THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

June 20,1925

amp towels are dangerous hamper companions

What happens when delicate silks are put in a ham- per with the towels, sheets and colored cottons of the weekly wash? Simply this; they wear out long before they have given the service you have reason to expect of them Why? Because, even though not obviously soiled, they contain perspiration acids from the skin, which are kept moist by the hamper dampness and destroy the silk fibres No, to preserve fragile garments and prolong the length of their service, many women have made it a habit to tub them in Ivory suds as soon as possible after they are worn, whether they LOOK soiled or not. in this way acid action and the fading and streaking that Comes from tossing such garments into stuffy ham- pers are all prevented. Silk blouses, sheer silk hose, glove silk, radium and crépe-de-chine lingerie, English broadcloths, silk broadcloths and other tub silks and knitted sports togs, baby’s flannels and aii other deli- cate things reward this simple care with far longer life Of course, to tub such delicate things frequently great care must be taken in the choice of the soap, for a soap that is the slightest bit too strong will spoil your whole effort by injuring the fabrics and colors. Ivory (cake or flakes) is safe, however much of it

you May use when in a hurry, or however often you

for chiffon stockings

use it. For, as you know, Ivory has for 46 years pro- tected something far more sensitive — the complexions of millions of women.

A soap safe enough for daily use on your face is safe for anything that will stand the touch of pure water. The best test we know of for determining the safety of a soap for delicate silks and woolens is this: Ask yourself, “Would I use it on my face?”

BLANKETS —how to wash them safely

Harsh soap, rubbing and extremes of temperature cause sensitive wool fibres to mat down, shrink and become hard and scratchy

> <4

IVORY

99*%co% PURE

CAKES FLAKES

Keep blankets fluffy this way: For 1 double or 2 single blankets, dissolve 1 teacupful of Ivory Flakes in hot water; pour into wash-tub 24 full of /ukewarm water; and beat up a thick suds. (If water is hard, use a little powdered borax.)

Shake the dry blanket well to remove dust; plunge into suds, working up and down with the hands, squeezing suds through it. To remove spots, soap with Ivory Soap and rub /ightly between hands.

Press water from the blanket and repeat operation in fresh suds of same temperature.

Put clean blanket through loose wringer, and rinse in three cleat lukewarm waters. In the last rinse, dis- solve enough Ivory Flakes to make water milky.

Wring loosely. Hang in open air—in sun if pos- sible. When partly dry, shake well from corners. When dry, press binding and air in warm room.

A Free Sample A postcard addressed to Sec. 25-FF, Dept. of Home Economics, Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati, Ohio, will bring you a sample of Ivory Flakes and a book- let on the care of lovely garments, both /ree.

PROCTER & GAMBLE

Published Weekly

The Curtis Publishing : Company

Cyrus MH. K. Curtis, President C.H. Ludi: n, Vice-President and Treasurer

.L P.S. Collins, General Business Manager Walter D. Fuller, Secretary

THE SATURDAY

EVENING POST

George Horace Lorimer EDITOR : Frederick §. Bigelow, A.W. Neail, Thomas B. Costain, Wesley W. Stout, B.Y. Riddell, Thomas L. Masson,

Associate Editors

Entered as Second-C lass Matter, November 15, 1679, at the Post Office at Philadelphia, Under the Act of March 3.1879. Add lL Entry at Columb 9°.

: William Boyd, Advertising Director é ° St. Louis, Mo., Chicago, Mh, Indianepolis, Ind. Sade Square,Philadelphia Founded A’D' 1728 by Benj. Franklin stn Nitweuhee, Wis, and $4. Fouk Rimes" caantumeee Copyright, 1925, bin Curtis, Publishing | Company tn, adhowret States ond Greet Britain fenorsd se Soosnd Cleese Mater ot Se Volume 197 5c. THE copy PHILADELPHIA, PA., JUNE 20, 1925 $2.00 =e Number 5!

INE MAN’S LIFE

Keo

My Father Was a Typical

Dutchman of Medium

Stature, and in His Youth an Able Wrestier

N SPITE of the fact that

there are very few auto-

biographies extant, com-

pared with the vast number which have been pub- lished, which are worth the pa- per on which they are printed, there is an urge upon many otherwise well-instructed peo- ple to commit them. I wonder why. It may be the work of the great adversary of man tempt- ing us through our vanity; or perhaps it is the fact that a really good autobiography al- ways fills a need on the part of the reading public and becomes in the hands of posterity amine of—more or less— precious metal. There is much to be said on both sides. A perfect biography of the man who can scarcely read, working today in my orchard, a person who has never been fifty miles from the mountain farm on which he was born, would be a priceless treasure. So would be a similar story of the life of almost any- one else. The thing, however, which should throw into a panic the person undertaking such a task is the daunting fact that none of the persons mentioned could write such an autobiog- raphy.

Our Frontier Cabin

EITHER can I. But hay- ing passed through a his- toric epoch such as none except Midwestern Americans have,

in all the world’s history, ever seen, having moved in many circles and observed numerous events, having had a thought or so occasionally about these things, and being

persuaded thereto by those willing to take the responsibility of publication be by the adversary and the argument of possible utility mentioned above

and it may I am

celebrating my sixty-third birthday by this beginning of my memoirs. To him who says I am old enough to know better, I can only suggest that he leave my reply to the event. The statistics are all in favor of his contention. The panic is mine.

I was born at midnight or thereabouts on the night of October 23, 1861. There was so much doubt as to whether it was the twenty-third or the twenty-fourth that when I was about fifteen I went into the matter as thoroughly as possible and decided that it

was the twenty-third.

In a matter of so much importance, the

bad time kept by the clocks in the frontier cabins in Iowa in those

days was a matter of some embarrassment; but the nearness to midnight has been useful to such astrologers as have cast my

horoscope, in which they have, so far, been at least 75 per cent wrong. The place was in Grundy County, Iowa, though Hardin County was justacross the imaginary line, which afterward became a road. The house has long since disappeared; but there was a huge glacial bowlder close by which, when I saw it in boyhood, looked as if it might be carved into a du- rable monument. On land which has sold for from four to five hundred dollars an acre within the past few

With a Garland of Mrs, Millstagte's Young Turkeys in Each Hand

years, one can scarcely ex- pect that the bowlder has been allowed to remain. If it has yielded to dynamite, the spot is unmarked. But the same thing is crue of the place of Homer's birth.

Pioneer Parents

T ANY moment after I was born, my mother would unhesitatingly have died to preserve me had it been required of her. I never for a moment doubted this. Yet, as she told me in after years, I was nota child whose coming was desired. A swarm of children was not looked upon as a blessing in the circle into which I was born. I should not mention this, notwithstanding that I think it is a matter of inter- est, were it not for its social and historical significance. For it was typical of the re- action to childbearing which had begun to prevail among the descendants of our Amer- ican pioneers.

The fact is that these American women had come to regard the bearing of many children as a part of the primal curse which they were, in large numbers, resolved to avoid. Their conversation among them- selves, their advice to their daughters, their whole men- tal attitude was against the

The Others Ran—and Were Aiways Blamed for it by Everyone But Griaaty Wright

By HERBERT QUICK

ILLUSTRATED

BY HERBERT JOHNSON

large family. They recognized no binding force in the command, “ Multiply and replenish the earth.”’ They were becoming intelligent. poverty as did the people of the stream of immigration which for two centuries was

engaged in threading the foreats, to emerge at last upon the prairies. this with those left behind in the East and Middle States and the South.

No race ever gained in intelligence amid

It kept pace in All over

America there was a new attitude toward the large family.

My mother was a typical woman of the old American stock. She told me truly of her attitude as to my coming; but like other American mothers, when the little guest once pulled the latchstring of this world, he received a welcome, a devotion and a wealth of love which could not have been greater if he had answered a want ad.

My ancestors all came to Amer- ica in Colonial times. They were, with one or two exceptions, Dutch, and came to New Amsterdam. I have never investigated the matter as to what sort of people came to New Amsterdam and went out to develop farms, or why they came. To avoid the charge of eccentricity, however, I am bound to imply that whatever they were, my ancestors were superior to the rest of them.

All the earlier names are lost, to me at least, They seem to have migrated up the Hudson to a point where they were blocked by the great patroons’ estates; and there, unwilling to pay rent to those excelient people, the

Van Renaselaers, the Livingstons and other landlords, but having their Dutch heads set on getting land of their own, they turned to the left at Kingston; and passing up the Rondout Valley on a line almost parallel to the Hudson, which they had ascended, by the time my family’s oral history begins, they were established in Orange and Sulli- van counties, New York; Sussex or Passaic County, New Jersey; and even in Eastern Pennsylvania.

They and their neighbors had ceased to be Europeans. They had yielded to that environment which has made Americans what they are and America what it is—the frontier. They had hewed their way up the Rondout and Walikill valleys and over the watershed from farm to farm, taking generations for the work, clearing the forests, building their cabins, erecting their churches, fighting Indians, slaying game, planting orchards and fields. All the Dutch left in them was the sturdy character and a somewhat altered language. This was one of the first frontiers in North America.

Readers of history are prone to forget how slowly our forefathers learned to live in the wilds. Sir Walter Raleigh planted two colonies on the Carolina coast. The first came to starvation, and the defeated settlers were rescued and taken back to England. The second, left for three years without supplies, vanished from the face of the earth. Six out of every seven of Jamestown's settlers starved the first winter, and half the Pilgrims in Plymouth did the same. They seem, if that be possible, to have been too dependent on their faith in God. These settlers were helpless even while living by waters teeming with fish, in forests full of game, fruits and nuts, and on fertile land from which to grow food. The Rendout Valley Dutch of a generation or twe experience, or the British born in the wilds, would have laughed at the conditions under which the first com- ers perished.

Qualities That Made Frontiersmen

T TAKES time to make frontiersmen. We learn of no

serious want among the Dutch, and I therefore claim for my ancestors that they were better settlers than the British, who had one quality which made them almost hopeless failures—their pig-headed slowness of adapta- tion. I have seen the same thing among the English settlers in Alberta and Saskatchewan and even in Iowa in my own day. Almost hopeless, but not quite; for they possessed also another trait which redeemed those who did not allow themselves to starve—their splendid determina- tion. Enlightened very gradually by their experiences in the New Worid through the solution of its problems, they staggered palely from winter into spring, better able each season to win through to the next, and were hammered by

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

adversity into the finest people to whom Providence ever gave an empire, especially when given the proper intermixture of Dutch, German and Irish.

Among those Rondout Valley Dutch were my ances- tors. They belong to my autobiography, because they bore the cells which make up my body and brain; and they were the first trickle of the human stream which for two centuries seeped slowly through the forests like a flood held back by fallen leaves and brushwood, and at last burst forth in a freshet of men and women on the prairies when I was new. Some fifteen-sixteenths of me is Dutch. How this works out in the matter of chromo- somes I have no idea; and must leave the matter, important as it is, to the biologists, merely pausing to notify those whose brains are absorbed in the matter of race that I am Nordic, They will concede that this is a thing which I planned well.

I find on tracing up my paternal line such names as Denis—or Dennis—and Winfield. ‘‘ Winfield”’ looks British too, but it is Dutch. How my forbears spelled it—such of them as were able to spell at all—I do not know, but they pronounced it “‘ Winfield.”” I have seen a Low Dutch book in which the battle ground on which Arminius, in the year 9 A.D., destroyed the legions of Varus is called Winfield, or the Field of Victory. Mr, Creasy, who puts this great slaugh- ter among the Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, by some strange oversight fails to mention the deeds of valor done by my ancestors in that engagement by which they must have got their name. As for some of them, their names were Dennis. On my mother’s side we have the names of Krom, or Krum—now corrupted to Crumb—Van de Marck, or Vandemark, Rapelje, Koms and Coleman. Coleman is Irish. Bardeen, or Bardin, and McAndree, or McKendry, are other names in the maternal line, which run back to New England, I believe, and away from the Low Countries.

The Irish ancestry is derived through John Coleman, who was in the British forces in New York in Colonial days. He was a soldier of the king—or queen; I am a little un- certain which—and met and courted a Dutch girl, Hannah Koms, as is the soldier’s way. He little knew, which is also the soldier's way, what he was doing for me. He, aided by those dim-seen Bardeens and McAndrees, has given me a non-Dutch strain—preponderantly Celtic, I think—which I feel sure has much the same effect as a little yeast in grape juice--it has acted as a ferment and perhaps communicated a kick. I hope the Volsteadists will not accept this statement as an admission against in- terest. Hannah Koms and John Cole- man were married. He went away on some expedition to attack Havana— or it may have been Louisburg— where, having his leg shot off by a cannon ball a la Ben Battle, he was carried aboard a hospital ship, got gangrene in the wound and was buried at sea. Somuch

I Grew Up a Clumsy, Pate, Awkward Boy

June 20,1925

for the delay in the invention ’ of aseptic surgery. A son named for him, but whom he never saw, was born to him after his departure; and there was a John Coleman in the family in every generation down to and including my maternal grandfather, whom I dimly remember.

The first John Coleman has had a very brilliant mil- itary career since his death. He is now, in the opinion of the genealogists, an officer. In fifty years more I feel sure he will be the commander of his expedition, even though only a common soldier when he sailed away. Moreover, Hannak Koms was a member of the royal family of Hol- land. Her first Colonial an- cestor was of royal birth and was secretary to old Gov- ) ernor Peter Stuyvesant of az New Amsterdam. Some branches of my family have found out this gratifying fact through the labors of the tree specialists, of whom, more than of any other scholars of whom I know, it may be said that they aim to please. we When the writer meanly suggested, on hearing of this, that there was no royal fam- ily of Holland at that time, and that a member of any great family who was brought down to the position of working in any subordinate ca- pacity for that passionate old tyrant, Peter the Head- strong, must have done something perfectly terrible in Holland, my contribution to the investigation of family glories was received with such ill favor that further in- formation was denied me.

A Concession to Ancestor Worship

HE life of the skeptic is not always an easy one. There-

fore I have adopted a policy of believing henceforth everything the family ascertains. I believe that we are descended from the royal family of Holland, whether there was one or not. I believe John Coleman was a colonel anyhow. I believe that my father’s grandmother’s people received the name of Winfield because they so slaughtered Varus’ troops in the Teutoburger Wald as to wring from the Emperor Augustus the cry, “Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!” But Varus could not give them back, because Arminius and the Winfields had got them. And whatever of good report is offered for acceptance in the future regarding my great forbears, I now pledge myself to believe, and I shall reject every calumny which links my blood with evildoers—unless aristocratic ones—or with mere hard-working, industrious folk who simply earned their living and paid their debts.

This confession of present and pledge of future faith is almost a necessity for everyone, as a confession to that universal weakness of mankind—ancestor worship. I sus- pect that the average man is as well born as the average king—which is saying mighty little. But ancestor worship demands its fables.

All my ancestors then living took part in settling the second great frontier of New York. They had acquired the traits which urged them from one struggle with the (Continued on Page 153)

Yet Jtitt They Pressed On, Toward the Hope Which Had Preceded Their Fathers for Two Hundred Years

THE

SATURDAY EVENING POST 5

“Narrint"* He Said. “She Foot." He Paused. “Drink This!"

Europe as any other which you can mention. It

is at the intersection of the Friedrichstrasse with Unter den Linden, where stands the great café which never closes by day or by night. Throughout the changing years its broad windows are alive, shedding their mild al!ure upon the handsomest street in the world. Yes, we Ailies beat Germany; we outfought her and outmaneuvered her; we capsized her Emperor off his throne and fetched her rep- resentatives to mock us at Versailles; but none of us have found the time to beautify our great cities with a road like Unter den Linden—two parallel avenues of traffic, with between them an average road’s width of grass and flower beds and trees. We were too busy for that.

It was under the awning of this café that Professor Conradi sat, after his busy morning at the asylum, await- ing the niece who was to lunch with him. The day had a mild benignity of sun and air; the incessant traffic streamed in the roadway with the effect of life poured through a pipe. With his little glass of kirschwasser upon the iron- topped table beside him, the small professor watched that spate of activity. A small black bag was on the ground at his feet; he sipped his drink and from under the brim of his black hat his eyes twinkled upon the motor cars, the hurrying men, the splendors of the women, as they flowed past him. Wealth, power, purpose, went by; defeated Germany promenaded in the sunshine as glorious and as challenging as a peacock; there was nothing else in sight so trivial and meager of effect as the professor himself. Yet if any had cared to watch him and analyze the quality of his regard as he contemplated the flow of the street, some, having vision, might have detected in it a character of mildly benevolent possession, a touch of the kindly autocracy of the father of a large family; as if, in short, he

[eure is a point which is as nearly the pivot of

ILLUSTRATED

By Perceval Gibbon

GEORGE £.

suffered them to run about and play at being free human beings till it should suit him to teach them otherwise. And so sitting and looking forth, he beheld the arrival of his niece.

She was easily recognizable across the nearer roadway as she stood at the farther edge of it, awaiting a chance to ford the current of its traffic. She was a girl of that make and manner which the Germans—with good warrant, too—have idealized.

She was of the middle stature, neither thin nor stout, and blond, of course—that gold-tinted blondness which reminds one of harvest-ripe corn. And from hat to heels she was clad in black, the stern and bitter black which is the ensign of mourning and bereavement. For somewhere upon the Somme-—shattered or shot, bundled into an un- marked grave—lay the twin brother who had halved her life with her.

She saw her chance to cross the roadway, stepped from the curb and started over. She caught sight of the pro- fessor under the awning as she came, and raised one hand in a gesture of greeting; it was thus that she failed to see the great car that came booming down upon her, sluing across the road as the driver, roaring blasphemies, jammed on his brakes. She knew only that someone suddenly caught her from behind and threw her forward, so that she fell on her knees in the roadway. Then turmoil piled up about her; there were passionate howls of protestation from the driver of the car, a jabber of comment from the throng which automatically collected, the staccato official bellow of the inevitable Wehrmann, the street policeman,

WOLFE

and one answering voice—precise, prompt, but un- hurried--in German that was fluent and correct, which yet, in a certain exotic delicacy of accent, was not German. No, there had been no accident; there was nothing to report. A lady had become involved in the traffic and had been pushed clear of an imminent car.

“‘Nichts ist geschehen; alles ist wohl! Es braucht hier keine U ntersuchung!"’

It was a clear voice, with a marvelous and inimitable character of modulation. Upon the curb the young woman, with mud upon her skirt at the level cf her knees, turned to look at what was happening. The little professor looked also. He had not moved from his chair. His set face of clay did not break into expression; but the eyes had their twinkle.

“Ach!”

She had not yet greeted the professor. She had turned upon the refuge of the sidewalk to look upon the scene in thé roadway. The throng was dissolving under the ur- gency of the policeman; the essential motor car, its driver still muttering curses, was moving on; and forth from the disorder of it all there limped toward her, with one long brisk leg and one which dragged and failed, a tallish young man. He, too, had been down in the road, and his clothes, of conventional blue serge, bore the signs of it. His hat had disappeared somewhere under the feet of the crowd, but his black hair, plastered upon his head like a coat of paint, discounted that loss. For the rest, he showed a high. indifferent and comely face; he was, perhaps, thirty years of age, or thereabouts; there was a small smear. of mus- tache under his nose; and despite his dragging leg, his limp, there was that in the general set of him, in the mere poise of the head, in the fashion in which he made his way

Figs BN a PRO hOGA INS

through the scattering throng—something which betrayed him for what he was.

He was ar officer.

He joined her on the curb, where she stood watching. He raised a hand in salutation toward the hat which he had lost, remembered and dropped it again. He smiled, as if at his own inadvertency. He had a queer smile; there was in it a casual mirth, a pleasant and not cynical worldli- neas; and with them both there was twisted in a strand, like the red strand in the ripping cord of a balloon, of bit- terness

*(inddiges Friulein’’ —he bowed to her—“T trust you are not hurt. I had to act quickly. I hope I need not say 1 had no intention of throwing you down.”

