that on the island only 140 of the clerks and draftsmen and mere executives get more than two hundred dollars a month, while two thousand of the workmen do. Any carpenter can earn sixteen dollars a night (known as "time and a half") if he is in the mood for work.

Luther Lovekin, the consulting engineer, is the man who conceived the Hog Island method of building ships in a hurry—of manufacturing ships whole-sale, like talking-machines or wardrobe-trunks.

One hundred and twenty ships will be

built, seventy large ones and fifty smaller ones; but each group will be cut on exactly the same pattern. For instance, seventy ship plates will be cut simultaneously, seventy propellers made from the same mold, etc. When all parts are assembled, they will be fitted together into seventy ships overnight. These will be strange looking craft; they will rest on the water as erect and ungraceful as a houseboat. Nevertheless, they will carry their quota of tonnage and go fast enough to make it at least a little hard for the submarine.

BRENDA UELAND.

WHY PEOPLE HATE

THE late Bishop Creighton wrote: "I am convinced that every time the moral and cultivated man exercises his right to vote, he seriously impairs his morality and his culture." The reason for this remarkable statement is that political opposition, more than almost any other cause, gives rise to hate and bitterness.

The causes of hate are analyzed by Arthur Everett Shipley in Studies in Insect Life and Other Essays (E. P. Dutton & Company). Hate is, in a sense, anger crystallized into a more permanent state. "Rivalry, the forced submission to an unwelcome authority, unequal conditions of life, perpetuate the emotions of hatred, which are often fanned by party and sectarian feeling."

As an example of this last, the author quotes die famous curse laid upon the great philosopher Spinoza in 1656 for his desertion of the orthodox Jewish faith. All the Jews of Holland cursed him "with the curse which Elisha laid upon the children, and with all the curses which are written in the law. Cursed be he by day, and cursed be he by night. Cursed be he in sleeping, and cursed be he in waking. Cursed in going out and cursed in coming in. The Lord shall not pardon him, the wrath and fury of the Lord shall hence-forth be kindled against this man, and shall lay upon him all the curses which are written in the book of the law. The Lord shall destroy his name under the sun, and cut him off for his undoing from all the tribes of Israel."

The fact that common religious and

social differences quite as often as personal wrongs arouse people to hate, proves to Dr. Shipley that the passion is rather a congenial one to man. "To certain dispositions hatred is by no means unpleasant. But, on the whole, hatred is a passion which dulls the intellect and in the long run weakens the individual."

THE BUSINESS VALUE OF A GOOD MEAL

BIG business men are experts in the diplomatic use of food: and many a deal that would otherwise have failed has been successfully concluded through the agency of a good dinner.

When Irving T. Bush had completed the great Bush Terminal Building, in Brooklyn, at a cost of more than $2,000,000, he found that his troubles were only begun. Try as he might, he could not induce any first-class steamship line to use the facilities he had provided, says Forbes' Magazine.

He did succeed at last in getting two small fruit lines to come to his piers, but here again his hopes were threatened by the fruit dealers of the city, who complained that the distance to Bush Terminal was too great.

It was a critical time for Mr. Bush. All one evening he puzzled over the situation, and the next day he went to the manager of one of New York's most exclusive clubs, and arranged for an elaborate dinner. Next he sent out invitations to every fruit dealer, merchant, and peddler in town. They came the next day, between 250 and 300 of them—a strangely assorted crew. The dinner was excellent. When the cigars were passed, Mr. Bush arose and made a clean breast of the business.

He told those men exactly what he was up against: he explained how much their cooperation would mean to him, and he asked them frankly to give the arrangement another trial. When he finished man after man got up and pledged his support—and the dream of Bush's life began to be realized. The dinner had done its work.

HAS THE AMERICAN WOMAN FACED THE WAR?

HOW are American women facing the problem of war economy? By "an extravagant, reckless, luxurious gaiety of high colors, rich silks, close-fitting skirts, and filmy laces," says Baroness Franciska von Heddeman, former court dressmaker to Queen Mary and others of European royalty.

In the Forum she says:

"Paris has grown old, indifferent to her former standards of fashion, a victim to the economic plague that has come upon her. The great French city of world coquetry has transferred the spirit of her gaiety to New York, and it is spreading over the whole of the United States.

