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The boy took kindly to his job, and made friends with his fellows, two in particular. fellows, two in particular. "When we get to France," he said to them, "if we can get leave together, we'll go up to Paris, and I'll show you the town." When he got to Paris, he went to his bankers and made himself known, got what money he neededhe had a large letter of credit, for his father was a multimillionaire and proceeded to the hotel aforesaid.

circumstances that makes its history truly a story of enthusiasm. What their hands found to do they did with their might. They drilled, they learned their job as well as they could, with never a sign of discouragement, though thousands of those who had enlisted had not even been called to the colors for lack of a place to put them. But those who did serve got their reward. Some of us who remember certain boys when they went to camp, and who saw them two or three months later, were amazed at the change in them. They had been made over physically and mentally. Boys who had been pale, anæmic, stooping, shrinking, came home on leave strapping, upstanding chaps with clear eye and fine color, with self-reliance and dependableness showing in every word and gesture. If the fathers and mothers of this country who didn't raise their sons to be soldiers or sailors could see what a few months had done for the boys of the Naval Reserve, it is inconceivable that they should not clamor for the same thing for their own sons. The cause of universal service would be won on this showing alone.

It has been said that the camps of the selective service are melting-pots where the young soldiers are transmuted into Americans-than which there could be nothing more useful. But with the N. R. there was no need for this process. The men were one hundred per cent Americans when they enlisted, and they were in deadly earnest. They were of every sort, and the immediate causes for their enlistment were sometimes out of the common. There was, for instance, the captain of a Standard Oil tanker whose ship was sunk by a submarine in the Mediterranean. He was mad all the way through, and hurried home to enlist as a common sailor in the N. R. The recruiting officer said: "Why don't you go and get another ship? Such men as you are needed; besides, you will get big money, and your life will be insured."

"To h with the big money!" replied the still raging skipper. "What I want is to get a crack at those d- -d babyFe killers." And he persisted in enlisting.

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Then there was the retired navy boatswain. When he came to enlist, the officer asked him also why he came.

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Well, sir, you see, the people in my town don't understand about this war, and I had to enlist to set them an example." If the older men show patriotism, the devotion of the younger ones is no less splendid, and sometimes very touching. There is young B whose father is at the head of perhaps the largest bookstore in New York City. Some one heard that the boy had enlisted as a stoker, and asked his father about it. "Yes," said the elder B ; you see, his eyes are not very good, and he was afraid he would not be able to serve his country at all, so he took this job, where eyes are not needed." To serve in the bottom of a ship, with no chance to fight backexcept by keeping the ship moving; with none to see what is going on, and with every chance of being drowned like a rat if the ship goes down, is one of the finest jobs in the service, and such men as young B "deserve to have a poem written about them," as one appreciative admirer said.

The matter of this boy brings up another stoker story. Soon after our first ships reached the other side three especially grimy young stokers appeared at one of the smartest hotels in Paris and asked for rooms. That particular house was not in the habit of entertaining guests of that quality, but the manager thought it would never do to turn away the first representatives of their new allies who had come to his door, so he took them in. After they had cleaned up a little, but were still grimy, they ordered the best possible dinner, which one of them paid for with a 1,000-franc note. The manager became interested, asked a question or two, and the whole story came out. One of them had hastened to enlist at the beginning of the war, and something like the following conversation ensued: "What can you do?" asked the recruiting officer. "Don't know, sir."

Ever been to sea?"

"Yes, sir. Made several trips to Europe as a passenger." Know how to row?"

"Yes, sir, in a shell. College crew.'

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No other experience?"

No, sir."

"Well, you look like a good, husky chap. I'll enlist you as a stoker. We need 'em."