She amiled faintly. She was as tall for a woman as he was for aman: large in the frame, in the German manner, vet without bulkiness. Her face was a wide oval, with very pale-blue eyes set deep under gold-tinged brows; and upon it there was a character of gravity as though an ex- perience had brushed it in passing and left its stain of knowledge and sorrow

‘Il am not hurt.” she said. ‘But you

She stopped. The little professor had risen from his chair and was now beside them.

‘My dear,” he said; he had a voice with no more tones in it than hia face had smiles, a voice that ran upon a rigid level like a train upon rails—“ my dear, if you will ask this gentieman to sit down with us for some moments, we can thank him comfortably.”

The girlshe was perhaps twenty-three years of age made a little obedient gesture of invitation toward the triple rank of small tables which bordered the sidewalk.

“Ich atelle mich vor—I1 introduce myself,” supplemented the professor. He drew his feet together and bent in an absurd bow, and in doing so he had the effect of burlesqu- ing the German formality of polite observances, as a dog on his hind legs burlesques the gait of a man. “Sigismund Conradi,” he an- nounced himself. He moved a jerky hand toward the girl. “My niece,” he said, “ Frijulein Lohr.”

The young man bowed in his turn, of course; you can do nothing in Germany ‘ without either bows or blows.

“I am Charlies Benest,"’ he said.

The glitter in the little professor's eves quickened for an instant.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “French, of course? I had already guessed it. But all that business of French and German, of friend and foe— that is an old story now, We can sit down and drink a bitters to- gether —not?”

His flitting glance did not miss the awift look at the girl’s mild serious face, itainquiry and the acquiescence of her answering re- gard.

‘Il bBhall be de- lighted, Herr Con- radi,” said the younger man

There is no privacy so complete and agreeable as that which one can obtain in the midst of a throng. Three people, seated at a small table upon the terrasse of a café, with indifferent fellow customers concerned only with their own affairs, the easy current of the sidewalk drifting past, the spate of the roadway boiling by, are folk in an oasis. Deserts burn about them; let them burn!

The Herr Professor—let him have the title! Who cares?—-had the place of honor, facing the street. The girl was at his right hand and the young man at his left, oppo- site to her. She spoke:

“I saw you were limping a little. Your leg has not been hurt?"

The young man smiled that queer rueful smile of his.

“Thank you,” he said. “I, too, hope it has not been injured. it cost a lot.”

“Cost She did not understand. fessor twink!ed.

“Ach!” he exclaimed. “Of course! Is it by any chance a Letchiglied?"" The young man made a motion of ac- quiescence. “ Because,’’ said the professor, before he could answer in words, “if anything is wrong with it, I can put it right for you. You see e

His lips did not soften as they widened. They only, for a moment cr so, changed shape.

“You see,” he said, “the Leichiglied, with the aluminum bearings at the knee joint and the special articulation at the ankle, and so forth—well, I can put it right for you if it is damaged, because *

He hung on his effect like a trained actor tantalizing his audience, He picked up his glass, drained it, and bent on

I hope it

The Herr Pro-

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

his two companions a face that was meant to be patroniz- ing and—so to speak—paternal. His littleness was rat- like; in every aspect he was mean and small; yet he achieved for the one moment his attitude of triumph. It was a pity that he had drained his glass already, for he lifted it as he spoke, to emphasize his words with a debonair gesture, “ because,”’ he went on, with a grimace of momentary discomfiture at his empty glass—‘‘ because I invented it.”

“Allow me!" begged his guest. “If the gnédiges Fréulein permits.” He lifted a finger to a hovering waiter. “T think I should tell you, to avoid misunderstandings, that I am a French officer on the Disarmament Commission. So perhaps €

He moved in his seat as though he volunteered to depart, to re- lieve them of his‘ company. His eyes were on the girl; they were very steady eyes, which yet were eloquent in the

trained composure of his face. She met them with her own still earnest regard.

“But” —she was eager and uncertain—‘“ we

Her uncle, the little professor, supplied the needed words,

“Aber was—what is all this? Disarmament Commis- sion! It is my hope that you will break or burst every gun in Germany. Guns and rifles and shells and bombs what are they?”

The hovering waiter had refilled his glass. The gesture was effective this time. He lifted the thimble-sized glass and drank flamboyantly. Perhaps the previous draught had touched him. For he laughed; he actually laughed! His death mask of a face collapsed into a humanity of mirth.

“Toys!” he chuckled. “Toys in the hands of big chil- dren! Give a child a knife and it will cut something itself as likely as not. Give a man a gun and he will kill somebody, or be killed by another man who also has been given a gun. Imagine trusting the ordinary man, the com- mon man, the man in the street, with the means of com- pulsion, with the means of power, with the means of death! Imagine appointing a silly old general, who has been kid- naped into a cadet school at the age of fourteen and taught nothing but Dreck—muck—about drill and trash like guns—and giving him a thousand guns or so and expecting him to regulate the affairs of a seething continent! Ach, was!”

The younger man was watching him as he spoke. His look moved at moments to the quietude of the girl's face, but came back always and at once to the professor’s.

“But They Took My Brother; They Took Him and They Kept Him'"’

June 20,1925

“Tam not a gunner,” he said. “But I have been taught to break up guns. I belong to the génie—I am in the en- gineers. My leg—I lost it when a mine, which I had laid myself, went off prematurely. So, you see, I am not en- titled to heroic poses. I am merely an expert with gun- cotton and dynamite and such stuff.”

The girl spoke. When his eyes had traveled from the professor’s face to hers she had met them each time with that steady gravity of regard which was in the manner of her. He was comely, in a sober masculine way; when he spoke of his abandonment of heroic poses her eyes kindled a little in sympathy and approval; but what should have

been chiefly evident to a front-row observer, : one in the position of AQ the professor, was that contact had been made; two spirits had touched and each had left its mark upon the other. There are such perceptions, happily for mankind; the soul knows its home.

“Then you did not fight upon the Somme?” she asked. “In 1916?” she ampli- fied.

Her face and her gaze intensified as she put the question. The little professor turned mirthful eyes upon him and spoke before he could answer. “It is this,”” he said: “My ar] niece, here, had a twin brother. : He was a lieutenant of Kaiser- jager, and in the Battle of the Somme he vanished. Some fool at the breech of a gun— possibly a brute, possibly a saint, but a fool, nevertheless, for he knew not what he was doing when he did it—pulled a cord. A shell forthwith traveled a mile or two and burst, and my niece's brother—my sister’s son—dis- appeared. There was nothing left of him. And that is what disgusts me. If he had been clever, and therefore dangerous, and had been picked out for slaughter for that reason, there would have been a leaven of sense in it. But he wasn’t clever; he wasn’t danger- ous; he was just a weak obedient fool.”

The girl stirred. His pale, malicious and merry eye switched round upon her and quelled her. The young man, too, moved momentarily in his seat. He answered her question.

“T have never fought, gracious young lady,” he answered. “‘I never shared that privilege with your brother. He was more fortunate than I. I only blundered.”

The girl warmed to a glow that shone in her look.

“He only moved a wagon train on an unscreened road in broad daylight, with aeroplanes watching him,”’ the pro- fessor said. “Fool! He went to meet that shell as though he had an appointment with it.”

He held up his finger again to the waiter. The young man shook his head as the menial—in a café an uplifted finger can make a cringing slave of six feet of flesh and blood in one second—came behind his shoulder.

“Perhaps he had,” he said. “‘ When I was serving at the Front I used t« think ‘There is a bullet somewhere with my name written upon it. I shall travel from sector to sector, from one command to another, from town to town and from road to road, but that bullet will not be too early or too late, and I shall not fail it. I must keep faith with death.’”’

He smiled his narrow smile at the girl as he concluded. She had heard him intently. She nodded now.

“Yes,”’ she said only.

“But come!” the Herr Professor struck in with his dry briskness. ‘I have a committee meeting this afternoon; and, my dear, it was for lunch we met here. If our young friend ——’ He waved a hospitable hand. “After all’’- he practiced again that trick he had of widening his mouth to the shape of a smile which was not a smile; it was, as medical witnesses say at inquests, a rictus—“‘ we must keep faith with appetite.” His unfailing twinkle was in his eyes as he looked up at the young man. “You will join us?”’

The other rose.

“Forgive me,” he said. “The gnédiges Fréulein will easily believe that I excuse myself with extreme regret. But it is true that I have already an appointment for

Set

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

lunch.” He looked down into her face. ‘‘ With some col- leagues,” he added; and then—unnecessarily—‘‘I am staying at the Adlon.”

And then the formalities of farewell achieved themselves. In Germany this can be as involved as a rite in some lodge or temple of a secret society; to meet a German is painful enough, but to part from him civilly involves calisthenics. They shook hands, they clicked their heels, they bowed.

The young man had his cigarette case to hand.

**My card,” he said, laying it on the little table.

The professor swung an instant’s glance on the girl. She had not moved or craned forward to look; she was yet still in her chair, her hands clasped in her lap, her tiny glass untouched before her.

But she was peering at the card.

“Thank you.” The professor groped in his waistcoat pocket and extracted a pasteboard, the large kind of thing which ladies use in civilized countries, which men also employ in Germany.

“*And my card,” he said blandly.

The young man picked it up and read it. He had a good poker face, for his expression did not change. His eyes passed to those of the girl for a moment. He did not say in words, “I have met you; I cannot rest till I meet you again.

He spoke no word at all to her; yet her pale-blue eyes widened; she got it.

Upon the card he had deposited was his name, Le Capi- taine Charles Benest, with the address of his hotel and of the French headquarters of the Disarmament Commission. But upon the professor’s card was no address. There were two words only, “Sigismund Conradi.”

AJOR BURKE~—the Honorable Phelim Burke—of

the Guards and of the British section of the Disarma- ment Commission, sat at lunch in a corner of the great restaurant of the hotel. Opposite to him was Stanley Post, an American special correspondent, with the man- ners—-when required—of an ambassador and the brain and the experience of a statesman. Major Burke was bottle nosed; he grunted; he did not pretend to pretty

manners. He was the last of a long and noble line of hard- working soldiers; he wore the Victoria Cross; and he knew his job.

There was a third seat at their table, preserved to pri- vacy by the chair tilted forward upon it. It was to this seat that Captain Charles Benest advanced.

“*Good morning,” he said as he sat down. His English was as good as his German, with the same delicate spice of accent.

“’Morning,”” answered Major Burke. He was eating goulash, and goulash does not go with conversation. Stanley Post responded with his ear-to-ear grin.

“Welcome to our city,” he said. ‘Glad to see you. The major has got all four hoofs in the trough, and as a light and chatty companion he’d make a mighty good dog butcher.”

The major looked up formidably—and he could look formidable too. The grizzled muzzle of a face, with its set of a lifelong habit of authority, its self-sufficiency and sheer disdain of the graces—that mark of the invincible caste which was the doom of Bolshevism before Bolshevism was born, which his two invalid children had seen and over which they had rejoiced him with their baby jeers at its grimness, which the enemies of his country had seen and not jeered at all, when he carried it over their parapet at the head of his men—it softened to the grin of Stanley Post.

Captain Benest dropped into the reserved chair and picked up the menu.

“Try this goulash,” urged the major.

“Don’t you try it at all,” put in Stanley Post. ‘For the love of Mike, eat something that'll let you talk while you’re mangling it! Dammit, I’ve helped you a hundred times. Haven’t you got anything to tell me? I've not cabled a dispatch for four days.”

“T will have an omelette aux fines herbes,"’ said Captain Benest to the waiter. “‘Send me the cellarer and I will order some white wine.”

Then he turned to Stanley Post. One knows that de- lightful little manner with which a Frenchman accedes to a demand for attention, that quick smiling surrender to the request, that gentleness and alacrity of courtesy.

~!I

“A hundred times, at least,”’ he said. “Not less! Let us make it a hundred and one!" He was fishing in his waist- coat pocket while he spoke. He found the visiting card for which he searched, drew it forth and handed it across to the newspaperman.

“Who is that?” he asked.

Stanley Post was famous—he was even notorious—for knowing everybody who was anybody in Europe. He went into courts and into clubs, into stock exchanges and other hells. He knew what queens said about rouge and lipstick, and he knew what their maids said about it too. He picked up the card.

“Sigismund Conradi,” he read aloud. He looked at Charles Benest. Then he read the card again.

“No,” he said, “I don't know him. I want to know him though. I want to the worst way. That lad could tell me alot. Tell me ’ He paused and considered. “Telling me isn’t everything,”’ he said. ‘‘There’s something doing, an’ he’s in it.

* Look here, I only set eyes on him once. He was goin’ upstairs in this very hotel. Scrubby little skunk, he looked, all in black, with a face as white as a piece of paper and as stiff as the sole of a boot. That your man?”

Captain Benest nodded.

“That sounds exactly like the man,” he answered,

“Well, that’s all I ever saw of him,” said Stanley Post. “O’ course, I wanted to know who he was an’ where he was going. The head porter here doesn't lose anything by answering my questions. He pays a thousand marks a week for this job and I help him to pay it. He couidn’t tell me anything which he thought would interest me. But it did interest me, all the same. That little black-clad walk- ing corpse was going up to the suite of old Baron von Steinlach.”” He grinned; when he grinned he showed his dog teeth; he wasn’t beautiful at any time; he was only good and clever. ‘“‘That mean anything to you?”

The major had abandoned his knife and fork and resorted frankly toa spoon. Goulash calls aloud for a spoon, but it needs courage in a crowded and superfashionable restau- rant. He uttered one word: “ Yes!"

Stanley Post nodded and turned again to the Frenchman.

(Continued on Page 122)

This, Hetd Up Before Them in a Puny Fist, Was Death!

He Said So; and Such Was the Manner of Him That They Believed

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

June 20,1925

AY IT WITH WORDS

j K THEN I put up the sign in front of our house, Marilla Holinshed, Opportunist, everybody in Portbridge laughed, and someone threw an overripe vegetable, so that I had to climb up with soap and water and a rag and wash it off. Marilla would not even hold the ladder.

“If you fall off the top,” she said, “what good will it do for me to be holding on to the bottom?”

There is no point in arguing with Marilla when she has one of those reasonable spells

At firet no one came, or just a few, end those only to be objectionable; and I must say that I was discouraged.

“This idea of yours may beall right as an idea,”’ I said; “but the way things are now, it won't put any but- ter on our bread.”

The minute the words were out of my mouth | regretted them, for but- ter is always a slippery subject be- tween us. Marilla ia forever harping on my weight and my diet, as if I weighed five hundred pounds instead of what I do weigh; and as if every- one did not know that there is a thin type like Marilla and a plumper type like me, and that what you eat has nothing to do with the type you are born with

There was no use in arguing with Marilla about the sign, because when she has an idea she believes in it and nothing shakes her belief. She sat there every day in the gray tweed suit she always wears, with the white tai- lored shirt waist and black tieand flat black shoes, and read books on psy- chology and astronomy and business administration and metaphysics as calmly aa if she did not know the state of our finances as well as I did.

Mariilais not aworman whochanges. She has changed in no way since I knew her. Her hair is just as dark and neat, and her eyes as bright and deep behind her bone-rimmed glasses; and there are no wrinkles in her face, only those three straight lines beside her mouth that are the marks of character and determination and, if | must say it, bossiness. I don’t know howold Marilla is. She never said. Personally, I am thirty-nine—and have heen for years. I hate the thought of getting into my forties.

She was sitting there just the same the afternoon that Jeremy Smythe came. Of course, I went to the door.

“No,” I said, without waiting for him to speak, “‘ Miss Hoiinshed isn't a piano tuner, She isn’t a religion or a cult or a cure, She is an opportunist, She practices applied commen sense.”

I stopped then, because Mr. Smythe was just looking at me gravely and holding out his card.

“How do you do?” said Marilla when I had taken him upstairs, “Sit down.”

And Mr. Smythe bowed and sat. Marilla eyed him quizzicaily. He was a thin, dark young man, with a high forehead, emphasized by a hair line peaked above the tem- ples, and self-controlled lips and chin, betrayed by a curious little twitching of one eyebrow. He kept his hands locked on one knee as if afraid of what they might do if he let them have their own way.

“Are you any relation to Alexander Smythe?” Marilla asked him.

Alexander Smythe was a synonym for the Peerless Pen and Penpoint Company, which was Portbridge’s largest industry.

“Nephew,” said Jeremy Smythe briefly.

“And you want to see me professionally?”

“Yea.”

“A love affair?” I marveled at Marilla’s boldness.

“No.”

“Money then? Debts? Some kind of scrape?”

“No-and yes.”

Marilla has never been a patient woman.

“For heaven's sake,”’ she burst out, “are you dumb?”

“Yes,” Smythe said. “That's it—dumb.”

Jeremy Smythe, it appeared, had never been a talker. Shy, maybe; tongue-tied; damn clam, his Uncle Alexander ealled him. Uncle Alexender brought him up. No, not here--school--college—Europe. He had come back ex- pecting to go into the pen business. Uncle Alexander was

ILLUSTRATED ar

By Ruth Burr Sanborn

REYNARD

GRANT

“If You Fatt Off the Top," She Said," What Geoed Wilt it De for Meteo be Neotding

On to the Bottom?"

disappointed in him. Uncle Alexander said the pen business was a place for a man with a tongue ir: his head, not adamn clam. Kicked him out. Re wanted to get back—prove he was fit for the business. Pride, maybe; maybe rather fond of Uncle Alexander after all.

Marilla pulled these facts out of him one at a time, and I must say that every one was like pulling a parsnip out of a two-year-old bed. She sat then soundlessly drumming on the table in a way she has when she is thinking. She spoke at last abruptly. Marilla was always an abrupt woman.

“Do you know,” she asked Smythe, ‘“‘how many words there were in the Gettysburg Address, or in Coolidge’s speech to the Massachusetts Senate in 1915?”

Jeremy Smythe wasstartled. I should have been startled, too, if I had not known Marilla. When Marilla has an idea she never walks right up to the front door of it; she creeps upon it from the rear. When she spoke again it was with deliberation. Marilla never hurried.

“You're certainly not much of a talker,”’ she said. ‘But you have two good points. You don’t stutter and you don’t blush.” And then— “I never believed in trying to do what you can’t do, I believe in looking for a chance to do what you can do. That's why I call myself an opportunist. Do you see my idea?”

“Re Jove,” said Smythe, “but I believe I do!”

It -vas more than I did, and I began to say so.

“ Angeline,” said Marilla, “don’t trouble to wait.”

“Tt's no trouble.”

‘Angeline ———”’ said Marilla.

And so pretty soon I went. That was how it happened that I did not hear what financial arrangements were made, nor how a sensible young man like Smythe ever happened to come there, nor exactly what the plan was anyway.

It was at supper that night that Marilla looked at me in a way she has across the top of her cup.

“Angeline,” she said, “I have a thought.”

I took another muffin. I knew I should need it, for when Marilla says that, in just that way, it always means trouble ahead for me.

“Tomorrow morning,” said Ma- rilla, ‘“‘you’d better go down to the Peerless Pen and Penpoint Company and get a job.”

“A job!” Leried. “I! A Tredenick work in a factory!”

“You will be my source of infor- mation.”

“But a Tredenick work in a fac- tory!”

“Your wages, too, will come in nicely.”

“But a Tredenick work in a fac- tory!”

Marilla shrugged her shoulders in a way she has.

“‘Angeline,”’ she said, ‘‘be reason- able.”

There is no point in arguing with Marilla when she begins to talk about reason.

HE next morning I applied for a

position at the Peerless Pen and Penpoint Company, and of all the un- dignified situations in which I was ever involved, that one had the least dig- nity. If you'll believe it, there were mental tests.

“Slow,” the examiner whispered to the employment manager when

he had finished. “But accu- rate. Dependable, but no origi- nality. Would not do for piecework. Would not do for the offices.”

“We need a timekeeper.”

“The very thing,’”’ said the examiner.

