The Saturday Evening Post 1901-03-16: Vol 173 Iss 37
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A Sailor’s Log A4anini Robley D. Evans Copyright, 1901, by THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY Entered at the Philadelphia Post-Office BAM 4 x u PRB its Ba fot tie * at SaEs Sh dai a a ls Se ae ee a ne nl alan ee y) 4a 7 Che CurtisPublishing Company Philadelphia
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A CADET AT ANNAPOLIS PASSED my entrance examination to the Naval Academy | September 15, 1860, and reported, as an acting mid- shipman on board the frigate Constitution—‘‘ Old Ironsides’’—on the twentieth of the same month. The examination, fortunately for many of us, was a very simple one; nothing like the elaborate and trying affair of to-day, otherwise many of us would not have followed the Navy as a profession. The candidate had to be sound physically, and to have a fair foundation on which to build the education required of a sea officer, who was not in that day expected to be an engineer, a chemist, a scientist, an electrician, a lawyer, an artist, as he is to-day—only a seaman and a gunner, with the necessary knowledge of things that per- tained to the sea. The superintendent, Captain George S. Blake, was assisted by half a dozen officers, selected for their fitness, and as many civil professors. Among the officers were two brothers, C. R. P. and George Rodgers, lieutenants, both of whom made their mark in the service, and wrote their names high up in the history of the Navy which they loved so well and did so much to honor. We have never had two officers whose standards were higher or whose conduct reflected greater credit on the country than that of thosetwo. C. R. P. Rodgers was commandant of mid- shipmen and George Rodgers was captain of the Constitution, and to them I uwe everything in my professional life. We had one hundred and twenty-seven men in the class when we settled down. to work, an average lot, from all parts of the country, and representing the various classes of American life— North, South, East and West. I was the only one from Utah, and I believe the first one ever appointed from that Territory either in the Navy or the Army. Our life on board ship was pleasant and novel, and our education on the lines that would fit us for the duties we should in the future have to perform. English studies occupied a . considerable part of our time, but practical seaman- ¢ ship and gunnery were considered the important things, and they were ham- mered into us so hard by our honored captain that we had to learn them in spite of ourselves. Many showed wonderful clever- ness, and after a few months the class standing in seamanship placed the men about as they have since stood in the service. The Constitution was moored at the end of a long, narrow wharf, which was the only means of approach unless by boat, so that the class was completely isolated from the older classes. We never’ came ih contact with them except when on shore for drill, or on Saturday, when we passed their quarters on our way to the town on lib- erty. All our recitations and most of our drills took place on board ship. Under such conditions the disgraceful * Copyright, 1901, by D. Appleton & Company. Everything must be done with our own hands THE SATURDAY EVENING POST A SAILOR’S LO 3050 hazing, which later on gave the Naval Academy such a bad name, was impossible, even had the temper of the midshipmen been such as to tolerate it. At the time of which I am writing hazing was absolutely unknown, and I am sure that any attempt to practice it would have led toa duel behind old Fort Severn. It was not until we reached Newport, and the senior classes had been ordered into service, that this brutal, and I must say cowardly, practice took root and grew until it was a disgrace to all those engaged in it. By some means the classes entering after 1862 got the idea from West Point, and in their zeal to emu- late really went far beyond the practices of that excellent institution, where hazing of a certain kind was a tradition, and considered necessary to the discipline of the cadets among themselves. With us the proper class distinctions and respect were traditions which did not require hazing to enforce them. I remember very well one Saturday after- noon, two of us, both very small, were passing the quarters of the first class on our way to town on liberty, when two seniors thought it would be good fun to put us down on the grass and sit onus. They promptly carried out their plan, and sat on us five minutes or so and then let us go. We returned to the ship mad all over, and in a few minutes we swarmed back with most of our class, and there was a beau- tiful fight which resulted in many black eyes. This was about the nearest approach to hazing we ever had. Afraid He The discipline was strict on board ship : from the start, and we were expected to was Going observe the regulations to be Hanged as soon as they had been made clear tous. I had =_, 505 0 to do. Conferences were frequent and serious, but never in one of them was there a disloyal word uttered. Every man followed the example set by the Southern men among the officers. So long as we were inside the Academy limits, or until our resignations were accepted, we were officers of the Navy and would behave as such. Lieutenant Hunter Davidson, afterward the torpedo expert of the Confederacy, was probably more responsible for this position than any other man, though both C. R. P. and George Rodgers were constantly giving us good advice. During the month of April, 1861, our studies were practi- cally suspended, and preparations were made to defend the Academy and the ship Constitution in case of attack. Drills were constant, and every precaution taken to give the enemy a warm reception in case he came. A Confederate cavalry company was organized on the north bank of the Severn River, and for several days they drilled in plain sight of the ship; but when a few boats were sent after them they disap- peared, and the next soldiers we saw wore blue uniforms, We had been told that the Confederates in Baltimore had organized an expedition and were coming down in steamers to capture us. A bright lookout was kept for them, and one dark night, about two o’clock in the morning, the lookout reported a large steamer coming in from the bay. General quarters were sounded, and in a few minutes we were ready and waiting for the word to fire. The cabin bulkheads had all been taken down, and four thirty-two pounders run out the cabin stern ports and loaded with grape and canister. The steamer slowly came on until she could be plainly seen formed a warm friendship for a young fellow (Ka from Mississippi named Baldwin, and he ' somehow became involved in a quarrel with a man twice his size; the quarrel soon led to a fight, and the large man attempted to strike Baldwin with a camp stool, when I grabbed him from behind, preventing the blow, and thus myself became part of the row. The next morning I was sent for on the quarter- deck, and, after having the Articles of War read to me and receiving a long lecture on the enormity of my offense, was locked up in a dark room in the wardroom. Some one had reported that Baldwin had a knife in his hand during the fight, and that I called out to him to use it and that 1 would help him. After being locked up I made up my mind that my time had come, in view of the many offenses mentioned in the Articles of War for which the punishment was “‘ death or such other punishment as a court martial may inflict."” I wrote a hurried note to my uncle in Washington to come at once if he wished to see me alive, as I was sure that I was soon to be hanged at the yardarm. He answered that disci- pline was good for me, and that he would wait a few days, or until sentence was pronounced. After three days’ confinement I was sent for by the commanding officer, and told him exactly how I became involved in the fight, when I was at once sent to duty, and some one else took my dark room. On board ship we had our hammocks to sleep in instead of bunks, and our messing was regu- lated just as it would have been on a cruising vessel. In fact, we lived under service condi- tions; and though it is now the fashion to decry such training in favor of barracks on shore, I have yet to be convinced that for the conditions then existing it was not the best. Many officers of that school have achieved great success both afloat and ashore, and have certainly met all the requirements of the service as fully as those of the will facethem. Our first impressions of the serv- ice were received on board ship, and the discom- forts of ship life were met and overcome in a way that made such discomforts, and even much greater ones, seem very trivial afterward. We grew into ship life gradually and naturally, and our knowl- edge of the ship and all] her parts was complete; such knowledge can be acquired in no other way, and though many able officers hold that this is not a matter of importance, on this point I have also to be convinced of the soundness of their reasoning. During the winter of 1860-’61 the anxious faces of our officers foretold the storm of war that broke so suddenly in April of the latter year. It was atime of great anxiety for all hands; naturally the greatest strain came on those in authority, but the midshipmen had their loads to bear as well. Many of us came from the South, and as the States one after another either seceded or threatened to do so, we had to make up our minds what we were going new school can ever meet the requirements that . This was about the nearest approach to hazing we ever had with the naked eye moving up directly astern of us, as if to avoid our broadside and carry us by boarding. Captain Rodgers’ clear voice rang out: ‘‘Ship ahoy! What ship is that?’’ The gun captains had the guns trained on the mass of men we could now see crowded about the decks and not more than three hundred yards away. Twice more the clear voice rang out: ‘‘ Ship ahoy! Keep off, or I will sink you!” And then a voice we all recognized answered: ‘‘ For God’s sake, don’t fire! Weare friends!’’ It was the voice of our chaplain, who had been North ona short leave, and on his re- turn found Colonel B. F. Butler and the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment at Havre de Grace, Maryland, blocked in their effort to reach Washington. Colonel Butler had seized the ferry Ben Butler > ferr in a Serious steamer Maryland, and, embarking his “ regiment on board of her, sailed for Predicament Annapolis, fortunately bringing with him our chaplain—I say fortunately, because he seemed the only one on board who knew enough to answer the hail from the Constitution, and in a few seconds more we shculd have opened fire, and no one call doubt what the result would have been. The splendid record of this fine regiment would never have been written, and what one may fairly call the variegated career of General Benjamin F. Butler would have been very short and inglorious. _ As soon as the character of the strange craft was satisfac- torily established she was directed to haul up alongside of us, which she did, and remained there until daylight, when the midshipmen were landed under arms, formed with those on shore and marched to the wall in the vicinity: of the gate leading to the town of Annapolis, and there deployed in line of battle to cover the landing of the Eighth Massachusetts. We stood in this position until the last soldier was ashore and the regiment had formed line in rear of the midshipmens quarters and stacked their arms, when sentries from our battalion were posted and the rest of us returned to our quar- ters. Not a shot had been fired by either side, though the excitement was intense, and there was a readiness on both sides to fight. Both parties hesitated to fire the first shot,
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THE By Robley D. Evans we and the Confederates contented themselves with pitching stones over the wall, which we caught and tossed back. The newspapers gave graphic accounts of how Butler and his men had recaptured the Constitution and the Naval Academy! They never fired a shot nor saw an enemy to shoot at. The magazines of the Constitution were mined, and she and her crew would have been blown to atoms before sur- rendering if the enemy had attacked her. Everything was now made ready as soon as possible, and the ship hauled out into the bay and prepared to transport us to some Northern port. The midshipmen on shore gave up their quarters to the officers of the Seventh New York Infantry and the First Rhode Island Artillery under Colonel Burnside, these regiments having arrived immediately after the Eighth Massachusetts. Our routine was entirely broken up, and our time given to guard and picket duty, until all preparations had been made for our trip North, when orders were given to assemble ready for embarkation. Then fol- lowed a scene which those of us who participated in can never recall without a tendency to moist eyes. The good fellows from the South who had determined to go with their States said good-by to their classmates, and as the rest of us formed ranks to embark, Captain C. R. P. Rodgers stepped out to say a few words to us before leaving the dear old alma mater. After a strong effort he managed to say: ‘‘ My boys, stand by the old flag!’’ and then broke down. We were all in tears, and braced up only when we heard the men of the Seventh New York cheering us, which we returned in a feeble wewE Saturday we went outside in one or other or both of the ships, and then the work was most thorough and complete, each mid- shipman in turn taking charge of the deck for different evo- lutions. On our way in, in the afternoon, we could generally tell when our work had been satisfactory; if it had not been, the ship was sure to fetch up hard and fast before we reached our anchorage. Then anchors would have to be carried out, and the vessel hove off, berthed and everything made snug and shipshape before we could leave her. For all this work we had no man to help us. Everything must be done with our own hands, and thus ave learned, and learned thor- oughly, what a man had to do in every position on board a sailing ship, from passing a close reef to sweeping down the quarterdeck. We learned how to do it ourselves, and how to make others do it under our instruction, and many of us still cling to the notion that there could not have been better training. If the weather happened to be such that we could not get under way, we sent down yards, masts and rigging, and proceeded to refit everything. Before the year was out there were few in the class who could not, with their own hands, do any work required of a petty officer or seaman. The quartering of the senior class on shore and all the others on board ship had a very bad effect, and it was years before the Academy recovered its normal condition. All the traditions of the school, the discipline among the classes themselves — which was, and always must be, dependent on traditions and customs—were lost sight of, and, as I have before said, hazing took root on board the Constitution and Santee. It took twenty years to break up this un-naval practice, and even now it occa- a ae pe Yy sionally shows its ugly head, generally with the result that some promising youngster has to be dismissed and thus lost to the service. As soon as war was an assured thing my family demanded that I should resign, come South and fight for my State; but it did not seem to me that this course was imperative. My next younger brother enlisted at the age of fourteen in the Washington Artillery, and went to the front under Pelham; so that there was one member of the family on each side, which was a fair division, if he saw his duty in that way. I was much assisted in those dark and trying days by the advice of Captain Rodgers, who pointed out to me very clearly what my duty was. I concluded to stick by ‘‘ The Old Flag’’ and let my family ties look after themselves, and so in- formed my mother, who was much grieved and shamed by my determination. She fi- _ nally wrote my resignation, sent it to the | Navy Department, where it was accepted, and without previous warning I found my- self out of the service. What to do under such conditions was a —1! grabbed him from behind, preventing the blow, and thus became part of the row sort of way—scrambled into the boats, and two hours later were once more on board ‘‘ Old Ironsides.’’ That was the last we saw of the Naval Academy at Annapolis until! after the Civil War had done its work. The army took possession, repaired the railroad and locomotives, and after a month or so of hard work reopened communication with Washington. Assigned The Constitution was towed to New to a Hotel York, from there to Newport, Rhode Island, where she was anchored in for Study Brinton’s Cove, off Fort Adams, and all the senior classes were ordered into active service.» My class, now about seventy strong, was the only one left, and we were anxious, of course, to join the others; but we had not yet sufficientl¥ advanced to make us of much value. Once more we settled down to routine and hard work. Fort Adams was unoccupied, so we were trans- ferred there, where we could have roomy quarters and con- venient recitation-rooms, and at the same time man the guns in case of need. It was all a lark to most of us, and the time given to study did not amount to much. The officers soon found that, if we were to do any serious work, proper quar- ters would have to be provided; and as the idea of a return to Annapolis was abandoned, the Atlantic Hotel, in the heart of Newport, was secured on long lease, duly fitted for our accommodation, and thither we were marched. In the mean time steps were taken to quarter the new class, a very large one, which had been appointed. The Constitution and the Santee, which had been sent North for the purpose, had been moored at suitable docks built on the inside of Goat Island in the inner harbor, and the sloops of war John Adams and Marion were anchored near them, to be used for practical seamanship and gunnery drills afloat. This made the most complete outfit in ships the Naval Academy had ever seen, and the most useful. That master of his trade, Stephen B. Luce, had charge of drills afloat, and scarcely a day passed that we were not under his watchful eyes at some sort of practical seamanship. Every serious question to me, and I was again assisted to the right SATURDAY EVENING POST ORAWN BY 6. MARTIN ,UBTICE would butt three times at a sea and then go around it. Before the wind she rolled so that all hands had trouble in sleeping at night; but she carried us safely as far south as Port Royal, South Carolina, and brought us safely back to Newport. During this cruise the midshipmen were stationed as a crew for the vessel, and did all the work of the different ratings. When off Hatteras on our way North our efficiency was thoroughly tested. At about ten o’clock the ship was struck by a sudden heavy squall, accompanied by rain and hail. All hands were called to reef topsails, the watch on deck having successfully handled the light sails. We were close enough to the Diamond Shoal to make haste a matter of importance, and the officers hustled us up without much ceremony. The topsails were quickly reefed, and I had just secured the lee earing on the maintopsail-yard when I heard the order, ‘‘ Hoist away the topsails!’’ I was straddling the yard at the time, and just about to swing to the foot-rope and lay down from aloft; but I changed my mind very suddenly, and instead hugged that topsail-yard until I am sure you could have found the marks of my arms on the paint. It was as black as a pocket, raining in torrents, and as the yards were braced up the topsails filled and the ship made a butt at a heavy sea. I thought my time had come. I reached the deck, however, in safety, only to be properly dressed down by the officer of the deck for being slow in laying down from aloft! We were back at Newport again in September, better for our work, and ready to enjoy the short leave then given us. My family had all gone South, and it was a question what I should do with myself; but as my uncle’s house in Washington was in charge of a house- keeper, I concluded to course by Captain Rodgers, who telegraphed to Washington, explaining mat- ters. I was out only about twenty-four hours, but they were very unhappy ones for me, and I was relieved when my reappointment came by wire. My mother, thinking she had finally dis- posed of the matter, went to Richmond to nurse my brother, who had been badly wounded, and there waited for me to join her. She was natu- rally much disappointed at the result of her ef- forts, and wrote me a very severe letter, which she sent through the lines by a blockade runner, who mailed it. When it came to me it showed no signs of having been opened, but I found that it had, and many parts of it underlined with blue pencil. Many of my letters during the war mailed in the same way had been similarly treated, showing that in my case at least the post-office officials were watchful. My brother fought gallantly, was twice wounded, and served to the end of the war. As soon as he could make his way North he came, and never showed any bitterness over my course. The other members of my family did not behave in quite the same way, but after some years my mother changed her views, and fully forgave me. Ina Heavy in Jame: eae! we started on our first real practice cruise, Storm off the using for the purpose the Diamond Shoal sloop of war John Adams. We were crowded into her like sardines in a box, and had no end of hard work, with whatever we could find to eat, and all in all about as little comfort as a set of youngsters ever experienced; but we made great head- way in learning our business as seamen. The ship was un- comfortable, as all her class were, but at the same time sea- worthy and safe. She would run well when off the wind, but with everything braced sharp up when there was any sea on she spend my time there, which I did very pleasantly. The good woman who had charge of the house called me one night to inform me that there was a burglar in the cellar, and would I put him out? I was not anx- ious for the job, but my position as an officer for- bade my declining; so with a small revolver in one hand and a lighted candle in the other I sought the burglar in the coal cellar. I had hardly entered the passageway leading past the: door of the room in which he was hidden, when a large chunk of coal whizzed past my head, and very closeto it. I dropped the candle, which fortu- nately went out, putting us on more even terms, and after ten minutes I turned my man over to the police with a bullet through his pen extend thigh. I learned that night not to hunt burglars with a lighted candle; experience sometimes teaches things in a very forcible way. i During this leave I had a rather curious meeting with my brother, whose command was operating on the Virginia side of the Potomac, a few miles away. I went one evening to an oyster house with a friend to eat some raw oysters. The place was one that all of us had known and frequented for years. As I entered the door I observed a tall, handsome young fellow who was finishing what he had ordered, and at Py bkd ecpaecen meatier apie ee a ee Be airs SPAS os wlber 22 pis prod RAR Se SPE SRS SESS TE
