Mary, or simply may not have mattered to her if it did. She thrust her greedy little hands deep into the web of things, and was apparently merely vain of the horrible rent and tangle she made. Richard was too blind drunk with her to know very much beyond the fact that she possessed him. He may have been the only person in the town who did not know that she had finished the wrecking of Andrey Kerkoff.

And then came the wildest turn of all. It is a test of the esteem her world held Hilda in that nobody thought it in the least amusing-only superb on Hilda's part and a little contemptible, if pitiful, on Andrey's. Andrey Kerkoff was spending every possible moment with Hilda Swayn.

It couldn't have been very easy for Hilda to have him walking her floor raving about Mary. She was all he did talk about. He was as past reserve as a man in delirium.

"Oh, my dear, why do you let that dreadful man come and remind you of things you'd better forget?" begged her mother, coming on Hilda after one of these visits. The girl was lying back in her chair, just as Kerkoff had left her. There were rings of exhaustion around her eyes. She had been staring unseeingly at the little images Richard had given her. "It's all I can do," she said simply. "Richard is so far away from me that I can't help him-yet. I can help this poor soul. It's the nearest I can come to doing something for Richard."

"You're not taking it like a normal girl. You ought to throw those hideous little dolls out of the window, say Richard was a good riddance, and come on that Canadian trip we've been planning so long."

AS

S Mrs. Swayn spoke she gave an impulsively vicious push to the nearest of the images. Hilda put out a swift hand to steady it.

"Oh, don't touch them! He gave them to me, when things were still right. . . . When I look at them, it seems somehow as if everything were still right underneath." She actually smiled a little as she stood fingering them, absently clasping her bracelets around grooves in their stiff waists, where bracelets may have been clasped for girdles before. "Even if they weren't from Richard, I believe I would love them. Haven't you ever come across things and places, mother, that made you feel as if they had always been yours and always would be?"

"I never have," said the mother, all the more sharply that she was unhappy about her daughter. "And I certainly could not begin on those hideous things."

She gave her daughter a half angry little caress and went hurriedly out. As she passed it the nearest of the images, jarred perhaps by her step, fell from its corner and struck her shoulder sharply with its base. "Hateful thing!" said the mother; but she picked it up, with a housewife's instinct, and replaced it. Hilda stayed on where she was. But when she came out, an hour later, she looked so bright and well that her mother commented on it. Hilda said she had been asleep.

She forgot to take her bracelets from the Little Queens, or perhaps she did not want to. Kerkoff, prowling up and down the room, as his habit was, noticed them for the first time when he came next to haunt her. He was looking worse, fevered and haggard. He talked, as always, of Mary Bellamy. He began to tell Hilda how he had watched Mary love-making with Richard night after night.

"There's a hole in their shade," he said with a short wild laugh. "I can see. For three hours last night I-"

Hilda stopped him. "You should go away from this town," she said quietly. "You are driving yourself mad.'

"No, I cannot." He whirled on her. "You do not go. Why? I do not ask, for I know. You are held here because of that man who was false to us both because he is chained to Mary, as I am chained. . Only you are stronger, for some reason I do not know.. I hate Mary as much as I love her.. I lie awake fancying her in my arms. And then I fancy her lying dead, never to belong to anyone again. I do not know which gives me the most comfort." She bent over him and set one strong hand on his shoulder, where he had sunk down by the couch.

"You must stop letting your mind think such things," she told him. "They are worse for you than for Mary."

He looked up at her-the half-terrified, half-fierce look of an animal.

"Tell me, you who are powerful to move lives-ah, yes, it is true, however the power came- -what shall you do to Mary, how do you feel to Mary?" There was an irrational terror in his look.

Hilda answered him with her strange frankness, her eyes falling into the unseeing stare they sometimes had.

"She does not seem to me like

a real person to be hated. Only a dreadfulness that has done something to my Richard. Something that will pass-something that will be gone.

E shuddered. "That is worse

HE shudder hate... Why Hthan any

have I turned to you for help, you-" He stopped short, staring over his shoulder. He uttered a short cry as he looked. "So! . . . It is no wonder you are strong with these for counselors! . . .

