inexpensive little concoction that gave her both health and social advantage. Poor but clean, she was. Next to her in line was a lady of great refinement, no doubt, but her hygienic habits had been formed in an environment that to us would seem heroic and discouraging. Next to her, was a lady of unascertainable nationality but of undisguised arrogance, for she, third from last in this formidable array of historical characters, was the first to taste the joy and display the benefits of chemically scientific cleanliness. She had reared many children, none of whom had ever discovered a continent or laid the foundation of a Columbian age, yet her nose tilted just a little when she was discussing the proper way to bring up a baby, and she said frankly that the Discoverer of this Continent might have established a more godly land, had he himself had the advantage of higher standards of personal cleanliness!

OFFICIAL RECOGNITION

It was a raw, damp, April Saturday; the chill of the lower New York air was doing its best to freeze up good intentions a fine day for morbid souls to feed upon. Anything disagreeable might happen, unless you had a name that sounded Irish or knew you were born lucky.

I had been told that if I wanted a chance to get into Europe before the war business was entirely cleaned up (there was almost nothing left then but the S.O.S.) I was to get myself down to the French liner which was sailing for Marseilles the next afternoon. Try buying a complete outfit for nobody-knows-how-long a stay in Europe on twenty-four hours' notice and your last month's pay check!

Someone had told me that I could get first-class-though used-army

blankets at the Red Cross shop down town. I boarded a Lexington Avenue surface car at Thirty-first Street and crawled down to Sixteenth Street, got off and turned east. I had walked about fifteen hurried paces when I became aware that my right hand felt queer. I did n't have my pocketbook - a medium-sized, rather flat (as I mentioned before) brown-leather affair. Surely I had paid my car fare on that Lexington Avenue car? True, my mind was distracted, but the conductor would n't have permitted such an omission. I must have left it on the car.

Here I was: not a cent of money, time as precious as platinum, and I miles from the few friends I had uptown. I retraced my steps to the corner, looking without faith along the sidewalk, and then gazing hopelessly down town after a car which must have been at Whitehall Street by that time.

On the corner was one of those redgold-trimmed Meccasa United Cigar Store. On its hospitable threshold stood a bluecoat, twirling his stick and gazing complacently at a seemingly peaceful world. He was built liberally -just as he should have been.

I crossed the street and stepped up in front of him. The stick stopped twirling and his eyes dropped — well, about six feet, I should say, judging from the size I felt as I began my story. As I remember, I omitted the date of the sailing of the liner and the reputed cheapness of the blankets. The omissions were probably due more to nervousness than to good judgment.

You know how some folks can make you seem to be lying when you are being so truthful that you feel almost naked. Looking at me, appraising me from my steady-going flat heels to my plain-band-around-straw hat and then down again, he said with a strong Donegal accent, 'Will, loidy, why don't ye tilephone your frinds?'

That remark did much to give me poise. He was n't wholly logical, and anybody who is n't wholly logical may be weak and sympathetic at times. Had n't I told him I did n't have a cent of money?

Timidly I reminded him of the unresponsive ways of public telephones. Once again his gray eyes traveled up and down my ultra-respectable, uninteresting raiment. Then his stick slipped to his side and his right hand to his pocket.

'Here's tin cents. Go over to the nixt block-take your subway up to One-sixty-eight. There's the Lexington Avenue car bairns. Wait there and maybe whin the car comes up ye went down on ye can spot the conductor -and maybe ye can't. If ye can't, tell 'em at the bairns to tilephone the lost-and-found department. If ye can't git any satisfaction, ye can use the nickel ye 've lift to git back to your frinds.'

Did I thank him properly? Could he see the lump in my throat which was so rapidly closing my windpipe? Just before I turned away I made sure of the figures on the silver plate on that blue coat - 961.

It did n't take me long to make the subway. All the way up I was planning how to get along without the blanket

- and then, as one always does, I enumerated dozens of things which I could have bought with that lost money. The way lost money bears interest and doubles its purchasing value is marvelous.

Heavens! the next thing I knew the train was pulling into One-hundredeighty-first Street! And the policeman had told me to get off at One-sixtyeight. Wildly I rushed out and down the steps and into the down-town entrance. And wildly I squandered the remaining nickel to ride back to Onesixty-eight. Time passed like mad!

Just as No. 961 had said, the Lexington Avenue surface-car barns were right across the street. For the first hour and fifteen minutes I stood and watched and waited. Whenever a car from down-town pulled in, I stepped up close to the steps, making it necessary for each man to walk around me or over me if he got off his car. They all looked at me with open curiosity. Women are scarce around car barns, I gather.

One motorman said as he stepped off the front, 'Wonder if that's Jim's wife, waiting for his pay envelope again?'

You'd be surprised to see how conductors and motormen seem to resemble one another. By the end of an hour and a half I don't believe I'd have recognized my own father in one of those uniforms. Despair settled thickly all over me.