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4 the same moment I saw him give me a quick glance of recog- nition. He drank up his glass of beer and then walked briskly out of the place, while I called for oysters on the half shell, and ate them very slowly. My brother knew what I would do, and he did not hesitate the least .bit in his move- ments; but I had some very serious thinking to do while the man opened oysters for me, and I must admit that I ate more oysters than I wanted, and ate them very slowly. I could have gone to the exact spot where my brother’s skiff was hauled out, and I was giving him all the time I could to get there ahead of the provost guard. Finally, my friend asked me if I were going to eat all night, when I paid my shot and we went out together. I asked if he had recognized my man; he replied that he had not, and then asked me in turn what I was going to do about it. Before I had time to reply a squad of the provost guard came by, and to the officer in charge I reported that there was a rebel officer in the city—that I had seen and recognized him, and knew him as such. At first he seemed disposed to arrest me, but at last concluded to go after the real offender. After the war my brother told me that he just managed to escape, and that he had concealed his boat at the spot where I imagined it was. Asa result of this incident I was twice arrested on suspicion of holding intercourse with the enemy. The last time I told the officer confidentially who the man was I had reported, and after that I was not annoyed. October, 1862, found us all back at Newport, and once more settled down to hard work and study. The demand for officers was so great that the class was divided into two sections, and the instructions arranged so that the first sec- tion could be graduated in the following June. It was not my good fortune to be one of this first section; but I lost nothing by this, as we shall see later. There was in this section, however, one of whom we were all very fond—the young Frenchman, Pierre d’Orleans, Duc THE SATURDAY EVENING POST de Penthiévre, who preferred to acquire his professional edu- cation under American auspices. He was a fine, manly young fellow, known in the class as ‘‘ Pete,’’ and you might expect to find him mixed up in all the class scrapes. During the winter of this year I again made acquaintance with the dark room on board the Constitution. Two of us were walking about during the evening in the park opposite our quarters, when I saw a watchman sneaking through the trees to catch some fellows who were violating regulations. The chance was very tempting, and without waiting to count the cost I landed a good-sized stone fairly behind the watch- man’s ear, sending him to the hospital for repairs. Unfortu- nately for me, there was a citizen near by who gave the commandant so good a description of me that I was sent for the next morning, and promptly sent on board ship and locked up. This was bad enough in all reason, but I soun made it much worse. The officer of the day, wishing to show proper respect for a senior, smuggled me a novel and a candle, and, having arranged my blanket so as to shut out curious eyes, I read my novel in peace until the sentry, a sailor with a cutlass, pried the blanket to one side. I blew the candle out at once, and then arranged the spring in the candlestick so that I could shoot the candle out when ready. Then I lighted it again, and as he again cautiously pried the blanket aside, I fired the candle through the opening. Unfor- tunately, it struck Jacky in the eye, and thinking that his head was shot off he bolted from his station. In a short while the commanding officer was on the scene, and then an end was put to my sport. I was marched out, the room searched, the door boarded up solid, and the key again turned on me. This time there was not the least sem- blance of fun about it. For two weeks I was kept locked up. Editor's Note —This is the first of a series of reminiscent papers on Life in the Navy. HIS FIRST BATTLE By Ellen URING the famous April three years ago a little D Fiorida winter resort discovered that greatness had been thrust upon it. War with Spain was declared and our Government resolved to establish a camp at Tampa. From the languor of its previous somnolence the tiny town awoke to a virile and vivid life. Regiment after regiment, some regulars but most volunteers, rallied to the country’s call in that sudden making of an army which was as brave a sight as War, the creator of heroic history, has produced. The pulse beat quickly through those sunny spring days in Tampa, and a common eager- ness of endeavor stirred hearts as varied as the individ- uals who crowded the small houses, the wide streets and the huddled tents upon the beach. The veranda of the Tampa Hotel was gay with elec- tric lights and tropical flowers and well-dressed women and uniformed men. The blue eyes of a young Rough Rider glowed as he leaned against the railings and faced the brilliant scene. ‘* It is splendid at the camp where every one is longing for orders to the front! ’’ heexclaimed. ‘‘ But it is splen- did here alse where all. these people have got something better to talk about and to do than they had last summer in Newport or last winter in New York: the women who have come to say ‘ God speed!’ to their husbands or their sons: the men who are going to fight and to i ‘** Come back with their shields or on them!’’’ Mede interrupted smiling. ‘‘ It is, of course, gratifying to us, who had some misgiving that we were nothing very spe- cial, to discover that we are heroes.’’ Young Norval’s eyes flashed up at his tall companion, and with effort he repressed a reply, which in his vocab- ulary would have been described as ‘‘ gush.’’ Mede, four years his elder, had been a hero to him since his earliest college days, when that brilliant senior had condescended to a closer friendship with the little fresh- man than he bestowed upon any class equal. Laurels had been added to his handsome head, in Norval’s esti- mation, when, confronted by his father’s ruin shortly after leaving the university, Mede had sacrificed a fortune, left him by his mother, for the sating of the family honor, and had gone abroad to seek a livelihood from the art which hitherto had been a favorite pastime. Since then the two had met whenever they could arrange a meeting, though the younger’s remaining years at college and the other’s wanderings, military as well as artistic (for he had fought through the campaign in Greece), combined to separate them much of the time. And recently, having volun- teered among the first dozen Rough Riders, Mede had won another claim on Norval’s affection by keeping a vacancy in the troop assigned to him until the mother’s reluctant consent had been given to the enlistment. He smiled at Norval’s reproachful glance. **IT shall make studies for a battle picture and reap as goodly a harvest of shekels as I did in Macedonia. But it is creditable to such a gilded youth as you to seek a dream of glory in the rough and tumble of camp life.’’ “‘A dream which if ever fulfilled I shall owe to you! I believe my mother thinks you quite equal to the turn- ing asidé of Spanish bullets from my precious person! ’’ Mede’s smile vanished. ** Even such risk as your mother’s sorrow seems worth while for the leaven of steadfastness and endurance you MackKubin ih \} | l il Wh ) | MUAY I iY I) 7a aah Se ei Mil > i | il Wt 7 | 'f Norval had doubted the meaning of her tears, her broken words, that doubt would have vanished before that gaze of the lovely, miserable eyes which saw him not may acquire for all the years of pleasant idleness to which you will return. The leaven which is, perhaps, the heritage for whose sake war is permitted among the nations——”’ he broke off his rather dreamy tone with a laugh. ‘‘ Dare you take me to your mother in such a sermonizing mood?”’ he asked lightly. ‘‘ I may not get ‘ leave’ to-morrow. And our orders to embark are likely to come at any moment.”’ ‘She is expecting you,’’ Norval answered. ‘‘ And—and my cousin is with her.’’ *“ Your cousin?’’? Mede repeated, amused by the suggest- ive tremor of the other’s voice. ‘She has lived with my mother since last winter —and quite insisted on coming here. There they are! ’’ he inter- rupted himself as they approached two ladies who were seated in a corner of the veranda. ‘‘ Mother, I have brought Mede to see you,’’ he exclaimed, and added formally: ‘‘ Miss Redmond, may I present my friend, Lieutenant Mede?”’ ‘We are old acquaintances,’’ a sweet voice answered, slipping coolly across the enthusiasm of Mrs. Norval’s greeting. A ‘* Come and sit by me!’’ the latter cried. ‘‘ You can talk to my niece afterward, but now you are to be bored with more of my anxieties.’’ Murmuring something vaguely amiable, Mede dropped into the chair indicated for his occupancy and Norval began eagerly to question his cousin. ‘*So you know Mede? Why did you never tell me when I have talked about him by the yard?’’ “*It did not seem so important as your other topic,” she said slowly. ‘* Myself?’’ Norval whispered, flushing. is yet another topic—if I dared?’’ “* Daring is not becoming to little boys, even when they wear khaki— until after they arrive in Cuba!’’ she declared gayly. ‘‘ Let us go to look at the dancers.”’ She would not dance, however, fervently as Norval entreated, and when they had watched one waltz they wandered back to the veranda. Mrs. Norval and Mede had disappeared, but Mabel seated herself languidly. ‘* With the electric lamps behind me and that atmos- phere of moonlight and jessamine floating up from the garden I feel—sleepy!’’ she said. ‘‘ Talk to me about this queer, ultra-civilized, semi-barbarous regiment of yours, and wake me, dear boy!”’ To be told to talk arousingly is apt to put a padlock of dullness upon the most eloquent lips. Yet fortunately he was too sure of the interest of the subject she had sug- gested to become embarrassed. He was aware of being amusing and picturesque in certain narratives of a camp life, which, though covering only a fortnight, had brought curious experiences which delighted this young million- aire recruit. Mabel listened passively a while. But presently, with a thrill of all his pulses, he saw two tears creep down her pale cheeks. ‘“Why are you crying?’’ he whispered breathlessly. There had been nothing in his stories to bring tears— what then had brought them? She laid her white fingers on his brown hand. ‘Why should I not cry?’’ she faltered. ‘‘ Dear Tom! Isn’t the very air here full of tears, shed and unshed— hopes that may never come true—fears that may soon be despair! ”’ She paused, touching her throat as if it hurt her. Hitherto her undisturbed serenity had been the one fault his eagerness had found in this ‘‘ queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls.’’ Could it be that the thought of his going away and that possibility which, perhaps, awaited him ‘*Mabel!’’ he gasped. She dropped his hand and arose. ‘IT want to cry, but I shall do it alone!’’ she half sobbed, half laughed. ‘‘ Don’t think too much of any- thing I have said.”’ ‘‘T think always of what you say,’’ he stammered. ‘* Nothing in the world matters so much to me——”’ ‘* Tom, dear,’’ Mrs. Norval called as she approached, ‘‘here is Major Blount, an old friend of your father’s, whom I wish you to know.”’ In the ensuing medley of greetings and reminiscences Mabel vanished, and when Mrs. Norval sent a message asking her to return, the answer came that she could not be again seen that night. Mede, too, was reported to have gone back to camp, and Norval, after a little, set out to follow him. The breeze was fresh, the moonlight tropically radi- ant. Norval’s watch assured him of half an hour’s unexpired leave, and he strolled seaward along the shin- ing sands. The tears on Mabel’s cheeks—the passionate pain of her broken words — what did they mean? Though she was his mother’s favorite niece, yet, owing to her long sojourn with an aunt in Europe, she had been only a childish memory to him until a few months since. A difference with her guardian regarding her marriage to a French noble had brought the orphan heiress to New York and Mrs. Norval’s care. But brief as their actual acquaintance was, it had sufficed to fill his head with the dreams, his heart with the longings, of a first love— none the less pure and reverent because the path of pleasure had been early open to his feet, and he had scarcely known a wish ungratified. Blessed night! To-morrow, whether their orders to embark came or did not come, he would find opportu- nity and daring to—— He halted. Just ahead of him a man lay face downward on the beach, and the clear light revealed to him at once that prostrate figure to be Mede. ‘“Mabel! There
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OS Tampa, though vigorously policed, had been stained by several deeds of violence during this military possession, in which lawlessness closely elbowed patriotism. It seemed a living man must have stirred at the approach of his swift steps in that solitary hour and place— yet Mede lay motionless! Norval dropped on his knees and touched his friend’s shoulder in a panic which vanished hilariously as Mede sat upright and stared at him dazedly. ‘* Lieutenant Mede guilty of disobeying the order against sleeping out of camp!’’ he laughed. Mede stumbled to his feet and leaned an instant upon the stalwart arm which was flung about him. ‘““What ails you, old chap?’’ Norval asked tenderly, for Mede’s face was white, and the look in his dark eyes hurt the lad who was fond of him. But Mede stood erect. “Incipient rheumatism and other incurable inheritances of our weak flesh,’’ he answered with a self-scornful laugh. ‘‘T would have you understand, young man, that reproving your superior officer is as serious a military offense as out- staying your leave —of which you seem also guilty.’’ “T’ve a quarter of an hour yet, Lieutenant,’’ Norval replied, saluting with exaggeration of gesture. There was never any use in trying to force an explanation Mede did not intend to give, and the present need was to get a fellow, who had nearly died of Roman fever last winter, under shelter from this beauteous, malaria-haunted night. Who had nearly died of Roman fever! With that memory flashed before his mind a picture of nights as beauteous and as malaria-haunted when he had listened to the ravings of burn- ing lips which muttered more or less coher- ently a story they never would have uttered consciously —a story in which recurred again and again a woman’s name which Norval had vowed to forget, feeling that to remember his friend’s secrets thus revealed would-be little less shameful than eavesdropping. Yet now that name echoed as sharply through his thoughts as though Mede had repeated it. ‘*Mabel! Mabel!”’ Two speechless men walked rapidly to camp, and, except for password and report, neither spoke until in the doorway of his tent Mede held out his hand. ‘* Nobody knows better than you how to be eloquently silent,’’ he said smiling. ‘‘ Good- night, old fellow.’’ A moment later Norval entered his own tent which, as throughout the troopers’ quarters, was divided among four. Solitude was impos- sible, and he endured the first vigil of his expe- rience to the music of three deep-breathing pair of lungs, so near that he could have touched each slumberer with an extended arm. During the previous December he had ful- filled an old promise by meeting Mede in Rome, and had been shocked by the worn looks his friend had brought from a sketching tramp in the Pyrenees. Mede’s irritable efforts to push on their sight-seeing had ended in a com- plete collapse and the doctor’s verdict of Roman fever. Many days elapsed before he regained consciousness, and Norval, listening to his de- lirious talk, realized that a passionate humilia- tion yet more than the fever was consuming him. At Pau it appeared that Mede had known a girl named ‘‘ Mabel,’’ a beauty, an heiress. Daily meetings had thrown them together in the intimate society of that gay little ancient city, and she had shown him such sweet pref- erence that he forgot an interpretation which might be set on the pursuit of her wealth by his poverty. It was forced upon him the morning after a ball where the confession of his love had been almost uttered. Summoned to an inter- view by the girl’s guardian, he was informed that the fortune which attracted him was re- eutanara SHIPPER GALER ? THE SATURDAY EVENING POST But now that he had seemed to avoid her, she was unlikely to seek him; and Mede assuredly would not risk tiie possibil- ity of self-betrayal to the girl he believed had humiliated him. When the morning at last slipped rosily through the tent doorway and its occupants prepared for the early swim which was their single luxury, Norval’s comrades discovered with surprise that certain usual pranks were received with sul- lenness. How should they guess that this new sullenness was an unacknowledged shame that in the midst of their rough and jovial loyalty he had resolved upon a course which savored of dishonor? In a few days at most, war with all its possibilities would have forced Mabel and Mede yet further apart —if only one who was the confidant of neither withheld a secret which chance alone had trusted to him. In the camp of the Rough Riders repeated breaches of discipline had made leaves very difficult to obtain. When, however, Norval that afternoon sought Mede, whom he found writing in the Adjutant’s tent, the needed indorsement of his application for a leave until midnight was scrawled with- out demur. But he was recalled as he passed out. **Tom! Make the most of your time,’’ Mede said, not lifting his eyes from the troop accounts which he was copy- ing. ‘‘All leaves are likely to be canceled at any moment.’’ served for one who offered in exchange some- thing more worthy than an artist’s vague hopes; that his devotion offended the happier aspirant, and, finally, as proof that the girl united with her guardian in demanding his withdrawal, some sketches he had given her were returned to him. Too cruelly hurt to question, Mede had left Pau the same day, and a week later Norval was listening to his broken repetition of his tragedy. During Mede’s slow convalescence Norval had so guarded any betrayal of comprehension of his extreme de- Pression that he managed half to forget the details of its cause. Thus, when many months later, amid very different Surroundings, he heard that his cousin had spent part of the preceding winter in Pau he did not identify her with the Mabel of Mede’s ravings —until to-night. Long before the coming of the summer dawn he under- stood it all, fitting fragments of knowledge together as rapidly as one fits the pieces of a puzzle when chance has set them side by side. He understood that not only Mede had been betrayed by Mabel’s guardian that December morning in Pau— witness Mabel’s subsequent rejection of the noble suitor the guardian desired to force upon her and her present visit to Tampa, where she must have known that she would meet Mede. With what a thrill of awed hope Norval had read his mother’s announcement that Mabel insisted upon accompany- ing her to say good-by to him—and with what bitterness he guessed the purpose which had really brought her there! Whether or no she divined her guardian’s treachery, she had made a throw for happiness by seeking a meeting with Mede. —yet Mede lay motionless ! ‘* Hurrah! ’’ Norval cried gayly. ‘‘I suppose messengers will be sent to the various hotels?’’ ‘ Mede nodded. An instant Norval hesitated, reading the stern melancholy of that resolutely bent profile. ‘* Shall you come up later?’’ “‘T think not. I have no special good-by to say as most of you have, so I offered to take extra duty. Will you tell your mother this for me?’’ A curiously breathless haste sent Norval along the hot white street, when he had left the camp, at a speed which made other wayfarers stare. | Mrs. Norval and Mabel were awaiting him in their shady sitting-room, and silence fell upon them when he announced that this was probably his farewell appearance. But his mother was a brave woman who did not intend to shadow her son’s inevitable departure with the sight of her in. ‘* Don’t go, Mabel,’’ she exclaimed as her niece arose; “‘ if this is our last until next autumn, I mean to enjoy it thoroughly—you shall sing my favorite songs, Tom, while Mabel plays for you.’’ She had set them a task easier than talking. A couple of German ballads in’ Norval’s edel Stimme, as his teacher called his robust barytone, sounded through that corner of the hotel, and then, in the midst of the passionate pathos of auf wiedersehen, Mabel’s hands left the keys and covered her face. ‘ Norval grew white, and the tears his mother had withheld slipped down her cheeks. ** Dear girl! ’’ she cried with her arms about Mabel. ‘‘ We must be brave as well as he!’’ But Mabel put aside her embrace. ‘* Forgive me, dear!’’ she sobbed. ‘‘I am ashamed! It isn’t only for Tom! It is—I half believe it is that I am lonely here where every other woman—like you, Aunt Frances—must be brave for some one—and no one needs my courage enough to give me strength to—to ”” She broke down completely, and, while his mother caressed her, Norval walked to the window. Words steadily spoken an hour since echoed in his heart. ‘*T have no special good-by to say as most of you have, so I offered to take extra duty.’’ Who was it possessed the secret of the misunderstanding which interposed between those two souls which yearned to each other in this atmosphere of fond farewells? Who was it but a miserable fellow selfishly unequal to the generous réle thrust upon him? A knock rang sharply and Norval, opening the door, con- fronted a bell-boy with a card, on which a dozen lines had been scribbled. ‘Our orders have come. There will be a scramble for the transports and our Colonel doesn’t mean to be left behind. Report at camp within an hour. Waiting here on special busi- ness with Major Blount, who has gone for a ride.’’ Norval stood motionless with his back to those watching women, who, breathless as was their suspense, did not divine that this was the vital moment of his existence—whether the days before him should be few or many! ** Tell Lieutenant Mede that Mrs. Norval will see him here at once,’’ he said, at last, some- what thickly and closed the door as the boy departed. ** Our orders to embark have come! ’’ he cried, facing two pair of wistful eyes. ‘‘I am given for an instant, mother.’’ ** Your orders have come!’’ Mrs. Norval re- peated faintly, while Mabel walked to the door as Norval had guessed she would on hearing of Mede’s approach. He kissed his mother’s trembling hand. ‘* Give him a very little of our precious time, mother dear,’’ he murmured. ‘‘ He has no one of his own to tf She nodded speechlessly and Norval opened the door for Mabel. ‘‘ I shall return presently,’’ he said and followed his cousin. She stepped from the corridor out upon a ve- randa and paused beside the threshold to gaze back down the corridor along which Mede’s tall figure was advancing toward the sitting-room. If Norval had doubted the meaning of her tears, her broken words, that doubt would have vanished before that gaze of the lovely, miser- able eyes which saw him not. “Mabel!’’ he exclaimed, drawing her aside with a rougher grasp than he was conscious of, ‘*T have a story to tell you.’’ She started. She remembered him. ‘*No, no!’’ she faltered. “It is no use, dear!’’ His lips quivered. “* This is not my story —I’m only the teller of it,’? he muttered hoarsely. ‘* Listen! ’’ He clasped her fluttering hands —his pained, steady gaze held her as closely, though she would fain haveturned away. This boy, whom she had teased and tyrannized, had become a man whose will compelled her obedience. ** If a fellow discovered a treasure which be- longed to two of his friends who had lost it, and he kept the discovery to himself, that fellow J would be dishonored—would he not?’’ he cried. ‘‘ I’ve been that fellow since last night, but I am going to the war, where dishonor can have no place—and my friends shall find their treasure.’’ He broke off with an unsteady laugh. ‘IT am not good at parables or at stories; but I can tell you plain facts! Before Mede left Pau sosuddenly last December your guardian had sent for him, insulted him because of his poverty and your wealth, announ your engagement to the Prince de Soligny, and assured him that it was by your de- sire that she requested a cessation of his acquaintance, as his devotion annoyed the Prince.’’ Mabel’s hands fluttered no longer. A light flashed in her eyes which dazzled Norval to a strange faintness. She lifted Norval’s hands and kissed them one after the other. ‘* Best boy in all this world, come back and be as happy as you deserve some day!’’ she cried radiantly. ‘‘ And now — send him here to me quickly, for these blessed moments are so terribly few! ’’ An instant later Norval met Mede as he was leaving the sitting-room. ‘*Go to the veranda!’’ he gasped. ‘‘ She is waiting for you.”’ Twenty-four hours afterward Norval, from a corner of the crowded transport deck, where he had found a tiny solitude, confronted the future with a resolute cheeriness which would achieve sincerity. “It was a hard bit of road, but it is behind me,’’ he teld himself steadfastly. ‘‘ And their faces even when good-by was said will be good to remember—as good, I dare say, as anything I shall see in Cuba!” an hour more with you, and Mede will be here yposern2 aa Xda eee ies oe we EPSRSE DAE IRS a OCS IR ME ERIS LER HEL SS: SS
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PHOTO. BY ALLEN AYRAULT GREEN camps and battlefields swept Northward to homes that were eagerly waiting for words of assurance from the ‘‘front,’’ the ‘‘ distributing post-offices’’ were flooded with tons of letters. This epoch passed into postal history as the Great Mail Blockade. It was not a passing incident, however, for in the throes of its necessities was born the Railway Mail Service, which now employs almost ten thousand men, and is one of the swiftest and most highly developed machines in the whole mechanism of the Federal Government. Its installation marked a new era in the move- ment of business and in social intercourse. The running of the first ‘‘ traveling post-office’’ over the old Dixon Air Line Railroad in Illinois, in August, 1864, was a significant and successful effort of the American mind to keep step with the swift pace of modern progress. If the economy of time effected by this simple means were struck from the business calendar of the United States to-day, the world of affairs would feel the shock almost as keenly as if every telegraph and telephone instrument were suddenly stilled, and the cry would go up that the country had been set back a hundred years. Practically every phase of development which this great forwarding agent has evolved was foreseen from the start by the man who faced the famous mail blockade in the Chicago post-office in the days of the Civil War, and who there devised the plan for distributing the mails as they were being whirled across the country toward their various destinations in every nook and corner of the land. Of the millions of persons who are daily beneficiaries of the genius of the ‘‘ Father of the Railway Mail Service,’’ few outside of the postal ranks know the name of George B. Armstrong, and those are mainly such as have chanced to pause before the bronze bust which stands just inside the main entrance of the Chicago post-office and have read this inscription on the granite pedestal: To the Memory of George Buchanan Armstrong, Founder of the Railway Mail Service in the United States. Born in Armagh, Ireland, October 27, A. D. 1822. Died in Chicago, May 5, 1871. Erected by the clerks in the service, 1881. The struggle which he waged against the stolid incredulity of the business public and the chilling conservatism of the Department at Washington was pitiful and heroic, but with- out bis unwearied devotion to his ‘‘ new idea’’ the business world of to-day would have been deprived of a benefit which it could only appreciate through its temporary loss or impair- ment. It is a far cry from the Burlington’s famous Overland Fast Mail—the ‘‘ greyhound’’ pet of the service—back to the crawling local accommodation train which carried the crude rack of pigeonholes constituting the first United States postal car. The former makes the run of 482 miles from Chicago to Council Bluffs in nine hours and fifty minutes. It requires a,uniform average of more than four-fifths of a mile a minute. Often the speed is actually much greater than this, and long stretches are frequently covered at the rate of seventy-five and even eighty miles an hour. What this speed means can be adequately measured only by the marvel-struck senses of a novice making his observations from the cab of the mon- ster engine which pulls the four cars at this terrible pace. Little is generally known of the men who are working the mail in the cars drawn by the great Mogul. As they may certainly be considered typical of the service, a glimpse into their life, its humors, hardships, perils and rewards, will give a fair insight into the routine of the railway mail clerk’s labors. The two cars nearest the engine are filled with sacks and pouches stacked in pens or stalls. This is ‘‘ storage’’ mail which has been ‘‘ worked’’ before reaching the fast mail. The stall labeled Manila is generally more than W ce the great flood of ‘‘ soldier mail’’ from Southern “ - ee ee THE SATURDAY EVENING POST Stories told in the By Forrest Crissey full and runs into its neighbors —the stalls that are labeled San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Tacoma, Hongkong and Honolulu. The mail for the soldiers in the Philippines is large. The Scene The scene in a working car of the fast in a Fast mail is not materially different from that 2 in any full mail car of the modern type. Mail Car Light is a first consideration, and this is furnished in unstinted quantities by means of a close-set row of quadruple gas burners similar to those of the standard sleeping car. Cases of pigeonholes, reaching from a low ledge toa point as high as the average man can reach, occupy one end of the car from the side doors forward to the door inthe end. This is where the letters are ‘‘ worked.’’ The remainder of the car is given over to the paper distribution. On each side, in iron racks, is a triple row of sacks and pouches, which hold their mouths open to their full capacity and at the same time show the labels which indicate their destination. Above these racks, and attached to the arching roof of the car, are two rows of little sloping bins into which papers may be thrown, to be sacked later. A long table with removable top occupies the centre aisle. The old-fashioned railroad stove, which scored so many terrible catastrophes, clung long and tenaciously to the railway postal car, but has now been practically driven from the service so far as the working cars are concerned. It is still used, however, in the storage cars. Steam-heating pipes and ‘‘ safety’’ heaters are more commonly used. The busiest clerk in any crew or car is the one who is detailed to receive and throw off the sacks and pouches. His station is between the side doors at the end of the letter rack. His mind must completely grasp the time problem. The stations, as they shoot past like rockets, must all be noted by this vigilant clerk, and if the train is deviating from its schedule he must figure out to a certainty the problem of mail connections and adjust his action to the new exigencies and conditions. A failure to pick up or throw off a pouch of mail means a severe reprimand. But there is still another form of trouble which threatens the man at the door of the mail car. To lift a heavy mail sack and throw it from a car moving at the rate of a mile a minute is a matter of good target-shvoting. ““Looks easy enough,’’ commented one of the veteran clerks at the letter case, ‘‘and it does seem as if a man should be able to hit a station platform without much diffi- culty; but you see that station is passed and gone in about one second. Then, the suction of a train running at this speed is something terrific, and until the knack of throwing a pouch is learned a man is liable to feed the wheels with a few letters. ‘* But,’’ he went on, ‘‘ that isn’t the worst that can happen to the man at the door. I’ll never forget the night when poor Billy started in to receive and discharge. We were hitting the rails at a hot clip and things were busy at the letter case, making up the way mail, which was heavy. Just PHOTO, BY ALLEN AYRAULT GREEN : 4 i Postal Car as we were passing a station where a branch line picked up mail for a busy section of the country, I glanced up and saw Billy lift a heavy pouch. He had done the thing before and didn’t avail himself of the brace—the pole which stands a little back from the door and runs down from roof to floor. The track curved a trifle right there, and at the instant Billy threw the pouch the train gave a lurch—and out of the door he shot head foremost after the pouch! Of course that was his last run; but it taught the rest of us to use ordinary caution and take a good brace when throwing mail from a train under full speed.’’ He was interrupted by the head clerk, who handed his guest a letter inscribed in a manner at once undecipherable but familiar. ** Can’t make it out?’’ he continued. ‘‘ Oh, it’s easy when you know how! Just take it back to the little mirror above the wash basin, at the end of the car!’’ Seen in the glass the inscription became instantly legible, as it was written backward. “You never know how many smart and capable people there are at large until you get into this business. There’s another variety called the ‘slant writer.’ Here’s a specimen of his art’’— and the clerk quickly wrote on paper a line of graceful characters suggestive of letters, but illegible at first sight. A chance turn of the card, however, brought the char- acters at a proper angle with the eye, and the words ‘‘ Railway Mail Pests ’’ were immediately made plain. The Poetical Pests of the Service ‘* Talk about pests! ’’ exclaimed another clerk, ‘‘ you don’t get the real thing until the poetry section breaks loose on you. Didn’t know there are hundreds of per- sons in this enlightened country who can’t take their pen in hand without breaking into poetry? Well, it’s literally true. Simply addressing a letter sets their poetic sensibilities going. Here is an example of what we get by the score.’’ He drew from a pigeonhole a letter bearing the following metrical inscription: “ This letter is to Mrs. James Townsend, And tell her that ’tis from a friend ; Send it to Hebron, her ‘ P. O.’ address — Her State is Jowa, I confess!’’ ‘* This poet,’’ continued the clerk, as he replaced the letter and began tying up his case, ‘‘ is uncommonly considerate, for he has drawn a line under the name of the person, post- office and State, helping us to pick out at a glance these essentials from the superfluous stuff.’’ The clerk who had come in from the car ahead remarked: ‘* One of the best examples of envelope poetry I ever saw has been copied in Captain West’s office. There is some genuine character in it. This is the way it runs: *** John Smith, the Hoosier scrub, To whom this letter wants to go, Is chopping cordwood for his grub In Silver City, Idaho.’ ‘* There’s a whole hard-luck story in those four lines!’’ he added. Then the head clerk checked the even stream of letters pouring into his case and said: ‘‘ There’s another just as good on record in Captain West’s office. It has the right ring to it— something like this: “*Carry me away at a rapid rate To Marshall County, Indiana State; In Bourbon post-office let me lie ; And if Susie McGuff should happen in Just hand me to her and see her grin!’ ‘‘l’ve always wondered, however, if Susie really did grin when that letter was handed out to her! ’’ A momentary halt at a railway crossing brought con- versation. to a stop; pouches and sacks were pitched out of the side door and others received in their places. The = 2 _ NS ee ee
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PHOTO. BY ALLEN AYRAULT GREEN receiving clerk unlocked the padlock of each pouch and deftly slipped from the holder the label bearing the stamp of the clerk who had made up the pouch, the title of his run, his train number and the date on which the work was done. Each of these little slips of Manila paper was carefully spindled. Then the pouch was emptied into a big armchair and the first process of “‘ working’’ began. Packages of letters for through points were thrown directly into the gaping mouths of their respective pouches, while those for intermediate destinations were tossed directly to the men at the letter racks. The deftness with which these small packages are separated and distributed into the pigeonholes is suggested by the picture of a veteran card player dealing for a game when the tension is high and the players impatient. The hand which shoots the letters into the tiny apartments of the case has the same nervous, pulsating movement, the same rhythmic regularity as that of the experienced ‘‘ dealer.’’ Occasionally there was a pause at the ow Clerical H letter cases and a clerk called out: “ lowa, Errors are Buckingham — anybody know that?’’ Checked Up ““ No good.” ““ Ves, ’tis!’’ ‘Look it up’’—and the head clerk tossed the Iowa scheme-book to the man in doubt. This official volume con- tains the name of every post-office in the State and the route by which it is reached —either the railway line on which it is situated or the post-office from which it is served by stage- coach line. ‘“Into the Nixies’’ is a decision which consigns the mis- sive to a pigeonhole containing letters which are hopelessly misdirected, and which are sent to the Dead Letter Office at Washington. The first thing put into a pigeonhole of the distribution case is a ‘‘ facing slip,’’ bearing the abbreviated name of the post-office of the destination to which all letters put into that hole are addressed. More frequently the name is that of the railway line by which they are to be forwarded. The clerk who “‘ ties out’’ this package puts his stamp upon the slip. Each package is handled separately at the letter table, in order that any letter improperly placed in a package by the clerk or postmaster who tied it out may be checked against him by the man detecting the error. The mistake is briefly noted on the back of the facing slip which came with the package, and the name of the clerk making the correction, and the stamp of his run or railway post-office, are placed as a signature. This gives a complete record of the whole error and the slip is sent to the division headquarters of the crew, whence it is forwarded to the headquarters of the clerk who has made the blunder. There it is charged against him in his ‘‘ car record,’’ which, together with his standing at the periodical examination he is compelled to take and his gen- eral work record, determines his standing and his chances. It is a slow run when the crew of the Overland Fast Mail, ‘‘ No. 15,’’ does not throw eight hundred packages of letters and three * hundred sacks of papers. This is done by seven men working from four o'clock in the afternoon to eight o’clock in the morning. Then they begin work again at two THE SATURDAY EVENING POST o’clock in the afternoon of the same day and reach Chicago again at a little after two the next morning. This constitutes a week’s work for the crew—and the man who does not think it sufficient service should attempt to stand on his feet for half that time in one of the lurching cars of the Fast Mail! The mental demands made upon the clerks are more appalling to the uninitiated than are the physical re- quirements. A clerk of the lowest grade who runs on the Fast Mail—a ‘‘ $900-man’’ — must be ‘‘ up on 12,000 cards.’’ In other words, he must have memorized that number of names of post-offices and the routes whereby they are most quickly reached. Scores of men in the service are, each quarter, put to the test on a knowledge of 10,000 to 17,000 ‘‘ cards’’—as the hypothetical en- velopes are termed—and maintain a standing of more than ninety-five. One man recently examined on 17,000 cards came out with a general average of 99.44. This showing is by no means phenomenal. Few clerks who have passed the probationary period are unwilling to stand an examination on at least 6000 cards. Constant additions to the fund of names imprinted in the memory of the clerk are required. With the passage of a given period he must memorize the names of a certain number of offices in a section of country prescribed by his superior officer. This implies hours of faithful and diligent. application at home while resting ‘‘ between runs.”’ Among the questions invariably asked by the layman this is generally foremost: ‘‘ Do you ever have curious experiences arising from the loss of letters?’’ And the answer is always in the affirmative. No incident of this character could be more finely typical of the Railway Mail Service than is the authentic story of one of the first ‘‘ traveling post-office’’ cars. This was one of the remodeled type made to meet the exigencies of the Civil War. Its first run was between Cairo and Chicago, and it went into commission when the soldiers in the field were sending almost as many letters home as they were firing shots at the enemy. More than twenty years after the close of the Civil War the cld car was condemned, mustered out of service and dis- mantled. Between the inner and outer walls of the car, im- mediately under the “‘ letter slip,’’ was found a nest of letters which appeared strangely out of place and out of time. They were time-stained and of curious shapes and textures, which gave a hint of the period to which they belonged. At once the Division Superintendent of the Railway Mail Service undertook to deliver these letters, which had been in transit, plying back and forth across the prairies of Illinois, for more than two decades. Only one was heard from. This had been addressed to Miss B , in Joliet. An official letter from the postmaster of that city brought the information that the letter was successfully delivered, by carrier, to the woman for whom it was intended. It had been written on the field by a soldier and mailed direct into the car by a com- rade. Before it was delivered the young man who wrote it had passed through many battles, had returned home and married the schoolgirl to whom he had hurriedly written from the front. When the missive was finally placed in her hands and she broke its yellowed folds she was surrounded by a group of children who had come to the home to which the young soldier had taken her as soon as he was mustered out of the service! None of the others was heard from. Their loss was made possible by the opening of a crack in the “‘ letter slip.’? This opening had then been closed by the action of the weather and by dust and dirt before it was discovered. PHOTO. BY ALLEN AYRAULT GREEN As an organization the Railway Mail Service is remarkably simple and effective. The Second Assistant Postmaster- General is at the head of the service. This position is now held by Mr. W. S. Shallenberger. General Superintendent James E. White is the official next in rank. Under him are an Assistant General Superintendent and a Chief Clerk. These officials are located in Washington. Under them are the Divi- sion Superintendents in charge of the eleven divisions into which the Union is divided. Each official of this rank is located at the main point in his division, but has lieutenants at other important railroad centres in his territory. These are called chief clerks and are the men in authority with whom the clerks come directly in contact. They recommend scheme changes, alterations in railway time-cards and increases in pouches, and they also hold examinations. Every clerk must be examined at least once a year. The lower grades have much more frequent examinations. The results of these tests, together with the record of the checks (or errors), and his general work, determine the rating of each clerk. The service is divided into five classes below the executive rank. The lowest receives $900 a year and the highest $1400. The Board of Promotions at Washington does not permit the Division Superintendent to make recommendations for pro- motion, but he is required to give, along with the certified records of men of highest standing, a history of the service rendered by each candidate. Strict civil service is the rule of the railway mail organization throughout. The probation leading to a regular appointment is often a long one. First the general civil service examination must be passed. From this certified list substitutes are chosen to do extra-work at the rate of $800 a year for the actual time on duty. Next comes a probationary appointment as a ‘‘regular sub.’’? Then follows an elevation to the ranks of the regulars at a salary of $900 a year. Discharge can be made only for cause. Instances Many instances of heroic devotion to of Heroes’ duty on the part of railway mail clerks might be given. Mention of this phase Bravery of life in ‘‘ the service’’ seldom fails to bring out the story of the clerk who, in a terrible accident near Stuart, Iowa, found his head jammed against the ‘‘ cannon stove,’’ which was almost red-hot. Although the flesh was literally burned away from one side of his face he refused to leave the scene of the wreck until the nearest postmaster could be brought to give a receipt for the registered mail in his hands. His devotion has been rewarded by promotion to a responsible position, but his mutilation was so terrible as to make his life almost solitary. On another occasion the mail car was dumped into the bed of the river and the clerk in charge of the registered mail was badly mangled, but would not stop to have his wounds dressed until he had reéntered the partly submerged car and rescued the precious pouch of ‘‘ registers.’’ Cowardice in the service is practically unknown. Though all possible precautions to insure safety are taken and every mail car is especially constructed to prevent telescoping and is rigorously inspected, the life of the railway mail clerk is undeniably one of constant peril, exact- ing work and frequent hardship. The Fast Mail. Photographed by Allen Ayrault Green while the train was running eighty miles an hour. The train took its own photograph by an eiectric device invented by the photographer, who is standing by the side of the track Sr a hb hw bahei EAL Oe es
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“— it fell with a thud” THE SEARCH FOR THE WATCH DON’T think I’ve had a pen in my hand —except when I | wrote a note to Berri—for at least two weeks. In the first place, I left in such a hurry to meet the family in New York that, among the various things I forgot to pack at the last minute, my diary was one. (Even if I had taken it, I probably shouldn’t have found time to record all we did.) Then, as I was with Mamma and Papa and Mildred during the entire vacation, there was no necessity for writing letters. They left early this afternoon and I’m a good deal of a wreck for several reasons. But I’d better begin at the beginning. I didn’t go to Washington with Berri. The family natu- rally wanted me to spend the holidays with them; and I couldn’t help feeling that, if I refused Berri’s kind invitation, he would be much more likely to stay part of the time at least in Cambridge and write his thesis. In a way, I was right; for when I told him I simply couldn’t go with him, he said sort of listlessly : ‘* Well, then I suppose I ought to stay here and finish that thing, oughtn’t I?’’ which was an optimistic way of letting me know that it hadn’t even been begun. I didn’t know what to answer exactly, because if I’d agreed with him he would have thought me unsympathetic and looked hurt, and if I had advised him to let the whole matter slide and forget about it and have a good time (which was, of course, what he wanted me to do), I felt sure that he would eventually blame me for giving him bad advice. That’s Berri all over. Sol merely remarked: ‘‘ You’ll have to be the judge; it’s too serious a matter for any one else to meddle with,’ and felt like a nasty little prig as I said it. He was restless and gloomy after that and took a long walk all alone, during which I’m convinced that he very nearly made up his mind to stay in Cambridge and slave. I say very nearly —because he didn’t bring himself quite to the point of telling anybody about it. But the next afternoon (college closed with the last lecture of that day) when I turned into our street on the way to my room, there was a cab with a steamer trunk on it standing in front of our house, and as I opened the front door Berri and a dress-suit case clattered down the stairs. He stopped just long enough to shake hands and exclaim: ‘* Good-by, Granny — have a good time— I left a note for you on your desk. The train goes in less than an hour.’’ Then he rushed out of the gate and jumped into the cab, slam- ming the door after him with that sharp, thrilling ‘‘ Now they’re off!’’ clack that cabs—and cabs only — possess. That was the last I saw of him until I got back here this afternoon. ‘ New York was a pleasing delirium of theatres and operas and automobile rides up and down Fifth Avenue, with just enough rows between Mildred and me, and Papa and me, and Mildred and Mamma (the other possible combinations never scrap) to make us realize that the family tie was the same dear old family tie and hadn’t been in any way severed by my long absence. It took us three days to persuade Mamma to ride in an automobile—a triumph that we all lived bitterly to repent; for she ever afterward refused to be transported from place to place by any other means— which was not only inconvenient, but ruinous. She justified her extravagance by declaring that, in an emergency, she preferred to be the smasher rather than the smashed. I met lots of fellows I knew on the street, and some of them took me home with them to luncheon, or to that curious five-o’clock-sit-around- and-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-the-cup meal they call ‘‘tea.’? Meeting their families was very nice, and I felt as if I knew the fellows ever so much better than I did in Cambridge. One incident might have ended in a tragedy if I hadn’t to preserve a certain letter of Mamma’s. (‘‘‘ Never write anything and never burn anything.’ Isn’t_ it THE SATURDAY EVENING POST The Diary of a Harvard Freshman By Charles Macomb Flandrau Talleyrand who tells us that?’’—as the friend of Berri’s aunt would say.) It was the real reason of our spending the last two days of the vacation in Boston, and came about in the following way. One day at luncheon (we were going to a matinée after- ward) I glanced at my watch to see how late we were, and Mamma noticed, for the first time, that I was carrying a cheap nickel-plated alarm-clock sort of an affair instead of the gold-faced heirloom that has been reposing for lo, these many weeks in Mr. Hirsch’s pawn-shop. Since our meeting she hadn’t referred to this painful subject, and as I hadn’t become used to the dollar watch on the end of my chain it never occurred to me to say anything about it. That day she looked at the watch and then at me, and finally she mur- mured, ‘‘ Why, Tommy!’’ with the expression of one who seems to see the foundations of Truth, Respectability and Honor crumbling to dust; and she finished her luncheon in silence—breathing in a resigned kind of way and studying the tablecloth with eyes like smitten forget-me-nots. On the way upstairs I lagged behind and Mildred said to me: ‘*Mamma has on her early-Christian-martyr look. What on earth’s the matter now?’’ But I was unable to enlighten her. Mamma had known from the first that the watch had been pawned; I couldn’t imagine why she was so upset. All was explained, however, when I went to her room. Some time ago she had sent me a draft for thirty dollars. It came in a cheerful letter (no letter containing a draft for thirty dollars is sad) about nothing in particular. I remem- bered that at the time the postscript had puzzled me, for it said, ‘‘ Of course I have told your father nothing about this,’’ and there was no clew in the body of the letter to what ‘‘this’’ referred. The draft wasn’t mentioned. It seems that Mamma was under the impression she had written me several pages on the evils of extravagance, the horrors of debt, and the general desirability of redeeming one’s watch as soon as possible—which she hadn’t at all. Not being a mind reader I assumed that her draft was a spontaneous out- burst of maternal esteem, had it cashed with a loving, grate- ful heart, and spent the money in three days. Therefore, when she caught sight of my tin time-piece (it keeps much better time, by the way, than the heirloom ever did) she had distressing visions of me indulging in a perfect carnival of embezzlement, and finally ending up with shorn locks, striped clothes and a chain on my leg. I never realized before that the human brain is perfectly capable, under certain circumstances, of harboring two dis- tinct beliefs at the same time—the truth of either one of which necessarily excludes the other. (There is probably a more technical way of stating this; but I haven’t got that far in my philosophy course as yet.) Now, when I solemnly declared to Mamma that she had never mentioned her draft in connection with my watch or anything else in fact, I am sure she believed me. She said she believed me and seemed greatly relieved. But on the other hand, although she knew I was telling the truth, and rejoiced in the fact, I am certain that she was unable at the same time to abandon her equally strong conviction that she had written and sent precisely the letter she had intended to. I don’t pre- tend to explain this mental phenomenon and I discreetly refrained from discuss- ing it with Mamma, for in the midst of our talk I began to have a dim, delicious suspicion that her letter was at that mo- ment reposing in my inside pocket. (When I'am away from home I always carry several plainly addressed letters in order that there may be as little trou- ble as possible in case anything should happen to me. I remembered having put the letter with the postscript into my coat pocket instead of my desk, as I wished to refer to it when I next wrote home.) So when’ Mamma finally said, ‘* Well, I believe you,’’ and then added with an air of abstraction, ‘‘ But I wish you had saved that letter,’’ I thrust my hand into my pocket, glanced at several envelopes, and exclaimed dramatically as I showed her one of them: ‘‘Madam—your most idle whim is my inexorable law.’’ Then we all went to the matinée. But that wasn’t the end of the watch. Mamma made me give her the pawn- ticket and insisted on going home by way of Boston for the purpose of redeem- ing it herself. The reason of this change in the family plans was not ex- plained to Mildred and Papa; but they were docile and seemed to think it would be very nice to see my rooms befote leaving for home. There was no opportunity to visit Mr. Hirsch yesterday — the day of our arrival in Boston—as we spent most of it in exploring Cambridge. But this morn- ing while Mildred was packing and Papa had gone to see about tickets, Mamma —with her head swathed in a thick black veil—and I slipped out to go to the pawnbroker’s. I have an idea that by going herself instead of simply send- ing me, Mamma had a vague but noble belief that she was rescuing me, somehow, from moral ship- wreck. And then, no doubt, the mere fact of one’s venturing out incognito, as it were, to wrest ancestral relics from usuri- ous fingers, is not without a certain charm. : Well, of course we met Papa at the door of the hotel. The ticket office was just around the corner and he had engaged berths and tickets with a rapidity that was as unfor- tunate as it was incredible, for he greeted us with, ‘‘ Start- ing fora walk? I’m just in time,’’ and proceeded to join the expedition with evident pleasure. Mamma lingered uneasily on the sidewalk a moment and then said: ‘We're not going for amusement, dear; we’re going to shop. You know how that always tires you.’’ But Papa, who was in good spirits at the prospect of leaving for home, quite unsuspiciously ignored the suggestion and replied cheerily : ‘Well, I think I’ll go along: I might want to buy some- thing myself.’’ I exclaimed, ‘‘ How jolly,’’ in a sepulchral tone, and we started. Now, Mamma in the réle of a gay deceiver is sublime. The fact that she is trying to play a part, and perhaps setting ‘‘an awful example,’’ makes her miserable, although she sometimes succeeds in concealing the fact until afterward. I saw that we were in for a delightful morning and would probably end by missing the train. We loitered unscrupu- lously in front of shop windows—apparently entranced by everything, from hardware to cigars. We sauntered in and out of countless dry-goods places in quest of dark-blue ribbon of such an unusual shade that Boston had never seen its like. We paused for half an hour now and then to inquire the price of diamond tiaras and alabaster clocks set with rhinestones. We bought a bouquet of frost-bitten roses (I had to carry it) from a one-armed man, and tarried to hear his reminiscences of life in a saw-mill. We went to pianola recitals, phono- graph exhibits, and assisted at an auction sale of bar-room furniture. And Papa wearied not. Mamma and I were nearly dead, but he not only wasn’t bored —he seemed to be having the time of his life. We couldn’t devise anything too silly and futile and tiresome for him to enjoy, and as the time before the train left was beginning to grow ominously short, Mamma at last resorted to heroic measures. I don’t think she had formed any definite plan when she abruptly led us into the subway; but our going there was probably not unconnected in her imagination with the bound- less opportunities for losing one’s self in the sewers of Paris or the catacombs of Rome. The subway may or may not resemble these historic places; I’m sure I don’t know. But at any rate, after we had been there five or six minutes we lost Papa. We all three had stood aimlessly watching the cars whizz up to the platform and away again into the subterranean dusk, until Papa (this was his first sign of impatience) mildly remarked: ‘‘ I think, dear, that as you and Tommy seem to be rather attached to this place, I’ll buy a news- paper.’’ Then he strolled off, and Mamma clutched me. We watched him approach the news-stand and pick up a maga- zine. His back was partly turned.
