An' camels-one hump and two humps-take your choice."

"A devil of a choice! They oughter come out in a dory, those fat geezers, and haul a few tubs o' trawls of a fine, cold winter's mornin', an' whatever else ailed 'em I'll bet it wouldn't be any sluggish livers by the time they got back to the vessel."

a

"Prob❜ly not. But Johnnie's crossed on whole fleet o' these big steamers goin' to Europe, and he was tellin' me he's met people who want to go to Europe, but they're so scared somethin'll happen 'em crossin' that they don't go."

Archie eyed Sam. "Say, Sam, artificial horses an' camels-one hump or two humps-'re maybe all right, but people scared to cross the ocean in a big steameryou can put that back in

your ditty box."

"You don't think Johnnie'd lie, do you?"

"No, no. But sometimes, Archie, I think he's a great little kid

der, that same Johnnie Duncan."

W!

crew.

"An' me, an' me, an' me!" came the chorus. "The top dory in the nest to wind'ard is mine and Archie's," yelled Sam.

So Captain Gurley, who was never known to play favorites, said: "All right-you and Archie try it." With easy seamanship-though, of course, a great vessel to handle, as all men out o' Gloucester well knew-Joe Gurley laid the Mary under the steamer's lee. His crew then dexterously put the No. 4 dory over the rail and, watching their chance, Archie and With a Sam just as dexterously dropped into it.

line paying out from the vessel to give them a chance if they capsized, they guided the dory to the steamer's side.

In four trips they took the sixteen men off the tramp, and nothing worse happened than that the

NCE the Mary was making good headway to the
Nestward, Captain Gedge, having been dried out

and fed, was standing beside Joe on the Mary's quarter. It was a gray day, a slate-colored hard sea and a gray sky, and for some time Captain Gedge had been staring ahead, muttering: "Yes, no; yes, no." And now he shouted: "Yes, by George, it is!"

It was an iceberg, a good-sized one, showing 400 feet or so of her length and perhaps 100 feet of her

height out of water. "Looks like a great, white tombstone against that gray sea and sky, don't it, captain?" said Gedge. "Something like," admitted Joe.

That was off the Mary's windward bow. Gedge bent down and had a long look under her fore boom, and by and by he looked up to Joe, saying: "And another one off the lee bow. How about those icebergs, Captain Gurley?"

"Oh, no special harm in them," said Joe. "This my old loafin' groundall these Grand Banks. I know these big banks 'bout as well as my kitchen at home, I s'pose. Thirty years now I've wintered an' summered here, an' you don't want ever to worry overmuch 'bout icebergs. There's always a kind of a freshwater smell-see-like" -Joe sniffed up into the air-"a fresh-water smell somethin' like we're gettin' now off an iceberg

to wind'ard. Of course if the sea's been hubbly all around, same as today, an' all at once to smoothen out, then you want to watch outyou're gettin' handy to the lee of a big one of 'em then."

THE

steamer man looked at Joe, and had another look ahead to windward and another peek ahead to leeward, and then he had a long peek dead ahead. "One over each bow, an' if I ain't mistaken there's another big one dead ahead!"

"There is," said Joe. "I been lookin' at it for ten minutes."

Whereat the other pulled a long face, and after a time he said: "Look here, captain, you may be able to smell icebergs in the dark, but everybody can't do that. And you can't be on deck always. It's coming on to dark, and you'll have to go below some timeif it's only for five minutes to get a cup o' coffee. How if you are below an' we should run into one o' those big white things in the dark?"

"An' me!"

dory filled to her gunnels on their second trip, and her side was smashed in getting back aboard from the last trip. It was good dory work-Joe Gurley said so to Sam and Archie; and, looking back to the steamer as she went down, he also said to her captain-Gedge by name: "I never see one o' those old hulks o' steamers that some owners shove out-with

To which Joe said: "Captain, don't ever put me down in your log for bein' any foolish kind. You maybe noticed a while ago I took the gaff tops'l off this vessel. Well, when a man makin' a drive for (Continued on page 18)

market takes the main

ITTLE BOY BILLY came up the steps bearing triumphantly a broad, flat canna leaf. His face wore the look of a discoverer. On the back side of the leaf, clinging by tenacious papillæ, was an emerald caterpillar, distinguishable only by close observation. "Look, muvver," he said, and generously laid leaf and vermicular occupant in Lelia's lap, along with the rose, mauve, and amber silk threads with which she was embroidering, thereby innocently introducing a plebeian alpha to its patrician omega.