Obe

1, you are very prudent and wise. You speak of

love and forgiveness. And all the while you stay and take counsel with these."

He pointed to the mantel, to the gold-girdled little stolid images. "You are talking wildly," she said. "I keep those because Richard brought them to me. That is all."

He shivered and dropped his head submissively. "Yes. I am talking wildly, I suppose. But we believed in such things at homewhat was once home. An evil icon will do more than a kind one, and more powerful than any are the Little Queens of Death But, after all, you are not of Rurik's race."

She spoke to him soothingly. "No, indeed. We are Norse far back, we Swayns: why, my ancestresses, they say, were Valas, Norse wise women, from grandmother to granddaughter. Never Russians at all."

He crouched back, a halfgrotesque, clutching figure. He began to laugh softly. "He brought it on himself: he gave you the gift, you who are of the blood of Rurik the Norseman! These were little goddesses of Rurik; set always on the headstalls when his women counselors rode into battle with him. . . . Yes, he had women coun selors, beautiful and young like you, with sheaves of yellow hair. Wise and chaste they were, and strong like men. And they had hands which could beckon the Little Queens of Death to send vengeanc on their enemies. . . . Even now the stories are told in the old baboushkas' huts. It was not well t come between the counselors and their desires, my own nurse told me. You talk to me with you lips of love and forgiveness, you who are, after al the centuries, still taking counsel with your Littl Queens of Death!"

H

...

• ..

E was in a pitiable state, for all his effort to b quiet. Hilda put her hand once more on hi shoulder, and looked at him steadily.

"You are wearing me out, Andrey. Won't you g away, do what I ask?"

He looked up at her with the cowed appeal of dog in his face.

"I have loved Mary so always-I have alway loved mankind. . . . Oh, do not ask me to obey yo -do not-"

He began to moan as if some terrible thing threat ened him. She bent over him, puzzled. There wa nothing in what she asked to make him plead si She spoke to him, the more sharply that she was b ginning to feel half tranced herself: "Please do as tell you, Andrey."

He rose stiffly, obediently as if she were his sup rior officer, but the horror was still in his face. "I must. . . obey you," he said in the some monot nous voice. Dazedly he pushed his hand across h forehead and walked stiffly from the room. It di not occur to Hilda till later, talking to her fathe that she might have sent him, in his shaken stat into a short hypnotic sleep.

It was hard for her to speak of the Little Quee of Death and all they meant to her, even to the ta silent father she was so like. But she felt that sl must do it if she meant to go on helping Andre Her father was a doctor, one of those of whom it said that their very presence (Continued on page 2

g

N'

X

ICOLAS overcame his reluctance and sat in the chair at her side. "May I share the twilight?"

Her lack of response suggested a helplessness to deny him, and for a time he was glad to encourage her silence. Then he spoke with candid interest: "You said last aight, Miss Grantley, something about having come from the South. rather guessed it the first time I saw your father."

She nodded, and continued to stare with the bewilderment of one wakening. "It's odd you mention

that just now." She looked away, and he had a fear she was slipping again beyond reach. "Why?" he asked.

She answered slowly, as if against her will: "BePause we are nearly within calling distance of the own in which I was born."

His clumsy interruption of her reverie could only

je repaired by accepting its inferences.

"Then these are your woods," he said sympathetially.

She nodded. "Dreary, ugly woods, most people hink them."

"They remind me of the desert," he said, "which I ike because every detail that goes to its similarity liffers from every other. When did you see your desert last?"

"Do you really care to know? What difference loes it make?" "None," ," he answered, annoyed at her habit of reession, "if my curiosity's at all intrusive."

Her denial came with an anxious rush. "I'm orry, Mr. Aldrich. I didn't mean that. I was ten. about-I think. You know so much already. You now where I went with my mother. It seemed a ttle disappointing to pass so close without stopping learn how much truth infantile memories hold." "You mean," he asked, "the house you lived in, nd"

wh

"Yes," she said, "because I can't help thinking the hild must have dreamed all that.”

Behind them a servant drew down the blinds. The rees had brushed the last color from the sky. Close s she was, her form lost outline. He leaned closer

By Wadsworth Camp

Illustrated by George E. Wolfe

with a genuine compassion. "Dreams that don't fit Third Avenue or Halloran's castle?"