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‘‘It’s our only chance,’’ said Mamma hoarsely, with a half-guilty, half-affectionate glance toward the news-stand. ] understood and, seizing her hand, ran with her to the nearest car. An instant later we were buzzing through the bowels of the earth in quite the opposite direction from the pawn-shop. d To tell the truth, the only thing I knew about the locality of Mr. Hirsch’s establishment was that we should never reach it unless we got out and took a car going the other way. This we did, and when I thought we had gone far enough on the return trip and we emerged once more into the daylight, we seemed to be miles from the place—the only place— from which I could have found my way. So we jumped into a cab and told the man to drive as quickly as he could to that place. (I had to describe it at some length, as I don’t as yet know the names uf many streets here.) He was very intelli- gent, however, and it wasn’t his fault that, after we had jolted along for four or five blocks, the horse fell down. We left him lifting one of the poor thing’s nervous hind legs in and out of the tangled harness. He looked as if he were trying to solve some kind of a gigantic, hopeless puzzle. We hurried on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I suddenly discovered that we had been in the right street all the time. It was one of those queer streets that never look familiar when you’re going the other way. I confess it took a great deal of courage to impart this discovery to Mamma; but she appreciated the fact that we had very little time to lose, and didn’t stop to point out to me that if I ever become a busi- ness man I’ll be a failure. The horse was on his feet again when we got back to the cab, so we jumped in once more and after an interminable drive (half of me was out of the window most of the time, like a Punch and Judy doll, directing the cabman) we finally drew up in front of the pawn-shop. It was then that we really distinguished ourselves. ‘*T’ve come for my watch,’’ I said to Mr. Hirsch. He gave me the look of a bird of prey. It reminded me of an eagle I had seen once —an eagle that had been stuffed by an amateur. He held out his hand and spoke a solitary word. Mamma’s face—in the excitement of the moment she had pushed up her veil—became dim with horror; her features for an instant were positively incoherent. ‘* The ticket?’’ she whispered gropingly. ‘‘It’s in the bottom of my trunk.’’ Mildred and Papa and a group of porters— peering up and down the street like a concourse of Sister Annes—were on the curbstone in front of the hotel when we got back. The baggage was piled on a wagon; Papa looked haggard and years older than when I had last seen him, and Mildred gave us a haughty stare as we alighted. Mamma was hustled wildly from the cab to the carriage, and I had time merely to peck hastily at their tense faces and gasp good-by. As the carriage swung around the corner, Mamma appeared for a moment at the window exclaiming, ‘‘I’ll send it to you in the first letter,’’ and then sank from view. This afternoon when I returned to my peaceful little abode in Cambridge, who should be in his room but Berri. He was at his desk, bending earnestly over a big pad of thesis paper. ‘* You’ve finished it, after all,’’ I said, for the floor near his chair was littered with neat manuscript. THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 9 ‘Yes, it’s finished; fifty beastly pages of it,’’ Berri answered as he jumped up to meet me. _I wanted to ask him all about it—how he had managed to do it during the gaye- ties of Washington, and if it had taken much time. But he said rather wearily : ** Oh—don’t let’s talk about it; I’m so sick of it,’’ and began at once to question me about my trip to New York. We chattered for about half an hour and then I got up to go into my own room and unpack my trunk. Thesis paper isn’t like the ordinary paper on which themes are written; it has a margin on all four sides, and as I had never used any I went over to Berri’s desk to examine a sheet of his. ‘‘ Why, you’ve had the thing typewritten,’’ I exclaimed; for there was a pile of typewritten notes in front of the thesis paper. ‘‘ Why don’t you hand it in that way instead of copy- ing it again? Your hand is so hard to read.’’ Berri wrinkled his forehead in a queer, annoyed kind of way; then he looked confused und blushed a little, and finally he gave an uncomfortabie laugh. ‘Oh, Granny—you’re so brutally guiicless,’’ he mur- mured. ‘‘ Why can’t you just see and understand things. It sounds so much worse than it really is when you make me say it in so many words.’’ Even then I didn’t aitogether grasp the situation. ‘You mean that somebody heiped you?’’ I asked. That didn't seem to me worth making such a fuss about, somehow. ‘Well, that’s a very refined and ladylike way of putting it,’’ he answered. ‘‘I got a man in the Law School to write it for me, and paid him ten dollars for his trouble.’’ (Continued on Page 19) Masters of Men By Morgan Robertson SvyNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERS— Richard Halpin was in no mood for even his own company. The position in which he found him- self was his excuse. Four years before he had left town, expelled from school, injured by his mates, ignored by Mabel Arthur—the girl in whose behalf he had brought all his troubles on himself—and in dis- grace with his guardian. Eager for anything, he had then jumped at the first opening and enlisted as apprentice in the navy. During the years of training and growth that followed it had always been upper- most in his mind that he owed it to himself to clear his name and to punish the four bullies who had helped to cloud it. With this thought steadfastly before him he had won preferment in the eyes of his officers, and now, at the end of his term, was picked to ship with Ensign Breen for. service in foreign waters. His liberty time he had chosen as the best moment for a settling of old scores. The present, accordingly, finds him at Allville, with twelve companions of the service to see fair play. First of all, though, he wanted to see little Bessie Fleming, who, when Mabel had ignored him, alone had found the courage to believe in him. But he had not counted on meeting Ensign Breen at her house. it was the mortification of this encounter which had left him doubtful of his motives and dissatisfied with himself. FOURTEENTH CHAPTER ICK found his men in the hotel, noisy and talkative, [) surrounded by an admiring crowd of villagers. One glance told him the situation. ‘‘ Hooray here, Dick, me lad!’’ called the red-faced man behind the bar. ‘‘I know ye by reputation. Ye’re Ned Bronson’s best lad, and I’m his best friend. Step up here, Dick, and have one wid me.’’ ‘Thank you,’’ said Dick savagely; ‘‘ I’m not drinking; ’’ and then, to the others: ‘‘ I don’t need you— not a blasted one of you. Breen’s in town—I’ve just seen him. Do you want to go in the brig?’’ “It’s all right, Dick,’’ they protested. ‘‘ We had just one apiece. That hurts noone. This is Morrisey’s place ——’’ ‘“ As many as can toe a line,’’ interrupted Dick, ‘‘ I'll use —no more. Fall in.’’ They formed a line, every pair of toes just touching a crack in the floor. H “Count fours,’”’ called Dick. ‘‘ One,’ said the first; the next called two, the next three, the next four; then they again began at one, until the groups of four were numbered. “Twos right—march!’’ he called, and as they formed double column and marched through the door, Morrisey whooped and ran for his coat and hat. Dick saw, by the clock over the new city hall, that he had fifteen minutes to spare before the closing bell of the school would ring, and as this time was: ample he marched his guard by roundabout streets, so as to avoid a possible meeting with Mr. Breen. On the next street was the school. Dick wheeled them . around the corner, and halted them in open order, a file on each side, with himself at the head. The bell in the cupola above clanged its dozen strokes and ceased. Then the same old janitor of four years back emerged from the basement stairs at the side and threw open the doors of the girls’ entrance. With a curious glance at the two lines of blue he passed along and opened the entrance for the boys. In a few minutes, laughing, shouting youngsters of both sexes —the junior department — emerged and hovered near the sailors, curiosity silencing their noise. Next came the senior department, boys of between thirteen and sixteen, and pretty, graceful girls, most of whom Dick remembered as ‘‘ young uns’’ in knickerbockers and short dresses. They passed through and around the waiting blue jackets with curiosity scarcely less than that of the juniors, and halted with the spectators beyond. Then appeared the high-school scholars—ladylike young girls and well-dressed young men, who paired off here and there, and stepped briskly down toward the gauntlet. They were closely scru- tinized by Dick as they passed, but none recognized in the young man at the head of the lines the schoolmate of the Past. It was for him to make himself known. He placed himself before a heavily-built young man, in gloves and Copyright, 1901, by The Curtis Publishing Company buttoned overcoat, whose full mustache had almost disguised him. ‘*Stop,’’ he said in a voice that was almost a snarl. ‘‘ You’re Tom Allen, aren’t you? Yes— Tom Allen. Know me? No? You don’t know me. I’m the thief and thetelltale. I’m Dick Halpin. I’m here to repeat what I told you once before— Tom Allen, you —are—a liar.”’ FIFTEENTH CHAPTER ay HA—what? Eh? Hello, Dick. Didn’t know you. When d’you get back?’’ said Tom, too surprised to com- prehend Dick’s attitude. “‘That’s not the question,’’ answered Dick. Tom understood. ‘* Let me alone,’’ he whined, but Dick struck out with all his strength and Tom staggered toward the blue jackets. ‘‘ Pass him through,’’ called Dick. With yells and laughter they passed him through. Tom, in a state of unstable equilibrium, chasséd down the line, kept from falling by the alternate blows he received from either side. Before he had received the last and floundered to the sidewalk beyond, Dick, realizing the magnitude of the task he had set for himself, bounded toward the waiting group at the gate. Confronting him was the stern-faced Mr. Clark, his old teacher. “Is this you, Richard Halpin?’’ he said menacingly. ‘* Stop this at once, or I shall send for the police.’’ “Yes, Mr. Clark,’’ answered Dick; ‘‘ and as you’re too old for me, I advise you to keep out. I’ve started to lick the gang that licked me, and I’ll do it, too. And if you call your police they’ll get hurt —that’s all.’’ ‘*He won’t lick me,’’ said a tall, broad-shouldered and well-dressed young man, who stepped to Mr. Clark’s side. It was Will Simpson, the boy who, at sixteen, had thrashed a man; and he was removing his outer garments. Dick, with wide-open eyes, waited until he had hung them over the fence, then asked: ‘‘ Ready?”’ ‘‘ Yes—ready; always ready,’’ answered Will dryly and composedly, bringing his two big fists to position. But before they were quite in position —almost before the last word had left his lips— Dick had planted both fists between his eyes. Will staggered against the fence, recov- ered and rested. ‘* Any more?’’ cried Dick in an abandonment of reckless- ness. ‘‘ Webster—Scanlon! Here—take care of this one in case he wants more.’’ These two advanced, lifted the demoralized Will Simpson to his feet and escorted him to the ranks. Dick, with flashing eyes and dilating nostrils, the battle-fever in his soul, pushed through the scattering, agitated group at the gate and caromed into a white-haired old gentleman whom he knew as the high-school principal, but who had no knowledge, past or present, of Dick. ‘* Stand clear, sir,’’ he cried to the shocked old gentleman; ‘““I’m reforming your school. Ned Brown, Tom Brandes,”’ he muttered. ‘‘ Are they here?’’ Up the street, toward the country road, was a group of scholars of both sexes, and among them, as he looked, Dick recognized the faces of the two he had named—tall young fellows who had the appearance of being able torun. He ORAWN BY GEORGE Gises —and down the street . were three policemen with drawn clubs, coming on a run could catch one, but not the ation: Turning the other way he beheld Mr. Clark and the high-school principal hurrying past his shipmates. An indignant crowd surrounded the sailors, and down the street —two blocks away — were three policemen with drawn clubs, coming on a run. Dick gtasped the situation at a glance. ‘‘ Devlin— Kerrigan,’’ he called, ‘‘ come here. Look out for the cops behind you, boys. Clear out. Turn those fellows loose and muster at the station at six.” Devlin and Kerrigan arrived. They were joyful of soul, and possessed besides the additional qualification of good records in the Cob Dock footraces. ‘* Boys,’’ said Dick, as he pointed up the street, ‘‘ see that long-geared fellow in the derby hat and short overcoat, near the tree? That’s Ned Brown. Get him. He’ll run, but get him. If he wants to see me, bring him over to that tree over there. If he don’t, tap him once for me and meet us at the station—six o’clock. Understand? No mistake, now. I'll get my man, and that’ll finish up. Come on now.’’ Away they went on a keen run, and the boys ahead of them scattered. Dick had chosen Tom Brandes, who waited for him behind a tree across the street, then, dodging as he : ' i ae ls a i
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SITET RRS 10 was about to seize him, sped diagonally across the ball- ground toward the village streets and his home. He was speedy, and Dick settled down to a long chase. SIXTEENTH CHAPTER ™ VOU have met him? Where? What is he like? Is he doing well?’’ Miss Arthur was asking. “‘He is doing very well,’’ said Mr. Breen dryly; ‘‘ very well, indeed. And not the least in retaining your interest so long.’”’ ‘* Please be serious,’’ Mabel Arthur answered with a hint of color in her face; ‘‘ I ought to explain. I feel responsible for his leaving home and school. We were only children, of course. He left under a cloud, and Bessie has always said that if he went to the bad it would be my fault.’’ In any face but that of Ensign John Breen the expression might have been a sneer; in his it was but a lukewarm smile. ‘* And Bessie is interested?’’ he asked. ““Of course; why, she believed in him when I did not. Later, it all came out. He was accused, unjustly, of steal- ing, and expelled from school. His uncle turned him out, and he went away. I have never heard from him since. I hope he is successful.’’ “‘He is. He is a seaman-gunner of the navy, now on the Vermont with me. He is one of the finest products of the apprentice system that I’ve seen—tall, athletic, refined in speech— educated, I’m told, almost to the requirements of a commission— handsome in a way, and a favorite with all hands —and the ladies.’’ ‘I'm so glad; and where is he now—in Vermont, did you say?”’ ‘On board the receiving-ship Vermont; but in town to- day.’’ ‘“‘In town? Here—in Allville?”’ ‘*T saw him two minutes before I called. He must have come up on the train ahead of me.’’ “Why didn’t you bring him with you? You know I should have liked to see him.”’ “You forget that it is two years or more since you expressed the desire; besides, I doubt that a sailor would care to make social visits with an officer.’’ “‘T understand the sarcasm; but I do want to see him. Where was he?”’ ‘* He was very pleasantly occupied. Had I been enjoying myself so thoroughly I should hardly have come on the instant —even had you sent for me.’’ She looked searchingly at. him, with inquiry in her face; and, after a moment’s musing, she said. ‘‘ But do you think you could induce him to——”’ “You would have me hunt him up, and extend your invi- tation? I will do so, provided he is on the street.’’ He arose as he spoke, and the lines of his face hardened a little. ‘No, no, I was thoughtless. You are an officer—he is a sailor.’’ **T am not in uniform.”’ ‘““No—sit down again. I will write to him.’’ “‘T should think,’’ he said dryly, as he seated himself, ‘* that a letter would answer every purpose.’’ ‘Sometimes I hate myself,’’ she said slowly, as she studied the carpet. ‘‘Do you know what I did? When he was disgraced and expelled? He stood outside when school let out, and he looked as if he had not a friend in the world; and every immaculate one of us snubbed him—except Bessie. I shall never forget the look in his face when I passed him.’’ There were decided tears in her eyes now, and all that Mr. Breen could say, in a rather strained voice, was: ‘‘ Bessie has a good heart—a big, generous heart.”’ “Indeed she has. And she was so indignant’ when she learned it all. It was a year later, for I went away to boarding-school, and we did not become friends until I got back. Neither of us knew at the time all that had happened. Why, there were five boys, all larger than he, who set upon him and beat him; and he was brave, and fought them; but there were so many—the great—big—brutes. Poor little Dick.’’ ‘Poor little Dick,’’ repeated the Ensign. ‘‘ Poor, big, broad-shouldered, iron-fisted, quicker-than-chain-lightning able-seaman Halpin. I shouldn’t care to be one of the five when he meets them. The other day, I was told, he lifted Big Billson—two hundred pounds—right off his feet with one blow. He’s a terror, poor little Dick.”’ She turned her face to the window, as if to hide the incon- sistent smile that was showing there. Then with an excla- mation she arose to her feet. ** Look! look!’’ she said. Mr, Breen was at her side in an instant. A wild-eyed youth with his hat in his hafd had rushed around the corner of the house from the back yard, pursued by another, who caught him at the foot of the front steps. “ There,’’ said the Ensign, ‘‘ is your poor little boy.’’ “Is that Dick Halpin, really? Isthat Dick? Oh, isn’t he changed! But what is he doing?’’ She looked with startled eyes at the pair outside. They were both panting, and one cringed before the other, who stood erect, holding him by the collar. Their voices could be plainly heard—one quavering with fear, the other angry and strong. **You’re not worth it, Tom Brandes,’’ Dick was saying; ‘* but to finish the job, you’ve got to take it.””. Tom lowered his head, but the fist did not fall.. Dick’s face had assumed a wondering, puzzled look as he glanced up and down the street, and it changed to one of certainty when his eyes rested on the front of the house and the two figures in the window. His grip loosened on Tom’s collar; the young man shook himself free, and fled through the gate, while Dick, with his flushed face a shade redder, and an almost defiant light in his eyes, drew himself to full height and brought his hand to his cap in stiff salute. Then he turned and passed through the gate, following Tom down the street at a walk. The Ensign THE SATURDAY EVENING POST had answered the salute, but Mabel had inclined her head and smiied before it was given. ‘* Was that one of the five?’’ asked the Ensign cautiously. She had left the window and seated herself in a chair. ‘Yes; I know them all.’’ ‘* Let me try to explain,’’ he said gently; ‘‘ he might have removed his cap, of course, to a lady; but I think he was embarrassed, and on the spur of the moment answered with the service salute.’’ ‘* He saluted you; he would not look at me. I deserve it, I know; but I would have explained—I would have apolo- gized. It wasdue him. Now, how canI?”’ ‘* Explain through Bessie — whatever it is. They must be very good friends. He visited there to-day. I saw him— on my way here.’’ ** At her house!’’ she exclaimed, standing erect; ‘‘ then that is why —what she meant—she expected company —she could not come over to-day.’’ As an officer and a gentleman must not tell all he knows, Mr. Breen may be excused in not naming himself as the com- pany expected. It might have involved explanations of the shortness of his stay. “She must have known all about him—all this long time,’’ she continued, as she paced the floor. ‘‘ It is the deceit—the deceit that hurts. But—I am a woman now, and it is due myself to atone for the selfish fault of a child — in the only way that is left me. You see him often. Will you say to him sts ‘Pardon me,’’ he interrupted. ‘‘ No, I cannot. I can have nothing but official relations with him. Oh, I would like to be a blue jacket,’’ he burst out vehemently, ‘‘ a nice sailor-boy, with a big fist and a big nerve and an interesting past.’’ ‘* Mr. Breen, what do you mean?’’ she said slowly. **T beg your pardon —really, I do,’’ he said, while his face softened. ‘‘I ought not to have spoken so, but, you see, I never before knew a sailor so far above par. I believe I’ll go, and not come again until I am on better terms with myself—that is, if I may.’’ “You will stay right here and have dinner with us. Father will be home in a few minutes. I insist.’’ SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER HE contractions of facial muscles known as smiles, grins, sneers and frowns are prompted by emotions varying from those of pleasure to those of pain and anger. Other changes of feature, such as result from surprise, grief or fear, though equally distinctive, have not been denominated. A few of them are duplicated in the faces of animals, but often from a contradictory cause. A dog and a hyena will grin and the latter will laugh, but not from a sense of humor; and these apparent inconsistencies and accidental variations in cause and effect have prevented science from classifying the relations between the emotions and the muscles as an exact study. In spite of this difficulty, however, one iconoclastic reasoner has attempted to trace the origin of the smile — which alone in the list may be considered a human attribute —by a backward flight to the days when our ancestors hung by their tails to the limbs of trees and were as dexterous with their toes as with their fingers, when the first law of Nature was in supreme force and the struggle for existence so bitter as to exclude all pleasure except that of eating—when, other things being equal, the individual who first got his or her mouth open was the one to close it on foud. Hence, says this reasoner, atose the habit of opening the mouth in good time; and the habit, coincident in performance with pleasure or its anticipation, has descended through the ages, and has produced, through evolution, the smile. The iconoclastic reasoner may escape a violent death, but he deserves to linger on in a loveless, smileless existence. For, with his logic, he would rob us of the sweetest favor of the gods, humanity’s universal flag of truce— welcome index of needful, though temporary, armistice in the never-ending warfare of individuals. He would take away the entrancing mystery of the dearest, most delightful of all life’s delusions —the smile of woman— which, even though we know that it is often a masked battery, we would not do without. It can bless us or blight us, but we are free agents with power of volition. We may accept or reject, risk or run; and woman’s radiant smile, like other radiant energy, decreases in force as the square of the distance. Mabel Arthur had again smiled at Dick, and the effect was revolutionary. In his hard masculine life the affections had not been largely developed. A warm and sincere friendship between himself and Bronson had found expression only in an absence of harsh words in their intercourse, a careless nod or cheery joke at parting, and a hearty handshake when they met again. Toward Bessie there had remained a kindly feeling of gratitude, which had led him to seek her—for further favors—on coming home. His weak-natured aunt had never been able to impress him strongly, and he stood now, as in his childhood, nearly alone in the world. It was due, perhaps, to this lack of diverting affections that the boyish admiration and homage which Mabel, as a school- miss, had inspired, had grown latently, as he approached manhood, into a feeling of an intensity past his own power of analysis. He was dimly conscious of its growth and its grip on his soul when Bessie teased him, and later, he had awakened more fully to a conception of its strength when he had seen his officer making for her door. Yet his consequent ill-humor on this occasion arose from a jealousy which he might have classed with the feeling once aroused in him when he had broken through a skylight at the ward-room dinner and had then gone forward to a salt-beef ration. But the sight of her, standing at the window in all her beauty of figure and face—the startled dark eyes, the crown of glossy hair, the tinted cheek and full white throat, the graceful inclining of her head and shoulders, and the tremulous part- ing of her lips that ripened, as he looked, to a bewildering smile of frank recognition—aroused in the sailor a knowl. edge of himself. But the knowledge came with a shock, and his involuntary attitude partook of the bitter defiance of his last meeting with her. He had not seen the change in her face which had prompted Mr. Breen to a chivalrous defense of his ungra- ciousness, and he went down the street with wildly-beating heart and trembling knee-joints, wrestling with the one phase of the situation that he could grasp—she had smiled on him, and greeted him from the window of her home. For the gentleman at her side—the commissioned officer —he cared nothing at present. Mabel had smiled on him, and by that smile had lifted him higher in his self-estimation than would an appointment to Annapolis. At the next corner he came to earth. He heard distant yells over the housetops, and the rousing chorus of a sea song that he knew. But that which had come to him pre. vented the words that would surely have arisen to his lips without it, and yet accentuated the frank distaste he now felt for the crowd with which he was identified, and for the mission which had brought them to this peaceful town, What would she think of him when it all came out? Yet she herself had once asked him to fight, and there was comfort in the thought. He could not mix with that crowd now—not yet—so he doubled around the block and out across the ball-ground, glad to find it vacant, and sat down on a rock at the side of the country road, where he overhauled his soul, calling back the past, planning the future and often shutting his eyes to see again the face at the window. His time in the navy would expire in a few months; he would be of age and could obtain the money that his mother had left him, and meet Mabel Arthur by right as the social equal of any Ensign in the American navy. Even a sailor in love, seasoned as he may be against exposure and warmed by the glow in his breast, may become chilled if he sits long on a‘cold rock, especially if the uniform of the day is ‘‘ blue without peacoats.’’ Yet the distant city hall clock had struck seven and the cold had reached his bones before he remembered that at six he was to meet the boys at the station. ** Hope they knew enough to take the train,’’ he muttered as he pulled himself together and started stiffly through the darkness. Under the first street light he studied his time- table and found that the next train for the city would pass through at nine o’clock. ‘‘ Plenty of time,’’ he said; ‘‘ it’s like pulling teeth to shake hands with the old man; but Aunt Mollie wouldn’t forgive me if I missed seeing her.’’ He went down the street, passed the schoolhouse and, a few blocks farther, crossed over to enter the street on which stood his uncle’s house. But in the middle of the street he stopped. He could look straight down to the business sec- tion of the town, brilliantly illuminated by the newly- installed arc lights overhead. Men were running about and an occasional shout reached his ears. He turned and hur- ried on, for he could distinguish, here and there among the running men, the uniformed figure of a shipmate. Two men coming toward him scurried across the street when they saw him under a street lamp, and Dick heard one say, ‘‘ There’s another of ’em.’’ Both looked worse for wear. He passed groups on the corners, and was stared at and given room. Uncomplimentary remarks and epithets came from crowded doorways, and a woman screamed after him: ‘* Why don’t you git out o’ this town, you miserable rowdy?” Paying no attention, he hurried on, passing the door of the police station, where three middle-aged men in shirt-sleeves and blue trousers with thin white stripes were expostulating with an older and grayer man in the uniform of police captain. On the next street, where stood the Salvation Army barracks and the brightly-lighted theatre, was the centre of excitement. Here he found Casey in the middle of the street, swinging a pug dog around by its leading chain as asailor would heave the lead, calling out, ‘‘ Watch, ho, watch,’’ with each revolution of the dog, and, as the poor brute landed, ‘‘ By the mark ten,’’ ‘‘ A quarter nine,’’ or any mark or deep of the lead-line that came to his mind. The boy owner of the dog wept in a doorway, and O’ Toole, flour- ishing a locust club, was threatening Casey with mock arrest, and dodging the dog. In front of the barracks were the others. The street was crowded with awestruck boys, and the sidewalks with well-dressed, respectable folk, most of them bound for the theatre, and some of whom were laughing at the spectacle; but Morrisey, the tutelary genius of it all, was not in evidence. EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER mR B dees deuce to pay and no pitch hot,’’ growled Dick as he faced Casey. ‘‘ Dropit, Casey,’’ he said; ‘‘ belay that; let the dog go.’’ ‘*Hooray!’’ yelled Casey, obeying the order—the dog landed near its owner—and throwing his arms around Dick’s neck. ‘‘Here he is. Where ye been, me jewel? Did they kill ye at all?’”’ ‘No sound, no ground, no bottom to be found, with the long pitch-pine pike-pole, Daddy,’’ howled Shannon, vaulting between them on the end of a long pole. ‘‘ Can ye take soundin’s on the Erie, Casey? This way.’’ He stabbed the pavement. ‘‘No sound, no ground—hello, Dick. Here’s Dick!’’ : They seized Dick by the shoulders and pushed him, unre- sisting, over toward the others, while O’Toole prodded them with the club. ‘Stop this!’’ he yelled, shaking himself free. ‘‘ Stop it, or you’ll get the worst of it. Come on, now, down to the station —all of you.’’ Dick retreated to the sidewalk and @ dignified old gentleman tapped him on the shoulder. He knew him. It was Mr. Arthur— Mabel’s father. ‘* You appear to be sober, young man,’’ he said. ‘‘ If you can control those fellows and induce them to leave town, do
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=. ae = a. oe So ome aon lu =— | . «hee See so; if not, as mayor of the town I shall call out the firemen. They can attend to them if the police cannot.’’ ‘‘ Excuse me, sir,’’ answered Dick in some embarrassment __for the halo of Mabel’s divinity hung over her father — ‘(but if you do there will only be some heads to mend. I can’t control them now—not yet. They’re three sheets in the wind and wouldn’t take orders from an admiral. But wait a little and I’ll get them away.’’ ‘‘Chief,’’ called the old gentleman to the gray-haired police captain who stood in the crowd, ‘‘ call out all the companies and send the foremen to me.”’ Three minutes later, with a clanging of bells and scattering of boys, two engines, two hose-carts and two hook-and-ladder trucks clattered up to the corner from different directions, and Dick, expostulating with his shipmates, who were forming for parade, observed two six-foot foremen in fire helmets and water-proof coats hastening toward the mayor. He also joined him. ‘Now look here, sir,’’ he said excitedly, ‘‘ there’s no use in this. They’ll resent dictation and some one will get hurt if you use force with them. I can keep them from doing any harm. Leave it to me and I'll march them to the station.’’ The mayor regarded him seri- ously, as though disposed to believe him; but another man, pushing through the crowd, interrupted him just as he was about to speak. ‘*What’s up,- Mr. Arthur?’’ he asked. ‘‘ Want tosprinkle ’em?’”’ ‘‘Why, yes, Jenkins, I had thought of it—or else throwing them out of town by force. I called your men, but as chief you are entitled todirect. This young man advises delay—thinks he can manage them.’’ ‘“Manage nothing,’’ answered the other, regarding Dick con- temptuously. ‘‘I’ll give ’em a bath for the fun of it and drive ’em afterward.’’ ‘* Suit yourself, Jenkins.’’ ‘All right,’’ said Dick angrily. **You’ll be sorry for it, I promise you. I’ll stand by my mates.”’ He hurried to them where they were regarding with mild interest the preparations for their undoing. They seemed to have forgotten their idea of parade. ‘** Break —scatter—clear out,”’ yelled Dick; ‘‘they’re going to turn the water on you.’’ “* Going to what ?’’ they answered in chorus. ‘‘ Going to turn water on us? Are we afire? Going to wash us? Why not holystone us? —Billson, shut off steam there; silence that fog-horn o’ yours. Scanlon, beat to quarters! Repel boarders! All hands repel board- ers! Keegan, desist. Stand by for a rakin’ fire from forrard.’’ Even as they declaimed the two companies were rushing their en- gines and hose-carts in opposite directions to the hydrants at the next corners, the carts paying out hose as they went. The hook-and- ladder men remained by their trucks. Two pipe-men at each hose coupled on the heavy brass nozzles, waited until the engines whistled and sang out in answer. Men passed the word along the two lines and water came—a deluge of it, in two solid streams, which struck the procrastinating blue jackets and knocked most of them down, while the crowd cheered. Although a wetting has little effect on the health of a sailor, it invariably adds to his discomfort and combativeness. They arose, much soberer than when they fell, charged on the nearest nozzle and wrested it from the firemen, who fled, followed by the stream which, first circling overhead, generously soaked the spectators on the side- walk. Leaving two in charge of the first nozzle, they charged on and captured the second—the pipe-men speeding out of range like the others. Then, while the fire- men, who had so far regarded the matter as an enjoyable frolic, were reorganizing with their oncoming reinforcements — which included the three police- men—the two streams were turned on the spectators, chang- ing their derisive laughter to cries of anger, and practically washing the street clear of them. But the firemen, dead in earnest now, were coming back, CRAWN BY GEORGE GIBBS ‘nearly two dozen strong, armed with spanners, hooks, fire- axes, spare nozzles and trumpets. They had thrown off their cumbersome water-proof coats and, drenched to the skin, advanced inch by inch against the two streams, which the yelling sailors held at their breasts. Then they deployed to the right and left, flanked and disconcerted the moist battery, and advanced more rapidly to what promised to be a bloody THE conflict, disastrous for the sailors. To add to this promise, there were coming back from the rear wet and angry citi- zens, who had secured sticks and clubs ranging in size from canes to cart-stakes; but, in fact, only one serious conflict occurred. It was between a sailor and two big: hook-and- ladder men, who had advanced with fire-hooks, the long points and barbs of which make them as wicked weapons as boarding-pikes, but which, to their credit, they used as clubs. The curriculum of navy-drill provides for this war- fare, and a well-trained blue jacket with a club in his hands has the same advantage that a skilled fencer has with the sword. Untouched by the lunging strokes of his opponents, the sailor whirled his light hardwood foil—a condemned billiard cue— punched, parried and cut with it, but little by little was forced backward, away from his friends and into the crowd of indignant townspeople. He would not have fought thus unequally had not his ship- mates been interfered with. At the beginning of it three men had run along the wet sidewalk, turned into the street and hastened past the fighters toward the groups at the nozzles, as the place of most serious trouble. Two were They were both panting, and one cringed before the other, who stood erect, holding him by the collar the mayor and the chief of the fire department. They waved and ordered the firemen back, and the third man, young and well dressed, sprang among the sailors, shouting: ‘*Stop this, men. Stop it at once. I am an officer. Lower those nozzles—down to the ground. Stand on them. Instantly! Do you hear me? Turn off your water, gentle- men,”’ he called to the others; ‘‘ my side will obey.’’ They had obeyed him; some recognized Mr. Breen, and all knew the unmistakable accent of an officer accustomed to authority. They saluted and answered respectfully. Shouts were passed around the corners and soon the water ceased to flow. ‘‘ Fall in over here at the curb,’’ ordered Mr. Breen sternly, ‘‘ and give an account of yourselves.’’ SATURDAY EVENING POST If ** Can’t we help Halpin, sir,’’ asked Casey anxiously as he fitted the grummet to his cap. ‘* He’s gittin’ killed.’’ Mr. Breen turned and looked, just in time to see the fight- ing sailor struck on the forehead with a piece of stone flung from across the street. Flourishing the half of his broken stick, he staggered and fell. The officer hurried over, fol- lowed by the sailors, but before they reached the prostrate figure Mabel Arthur was bending over it. NINETEENTH CHAPTER “3 ABEL—Miss Arthur,’’ said the officer gently, as he touched her arm; ‘‘ here is your father.”’ Mr. Arthur almost dragged her back through the crowd, scolding her all the time in a most shocked and fatherly manner. ‘“Why are you here? Going to the theatre with Mr. Breen? Um-humph. Might better have remained at home, on this occasion, with the streets full of rioters. I haven’t dated go to dinner.’’ ‘* But, father,’’ she stammered, ‘‘it is the boy—Dick Halpin; you know—you remem- ber. The boy who went away, and —oh, father, come back. I want to be sure that he is not seriously injured.’’ Her father humored her, and the crowd parted for them to make their way back. Dick was hurt, but not seriously. Mr. Breen held him by one arm and Shannon by the other — not to support but to curb him; for he was muttering to himself and was not yet responsible. ‘* Fall in here, men,’’ called Mr. Breen. ‘‘ Double column, with Halpin between you. Webster, I know you; take my place. I hold you and Shannon responsible for his safe delivery on board the Vermont. Halpin, you are under arrest. Make way there, please. Forward— march.’’ ing him tightly, and his bodyguard changed to a guard of arrest, Dick was marched through the streets toward the station. But Shannon and Webster need not have held him. He was tractable and harmless, for the transient light.of Mabel Arthur’s smile had gone from his soul. The Ensign hastened after, and the crowd gradually dispersed, except for a small contingent that jeered the sailors on their way. On the station platform, where Mr. Breen halted them to wait for the train, Morrisey appeared with his silk hat on an even keel —sober-faced and anxious in manner. ‘*T know yer an officer, sir,’’ he said to the Ensign, saluting him in the way that only man-of-war’s men acquire. ‘‘I’m Tim Morrisey, late quartermaster of the Kearsarge, and I want to say a word for the boys, and Dick there. Dick’s a good lad, as ye must know, sir, and all he wanted was to do up the gang o’ school bullies that killed him once, and he brought his mates to help him. Plase be aisy on ’em, sir. Now, will ye sind Dick over to my hotel under guard, sir, and I’ll clane him up, so he can go aboard presint- able like, and not fall foul o’ the master-at-arms?’”’ ‘I will consider your request,’’ Breen replied; ‘‘that is all I can say.’ Morrisey drew over toward the boys — not to talk; he knew better — but to encourage them by his presence and sympathy. ‘* Webster—Shannon,”’ said Mr. Breen. ‘‘ Take Halpin over with this man and attend to his wants. Halpin, will you go on board to-night if I give you your liberty?’’ ‘* Yes, sir,’’ said Dick, rising to his feet and saluting. ‘*And the rest of you. Do you all belong to the receiving-ship?’’ ‘Yes, sir,’’? they answered; ‘all of us—we’ll go aboard, sir—we want dry clothes.’’ ‘Very well, go along. You need not report to the execu- tive officer, Halpin. I will attend to your case myself when I come on board.’’ ‘Thank ye, sir,” said Morrisey; ‘‘I consider this a personal favor, sir.’’ Mr. Breen went back to spend the rest of the evening, at the Arthurs’. He had managed his share of the proceedings without getting wet, and was still a well-groomed, present- able young man. Next morning’ the baker’s dozen of sailors presented them- selves to the Vermont’s surgeon in the sick-bay. (TO BE CONTINUED) With Shannon and Webster hold- i i PR BROT i ‘ |
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Site Sec ag Lee GEORGE HORACE LORIMER, Editor THE CuRTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA 421 to 427 Arch Street SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 1901 $1.00 the Year by Subscription 5 Cents the Copy of All Newsdealers The Saturday Evening Post is the olest journal in America, having appeared regularly every week for the past 173 years, except for the short period when Philadelphia was in the hands of the British Army. The magazine was founded in 1728, and was edited and published by Benjami Franklin, in whose day it was known as The Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1765 the publication passed into other hands, but its name continued until 1821 when it was changed to The Saturday Evening Post. The magazine was purchased in 1897 by The Curtis Publishing Company. R ag ohoews BREWER, of the Supreme Court, declared in a lecture at Yale that the “‘ jury system, as at present administered, is little more than a relic of a semi-barbarous age.’’ When such strong words come from so eminent a jurist, can there be any surprise that citizens do everything they can to escape jury duty? This seems to be a case where the law-makers have an opportunity to achieve a great reform. @ ICHARD CROKER comes back to America to resume his place on the Tammany throne. Possibly there is not room in England for two kings, and so the American monarch, who exercises a more despotic power than Edward VII ever could or would, returns to the land of the free and the home of the brave. His coming seems quite necessary, for there is revolt in his kingdom, and Tammany needs his strong hand to restore harmony and confidence to its forces and to fight the monster known as reform. If he were not a living fact Richard Croker would be one of the interesting but impossible figures of political fiction. There are other bosses in America, but he is the boss one of them all. @ Gone of our scientists may soon tell us the relationship between statesmanship and baldness. Most of the leaders in our public life are distressingly short of hair. There are exceptions, of course, but the rule holds. In former years our statesmen were not bald. George Washington’s powdered locks, John Adams’ sweeping curls, Andrew Jackson’s precipitous pompadour, and even the long strands that fell in their disorderly way from the head of Lincoln, prove this. Of course, the country was not so large then as it is now, and they had no expansion, no trusts, and few bosses. There was fun enough in politics to keep the hair from falling out. Perhaps our modern statesmen are worrying too much, The only consolation is, that the bald- ness is only partial, and while there is hair there is hope. & NE reason why recent Congresses have vied with one another in money spending has been due to the change in the method of making the appropriations. Instead of the. central budget considering and limiting all expenses of the Government, different appropriation bills have gone to differ- ent committees, and of course an ambition on the part of each committee to get all it could was inevitable. Imagine a great railroad corporation allowing its different departments to name their wants, and then to combine with one another or to fight one another in the treasurer’s office. They would wreck the corporation within a year. But Uncle Sam is a liberal fellow and he allows the politi- cians to do just about what they please. The time must come, of course, when there will be a change, and when the respon- sibility for expending vast sums will not be so widely scat- tered. In other words, there must be a reform in Congress by which, among so many who are for their districts and for THE SATURDAY EVENING POST their own political advancement, there will be a few strong men who will stand firmly for the Government and for the taxpayers who support it. @ OME months ago the Commissioner of Pensions, in reply to our question, ‘‘ What do you estimate the probable pen- sion cost of the Spanish-American War?’’ said: ‘‘ In the light of the experiences of the past I am not estimating. The pension demands in 1878 were about $27,000,000. General Garfield then predicted that the pension roll had reached its maximum.’’ The pension roll at present is nearly twelve times that sum. The pension expenses of the Spanish-American War are nearly half a million dollars a year, and nearly forty thousand pension applications of Cuban and Philippine veterans have been received in Washington. Ina public statement Senator Hale, of Maine, declared that in the course of time the name of every soldier engaged in the Philippine War would be upon the pension roll. This may be exaggeration, but it shows the conse- quences of war. bo) Congress is something like a country house. It costs more every year to run tt. aS The Celtic Revival OR half a century and more, scholars in the British Islands and France, Germany and Norway have been decipher- ing the traces of an ancient civilization, to which Europe owed much of its emergence from the Dark Ages. On the margins of old manuscripts in German, French and Danish libraries were observed notes, or ‘‘ glosses,’’ in a language unknown even to German scholarship. By German labors mainly that language has been discovered to be the oldest existing form of Celtic speech, the Irish spoken by the great missionaries who founded Luxeuil, Bobbio and St. Gall. Naturally this has reacted on the national spirit of the Irish people, awakening a purpose to prevent the extinction of the old Gaelic speech of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. The educational policy of the British Government has been frankly to seek its extermination from both countries, with the result of teaching the young Gael to forget his native tongue. The rehabilitation of Gaelic as an important member of the family of Indo-Germanic languages has naturally stimulated those Scotch and Irish, who are masters of that tongue, to extend its use, to study its extensive and interesting litera- ture, and to imitate its saga-masters and poets in English story and song. There has grown up a whole literature of _ Gaelic spirit though of English form, and a large school of young poets and novelists is pervaded by this novel enthu- siasm. Nor is this a mere empty fad. This Gaelic litera- ture, although very different from Macpherson’s travesty of the Ossianic poems, has an atmosphere of its own. There is a charm of ‘‘ glamour ’’ about it which suggests the sad but beautiful history of the Celtic race. As Matthew Arnold reminds us, the Celt taught the Saxon what he knows of “‘the grand style’’ in literature. The Saxon has been the pioneer of human advance, but the Celt has followed with the refining influence of a fancy wedded to beauty, and fruitful in graceful and noble delight. The Celtic Revival has many sides. In the labors of the collector of folklore it has been rescuing from oblivion many of the artfully conceived tales which linger among the Highlands, and are still woven on fancy’s web in Western Ireland. In the field of philology and history it is investi- gating the structure of Celtic speech, and showing the influ- ence exerted by Celtic ideas and poetical forms on the intel- lectual development of Germans and Norsemen. In pure literature it is creating a national Irish theatre, and is fos- tering the imagination of a whole school of young poets and tale-writers, of whom Fiona McLéod and William B. Yeates are the best known. In education it is establishing schools for the study of the Gaelic throughout Ireland and America, so that this ancient tongue is now taught in at least one school in every important city of our Northern States. w Tf all the patent medicine advertisements were true, Heaven would have to do something to encourage immigration. os The Elections in the Spring OR a great many years all the officers of nation, state and city were elected on the same day and often on the same ticket. The average voter had great difficulty in voting for the man he desired. As a partisan—as the American citizen usually is—he generally voted straight for the national and state candidates, but in municipal matters he wished to make his selections. The difficu'ty of doing this frequently —in fact, generally—led him to vote for all the party nominees—municipal as well as the rest. Thus, under the cover of the higher officers, many a gang of looters found its way into the municipal treasury. Some of the States adopted the plan of holding the munici- pal elections in October; but in this case all the strength was put into carrying the day, and the usual November election generally became an echo of the October contest. Then, in many States the separation was made complete by placing the elections in the spring. These have been going on in various cities and they will continue for several months yet, The experience has not been all that was expected. One election a year is about as much as the average voter wants to bother over. Thus it happens that the spring elections draw out only a small proportion of the voters, and, as a rule, are merely fights between local bosses and ward leaders. It is declared in various quarters that the spring elections have been sad failures. That sweeping statement, how- ever, by no means holds. If the people are genuinely inter- ested in a contest they will go to the polls, no matter how often elections are held. It is more the nature of the elec- tions themselves than the fact of their being held in the spring that keeps the people away. Of course, the double elections are enormously expensive, but that is a secondary consideration. we It is a waste of effort to say things about the train that has passed. ws Societies that Safeguard i tes QUITE a degree the growth of our national spirit may with fairness be ascribed to the growth of patriotic societies. The Sons of This, the Daughters of That, the Sisters and the Cousins and Aunts of the Other, the Great- Great-Grandchildren of Something Else, have been, and are, important influences in keeping our national pride aroused, Of course, we may good-naturedly smile at some of the extreme manifestations of the growing tendency toward the formation of patriotic associations, for in some cases the desire to form a new organization, along lines hitherto over- looked, has led to amusing results; and if the thing is to be kept up there is no knowing but that the Exclusive Order of the Families of Mound-Builders will yet appear. But the patriotic societies are, on the whole, a splendid influence for national good. Nor do they discourage any who are unable to belong to them. They but arouse a gener- ous emulation, in the hearts of these, to perform deeds on which new societies may be based. We shall have societies of the Spanish War, of the Philippine War, of the Cuban War, just as we now have them of our earlier wars. And already the newspaper men have swung into line with their society of correspondents who went to Cuba. In these societies, the man whose great-grandfather fought at Lexington finds himself the companion of other men whose ancestors fought in the great war that made us a nation; and such a man is bound to be a better citizen: he deeply feels a thrill of exultation in his Americanism; he feels a great pride in what his ancestor did, and on that account he is likely to perform deeds that will make his own descendants proud of what he himself does. In the future these patriotic societies may do an even greater good than they have thus far accomplished. The most serious peril of the future will come from the overweening power of money. Whether that power will be most dangerously exercised in the bribery of legislators, in the oppressive tyranny of trusts that have grown too great, or in some other development of the money power that is thus far unsuspected, none can as yet tell, but in one form or another the power of money will be our greatest menace. And it is well that, among our other forces for defeating or neutralizing that dangerous power, we shall have a mass of people who, feeling the keenest pride in the past history and glory of our nation, will be banded together in patriotic societies in which money has no standing. ws Probably men think less of co-education because they are more afraid of the competition. ew Commoners and Plutocrats HE dictionaries tell us that a ‘‘ commoner ”’ is one of the common people, as distinguished from the titled class. Having no titled class, no aristocracy, with whom shall we compare a man in order to discover whether or not he is a ‘‘commoner?’’ Moreover, this designation implies inferi- ority, however different may be the intention of the gentle- man who is now using it so freely. It does not mean the same thing as Lincoln’s phrase, ‘the plain people.’’ This is a term that we can all understand. The plain people are not necessarily commoners; they are distinguished by nothing except the absence of ostentation. The plain people may be rich or poor, educated or ignorant; they may be more or less worthy. As a matter of fact, the plain people compre- hend all sorts and conditions of men, and whereas to ‘‘ com- moners ’’ the idea of inferiority at once attaches, the ‘‘ plain people’’ suggests merely the mass; the term carries with it no odium, and implies the existence of no contrast with a defined higher class of special privileges. How, indeed, can there be any classes in a state where any line that should be attempted to be drawn between them would be quickly scuffed out of sight by the feet of those pressing upward in intelligence, capacity and wealth, “‘ virtue and talents?’’ There can be no classes in a country where the ‘‘ commoner ’’ of yesterday is the statesman, capi- talist, ‘‘ plutocrat,’’ if you like, of to-day. And great harm may be done politically and socially by the propagation of the idea that the people of the United States are divided into any other classes than these two, the worthy and the unworthy; those who have ‘‘ virtue and talents’’ and those who lack these characteristics. Even in the most democratic of European countries, England, the son of a farmer or 4 shopkeeper is discouraged in any desire he may manifest to occupy a higher social position, The idea of class or caste, in a form somewhat modified, is as firmly held in England to-day as it was ever held. Here, on the other hand, the greatest encouragement to effort and improvement has been the knowledge that the most desirable and the most sought- after things of life, together with the highest honors, are open to all without regard to birth. To disseminate a theory of caste is to impair effort and weaken ambition, and not even in the name of politics should an attempt to do this be permitted.
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Gen. Gordon’s Sunrise Review General John B. Gordon, one of the best-known ex- Confederates living, has a happy custom of which the world knows little. This is his ‘‘ sunrise review.”’ He was born in 1832, fought through the Civil War, was shot eight times, and rose from the rank of captain to that of lieutenant-general. He has been Governor of Georgia, Presidential Elector, and United States Senator. His home is still in Georgia, and he lives at the old plantation, near Atlanta. Here come men of letters, politics and finance to visit the Gordons when the General is not lecturing. Scattered out over the cotton field are the cabins of the negroes who work for the General, and the little chapel where Mrs. Gordon and her daughters teach Sunday-school to the colored children on the farm. Everybody on that place adores the General. It is their highest delight and honor to live under the old conditions and to bring up their children under them, and they still call themselves ‘‘the Gordon people.’’ The older ones teach the little ones that so long as they live with the Gordons they belong to ‘‘ the quality.’’ Every morning at sunrise, except during the unpleas- ant weather of the two winter months, General Gordon has his large old horse brought to the door for his morning ride. He sits in the saddle as erect as in the old days. Every hand in the field knows of the review, and before every cabin stands a little group of colored persons: the men clean and smiling, ready to go to work, the women “spruced’’ up, and every little child washed until it shines, with its woolly hair done up in a dozen little knots. ‘Morning, Giniral,’’ say all the men as they duck their heads. ‘* Morning, Boss,’’ say all the women; and every little piccaninny ducks its head to the ground and says ‘‘ Morn- ing, Boss,’’ as well as it can speak. The General replies to every one by name, asks after the children, how they are growing, and what their health is. Such is the ‘‘sunrise review’’ on the Gordon planta- tion. How Dr. Wheeler Learned of Uncle Tom Rev. Kittredge Wheeler, a strong figure in the Chicago ministerial crusade against vice, naively declares that he is entitled to neither praise nor blame for the “‘ fighting blood’’ that runs in his veins; that he is a reformer by inheritance, and couldn’t help it if he would. Once, when a parishioner asked Doctor Wheeler if he had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he answered ‘‘ No,’’ but his keen eyes twin- kled with unmistakable mirth. Finaliy he added: ‘My father was the one ‘ Abolitionist’ in St. Charles township, in Northern Illinois, in the days preceding the publication of Mrs. Stowe’s marvelous novel. When that came out a new epoch began in our family. Up to that time the fireside readings in our household had been con- fined to the Bible. But the publication of this heart- stirring story found a circle of open-mouthed children gathered about the fireplace while my father read aloud. The pauses were frequent, for he was compelled to make constant use of the wristband of his hickory shirt in dash- ing the tears from his overflowing eyes. Soon I learned that to be an ‘ Abolitionist’ meant to be hooted at on the street and persecuted on every hand. “Our little cabin became a regular station of the ‘Underground Railroad.’ Those evenings when we surpassed only by the nights when we heard strange tales from the lips of fleeing slaves.’’ THE SATURDAY EVENING POST laughed and cried with Uncle Tom, Little Eva and the other personages of the great story were In the study of this eloquent Chicago preacher, who was for many years pastor of a large church in Hartford, Connecticut, hangs the rung of a sawbuck which bears all the marks of long service; it is a practical reminder of the days when Doctor Wheeler almost literally sawed his way through college. His recreation is the study of Egyptology. In this field he enjoys a considerable reputation as an expert. A Miner’s Strike of Senatorial Ore A big, muscular, flannel-shirted and broganed young Irishman was toiling up a steep hill in Park City, Utah, about ten years ago, carrying some heavy timbers on his back. They weighed enough to tax even his brawn, and he was perspiring and puffing, when the owner of one of the Park City mines stopped in passing to say: ‘*Hello, Tom. Why don’t you get a pack mule instead of being one yourself?’’ ‘**?*Tis better for a poor man to be his own pack mule now and ride in a carriage later,’’ was the reply. This was ‘‘Tom’’ Kearns, common miner. He was digging ore eight hours a day, living in a cabin not much better than a shanty, and spending most of his time when ** off shift’’ in working on a claim of his own. Six years later there was a National Republican Con- vention at St. Louis, at which there was a fierce fight over the adoption of a plank favoring the free coinage of silver. The plank was defeated, and a body of Western delegates left the convention. The newspapers chronicled the fact that ‘‘ among the delegates to bolt the convention was the Hon. Thomas Kearns, of Utah, one of the millionaire miners of Park City.’”’ ‘*Tom”’ by this time was able to ride in his own car- riage, but his ambitions had barely begun to be aroused. He made investments in many mines and added rapidly to his already vast fortune; for his claim had developed into one of the richest silver and gold mines in the world. When Mr. Kearns gave $50,000 to found an orphanage in Salt Lake City, and $10,000 toward the building of a great new cathedral, he began to get a reputation for liberality. But the general public persisted in re- garding him still as only a common miner—lucky, but ‘* only a miner,’’ even though he began to build a marble palace in Salt Lake City as his ‘‘ miner’s cabin.”’ ‘“*Tom’’ was rapidly learning the intricacies of busi- ness and politics. It touched his pride to be continually taken as a joke, and he set out to show the people that he was a great deal more than ‘‘only a miner.”? He succeeded. When it was rumored during the summer that ‘‘ Tom”’ Kearns would like to be United States Senator, the report passed as a joke of the same order as other stories about him. The politicians patted him on the back, told him what a fine Senator he would make, ard suggested 13 MEN @ WOMEN OF THE HOUR fi, ee —ae Pen Doone aaa ———— that a contribution to this or that campaign fund would help his chances—and all the time they were winking at each other. The people in general smiled at the idea of ‘‘ sending a common miner to the Senate,’’ and laughed heartily at some of his cam- paign speeches. After the fall election ‘‘ Tom’’ made a formal announce- ment of his candidacy. Pitted against him were some of the most influential men in the State. One of the can- didates was a brilliant lawyer and experienced politician who was making his fight on his previous record in the Senate. Another was a millionaire banker with a powerful business and political backing. Still another candidate had the support of a coterie that for years had ruled the party in the State. There were half a dozen other aspirants, and the wiseacres, in making their predictions as to the result of the balloting, placed the miner at the bottom of the list. All the prophecies were ludicrously astray. The first bal- lot in the legislative caucus showed astounding strength for Mr. Kearns. On succeeding ballots he gained vote after vote that the other candidates had tried in vain to secure. They stopped laughing at him. The final ballot showed that Thomas Kearns, ‘‘ only a miner,’’ had won the Senator- ship and had outgeneraled the shrewdest and most ex- perienced politicians in the State. Such, in outline, is the unique career of Senator Thomas Kearns, who has arisen in ten years from laborer to law- maker; all in less than thirty-nine years after his birth in the little town of Woodstock, Ontario. He is of Irish parentage. Before beginning his career as a miner he was a farm hand in Nebraska. Now, among other things, he is a director in a newly organized railroad company, and is president of the construction company that is to build the road, In entering upon his career in Washington Senator Kearns realizes the handicap of his lack of schooling, but he is starting out with his customary determination to win despite all obstacles. One of his first acts after his election was to persuade his campaign manager, who is a successful lawyer and former newspaper man, to accompany him to Washing- ton to advise him on the legal phases of the matters that might come up for his action or vote. A Silver-Voiced Eaglet An interesting feature of the dramatic season that is just ending has been the rival presentations of L’Aiglon—one by the delightful American actress, Miss Maude Adams: slight, dainty, low-voiced; and the other by the great French actress, Madame Bernhardt, a woman full of fire and viril- ity, and with a miracle of a voice that can range through every phase of feeling and passion. Miss Adams, who has won her greatest fame in another wholesome play, The Little Minister, has been on the stage since childhood and is still in the twenties. She was born in Utah, and her real name is more ‘‘stagy”’ and ‘‘ roman- tic”? than the name that she assumed for the stage — for she is really Miss Maude ‘Kiskadden. Miss Adams is of quiet, home-loving tastes, dislikes to meet curiosity-seeking strangers, is an enthusiastic golf player and horsewoman, and has an intense love for flowers. She is a hard and~ methodical worker, a close student, and possesses a win- some and charming personality. ‘“‘That gold statue of her that was exhibited at Paris was pretty fine,’’ exclaimed an enthusiastic admirer, ‘‘ but I'd give $100,000 more for the silver of her voice!’’ POON NILE NENG PPR! MEETS
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eae ANAGED with reasonable intelligence, bee-keeping is about as sure a meth- od of making money, in a moderate way, as can be found. One must not expect to earn a fortune by it, but an average annual profit of four or five dollars for each coiony or hive may fairly be reckoned upon under ordinarily favorable conditions. Inasmuch as a stnart boy or an active young woman can easily take care of from one hundred to two hundred colonies, it is easy to see that a fair income may be derived from the business. A man who will devote his time to it can manage five hundred colonies of bees. Another advantage of bee culture is that the products of the apiary are readily dis- posed of. Except in localities where the population is exceptionally sparse there is always a ready market for them. But it is desired here to lay special emphasis upon the fact that one does not need to live in the country in order to keep bees satisfactorily and profitably. If there be only a little available space, apiaries may often be main- tained as advantageously in the city as in rural districts, especially if there is no lack of parks and gardens, with plenty of nectar- yielding shade trees along the streets. Washington, for example, is considered so excellent a pasturage for bees (thanks to the lindens and tulip-trees that shade some of its avenues), that one bee-master has adopted the practice of moving his hives from the country into the town at a certain season, in order to take advantage of the superior opportunities for honey gathering. A prosperous apiary has been maintained on the roof of a business house in the heart of New York City,.and a similar enterprise, conducted not for amusement but for money- making, is carried on upon a roof in Cincinnati. Suburban localities are usually well adapted for purposes of bee-culture. Bee-keéping is an easy business to learn, and to start requires very little capital. The appliances required are few and inex- pensive. A bee veil costs fifty cents, and a Hiving a swarm of bees clustered on a tree-branch THE bellows smoker seventy-five cents. Additional hives, as they are want- ed, may be bought for $1.25 each, in pieces accurately cut and ready to be nailed togeth- er. There will be avery slight ex- pense for comb foundation, the use of which will be explained, and the tool required for fastening the foundation in the sections may be had for seventy- five cents more. It is most important that the novice shall select gentle bees. Some varieties of bees are vicious and difficult to handle, while others are comparatively mild and tractable. Of all bees, the gentlest and most e€ ily managed are the Carniolans, which, if obtainable, should be the ones selected. They have been introduced into this country within the last few years from Carniola, in Austria, and are steadily growing in favor among bee-keepers on account of their amia- ble disposition, fecundity, great hardiness in cold climates, and excellence as honey- getters. It is best to begin in the spring, so that the novice may acquire some experience before the arrival of winter. Half a dozen colonies are plenty to start with, and, the nor- mal increase being about fifty per cent. a year, the little apiary will grow rapidly. One should buy the first colonies of some reliable bee-master in the neighborhood, if possible, to avoid cost of expressage and pos- sible injury in transportation, making sure that they are in first-class condition and housed in properly-made frame hiyes. The cost per colony for pure Carniolan or Italian bees would be from six to eight dollars. Besides, the honey they make is very white and pretty, commanding, therefore, a good price in the market. So indisposed to sting are the Carniolan bees that they may be handled with the utmost freedom, and they will never volunteer an attack when their hives are approached. They are for this reason more profitable to keep, because the owner is able to work with them at all times without hindrance. Bad bees tempt neglect. A colony of bees—one hive, that is to say -—should yield, under fairly favorable con- ditions, fifty pounds of extracted honey or thirty pounds of comb honey in a season. The extracted honey should fetch from ten to fifteen cents a pound, and the comb honey fifteen to twenty cents. In most cases the crop is readily sold to neighbors, but grocers will usually buy it at a fair price. Honey, however, is not the only valuable Uncapping honey and extracting it from the combs in the centrifugal machine SATURDAY POST EVENING product of the hive. Each hive ought to yield, each year, about a pound of beeswax, worth from twenty-five to twenty-eight cents, and this is an article always in demand, | being utilized in the manufacture of comb | foundation, for pomades, and largely in the | making of graphophone’ cylinders—an industry which has created an important market for the substance. Another product of the hive is propolis—a resinous gum with which Nature varnishes the buds of trees. This substance, otherwise known as bee glue, is gathered by the bees and used by them for gluing everything fast in their houses. It is an instinct of theirs to make all parts of the hive tight and immova- ble, and, if there is a cranny, they fil it with propolis to keep out the cold when winter comes. Formerly bee-keepers did all they could to prevent the use of propolis by the insects, but of late a market has been created for it, and it fetches about fifty cents a pound, being employed for furniture varnish, leather polish, and dressing for harness. By scraping it from the frames and hive cover- ings, a pound or more of it may be obtained annually from each hive. Finally, there is a profit to be gained by the sale of vinegar made from honey. Thirty-five gallons of water, put in a barrel with forty pounds of honey, will make a pro- portionate quantity of first-class vinegar, as good as the best cider vinegar, and readily salable at forty cents a gallon. A colony of bees should contain at the opening of the season a laying queen and thirty to forty thousand workers—six to eight quarts of the insects by measurement. The queen lays all the eggs, depositing in each of the brood cells, and sometimes put- ting in place as many as four thousand in twenty-four hours. The workers are unde- veloped females, which do all the toil of gathering honey and pollen, secreting wax, building combs, stopping crevices, nursing the baby bees, and defending the hive. The wax required by the bees for the con- struction of the combs is manufactured by them out of honey, which is thus transformed in the bodies of the workers and extruded in scales between the segments of the abdo- men. It costs them from twelve to fifteen pounds of honey to make one pound of wax, and thus it will be seen that wax is a very expensive product from the viewpoint of the | bee-keeper. It is a great economy for him to furnish wax to the hives in the shape of comb foundation, as it is called, which is simply sheet beeswax stamped by machine with hexagonal impressions ‘in the likeness of worker cells. This is readily accepted by the bees, and the walls of the imitation cells, which are merely indicated raised pattern on the sheet wax, are built up by the insects to the requisite height for their purposes. Thus the bees are relieved to a great extent of the burden of wax production. But the A comb full of bees removed from the hive in a slightly | Thin little biscuit of creamy richness and wafer-like lightness. Delight- fully crisp and brittle. Unusually delicate and of unvarying freshness. You’ll know them by the package — sealed with a wrapper like green watered silk. MADE BY | Biscuit Company. No Penalty To pay in the way of diges- tive disorders when biscuits, cakes and pastry contain B. T. Babbitt’s BEST Baking Powder It is absolutely pure and unsurpassed in quality. Made by B. T. Babbitt, New York Sold by grocers everywhere. PENMANSHI one rapid, common-sen business, weitin at home. No har An a phenomenal “ ie a oe Better er position. eon cen nese Com: in addition t newspaper illustration, co Plt ffourish flourishing, ornamental writing, automatic lettering and illustra- tions from famous penmen, with a year’s su tion that beautiful 32-page monthly, ‘estern Penman. for one year, on receipt of only $1.00, Money re if you are not delighted and wonderfully benefited, Circulars and sample copy of Penman free. The Western Penman Publishing Co., C, Cedar Rapids, lows ESTABLISHED 1857. ALEXANDER PATENT & DOWELL! “4wvers 607 7TH STREET, Wasmimaror, D.C. IF WE SAY “Your ble” IT 1S, ts - d tee Patent li a specialty. Ve an be be all “Federal Cou re nt gation 8 United States. Write for our booklet wae Sull information. © SELF TAUGHT. Palmer method bi one = gl ———— teaches any success, Easy to lea