"It is the American woman whose extravagance has remained undisturbed by the war. She alone reigns in the old indisputable splendor of clothes that cost fabulous sums.

"She is still wearing the imported styles, though there are no imported gowns to speak of. She is able to do this because these 'importations' are made in America, where they cost more than they did when they were made abroad. It is the milliners and dress-makers who are imported, not the gowns. It is they who are receiving more for their work in this country than they did in Paris.

"I have been shocked by the unrestrained luxury of women's clothes since the United States entered the war. At a fashionable dance the other evening I wondered if the great whirlpool of death over there really existed, wondered if the fathers, husbands and sons of those beautifully gowned women were really giving their lives for world democracy! Or was this scene of exotic charm merely a phantom picture of something I still remembered from those days of court splendor in England and France before the war?"

MAYBE THIS WILL COMFORT YOU

IF you are worried about the cost of living—and who is there that is not?—there may be a crumb of comfort in the reflection that the situation is world-wide. Not a family in the world but has had to pay its share of the bill piled up by the Kaiser's crime. The following figures, compiled by the State Department and published in The Nation's Business, indicate the increase in the cost of living over 1916:

        

Italy	65 percent
Spain	25 "
Greece	250 "
Switzerland	97 "
Sweden	225 "
Denmark	70 "
France	57 "
Holland	60 "

Our Most Public Private

THE large man in the middle fore-ground, with the too large khaki blouse and the not large enough campaign hat and the general appearance of being a rookie, is Private Royal C. Johnson, of the second district of South Dakota. This picture was taken ten years ago, when Mr. Johnson practised the preparedness he preached by organizing a company for the South Dakota National Guard at Highmore, his home town. He is in khaki again now, and that's why we print his picture.

Between his two spells of soldiering Mr. Johnson has been Attorney-General of his State, and since 1915 one of its Congressmen. He is thirty-six, married, and has two children. Last January, after having done his part to get Congress speeded up on war work, he enlisted as a private. In a letter to his constituents he says:

"In my opinion, this war will continue until 1919, and it is the duty of every man to serve his country where he can render the best service. Particularly is it my duty to go where my vote has helped to send other men. Any one with a sense of personal responsibility ought to be willing to do his share of his own fighting, and I expect to do mine."

The Outcast

—Continued from, page 9

admitted. He had removed his goggles, and Stewart, looking through the window, found himself gazing into the short-sighted brown eyes of Mr. Gross. As the office manager, smiling pleasantly, handed the watchman a cigar, Mike rose noiselessly on his toes and brought down his blackjack upon the watchman's skull! The man dropped with scarcely a sound.

Gross laughed and kicked the helpless man in the ribs. Mike carefully placed his satchel in one corner. Stewart took up his post in the entry, where he could watch both the back door and the office.

Gross knelt before the safe.

"You get the cash and I get the papers," he puffed, as he swung the door open. "You have the explosive? What did you bring—dynamite?"

"Dynamite!" Mike spat with an expert's contempt! He drew a round brownish ball from his bag. "That's picric! And say, we don't need to worry about them other watchmen none. One of these here and a couple in the yard against the buildings will do the trick!"

"So?" Gross studied the small bombs doubtfully. "Have they sufficient lateral force?"

"Lateral force?" Mike showed his yellow fangs in a horrible soundless laugh. "There won't be a building standing in this block when them boys pop. After we light the fuses we can't get away any too fast, neither!"

"My car's at the mouth of the alley," Gross reminded him. "How long will it take the fuses—"

AT this moment a key rattled in the front door, and John Cowan stepped briskly into the room, He had apparently come from some function, for he was in evening clothes, his face ruddy and pleasant above the white rectangle of shirt-front that his open overcoat exposed, his silk hat pushed back from his broad fore-head.

"Was it you, Gross, that 'phoned?" he began. "What's this?" His voice deepened as he took in the unconscious watch-man, the open safe, the blue-prints, and the brownish balls, to one of which Mike clung stupidly. "What are you doing?"

"Serving my emperor!" thundered Gross, and whipped out his automatic. "Put up your hands!"

Cowan slowly raised his white-gloved hands.

"I don't understand! You—Gross, after all these years—"

"I'm a German still," answered Gross proudly. "Do you think I'll let you make cannon to fight the fatherland?"