And so I became a time- keeper. The timekeeper’s office was at the right of the em- ployes’ entrance, and after the big iron gates had closed, promptly on the stroke of eight and one, late comers had to enter through it and have their

: time taken by me for the dock- +\ ing office. People going in and = out of the factory during hours also had to pass that way, so that first and last everybody came there.

It was not a bad job, either, once you were used to it. People gave me candy and fruit every day, so that I always had something Ly me, and after their time had been taken they would stop a while and talk. First and last, I found out a good deal. I am not naturally curious, but anyone likes to know what is going on.

The queer part of it was that the very day I got my job Jeremy Smythe got one, too—right there, if you'll believe it, in his own uncle’s factory. Of course, he was not recog- nized, because no one there had ever met him except his uncle; and if you saw the layers of ceremony that old Alex- ander Smythe kept wrapped round himself up in the front office, you'd realize that he would be the last to know any- thing about it. I heard Jeremy when he gave his name to the employment clerk.

“Smith,” he said.

“What first name?”

“J.” And the man wrote it down: Jay.

After a great deal of discussion they made him a janitor.

Jeremy spent the first week in a cloud of dust. He swept the w of the first floor of the plant, which covered several acres, and he swept it fast and well, and touched his cap in silence when people spoke to him, instead of stop- ping to talk over the election.

see Beh Kam wl UL te DIA

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 9

“Can't What?" Inquired Jeremy. “*Go—or Watk?"*

Toward the end of the week, when the second floor janitor began to be ailing, Jeremy helped him; and when he was taken suddenly worse, Jeremy did all the second floor in addition to his own. When it was known that he was doing two janitors’ work, they gave him two janitors’ pay, and sent a man up to see him from the efficiency department.

“*How do you get so much done?” he asked.

“TI sweep while others talk,” said Jeremy, and went right on sweeping.

They transferred him to the box department.

It was at about that time that Jeremy made the first remark I had heard from him except in answer to a question. He was with Marilla in her study one night when I went in after The Ship of Love that I had left there, and he turned round to me with a face like a perfectly wonderful- looking wooden Indian’s for ex- pressiveness except for that little flicker of the eyebrow.

“What do you know about Ann Devon?” he asked. I told him.

“Ann Devon,” I said, “is a sweet, pretty, nice young lady,

and Bailey Bridges will be lucky if he gets her; and if you want my opinion, he’d better look out for Lawrence Amidown. I don’t see how she happens to be in a factory anyway.

) She isn’t like the os others. You can’t im- agine her sticking a wad of gum under her typewriter or chewing up her hair in a per- manent wave. She's too much of a lady, if you want my opinion, with that slow soft voice and that quiet way she has.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

I took a breath and did so. “She is Bailey Bridges’ sec- retary. Bailey Bridges is the sales manager. I guess he’s done a lot for her in the way of salary, and so forth. I un- derstood at first that she was engaged to him, but I asked her one day and she said ‘Not yet’; so then I asked her if she was engaged to Lawrence Amidown— he's the general manager and he got her the position in the first place-—and she said ‘Not yet’ again, so I can’t tell, really. But I can see that she likes them both. They’re both wild over her, and I don’t wonder, what with those eyes of hers like two

purple pansies and that braid of hair she wears round her head like a gold crown.”

“Angeline,” said Marilla, “you've been reading love stories again.”

I don’t care if I had. I am not ashamed to say that I like love stories, whether in books or real life, and that was why I had taken a particular interest in Ann Devon and her two suitors.

Bailey Bridges and Lawrence Amidown were rivals in more ways than one. They were both favorites with old Alexander Smythe and it was rumored that some day there would be a partnership looking for one of them. You would have thought that there were reasons enough for jealousy between them, but Bridges used to say that all was fair in love and business, and they seemed to accept things on that basis; they worked together in many ways and were good friends.

Alexander Smythe had discovered them both himself, and he was proud of them. He told his secretary that either could wag a wicked tongue.

If Bridges and Amidown were rather pleased with them- selves, they had every reason to be. Bailey Bridges was as sleek a blond young man as you could find in a day’s travel, with a little fair mustache perched on his upper lip, and eyes as bright and blue as two glass marbles. He could have told you—and often did—that he had run away from an unsympathetic home when he was twelve and had fought his way upward one step at a time against tre- mendous odds. Now he wore silk shirts to work and drove his own car; and the gesture with which he handed Ann Devon into it could not have been surpassed by Raleigh, flinging his coat in the mud before the queen.

Lawrence Amidown was as smooth and dark as Bridges was smooth and blond. His hair was black and shining above a shining forehead, and his eyes shone too—rather piercingly—as if in anticipation of more good things to follow. He, too, had made himself what he was today, and he was not dissatisfied either. He, too, drove his own car, and it was a better car than Bailey Bridges’. He tc!d me that if he took a girl out to dinner he would be ashamed to spend less than ten dollars. His acquaintance with Ann Devon must havecost him afortune. I thought Ann Devon was a lucky girl.

“T don’t see how they do it on their salary,”” Marilla

‘said when I told her about them.

“Perhaps they get more than I do.” Continued on Page 68)

“Do You Know," She Asked Smythe, “How Many Words There Were in the Gettysburg Address, or in Coolidge’s Speech to the Massachusetts Senate in 1915 ?""

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

June 20,1925

American Cooks From Way Back

HERE is a little boy of my acquaint- Tiance whose chief diversion is that of whacking people’a shin bones with a hammer; and his grandmother, who is ham- pered by years and withheld by dignity from leaping to and fre or perching on the grand piano for refuge, receives the most of his attention. Some day he will hit her where she lives, and there will be no more grandma to pound. Taken by itself, this is not remarkable. The little terror is reliving, as the bygolly- gists tell us, a period of our racial depravity. Asa phase, is it not observabie even in kittens, which evince ferocities of similar inclination about the time they ieave off certified milk and take to raw mouse? And then the mother cat gets in some of that iively paw work that puta Carpentier in the paralytic class. Rut the parents of the above-mentioned little human pursue an opposite course. They let him take the ham- mer to bed with him so that no re-

pressions shall dis- turb his infant slumbers. They say that self-

expression ia worth many shin bones, and that hia over- bearing nature, plus his love of pounding, fore- caste no less a ca- reer than that of Speaker of the House. They lately received—as i hope—-a night letter reminding them of another career, having to de with a guard with a gun, a high wall, steam-cooked victuals world without end, a heavy ham- mer and a right smart pile of stones.

Self-expreasion! How many people have ever expressed what others thought they were going to, anyway? Take Sen- ator Thunderjaw down in Washington. Old Thunderjaw, one of the finest cooks God ever put in front of a French range, a chafing dish or a clambake, the very prophet, if such there be, of the renaissance of American eookery~-and does he think he is? But wait a minute. He illustrates two points on this self-expression stuff, and be- fore we ceme to him and his incomparable Delaware muffins, his pound cake candied in a crock, his soft-shell crabs in volau-vent of terrapin, sugared loin of pork pounded on a-stump, and his cider sauce, his salad of melons with an ambrosial dressing, fruity, suave and of a nature to make a jack rabbit hit a hound; before, indeed, we allude to hia traditions, harking from the galley of the Mary Hamblin and other luxurious steamboats of the Mississippi and from clay-daubed hearths of cabin kitchens in the lower South, let us tear the veil of pretense from the outrageous old hypocrite, and show him for what the most of ua are, a serio-comic case of self-deception.

The Prince and the Pumpkin

F WHICH cases, the worst is not his, as I am forced to

/ remind myself, in view of a vivid recollection of what took place only a few months ago in a New England cellar | could locate, and I were pressed to do so. It was an ex- plosion at dead of night. Or rather be- tween one and three in the morning, that hour known to the Japanese as the hour of the rat, the hour of creak- ings and a pause and more creak- ings, of the turning over of the dog, of the warping of old timbers in the cold, for the Wain was curving west- erly over the

TLEUSTTRATEDO BY

By William Reade Hersey

wrncieé

But He Wouldn't See That He Was a Chef Au Cordon Bleu

peak of the barn, gaunt and soli- tary in its frozen yard. And in the cellar a pumpkin, overwrought with a sense of its importance, disgusted and full of self-pity be- cause of its humbled situation be- tween two jugs, a coal hod, a bag of mere potatoes and a bin of turnips, utterly self-deceived as to its real career, its destiny in pumpkin pie, striving for self-expression of the wrong kind, went splush—doing so noisily and at a most unseemly hour. And all because it had met the Prince of Wales, which august and unpre- tentious child of Nature and the British Empire had come horses, hounds, cameramen and al!l—to the very corn patch where the pumpkin grew, on a certfin tawny day of au- tumn, and Had said out loud, “ What a jolly old pumpkin! Quite the finest I have ever seen.”

And the outcome of it—pitiable. Yet, ask yourself how many pumpkins have you not known whose whole life was ruined by a too sudden success or an accidental exaltation. Perhaps it is better to explode and be done with it. Per- haps those squat old jugs up and killed the pumpkin, whose continual harping on the great event had become insuffer- able. There’s many a jug whose homely bearing conceals a priceless interior, a quality that has come to be all too rare. Even with the dregs of a proper spirit, such a jug might find the pumpkin an upstart unbearable.

Thunderjaw was first cousin to that sort of pumpkin. Cocksure that he was a political whingdinger; always sure that he was to be the next dark horse in an election; al- ways writing long thunderous speeches and endless letters to Presidents, opponents and bosses; never accorded the slightest attention by anybody who wasn’t trying to col- lect a bill—Thunderjaw held himself a reformer, a poli- tician, a Demosthenes. But he wouldn't see that he was a chef au cordon bleu.

The sun streaks down over the apartment housetops into the leafy backyards of the residences on his avenue. It pours into his kitchen, a room made out of two kitchens thrown together in the adjoinment of two houses in the block to make this semi-hotel—a boarding house that is too gazook to call itself by that name. It calls itself a transient residence. There are two parlors, a double dining room, two stairs. Everything is double. Even the lives of its tenants. Windows are open. The avenue—New Jer- sey—is being swashed by men with a hose. Water-bright asphalt, the tracery of horse-chestnut trees and linden, mounting cumulous masses of tree tops and accents of dark boles, green cool lawns—mark the swerve of the avenue to a vista closed by the colonnaded station. Washington of a July morning at 5:30. Athens in Windsor Forest with a light as of dawn upon Capri.

This is a Wednesday, which may be of no moment to anyone else, but to us it means breakfast with double omelets. What? Yes, just that. A pan omelet, rolled up around a puffy little souffié - with the flavor but scarcely with the fact of chicken. It is one of Thunderjaw’s prime dishes. Its preparation de- mands explanation. No, it demands Thunderjaw. And where is he? He is upstairs, writing an- other letter to the President. Probably it begins, “In the name of that freedom for which our fathers bled, in consecration to that fraternity of ” And soon. His wife is curling her hair. The boarders, as you can tell by the ruckus in the hot-water pipes, are taking forty-’leven simultaneous baths. It is seven o’clock. The grocer comes, the milkman, the ice—and no chef. But at last! Just as four pans of muffins come out of oven and the coffee urn is beginning to say bubble or bust, there is a slow, important tread upon

KING

the stair. He stands in the doorway. Huge. Pot-bellied. His Websterian eyes roll

as though their sockets were a hindrance and they would roll out on the floor if they could. He reaches for a vast white apron hanging on a peg by the kitchen door, and assumes it. You and I would just put it on. “The pans for the souffiés,” he says, and glances toward the range. ‘And are those two hams boiling—and the sweetbreads?”’

From Oratory to Cuisine

IS eyes rove around the kitchen, yet they have a pe-

culiar look. He is really trying to bring himself down from oratory tocuisine. Yet one of his masterpieces is under way—his double omelets—and his chief concern is for the ovens. For his souffiés in muffin cups—which are a just proportion of egg white frothed and egg yolk beaten with a bit of rice flour—require an easy temperature and then a voleanic one. He does not hold with a high oven for puffy things until they have adjusted themselves to the fact that they are in the oven. He uses only a big spoonful of the mixture to each cup, and each cup is cold buttered. Make what you will of that. D’Alencon from Geneva would have them hot as a coal from a blast furnace. But Thunderjaw is out for a yellow, not a brown crusted souffié.

I make his omelets. I lay them one by one on a board. He puts a soufflé in the middle of each, cuts diagonally with a sharp knife outward to the corners, splashes it with melted butter, sifts chicken meat—white meat absolutely powdered—over it, then folds the omelet package-wise, splashes it with bacon grease and pepper. With a big spatula he carefully lays each one on an earthen platter. Into the’oven with it. Right up under the hot metal. They sizzle. Brown. The platter goes on to a silver platter — and so to the table.

“One day,” says Thunder- jaw, ‘‘when Paul Morphy was playing seventeen games of chess against Gen- eral Beaure- gard, down in New Orleans, my grand- father’s cook made seventy- two of these omelettes for the

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST i

chess players’ breakfast. They played all night—in the Boatman’s Club, long since demol- ished, down between Ca- rondelet and the levee. Morphy was sixteen years old. They blindfolded him and he de- feated Beaure- gard and twenty other players. He lost only three games out of twenty -four.”

And all the time he is talking and doing those omelets, the second element for this salver of delicacies is going forward. Under the gas broiler is a threefold layer of the utmost that a pig can produce plus the artistry of certain smokehouse experts down in Anne Arundel County. Thin, lean, tender slices, taken from a parboiled ham, lie between layers of bacon in slices cut diagonally of the chunk, in order to get the greatest possible width. The watching and turning of that bacon is a great worry off his mind since he feels it can be intrusted to me. It leaves him more free to ponder on his im- portant affairs. Perhaps on his- tory—for heis writing history. Yes, just that. He has eleven hundred typewritten pages of resounding words upstairs—all on Democracy. The slices must be crisp, not dried, and the ham within must come out wet, tender and smokier than smoke. The arrangement of the omelets in a frame of these bacon-ham slices he reserves to himself.

Thunderjaw’s Daydreams

ND all this time he keeps ejacu- lating, “I am completely at a loss!’’ Or he pauses and stares out to the yard and says, apparently addressing a tomcat in the center of that area, ‘To this end, gentlemen, we have been ordained, put, put, ordained ——” He stops, leaving “ordained” hanging in the air, while, raising one arm, he waves his big griddle-cake spatula and turns on me. “Would you say ‘put’ or ‘ordained’?”

My back is turned, but I hurry to answer, ‘Oh, by all means ‘or- dained.’ It has a richer taste.”

“You have an acid soul and a very unresponsive one,”’ he mutters.

But he comes off his perch for a few minutes and we get down to business, starting all sorts of dishes that before night will be ready for dinner or are actually the beginnings of tomorrow’s breakfast.

“Of course, a real cook,” he would say time and again, “has everything lined yp hours—nay, even days ahead.” Nevertheless, I don’t know how we ever achieved the miracles that went forth from that kitchen. Thunderjaw’s mail was pro- digious. Let- ters littered the tables; of circulars and pamphlets there was no end. One day he was way up in the clouds over the ap- pearance of his communica- tion to the

editor of the Muggs Landing Gazette, and over a reply from the chairman of a House committee on the Cultiva- tion of Edible Frogs in the Yazoo Valley the next. And I never did find out what “Bill double X 931” was. He was its parent anyway. His day was divided between his kitchen, with sleeves rolled up and apron on, and his stroll- ing the avenues, haunting the Capitol, committee rooms, hotel lobbies; whither he went forth with a flappity frock coat, loose collar, flowing tie and a top hat whose brim rolled in the shape of a sugar scoop, but whose high light would burn your eyes out.

Birds of a feather. Everybody in the house except my- self and the Japanese butler had a pet scheme by which the Government was to make him rich. There was the old lady with two canes. Every boarding house has an old lady with one cane. We had one with two canes. Her claim was for practically the whole Ohio Valley. And Sefior Ipecac, who, clad in spotless white, matutinally paraded his equally white poodle up and down the block. His claim, geographically and in point of time, might be said to have come down the ages from Cortés to Coolidge.

All in a beautiful daze and daydream as Thunderjaw might be, however, with only half his mind on his cooking, that half aimed at and achieved perfection. Consider fried crabs as Thunderjaw did them. He transcended every

—

“My Reputation? As a Cook? A Cook!"

association of yours and mine in regard to that Lucullan, that prime delicacy, the soft-shell crab, not omitting the connoted background which they bring to mind. Mary- land itself is a magical name. So is Chesapeake. And the soft-shell crab brings to mind the two extremes of ele- gance. The elegance of old manorial supper rooms, rooms ultimately perfect in their pilastered fire breasts and wain- sc@ts with fluted trim. The other elegance that @f clean- sanded tavern floors and oyster houses set on wharves where is the gurgle of water between piles, the gurgle of pepper sauce in bottles; the raw, rich, salty air of estuaries, smelling of timber turned black with iodine, mingles with the odors of shipping and incoming tides blown by a westerly half gale from the Virginia shore. That—and more—is the background of soft-shell crabs as Thunderjaw did them. They came in a crate of seaweed that stood on the kitchen floor. There were one hundred and fifty of them. We put them in a tub of water and rock salt, so that the chloride glory of them, lost in transit—even a three- hour journey—should be replaced. Old Maryland cooks cleaned them in ocean water. We tore away their aprons, their little fringy lungs and sandbags, and they were dropped in a big sieve filled with flour and pepper. The sieve was slowly motioned back and forth and left them white—the very ghosts of crabs. One by one they went into beaten egg and then into the finest sifted crumbs of stale cornbread; these crumbs were one of the treasures of our kitchen. They were fried in smoking lard.

derjaw never

ss ~ywere

Thunderjaw Did His Finest Sneer

He had three ways of trim- ming these ex- quisite things for the side- board. Thun-

spoke of the table. He said that was where you sat. The table to him was a fur- nished area of linen, silver and candles, possibly of decorations. But the side- board, loaded with delica- cies, plus wait- ers to dispense therefrom, was his idea of service as it should be. Thun- derjaw put these fragile, sea-smelling, corn-redolent, juicy, tender crabs, crimpy, with claws caught in their last act of invocation, in a circle about the platter. Then he poured in the center a sauce of terrapin meat in a veal liquor with wine, or of green turtle fat in a similar sauce, with the addition of broken yolks of hard-boiled eggs. Triangles of puff paste sprinkled with pepper garnished the edge. It took three silver platters of thirty-six inches in their extreme measurement to carry the full serving of these crabs.

Crabs at Home

Ae I recall a frequent ringing of the telephone, of the doorbell, of the rumbling away of disconsolate limou- sines, because he would not, could not serve more guests, and if they wanted soft-shell crabs Lord Calvert they would have to wait until next Thursday. What set these fried crabs apart from those commonly seen was the cornbread crumb and the luxurious accompani- ment of turtle meat; but his outstanding achievement was Crabs at Home, He called them that. Just how much at home the crabs felt, I cannot say. Perhaps you and I can scarcely put ourselves in their place until we, too, have been fried in batter.