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Made by STANDARD OIL CO. 7 THE “BES Incandescent Vapor Gas Lamp Brighter than Electricity or Acetylene and Cheaper than Kerosene Makes and burns its own gas. It is portable. Requires no pipes, wires or gas machine. A safe, pure white, powerful, > steady light. 1 candle . wer costs @ cts. for hours. by Fire Insurance - Underwriters. No wicks to trim, no smoke or smell, No chimneys to clean. Saving effect its use egret pays forit. Great variety of Fixtures for indoor and outdoor use. This Pioneer Incandescent Vapor Gas Lamp. Itis perfect. Beware of imita tions. Agents wanted everywhere. Every mp warranted. THE BEST LIGHT CO. 25 East ¥ Fifth Street, Canton, Ohio A Monogram Wax Seal On the back i your - - ani 7 tocorrespondence. We will send a sea with combination of any two letters, For 50c Made of hard bee nickel- ‘ag fitted with neat ay finish hand! Never before sold so c Send for yo" illustrated catalogue of use- Jul articles for men and women. D. A. HUEBSCH & CO., 33 Rose St., New York A GREAT SELLER FOR AGENTS And that means big money. The Excelsior Carpet Stretcher and Tack Hammer Combined Has no equal. Great demand. Thousands sat- isfactorily used. Simple, durable, com and effective. Any one 09 operate it, oe for 65c, Stamps Postpaid for bir Ned order for one dozen deduct pal seg tere to furnish Agents’ Outfit Fr, Send for Free INustra- ted Circulars. Quick ty. Co., Dept. O11, Gallen, Mich. OURNALISM Offers a brilliant career to intelligent, trained young men and Pa gu All f ntorian e y aatbelens ete See ot tie es rection of Mr. ag A rae ee former! managing ‘or of ene Post. rite = “illustrated book- C Institute (Ine.) | twenty-eight to the square inch. ‘toes 19-48 Second Nat'l Bank woe Washington, D.C. most important assistance given them is by | utilizing again and again the combs which have been emptied in the centrifugal machine; for in this way they are provided with ready- made storage chambers for the honey they | gather in the busy season, and are not obliged to interrupt that business to con- struct fresh combs. The prudent bee-keeper saves his combs year after year, and substi- tutes the ‘‘ empties ’’ for the full ones as often as the combs are filled by the bees. One should not forget to mention that the comb foundation is purposely stamped with cells of worker size only, so that those used for brood will produce no idle drones, but all worker bees. The drone cells are sixteen to the square inch, while the worker cells are This, it must be owned, is one of the most remarkable and successful of man’s attempts to interfere with the creative business of Nature. A machine for making comb foundation, consisting of two engraved cylinders through which a sheet of warm wax is made to pass, costs only twenty-five dollars, but the work requires some skill, and it is best for the | beginner to purchase ready-made sheets of the material, fastening them into his frames with the tool already referred to. Any experienced bee-keeper can show him how to do it ina few moments. The stuff costs only forty-eight cents a pound for brood founda- tion and fifty-five cents for the ‘‘ supers ’? — that is, the top-story frames in which the marketable honey is intended to be stored. Making a Ri construction of the : ive is extremely simple. Hive for It is nothing more than a the Bees box in which are sus- pended vertically a num- ber of rectangular frames, each containing its sheet of comb foundation. When the bees are storing honey intended for the centrifugal machine, a second story, made exactly like the lower cone, with another set of vertical frames, is superposed. There is a partition between the first story and the second, with holes in it big enough to allow the passage of the workers from below to above, but just too small to permit the slightly larger queen from getting upstairs. Thus she is prevented from laying any eggs in the combs overhead, and the latter are filled with honey only, the rearing of the young being confined to the lower compartment. For securing comb honey, the place of the upper story is taken by one or more “‘ supers,’’ each arranged to hold twenty-four or twenty-eight sections, or ** pound boxes,’’ and in this way the bees are induced not only to produce the honey, but also to pack it ready for market in parcels suitable for the trade. These pound-size sec- tions, empty, are purchasable at $3.50 per thousand. All the frames in the hive are readily movable, and any one or all of them may be taken out at any time, so that every part of the bee house may be inspected when desired. The Carniolans in particular are so gentle that they do not mind this sort of thing at all. To the novice the separation of the honey from the bees, when the combs are filled, must seem an anxious problem, but in reality it offers not the least difficulty. All he has to do is to slide between the lower story of the hive and the upper section a board that is provided with a little device known as a “‘ bee escape,’’ which permits the insects to go down but not toascend. Next morning not a bee will be in the upper com- partment, and the combs may be removed at leisure. The young bee-keeper may choose whether he will sell his honey in the comb or extracted. In the former shape it brings a higher price, but then he loses the comb, which is valuable. If he prefers the other method, he can buy for eight dollars a centrif- ‘ugal extractor —a large can in which a light metal basket revolves. Into this, after slic- ing the cell-caps off the combs with a knife made for the purpose, he puts the full combs, and a few turns of a crank cause a rapid revolution of the basket, throwing out the honey, which flows through a spigot below A broad comb — showing the larger queen cells along the margin into a pail. The combs thus emp- tied may be used over and over almost indefinite- ly, being put back in the hives to be filled again by the bees. After being left to stand for a day or two in a warm room, and having been skimmed until THE SATURDAY EVENING POST clear, the extracted honey is put up in cans. There is quite a little money to be made by raising queen bees of choice stock, though this branch of the business should be attempted only after considerable experience has been gained. In order to make the process under- stood, it should be explained that any baby worker, if taken young enough, may be converted into a queen if provided with the proper sort of cell and fed with the requisite food. A queen cell, as made by the bees themselves, is much larger than a worker cell, and the diet provided by the workers for a young queen is a peculiar substance known s ‘‘ royal jelly.’’ By the help of a little mould the bee-keeper makes a number of imitation queen cells of beeswax and attaches them along one side of a flat stick. He leaves them open and in each one he puts a worker larva from one to two days old, taken fresh from a hive. Each of the larve he also provides with a little bit of royal jelly, likewise obtained from a hive, and then he lays the stick in one of the bee- hives, placing it there just as if he were hanging a frame in the box. The bees, always ready to adopt a hint, immediately begin to feed the larve with more royal jelly, building up the cells at the same time and finally sealing them over. In eleven or twelve days every one of those larvz will be ready to emerge, a perfect queen, but, shortly before the time arrives for this happening, the stick is taken out and the new queen cells are separated, each of them being deposited by itself in a small queenless hive. For this purpose little hives, called ‘‘nucleus’’ hives, are utilized. They are simply small colonies of bees, which serve just as well to hold the queens as large colo- nies. The queen cell put into such a hive is simply thrust into one of the brood frames and left there to be fastened securely by the workers. Having no queen of their own, they are delighted to acquire one. About a week after the queen has emerged from the cell, and when she has mated and begun to lay eggs, she may be taken out of the hive and sold, her market value being one dollar. On the other hand, she may be kept in the nucleus hive for three weeks longer, until some of the workers hatched from her eggs have made their appearance, and, if the markings of these workers show that the purity of the stock has not been impaired, she is called a ‘‘ tested ’’ queen, and is sala- ble for two dollars. These queens are sent thousands of miles by mail in specially made boxes, each one accompanied by a dozen workers and a bit of sugar candy for food. Only a one-cent stamp is required under our postal regulations. Swarming is aptto trouble the beginner in bee-keep- ing, but, when the matter is properly managed, it is not very bothersome. This is the method adopted by the insects for multiplying their colonies, inasmuch as‘it is obvious that a given number of hives cannot indefinitely accommodate augmenting num- bers. Nobody knows exactly what starts the bees to swarm, but suddenly an excitement will seize the workers who happen to be at home, and they will rush forth, accompanied by the old queen. When a swarm is seen issuing or in the air, it is best to wait a bit. Presently the bees will gather in a clump on a tree or bush, and it will be easy to shake them into a new hive, or into a basket, from which they may be poured out in front of the new hive like so many beans. Bees are usually in a peaceable mood when swarming, but one should wear a veil as a precaution and use the smoker to quell them in case they show anger. Smoke is the bee-master’s whip, and serves instantly to cow the bees in case they attempt to rebel. All trouble about swarming may be avoided by clipping one wing of the laying queen, so that when the bees swarm she cannot go with them, but may be caught at the entrance. The swarm wil) immediately return to the old home, where an empty hive must have been substituted for the original hive. Into this the swarm will enter. A beginner in bee-keeping can- not do better than obtain from the Department of Agriculture its recent publica- tions on that sub- ject, written by Mr. Frank Benton, one of the assist- ant Government entomologists. The Curious Problems of Swarming GELATINE Is granulated—measure it with a spoon like sugar. If you have strug- gled to get the proper amount of **shredded,’’ you will appreciate this point. I WILL MAIL FREE My book of seventy “* Dainty Desserts for Dainty People," if you will send the name of your grocer. If you can't do this, send a two-cent stamp. For 5 cents in stamps, the book and full pint sample. For 15 cents, the book and full two-quart package (two for 25 cents). Pink color for fancy des- serts in every package. CHAS. B. KNOX 53 Knox Ave., Johnstown, N. Y. B. 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THE Letters from a Congressman’s Wife WASHINGTON, D. C. OME one has said that ‘‘ man is the only animal that laughs, and he is the only SATURDAY one who deserves to be laughed at.’’ I | thought of this as I sat for the first time in my life at a night session and looked down upon the Senate Chamber below. I could not help thinking that it resembled a bear-garden a good deal more than a legislative chamber, for there was certainly a bear-baiter in this Senatorial pit in the person of the senior Senator from sessed of boundless good nature, seemed to go around as though from cage to cage stir- ring up the animals for no other reason, apparently, than to heat them roar. New Hampshire, who, pos- | I had been dining out that night and had | had some difficulty in persuading Robert to drive with me to the Senate after we had excused ourselves from the dinner. When we reached the Senate it was already quite late and it was evident that things were in full swing—or rather, everything except the Subsidy measure was in full swing. Mr. Frye had called Mr. Beveridge to the chair and had come down on the floor to try to keep control of the measure. He was pacing restlessly back and forth at the back of the desks, or holding caucuses over the desks with other Senators, and occasionally he would mount the dais and survey the Chamber, then disconsolately march down the carpeted steps again. Mr. Hanna was sitting alone in grandeut upon one of the leather sofas, the very picture of rheumatic misery, while Mr. Chandler was dancing around, throwing in a word here and there and stirring up the animals as though with a stick, and I will venture to say that he occu- pied in turn every seat on the Republican side during the three hours of the session. By this time the members were entirely | careless about obtaining recognition from the | Chair before addressing the Senate. They talked back and forth over each other’s heads | and hurled their remarks in all directions, | while the Chair pounded vigorously for order and made vain efforts to control the Senators. Mr. Chandler persisted laughingly in disre- garding the Chair, until Mr. Spooner rose to his feet and jocularly appealed to the Chair not to permit Mr. Chandler to continue his filibustering tactics against the bill. “Is that all that the Senator from Wisconsin arose to say?’’ inquired Mr. Chandler. ‘“ Yes, at this time,’’ replied Mr. Spooner. ‘‘It is the most agreeable and the shortest speech I ever heard from the Senator,’’ retorted Mr. Chandler. There was no remark that any man could make that night that Mr. Chandler did not | contradict fiatly, and when Senator P came up to the gallery at this juncture I said to him: “Do you remember what your esteemed statesman John Randolph once said about the habit of contradicting ?’’ ‘* No,’’ he said in a puzzled way. ** Well,’’ said I, ‘‘ apropos of Mr. Chandier to-night and his passion for contradicting, I am reminded of John Randolph, who said: ‘The impulse to contradict is as familiar as dyspepsia, and it is a primitive quality of mind by no means confined to women and children.’ It seems to me, Senator P that this night session is the funniest thing I’ve seen the Senate do yet.’’ ‘*Yes,’’ said the Senator, ruefully and without a smile on his face, ‘‘ I am afraid we are rather a spectacle. I have been recalling to-night an incident in Parliament away back in 1809 when Lord Granville kept pressing an unwelcome measure, and Sheridan, the incomparable, said in a great speech on the occasion: ‘I have heard of men running their heads against a wall, but this is the first time I ever heard of men building their wall and squaring it and clamping it for the express purpose of knocking out their brains against it.’ ”’ In a little while the Senator continued: ‘* Just listen to Jones down yonder, and also observe Frye’s and Hanna’s faces.’’ I leaned forward and saw Senator Jones with uplifted arm and voice pitched to the height of the ceiling, shout out: **So help me, high Heaven! I will not be a party to this effort to throttle free speech upon this detestable bill.’’ ‘*T cannot see,’’ said Senator P——, ‘‘ that Editor's Note — This is one of a series of letters by the author of The Diary of a New man’s Wife, which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post last winter. 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Hion. Henry Watterson says, in the Louisville Courier Journal ; “**Mr, Halstead can in a twelve- month teach a young man that which he might not be able todiscover for himself in years of unaided effort, groping in the dark. He can put upon a young man a trade-mark that will give him access to employ- ment.” THE COLLEGE OF JOURNALISM UNDEK THE PERSONAL DIRECTION OF MURAT HALSTEAD, the President Endorsed by over 3000 newspapers and periodicals. This announcement is placed in The Satur- day Evening Post because we want to reach a thinking class—the thoughtful people, who appreciate the fact that trained men and women steadily where others stumble and fall. This is the only journalistic school, as stated by Col. A. K. 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I pond Schools Box 1171, Seranten, Pa. Established 1891. Capital $1,500,000, “GO TO Prepare by study at . The business COLLEGE !!” | oto" gauegintonet “WHY NOT ?” | by tating our courses. Commercial and Civil Service Courses. We use Standard Text-Books and Standard Methods. 12 years’ experience. Write us. Interstate Correspondence School, 1931 Broadway, N. Y. 'CTon’, Aol ahaal Aah -cel—-thale) ak Nearly 10,000 appointments made last year. Chances better for 1901. Hun- dreds of ay —ve are ay 1 ed were vy mail by us. Nin Full’ particulars free concerning 5 etc. Write to-day. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE INSTITUTE 19-42 Second National Bank Building, Washington, D.C. STAMMERERS Caspar C. Garrigues (Ex-Associate Partner in the Philadelphia Institute fur Stammerers), NOW PRESIDENT OF HE PENNSYLVANIA INSTITUTE, stammered about sixteen ein He has assisted hundreds to a cure. Endorsed by Prof. uis Lewis, 25 years instructor in Girard cones Philadelphia. Write for full particulars to N. W. 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There, Aldrich is on his feet.’’ Mr. Aldrich said in a soothing voice: ** There is no disposition on this side of the THE SATURDAY Chamber to stifle free speech, as the gentle- | man from Arkansas well knows.’’ At this juncture Mr. Depew came hurrying in in evening dress, made resplendent by a | white silk waistcoat. For a moment the noise | died down and the attention of this mercurial | body was diverted. Mr. Chandler of course caught sight of Mr. Depew. He said some- | thing that set the Chamber ina roar. After | this Mr. Bacon chanced to emerge from the | cloakroom and Mr. Chandler charged upon | him. ‘The gentleman from Georgia gallantly returns to the arena with the inner man refreshed.”’ Whereat Mr. Tillman pulled himself up out of his chair, and with his characteristic jerky way proceeded to take a hand in trying to call down the gentleman from New Hampshire who was having such a gala time of it. He cried out in a thundering voice: “Will the gentleman from New Hampshire p? But the gentleman from New Hampshire struck a mock attitude of fear and appealed to the Chair for protection against the onslaught from the Southern Senator, saying: ** The Senator intimidates me.’’ This broke up Mr. Tillman. He had to laugh, and the galleries joined in. ‘* I had always thought that the House was the turbulent body. Has the Senate always been so unruly as this?’’ queried I. ‘*Oh, yes, more or less. In the earlier days there were some terrible collisions in this body. Men always went armed, and upon slight provocation would draw knives and pistols. Why, Ben Wade once, just at the outbreak of the war, made a speech here, and when he began he coolly laid down on his desk two six-shooters ready for use, and dared any man on the floor to say a word or molest him.” Preston Brooks, of South Carolina, once gave notice over in the House that he should offer a resolution to the effect ‘ That the Sergeant-at-Arms shall cause to be erected a suitable rack in the rotunda, where members who are addicted to carrying con- cealed weapons shall be required to place them for the inspection of the curious while the owners are employed in legislation,’ This threat had quite an effect on the House for a long time.’’ ‘* By the way,’’ said I, ‘‘how did the John Marshall banquet turn out? Was it fine? Was the speaking good?’”’ ‘* Yes, it was unusually good. I never heard Dalzell make so good a speech in my life as he did that night. Of course MacVeagh made a good talk, and so did all of them. There was a great deal of fun at MacVeagh’s speech over Harlan. One of the younger men said that since the great jurist had passed away the Supreme Court had sadly degenerated, and here the wink was passed along the table to Harlan that he was going to be made fun of. You know, Mrs. Slocum, Harlan is one of the best men going, one of the strongest and safest men on our bench, but ever since that Loyal Legion dinner his friends have had no end of fun over him and Harlan has enjoyed it all with the rest. White in particular has roasted him for his alleged remarks. Well, when this young lawyer began on Harlan at the Marshall banquet, you should have heard the wit that flew back and forth. You should have heard the roars of laughter and you should have seen Harlan. I never heard a man laugh as he did over the whole thing.’’ I looked around the floor. What had become of the forty-four Senators who had been present earlier in the evening, when the first demand for a quorum was made? Where were the fifty-four Republican Senators who belonged to that body? If the majority were so anxious for this bill to be law why weren’t they there? Why was it that the determined little handful of Democrats below could hold at bay all this body of men? What had become of Mr, Chandler? Where was Mr. Depew? What had become of Mr. Lodge, Mr. Hale and the rest? I still saw Mr. Frye with a tired look on his face, and also Mr. Hanna, stolid and placid, still sitting on the leather sofa where he had been for two mortal hours. This night session, which had opened at least with possibilities, was closing without one inch of progress having been made. Just as the hands of the clock got around to eleven, Mr. Tillman addressed the Chair: “Ts it not time for the ringmaster of this circus to let us go home?’’ Promptly and harshly came the reply: ‘*T move that the Senate do now adjourn.”’ EVENING POST GIANT FLOWERING (ALADIUM, LSS, S.- . 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Not only is it the grandest garden or lawn plant, but as a pot plant for large windows, verandas, halls or conservatories, it rivals the choicest Palms in foliage, to say nothing of its magnificent flowers. Thrives in any soil or situation, and grows and blooms all the year. As many as 6 to 12 flowers rise successively from the base of each leaf-stalk. Regardless of all we can say, the plant will astonish every one; so novel, effective and fragrant. Strong plants, which will bloom this summer, 50 cents each; 3 for $1.00, postpaid. OUR CATALOGUE FOR 1901 —..New Century Edition —Greatest Book of Flower and Vegetable Seeds, Bulbs, Plants and New Fruits, 152 pages, 500 illustrations, 12 colored plates, will be mailed free to any who anticipate purchasing. We offer many Great Novelties. JOHN LEWIS CHILDS, Floral Park, N. Y. te FLORAL =. |‘ NOVELTIES £% Incandescent Gasoline Lamps. All flower lovers will p. ‘ wish to try these floral \ gems; easily grown. 