The rush of college and school boys to the N. R. brought in a great number of such fellows as this. Many of them enlisted at Newport, because their friends spent the summer there. It was a standing joke in the early days before the Government had provided quarters for them, and they were living all over the town, that many of them drove down to the boats in the morning in their own cars, and their chauffeurs drove down for them in the afternoon. Over at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, one day an officer was starting for Pelham Bay when his chauffeur cut his hand badly, and announced that he could not drive. "Can any of you men drive a Ford?" asked the officer, turning to a group of N. R. men standing near. "I can, sir," said one of them, touching his cap. "But have you far to go?" "Pelham Bay." "If you don't mind waiting a few minutes, sir, I'll get my own car, and we'll make better time." He disappeared through the Navy-Yard gate, and in a few minutes reappeared with a Rolls-Royce.

One N. R. jacky subscribed for $90,000 of Liberty bonds, and a group subscribed for $76,000. But the N. R. is no rich man's club.

Wealth is purely an incident, and gives men no especial value, except that it sometimes implies self-sacrifice and generally implies education. But there is often far greater self-sacrifice on the part of the man who gives up a job in a machine shop-certainly there is great unselfishness on the part of the mother whom he may be helping to support and many of the best-educated men have no wealth but their salaries, yet prove among the most valuable men in the service. Two instructors at Columbia, one a Harvard, the other a Yale graduate, enlisted as ship's cooks because, although both were deep-water yachtsmen, they modestly doubted whether they were qualified for anything better. It is needless to say that something better was found for them to do, and they are now instructors at Pelham Bay, helping to turn out the officers whom the Navy so greatly needs. Another man who enlisted as a ship's cook is a well-known sculptor who thought himself too old for anything else. He, too, has a better job, but he earned it by good work, and he is prouder of the whistle which he carries as boatswain's mate, and which is the outward and visible sign of his promotion, than ever he was of a prize at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. Meanwhile the fact that so many rich men's sons are in the N. R. results in one fact-it is the best possible school for learning democracy. When the boy from Groton, the clerk from Wanamaker's, the apprentice from a machine shop, and the hand from a Rhode Island cotton-mill have pulled an oar in the same boat, have played on the same ball team, have served on the same submarine-chaser in the North Sea, there is apt to be a clearer comprehension of each other's point of view, a more lively realization of the fact that “a man's a man for a' that."

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Everybody is equal, and as promotion comes to the boy who makes good, utterly and entirely regardless of money and "pull," the man who is really a man comes to the front even before he gets on active service. Which brings us to what is the most interesting and perhaps the most important part of the work of the N. R.

There is no naval Plattsburg, and the Reserve has to take its place as well as it can, though it is sorely hampered by being obliged to work informally and, in a sense, unrecognized by the authorities. The same sort of work is going on at all the stations; perhaps the best idea of it can be given by telling what is done at Pelham Bay, which is the model camp of the whole service.

The site at Pelham was selected with the utmost care from several which were offered by the city of New York. It is in a public park, with water on three sides, offering perfect facilities for boat practice, and it was planned and built with the most careful concern for the comfort and welfare of the men. The buildings (of wood, of course) are skillfully designed for their purpose; there is a central heating plant, so that the danger of

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fire is negligible, and there is now an adequate supply of rowing and sailing cutters, barges, whaleboats, launches, and two training vessels. On top of the long Executive Building there is a bridge," with semaphores and all the paraphernalia for signaling, where the men learn that important branch of duty, and can practice it on the fleets of boats in the bay below and to bridges on other buildings. The food, which is excellent, is served on the "cafeteria" plan, and the bill of fare is scientific in food values and very varied. There is a Y. M. C. A. hut, of course, and a hostess committee, formed of ladies who receive and entertain the men. Nothing seems to have been neglected. The most important thing about the camp is, of course, the men's health. So admirable have been the hygienic conditions at Pelham that at hardly any time has the percentage of sick amounted to one-quarter of one per cent. With seven or eight thousand men in the camp or passing through it, in spite of the severest winter on record, and in spite of the fact that it is necessary to put the men through a drastically hardening process so that they may be able to stand the exposure of service in the North Sea and even worse places, there have been only about a dozen cases of pneumonia, and not a single death from that disease. The only case where a man died of it was when a Reservist caught it and died while on leave. Has any other camp such a record?