"What is it?" asked Lelia, smiling indulgently. "Buggo," said Billy proudly, his hands folded behind him. He might have been another Columbus presenting his queen with the fruits of his voyage. Lelia's first impulse was to brush the obnoxious insect away, but something in the eagerness of the flushed face stayed her hand. Billy was at the insect age which precedes the reptilian. His whole interest centered in buggos. Spiders gave him keen pleasure: he shrieked with delight at the beetles scurrying away to safety, when a board was lifted; he had already learned with bitterness the fallacy of the theory of the harmlessness of white-faced humblebees, and beetles pleased him most of all. Sometimes he found them on the stems of hollyhocks, but the surest place was in the hearts of sunflowers. It was a pretty sight to see the little fellow standing atiptoe, straining to draw down the topmost blossom in which he searched eagerly for a concealed buggo. Insects were all buggos to him, and all were delight

By Olive McClintic Johnson

Illustrated by H. M. Stoops

The list is not long. It includes the late Joel Chandler Harris of Atlanta and Harris Dickson of Vicksburg. A third Southerner who knows the negro and writes about him understandingly is Mrs. Johnson, who mails her stories from Dallas. Not only is she amusing the country with the irresistible adventures of Orestes and Nannette, but she is helping Americans to understand the mysterious traditional relationship between Southern people of the best kind and the negroes

ful. He had discovered a new specimen. "Where did you get it?" asked Lelia, simulating interest. 66 'Westes finded it. He said the wind wocked it to s'eep in its cwadle."

Lelia's eyes kindled. Her appreciative glance. rested upon Orestes, who worked faithfully mowing the lawn. The humble toiler had not been too busy

to feed her small boy's fancy. Could she do less? She tossed her work aside and lifted Billy to her knee. "It's a beautiful buggo," she said, trying to make up in warmth all that her response had lacked in spontaneity.

Billy was delighted. "You almos' couldn' see it, at first, could you, muvver?"

"No," admitted Lelia. "You see, it is so green, just the color of its cradle."

Then she told him how Nature often gives her children colors that beguile the eye-colors so like the surrounding environment that the small creatures are protected and able to elude and escape man, their natural enemy. With all his brains and his ability to think, man frequently overlooks and is deceived entirely by the simple unthinking creatures, colored by the hand of Nature.

7

had turned goggle-eyed at the startling revelation. Lelia looked up in surprise. She smiled at the emotional imagination of her colored servitor.

"How much have you heard of what I said, Orestes?"

"I heahed it all, Miss Lelia, an' iffen you'll 'scuse me I wan' to ax des one mo' li'l question." "What is it?"

"If it warn't fo' dey cullah, dey'd all been daid long ago, wouldn' dey-dem snakes an' alligators an' varmints an' sich? De white men would 'a' kilt 'em sho?" "I expect so."

"Dey cullah is what saves 'em, den, ain't it?"

theory of Protective Coloration, and"-she glanced downward at the inert, relaxed figure in her lap-"I see part of my audience has fallen asleep." Lelia arose and bore the little fellow, still tightly clasping the leaf, indoors.

Orestes had a way of storing novel thoughts in his mind, not knowing what eventualities might wake them into usefulness. With an entirely new idea for rumination, he turned back to his waiting lawn mower. As he propelled it back and forth he entertained himself mightily. To the tune of the revolving blades he chanted his monologue: "Cain' nuttin' happen to 'em. White man cain' git 'em! Nobody cain' git 'em! Hit's on account o' dey cullah. De Lawd gin 'em dey cullah. Bress de Lawd! If you set down on one ob 'em, it's a alligator, an' iffen 'tain't a alligator, hit's a snake. Whoopee! Be keerful whar you sets. Dey cullah pertecks 'em."

HE Leaf Motor Car Company received a package by express that afternoon which had been eagerly awaited. It contained a shipment of curtain rods. The automobile factory had been behind with production, so that it only turned out essentials. Small accessories like nickel curtain rods had to wait. They were cleverly devised standards, made to fit upright into sockets on the doors and support the storm curtains, so that occupants of the car could enter or leave without the trouble of unfastening the curtains.

Every Leaf sold in weeks had been sold with the provision that the curtain rods should be supplied later. This had been quite satisfactory to all the buyers with the exception of Mr. Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery-familiarly called Monty-was the manager of the George Hotel. He had never owned a car before and he had always longed to. So when the time came, finally, that made him the proud possessor of a Leaf, he wanted it complete. Not that there was any necessity for the use of curtains it was midsummer, and the sky had not so much as entertained the suspicion of a cloud for a month-but human nature came to the fore in Mr. Montgomery. He had no use for curtain rods, but he was entitled to them and he wanted them. So, on an average of once a day, he telephoned the Leaf Motor Car Company to ask if the rods had arrived. It was the office joke-the missing rods and the murmuring Monty. It irked Mr. Holmes. To have his telephone rung continually on the inconsequential business was annoying.