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Street, Philadelphia. Ask Your Grocer for THE 5.MINUTE BREAKFAST FOOD SAINT BERNARD PUPPIES Finest stock, rough coated, eligible to registry, largest breed, handsome markings, sable and white. J08. THOMAS, Berwyn, Pa. THE SATURDAY EVENING POST ‘Publick Occurrences St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning St. Patrick’s Day this year falls on Sunday. That means that the main celebration will be either upon Saturday, the date of publication of this magazine, or on the following Monday. It is the day of days when Irish patriotism throughout all the world is faithfully shown. It is not likely, under the changed circum- stances, that the celebration will reach the proportions of a year ago, when the shamrock was the badge of honor throughout John Bull’s realm and when it was worn by almost everybody in England, from Queen Victoria to the humblest costermonger. Then the Irish troops in South Africa had shown their magnificent fighting qualities. Fifteen Irish infantry battalions and cavalry regiments had done the best fighting of the war against the Boers. Of the generals who had achieved reputation and who were doing successful work, Roberts, Kitchener, French, White and Kelly-Kenny were Irishmen by birth or parentage, and it was the old fact proven over again that in modern fighting the best soldiers in the English army are Irishmen. So the shamrock was universal, and St. Patrick was the patron saint of the day for England as well as for Ireland. In this country the character of the celebra- tion has greatly changed as the years have come. There is little of the hilarity of the past; it has become a respectful recognition of the patron saint who was the chief apostle of Christianity when the faith was introduced into Ireland in the fifth century, and an appreciation of the opportunity of showing what Ireland has contributed to the world in heroism, statesmanship and progress. Great Britain’s New Census Curiously, the taking of Great Britain’s new census also falls on a Sunday of this month— March 31. The people of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland will be counted simultaneously. Altogether the countries have been divided into nearly forty thousand districts, and each district will have an enu- merator who will distribute, collect and copy the scheduies. There is special interest in the figures for Ireland. Mr. John E. Redmond said in a speech some weeks ago: ‘‘ Every day the population of Ireland is diminishing, and, what is more heart-breaking, those who remain are becoming more and more dena- tionalized and demoralized.”’ Sixty years ago the population was over 8,196,597; in 1891 it was 4,706,162. In 1881 it was over five millions. The Ireland of To-day Right Honorable James Bryce, a careful observer, and Mr. Seumas McManus, the Irish writer, agree that Ireland to-day is enjoying comparative’ prosperity. The people are living better, their food is of a higher grade, the bank deposits have increased, the farm rents are lower, and the returns from work are larger. The main reason why it does not take its place as one of the rich countries of the world is its lack of manufacturing. it exists mainly on its agri- culture and its fisheries. Ireland contains 32,337 square miles, not including the 196 little islands which add 246 square miles to the total. It is not quite so large as Indiana and is a little larger than South Carolina. The Philippine Islands are four times the size of all Ireland. Less than five years ago a commission appointed by Parliament reported that there had been placed upon Ireland a taxation burden which | it was unable to bear, and that something | should be done. Thus came the new Land Law Act, which was a mitigation, but not a reform, of the evils. A few days ago a member from Ireland arose in Parliament and tried to make a speech in Irish. He was duly rebuked. A phrase in Mr. Redmond’s address was this: ‘‘ The Irish language is almost dead.’’ Figures support his statement. The Irish language is understood by less than a half | million persons in Ireland, and only thirty | thousand of them speak that and no other tongue. English is the language of Ireland. The American Irishman All reports agree in stating that the chief influences that have contributed to the better welfare of Irishmen have come from this side of the ocean. The Irishmen in America have done well. They figure in all the profes- sions and in all the vocations. There were certain raw days in their American experi- ences; but they were quick to see the advan- tages of the new country and to profit by them. So to-day there are more Irishmen in our Congress than there are in the British Parliament, more Irish millionaires’ in America than in all Europe, more Irishmen prominent in every walk of life in the United States than in all the rest of the world. Each year millions of dollars are sent to the old country, and thousands who have made their small fortunes here go back to live in afflu- ence, to spread American ideas, and to build a new life in their native land. Of course most American Irishmen remain here and hold their American citizenship as among the treasures of the earth. Irishmen have founded no nation for them- selves, but they have aided mightily in build- ing up the greatest two on earth. The Question of Home Rule Last fall there was a general election in Great Britain. The vote polled in Ireland was the largest for many years. The Irish Nationalists lost two seats and gained two, so that their strength in the House of Commons remains unchanged. Not since the days of Parnell has the party been so united, and Mr. Justin McCarthy predicts that there will soon be a revival of the fight for Home Rule. On the other hand, the English hold that Home Rule is dead beyond resurrection. But in all the Irish papers, in all the Irish speeches, Home Rule is constantly mentioned, and something may come of the persistent and skillful agitation. Had you not better Ask your Grocer for A “Ferris” Ham Boneless Bacon? Six Blue Stripes woven in the cover and the Metal Seal prove the ‘* FERRIS ’’ of it. ge" ““A Little ae. in Aton Baut— | | { Does perfect work Easy to operate No jagged edges Turns edge of can down Price, postpaid, 25 cents a Money refunded if not satis- factory ] CHAS. G, HOPPER, Manufaet ’ Pa. WHY NOT? You need take no anxious concern for to-morrow. Provide for your family through life insurance and have peace — at least as much of it as is attainable in this life. Send for booklet, ‘‘ How and Why.’’ Full information free. PENN MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY 921-923-925 Chestnut St., Philadelphia . 99 . “Mizpah” Valve Nipples WILL NOT COLLAPSE And therefore prevent much colic. The valve prevents a vacuum being formed to collapse them. ‘lhe ribs inside prevent collapsing when the child bites them. ‘The rim is such that they —— be ail. lled off the bottle. Sample WALTER PF. WARE, Thatch se ARMOVR @Q the Grace cs Seat oe COMPANY oS INE ARL TOILE, SOAP by the Art of Man --- for of Woman
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—— « Build Up the Child— * Twill Strengthen Character”’ Nothing like wheel exercise for doing it pleasantly, surely, at little expense. Popular adults’ and children’s Bicycles Have many excellent points of high-priced wheels, but cost little. Indian Head Poster Cover Booklet Free. RAMBLER SALES DEPT., CHICAGO AGENCIES EVEKYWHERE, G &J TIRES" are high grade — made from purest Para rubber and finest tire fabric. ‘They are handsome, fast, durable and always comfortable. In case of puncture, you can instantly detach the tire and repair it yourself. When you start out on G &J Tires, you never have to walk home. There’s no road too rough for a G & J rider. G & J TIRE CO., Indianapolis, Ind. . . A Cycling Sensation A motion in riding over rough places as gentle as wheeling over a Macadam road is given by the double springs inside the -BERKEY Spring Seat Post Ball Bearing, Like the Bicycle It removes the cbjection physicians raised to cycling. It overcomes jarring and vibra- tion. It doubles the delight of cycling for Sag eb and makes the wheel more valua- ble for business. Fits any bicycle, new or old. Inquire of dealer or send tor booklet. Berkey Spring Seat Post Co. 12 Pearl St., Grand Rapids Michigan Rider Agents Wanted One in each town to ride and exhibit sample 1901 Bicycle. Best makes 1901 Models, $10 to $18 99 & 00 Models, high grade, $7 to $12 500 Second-hand Wheels All makes and models, good as new, ®8 to ®8. Great Factory Clearing Sale at half factory cost. je ship anywhere on approval and ten days’ trial without a cent in advance. EARN A BICYCLE distributing Catalogues for us. We havea wonderful proposition to Agents for 1901. /Write at once for our Bargain 7 and Special Oger. Address Dept. 117 CYCLE COMPANY, CHICAGO unique plan becomes simply an in- vestment. It is always worth ged what you paid for it. It will pay you to investigate this plan before buying. fine and rare Violins in AMERICA. Good ones from $5 up. Ask for large, handsomely illustrated Violin Cata- logue No. 46, sent FREE on request. The Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. 172 East 4th St., CINCINNATI, OHIO Are You Deaf? We have 25 kinds ents to Assist Hearing Sen proval.. Mf. rite fos 5 or WM. vy. WiLkAD & tor, 100,000 Given Away. Poe Hat Brushes. Send 10c pema S etc., and we Lag h free. Aluminum. Great ity. It ilarizes Dykes ‘ou can get our “mm 8 Heelin your town. Ifnotsend MJ git: us outline of heel and 85c. J 4 JONN L. G. DYKES €0., Dept. F-96-5th Av., Chieage VIOLIN VALUE) A Violin bought by our original and | We carry the largest line of | Diary of a Harvard Freshman (Continued from Page 9) I had never thought much about this sort | of thing, and it was impossible all at once to know just where I stood in the matter. I | didn’t know what to say, and I think I blurted out: ‘Oh, Berri —I’m so sorry.’’ ‘Well, I’m sorry you know about it, Berri mused drearily. ‘‘ No, I’m not, either,’ he added quickly after a moment; ‘I’m ” darned glad—for now that you know you | can do what you like.’’ It was impossible to go back to other topics | after that, so I went into my room and unpacked my trunk. I don’t believe I ever unpacked so carefully and put everything away so neatly before. It must have been because I was thinking. With all my thinking, however, I can’t say that I’ve got much farther than I was when Berri first told me. I simply know that he oughtn’t to have done it and am very, very sorry that he has. If he tried to defend him- self in any way I should have it out with him. But he doesn’t. When he finished copying the thesis he came into my room and said: ‘‘ I’m going over to drop this through Fleetwood’s door. Do you want to go along?’’ And I went with him, hoping that at the last minute he might, in his unex- pected way, change his mind. On the way over he did burst out with: ‘** You see, it’s this way. If I didn’t know Fleetwood so well I shouldn’t do it—I shouldn’t care. But he’ll think, if I fail to hand in the written work, that I’m presuming on the fact that we’ ve breakfasted together at the Holly Tree and gone to the theatre and all that. I hate that kind of thing.’’ I tried to make him see that Fleetwood wouldn’t look at it in this way at all, and that even if he did it would be his fault — not Berri’s. I even put my hand on his arm as he was about to drop the thesis in Fleet- wood’s letter-slide, and said: ‘‘ Please don’t, Berri; wait until to-morrow morning, any- how,’’ but he pushed the roll through the | door, and as it fell with a thud inside he laughed and answered: “Too late. Now I’m going to forget about it.’’ He went to town to dinner, and I had mine about an hour ago at Mrs. Brown’s. Ina few minutes I have to go out again, as I promised LATER. Just as I had written that far the front door opened and slammed and the tin steps clattered as they do only when Duggie is coming up. The loneliness of the house and the feeling that college opened to-morrow, and Duggie on the stairs, all took me back to my first evening in Cambridge. The only differ- ence was that instead of going to his own room, Duggie, this time, came bursting into mine. ‘I came to say good-by,’’ he exclaimed; and when I got over my astonishment he went on to tell me that he had decided during the vacation to go away—to Europe—and stay until Class Day. He had never told me before that he had taken his degree in three years, and that it wouldn’t have been neces- sary for him to come back this yeat at all if he hadn’t wanted to. “Tm leaving on the midnight train to-night,’’ he said, ‘‘ and I came out here on the chance of your having got back. My family are all in the country—I left them this afternoon.’’ I wanted to tell him how sorry I was that he was leaving us—and how glad I was that he could go; but somehow, I don’t think I showed what I really felt. The time was so short. But in a way.I had an opportunity to let Duggie know how I felt toward him, for while we were sitting there he laughed and said: “ As yon won’t stay and talk to me, I think you might at least do the next best thing. You know I’ve always wanted to read this— and now that I’m going away you ought to let me.’? Then he took my diary from the mantelpiece and pretended to read. My first impulse was to ask him not to. If he had been going to stay in Cambridge I shouldn’t have let him, of course; but as he was leaving in a few hours and seemed | anxious to read the thing, and as it really | didn’t make any difference, I finally let him. ‘*T don’t see why you want to, and you | probably won’t get beyond the first few pages —but you may,’’ I said. So I left him by the fire with the little book in his hand. - I thought that perhaps I should find a note about it when I got back this evening. But I didn’t. Editor’s Note—The next installment of The Diary of a Harvard Freshman will appear in The torday Evening Post of March 30. THE SATURDAY EVENING \ BICYCLES “WHITE FLYERS The New un ful Work ™ Barnes Offered by the Monarch Sales Dept. are ualled in every respect. Wh te Piaish, x yeh Bicycles The Superb Lines and Skill- bine to make “WHITE FLY ERS ” ideal machines. Barnes Agencies Every where CHICAGO, NEW YORK, -* Will secure for you, in your home, office, church, and, in fact, anywhere, the per- fection of illumination. No smoke, no smell, small expense — almost no care. Thousands are in use and give the great- est satisfaction. Our Catalog K tells all about it, and shows all ays from $1.80 up. Ask for it. The Angle Lamp Co., 76 Park Place, New York FARM ANNUAL FOR 1901 BURPEE’S and BEST SEED CATALOGUE ever published. earliest Tomato,— “Quarter-Century.” a postal card for Burpee’s ‘‘ Grand New Book of two hundred and twenty pages. Entirely rewritten at our famous FORD- HOOK FARMS — the largest Trial,Grounds in America. Novelties of unusual merit in both Vegetables and Flowers, Elegant New Colored Plates. Century’s Record of Progress, New Cash Prizes, and other New Features. The largest, most com: Name this magazine, send ten cents (silver or stamps) and withthis great catalogue we shall send a 15-cent packet of either Burbank’s Unique Floral Novelty &®™ Should you object to paying ten cents for a seed catalogue (even though it is worth a dollar), then write SEED-SENSE "’ for 1901,— a “ W. ATLEE BURPEE & CO., PHILADELPHIA, “QUARTER-CENTURY EDITION ” New Directions for culture, New I ts, New The Quarter- J Mailed for ten cents, which is less than cost per copy. or Burpee’s wonderful, new, dwarf, meaty, bright-red, strictly business ” catalogue of ninety pages. PA. $25 to $75 per Week Coeepeuts Ours is the original Ad. —, roughout the coun! prove 1s what you should make yourself worth. Mali, privately, ae aca 'y and thoroughly how to write adver- 1 you read so much about. Graduates Let us teach you by Our Empleyed are the only fires an thet feed ny so-called ** Genius ""— Fico hy use your spare moments evenings oes: Satlures of life are Jull of poor excuses — the fio. Mesos are a we of geod reasons ge-Davis Co., Chicago, Il, for. one of the largest pa Diao Stores in first took lessons. Had it not ll for your instructions, it rom es A ae truly telle a ail.’ WORCESTER, MASS., Jan. 21, I present Ad. Mana; the salary I did w impossible for me to Mie held the position. Our Dear Sirs:— I am at Massachusetts, securing almost double Write fer it 48-page PAGE-DAVIS CO., Suite 1 18, 167 Adams Street. CHICAG®, ILL. St. John and St. Peter on Easter Morning, Hurnand The above subject in our American Carbon or an wal num photographs sent for with our catalogue, showing 10,000 phot phs, cabi- net size, for sale at 5 cts. each in lots of five or more. HENRY pean Trustee of Moulton Photo Co. Bromfield St., Boston, Mass. 40 cts. in stamps, together LACE CURTAINS Simic’ ee Benes } Eviet, Bia, Fokas, and English Notting- The prices will Interest Weak bere CHICAGO DRAPERY CO., Chicago, Il. An Education Without Cost THE SATURDAY EVENING Post offers a full course (all expenses paid) in any college or conservatory in the country, in return for work done for the magazine. If you are interested, send a line addressed to The Curtis Publishing Company Philadelphia ings for costing PLANS, & eereose tional $1000 —$5 extra. 20 years’ experience. Postal for particulars. EPWIN ¢. PRTTIT, Architect, Dept. 8, 42 Tenth St., Buffalo, N.Y. ~ Srv pee scale and detail
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20 THE SATURDAY EVENING POST i. A Few Words About Some of the Magazines in Our Clubs The Harper periodicals and other magazines in our clubbing offers are so well known to the American public that it is hardly necessary to more than list them here. But bear in mind that the offers are limited and all who would avail themselves of the greatest club- bing bargains of the age should send their orders at once. Harper’s Weekly Is the foremost illustrated paper of America. Its correspondents and art- ists are in all parts of the world repro- ducing, pictorially, the great events of modern times, and giving to its readers that close view of “‘ things as they are’”’ which can never be gained by printed words alone. Its caustic, timely, story- telling cartoons have for many years made political evil-doers tremble. Regular Price, $4.00 a year. special offer opposite. See Harper’s Bazar Has been the leading fashion journal of America for over 30 years. The pub- lishers now issue monthly (12 times a year) an extra large ‘ Fashion Number,’’ with a beautiful cover in colors. This number will be devoted exclusively to fashions and domestic interests, and each of these fields will be covered more thoroughly and bril- liantly than by any periodical published in Europe or America. The greatest American authority on dress, Mrs. Ashmore, will be the leading fashion writer. In addition, the best-known specialists in domestic fields will cover, in these monthly numbers, every inter- est and need of the home-maker, mother and hostess. Price, $1.00 a year. North American Review Now in its 86th year, has no equal in America or Europe. The February, 1901, issue, for example, contains strik- ing articles by Mark Twain, Ex- President Harrison, Henry Cabot Lodge, Sir Lepel Griffin (on ‘‘ The Great Religions of the World ’’), Lady Jeune, W. D. Howells, Perry Belmont, and seven other leading specialists in differ- ent fields. The best thought of the times is reflected in ‘‘The North American,’’ and it should be in every household. The regular subscrip- tion price, $5.00 a year. See special offer opposite. The Review of Reviews Is a monthly magazine in which the world’s current history is made as fas- cinating as romance. Portraits of noted men and women brighten its pages, together with the best caricatures and political cartoons of the day, repro- duced, by permission, with a wide range of periodicals. American and foreign politics are discussed ably and fearlessly by Dr. Albert Shaw and oth- ers... It gives over 1500 pages and 1500 pictures yearly. $2.50 year. The World’s Work Is a brilliantly edited magazine in the rank of Scribner’s, Century and Harper’s. It contains the literature of positive achievement, not the threshing over of old straw. It is a short cut to what is most important. It is published by Doubleday, Page & Co., and is already an assured success. It is magnificently illustrated. Regular subscription price, $3.00 per year. Public Opinion Is a 32-page weekly magazine. 3000 weeklies and dailies are required to produce one copy of Public Opinion. It is an invaluable epitome of the world’s news and progress—an almost indis- pensable weekly. $2.50 a year. 4% , $8 Worth for 43 The Magazines Will be Sent to One or Different Addresses In our remarkably liberal clubbing offers on this page we of Reviews, Public Opinion, North American Review (6 months), Current Literature, Leslie’s Popular Monthly and World’s Work may be substituted ONE FOR THE OTHER. The Cosmopolitan Magazine, Harper’s Weekly (6 months), and Harper’s Bazar (monthly) may be substituted ONE FOR THE OTHER. 26 Numbers, Harper's Weekly, ‘i'monns, Harper’s Bazar (12 Monthly Fashion Numbers) may be substituted. 1 Year Review of Reviews, ina, . McClure’s Magazine may be substituted for Review of Reviews. re SUCCESS is the most heipful and inspiring magazine in the world. For Six North American Review, tenn World’s Work or Public Opinion (new), one year, may be substituted. NOTE.—ALL ARE YEARLY SUBSCRIPTIONS except to Harper's Weekly and North American Review. may be EITHER NEW OR RENEWAL except to Review of Reviews, Current Literature, and Public Opinion, which must be new names. Foreign postage extra. The periodicals will be Cosmopolitan, iver, $1.00) “°° Public Opinion, #2." 2.50/$“) .00 Review of Reviews, (new) 2.50 Success, tyer, . . . 1.00) rorau YOU MAY Harper’s Weekly (6 months), Harper’s Weekly (6 months), Harper’s Weekly (6 months), Harper’s Weekly (6 months), Harper’s Weekly (6 months), ACCEPT ANY or Harper’s Bazar Dollar a year. Every tiful cover in colors. SUCCESS SUCCESS is now taken in Edwin Markham at Twenty-One. (Cover Design, March Success.) HELEN MILLER GOULD Contributes a signed editorial in the March SUCCESS on ‘*The Saving of the Soldier and the Sailor.’’ EDWIN MARHHAM’S SUCCESS “The Romance of Edwin Markham’s SUCCESS”’ is the subject of a splendid life story of the famous author of ‘‘ The Man with a Hoe,’’ which tells of his rise from a blacksmith at twenty-one to ‘‘ the Poet Laureate of America.’’ CAREER OF THE DE RESZHES Is told by F. N. R. Martinez, with a sketch of their lives by Edouard de Reszké himself. It is not generally known that they began life as porters in a Russian hotel. MRS. RUSSELL SAGE Gives wholesome advice to young women in March SUCCESS on ‘‘Home Financiers.’’ Leading Newsdealers Will Forward Your Orders. Publishers of SUCCESS McGRAW- MARDEN CcCOo., 1283 Washington Square $2.00 Cosmopolitan, Review of Reviews (new), and Success, for $2.75 Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazar (monthly), and Success, for McClure’s Magazine, and Success, . ‘ The Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Success, SUCCESS is a large and handsome family journal, issued monthly, at One Its contents are of great variety—always something of especial interest to every member of the family. inspiring publication in the world.. You can better afford to do without all other periodicals rather than miss: reading SUCCESS. artistic qualities, SUCCESS for 1901 will be unexcelled. A series of brilliant stories, by well-known writers of fiction, is now appearing in its columns. Some of the most famous men and women in the world —leaders in literature, politics, religion, art, science, and Features of the March Success ~)\ allow substitutions as follows: McClure’s Magazine, Review No periodical can be substituted for SUCCEss. $8.00 Worth SEND US ONLY $3 00 (Checks Accepted) For All Four 2.50 1.00 2.50 Subscriptions SENT TO ONE OR DIFFERENT ADDRESSES, as may be desired. * 1 .00 SEND ONLY 00 “— 00 00 3 3. ] FOR ALL Monthly Harper’s Bazar, ‘Yer World’s Work, 1 Year, Current Literature, Success, yea, . 1 Year (new) OF THESE OFFERS CLUB PRICE 2.50 2.25 2.00 1.50 for for (monthly), with Success for number is magnificently illustrated, with a beau- It is the most helpful and In literary and industry—are regular contributors. over 250,000 homes. REV. THOMAS R. SLICER Contributes a remarkably strong appeal to young men in the March SUCCESS on ‘‘Let Yourself Go.’’ Mr. Slicer is one of the ablest ministers in the Metropolitan pulpits. ELLA WHEELER WILCOX Writes on ‘‘ What Success is Greater than Happiness.’’ RED RUM Is the title of a powerful short story by Henry Irving Dodge. AURELIA’S BACK WINDOW Is a charming love story by Helen Nicolay. The March SUCCESS is magnificently illustrated. It is for sale by all newsdealers. 10 cents a copy; $1.00 a year. Make Remittances and Address All Orders to New York City yy