Her laugh was bitter. "Scarcely."

"I understand," he said. "I think your father suggested he had had bad luck. A pleasant house, I fancy. I am sorry. Perhaps you have a picture of the child in laces and ribbons?"

This time her laugh was soft. "A supercilious little wretch, with red hair!".

"Will you let me see it? I should enjoy seeing that infant."

He hadn't meant to say it, and at once sought means of disclaiming so confidential an interest, but before he could speak she had taken the situation in her own capable hands; had risen, demanding sharply: "Haven't I amused you enough?"

He sprang up, detaining her, wishing he might grasp her shoulders and shake her for her impudence. For one who was so frequently there herself she had too easy a habit of placing others in the wrong. "You're unjust," he said quickly. "Interest and amusement don't always coincide."

OEFORE she could speak the screen door swung

the dreary woodland vanished.

"Jewfish Creek! What an absurd name!" The private car was ready for abandonment. Luggage filled the living compartment. The four stood on the observation platform with the train conductor, come to make sure they wouldn't miss their destination.

"You're almost the first passengers I've dropped

here," the conductor replied to Mrs. Ashmead.

They were by now actually in a waste a stretch of flat marsh with occasional glimpses of turquoise

ater; but Nicolas was more interested in the change that had come to Eleanor Grantley. Deliberately she seemed to have lifted herself from the Gothic setting which his vision of an artist had always given her, emerging from her stateroom after luncheon essentially an object for the sun. She stood now, swinging a straw hat at the end of its gay ribbons. Above her skirt and waist of white, soft cloth, her hair was like a crown of a metal so rare as to have become legendary. Beside her Mrs. Ashmead's more costly concessions to the climate seemed exaggerated.

Mangroves stood thick, about the embankment on which the track was laid. The train rattled over a drawbridge and stopped beside a long, narrow platform flanked by three yellow shacks, raised on stilts, from which interested employees emerged. Hal came running along the platform, bronzed and dangerously handsome in his flannels.

"Jewfish!" the conductor called, sprang the platform trap, descended, and offered a chivalrous hand. "Mother mine!"

Hal received Mrs. Ashmead in his arms. "Hello, father! Nick! It's a dull caravan, but Janet's primed to pound the tom-tom for you."

Then Nicolas knew Hal saw Eleanor Grantley as she descended the steps with long, easy strides, ignoring the gallantry of the conductor. Hal's face wasn't so brown it couldn't show red.

"Nobody mentioned you were coming, Miss Grantley."

His hand started forward and hesitated. Nicolas smiled. Evidently pledges weren't forgotten. "Had to bring a corner of the shop," Mr. Ashmead explained cheerily. "These our men?"

While landsmen dressed as sailors invaded the car and brought the luggage down, Nicolas, puzzled by the swift change of her face, the fear in her usually inscrutable eyes, watched Eleanor Grantley. She had known she would find Hal. It couldn't be that. Her strangely timid eyes followed the close horizon, and Nicolas absorbed with

"Janet, you don't like Eleanor Grantley?" Nicolas asked. She mocked: "Some men study delightful creatures like her"

her the stark desolation of the landscape. Aside from one or two invalid coconut palms on the low ground behind the shacks there was no vegetation except endless acres of mangroves. Beyond the drawbridge the sluggish stream expanded into a large sound which was limited by the same melancholy growth.

In every direction the skeleton mangroves seemed to close in, forbidding escape. Perhaps the sight of the launch, moored to pilings in the draw, brought thé indifference back to the girl's face, or the gleaming enamel and brass of Beau Ashmead's house boat, which was anchored far out in the sound.

WITH anxious regret Nicolas watched the private

car whisked toward Key West, and descended with the others to the launch. He could separate almost at once the welcoming group at the rail. There was Janet, leaning eagerly forward, waving a handkerchief; Lady Mary, clinging to a stanchion; her daughter, a trifle behind, looking on with erect indifference. When they were close he wasn't unprepared for the surprise expressed in Janet's face and voice as she called affectionate greetings. Her disapprobation was plainer when they had climbed the ladder, and, with the exception of Eleanor Grantley, who had presumably sought her stateroom, stood together on the wide upper deck, aft. She projected into the reunion a not unnatural regret.