So great has been the all-round success of the camp that the Secretary of the Navy has ordered it to be increased by adding accommodations for ten thousand additional men. That speaks for itself.

When the recruit joins, he is taken to the Probation Camp, where he is stripped, washed, inoculated against typhoid, etc., has his teeth looked after if necessary, and is clad in a Government uniform. Then he is marched into a barbed-wire inclosure, where he must remain till he has passed the period when he could possibly develop a contagious disease. But he must pass something else the microscopic scrutiny of his officers. If he is lazy or indifferent or too stupid, out he goes; they will have none of him. The Reserve is too busy training men who are at least embryo seamen, and preferably petty, warrant, or commissioned officers, to turn itself into a reform school or an institution for the feeble-minded. This fact is impressed on the men once a week in the talk which the commanding officer gives them on their duties and opportunities, and it is on these latter that he lays stress, publicly and privately. Every recruit carries a possible ensign's commission in his ditty-bag, and he is thoroughly encouraged to bring it out. The hawk eyes of his officers will quickly find him out if he shows a desire to develop. First he will be given a petty officer's rating to see how he handles men. If he makes good, he is encouraged to study for a warrant. This gained, if he still is a success, he is helped to study for an ensign's commission, and the Navy Department sends up a board, headed by a rear-admiral, to examine him. The school which was at Columbia University has moved out to the camp, and turns out ensigns in two branches, deck officers and radio. The only complaint of the gentlemen who do this work is that the Navy is in such need of trained men that it carries off their pupils before they have time to educate them properly.

In the Probation Camp the men get their first instruction in cleanliness (that most important feature), in obeying orders promptly and without question, in saluting, in the customs of the service and in nautical phraseology, and in infantry drill; for Jack must be soldier and sailor both when need be. And as one walks through this section of the camp one is struck by the efforts which are made to give the enlisted man some rudimentary knowledge of how to do his duty aboard ship long before he ever gets there. There is instruction in knotting and splicing ropes, there is a platform from which a man is taught to cast hand-lines and on which there are cleats for him to fasten cables to, and on top of one of the dormitories there are platforms from which he is taught how to heave the lead, both right and left handed. It reminds one of the remark of a witty woman when she heard that a friend had been appointed ground officer" in the Aviation Corps. "Well," she said, “I the next thing we hear of will be dehydrated admirals." When a man has made good in the three weeks' course in the Probation Camp, he comes into the main camp and goes on with his training as an infantryman and artilleryman (they have a

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number of guns of different sorts), is taught to row and manage motor craft, and learns all the forms of signaling-to be, in short, as good a seaman as he can be made without going to sea The whole camp is seething with enthusiasm. The other day I happened to look out of a window in the executive building and saw a Jacky walking across the parade ground waving hi arms like a windmill. St. Vitus's dance? Not at all; he was simply practicing his semaphore signals on his way to th "bridge." It recalled a story which General Bell tells of Yap hank. One of his staff was stopped late at night by the onler "Halt! Who goes there?" After the proper exchange of question and answer the staff officer was dismissed with the cheerful remark out of the dark: "That's all right; don't min me. I'm only practicing."

This enthusiasm on the part of both officers and men pro duces a fine crop of ensigns (to say nothing of petty officers and seamen), though by no means as many as the service needs Consequently, for any ambitious young man who wishes to ois tain a commission in the navy there is no better or quicker way than to join the N. R. and work like fury. There is plenty of room at the top, where he will be welcomed with open arms and will be working amid congenial surroundings, in personal com fort, and under the eye of intelligent and sympathetic officers As to these officers, who have in many cases given up lucrative positions, sometimes at the head of big business concerns or im portant departments in colleges, or what not, it is impossible to speak of them with too much respect or admiration, though they would be the last to claim either. They are too busy with their jobs to think of anything else, but they will have their reward in the regard of their fellows, if nowhere else.