"I thought you were an American," said Cowan.

"I spit upon all Americans!" raved Gross, and suited his action to the words.

Mike laughed; Stewart stood silent in the shadows.

In spite of himself, or simply because of the physical strain, the white-gloved hands wavered a trifle, but Cowan's gray eyes were steady.

"I know one might as well plead with a mad dog," he said. "I'm only a pawn in the game. All over the country other foundries will cast cannon to clear the world of your kind and to make it a fit place for humanity and—"

"I've heard enough!" bawled Gross. "Sit down in that chair and put your hands behind you. Ryan, get something to tie him with!"

Cowan held his hands steady; but Stewart, watching him closely, saw him slightly shift his weight on the balls of his feet. They would never truss him without a struggle.

Mike carefully put down the bomb he had been nursing and stared around the room. An electric-light cord swinging in the corner caught his eyes, and he started toward it. The moment had come for which Stewart had been waiting. He stepped into the room, forgetting, in his excitement, that he had removed the annoying mask in the hall.

"I think I'll take a hand in the game," he snarled, a sneer of satisfaction rimming his thin-lipped mouth.

"Stewart!" cried Cowan. His voice betrayed his agony. "You too?"

"Yes," said Stewart grimly; "me too!"

The office manager, as startled as Cowan at the appearance of Stewart, whirled the muzzle of his pistol upon him and pulled the trigger. There was no sound save Stewart's contemptuous laugh!

"There's your boasted German efficiency for you!" he taunted Gross, as the frenzied office manager snapped the trigger again and again! Stewart thrust his hand in his vest pocket and pulled out two pointed bits of steel with tiny springs attached—the firing pins of the automatics. "Look after your own gun if you want it to shoot!"

"You took out those pins when I was downstairs, you double-crosser!" yelled Mike, advancing, the electric-light cord in one hand, the heavy knife with which he had severed it in the other.

Stewart swung his gun upon Mike, as Cowan grappled with Gross.

"Drop that knife!" Stewart ordered! "Back up against that wall! Who started the double-crossing? Lam an old pal on the head and leave him, would you? Mr. Cowan, shove Gross alongside him. Take that cord and tie 'em while I keep 'em covered!"

Cowan stared at Stewart.

"Then it was you who 'phoned?"

"Sure," grinned Stewart. His black eyes blazed with triumph. "Now, I guess, we're square!"

"Square?" repeated Cowan wonderingly. "Man, I can't square what you've done for me and for the country in a hundred years!"

THIS IS HIS WEEK

RICHARD WAGNER, twenty-four years old, an unknown musician from provincial Germany,—with a wife, an opera and a half, a small purse, a terribly large and voracious Newfoundland dog, and nothing much besides,—traveled in a sailing vessel from Riga to London, from London to Paris, full of assurance that he would shortly be both rich and famous. It took him just thirty years to do it, and in all this period there was no time when he had more than was "barely necessary to live on."

"Those who had promised to help him did not do so. Meyerbeer, who had urged him to come, forgot him after he had arrived. He and his stupid, pretty wife, Minna, often nearly starved. He sold three of his most beautiful songs for a sum amounting to four dollars.

Paris would have none of him. Opera producers told him that his music was "dissonance," that he was "impertinent" to try to foist it on them. So he went back to Germany, where after seven years Tannhäuser was produced without success.

Injustice and poverty began to prey upon his mind, and he became socialistic in his theories—so much so that he was hunted as a dangerous revolutionist and was forced into exile in Switzerland. He had a few friends, however, and they were as devoted as his enemies were merciless. Through one of these "Tannhäuser" was at last produced in Paris. No outrage in the history of genius exceeds the reception of this opera. People blew penny whistles and cat-called during the most beautiful passages.

Wagner, utterly crushed, crept back to Switzerland to die, as he hoped. He probably would have died had not Ludwig II of Bavaria befriended him. The King's friendship brought better years, belated success, recognition, fame. After the death of his wife, Minna, he married Lizst's daughter Cosima, and found love and peace at last. But the story of his life leads one to wonder, with Mark Twain, "Does it pay to be a genius?"