The dish was a re- markable piece of culinary scenery; the crabs, very real- istically tangled in a mass of fragrant lob- stery fritters, ap- peared for ail the world like one of

~ these museum groups gotten up to show howfriend crab crawls around among the aquatic wonders on the sea bot- tom. And it was all an edible trick, a playful tour de force, which Thunderjaw performed only for an inner circle that forgathered with him on occasion. It was a lobster-fritter batter, let through a little funnel into deep smoking fat in small sauce- pans, with the soft-shell crab dropped in with judgment so that the curling, en- tangling frit- ter would trap him. Finished, it wasa picture of the homelife of our dear crab, all fragile as blown glass, and twice as digestible. Perhaps the fritter, short- ened only with lobster fat, (Continued on Page 138)

he TN Oe

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

June 20,1925

BREAKFAST WITH BETTINA

Paris Toren met in Paris, at one of Bettina’s charming little

breakfasts. She was famous, even then, for her break- fast parties. They were considered trés Américain, and as it was the fashion at that time to be trés Américain, Bettina’s drawing-room

By Dana Burnet

ILLUSTRATED BY JAMES H. CRANK

She poured his coffee. He sat watching the play of her hands, admiring her grace and assurance, the delicate cer- tainty of her movements. She was obviously in her element seated at this table, behind this bright rampart of silver and china, with all these well-dressed pecple buzzing about her. He realized

was always crowded. Sheserved wheat

that his problem would be to disasso-

cakea and mapie sirup at eleven o'clock in the morning to an entranced circle of the internationally jaded, and her cof- fee was delicious. She had got the rec- ipe from ber maid, who had got it from her sweetheart, who had once been a cook in a restaurant in New York. But even her Parisian friends said that it was delicious; and Halve, the French moderniat poet, wrote a poem about it, which was published on coffee-colored paper, and made a great hit.

it was Halve who introduced Gerald Rrown to Bettina. Gerald was an American artist, a painter, who lived in a studio in the Rue Daguerre. He was thirty years old, six feet tall and had money, which, as Halve once re- marked, was original of him.

“I’ve brought a friend,” said Halve to Bettina, on the occasion of that par- ticular breakfast party. “He's an Americas like yourself; and like you, mademoiselle, he is filied with vitality. He paints vital pictures. His name also is vital. It's Brown.”

“Heavens!” said Bettina. “Is he attractive?”

“The only way you can find out is to flirt with him.”

“TI never flirt on Fridays. It’s bad luck. Where is he?”’

“Standing by the window, mademoi- aelle, talking to Lady Calverly, who looks extremely English in that light.”

Bettina glanced across the room and saw a tall man gazing over Lady Cal- verly’s head in her direction.

“He's got red hair,”’ she remarked.

“No redder than yours, mademoi- selle. Infact, Lsiouldsay that you both had the same subtle shade of auburn.”

“I see him as @ red-headed man,” said Bettina thoughtfully. “ Bring him over. After all, I'm not superstitious.”

So the Frenchman brought his American friend to the table where Bettina sat pouring coffee

“Mademoiselle Morgan —Gerald Brown,” murmured Halve in his pol- iabed, unceremonious, modern manner, and left them.

“T've been wanting to meet you,” said Gerald, sitting down beside Bet- tina. “In fact, I've something to tell you, but as it's rather awful, I don't know how to begin.’

“Is it so very awful?”

“I'm afraid you'll think so

“In that case,” she said, “ you'd bet- ter plunge right in— like taking a cold bath, you know.”

“Yes. Very well, heregoes. I He sat up straight in his chair and said

”

ciate her from her background; to ! isolate and discover her essential per- sonality—that final lovely ego which is the last thing a woman surrenders.

“Cream and two lumps,” she re- peated, and gave him hiscup. ‘What was I going to say? Oh, yes! The

‘ weather —— é “We had finished with the weather,” ‘ he reminded her somewhat sternly. “Yes, so we had. Then let’s talk | about the recent discoveries in the

Arctic zone,” said Bettina; and added immediately, ‘‘ Tell me when and where you first saw me.”

“At the opera. You were in a box with a lot of people. You’re always surrounded by people,’’ he complained, A disgressing.

i “T collect them,” she said, with rather

bis kee a helpless gesture. “I seem to have a

gift for it.”

“So I've noticed. Well, I saw you in the box-—I saw your profile against a man’s black dress coat—and fell in love with you, like an idiot. I pointed you out to Halve, who was with me. Halve said he knew you and offered to introduce me. I said no; I didn’t want to meet you in that crowd. I knew you'd say something meaningless and silly.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, I'd have been silly too! One always is in a crowd. I don’t like crowds. I’m too big to hide in them. I stand out, and get stared at, and feel like a fool.”

“How unfortunate that you came here today! Why did you come?” asked Bettina.

“I couldn't wait any longer. You were beginning to hauntme. You were actually interfering with my work. I said to myself, ‘I'll get Halve to intro- duce me and have it over with. I'll! probably find her disappointing, hope- lessly frivolous, older than she looks.’”’ “Tam,” said Bettina. “I’m twenty- six.”

“Tt isn’t your age that matters,” he muttered. ‘It’s your profile, and your hair. I keep trying to memorize the exact color of it.”

“It’s auburn,”’ said Bettina. “Rather an unusual shade, my hair- dresser tells me.”

“It has,” considered Gerald, “a good deal of red in it.”

“Like yours.”

“I haven't got red hair!’

“Oh, yes, I’m sure you have!”

‘ “That’s not the point,” he said, putting down his coffee cup. “The

’

firmly, “I'm in love with you, Miss Morgan.”

“Dear Gerald,” She Sighed, “I Was So Lonesome Crossing Without You"*

point is that I had to meet you in or- der to——”

“Go on,” said she encouragingly.

“That's all.”

“I thought you said it was something awful.”

“But it is,” he protested. “It’s frightful. Why, I've seen you only three times—no, four—and yet I've fallen desperately in love with you. Or rather, I've fallen in love with my own mental image of you, which is much worse.”

“Oh, much,” agreed Bettina.

‘I’m an idiot. We'll admit that to start with, and dis- miss it aa inconsequential re

“Just a moment,”’ interrupted Bettina with a charming smile. “Do you mean that you're an idiot in general, or just because you fell in love with me?”

“Because I tell in love with a woman I don’t know.”

“Ah!” murmured Bettina.

“Are you bored?”

“No, I think it’s thrilling.”

“Do you? Good! Then it’s understood that I adore you~my image of you?”

Bettina’s eyes were brown. They had a luster like chiffon velvet; they glowed and were veiled by auburn lashes that had a silky luster of their own.

“I'm afraid we're going too fast,”’ she said. “I feel dizzy.”

“That's encouraging—from my point of view,”’ said Gerald.

“But not from mine. I think we'd better stop talking personalities.”

“What else is there to talk about?”

“The cabinet crisis,” suggested Bettina; weather. Paris in springtime 5

“Paris in springtime is Paris adorned for love,’’ he said, being inspired. ‘Which brings me back to what I was saying.”

“Do have some coffee,” she urged hastily.

“With cream, thanks. And two lumps.”

“or the

“____. to destroy the illusions with the reality,” finished Bettina sweetly.

Gerald laughed. He had a nice laugh, she thought. Like a boy’s. But he was worried.

He said, ‘The reality’s clever. I don’t think she’s going to be so easily destroyed.”’

“What a lovely compliment!”

“Look here, may I ——— I simply must see you alone. Please tell me when I can come ——-”’

“Here? But I’m always surrounded by people here.”

“I live in a studio on the Left Bank,” he told her. “Number Seven, Rue Daguerre. Will you come some after- noon to look at my pictures? I'll give you some tea.”

“I'm afraid all my afternoons are taken for some time,” she murmured regretfully.

“Then another time—anywhere—anywhere at all. The Ritz —Napoleon’s Tomb—the Bois—Notre Dame ——”’

“If I met you in Notre Dame, you'd get an entirely wrong impression of me. I’m not in the least angelic.”

H i } { | '

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 13

“Well then, where—where in the world?”

Bettina studied him for a mcment. He was attractive, she decided. He had a nice laugh and nice blue eyes and a nice clear skin. He was nice. And his hair was red.

“T’m going to London the end of next week,” she said finally. “I'll be stopping at the Savoy. Come and have breakfast with me there.”

London

HEN he entered her private drawing-room at the

Savoy, a week later, Gerald instantly felt duped and cheated. There were at least thirty people in the room. The confused chatter, the breeze of talk, fell with a kind of indignity upon his ears. He had expected something quite different. All the way north from Paris and across the Channel he’d been anticipating a quiet téte-a-téte with Bettina; a delightful hour of coffee and conversation, during which he might form a definite opinion of the young woman who had stirred his imagination.

And now ——

“You've deceived me,” he said, stooping over the breakfast table to shake hands with her. ‘I consider this nothing less than a base deception. I'd expected to have breakfast with you alone.”

“So had I,’ said Bettina; then, with a lift of her silken shoulders: ‘But what could I do? Lady Calverly insisted on coming, and of course that meant a crowd. She’s been talking, you see, about my American breakfasts. She says they're barbarous, but fascinat- ing—‘singular’ is the word she

Florence. The walls are covered with bougainvillea, and I believe there are olive trees. It'll be frightfully roman- tic. I like to be romantic in May, don’t you?”

“I prefer to be romantic in June,” said Gerald, rather irritably.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you might come to Florence and have breakfast with me.”

“Thanks; I wouldn’t consider it.”

“May I ask why—or why not?”

“Because if I did,’’ he said, firmly putting down his coffee cup, ‘I'd find all Italy congregated on your terrace.”

“But I don’t know a soul in Florence—not a soul, except the Comtessa -——-"”

“The friend who is offering you her villa?”

“Yes.”

“That’s enough.”

“You're a bit stubborn, aren’t you?” sighed Bettina.

“T’m not in the least stubborn. All I ask is that you let me see you alone—have dinner with me—go to a show.”

“I’m afraid I’m dining out every night this week,” she said apologetically. ‘‘But perhaps next week, when I get back to Paris ——”’

“Tt's no use,” he groaned. “In Paris, you invite me to London; and in London, you invite me back to Paris. The truth is I'll never see you alone. It’s Fate. I want to make love to you, and I’m prevented by the entire floating population of Europe. My rival,” he said, “is a hydra- headed monster with a passion for wheat cakes.”

“ And sirup,” said Bettina. ‘I really think it’s the sirup that attracts them.” ;

“Tf it was only another man,”’ he went on, “I wouldn't mind half so much. I’d know what to do. I'd outwit him, or poison him, or get rid of him somehow. I —-—" He stopped and looked suspiciously at Bettina. ‘Perhaps there is another man!" he exclaimed.

“Let me see,” said Bettina. ‘No, I don’t think there is at the moment.”

“But there has been?”

“Oh, yes, there has been.”

“In fact?”

“T was going to say that there was a man once who But that was a long time ago. I'd almost forgotten him."

“Did you love him?”

“T never could tell,” she answered with a frankness that was both charming and maddening. ‘But as I say, it was a long time ago.”

“You don’t seem to realize,’’ he burst out with sudden vehemence, “that you're torturing me!"’

“T don’t mean to,"’ she protested. “ Really I don’t mean to. Please don’t think I’m heartless, Mr. Brown.”’

“You may as well call me Gerald.”

“Gerald, then.”’

“Thanks,” he said unhappily.

“You don’t think I’m heartless, do you--Gerald?”’

“Oh, how do I know? Here I've chased across the Channel, and you refuse to do the humane thing.” “What is the humane thing?”’ “To put me out of my misery.”’

uses.”

“Tell me how.”

“My objection to them,” said Gerald, “‘is that they're so infer- nally plural.”

“Well, but you really can’t blame me, can you?” she pleaded. “ All these people are her friends at least, most of them.”

“Oh, I don’t blame you. I've no right to blame you. But if you were shipwrecked on a desert island,”” he said gloomily, “you wouldn’t be alone ten minutes. Crowds of cannibals would come rushing down from the jungle to share your morning coconut.”

“They might eat me,” said Bet- tina.

“Not atall. They'd simply join your collection.”

“That would be nice. I’ve never collected cannibals. Can you see me arriving in Paris—or London or New York—surrounded by a bodyguard of woolly-headed sav- ages in feather dusters? I’d make an impression, don’t you think?”

“Yes,”’ said Gerald. “‘But you must forgive me for saying that I’m much more interested in the im- pression you might make without a bodyguard. That is to say, alone.”

“But there’s no impression to be made if one’s alone. It’s like the old problem of the falling tree in the forest. If the tree falls, and no one hears it, is there any sound?”

“Are you ever serious?” he asked politely.

“Sometimes I think I am, and then again I’m not sure. But I’m comparatively honest, and I've a temper, if that means anything to you. Will you have some coffee?" .

“Cream. And two lumps.”

She poured his coffee with such gestures as he remembered vividly. He was at once fascinated and ap- palled by the clarity of these inci- dental memories. It was absurd that he should recall so exactly the turn of her hand and wrist, the lift of her shoulder as she gave him his cup. On the contrary, the pre- cise color of her hair evaded him even while he looked at it. There was a good deal more red in it than he had supposed.

“I'd like to paint you,” he said. “Will you come and sit for me when you get back to Paris?”

“I'd be delighted. But, you see, I’m going to Italy the last of this

“Why,” he said, “by giving me a chance to make love to you! I'll never be disillusioned about you till I’ve had a chance to make love to you.”

“What a nice theory!" said Bet- tina. “But are you sure it would werk? Are you sure your recipe for falling out of love is infallible?"

“Tt always has been.”

“Oh! Then you've been in love before?”’

“Yes, of course. Who hasn't’ But previously I've always man- . aged to get over it.”

“ Bydiscovering that your pretty ladies had clay feet?”’

“By discovering,” he said mo- rosely, ‘‘that they hadn't.”

Bettina smiled.

“TI have beautiful feet,’ she murmured. “ At least, so my shoe- maker tells me.”

“Siren!” he accused her; then: “T can’t go on like this, making love to you in the presence of all these animated appetites. It'll drive me mad. I dare say I'm a fit subject for pathological treatment right now. My mind is hopelessiy divided. The sane half of it telis me that the chances are a thou- sand to one you're not the most perfect woman ever created, but the other half insists that you are. So, you see, it's your duty—it’s positively your duty—to disillu- sion me.”

“I'm sorry,” said Bettina, “but the very thought of duty chills me; especially in England, where duty is considered a virtue.”

“Have you no pity?” he asked.

“Of course I have, But I don’t see how I could disiliusion you this week, Lady Calverly has ar- ranged -

“Drat Lady Caiverly!” said Gerald. “‘ Will you or will you not dine with me alone?"

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Next week--in Paris.”

He rose abruptly.

“That settles it,” he announced, “That convinces me ——"’

“Of what?”

“Of your fundamental elusive- ness. You're a phantom. You'll always remain a phantom—a be- witching ghost-—a beautiful prom- ise that I'll not be fool enough to think will ever be fulfilled. So I must get you out of my mind as

month. A friend of mine has of- fered me her villain Florence. At

He Found Bettina Serving Breakfast to Some Twenty or Thirty People of Various Nationalities

best I can. Good-by. I shall never see you again.” (Continued on Page 56)

least, it’s on a hill overlooking

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

June 20,1925

THE RICH MAN’S INSURANCE

TOW what I! want to know is

this,”’ I eaid, after we had arrived at the selad and be- come fairly weil ac- quainted: “ Why does a man who is worth $1,000,000 or upward buy life in- surance? I know, of course, that many rich men do take out large poli cies; also I have been told that you are a sort of wizard at selling them. The whole thing is mys terious to me. In the first place, I don’tsee much dan- ger of the widows and orphans of millionaires starving’ todeath. In the next place, if such men need insur- ance, why ia it that a few agents are very successful at selling it to them and the vast majority are not? Have you any objection to answering those questions?”

“None at all,” he replied. ‘“There’s nothing mysterious about it.’

“Oh, yes, there is,” 1 objected. “For instance, I wouldn't need a course in salesmanship to supply me with arguments if | were going to offer a $5000 policy to one of my neighbors; but if you sent me to solicit a man worth $10,000,000 I'd be tongue-tied. I can't think of a single reason why he should buy life insurance.”

“The reasons don't vary so much as you might imagine,” he remarked. ‘‘Now take this case right here’’—and he unfolded a morning newspaper. “ You'll notice that this fellow dropped dead. That way of passing out is becoming almost popular in this country nowadays, You'll also notice that his fortune is estimated at between $3,000,000 and $12,000,000. Now just stop and think a minute what a ridiculous spread that is. It means, translated into plainer English, that the man’s friends, associates and family didn’t know just what he had. In all probability he didn't know either. Moat rich men don’t know; they are busy making money, not counting it. When a man is cut off in the midst of his activities his estate will generally lapae into # very unsatisfactory condition almost at once. As a matter of fact, it never has been what you might call easy for a man to hand down a large estate to his heirs; but since the inheritance tax has been in force the difficulty is greatly increased. The number of large policies in force has been growing at an astounding rate since inheritance taxes came into being. We have now, you may know, both Federal and state inheritance taxes. They hit the big estates terrific jolts, and these taxes have to be paid in cash before the heirs get a cent.”

”

When Taxes Take the Widow's Mite

“TUT before I go into that subject very far I want to

dispose of the legend about some of us fellows being wizards. I'm no better salesman than a dozen other life- insurance men of my acquaintance. The only advantage i have over them is that I know something about inherit- ance taxation; consequently I can advise a man how to protect his estate against sacrifice sales to meet taxation. I very seldom solicit rich men; they send for me. One man traveled 1000 miles not long ago to get me to place his insurance for him and tell him how much he needed. I lost that business because agents back in his home city resented his going away and demanded that he purchase through them. They didn’t know how tc advise him about it, but they were determined to have the business any- way—and they got it. He paid me a fee for my advice. The time has come when every life-insurance agent ought to understand such matters, but a lot of them don’t. For instence, look at this'’—and he produced a telegram which read as follows: ‘“ What would inheritance tax be on half- million-dollar estate?"’

“T can’t think of a more ridiculous question than that,” the insurance man continued. “He might just as well have asked me how tall is a man named Jchn. The tax wil) vary according to the nature of the estate. I wonder that more life-insurance men don't wake up to the im- portance of this subject, because thousands of men with only $10,000 or $12,000 need insurance just as imperatively as the big fellows to protect their holdings after death.

“You said a while ago that you don't see much chance for the widows and orphans of millionaires to starve to

By Chest

“This Banker Felt Reasonably Certain There Would be a Contest of His Wii"

death. Well, you are mistaken about that. Some time ago an expert on this subject of inheritance taxation worked out an imaginary case just to show what could happen. I have some notes on that case. It is highly improbable, of course; but it will give you an idea of the subject. Our imaginary rich man in the hypothetical case is worth $10,000,000; he is an American citizen residing in Manila at the time of his death. The inheritance taxes under cer- tain circumstances could amount to 104 per cent of his estate; if his property consisted partly of corporate securities representing property in Wisconsin, the taxes would total not less than 144 per cent; if this corporation were incorporated in West Virginia, the taxes would be 179 per cent; if the certificates showing his ownership happened to be in a safety-deposit vault in Seattle, the taxes would be 219 per cent; if the transfer office were in Denver, the taxes would be 235 per cent; if the corpora- tion were also incorporated in Idaho, the taxes would be 250 per cent.

“Well, there is a lot more of it, but I think that is enough. It runs on up until the total tax becomes 305 per cent of the estate; but, of course, you see for yourself that this is an extremely imaginary hypothetical case. Nevertheless it ought to indicate that a $10,000,000 estate is not an absolute cinch for the heirs.

“ But now let’s get down to realities, such as almost any estate might encounter following the death of the owner. I have here a tabulation showing what happened to a number of estates, some of them not very large, in quite recent times. This tabulation was originally printed in the New York Times, so most of the estates mentionéd are probably along the Atlantic Seaboard. I can’t be sure about that, because they are identified only by the initials of the deceased owners; but I have checked some of the figures and I am sure they are accurate. They show first the gross estate, then the net, and the shrinkage, of course, is then a matter of arithmetic. Under the head of shrink- age are included various administrative expenses in addi- tion to the inheritance taxes; but, after all, it doesn’t make a great deal of difference how the money went if there is no way to prevent its going. Here are the figures:

Gross NET SHRINKAGE GROSS NET SHRINKAGE $ 66,778. . $ 51,235. . $ 15,543 $ 23,446. . $ 1,981. . $ 21,465 211,543 188,625. . 22,918 42,204... 37,300 4,904 5,307 3,145. . 2,162 7,541 4,968 2,573 132,758. . 120,711 12,047 17,580 10,973 6,607 8,377 6,040 2,337 44,395 36,471 7,924 16,732 13,947. . 2,785 45,748 26,485 19,263 50,514 44,825. . 5,689 25,643 21,583. . 4,060 927,360 531,415. . 395,945

“I haven't worked out the percentages on those estates, but | have another tabulation which gives percentages

er 7. Crowell

only. Itis more to the point with ref- erence to inherit- ance taxation, be- cause no other items are included ‘under the head of shrinkage. Also it includes very man) more properties, with every part of the country rep- resented. Here are the figures:

$100,000 to $250,000- Number of Estates, 105; Lowest Taxa- tion, 7.6; Highest Taxation, 20.6; Av- erage Taxation, 11.38. $250,000 to $500,000— Number of Estates, 132; Lowest Taxa- tion, 8.3; Highest Taxation, 44.5; Av- erage Taxation, 13.31. $500,000 to $1,000,000—N umber of Estates, 146; Lowest Taxation, 9.1; Highest Tax- ation, 31.1; Average Taxation, 14.76. $1,000,000 to $5,000,000—Number of Es- tates, 95; Lowest Taxation, 9.5; Highest Taxation, 34.7; Average Taxation, 16.86.