When Orestes reached the shop, following the completion of his morning's lawn mowing, one of his

but his master had counseled haste and, besides, he seldom went anywhere without the truck. He would deliver Mr. Monty's rods in a jiffy and return to the shop in haste to attend the more patient purchasers, who also awaited the belated equipment. This was a definite plank in Orestes's platform, but definite planks are sometimes lost in the perilous journey between their providing and their performing. The shop saw Orestes no more that day.

Mr. Holmes was really to blame. The curt insistence of his final instruction to Orestes caused the abscondence. How could his porter put the rods into Mr. Monty's hands when Mr. Monty was not there? How could Orestes return until he had fulfilled his mission? Mist' Bill had said stay, and stay he would-a modern colored Casabianca.

Nobody about the hotel seemed to know exactly where Mr. Monty was or when he would return. Orestes waited. Not feeling quite at ease in the splendor of the gilded lobby, he betook himself to the basement. There was always the likelihood of finding some acquaintance among the constantly changing cooks and waiters. Orestes was not disappointed. As he passed the swinging doors of the kitchen and perceptibly slackened his pace to catch more fully the tantalizing odors, the doors opened and a familiar white-clad figure emerged, bearing a huge meat knife. It was Hosea Hupp. "Name o' goodness, Hosea! What you doin' heah?" "I's de 'sistant to de chef cook," grinned Hosea proudly.

"Is you? An' whar you gwine wid dat cleavah?" Hosea's glance rested fondly on the giant snickersnee. "Dat's some baby, ain't it? Hit's mine. De hotel don' funnish 'em no mo'. When you comes to git a job as chef cook now, you brings yo' own knives wid you-des de same as a cahpenteh an' his tools. Hit's de only way; den eve'ybody kin hab de kine what's bes' suited to his han'."

"But whar is you gwine wid yo' chef. cook cleavah?" "Hit's a li'l game," whispered Hosea.

cooks, hotel's

"Me too," said Orestes, forgetting the fact that it was always such accid ing that got him into trouble.

of the

ouped

In the sample room was a motley c waiters, bellmen, and baggagemen. entire colored personnel, with the except chambermaids and elevator girls, was in expectant eagerness. Added to these were as many outsiders, drawn from the neighboring garages and shops by the glad word, mysteriously passed, that the bones were rolling. It was easily the largest indoor golf party that Orestes had attended recently, and many of the gamesters were his friends-Eliphilate Luck, Hiawatha Bones, Sloofoot Jackson, and Mannie Blair. The last-named came upon him suddenly. "Dawg-gone, Rest Ease!" he exclaimed gladly. "I wuz des fixin' to sen' afteh you."

"Wisht you had, Mannie," said Orestes regretfully, "so's I could 'a' brung some money. I is clean broke."

"Too bad, but you'll make a good man to hol' de stakes," averred Mannie. "Dat's safer'n playin', anyhow, 'caze ole Lif' Laig is in de game, an' de stakes is gwine be high."

RESTES'S curiosity momentarily overcame his

nie? Is you wukkin'?"

"Me? I ain', to say, wukkin'. I is de haid waiteh!" he responded proudly.

"Naw?"

"Yes, I is. Ole Pompey Snow, what's been in all dese yeahs, is sick, an' I tooken his place."

"What's de matteh wid ole Pompey? De Jawdge Ho-tel wouldn' be de Jawdge Ho-tel widout no Pompey."

"Dat's right," admitted Mannie. "Dey's sum'p'n de matteh wid his laig. I don' rightly knows what 'tis."

"Mebbe hit's de pel-laig-ra," suggested Orestes with ready sympathy.

"Umphm-m! I 'speck so. I wisht he would come back. I's gittin' tiahed of de job. You don' gits no tips hardly atall--not nuttin' lak des a plain waiteh. Look at dem birds dar flashin' dey rolls-eve'y cent wuz made in tips."

It was an opulent crowd. The high wages and easy money of the times were revealed in visible wealth of cash and clothes. Hardly a man who did not bear a sizable roll and (Continued on page 19)

coworkers confided that matters were at a sad state in the office. "Mist' Bill is sho got de dis

tempah!"

"'Count o' which?" asked Orestes.

"Dat Mistuh Monty maddened

him ag'in."

"Oveh dem curtum rods," said Orestes with swift intuition.

"Yeah."

"Umphm-m! I wisht cahs wuz bawned widout no curtums."