"Our Experience in Coöperation"

WE WANT a dozen letters telling about successful experiments in cooperation that have been carried on either by you and your neighbors or by groups of people in your community, under your observation. As the war goes on, there will be fewer and fewer men to do the work: many of the activities of production and distribution for which we used to depend on other people we must somehow manage to do ourselves.

Have you carried through a successful experiment in cooperative buying? Tell us about it. How many families cooperated? What did you save? How much did you save? How were the accounts handled? What difficulties and disappointments did you encounter?

Or perhaps your experiment was in the coöperative cultivation of a piece of land. What did it cost each family in money? How was the work divided? What was the net profit? Were some families "slackers," leaving the others to do the work?

We will pay $25 for the best, most accurate, and interesting letter on this subject: and $5 for every other letter that is interesting enough to use.

The letters will be judged for the amount of specific information they contain, and for their possible helpfulness to the people who read them.

Address the Editor of the Coöperation Contest. All letters must reach us by June 18, and no letter can be acknowledged or returned.

Let us make this the most interesting and helpful contest the magazine has ever printed—a real money-saver for everybody.

Buried Alive

—Continued from page 5

His answer is an onrush on me.

"Damn you!" he screams as he comes on. "It's all your bloody fault that we're here. It's you are burying us alive."

Buried alive! It's out at last. He has ventured to voice the horror. But there is no time now to indulge our despair. With all the violence of a madman, he attacks me. We clinch for a second. Then there is nothing else for it. I hit him on the head with the butt of my revolver, and he drops in an unconscious heap to the ground.

Barely has he fallen than the candle goes out, leaving me and Blackmore to face the struggle in the dark.

"For God's sake, sing or say something," I beg him. "I feel as if I'd go mad."

He sings—some old music-hall ditty. What a man he is! But, in spite of his grit, he can't keep the quaver out of his voice.

"Oh, stop it!" I cry. "That's worse than the silence."

Nothing offended, he stops at once.

We go at it again—dig, dig, dig. By the end of half an hour my arms are aching and my back strained. I stop. What's the use of pretending any longer? Might as well sit down and give it up.

"Let's ease off," I suggest.

"Right-o," comes the cheery answer. Was ever a man like this man?

We sit down. It must have been morning, probably six o'clock. Weston, who has regained consciousness, is sobbing like an ill-used child. I sense rather than see that Blackmore's head has gone down in his hands. I feel alone in the black dark. I liken myself to an animal that knows he is trapped and must face his cage as best he may.

But what solace can a man in such a plight apply to his soul? What faith will

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give him fortitude to meet his end as a man should? The thick gloom of the grave surging against my sight strikes on my senses like some horrible menace. My eyes peer through it painfully, searching for the God-sent gift of light. Light in the grave! No; a man can't hope for that. I must face my horror with the bowed head of the blind.

A Star Appears

AND then suddenly I feel my heart leap high with hope. Through the darkness comes a rift, tiny as the top of a tea-cup, dim and gray as the early streaks of dawn. I blink; for to my sight, accustomed to the gloom, it seems preternaturally bright. I turn my head. It is still there—before me. A star! The star of Bethlehem! The promise of a Saviour! Is God Himself, then, coming to our aid?

I say nothing of this to Blackmore. Why should I? He would accuse me of "seeing things." He would be right, I tell myself. Of course this is a mirage—a mirage formed by an imagination that has overtaxed itself trying to find relief. But what does that matter compared to the fact that my heart is leaping.

No doubt it may seem impossible to you, sensible reader whose nerves have not been wrenched by a night of horror, that a man should mistake the plain evidence of his own sense of sight. Yet so it was. I am telling the terrible truth.

That light I saw came from a crack in the loose surface of the crumbled clay. My eye, accustomed to gloom, preserved the image on the retina. Everywhere I looked I saw a star which was no more than the reflection still held by my optical nerves.

So might your eye, struck suddenly by the glare of an electric arc, keep the dazzling brilliance even after you had deflected your head.

But you would know what you were seeing. As I say, I mistook the evidence of my sight. So wrought was my brain with horror, so sunk was my soul in despair, that the possibility of genuine hope after six hours' struggle never dawned on me.

So I sat motionless, gazing at my star.

It was probably fifteen minutes later that Blackmore raised his head, gasped, grasped my arm, and shouted to me hoarsely:

"Light! Look! Look!"