$5,000,000 to $10,000,000—N umber ef Estates, 12; Lowest Tax- ation, 11.2; Highest Taxation, 30.7; Average Taxation, 20.14.

“Now it is a very rare estate that can imme-

diately provide cash to the amount of 10 or 20 or 30

per cent of the total appraised value. Such a de-

mand frequently results in mortgages or sales of the

very stocks and bonds that the owner had been

salting away for his family. The result is that the

Government takes the widow’s mite and she is

often left with the sort of property that needs experienced

and expert management —that is, of course, unless the rich

man in question has provided her with an insurance policy.

In that case she has the cash for immediate payment of

taxes and administrative expenses. The whole affair is cleared up promptly and she is left with her property.”

How Large Estates Can Shrink

‘TN THIS connection I recall a case that may interest you.

There was a friend of mine, a banker, who had a large estate represented principally by securities of various sorts. It just happened that at the time of his death these securities—for they changed from time to time— included quite a lot of railroad paper, and the railroads ran through states where the inheritance taxes are especially severe. I don’t want to go into the details of what each state col- lected, because it’s too much trouble; moreover, what I started to tell you is that this banker felt reasonably cer- tain there would be a contest of his will. As a result he tinkered with it frequently and was always uneasy about any bequests for charitable institutions. There was a hos- pital that he wanted to leave some money to, and he didn’t know whether to name the sum in his will or not. One day we talked it over and I suggested that he take out a policy for $25,000, naming the hospital as beneficiary. He did that. About three days after he died the hospital received his bequest of $25,000.

“Shortly thereafter it developed that the inheritance taxes on the rest of the estate were much heavier than had been expected. Stocks and bonds assigned to certain relatives had to be sold to meet the Government’s de- mands. This threw the whole estate into confusion and made it very difficult for the executor to follow the instruc- tions given in the will. Under the circumstances about the only thing he could do was appeal to the courts. That threw everything into litigation. It had been the old man’s intention to leave something to about twenty different persons and institut:ons, including the hospital I have already mentioned. When the legal smoke had cleared away his heirs had almost nothing; several of the other bequests were paid in part; the only one of the whole lis! of intended beneficiaries that was promptly paid the entire sum promised was the hospital. Things of this sort have happened so many times that nowadays it is not unusual for rich people to take out life-insurance policies naming churches, foundations, schools and a dozen other kinds of institutions as beneficiaries. In other words, the rich man isn’t as well off as he used to be.

“Inheritance taxation is in an awful jumlile, it seems to me. However, I’m no statesman, and that problem is

(Continued on Page 173)

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 18

Is Common Honesty Common: By CLARA BELLE THOMPSON

TALL weather-scarred man in loose flannels ap- proached the credit desk.

“Are you the credit manager?”

The gentleman at the desk replied, ‘Yes. But at the moment you see that I am engaged.” He glanced at me.

“My business will wait,’ I put in, and started to rise.

But the stranger stayed me.

“Keep your seat, lady,” he said. “I just want to pay a bill.” He drew from his pocket a faded slip that bore in small letters the name of the merchandising house. ‘I have been in China for twenty-five years,” he explained. “‘T did not have a cent when I left, so I had a few accounts against me. But I kept them, every one; and now I am home again. Your bill was $75. I know how interest mounts, so I am paying you $150." He counted out care- fully seven twenty-dollar bank notes and a ten and laid them on top of the 1900 statement.

“You have probably made a fortune,’”’ remarked the credit man pleasantly, as he receipted the bill.

“‘Why, no,” answered the stranger. ‘‘I did make money, but I was sick too. Illness costs heavily in the tropics; that is why I plan to stay here. I have just enough to start me in a small business.”

When the man had left, I asked if many such payments were made.

‘‘Not many,” was the reply. “‘ Perhaps half a dozen ina year. But the other side of the question is that there are not many possible. Most people pay their bills as they make them. We could not do business on a money exten- sion of a quarter of a century.”

‘Most people,” I repeated—‘‘about what per cent?”

‘‘ About 95 per cent pay regularly,” hesaid. ‘‘Of the other 5 per cent, 4 per cent are slow pay. The other 1 per cent is composed of skinflints, sharpers, swindlers, rogues —-—”’

“‘T have the idea,” I interrupted, “you are giving more time to the 1 per cent than to the 99 per cent.”

“They take more time too,”’ he justified himself.

Self:-Serve and Self-Charge, Too

FOUND that bankers, restaurateurs, doctors, mer- chants, railroad men, indemnity companies, hotel men, lawyers, grocers and others who serve the public in a pro- fessional or business capacity gave as high figures on general honesty as the credit man. Many gave the 99 per cent without the qualifying 4 per cent. But the divergence of opinion came in the application of the principle of trust to a workaday business. There were a few who felt that the more persons were trusted the greater was their response. A young woman who owns and manages a lunch room cited her own case.

,. & | UE £2 2 we See

“We have prices plainly marked above the various foods,”’ she said. ‘‘We have no waiters, no checks, no spotters. People come here, serve themselves, eat, and on the way out tell how much they owe and settle.”’

“But you could not estimate how much an individual did eat if he chose to misrepresent,’ I countered. “I should think you might have pretty heavy losses.”

“IT know we might, but we do not,” was her response. “‘ Although everyone who comes here is not above cheating. Only, he seldom tries it on us. Many a time a man has pulled ovt a bad coin, noticed it and said, ‘I wonder where I got that. Well, I can use it somewhere else.’ Then he would slip it into his pocket and bring out a good one. But he was planning to pass that coin just the same—only not to us, because we trusted him.”

Her words had the authority that would go with a self- supporting young person who served 1200 persons a day between the hours of twelve and two P.M.

Giuseppe makes a still greater concession to his custom- ers’ honesty. He, with his wife.and two sons, has a small restaurant across from the campus of a university that houses 15,000 students. His sandwiches and fruit and ice cream are very good, if the students can be regarded as authorities. Between the hours of 11:30 and four his place is the scene of unimaginable confusion. Young college people are crowding the counters, helping themselves to paper, string, sandwiches, ices, cigarettes, and shouting, “‘I am charging until Wednesday, Giuseppe.” ‘Here's my fifty cents; I bought a quart of cream.” “TI can’t find the tongue sandwiches. Are they all gone?”

To which the small dark proprietor replies, ‘‘Yes, yes, a’right!”

There is no bookkeeping whatsoever, and charging is done on all sides. I saw no opportunity of talking with the manager at the busy hours, so I returned about 4:30. Then I asked him how he kept track of accounts.

“Why should I?” He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have plenty to do, and my boys remember what they buy, and pay me.”

Even as we talked, a thin stream of wide-trousered youth was trickling in and out of the shop. Their words were brief: ‘I owe you $2.80. This makes us square.”” ‘Take $1.35 out of that two-dollar bill; it is what I owe you.” “Giuseppe, I am putting my dollar on the counter. I will pay the rest tomorrow.”

Yet two tea rooms that are within a stone’s throw of the small lunch room have difficulties in collecting some of the bills that are due to them from the students.

EowA R D

A couple of brothers who had an installment business had an experience that would bear out Giuseppe’s attitude, but with a different class of people. There was a strike in a coal mine and hundreds of families faced the hardships of a salaryless winter. The two brothers had a credit house by day, hut by night they were professional musicians. In the latter capacity they were provided with union cards. As soon as the strike was called, they put a full-page ad in the local paper:

WE ARE UNION MEN AND WITH You. WHEN THE STRIKE IS OVER. You Have Ir.

The miners took full advantage of the offer and pur- chased more than $125,000 worth of merchandise, The strike lasted for six months, but more than 90 per cent of the merchandise was paid for before the end of the year.

RY As

Buy Now, Pay Don’t ASK FOR CREDIT;

Little Danger of Petty Thievery

“TN THIS case, that was an extremely high average,” explained the partners. ‘‘Some people were forced to move, others never regained their positions, still others paid in part after the year was completed. But 90 per cent of the money was brought to us personally within the time I have mentioned and paid over our counters. Incidentally, that concession was the best advertising that we have ever had.” Leaving the customer group and turning to the employe, there are notable instances of the same complete confidence in the assistant’s integrity.

A chain system which includes in its number 11,500 stores that reach from coast to coast and serve 12,650,000 customers a week is careful to give its young men who manage the single stores a feeling of full responsibility. They handle the money without the aid of cashiers, they do all their own ordering from the central district ware- house and they can se!l to their own families and relatives. The greatest proportion respond to their employers’ expec- tations, with less than 1 per cent failing.

“T should think it would be impossible for you to tell from your periodic inventories whether a few dollars’ worth of goods was missing,” I said to one of the executives. “Then a good many might be taking small amounts.”

“You might think so,” was his answer. ‘For it would be possible to steal in small quantities and we would never find it out. But the fact is that a man who takes a little can never stop at that stage. Before long he is taking more and more and more, until he almost convicts himself. For- tunately, such a one is very rare in our business experience.”

A man in the management of an insurance company gave a similar bill of health to his agents.

(Continued on Page 177)

It is Quite True That the More Complex a Civilization is, the Greater the Range of Temptation to Dishonesty

NCLE CHARLIE, the rubi- | | cund, freshly shaven and as

pink as a scraped hog, had come down the hill to peddle from door to door a wagonboxful of suck- ers which he had dipped out of thesluice of Pruyn Pond with a potato hook. They were good, as suckers go, in August, if one politely overiooked what Jason Selfridge called their pinfeathers.

But he had found the market oversoid. The Forest Products Company, Inc.-- Ed Sparrow—had recently in- stalled an ee] rack, unbeknownst to Uncle Charlie, who lived way back behind the sun, to screen these pestif-

TLLEVUSTRATEDO Br J.

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

WHITE HORSE

By Frederick Irving Anderson

SHEPHERD

CLINTON

“Dunno. None I ever heared. Guess he’s caught in a trap.”

“Why don’t you go look for him?”

The boy wrote some more with his toe.

“Orlo looked for him, but I guess he didn’t find him,” replied the Miner boy, much ashamed of himself.

Uncle Charlie was looking him over doubtfully.

June 20,1925

Now Jake, being finally con- vinced one horsehide could contain no more water, suddenly backed up with so much vigor as to crash the tail of the wagon through the guard rail into the river; and the boxful of shopworn suckers automatically dumped itself smartly into the turbulent water. Here ended the miracle of the fishes—except for the six the Miner boy was using. As a matter of fact, Charlie confessed to himself as he induced Jake to pull the wagon out, the suckers had been merely an excuse to mollify his excellent wife. He had planned to visit Jason today, and he had artfully produced the suckers as a means of

erous sons of animated raw- hide out of the turbines — and eels were hopping on every hot griddiein town. Somuch for fish. Then Orlo Sage, the town constable, exercising his care of the common peace with cognizance of contracts concerning deeds of arms within the realm, had taken a three-tine buck deer in the act of depredating his pole beans by moonlight. The authorities —Orio-— having viewed the remains and cer- tified to the facts on a blank provided by the state, the carcass was dismembered and distributed as 4 warn- ing. So the tang of roast venison hung about many kitchens

Noon arrived, and Uncle Charlie had accumulated nothing for his pains but a cloud of flies and some gate- post gossip. The gossip was mostly of a faunal nature: ‘The Ives’ red heifer had twin calves; Byron Woods’ dog, Nip, had been vanquished by a porcupine and was visit- ing a vet; pickerel were biting ke Spectacle Pond; Al Johnson's old mare had died; Burley had beefed his steers — they weighed thirty- one hundred--and so on.

There was one item of historical intereat to Uncle Charlie -someane had been seen in the old Mott house back of the reservoir; they were thought to be Motts. The house had stood empty and crumbling, shunned for two generations by the countryside as the scene of one of those eerie country ca tastrophes-a family found at morning slaughtered by a half-witted boy.

Unele Charlie was born just beyond there, in the days when the ridge was good farm land. The mere mention of the name Mott made him dream of his boy- hood, of the days of hatchel and joom, when he trudged to school over meadows now

evading the potatoes that needed bugging for the last time.

With mind and conscience free, thanks to old Jake, the strong backer, he turned into the old De Wolfe meadow, and in the shade of the river bank he ate his dinner from a seven-pound flour sack he had concealed under the horse blanket on the seat.

» He was dusting off his hands when his woodsman’s ear caught the long-drawn whir of a reel in the hands of some- one who knew how to use it. He crept into the thicker cover and waited.

Shortly the city boarder at the hotel appeared around the bend. He was in hip boots and the full regalia of a city sport on a vacation. But he was casting, no mat- ter how futilely, with the precision of an adept; Uncle Charlie himself could not have dropped a fly with more delicacy. He shook his head, vaguely puzzled.

Suddenly the primeval si- lence was rent by a loud yell. It was the Miner boy downstream, who seemed to be struggling with some monster in the bottom of the river. The city fisher- man excitedly reeled in his line and plunged to the res- eue. But before he could reach the spot the Miner boy exultantly held up for all the world to admire one of the dead suckers. Even then the battle was not over, for the fish, apparently re- suscitated in mid-air, put up a terrific struggle. The boy, heartened no doubt by the encouraging cries of the fisherman, won; and he set- tled the dispute for all time by hammering the poor fish on a sharp rock,

Uncle Charlie from his cover watched the proceed- ing. Part of the bargain seemed to be that the Miner boy would show how he had caught themonster. Half an

gone back to forest.

Jake, the horse, paused for a long pull at the iron kettle in the Hawley woods, where the road runs through a cool tunnel of trees by the river. The fish peddler was gazing mournfully up through the dappled canopy of leaves, above which soared a noisy family of black hawks dining on the wing, He was brought back to earth by the Miner boy, who wanted Uncle Charlie should give him six suckers for nething

“Who is in the Mott house?"’ demanded Uncle Charlie, pursuing his thoughts.

“Dunno. Some says they’re Motts,”’ said the boy.

“There ain't no Motts!"’ said the fish peddler decisively.

The boy wrote elaborately with a toe in the dust.

“There's a dog howling in the woods!" he exploded.

“Whose dog?”

At Their Head, Laden With a Shotgun, and Carrying an Ax in His Bett, Watked an Olid Man

Oliver Recognized as Harley

“What you want I should give you six suckers for?”’ he demanded with some asperity.

The boy opened his mouth and his eyes wide.

“That city fellow—at the hotel —he’s fishing the river!" he confessed.

This of course was tautological. Only a city fellow would fish the river in August. Uncle Charlie's eyes wavered in a twinkle; the pair were suddenly on a par, in a conspiracy. Uncle Charlie selected six of the most promising of the suckers. He went further: He got down and cut a forked little branch and strung the fish on it in lifelike attitudes.

“You want to sell him some fish?" said he. ‘“ Weil, tell him they are rainbow trout,” said he craftily; he patted the boy and sent him on his way.

hour passed. Uncle Charlie lost interest. He and Jake started up the road.

Charlie noted with complacency that the meadows of the Selfridge place were as neatly barbered as so many bride- grooms—even the brush in the stone walls had been trimmed — with a jackknife. The haying was over. It was well—for Jason had an embarrassing way of impressing labor in haytime.

Jason himself was grinding a hand ax in the barnyard; and Oliver Armiston, a city neighbor, was comfortably framed in the barn doorway, reading his morning paper. Charlie, with the air of one come for a long visit, unhitched Jake and turned him out.

“What's the news?” he inquired, fitting himself in the doorway by Oliver. Oliver half-humorously considered what might be news to this man: A crown prince had taken

- vgt ¥ : 5 at al "—e , “Any Luck?’ \e2 ‘ Asked Jason %

a warship to go visiting; a big murder trial had opened with the principal witness kidnaped; the President at Washington had just had his shoes half-soled; the Monday Opera Club was about to entertain a queen. These affairs might agitate the world outside, but not Uncle Charlie. His region maintained no diplomatic relations with the world outside. Oliver put down his newspaper, yawning. What if the police of forty-eight states were looking for a missing squealer in the most atrocious murder of the dec- ade? It didn’t matter up here. Nothing mattered, what with a bright sun and soft lazy air, and Uncle Charlie come a-visiting--Uncle Charlie, who should have been born a hundred years ago when these woods were young.

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

“Ever kill a bear with an ax?” demanded Uncle Charlie. Jason grinned. Oliver expressed polite astonishment. And Uncle Charlie was off. One bear story led to another; and he was in the middle of his pet yarn, where, inching hand over hand up a cliff, he was to find himself nose to nose with the biggest, the blackest bear, when ——

At this moment a sophisticated city voice said “Good morning! Would you mind if I helped myself to a drink?”

It was the city fisherman at the watering trough. As an afterthought he mentioned that his name was Jute, a fact not unknown to the countryside for the past week. He drank thoughtfully, like Jake.

“Any luck?” asked Jason ceremoniously, testing his ax on a thumb.

Jute had a little struggle with modesty, but pride pre- vailed, and he opened his creel and displayed the six de- funct suckers. He eyed the admiring au- dience craftily, as if longing to detect envy.

He asked, “Would you call them wild trout?”

Jason resumed grinding.

“They look pretty wild,” said Uncle Charlie. Oliver held his peace; city men were apt to be more or less subnormel.

Jute closed his creel and buttoned it. He was still eying the three sharply, with a suspicious twinkle in his eyes.

" “How long do you reckon they been

a? dead?” he asked suddenly. He chuckled, then roared with laughter. “1 bought them off a boy down here. The little fellow was so earnest I couldn’t bear to disappoint him.” He looked wryly at the basket. “ Now I suppose I’ve got to skin them out and try to eat them.”

He sat down on the edge of the water- ing trough and filled his pipe from a patent pouch. Uncle Charlie, always fascinated by objects of mechanical ingenuity, took the pouch out of his hands and examined it with childish pleasure. From the pouch he turned his interest to Jute’s hat.

“You didn’t fetch that hat from town?” said he.

“No,” said Jute. He passed the hat to Charlie. “I bought it at the post office.” Charlie examined the felt critically, and passed it to Jason for his inspection. They smoked in silence, a curious atmosphere of amity having now, for some reason Oliver could not divine, settled down on the barnyard. City sports were not usually made to feel at home quite so readily. Jason sat down by Jute and whetted his ax with a hand stone.

“You seem mighty particular about that edge,” re- marked the city man, break- ing thespell. ‘‘ What are you going to dowith the hatchet?”

“I’m going fishing up to the reservoir,” said Jason.

The man eyed him dubiously. “What do you do with the hatchet? Gaff them?” “No,” said Jason. He looked up at the sky. The wind was backing around tc the west. There was rain in the air, for all this soft sunshine. “No,” he said, resuming his whetting. ‘“‘We walk along till we come to a good spot; then we cut out a square of sod and fish through the hole.”

Charlie had hurried off to the tool house. Now he re- appeared with a hand ax of his own to be ground. Jute smoked for a time. He was knocking the idea about in his mind, as an old trout will knock about a lump of bait before biting—there was a hook concealed in it some place! He seemed to recognize in Oliver one laboring under the same mental deficiencies as himself.