"Since you had to bring some one

"Why anyone else?" Mr. Ashmead asked goodhumoredly.

"At Hill's End, I didn't like "

Her mother placed her finger on her lips. "Cramped quarters, dear! Everything is heard on a boat. At Hill's End? That was your grandfather. She's quite prudent herself."

Janet shrugged her shoulders. Nicolas turned to Mary. Her face was more at peace than he had seen it since her first days in New York.

As he changed for dinner he admitted Janet's vexation had some excuse. A house boat, even as extravagant as Beau Ashmead's, isn't a country house. There would be crowding of a sort, an inescapable intimacy, but Mrs. Ashmead, when they gathered on the upper deck later, faced the prospect cheerfully.

"Where," she asked, looking around, "is Miss Grantley? We'll have to take her en famille."

She said a word to a steward who had emptied his tray, but Hal sprang nervously from his place on the skylight beside the Honorable Mary Morley. "No bother. I'll rout her out." "You're a good boy," his mother approved. Nicolas frowned at the mangrove walls which nar

rowed to a creek. Hal had seemed too virtuous for honest reform, and his voice came from below now impatient and buoyant: "Miss Grantley! Where do you hide? Mess gear!".

He ushered the slender white-clad figure to the deck. Mrs. Ashmead absent-mindedly slurred over a half introduction. The Honorable Mary Morley smiled at the secretary. "I remember seeing you at Hill's End."

Janet whispered in Nicolas's ear: "Father's spoiled our picnic."

Yet the really difficult place, Nicolas conceded, was occupied by Eleanor Grantley, and he watched her during dinner and afterward, admiring her tranquil inser.sibility.

W!

HEN they emerged on deck the boat lay at anchor in the Bay of Florida-out of respect for the mosquitoes, to leeward of a large key. That and smaller and more distant islands were like sudden, uneven creases in the velvet and silver setting from which the deck radiated its brilliancy.

Eleanor Grantley, sitting in a deep chair, chatting with Mr. Ashmead, seemed unconcernedly at home beneath the multicolored awning with its painted central lantern; among the tumbled, pleasantly contrasted cretonnes of settees and chairs; beside the wicker table laden with coffee, liqueurs, cigars, and cigarettes.

Through experience Nicolas understood how little truth could be read from Eleanor Grantley's shell. She couldn't be such a fool as not to know she was a part of this fortunate circle merely on sufferance, that in the social scale she still swayed between her hostess and the stewards, inclining, if anything, toward the lighter balance.

"What are your thoughts worth, dear?" Nicolas, lounging with Janet among the cushions of the skylight, laughed shortly, put down his coffee cup, and sauntered to the rail. Janet followed him.

"While I've missed you, Nick, I've explored and found the perfect retreat."

"Good," he said, lighting a cigarette. "May I be shown?"

As they followed the deck they passed Hal and Mary, leaning silently on the rail amidships. Nicolas wanted to pause, but Janet urged him to the front of the deck house into which a bench was built, lighted now only dimly by the high moon.

"Perfect?" she asked.

He stared, agreeing. He had been blaming himself for having come to this reunion without a thrill, for anticipating emotionlessly the prospect of sharing

such a corner with Janet; and as he sat beside her

he faced the necessity of telling a deliberate falsehood. For Janet's sake he must force himself to the unquestioning passion his mother was so confident he had never experienced.

"Have you missed me a lot, Nick?"

"Worked hard as I could," he evaded, "in order not to."

"Wish," Janet said, "I could have shared your trip down. Was it deadly?"

"No," he answered.

She lifted her head and examined him quizzically: "Perhaps father's newest stenographic obsession helped?"

"You don't like her, Janet?"

"Why should one like or dislike?" she asked, surprised. She bent closer with mock anxiety. "My dear! I know some men make a study of the habits of these delightful creatures. Not you, my own-"

Nicolas could not elude an instinct to defend that girl, who, without knowing it, had become the subject of small talk that had taken a tinge of the illicit. They had no business dragging her in; or, accepting facts for what they seemed worth, why wasn't. Hal with her, instead of standing voiceless beside Mary Morley?