Perplexed, unable to believe yet the significance of what I saw, I gave no answer. Then he shook me impatiently.

"Can't you see it?"

"Yes," I answered at last quietly, as if indeed it did not matter.

"God!" he cries. "God!" His voice breaks with relief.

I feel his body tremble—the first sign he gives of his state. Then we relapse into silence, afraid to trust ourselves to speech.

He is the first to speak again.

"Well, we won't choke to death, anyway," he says in matter-of-fact tones.

"No," I say, equally casually.

Then simultaneously we rise and grope our way through the gloom to the mouth of the shaft.

When the earth had crumbled under the impact of the shell it failed to fill the sap entirely. Just a tiny crack remained open, and to it we owed our lives.

Once again we go to work—dig, dig, dig. But now there is hope and energy in our efforts. We keep at it for hours, never tiring, but ever turning to the little light on which we pin our faith. We try to ex-plain to Weston that hope has come at last, but he only whimpers like a little whipped child. Poor chap! Pity he could not have held on!

Ten A. M.—I see my watch again—a shadow passes at last.

"They've come!" shouts Blackmore.

We rush to the mouth of the hole, and shout and shout. But the damp earth retains the sound. Nothing answers us but the echo.

More shadows! They pass and repass repeatedly now. Why don't they stop?

"Can't they see we're buried?" we ask each other irritably; and again we begin to shout. Shout and dig, shout and dig—that has become our routine. And then—it is eleven—a sound reaches our ears. Some one digging!

"God! they're coming at last!"

Our own work has taken on a furious quality of energy. We dig as we never dug before. Even Weston has ceased to sob and drawn near the sap. But never a word is said—we are straining our ears for a human sound.

Twelve o'clock, and they haven't reached us. Suppose, after all, we were mistaken? Suppose they are not digging toward us? Suppose they're merely clearing the trench?

"But they must miss us—they must," says Blackmore. Even he is nervous now.

We scream again. No answer but the echo. Dig, dig, dig! They and we are at it. At least, we know that.

Twelve-thirty—we fancy we hear a voice not far off. We stop for a moment to listen, but only hear the dig, dig, dig. Twelve-forty—they're close. Lord! we realize it now. Twelve-fifty—they shout, and we answer them at last. They hear us, too. Great God! we're almost out.

One o'clock—a shaft of light shoots into the cave. A hand comes through—a head—a body. I see a man bearing a lantern; I hear a voice asking a question. I try to answer, but my tongue seems to stick in my teeth. I throw out an arm to catch some one. It is taken. The next thing I know, I am lying in the Casualty Clearing Station, with a doctor bending over my head.

As he tends me he tells the story of our rescue.

The Chief Engineer Missed Me

NO one had missed us all evening. No one had missed us in the morning, until the Chief Royal Engineer, my friend, noticed my vacant place at breakfast.

"Working in his sap, I think," said some one.

I'll drop round and tell him to hurry before all the good things are gone."

It was about ten when the C. R. E. dropped round to the trench, and found his way blocked by the effects of the bursting of a shell. Immediately he set the men to work. But were we alive? That was the question that bothered them all the time, and made them work with all the greater energy. Yet, even with their regular tools, it took them three hours to reach us. What a chance we had had with our jack-knives!

I inquire for Blackmore. Oh! he seems to be all right. Not a nerve in the man's whole body. Weston? Well, he, poor chap, had been buried before. The doctor shakes his head over the probable effects of a second shock.

I am lying in bed in my billet, looking round. Near me is a brother officer, shaving. I ask him for the mirror he has—just for a whim. I look in it, and can scarcely believe what I see.

Can this man be I—this old man with the haggard features and the hair gone white on both sides of the head? Well, why not? Isn't my every nerve crying out with exhaustion? I lie back, limp, lifeless. I feel as a tree might feel from which every drop of sap, every last ounce of its life-blood, has been wrung, leaving it dry and withered.

For two days I stay in bed. Then my inertia leaves me, and my brain begins to cry out for new food for thought. Distraction—that is what I need. They send me back of the line, to give me time to recuperate. But my nerves won't leave me in peace. They wake me in the night, in the grip of horrid nightmares. They shake me, as if with ague, at the sound of every shot. I can realize now why poor Weston had gone mad. A man can't stand such a shock twice.