So, it may be easily understood with what satisfaction Orestes received the express package and bore it triumphantly to his employer. "Mist' Bill, Santa Claus is came," he announced happily. "What is it?" asked Mr. Holmes shortly.

"Dem curtum rods."

"Praise be!" came the fervent response. "Here,

T

Brown Bros.

HE man in the street resents the usual disposition of Congress-Republican or Democratic -to talk and talk and do nothing. A very considerable number of senators and congressmen do a large amount of hard, earnest work in committee. A deal of this work is frustrated by the intricacy of the parliamentary procedure and by the size of the House of Representatives, which is already more of a mass meeting than a deliberative assembly and threatens to become larger. The man who does want to work is handicapped at every turn and it is quite unfair to characterize the House and Senate as being made up wholly of speechmakers. But unfortunately it is as speechmakers that most congressmen appear to those who do not have inside knowledge of the workings of the legislative machinery. And it is as speechmakers that far too many congressmen think of themselves. And the people are tired of speeches.

The sentiment is every day growing against the politician-orator type. The people want men who will talk less and do more; they are happily beginning to learn that the impassioned oratory by which a man gets himself elected to office grows out of a disposition that usually unfits him for the position to which he is elected. Mr. Bryan is a notable example of this; we have rarely had a better orator than he and never a worse secretary of state. President Wilson is in the way of being an orator and most people will grant that he has not been an executive-he has seldom even bothered to see if a policy which he formulated has been put into execution. During the past half century our real leaders have not been orators. Men like Mark Hanna did not have to be told that the orator is not an executive, and neither did they have to be told that it was next to impossible to elect to office a man who was not an orator. Therefore Senator Hanna compromised by picking out orators to run for office, while he at

By John Hays Hammond

"What we need is a good business administration." "There ought to be more business men in Washington." Familiar phrases? Yes, they get sprinkled through conversation and the editorial pages of the newspapers at very regular intervals-mostly around election time or when a new President is picking his Cabinet. But the time to work for the business man in politics is between elections. We can have him help with government if we really want him. John Hays Hammond tells here why the business man isn't helping more now and how to get him to help

tended to the executive work himself. In those days the orators holding political offices and occupying the front seats, whence they made a good deal of noise from time to time, were seldom more than messenger boys. The municipal governments were always thus organized by the bosses. Colonel Roosevelt was first an executive and only secondly an orator. He held vast throngs not because he was a good speaker, but because he always had something to say and could drive that something over by the force of his personality.

The party leaders or bosses of the Quay and Hanna type are gone; in their time they provided the executive brains for government and used the silver-tongued orators only to entertain the public.

Few regret the passing of the old representatives of personal politics. But the type of politician which they used as a pawn is still being elected to office and people are wondering why he is so ineffective. A kind of contempt is growing for the sort of mind that fills vast stretches of the Congressional Record with mere words. The country is looking about for men who will get things done. Politics and politicians are, for the time being, in disfavor.

If we are not to have bosses, then most assuredly we need a new type of politician. The present type has had little or no training except in noisily and vociferously carrying out orders. They do not distinguish the three essential phases of governmentelection, legislation, and administration. The ordinary politician formerly had nothing to do with legislation or administration-he just went through the motions. He had a deal to do with his own election; he had to keep everyone happy enough to vote for him. Now the direction is gone. The lack of leadership is forcing the responsibility for legislation upon our duly elected representatives. They must give a measure of attention to something other than reelection. They do not know how to act; they are most muddled-and nothing gets done.

The tradition that impassioned oratory is the principal need of men in public life comes down to us from a time when we were fighting to emancipate ourselves from European domination, and it was necessary to support our cause with rhetoric and argument. Our present needs are entirely different. In the administration of government it is deeds, not words, that count. American democracy won its fight for free government in the eighteenth century. Its fight in the twentieth must be for good government, and there can be no good government without good administration, and no good administration until administration is divorced from politics. Politics has its place, (Continued on page 28)

10

Hush Stuff

By Meade Minnigerode

Illustrated by R. M. Crosby

Yale's "Tap Day" is one of the most picturesque traditions of our American colleges. Primitive human competition will eternally create the greatest interest and enthusiasm. Seldom in later life is a man forced to be publicly weighed, measured, and accepted or discarded with such brutal frankness. No man with a chance of being included in the forty-five men elected can be indifferent to the tenseness surrounding the ceremony. Mr. Minnigerode, himself a Yale man, has succeeded in injecting into his story the taut, aching suspense, the wild joy, the utter hopelessness of what may seem to an outsider a trivial affair, but which remains to the participant the most vital moment in his youth

I

T was always queer, thought Jimmy, the newsboy, how no one ever took anything seriously in college. These young men came there every year apparently for the purpose of laughing at each other, and if you stuck around long enough you found out all about everything, even fraternities. Ever since "Curly" Corliss and "Angel" Benson, his roommate, had come to college, Jimmy had devoted the eager attention of his twelve-odd years to the intricacies of the life they led under the Campus elms-and he claimed to know more about it than any other newsboy of his generation. By the time they had become juniors, Jimmy had achieved a position of confidence in the class, and the freedom of their room over on the ground floor of Durfee was his at all hours of the day. Even if they were not in, there was always Angel's bull pup Champ to play around with on the Campus.