"Don't file people in pigeonholes, Janet."

"What do you mean?" she asked anxiously.

"Nothing more than that." He managed a laugh. "Although I might remind you I'm one of the steadiest of men."

She laughed back, unconsciously repeating the jarring note. "Which means the most suspicious of characters, doesn't it? But I know you, Nick, and I crave no other."

He stared along the path of the moon to where, with the appearance of an enormous raft, a name less key floated. With all his heart he wished himself a partaker of its solitude. He sat unthrilled with Janet in this corner to which the sentimental moonlight barely penetrated; said nothing on impulse; made no gesture save at a calculated mental demand. If the old hunger had died, what was left to this bargain which at all costs he must see through?

Under the circumstances it was convenient hissilence should suggest a passion beyond expression. She sighed. "It is too beautiful, Nick, but one must think of others."

With a bewildered sensation of relief, he led this woman, whom he had contracted to marry, back along the deck to the others.

THE

HE group aft was significantly reduced, Lady Mary and Mr. Ashmead alone remaining. Mrs. Ashmead and the Honorable Mary, it was ex plained, had retired. Hal, out of the kindness of his heart, had just started Miss Grantley on a little constitutional. From time to time they appeared pacing slowly about the deck house, and Nicolas wondered uneasily if the bland moonlight sent thrills to them. "It's sweet of Hal," Janet commented. Nicolas couldn't guess how sincere she was. H broke in impatiently: "Hang it, Janet! Don't you think it counts that she's pretty?"

At first he was afraid he had given too much away Then, to his amazement, he saw that Janet had quit misunderstood, for she answered sharply: "I can see why you think her pretty."

A steward intervened with sandwiches and ice drinks. Hal put a period to his sweetness an brought Miss Grantley back.

Lady Mary made a point of speaking kindly to he Nicolas offered her a tray.

Absent-mindedly, without looking at him, she too a sandwich. He saw that her attention was held b the water with its path of silver, its vague an somber' islands.

"You like it?" he asked.

She shook her head almost vehemently. "Thos. islands," she murmured, "growing from the wate and all empty!"

He indicated the single black patch in the moon path. "Can't you catch a happier impression?" 1 smiled. "Suppose you were there? Couldn't you fan yourself drifting with it to mythical splendors?" Again she shook her (Continued on page 24

SEE where our old friends, Emma Goldman an' Alexander Berkman, would like America to take 'em in again," said Uncle Henry. "They've had just about all the freedom they a possibly stand. New Russia is too stimulatin' 'em. Another month of liberty an' the docis won't answer for the consequences. They nt to come back to this

ad of bondage for a rest

re.

'I kind of figured it that y from the first. Y'see, re's nothin' sedentary ut the Russian brand Freedom. It isn't a thing t you can take sittin'

n. It calls for youth, ength, endurance, an' ed-mostly speed. Unthe Soviet, life is real, is earnest, and the ve is not its goal, not if can run fast enough. the days of the brutish ar, ordinary agility ald serve, but now a zen's got to be able to a hundred yards in betthan ten seconds. Bein' e is a blessin' guarand by Lenine, but keepfree is up to the indinal. Fallen arches is the ne as a death sentence. 'It isn't only the case t Emma and Aleck ain't

young as they used to You've got to take into sideration the years of ferin' behind 'em.

Bit

soul-crushin' lecture rs that sapped courage, lermined stamina, an' yed hob with the waist. ! Day after day of ary travel on the enerin' Pullman, with the sh eatin' into your ils an' the porter never und when you want him! al after meal in expenhotels, with the caviar ut to hatch, the soup f cold, an' the fish sel

a above suspicion!