By a desperate effort of will, I concentrate on my new work. It relieves me somewhat, and I pluck up heart again. But nature has not yet exacted her full penalty for the violence clone her on that dreadful night. When, six weeks later, I receive my second wound, my agony begins all over again, and this time it is intensified tenfold. Now it is over—almost—but now is two years later. Pray God it may never recur again!

THE EDITOR ANSWERS

"WAR is war," say the Germans, and think by that phrase to cover the record of their hell. But what warfare is depends upon the character of the men who make it. "Contrast the Germans in Belgium with the record of the Army of Northern Virginia," says Randolph H. McKim in "The Soul of Lee." "It invades Pennsylvania and occupies it twenty-one days; fights a great battle, or rather a series of great battles, besides many minor actions; and returns to Virginia, leaving no trace of violence or rapine behind it. None of the citizens are harmed. Their houses, their farms, their villages, are immune from injury. We look in vain for the print of the iron hoof of war in the country trodden by the Army of Northern Virginia."

Hush, Not so Loud!

Dear Editor:

The pupils in my class were discussing the daylight saving plan, when one of them asked seriously, "What is the name of the bird that comes early in the morning and wakes up the farmer?"

I replied: "The rooster."

"Yes," said the little fellow. "And will he crow an hour earlier?"

A. R., Boston.

We have been in favor of this daylight saving business for years; but we don't want it discussed around our house. Our son, aged two, has not heard of it; and we are hoping to get him to sleep through on the old schedule.

Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief

Dear Sir:

Do you know (you probably do, since you have been recognized by a hotel clerk) how many different classes of people read your magazine? I know at present a well known minister, a soldier who was a first-class architect, a musician, a plumber, any number of insurance men, and—well, my brother travels from Chicago to Florida, and is constantly surprised by the number of people who speak of our magazine.

R. M. A., Chicago.

We don't dare to think of all those readers, R. M. A. We just go ahead as though our wife and ourself were the only readers, and we were printing just the stuff that we wanted to print. But if we ever got to thinking, "Now what will our preacher readers think about this?" or "What will our plumber readers think?" we would get so stage-struck that the magazine probably wouldn't get printed at all.

The Wrong Kind of Saving

Dear Sir:

I wish you would say a few harsh words about the people who save without doing any good. I know one woman who, to be patriotic, made her last winter suit do again this year. But did she buy a Liberty Bond with the money she saved? Or give it to the Y. M. C. A.? She did not. It went into her own selfish account. Speak harshly to her, please, and the others like her, through the columns of our favorite magazine.

A. P., California.

You're right, A. P. Penury could do us just about as much harm these days as extravagance. The whole question seems to me fairly simple. Until the war is done, a dollar put into Liberty Bonds or into the Y. M. C. A. or the Red Cross is better used than as if it were spent for anything else under the sun. But, after these needs are met, the patriotic man is the one who lets his money circulate intelligently, and so helps to keep the normal processes of our life active and secure.

Who is He?

HE was a rich man's son. His father was a great Italian land-owner, his mother an Irishwoman. His father and his mother, as well as his sisters and his cousins and his aunts, called him a dreamer. But his father, who was an indulgent parent, said: "Let him dream on—I have plenty of money," and built him a laboratory to dream in.

The boy believed that electricity could be controlled without wire. When he was a young man of twenty-seven he decided that he was ready to test his dream before the world.

On the morning of December 12, 1901, he stood on the summit of a hill outside the city of St. Johns, Newfoundland, sending kites up into the air. He had chosen this spot especially—"Because," he said, "since the earth is round and the surface of the ocean between England and Newfoundland is curved, I must be as high up as possible if I am to receive the waves of electricity sent to me from across the water."

While he was busy thus in Newfoundland, an operator who had been stationed in Cornwall, England, was making ready to send the message the young man hoped he was going to receive. No one was sure that anything was going to work, except the young man who stood on the hill outside St. Johns. Never for a moment did he doubt his dream. The time arranged for came, and a bolt of lightning as thick as a man's wrist leaped away from Cornwall. But the lightning was not free to travel as it would. It leaped across the Atlantic to the kites awaiting it. And it came with a click, click, click, marking the three dots that stand for the letter S in telegraphy. That day history was made. The Atlantic had been bridged.

Who is the young dreamer?