"Well, I know," he heard Angel say one evening. in May of junior year. "He's on every dope sheetbut I think he's going to miss out."

"You can never tell," replied Curly. "He's a dark horse all right, but you know he's in strong with Webb and that bunch. 'Ham' Leonard's got him down on his list for Keys, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if High Street went after him . . ."

"Well, believe me," Angel went on, "if he's wise, he'll take the first thing that comes, and not run any chances. I think he's cooked if he doesn't go early."

Jimmy looked out of the window and pulled Champ's ears absent-mindedly. By jiminy, here was one thing he knew very little about, come to think of it! Something you never found out much about either, no matter how long you stuck around. And something, moreover, which they all seemed to take pretty seriously when the time came every year!

H, he knew what Angel and Curly were refer

Oring to. It had to do with Tap Day and elections

to Senior Societies-and he understood that the whole junior class was simmering with "dope," poring over lists of possibilities for the three secret And he societies, and figuring out its chances. understood besides that some of them were not bothering much about it personally, either because they felt pretty sure of themselves,, "barring an upset," or because they realized without any further argument that they did not have "a ghost of a chance"-while others again were staying awake nights because they knew themselves to be "on the ragged edge."

But the why and the wherefore of all these things, and the private doings of these societies, remained a mystery to him. It was all "hush stuff" of the deepest sort-very secret and, doubtless, very terrifying!

This was all in the days when Alumni Hall was still standing on the Campus, and the customs

"Hello, kid," said Angel to Jimmy. "Chase yourself up into the tree and sing out when some. body gets tapped"

surrounding these societies were still in full sway -and, of course, Jimmy had steeped himself in all that was to be learned about them outwardly, enhanced by highly imaginative conjecture. Freshmen always had extraordinary things to tell about them, beginning "They say . . ." and ending in some outlandish piece of medievalism. A man, an outsider, had gotten into Bones once, and had never been seen again! General consternation! And Jimmy would be too excited to consider how, if he had never been seen again, they had found out that he had got in. Mr. Drummond and Mr. Sayre of the senior class, who had "run" Curly and Angel for Deke, belonged, the former to Skull and Bones, and his roommate to Scroll and Key-and Jimmy had carefully observed their speech and behavior for some clue to all these mysteries, but with very little result.

He had stood in the crowd, to be sure, on Initiation Night and watched them being taken in-and, gee whiz, that had been thrilling enough! The Bones tomb was over on High Street, just off the Campus behind the Art School-a bloodcurdling sight of itself to a little boy of twelve with its massive, windowless, brownstone front, and its shadowy portal with the big black door-and never a sound from inside! Drummond had waited for his turn to come on the Campus in a dark suit and hatless-then he had walked across the street and up the stone path to the steps through a lane of cheering classmates and stopped in front of the door.

And then-oh, terror and mystery-the door had

swung open a little way, a hand and a bare forearm had reached out slowly through the opening, grabbed Mr. Drummond by the left shoulder, and fairly yanked him off his feet into the building! Oooo! "Pulling them into Bones," the college called it.

...

"Look out, Benny!" everybody in the crowd had shouted. "He's after you . . . there he comes zowie!" And they had all laughed at Drummond's disappearing heels-but it seemed no laughing matter to Jimmy!

Over at Keys, on College Street, they did it differently. It was an ivy-covered building standing all alone in its own lot, and you had to go up a flight of stone stairs to reach the door. Jimmy ran over They just in time to see Billy Sayre going in. passed in one by one in groups of five-in complete silence. Gee!

H

E never found out what went on over at Wolf's Head on that evening out on Prospect Street. And up on York Street, at the Elihu Club, they did nothing in particular. The men just went up the steps one by one, in dinner jackets, and rang the bell and went in. It was an ordinary house, not a tomb, which they used for several years before moving into the historic old "Tory Tavern" on Elm Street, facing the Green-the house which had served as headquarters for the British when they took the town during the Revolution. This club was the nonsecret senior organization, which at that time still gave out its elections by mail after Tap Day-when