There is another branch of the N. R. the importance of which cannot be overestimated the hydro-airplane service, which has its station at Bayshore. As the mastery of the air seems likely to settle the fate of war on the land, so the hydro-airplane will have an important influence in controlling the submarine men ace, and so reducing the danger to convoys as well as in many other directions. There are over two hundred young men in training at Bayshore, and many of them are ready for service. Some of them, indeed, are already actively employed "somewhere ot the great deep," and no branch of the N. R. will have greater opportunities for usefulness, a better chance for distinction, or be more often heard of in the future.

There is one more institution affiliated with the N. R. which deserves a word of mention-the Naval Prison at Portsmouth Navy-Yard. Last spring Secretary Daniels asked Mr. Thomas Mott Osborne, who did so much to make Sing Sing a place fit for human beings instead of wild beasts, to take charge of the Portsmouth prison. When Mr. Osborne consented, he and his assistants received commissions in the Naval Reserve, which thus became a sort of foster mother to the prison. Military-of naval-law in case of war is necessarily very severe. How much it needs such mitigation as it can get in its administration from a man like Commander Osborne (to give him his new title) car be guessed from the following incident.

A fourteen-year old boy who had enlisted in the Navy had been granted leave of absence from, let us say, June 28 to July 5. As he left the navy-yard where he was stationed he over heard some one say, "The ship does not sail till August 5." He connected this in some way in his not over-clear mind with his own leave, and assumed that he need not come back till August 5. Consequently he remained quietly at home on his father's farm without the slightest idea that he was doing wrong till be was arrested and brought back as a deserter. Technically that is what he was, and the court martial gave him three years in the Portsmouth prison; but when such Draconian sentences as this have to be inflicted it is perfectly clear that all the huma izing influences at Commander Osborne's command are urgently needed.

Happily, with all the hard side of life in the service of country and there is plenty of it, beyond question-it has also its comic relief, oftenest, in such a body as the N. R., arising from ignorance. There was the case of the young commander of a "chaser" who mistook a floating mine for a buoy, started to make his ship fast to it till he was warned off by the frantic shrieks of every siren within sight and sound. Not less naïve was the young Reservist who wanted a quiet place to smok

a cigarette, and sought the seclusion of the magazine! But perhaps the prettiest example of simplicity was that of a Negro who was waiting at a hotel on an officer of the Reserve. The latter was tired after a hard day's work, and thought he would like a cocktail, which he ordered. Then he bethought himself of the breach of discipline involved in serving a drink to a man in uniform. Pretty soon the darky returned with the cocktail neatly "dolled up" in a cup surrounded by cracked ice, as orange juice is served. The officer looked sternly at the darky and asked him if he did not know better than to serve a drink to an officer in uniform. "Is you an officer, sah?" said the darky, innocence oozing from every pore of his face. "Fo' de Lawd, I thought you was one of dem Sousa's Band."

The Reserve has its touch of grim romance, too. Some time ago there was an engaging young ensign in command of a submarine-chaser. His superior officer commented on his familiarity with the waters about New York Harbor. "How do you come to know them so well?"

"I owned my own yacht, sir, and cruised all about here. I know the North Sea and the waters about Sweden and Norway nearly as well, too."

Clearly a desirable member of the force. Unfortunately, not long afterwards there was a descent of Secret Service men, and the engaging young ensign was arrested as a German spy, who presumably had enlisted in the hope of being transferred to the Intelligence Department. Where is he now? Has he faced a firing squad? Is he in a Federal prison? None of his former friends know, and the Government doesn't tell.

Then there is the pluck of these boys. One of them, scarcely nineteen, was asked last spring what his job was.

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What was the matter with your shoulder?"

"I was skylarking on a train coming down from school (he was a fifth-form boy in a New England school) and got thrown through a glass door. I cut my right shoulder so they had to take six stitches in it, and when I came to shoot at Plattsburg the recoil from the first shot broke out all the stitches. If it had not been for that, I think I might have made a better record."