“Do you get this at all?” he asked comically.

Oliver shook his head; he did not. Jason chuckled

Uncle Charlie, treadling vigorously, said, “ Let’s take them along, Jase!”

“No,” said Jason. “They'd fall through; we'd have to stop and dig them out.”

“I’m going!” cried Jute. He swept aside the jocular. They looked at him curiously. Then, as if he feit a certain doubt in their regard—‘‘ You can tie a board across my back,” he laughed.

Jason still had a reservation—Jute couldn't go in those mail-order clothes; they'd scare the fish. Jute agreed to wear anything if they’d show him how to catch fish with a hatchet. Jason led him to the milk room, and got down a chore-boy outfit— blue jeans, a pair of soft shoes speckled with milk inside and out, and a haymaker's hat; and he shut the man in to change. He and Uncle Charlie backed out the faithful old flivver, hero of many a bog hole, and loaded the gear—soap boxes, buckets, blankets, lanterns, axes, what not,

“What's he after?” asked Uncle Charlie, under his breath.

Jason shook his head. He was wondering.

“Did you ever see him cast a fly?" continued Uncle Charlie in the same soft tone.

Jason had; his eye glistened; he knew an artist when he saw one. Oliver was making a to-do about helping.

“Who drives a white horse around here?’’ asked Charlie out of one corner of his mouth.

They were stooping to lift a heavy box.

“There’s one over in back—on Blanford Brook.”

Oliver pricked up his ears. Just when a white horse had walked into the picture he didn’t know. But Jason and Charlie seemed to assume there was a white horse in the cast. The situation was perfectly obvious now to Oliver that is, the theme of it, not the plot. These two country- men, Jason and Charlie, had a deft way of picking up (Continued on Page 82)

Now the Road Pinched Itself Als most to Nothing. On a Little Rise They Caught Sight Through the Trees of the Oid Mott Homestead on a Terrace a Hundred Feet Below

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

FINGERPRINTING

F YOU find yourself star-

ing down a gun

The Silent Witness—By Wesley W. Stout

June 20,1925

it continued virtu- ally unused be- cause of the diffi-

barrel tormorrow in . 13228 wo. 45

your place of busi- ness or on the atreet--as you may very well doif you are a paymas- ter—-that barrel, more likely than not, will have been manufactured in Kibar, an obscure town inthe Basque Provinces of Spain; an automatic, or a cheap and frank counterfeit of an American revol- ver, laid down in New York and Chicago for as lit- tle as $1.47. Some- thing like 1,200,- 600 amall arms of foreign manufac- ture, 80 per cent of them Spanish, have been dumped inte the United States since the war, exclusive of smugs'ed weapons and the arms the A. E. F. brought home

In 1919, when Charles E. Waite began the task of collecting a sort of rogues’ galiery of the measuremenis and family pecu- liarities of all makes and models

culty of loading a bullet into a grooved barrel in those times of muzzle-loading, ball and powder, flint or matchlock weapons.

In the American colonies, where range and accu- racy were more important in In- dian fighting and game killing than rapidity of firing, the rifle steadily grew in use after 1700. The British Army had encoun- tered the rifle in the French and In- dian War and the American Revolu- tion; but with true military conserva- tism, it continued to use the smooth- bore, in common with all European armies. It took the rifle shots fired by Jackson’s men at New Orleans in 1815 to be heard and heeded in Europe.

Rifling

AY students al- 4ways have been puzzled by

of revolvers and pistols, in the hope of better identifi- eation of bullets in murder cases, it seemed a relatively simple enterprise. There were fewer than twelve manu- facturers of smal! arms in America, all ready to codperate. Had Mr. Waite known the true extent of the completed job, he would have left it to a younger man.

He began his quest at Springfield, Massachusetts, where the Smith and Wesson Company threw open its books to his inspection. The records, however, proved to be con- cerned only with current models. The firm had made and discarded any number of models since 1857, when it began, and some of each ofjthese obsolete types presumably were scattered about the country and might be used in the com- miasion of a crime. Moreover, every manufacturer from time to time may make minor changes in the rifling of a model, Neither the heads of the firm nor the ballistic en- gineers ever had seen or heard of any data on the obsolete typea, and the factory records did not show the dates and serial nurabers where minor changes had been inau- gureted in current models.

Part of the Revotver Section of the Reference Collection of Small Arms Gathered by Waite and Goddard

the warpath, They still spit lead along the Rio Grande and blanks on the lots of Hollywood. But other early Colt models long ago were dropped and the records were not unearthed without long search.

These records gave, primarily, the various models, the first and last year of their manufacture and the range of their serial numbers; the calibers; the bore diameters, which vary considerably from the calibers; the depth of the groove cuts in the rifling, the width of the grooves, the width of the lands, the number of lands and grooves, the rate and direction of the twist, and the tolerances from standard permitted by the factory.

From the fourteenth century, when arms first were used, down to the period of our Civil War, most firearms were smoothbores— that is, the inside of the barrel was a smooth, polished surface. A bullet from a smoothbore traveled with fair exactness for 100 yards; after that it wandered

Jackson's triumph at New Orleans. He commanded 3000 men, ragged and undisciplined militia. Pakenham at- tacked with 9000 veterans of an army that had just whipped Napoleon and sent him to Elba. Yet Mr. Bryan’s sturdy American yeomen who leaped to arms overnight routed the campaign-hardened British professionals.

Historians have been inclined to credit it to the superior marksmanship of the American frontiersmen, but there was more toit than that. Pakenham planned to charge at 100 yards and clear out the Americans with the bayonet sound European tactics. But Jackson’s rough-and-readies and their rifles began to cut down the advancing British at 300 yards, and stopped them before they could come within smoothbore, let alone bayonet, range. Pakenham, a brother-in-law of Wellington, and his next in command were killed. The British lost 2600 men in less than half an hour, while only seven Americans were killed and six wounded. That most decisive of battles doomed the smoothbore musket in Europe. America, as Thomas H. McKee says in his Gun Book, had taken a cast-off

Waite poked about the plant, talking with work- men, and eventually encountered a veteran foreman.

“I know what you want,” the foreman said. “I've seen it; it went back to Gun No. 1, before the Civil War, but it has been years since I laid eyes on it.”

The Guns of Song and Story

HIS promised {ittle, but the foreman rummaged about his home, and appeared several days later with a notebook, its pages yellow and brittle with age. It contained the missing records. Other foremen supplied the dates and serial numbers, marking rifling changes in current models, from pocket-notebook

Fetal,

Te sf. icp

oad.

S| ao

European experiment, and by thought, invention and skillful handling brought it to such efficiency that the world was compelled at last to adopt it as the standard firearm.

Virtually all firearms, save shotguns, are rifled today; but there has been no standardization among makers. There is no assurance that the bore diameters of two makes of a .32 caliber weapon, for example, are the same. Originally .32 caliber meant a bore diameter of .320 of an inch, but today it is merely atradename. A .32 is more likely to have a bore di- ameter of .301 or .299, varying according to make.

The depth of the groove cut, its width, the width of

the lands, or spaces between the grooves, and the

memorandums made at the time.

At the Coit plant, Mr. Waite had a similar experi- ence. Samuel Colt first brought out his famous single-action revolver, the six-shooter of the cowboy and the bad man of the Western frontier, in 1873 and 1878, in five calibers, ranging from .32 to .45; and the company atill is manufacturing them in quantities. This and the Winchester .44 rifle are the guns of song and story; they exterminated the buffalo, shot up Dodge City, dropped Billy the Kid, and drove the Sioux and the Comanches off

What the Comparison Eyepiece Reveats: Left, Marriage of @ Fatet and a Test Bullet; Right, Divorce

off at tangents, and armies fought at quarters only a little less close than in pre-gunpowder days. As far back as 1500 it began to be perceived that a bullet would move more truly to its mark if it could be given a spinning motion, and that a spin could be imparted and controlled by rifling, or grooving, the interior of the barrel. But for nearly 300 years after the principle of rifling had been stumbled upon,

number of lands and grooves in the barrel, all of which leave an impression on the bullet, differ widely between makes.

This was generally understood by everyone familiar with firearms, but there was no certainty of it until Mr. Waite had completed his codification of the factory standards. He found no instance of the number, depth and width of grooves and lands corresponding in two independent makes of guns; but he did find that the differences were so frac- tional in a few cases as to come within the tolerances, or

errors, permitted by the factory, and

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 19

therefore of dubious value for his purposes.

There is, however, another factor that leaves its impress on the bullet the pitch. That is the rate or degree of twist or spin given to the bullet by rifling. Sometimes the pitch is right, or clockwise; occasionally left, or counter-clockwise. Colt is the only modern American maker using a left twist. These canted grooves grip the bullet in its progress up the barrel and start it turning in its flight.

Every ballistic engineer has his own formulas for pitch. Some rifle their barrels at an angle that causes the bullet to turn as often as once in eight inches, others in as little as once in thirty-two inches. Nor is there ever any variation, or tolerance, in the pitch, as in other rifling dimen- sions. It is exact and constant for any given make or model, and two models of revolvers or pistols have yet to be discovered in which the rate of pitch and the other rifling measurements correspond even ap- proximately.

a bath of oil, pulling ahead of it the shavings of steel it has cut. The life of a cutter, before it must be rehoned and reset, is only half a day, or per- haps ten revolver barrels, in a factory of high standards.

It does not groove these ten barrels alike. It does not even cut the va- rious grooves in the same barrel alike. In some factories each groove is cut separately, in others a multi-edged tool completes the rifling in one op- eration. But in either case the cut- ting edges wear constantly and can no more be the same in two successive operations than a razor blade pre- sents the same edge on the first and second shaves.

Pistol Personality

HE steel shavings, puiled ahead of

the cutter, revolve inside the barre! and scratch its surface in chance pat- terns never the same. Moreover, the physical structure of the steel in the gun barrel never is identical in two barrels, and therefore offers a varying resistance to the cutter and the shav-

In plants making cheaper small arms Mr. Waite found no such ex- actitude as is enforced by the makers of higher-priced weapons. No tolerances have been fixed; no plug gauges were used to test the accuracy of the bore diameter; there was no testing of the completed gun before it went on the market, with relatively large variances between individual weapons of the same model and make. But here again the rate of pitch was the always fixed and constant factor.

When Mr. Waite had completed his tour of the Amer- ican arms plants he had the exact measurements of every make and model of smal! arm then being produced in America, many of obsolete models still in occasional use, and some of disused types encountered no more outside of collections. He believed he was able now, with precision, to identify a given bullet to the pistol or revolver that fired it.

The first step was to determine whether the twist was right or left. If right, all left-twist models were eliminated. The caliber known, all guns except, say, a .32 of right-hand twist were disposed of. Even if the bullet had mushroomed badly, a micrometer still would give the bore diameter. Only once in his experience has he encountered an excep- tion to this rule.

The bullet which

Two Typicai Cheap Spanish Automatics

a cheap one from a factory with no fixed tolerances. In such case the measurements would not give the exact equivalent of any shop standard, leaving the bullet resting between four or five models.

The final step was the measurement of the degree of pitch. If the now-completed record corresponded with a shop standard in his files, Mr. Waite could say with entire certainty what make and model of gun had fired the bullet. This was an unprecedented achievement in itself.

It remained to tag one particular revolver or automatic with the bullet’s parentage. Several hundred thousand guns of some American models have been sold, all without presumable variation between guns of the same model. It is an axiom that there is no duplication in Nature. No two objects of the same species ever are precisely the same; the difficulty is that the variance is often too minute for discovery.

A rifling cutter is made of the hardest of tool steel. It comes from the honing machine with an approximately perfect cutting edge and is dragged through a reamed barrel of steel only less hard. it grinds its way slowly in

ings. The bullet gets its final impress

from the last few millimeters of the barrel at the muzzle, and there these minute but critical variations are fingerprinted upon the soft lead or metal jacket of the bullet, where by modern microscopic and photographic apparatus they can be readily detected, measured, compared and reproduced many times enlarged. The unfired bullet is slightly larger than the bore of the gun. Driven through the barrel by a pressure of from 8000 to 20,000 pounds to the square inch, the hot lead is forced into the grooves, As one bullet may vary from another by some thousandths of an inch in diameter, it will set more deeply or more lightly into the grooves. The impression left on bullets from the same barrel will vary accordingly in strength; but fainter or stronger, the markings will cor- respond exactly in number, position and direction.

Thus every revolver or pistol comes from the factory with a personality all its own, which it passes on to a bullet. The more often the gun is used the more vivid this per- sonality becomes. If fired and neglected, rust and powder incrustation further fingerprint the barrel interior. If fired and cleaned, another sort of record will be left, There are other and supplementary clews, of course, such

as bulges in the barrel that have

killed a man in Bridgeport a year or soagosplintered into fragments that defied the mi- crometer.

Accuracy

HE lands and

grooves now were counted. If they numbered five each, all rifling of three, four, six orseven landsand grooves was out. The depth and width of the grooves and lands next were meas~ ured by the mi- crometer. The ac- curacy of these observations was checked easily by adding the width of all lands and grooves and divid- ing by pi. If the micrometer had been read accu- rately, the result of the division by pi would equal the diameter of the bullet.

The chase now was growing hot. But a defective barrel may have escaped an inspec-

developed after the gun has left the factory, mi- nute adherent par- ticles of lint and pocket dust, traces of lubricant, the percentages of an- timony and bis- muth in the lead, and the like. The shell tells a tale of firing pin, ejector block and ejector hook peculisrities. There is one foreign-made au- tomatic which con- tains, for no dis- cernible reason, two ejector blocks, and accordingly leaves an unmis- takable finger- print on a shell. New York State has an unusually severe statute against the carry- ing of concealed weapons, the Sul- livan Law. No re- volver or pistol may be sold in New York except to a buyer holding a permit, and these permits are sup- posed to be hedged about with restric- tions. Actually, however, a4 man

tor’s notice, or the gun may have been

Microscopic, Photographic and Other Technical Equipment Used by Waite and His Associates in Fingerprinting Bullets

(Continued on Page 163)

N THE third day at sea, outward bound to Taltal Q with general cargo, there was a stir aboard the ship Hiogo. Stirs aplenty had marked almost avery mile she had sailed so far; she had an easy-going master, a youthful second mate and an old-time hard-

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

RTH THEIR SALT

By Captain Dingle

ILLUSTRATED BY ANTON OTTO FISCHER

June 20,1925

found the stowaway under a heap of cabbages, sur- rounded and festooned with carrot tops. He was a skinny, dirty, furtive rat of a lad; and he had ob- viously fed himself upon raw carrots.

“Me son, you sure have queer ideas of comfort,” said

case mate. She had been taken to sea by a tug, and her working had been set after a fashion by a gang of longshoremen who had returned in the tug. There had been just one man of all her shipped crew who was able to stand up at the wheel and steer. He was a pitiful object, yet a cheery soul, and he had scandalized the skipper, amused the second mate and enraged the mate, who dared not attempt reprisal since somebody must steer. Captain Trew prided him- self upon knowing how to select a good firat mate; and he always left every- thing between porta, except

canvas

the actual navigation, to that mate

“Mr. Hart,” he often said, “when | was mate I

made it a point of pride that my captain should not be worried by trifles. You have a capable crew. It only requires tact in order to shape them properly.”

Sam Perter, the cheery sailor who hung to the wheel for support and steered like a wizard, overheard that re- mark the first time it was uttered on this particular voyage, and when Captain Trew had left the deck the mate was astounded to hear hilarious chuckles from be- hind the binnecle

‘*Ca’ble crew! Tack, tha’'s th’ stuff, Mr. Hart! Tack's th’ stuff fer sailors! Hard tack, sof’ tack, port tack an’ starb'd tack. Betcha!"

Sam was swaying with the wheel, his eyes bent with ludicrous gravity upon the compass, The mate glared athim. But he could hardly assault the helmsman; par- ticularly since the helms- man was the only man sober enough to steer at all. The crimp who had supplied the Hiogo’s crew had made sure that none of the gang should

Sam, hauling the lad out. “You ever heard tell o’ trouble?”

The stowaway’s teeth gleamed behind drawn lips, and his eyes were beady like a rat’s. He was ragged, his small wizened face was scarred and misshapen. He weighed no more than a hundred pounds with all his dirt.

“Trouble?” he snarled, twisting impotently in Sam’s strong grasp. “You make trouble for me? Try it, an’ I promise yuh ——”’

“‘Don’t be afraid, me son. I ain’t that sort. But wait till th’ mate hears about you!”

Four bells was struck just then. It was Sam’s trick at the wheel. The cheery sailor let go of his captive, prefer- ring to leave it to somebody else to inform Mr. Hart that a stowaway had dared to enter his ship. The mate was at the taffrail, reading the patent log, and Sam glanced dubiously at his broad back as he took over the helm.

Mechanically repeating the given compass course, he shifted the spokes of the wheel once or twice in order to get the feel of the ship, wondering if the stow- away would have sense enough to stow away again. But the steward came run- ning onto the poop, all fussed with importance.

“Found a stowaway in the spud locker, Mr. Hart,” he reported, and Mr. Hart's weather-beaten face dark- ened. A red rag toa bull; a stowaway to an old-time windjammer mate; perfect synonym. Mr. Hart strode to the forward rail of the poop and glared down at the gang by the locker. They, in turn, stared curiously at the queer ragamuffin they had unearthed.

“Bring that critter up here!’ barked Mr. Hart.

jump the ship at the pier- head. Whatever they had been dosed with had ren- dered them as useless as they were harmless. Sam had obeyed the order to go to the wheel, delivering himself of sage remarks all the way aft.

“Shame th’ way sailors get that way,” he boldly told the skipper in passing. “Look a’ me now. Don’ shee me dumped aboard like a pig. I gets drunk hones’ and genel- manly. An’ I bet I have to stan’ twelve-hour trick at th’ wheel f{'r it.”

Which proved true. Both mates tried every half hour to atir life into the sodden derelicts in the forecastle. Only with the grumbling assistance of the steward and cook, with dignified Captain Trew himself hauling on a rope, did the ship get topgallant sails set over her topsails so that she might at least win clear of the land with her burden. Now and then one of the mates succeeded in dragging out a man who could atand up and keep his eyes open for a little while. By the time Sam Porter had actually stood twelve hours at the helm, muttering comically all the time when he wasn't singing, there were enough of the crew on deck to select a relief for him. And by the third day out the whole forecastie crowd was discovering by painful process Mr. liart’s notion of tact. There were few decent sailormen

“Haat Him Out While I Hold the Weight!"*

among them. Sam Porter was the only man who had not experienced the mate's adeptness of fist and foot.. Black eyes and cockbilled noses were marks by which the watches might be identified. Mr. Nebbs, the young second mate, was not quite so handy or so ready with his corperal disci- pline as Mr. Hart. So, after the first round-up, during which Mr. Hart had managed to place his sign manual upon every man but Porter, and the watches were divided, the port watch received frequent physical admonishment, while the starboard watch were permitted to let their bruises heal.

Any man sporting two black eyes or a freshly cut lip on that third day out could be known with certainty as a member of the port watch.

It was during the forenoon watch that the stowaway was discovered in the vegetable locker on deck. Mr. Hart was in charge. The men had managed to get all plain sail set, so that the ship was reeling off the knots smartly; and in the bright sunshine were now helping the steward and cook open out and restow the cabbages and onions, pota- toes and carrots, so that the air might circulate among them and keep them fresh as long as possible. Sam Porter

And to the smirking stew- ard: “Run down and tell the captain.”

Captain Trew appearec: ponderously. He had been working on a thrums mat, and carried it in his hands. He looked as unlike a shipmaster as possible, and he puffed in displeasure at being interrupted in his pleasant pursuit.

“Stowaway? Why don’t you wash him off before bring- ing him on the poop? What's your name, my lad? What’re you doing in my ship?”