How They Suffered

ON'T talk to me about

ria or Hiram Johns agony over not thin' the Senate in time the Newberry vote. All sympathy's for Emma. ry time the proletariat ready for revolution, ew Chaplin film would

le along, an' only the loathsome rich seemed willto listen. Night after night she would have to g herself to her feet in the auditorium of some gar caravansary, an' face the assembled bourisie with nothin' to support her but the conscious3 that there wasn't an unsold seat in the place; suffocated by the heavy odor of massed Ameribeauties, her nerves racked by a noisy meetin' some Rotary Club on the next floor, an' always rin' under the sick fear that the reporters might be present, but still forced to go on. I suppose e were hundreds of mornings when Emma an' k just prayed for strength to keep on bearin' it. An' on top of it all a drear sense of futility, the in' conviction that she was a voice cryin' in the erness. Oftentimes, after one of her most pasate periods, when she'd ripped the capitalistic em wide open, an' had absolutely proved the neity of destroyin' the existin' order, drownin' it in d, like as not the banker's wife would say: 'Isn't o lovely!' Or maybe the daughter of a traction nate would whisper: 'Aren't you just too thrilled!' the Heaven knows what the end would have been, for ma was gettin' to be the rage with the accursed geoisie. All over the country Near Thought soes were demandin' her presence, an' chambers of

commerce were wonderin' if a speech by her wouldn't liven up the annual dinner. Even Bryan got nervous about his Chautauqua job, an' began to think about puttin' some new stuff in 'The Prince of Peace.'

"The order of deportation came just in time to save poor Emma an' Aleck. Another day an' they'd have had to diet. At first, however, they didn't dare to believe the glad news. It looked too much like some capitalistic trick.

"Even then Emma an' Aleck couldn't bring themselves to realize that their day of release had come. Convinced that there was a catch in it somewhere, they tried everything their lawyers could suggest. Habeas corpuses, attachments, replevins, contributory negligence, assumed risk, an' mechanics' liens-nothin' was left undone to

make sure that the order of deportation was on the square. When the last decision was rendered, an' they knew that no corrupt judge could keep 'em from goin' to glorious Russia, their cries of joy were heart-rending. They simply couldn't contain themselves. Policemen had to do it for 'em.

""Quit. torturin' us,' cried Emma and Aleck, bracin' their four feet right up against the threshold of liberty. 'You don't mean to let us go, an' you know it.'

"Indeed we do,' said Uncle Sam. 'Our better nature has asserted itself at last. Bold, untamable spirits, no longer will we detain you here in this hell hole of despotism. Slaves of capitalism, you are free! The beat of your wings against the cage has touched our hearts. The door is open, an' give it a good push as you go out. There's a spring lock on it. Over there, in the heart of the sunset, only it's houses. burnin', is unshackled Russia. Fly to it an' at it.'

strings. Blood lust swept the crowd, an' there was unanimous decision to give a demonstration of the proletariat's power. At least five thousand revolutionists were in the maddened throng, an' Lord knows what might of happened if Officer Kelly hadn't come by an' made 'em move on.

"As the good ship sailed away from this land of the fee an' home of the slave, you never in all your life saw anything more pathetic than the joy of Emma an' Aleck. It was (Continued on page 26)

The Talking Sickness

WO well-known men were discussing a mutual friend who is one of the United States senators from their State.

"He is talking too much," said one of them. "He has a brilliant mind, and some of his speeches before his election were almost masterpieces. But the stuff he's been getting off recently is pure drivel."

"That's true," said the other. "I know it; all his friends know it; and the worst of it is, he knows it. I had a conversation with him not long ago in which I referred to the subject in a friendly way. He admitted that no man can speak as often as he has spoken recently and say something every time. But he said: 'You have no idea of the pressure that's put on a public man to make him speak. America is overrun with societies and clubs and organizations that hold weekly or monthly or semimonthly gatherings; and every one of these gatherings means a speech from somebody. If you can tell me how to turn down these invitations from my constituents and still retain their votes, you will contribute enormously to my peace of mind. And you will probably lengthen their life.'

The senator is right. We criticize our Congress and our officials because they do not accomplish more in the way of constructive work, while we are doing our best all the time to keep them from working at all. The business of lunching and dining in groups, and compelling men to speak to us, has become one of the great American industries. Measured by the money value of the time of those who speak and those who listen, it would probably rank not far behind steel and textiles. The "sleeping sickness," about which physicians have been recently so much concerned, is a minor ailment compared to the talking sickness. That is the real curse.

It is the foe of common sense and sanity in our industrial life. Recently we engaged in a disheartening experiment. We took three consecutive issues of a metropolitan paper and marked in red pencil the news articles which were based on false or reckless or utterly foolish charges directed against responsible individuals or institutions. When our marking was finished, the paper was scarred on almost every page.