A service rifle has a very vigorous kick. Think what it meant to that boy to hold it for forty-five shots against an open wound like that and get the second-best rating possible!

Last summer this same boy was assisting in the installation of some machinery. A piece weighing some five hundred pounds slipped from its fastenings, and, had it fallen, would have crushed a young seaman beneath it. The boy managed to catch and hold it till it was hurriedly blocked up, so saving the life of his shipmate; but the physical strain was so great that when it was over the boy fainted from exhaustion.

Again, last December he went overboard in icy water with a pair of nippers in his teeth and cut the wires of a wrecked hydro-airplane in which the aviator had become entangled. saving the latter's life. Yet all these things were done simply as matters of course in the ordinary performance of duty. And the Naval Reserve is full of just such boys. Aren't you proud of them?

I

SOLDIERS OF LAW AND ORDER

SOME ADVENTURES OF THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE POLICE

I-JOHN G.

BY KATHERINE MAYO

AUTHOR OF "JUSTICE TO ALL," THE STANDARD AUTHORITY ON STATE POLICE

T was nine o'clock of a wild night in December. For fortyeight hours it had been raining, raining, raining, after a heavy fall of snow. Still the torrents descended, lashed by a screaming wind, and the song of rushing water mingled with the cry of the gale. Each steep street of the hill town of Greensburg lay inches deep under a tearing flood. The cold was as great as cold may be while rain is falling. A night to give thanks for shelter overhead and to hug the hearth with gratitude.

First Sergeant Price, at his desk in the barracks office, was honorably grinding law. Most honorably because when he had gone to take the book from its shelf in the day-room, “Barrack Room Ballads" had smiled down upon him with a heartaching echo of the soft, familiar East; so that of a sudden he had fairly smelt the sweet, strange heathen smell of the temples in Tientsin, had seen the flash of a parrot's wing in the bolotoothed Philippine jungle. And the sight and the smell on a night like this were enough to make any man lonely. Therefore it was with honor indeed that, instead of dreaming off into the radiant past through the well-thumbed book of magic, he was digging between dull sheepskin covers after that entrance to the bar on which his will was fixed.

Now a man who, being a member of the Pennsylvania State Police, aspires to qualify for admission to the bar, has his work cut out for him. The calls of his regular duty, endless in number and kind, leave him no certain leisure, and few and broken are the hours that he gets for books.

"Confound the Latin!" grumbled the sergeant, grabbing his head in his two hands. "Well, anyway, here's my night for it. Even the crooks will lie snug in weather like this," and he took a fresh hold on the poser.

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Suddenly "buzz" went the bell beside him. Before its voice ceased he stood at salute in the door of the captain's office. Sergeant," said Captain Adams, with a half turn of his desk chair, "how soon can you take the field?" "Five minutes, sir.'

"There's trouble over in the foundry town. The local authorities have jailed some I. W. W. plotters. They state that the I. W. W. organization threatens a jail delivery, that the sheriff can't control it, and that they believe the mob will run amuck and shoot up the town. Take a few men, go over and attend to it."

"Very well, sir.”

In the time that goes to saddling a horse the detail rode into the storm, First Sergeant Price, on John G., leading.

John G. had belonged to the force exactly as long as had the First Sergeant himself, which was from the dawn of its existence. And John G. is a gentleman and a soldier, every inch of him. Horse-show judges have affixed their seal to the selfevident fact by the sign of the blue ribbon, but the best proof lies in the personal knowledge of A Troop, soundly built on twelve years brotherhood. John G., on that diluvian night, was twenty-two years old, and still every whit as clean-limbed, alert, and plucky as his salad days had seen him.

Men and horses dived into the gale as swimmers dive into a breaker. It beat their eyes shut, with wind and driven water, and as they slid down the sharp-pitched city streets the flood banked up against each planted hoof till it split in folds above the fetlock.