“Make this feller leggo 0’ me, afore I bite him!”’ snarled the urchin savagely. The man holding him hurriedly let go; but the mate swiftly seized him in a grip that made him scream,

“‘ Answer the captain!”

“You wait! I'll show yuh!” the stowaway yelled. But Mr. Hart’s grip tightened, and the agonized information was given:

“*Me name’s Hawkes, and I come in yer boat becos I was hungry. What’s this guy breakin’ me arm for? I'll work for me grub, but nobody ain't goin’ to strong-arm me. Leggo, you big stiff!”

“Take him forward and have him washed,” ordered the captain. ‘Put him to work, Mr. Hart. Use tact with him, but see that he earns his whack.”

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 21

Sam Porter tried to follow with his eyes the little pro- cession as it passed forward. But he could not see after the mate had urged his prisoner forward of the mainmast. It was none of Sam’s business, anyhow. Ile was to steer the ship for two hours, not to concern himself with the fate of astowaway. Yet, knowing Mr. Hart’s ideas of tact, Sam felt painfully interested in young Mr. Hawkes. So when he heard the swishing of water far forward at the head pump, and above other voices heard a shrill cry of human suffering, Sam’s clear gray eyes darkened almost to black and his lips tightened. He tried to concentrate upon his steering; but that yell arose again, several times; other men’s voices were hushed, and Sam sweat in helpless anger.

Now that three days of clean sea air and good hard work had overcome the sordid stupidity of sailing day, Porter was the complete able seaman; he was fully aware of what it meant for a sailor to oppose himself to a chief mate. Yet when Mr. Hart stumped aft again, wearing a grim expres- sion that was more than half satisfaction, Sam was gratified to notice that he was sucking a ragged wound on his left wrist which seemed to afford him an amount of anxiety about even with the satisfaction.

When Mr. Hart returned from a brief visit to his room, he sported a bandage on the wounded wrist and there was a strong odor of iodoform about him. The satisfaction had gone from his expression and the anxiety was about doubled. Sam stuck to his steering. He would only have asked for trouble had he dared to comment. But when the skipper came up just before noon to take the meridian alti- tude of the sun, there was a brief conversation between mate and master which sent Sam forward immediately he was relieved at eight bells full of dismal expectations which were all too fully realized.

“‘Where’s the stowaway?” he demanded of the first man he met.

The man nodded silently toward a dark bunk. Sam went to it and peered at the whimpering wastrel huddled there.

“What did you bite him for? What did I tell you about trouble? Let’s look at you, m’ son. Manhandled you, didn’t he?”’

Sam put his hand on what seemed to be an arm as he spoke. Hawkes screamed, shrinking away.

“T never bit him till he bent me fingers back and broke *em,”’ he sobbed.

“He told the Old Man he was afraid of hydrophobia. Let’s look at you. What's he done to you?”

“He'll be seared all right! Wait till I get on me feet again! I'll cut his ——~”’

“You'll cut nothing!" snapped Sam, using gentle force to unhuddle the man and examine him.

““Come get your dinner, Sam,” his shipmates grumbled.

Sam let his dinner go; for, as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom of the forward end of the forecastle, he saw injuries which brought his heart up to almost suffocating him. There were three broken fingers, and all the toes of one foot were crushed into a pulp. Hawkes could never have been called handsome; but now his pitiful face was so drawn and wrinkled with agony and animal savagery as to be positively repellent. Yet Sam Porter spent a full hour of his watch below, and let his dinner get cold and greasy, while he bandaged the mangled toes and set the broken fingers. It was his own scanty store of clothing which supplied strips of underwear for bandages, his own dinner which provided the grease with which he anointed the hurts. It was his own cold soup that he frightened a surly cook into warming up and fed with a spoon to the vicious little ruffian who had bitten the mate like a dog.

“Now you lay doggo, Hawkes. Don't talk to nobody but me, then you can’t get into trouble with that sharp tongue o’ yours. I'll ask the Old Man for some proper gear to fix you up in the first dogwatch,” said Sam.

Captain Trew was standing at the poop rail when the watches were changed at four o’clock. As Sam approached the ladder, Mr. Hart appeared to take over the deck from the second mate, and, with all hands temporarily on deck and in sight, the skipper was looking for somebody.

“Have you put the stowaway to work, Mr. Hart?” he inquired.

“He's sick,”’ grinned Mr. Hart. ‘‘You suggested I use tact. I have, and I don’t think he’s fit to work today.”

“And he won't be fit to work for a month, you man- killer!"’ roared Sam, unable longer to restrain his anger. He shook his fist in the mate’s suddenly purple face, from where he stood midway up the ladder. ‘I hope that bite poisons you!”

“That'll do, that'll do!" the skipper interjected hastily.

Such a breach of discipline could never be permitted, The mate stepped toward the ladder as if about to leap upon the angry seaman. Sam was worked up beyond stopping.

“It won't do!” he cried. ‘That poor critter for’ard lies in a bunk with toes and fingers broken and smashed, And that man did it. Sick he is, says he! Tact he used!"’ Sam blazed straight into Hart's face. “That lad never bit you until you broke his fingers!"”

Sam had brought aft a tin pannikin to hold ointment if he succeeded in getting some from the medicine chest. Now, as he shouted, he hurled the pannikin hard at the mate, off whose high-bridged nose it bounced with a sharp metallic clang. Almost as soon as it fell to the deck, the mate had recovered from the surprise, and with both hands on the handrails he launched himself feet first at Sam. His boots struck the sailor in the breast, hurling him heavily down to the main deck; and before Sam could get to his feet Mr. Hart was upon him. Captain Trew turned away; but not so that he could not see.

With the breath knocked out of him and the mate’s hands at his throat, Sam Porter found himself in hard case. But he was a hard case himself, given half a chance. Throw- ing up one knee, he held his assailant partly away, until with a squirm and a heave he was able to roil sideways. And with desperation helping his muscles, he wrenched free from the mate's clutching hands and delivered two sti? punches to his chin which slowed him up a lot. The skipper stepped a pace toward the ladder again when his first officer crashed against it. But Mr. Hart was not whipped by any means, He had the moral support of his position; and years of being top dog had given him assur- ance which no two blows on the chin could entirely offset. Only when Sam ducked a punch and stepped in ciose with

(Continued on Page 8&8)

The Strong Winds Came and the Hiogo Foamed South, Leaning to the Pressure Until the Brine Spurted Halfway Across Her Decks

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

June 20,1925

Trequois, 1878, With Fred Archer Up

morrow, when you race horses, In the fall of 1896 I

was down — until the street car jumped the track, spilled me and I tumbled into a winning streak. And only the year before, I had been sitting pretty as the trainer for the stable of BE. J. Baldwin-—-or Lucky Baldwin, as everybody knew him the country over. Frank Taylor was with us at the time I took over the Baldwin horses. We were running some of our own, but Taylor didn’t have a regular job, and when the chance came for me to go with Baldwin I told him to take our string and I would go to training. My ar- rangement with Baldwin called for straight wages of $500 a month and 10 per cent of the winnings. His stable was at Louisville when I took charge. When the season was ended there Taylor shipped my horses to California and I came East with the Baldwin string.

Lucky Baldwin was another of those characters that are

paasing out of racing—and, for that matter, out of life itself. He was the kind you never forget, once you'd laid eyes on him, with his Prince Albert coat and large fedora hat and a look about him that comes only to the fellow who has been a pioneer on the other side of the Rockies. Baldwin had gone West with the forty-niners and had fought his way through all the hardships that confronted the early settlers of the Pacific slope. He was a game man, The people he knew in later days were acquainted with his history and they used to get him to retell the stories of his fights with Indians. I reckon Baldwin would sometimes get fed up on the questions they asked. I remember one day ha was talking to a group of women and putting it on a little thick about his adventures with the redskins, He was telling about an especially tight corner he was in.

“What did the Indians do to you, Mr. Baldwin?" gasped one of the women, who couldn't wait for the end of the story.

“Oh, they killed me,

[= high, low, up and down, here today and gone to-

* he drawled.

Farmer and Horse Racer

QANTA ANITA RANCH was the property Lucky bs Baldwin laid out in Arcadia, near Pasadena, after he had grown prosperous. There was every imaginable kind of fruit and vegetable growing on its innumerable acres grapes, lemons, oranzes and great fields of wheat. The wheat was one of the things he took most pleasure in. It tickled him to think he had more wheat on his ranch than anybody else had on other ranches. When we used te go horseback riding together over the ranch —the most beautiful place of its kind I’ve ever seen —we would come to an elevation and he would sit there on his horse, straight as an arrow and reminding you of a general.

“Look at that wheat, Sam! Just look at all these acres of the finest wheat in the world!"’ he would say; and then a twinkle would come into his eyes; he liked to have his little fun. ‘Why, do you know, there’s so much wheat growing here that pretty soon I'll have to be buying another ranch like this to store it on.”

WIDE WORLO PHOTOS., N.Y. C.

Santa Anita Kanch was the biggest thing in his life. He loved it even better than he loved his horses, and he wouldn’t part with a foot of it. Thirteen years later, when I was again in the West with a string of horses, headed by King James, he invited me to the ranch for a visit. The place was in my blood too. I thought I'd like nothing better than to buy a small part of it and have it as a place where I could always go. I told him so.

“Now that’s fine, Sam,” he said. “There’s nothing I'd like better in the world than to have you for a neighbor. Let's take a ride around the ranch and you show me just what part you'd like to buy.”

Almost any portion of it would have suited me. There wasn't much to choose between one part and another, it was all so beautiful.

“This section will do fine for me,” I told him, with a sweep of the arm to fix on a definite locality. “‘Tell me the price and I'll pay you this minute.”

Mr.

Dick Clawson After Winning the Futurity

and Mrs. Hildreth and Stromboli

“Oh, yes, the price,”’ he replied.’ “‘ Now as to the price the price. Why, man alive, when you talk about price, that means you're talking about my selling part of Santa Anita!”

He looked to the north and to the south and the east and the west. It was a picture that filled the eye—a broad ex- panse of rolling hills and flowers in bloom and fruit bulging from the trees and vines, and his wheat. I could see what was going on in his mind. After a long pause he said:

“T told you, Sam Hildreth, I would like to have you fora neighbor. I meant it and I still say it. But I don’t guess I can sell any part of Santa Anita—not to anybody. It was a desert when I came here, and I’ve watched it grow up.”

Training for Lucky Baldwin

HERE were some fine race horses in the string I trained for the master of Santa Anita. He had won the Amer- ican Derby with Rey El Santa Anita before I took over his horses, but this fine Thoroughbred was still in the stable when I began to train for him. Emperor of Norfolk was one of the best that ever bore his colors, and there was also Rey del Carreras, a son of Emperor of Norfolk from Clara D, a slashing bay with a star on his forehead and sixteen hands in height. He was one of the flashiest colts I've ever seen and was built a good deal along the lines of Purchase, the best horse I ever trained. Lucky Baldwin sold Rey del Carreras to Richard Croker for $40,000. Croker raced him in England under the name of Americus with great success, though he got to acting so mean at the post that they had to start him behind the other horses. But even with this handicap, Rey cleaned up over the shorter routes in England. He was about as fast a trick for six furlongs as America ever sent abroad. He could travel a distance, too, but his speed * was so great Mr. Croker entered him chiefly in the short races.

In our campaign cn the' Eastern tracks we had great luck. That season we picked up about $65,000 in purses and sold part of the stable for $102,000 before Baldwin went back to California. And when I parted company with Lucky Baldwin, after six prosperous, happy months, he still had a good string of horses in his barn. We hadn’t figured on possible sales when I made my contract with him. I was sorry I had overlooked the 10 per cent I could have picked up just as easy as not through the sales we made in the East.

Three other horses come to my mind as doing big things on the turf in the years just preceding 1900. They were Ben Brush, by Bramble out of Roseville, by Re- form; the great mare Imp, by imported Wagner, a son of Prince Charlie, out of Fondling, by Fonso; and Ham- burg, by Hanover out of Lady Reel, by Fellowcraft. All these names are written large in turf history; Imp’s because of her consistent running and the affection the racing public had for her, and Ben Brush’s and Ham- burg’s because of their fine performances on the track and what they have done in sending a line of splendid sons and daughters to the races. Like so many other

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 23

]

great race mares, Imp left no progeny to take her place in the turf world.

Of all the things Ben Brush did, none will be remembered more distinctly than the fact that his mating with imported Elf produced Broomstick, who in recent years has stood at the head of the Whitney stud and has sired many fast and courageous Thorough- breds. He was of thesame type as Broomstick, small and com- pact. When Mike Dwyer first bought him from Eugene Leigh and Ed Brown for $18,000 he started his Eastern campaign in a way that made many be- lieve he was a flash in the pan. He had been the star of the Western tracks, but in the early part of his Eastern cam- paigning he was a thorough disappointment. Later in his two-year-old form he showed his real speed, though it was not until the next year that he really got his name in the hall of fame. Then he won the Kentucky and Latonia Der-

4 i ’

Boston, Salvator, Hanover, Domino, Henry of Navarre, Colin, Purchase, Man O’ War, Grey Lag and Zev.

Along toward the close of the nineteenth century—I think it was 1898—I was rac- ing my horses at Washington Park, Chicago. Ed’ Corrigan was still the big boss of racing through the Middle West. He had gone in for breeding as well.

One of the horses he had bred and raised on his farm was racing in Chicago at the time. This horse was Hurley- Burley, by Riley, out of Helter- Skelter. She was originally just a selling plater, but she figured in a little brush I had with Corrigan that season. About five years before this I had trained for Corrigan and I knew him well,

Fair Exchange

STILL owned Lucky Dog, the horse I had bought after my street-car accident in San

bys and followed these suc- cesses up, as a four-year-old, by winning the Suburban, Brigh- ton and other important stakes. In his career on the turf he started forty times and won twenty-five races, for a total of more than $65,000.

Imp was a black mare and a great favorite with the pub- lic. When she appeared on the track the band would strike up a popular tune of the day, My Coal-Black Lady, and the crowd would go wild. She was a remarkable campaigner. In all, she ran in 171 races and won 62. She was bred by D. R. Harness at Chillicothe, Ohio, and was handled by C. E. Brossman. Her first attempt to win the Suburban was a failure, but she returned in 1899, as a five-year-old, and won that turf classic from a good field, beating Ban- nockburn among others.

Mr. Vosburgh, the official handicapper, tells of a smart trick played by Nash Turner in that race. There was a long delay at the post. Imp was next to the rail, and while the starter was trying to catch the field in line Imp’s jockey raised himself slightly from the saddle by resting his foot on the fence, so that the weight would be taken off the mare’s back. She carried 114 pounds and was 7 to 1 in the betting. Turner’s cleverness un-

Cody.

A Group of Famous Old-Time Jockeys. Bottom Row:

figure. See what happened: Hamburg won about $40,000 in stakes and purses, and when he was at the top of his ca- reer he was sold to Marcus Daly for another $40,000. Mad- den’s investment of $1200 had netted him close to $79,000.

As a six-year-old, Hamburg was bought by William C. Whitney and retired soon afterward to the Brookdale Stud, where he again showed his worth. Among his get were Hamburg

From Left to Right, Top Row: Cash Sioan, Tod Stoan, Skeets Martin, Marty Bergen, Chartey Thorpe, Henry Shietds, Hennessy and Billy Martin

Franciseo., One day when Lucky Dog won a selling race at Washington Park, Corrigan ran him up and took him away from me. Now I've been through too much racing to mind losing a horse thia way, but there are some horses you just don't like to part with. Lucky Dog was one of them. He had come to me in a pe- culiar way, and I liked to have him around because he was a reminder of how that one awful run of bad luck had been broken. When Corrigan led him away I determined to get square.

Belle and Artful, winners of the Futurity in 1903 and 1904; In- flexible, Dandelion and Burgo- master. Artful was one of the great fillies of the American turf. In the Futurity field she beat Sysonby, the Keene colt, whose name must be placed in the very front rank of the great horses that have raced in this country in the last 100 years, along with those of American Eclipse,

doubtedly kept her fresher than some of the other horses and helped her to win the race, Whenshereturned to her home town after these cesses the people of Chillicothe sus- pended business for the day to join in the celebration held in her honor.

suc-

Futurities

T IS the uncer-

tainties of rac- ing that help to make its hold on you so strong you can never get away from it once you've gone in deep. There is a little story about Hamburg that ex- plains what I mean. John E. Madden bought this son of Han- over from C. J. En- right for $1200, the price you'd pay for a cheap seliing plater. It wasn’t much of a gamble for him to buy at that price, but it

A few days later Corrigan had Hurley-Burley entered and she won, my horse Chihuahue run- ning second. I had noticed Hurley-Burley a number of times and I thought Corrigan was un- derestimating her when he let her run in selling races. So I knew there would never be a better chance for me to square accounts with Corrigan than at that moment. I ran Hurley- Burley up to $1500 before Corrigan let her go, and as [ had won $250 in sec- ond money, | actu- ally got her for $1260. Corrigan was good and sore over losing his home-bred filly. i couldn't help tak- ing a parting shot.

“How's Lucky

Dog getting along in your stable?" I called out to him, as I led Huriey Burley away. But Corrigan didn't answer. He just walked away boil- ing mad.

The filly turned out even better than 1 had ex- pected. She set a new track record for six furlongs at Washington Park soon after she had come to my barn, and a little later ran the mile and twenty yards faster than it had ever been run be- fore on that track, People were begin- ning to take notice of her. The name Hurley-Burley was becoming better

was for Enright to sell for so low a

PHOTO, AND INSERT BY C. C. COOK, N, ¥. 0,

A Scene at Betmont Park. In Insert -—- Tod Stoan

(Continued on Page 144)

YHE SATURDAY EVENING POST

June 20,1925

OLID MAHOGANY

WAS the black water which Toren out all Linda’s secret terror of getting back home. When she left Miami in the after- noon, with Willie Penney’s weather- heaten old fish boat chug-chugging down the glitter of Biscayne Bay, with Willie Penney’s gnarled black paw steady on the unpainted helm, with the exhilaration of shops and crowded streets still in her mind, she was braced for anything. {f the crawfish or the bonefish and pompano had sold well at the fish wharf, and if she had had enough left over from Sydney's hair tonic and canned mushrooms to buy something for the children, perhaps a yard of mos- quito netting for Jamie's old fly net and a string of cheap blue beads for the Pobble, because they would look so darling with her amooth little yellow head, she was almost happy.

When the gilt and rose of the afterglow stained all the vast fragile sky and all the sea between the green humps of keys and the westward line of the Florida mainland, she could fold her amali hands in her lap, pull off her hat and let the sweet great wind pour against her uplifted face un- til her mouth relaxed into its old softness and the fright- ened eyes grew wide and gray again. in that lovely last lingering of afterglow some white yacht would drive past them with a thutter and rush of foam, com- ing from the smart Cocolobo Key Club, just opposite her own end of key, and she could lift her head proudly and wave, feeling that after all she was Mrs. Sydney Craddock, fully the equal of xny of those laughing white-clad women. Not one of those lounging yachtsmen was as tall and blond and utterly patr: cian as Sydney. When he was in one of his rare good moods and not drunk, he had a right to sneer at them, being a £ Craddock. And she was Mrs. Sydney % Craddock, mother of two Craddock children. That proud distinction noth- ing could take away from her. It was a marvel on which she fed secretly.

Before the light went, her loyalty and her pride drank deep and were re- newed. The bitter humiliation of the knowledge that because Sydney had married her he had been cut off by his family and brought to this, burned within her, changing the iron of her de- sire to steel. Because of that she served only more passionately everything she could Jearn of the splendid Craddock family tradition, breeding, intelligence, culture, position. Her children were to be brought up in that tradition, even if they were cut off from it. She had worked to make them worthy of the heritage denied. That determination, in the hour before the thick dark, was al- ways an exalted certainty. Then her head was high and unafraid, And yet for all of this, when Willie Penney curved the boat's nose nearer the shadow of Cocolobo, and then, through winding channels among smaller keys, braced the helm suddenly for the tide that ran in from the sea through Cwsar's Creek, all that in one quivering moment was wiped out. Around her, who had been a timid small- town school-teacher, the black night and the black water boiled, deep and swift and infinitely sinister. The sight and sound and relentless pressure of it, lying between her and her children, stripped her of everything but sheer panic.