Many headlines like these stared at us:

CHARGES CORPORATION PLOT AGAINST WORKERS
DENOUNCES RAIL LABOR BOARD

CHARGES THAT FEDERAL RESERVE IS FOE TO FARMERS
SAYS ADMINISTRATION IS FIDDLING WHILE ROME BURNS
ALLEGES THAT UNION LEADERS CONSPIRE TO EVADE LAW
CALLS ALL WOMEN WASTERS

In each case the quoted interview or speech was without any decent foundation in fact. None of the charges accomplished anything except to sow ill feeling and resentment, and to put the injured parties under the necessity of striking back. If the slightest effort had been made by the speakers to get the other man's point of view before they spoke, not one of the speeches would have been made. They appeared in print because the world puts a premium on loose talk and attaches no penalty to it. And every such outburst is a handful of sand thrown into the gears of national prosperity.

his Journals he reports a conversation with Albert H. Tracy, an able and influential member of Congress from Buffalo:

"The other point which interested Tracy was the ridiculous fame of the rhetoricians," he writes. "In a senate, or other business committee, all depends on a few men with working talent. They do everything and value men only as they can forward the work. But some new man comes there who has no capacity for helping them at all, can't do the first thing, is insignificant and a nobody, but has a talent for speaking; this fellow gets up and makes a speech which is printed and read all over the Union, and at once becomes famous, and take the lead in the public mind over all these executive men who, of course, are full of indignation to find one who has no tact or skill, and knows he has none, pul over them, by means of this talking power which they despise."

This "talking power" is the Pied Piper of politics. We shall make no large progress in government until we grow far more critical and suspicious of men who talk, far more appreciative of those who silently do the solid work.

And what is true of industrial and political affairs is equally true, we are confident, of domestic difficulties. How many family disasters begin-if the full truth were known—in an inability t keep silent at the critical time! A very shrewd and intelligen observer remarked recently that he would be in favor of a law pro hibiting all conversation before 10 a. m.

That is not so cynical a suggestion as would at first appear A very good case could be made out of it. It might shock thos who for years have been saying that the breakfast table is th place for cheerful and improving conversation between husban and wife, children and parents. But it is based on a sound recogni tion of the fact that the human mind is cold in the morning, lik an engine that has been chilled by the night air; it starts slowly with much reluctance and back-firing. By ten o'clock it is warn in full motion, and optimistic as to its powers. But woe to thos who try to crank it too early!

.

Foolish charges in industrial life; futile, wasteful talk in polit cal life; the selfish inability to recognize in domestic life tha every soul has a divine right to certain periods of privacy an silence these constitute the "talking sickness." It afflicts the worl more heavily than debt, or hunger, or disease. Its annual cost i money and harassed feelings and needless tragedies runs into sum uncountable.

Isaiah wrote of the ancient Egyptians that "their strength is t sit still." One reads the sentence with a sense of yearning and env Shall we ever reach that glorious day in human affairs when me and women will distrust the talker and penalize the promoter baseless verbal attacks? When we shall learn the wisdom of pu ting our trust in quiet, unobtrusive men who toil away at the bus ness in hand, men whose strength is to pull up close to the de or bench and there to sit still.

Human nature makes each one of us feel that his particu misfortunes are the worst. We know an American farmer, w a comfortable home, fertile acres, and an automobile, who we aloud that low prices have ruined him, and never gives a thou to the Russian farmer who, with his children starving on his o doorstep, walked fifty miles in search of a little grain and fai to get it.

We know another man who made life miserable for all ab him because he had to wait two days in a city he was pass through to answer a minor charge in a traffic court, and who ne gave a thought to the New York merchant who spent seven ye in jail (missing the electric chair once by only seventeen minut before his innocence was established and he was set free to rebu his broken life if he could.

The people to whom we tell our troubles may be polite eno to sympathize with us. But how would most of the misfort we so bitterly bewail look to a third person-an outsider? T is the test, after all. For the world is not personal eno to pay attention to hard-luck stories from anyone who work enough and health enough to win and enjoy food, clothi shelter, and friends.