Down in the country beyond, mud. slush, and water clogged with chunks of frost-stricken clay made worse and still worse going. And so they pushed on through blackest turmoil

toward the river road that should be their highway to Logan's Ferry.

They reached that road at last, only to find it as lost as Atlantis, under twenty feet of water! The Alleghany had overflowed her banks, and now there remained no way across short of following the stream up to Pittsburgh and so around, a detour of many miles, long and evil.

"And that," said First Sergeant Price, " means getting to the party about four hours late. Baby-talk and nonsense! By that time they might have burned the place and killed all the people in it. Let's see, now. There's a railway bridge close along here somewhere."

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They scouted till they found the bridge. But, behold! its floor was of cross-ties only-of sleepers to carry the rails, laid with wide breaks between, gaping down into deep, dark space whose bed was the roaring river.

"Nevertheless," said First Sergeant Price, whose spirits ever soar at the foolish onslaughts of trouble-"nevertheless, we're not going to ride twenty miles farther for nothing. There's a railway yard on the other side. This bridge, here, runs straight into it. You two men go over, get a couple of good planks, and find out when the next train is due."

The two troopers whom the sergeant indicated gave their horses to a comrade and started away across the trestle.

For a moment those who stayed behind could distinguish the rays of their pocket flashlights as they picked out their slimy foothold. Then the whirling night engulfed them, light and all.

The sergeant led the remainder of the detail down into the lee of an abutment to avoid the full drive of the storm. A while they stood waiting, huddled together, but the wait was not for long. Presently, like a code signal spelled out on the black overhead, came a series of steadily lengthening flashes--the pocket-light glancing between the sleepers as the returning messengers drew near.

Scrambling up to rail level, the sergeant saw with content that his emissaries bore on their shoulders between them two new pine "two-by-twelves."

"No train's due till five o'clock in the morning," reported the first across.

"Good!" Now lay the planks. In the middle of the track. End to end. So."

The sergeant, dismounting, stood at John G's wise old head, stroking his muzzle, whispering into his ear. 'Come along, John; it's all right, old man!" he finished with a final caress. Then he led John G. to the first plank. “One of you men walk on each side of him. Now, John !"

Delicately, nervously, John G. set his feet step by step till he had reached the center of the second plank. Then the sergeant talked to him quietly again, while two troopers picked up the board just quitted to lay it in advance. And so, length by length, they made the passage, the horse moving with extremest caution, shivering with full appreciation of the unaccustomed danger, yet steadied by his master's presence and by the friend on either hand.

As they moved the gale wreaked all its fury on them. It was growing colder now, and the rain, changed to sleet, stung their skins with its tiny, sharp-driven blades. The skeleton bridge held them high suspended in the very heart of the storm. Once and again a sudden more violent gust bid fair to sweep them off their feet. Yet, slowly progressing, they made their port unharmed.

Then came the next horse's turn. More than a single mount they dared not lead over at once lest the contagious fears of one, reacting on another, produce panic. The horse that should rear or shy on that wide-meshed footing would be fairly sure to break a leg, at best. So, one by one, they followed over, each reaching the farther side before his successor began the transit. And so at last all stood on the opposite bank, ready to follow John G. once more as he led the way to duty.

"Come along, John, old man. You know how you'd hate to find a lot of dead women and babies because we got there too late to save them! Make a pace, Johnny boy!" The first sergeant was talking gently, leaning over his saddle-bow. But John G. was listening more from politeness than because he needed a lift. His stride was as steady as a clock.

It was three hours after midnight on that bitter black morning as they entered the streets of the town. And the streets were as quiet, as peaceful, as empty of men, as the heart of the high woods.

"Where's their mob?" growled the sergeant.

"Guess its mother's put it to sleep," a cold, wet trooper growled back,

"Well, we thought there was going to be trouble," protested the local power, roused from his feather bed. “It really did look like serious trouble, I assure you. And I could not have handled serious trouble with the means at my command. Moreover, there may easily be something yet. So, gentlemen, I am greatly relieved you have come. I can sleep in peace now that you are here. Good-night. Good-night."