All her fears, which she had stamped down with her passion of loyalty in the brave daytime, linked to this fear of the black water and became dominant. As the boat fought forward through the black, under the black sky, her fear was aiso her fear of Sydney, his sneering disapproval when he was sober, his heavy cruel hand when he was drunk. It was her fear of the unguessed things he did on his long unexplained absences in Nassau or Havana. It was her fear for the children, not only for their food and shelter and clothing, precarious enough considering how rarely Sydney threw a little money at her, but for their minds and their futures, brought up like this. It was her fear that some day, any day, they would be forced to give up even this last footheld on respectability, this flimsy shack on an out-of-the-way island, because of something he might do. It was, in the iast analysis, her fear of her own ignorance, her own weakness, her own inability to solve all the prob- lems that the dark flood of life relentlessly brought her.

From the black mass that was Cesar’s Rock, a handful of mud and mangroves full in the tideway, a drunken voice lifted a high quavering shout. Linda clenched her hands to repress the long shudder that always ran over her at

TLELeUuS TRATES O

By Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Br GEORGE z£. those drunken bootleg voices, which meant that a laden boat had come in from Nassau, perhaps bringing Sydney. She strained forward to see if Jamie had remembered the lantern. With a little gasp she saw it, a yellow fleck of light held steadily. Jamie never forgot anything. Her body warmed a little with her rush of pride and thankfulness. But the terror reached its worst moment when she sat still, while Willie Penney shut off the engine and stood up to catch a piling, in the murky shadows of the wharf. Look- ing up, she could see the warm light of

™

There Was Something in Jamie's Dark Gravity, Between the Two Big Biond Men, That Struck Her Into Her Oid Mood of Wonder That She Coutd Have Borne This Boy

the lantern splashing Jamie’s lumpy bare knees, with the unhealed Florida sore on the right shin; could catch a glimpse of his face in the upper shadow, with the square Craddock jaw and the eyes deep set under the bar of eye- brows, too old, too grave a face even for an overgrown boy of thirteen. He stood looking down at her and she sat mute, with a mouth too dry to let her speak, clinging to the last moment of respite before whatever he had to tell her struck again at her heart.

Yet when she had scrambled up the shaking ladder her face put on automatically its mask of calm cheer, the gray eyes narrowed to hide her terror, the soft mouth fixed again in a firm smile. Her cheek restéd only a moment on the boy’s bony shoulder as she slipped an arm about him.

“A good day, Jamie,” she said lightly. “The crawfish sold in the first half hour and I got five dollars for the pompano. And what do you think? You know that book- store where you saw the tree book you wanted? I took the leaf from your tree there and the nicest man was inter- ested and said he might ——— Jamie, what’s the matter with your face? Is father ———”"

“Yes, he’s back,”’ Jamie said, trying to keep the great bruise by his eye out of the light she held to it. ‘Don’t, mothie. It’s all right. Amartha saw the boat coming in and she hid the Pobble over at her house. Father passed

out on the porch and I got him to bed. He’s been laying there all af- ternoon.”

Through the beginning of a quiver she repressed instantly, Linda re- membered tosay, ‘‘ Lying, dear; not laying. Afterall, when father gets out of a heavy sleep like that he’s so nice in the morning. Jamie, what are you looking like that for? Is there anything else?”’

Jamie’s dark eyes were still fixed on her as he held the lantern for Willie Penney to unload the boat.

“Listen, mothie. After I got father to bed, Cousin George came to see you.”

“Cousin George Craddock?” Linda clutched his arm in utter shock. Jamie nodded.

“Cousin George Craddock—here? Oh, why?”

The boy shook his head again.

“T kept him out of the bedroom. I knew you wouldn't want him to know. He said he thought it was time the last of the Craddocks got together. He'll be over in the morn- ing. He came in that yacht over by the Cocolobo wharf.”

Beyond the wide reach of dark, where the sea poured, with a low sound of whirlpools, over against the black mass of distant key, against a sky faintly lit with a few great stars, Linda saw the slender poles of a yacht, a blue riding light and white flecks of deck lights gleaming again in dark water. Beyond that there were lights in the clubhouse, lights hung about the clubhouse lawn. Over there the dark was not sinister, merely a decoration to light-hearted people’s gayety. Linda stared, even while Jamie swung the lantern up the path to the house. Over there were the Craddocks. Tomorrow she would see them.

“Quick, Jamie,” she said. “‘ Run over and tell Amartha she’s got to help me clean house right away if it takes all night. It’s got to look nice for the morning.”

Sydney was lying as she had seen him so many times, sprawled across her bed, breathing heavily. She lifted the lamp high to gaze at him. Her eyes held no softening gleam, either at the relaxed goodly length of him, at the coarse yellow hair that fell away from his unconscious forehead, or the red and white of his cheeks that was somehow miraculously maintained in spite of the dissipation which scored hollows under his eyes or masked the Craddock jaw in puffiness. When she bent over him it was not to sentimentalize but to judge how sober he might be made in the morning. She knew so wel! every step in the process.

Then she looked about the room. It was not such a bad room, only flimsy, like the house. She had painted the cheap sheathing a soft green, hung cretonne that was at least not too blatant at the windows, covered with it a chair they had found on the beach, hung up the three framed photographs of the Craddock family that she had rescued early from Sydney’s belongings. Now she moved over to the largest of these, the one that showed Grand- mother Craddock and Father and Mother Craddock on the porch of the stately white house in Brookline, the one with Sydney on his pony by the steps and Cousin George standing by grandmother. She knew every line in every proud, self-contained face; knew every turn of hand or straightness of neck; knew best of all, of course, Sydney’s debonair grace on the pony, his long curls tossed back, his roguish smile at its most fascinating. But now she looked closely at the sturdier figure of Cousin George, straining to read what he would be like, grown up, in the morning. She stared until the cold chills of panic ran down her spine, and then moved quickly from the room to tell Amartha about the cleaning.

After he had put the Pobble to bed in the little cubby- hole off the kitchen, Jamie came up to her suddenly.

“Listen, moth!" he said. “What's the use your staying up all night and getting all excited about these old Crad- docks? You're worth ten of any of them, with father thrown in extra on the side. What’s the use of ———”

“Jamie’’—Linda’s head was up—‘“I will not have you speak of your father or his family in that tone. Please understand me. What they stand for I want you to be proud of, all your life. Father isn’t to be blamed. You

WoOtLtre!E

Did he see father?

ay,

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

Of the Two Men, He b Was, in Spite of the ‘ Mantling of Soft Fat ' at His Diaphragm and Under His Jaw,

the Finer Figure

mustn’t say such things. And besides—oh, Jamie, I’m thinking of your future.”

The boy stood scowling at a knot hole.

“What's that got to do with them?”

“Oh, Jamie, don’t you see?”’ Linda’s face went radiant. “If Cousin George likes you—if he sees that you and the Pobble are really Craddock children—maybe he’ll put you somewhere in a good school, send you to college afterward, provide for the Pobble. Oh, I'll do anything, even to giv- ing you up, if he’d only do that. I can’t bear this place for you-—this desolate key at the end of the world. I can’t bear to have you going around fishing and working with nobody but an old negro, messing with those stringy plants. You ought to have better teachers than I can be. You ought to play with nice boys, rich men’s sons. You ought to have a pony.”

A slow grin moved across Jamie's face and he patted his mother’s shoulder that was hardly taller than his own.

“Me with a pony! Don’t make me laugh! For the cost of a pony I could get a good microscope and a bunch of tropical-plant books and tools and enough fertilizer to make this place a real botanical garden, with just the stuff that grows here, if 1 could only find out about all of it. Why, that one tree $5

‘* James ’’—she looked at him with something so fiercely passionate in her face that the boy’s eager voice was stopped abruptly—‘“‘please, you've got to promise me you've got to—never to say anything like that to Cousin George, never! You mustn't let him know you like it here.”

“But, mothie

“You must listen to me, Jamie. I tell you, you must. Tomorrow you mustn’t go roaming off with Willie Penney into the hammock or start doing anything with your seeds or anything dirty and grubby. And you've got to promise me not to get interested in any kind of horrid bug. Do you remember the time the man from Cocolobo came over here and you cried like a baby because he stepped on a spider you had been staring at for hours and hours? Jamie, I tell you, I can’t have you acting like that tomorrow. I can’t!”

Before the intensity that shook all her slight body, flamed in her eyes, the boy’s face grew a slow red.

“But, mothie, my tree “

“Jamie, if you talk about that horrid tree to Cousin George tomorrow I'll—I’ll burn it. You've got to act like a Craddock tomorrow. You've got to. Now promise!”

As soon as he had mumbled some sort of acquiescence, she moved feverishly about the living room, starting old Amartha at scrubbing the floor, choking down the memory of Jamie’s hurt face. Oh, why must everything be so hard, now that there was some chance of its all coming out right? She remembered suddenly that she had not finished telling him about the man she had met in the bookshop, the dry, quiet little man who had been so interested in what she had told him about Jamie and the key. He had said he was a tropical-plant man himself and maybe he could get down to the key some day and tell Jamie some of the things he was crazy to know.

As Linda moved about the room, straightening the sorry wicker chairs, mending a tattered curtain, arranging the books better in the bookcase, bringing out her two glass candlesticks and trying to disguise tin cans with crépe

paper to hold flowers, she thrust from her a growing sense of remorse that she had not told Jamie that. It would have made him so happy. And yet what would be the use? Cousin George must be made to see the necessity of taking the children away from here, giving them their rights. Even if she had to give them up, she would do it. That thought, re- curring, made her wince with its cutting edge. But she would—gladly, fearlessly. The children must have their chances. Amartha Penney, scrubbing the floor with leisurely sweeps of im her skinny black arms, rolled the sd discolored whites of her eyes at Linda’s ashen face. For once even Amartha did not dare tosay anything. Late at night Linda lay down on the couch in the living room, her mind racing madly from one detail to another. Then even that was blotted out suddenly by utter emotional exhaustion,

Yet the next morn- ing it was as if a mir- acle had come bril- liantly into flower. From her immaculate, shabby porch Linda saw the day rise glori- ous into its most dia- mondlike perfection. The morning sky was one intense turquoise, from which the sheer radiance of the tropic light swam daz- zling on every leaf edge, every palmetto point, every viny tangle glittering down the slope, and struck the wide flow- ing expanse of water into one million-flecked sparkle. Be- yond Cwsar’s Rock the sea was one burning azure. The massed mangroves were emerald against it. Northward, on Cocolobo, the clubhouse behind the palm trees, the green floor of the grass, the yachts, white and bright brass by the long wharf, made one clear-cut picture as festive as a fashion magazine, as crisply cheerful as a railway poster. Over there, dominating everything else, was Cousin George's yacht. As Linda looked at it something leaped in her—a thrill that was not only a thrill of pride in its patrician smartness but something deeper, the sudden recognition of complete beauty.

Cousin George Craddock's yacht was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life.. Its sharp whiteness rested lightly, like a great bird, on the dancing scintillance of the water. Its delicate raked masts reached up, with a grace that clutched at her, into the clean wind. Bright awning edges rippled on the after deck. The bow was one clear curve forward, under the bowsprit, as if the lovely thing sensed the sea beyond and fretted for it. Linda, fill- ing her eyes with its utter harmony, felt her mind re- lax its too tight grip on her purpose. She took a long breath, held her smooth head high. On such a morn- ing as this nothing could gowrong. And truly it seemed as if that rash faith were justified. The shabby little house shone, took on, with the flowers Jamie brought si- lently from Willie Penney’s garden pale blue tufts of plumbago, yellow marigolds and arm- fuls of deep blue sage—an air of al- most expansive leisure. The bruise by Jamie’s eye hardly showed at all, and Jamie him- self, in unaccus- tomed shoes and stockings, clumped docilely about, with his unruly black hair brushed and his bony strong hands clean and unfilled with roots, looking, as Linda felt, very much the gentleman's son in- deed. Her heart swelled at the thor- ough way he had kept his promise. Not even once had he so much as glanced at his beloved tree, which in the morn- ing light shimmered and whispered near the corner of the porch; that nameless tree whose

Le] Zs

tiny, pointed, glossy leaves and strange smooth trunk had so fascinated him always. Jamie's Tree they called it, not knowing any other name, and he had made its shadow a kind of crude laboratory for his tree-snail shells and his dried beetle cases. He spent hours under it, drawing sponges from the outer beach, or studying the way a land crab’s big claw.grew again, or listing seeds and leaves from the deeper jungle. Instead, this morning, he brought her, from some secret fastness of his own, one great purple orchid, sacrificing it to her one vase without a tremor. Its strange color filled the room with richness and fascinated the Pobble, herself a smart fat thing in pink gingham, her round blue eyes solemn with the strange feelings of the day, her hair a Dutch cap of pale soft gold. She trudged care- fully about after Linda, crooning interminably one of her private epics, not once getting into dirt or mischief, But these were minor. The greatest was the miracle of Sydney.

As Linda had known, after one of those deep, heavy stupors he generally emerged slow-moving, vaguely docile. But this morning, after the quick plunge she urged him to, he strode up the slope with quite an air of vitality, his yel- low hair a glinting tangle, his face ruddy, his gray eyes almost blue. It was the news about Cousin George that had done it, of course, and the sight of the yacht. Recog- nizing that, Linda felt a little warming throb in the heavy stone thing that her heart had become in regard to him. Perhaps it was going to be true, what she had desperately tried to believe, that if his own proper background and fam- ily tradition were restored to him he would change back into what he had been when they were married. The thought of that possibility so fluttered in Linda’s throat that when she saw the launch from the yacht cutting straight to their wharf she had to dash into the bedroom and clutch the dressing table with both trembling hands properly to compose herself. When she looked into the mirror she saw a wide-eyed girl, with soft, parted lips and cheeks that burned exquisitely. Her ash-brown hair was sleekly demure at her temples. Her clean blue gingham flirted about her as she turned. Oh, it was all coming right in the end! It must!

“Ah, George, my boy,” she heard Sydney say as slie crossed the living room. Even in her excitement she had time to admire the superiority of these Craddocks, bridg- ing the years with a crisp word. The voice that answered Sydney was of the same caliber, older perhaps, more suave, more sure. Then she was on the threshold and Cousin George was taking her hand in a smooth large grip

“This is Linda, I’m sure,” he said. “Sydney, my dear old chap, what a lovely child she is!"

And Linda flushed under the cool brushing of his lips across her cheek.

While Cousin George was shaking Jamie's limp paw and picking up the Pobble, Linda had time to notice his tall, thick-set figure, the bald head burned a delicate pink above the gray tufts at the ears, the narrow eyes under thick-lensed expensive-looking glasses, the gray goatee that made all elegant. There was not much look of Sydney that she could see at first, glancing over at her hushand, his clean white shirt collar open at the throat and showing the

(Continued on Page 62)

Later the Pobbie, SJeraphicaily

Caitm Again, Was Coaxed to

Cousin George's Knee Opposite

the Hand That Held the Cock+ tail Glass

“Oh, I'm AU Right for the Present, Thanks.

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

AM IN THE SUBURBS

I Pinched

Close on Pifty Pounds From «a Man This Morning"

se. Cee

rs A nab!

were coor pees oe ae ’

¥ ' } ,

vir T IS not given to every girl who makes prophecies [« find those prophecies fulfilled within a few

short hours of their utterance; and the emotions of Claire Lippett, as she confronted Sam in the hall of San Rafael, were akin to those of one who sees the long shot romp in ahead of the field or who unexpectedly solves the croas-word puzzle. Only that evening she had predicted that burglars would invade the house, and here one was, as large as life

Mixed, therefore, with her disapproval of this midnight marauder, was a feeling almost of gratitude to him for being there, Of fear she felt no trace. She presented the pistol with a firm hand.

One cails it a pistol for the sake of technical accuracy. To Sam's startled senses it appeared like a young cannon, and so deeply did he feel regarding it that he made it the subject of his opening remark—which, by all the laws of etiquette, should have been a graceful apology for and explanation of his intrusion,

“Steady with the gat!” he urged.

“What say?” said Claire coldly.

“The lethal weapon—be careful with it. at me.’

“I know it’s pointing at you.”

“Oh, well, so long as it only points,” said Sam.

He felt a good deal reassured by the level firmness of her tone, This was plainly not one of those neurotic, fluttering females whose fingers cannot safely be permitted within a foot of a pistol trigger.

There was a pause. Claire, still keeping the weapon poised, turned the gas up. Upon which, Sam, rightly feel- ing that the ball of conversation should be set rolling by himself, spoke again.

“You are doubtiess surprised,” he said, plagiarizing the literary atyle of Mr. Todhunter, “‘to see me here.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You're not?”

“No. You keep those hands of yours up.”

Sam sighed.

It’s pointing

By P. G.

TLLUSTRATED

“You wouldn't speak to me in that harsh tone,”’ he said, “if you knew all I had been through. It is not too much to say that I have been persecuted this night.”

“Well, youshouldn’t come breaking into people's houses,” said Claire primly.

“You are laboring under a natural error,” said Sam. “I did not break into this charming little house. My pres- ence, Mrs. Braddock, strange as it may seem, is easily ex- plained.”

“Who are you calling Mrs. Braddock?”

“Aren't you Mrs. Braddock?”

“No.”

“You aren't married to Mr. Braddock?”

“No, I'm not.”

Sam was a broad-minded young man.

“ Ah, well,” he said, “in the sight of God, no doubt

“I'm the cook.”

“Oh,” said Sam, relieved, “that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Well, you know, it seemed a trifle odd for a moment that you should be popping about here at this time of night with your hair in curlers and your little white ankles peep- ing out from under a dressing gown.”

“Coo!”’ said Claire in a modest flutter. She performed a swift adjustment of the garment’s folds.

“But if you’re Mr. Braddock’'s cook

“Who said I was Mr. Braddock’s cook?”

“You did.”

“I didn't any such thing.

“Mr. Who?”

“Mr. Wrenn.”

This was a complication which Sam had not anticipated.

“Let us get this thing straight.” he said. ‘Am I to under- stand that this house does not belong to Mr. Braddock?”

I’m Mr. Wrenn’s cook.”

Wodehouse

R. GRUGER

June 20,1925

“Yes, you are. It belongs to Mr. Wrenn.” “But Mr. Braddock had a latchkey.”’ “*He’s staying here.”

“Ah!”

“What do you mean—ah?” “T intended to convey that things are not so bad as I thought they were. I was afraid for a moment that I had got into the wrong house. But it’s all right. You see, I met Mr. Braddock a short while ago and he brought me back here to spend the night.”

“Oh?” said Claire. ‘Did he?

Sam looked at her anxiously. ner.

“You believe me, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“But surely

“If Mr. Braddock brought you here, where is he?”

“He went away. He was, I regret to say, quite consid- erably squiffed. Immediately after letting me in he dashed off, banging the door behind him.”

“Likely!”

“But listen, my dear little girl

**Less of it!"’ said Claire austerely. ‘It’s a bit thick if a girl can’t catch a burglar without having him start to flirt with her.”

“You wrong me!” said Sam. “You wrong me! only saying ——”’

“Well, don’t.”

“But this is absurd. Good heavens, use your intelli- gence! If my story wasn’t true, how could I know any- thing about Mr. Braddock?”

“You could easily have asked around. What I say is if you were all right and you really knew Mr. Braddock you wouldn't be going about in a suit of clothes like that. You look like a tramp.”

“Well, I’ve just come off a tramp steamer. You mustn't go judging people by appearance. I should have thought they would have taught you that at school.”

“Never you mind what they taught me at school.”

Ho! Oh, indeed?” He did not like her man-

I was