All through the remaining hours of darkness the detail patrolled the town. All through the lean, pale hours of dawn it carefully watched its wakening, guarded each danger point. But never a sign of disturbance did the passing time bring forth. At last, with the coming of the business day, the ser geant sought out the principal business men of the place and from them ascertained the truth.

Threats of a jail delivery there had been and a noisy parade as well, but nothing had occurred or promised beyond the power of an active local officer to handle. Such was the statement of one and all.

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I'll just make sure," said the sergeant to himself.

Till two o'clock in the afternoon the detail continued its patrols. The town and its outskirts remained of an exemplary peace. At two o'clock the sergeant reported by telephone to his captain:

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Place perfectly quiet, sir. Nothing seems to have happened beyond the usual demonstration of a sympathizing crowd over an arrest. Unless something more breaks the sheriff should be entirely capable of handling the situation."

"Then report back to barracks at once," said the voice of the captain of A Troop. "There's real work waiting here.'

The first sergeant, hanging up the receiver, went out and gathered his men. Still the storm was raging. Icy snow, blinding sheets of sharp-fanged smother rode on the racing wind. Worse overhead, worse underfoot, would be hard to meet in years of winters. But once again men and horses, without an interval of rest, struck into the open country. Once again on the skeleton bridge they made the precarious crossing, And so, at a quarter to nine o'clock at night, the detail topped Greensburg's last ice-coated hill and entered the yard of its highperched barracks.

As the first sergeant slung the saddle off John G.'s smoking back, Corporal Richardson, farrier of the troop, appeared before him wearing a mien of solemn and grieved displeasure. "It's all very well," said he, "all very well, no doubt. But eighty-six miles in twenty-four hours in weather like this is a good deal for any horse. And John G. is twenty-two years old, as perhaps you may remember. I've brought the medicine.'

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Three solid hours from that very moment the two men worked over John G., and when, at twelve o'clock, they put him up for the night not a wet hair was left on him. As they washed and rubbed and bandaged they talked together, mingling the sergeant's trenchantly humorous common sense with the cor poral's mellow philosophy. But mostly it was the corporal that spoke, for twenty-four hours is a fair working day for a sergeant as well as for a troop horse.

"I believe in my soul," said the sergeant," that if a man rode into this stable with his two arms shot off at the shoulder you'd make him groom his horse with his teeth and his toes for a couple of hours before you'd let him hunt a doctor."

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Well," rejoined Corporal Richardson, in his soft Southern tongue, "and even if that man died of it he'd thank me heartily afterward. You know, when you and I and the rest of the world, each in our turn, come to heaven's gate, there'll be St. Peter before it, with the keys safe in his pocket. And over the shining wall behind from the inside, mind you will be poking a great lot of heads, innocent heads with innocent eyes. heads of horses and of all the other animals that on this earth are the friends of man, put at his mercy and helpless. And it's clear to me that before St. Peter unlocks the gate for a single

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A REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPH OF A FRENCH MILITARY MINE, TAKEN BY A YOUNG AMERICAN AMBULANCE DRIVER This flashlight picture was taken by Julien H. Bryan, aged 17, a few months ago, at the front in France. He furnishes to The Outlook this description: "This scene is at the end of a mine tunneled beneath No Man's Land to the front-line German trenches. These three poilus are working only ten feet from the Boches. They have gone as far as they can with safety to the work, and are putting on the finishing touches, digging by the aid of a carbide lamp. The conversation and movements of the German soldiers in their trenches can be heard by means of the microphone. When the proper time comes (usually during an attack), the French, having filled up this cavity with three or four tons of high explosives, will blow up the mine and the German trenches. This mine is probably twenty feet underground and two hundred feet from the French trenches." Young Mr. Bryan took the photograph while his kodak rested on a sandbag as he set off the flash. We hope soon to publish an article describing some of his experiences, with additional pictures

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