Along came another car. This time I didn't step forward- just kept on leaning heavily against the brick wall of the entrance. Off stepped the conductor, slim, young, Danish-looking. He looked at me, dived into his coat pocket and held up my purse, grinned, and said, 'I got it, lady!'

Detaching myself abruptly from the brick wall, I rushed forward, expecting to clasp my treasure. He shook his head. According to the rules of the company he must turn in all articles found on cars at the desk upstairs. But, he said, I had better go upstairs with him and identify my property.

Nothing could have been more to my liking. As we climbed the stairs he remarked, 'Now you want to be sure you know just what is in it. I'll tip you off. You have so many bills, so many pieces, and a little piece of pink stuff.' This last was really a sample of lavender voile.

Behind the grating in front of an office-window upstairs, sat a lean Uriah

Heep model. Clearly, definitely, reassuringly, did that young Dane explain the situation, with the pocketbook still clutched in his hand. Eagerly I corroborated each statement. All the time the man inside kept shaking his head and I suffered a relapse in my spirits. Then in a bored, final tone, without apparently taking the least interest in either the conductor or myself, he said, 'I'll have to have this purse and send it down to Ninetysixth Street to our Lost and Found Department, and Monday you can go down and redeem it, madam, if it is yours.'

Monday! In vain we pleaded. That office clerk stretched long, thin, inkstained fingers under the grating and I saw my wallet carried back to a desk on the other side of the room. I looked at the conductor. He looked at me. Then, with a sudden rush of masculine chivalry, he said, 'Can't you ride back on my car and get near where you live?'

I assured him I could. So we started out. If I had been president of the whole I. R. T. I could n't have ridden any cheaper than I did on that trip, and there was n't anybody in the whole world I liked any better at that moment than the honest, big-hearted boy at the back of the car. We had gone about ten blocks when he came down the aisle with a two-dollar bill in his hand. 'Would n't this help you out for a little while, ma'am?'

I want to tell you that the lump in my throat which I had swallowed earlier in the morning rose up bigger and harder; with blurry eyes I refused the two-dollar bill. But if ever I sit on a Board which is dividing up

and apportioning Europe to different nations, I'll use my influence to see that Denmark stretches well down toward the Mediterranean.

I got off at One-hundred-forty-fifth Street with this time a number on a brass plate stamped on what little mind I had left - Conductor 1078.

It did n't take me long to rush over to my room and friends, get the rest of my money, board a subway down to Fourteenth, walk back to Sixteenth, praying all the way that officer No. 961 might still be on duty during the noonday rush. Luck again! There in the middle of the street stood that bulwark of comfort. Adroitly I stepped up behind him, tapped him on the arm, and held out an open palm with a dime in it. He turned quickly, started to look as his job demanded, and then suddenly his face broke into folds of real pleasure. He grabbed my whole hand, saying, 'Will, will, loidy, did ye git it?'

In spite of three hours shot to the wind, I took time to tell him of the car-barn experience and the trip back (I wish now I had told him how I squandered the other nickel).

The last thing he said was, 'Here's good luck to ye!'

Yes, I got the blanket. It was cheap. It was warm. With hurried directions left with my friends as to a reward to be sent to Conductor No. 1078, and a letter to the Chief commending Officer 961, and their promise to go for my purse on Monday, I started that afternoon for the steamer. I did n't miss it. It's a good old world and

Ah, my foes, and oh, my friends,
It gives a lovely light.

PURSUING the theme of Lord Moulton's now famous essay in which he sought to define the domain of Positive Law, the domain of Free Choice, and that larger territory which lies between them, where we are obedient to the 'unenforceable,' William P. Gest declares that no such willful boundaries exist in this country; rather we are fenced within a high-barred reform and saddled with 'a liberty created by law' - for the most part a galling harness. Students as well as lawyers will recognize the authority of Mr. Gest's quotations, though for convenience's sake we have eliminated the references from the text. Samuel Taylor Moore, formerly of the Publicity Department of the American Legion, has written extensively on aviation and other subjects in which veterans are particularly interested. During the war Mr. Moore was an officer in the Balloon Corps. ¶The Jew who defends his race against that national blackball, so often the mark of pride and prejudice, is an important member of a large institution where Jew and Gentile work together in business harmony. ¶A. Cecil Edwards has just resumed his London residence after thirteen years in Persia. His other miniature, 'Omar's Grave,' appeared in the September Atlantic.

***

When James R. Nichols was a boy, his grandmother told him stories of a revolutionary soldier whom she had known in her childhood. Some of these stories were taken from the soldier's diary, a hallowed heirloom. This in time descended to Mr. Nichols. From his transcription, we have selected the most characteristic entries. ¶It requires the even-tempered geniality of Edward W. Bok to consider the most offensive subject in the world — age · whether it be middle, ripe, or old. George Villiers, an English poet recently familiar to the Atlantic, here writes in happy accord with childhood and the season. Simeon Strunsky, whose Post-Impressions were

formerly a part of a New York evening's entertainment, is now on the editorial staff of the New York Times. As a practising member of the Philadelphia bar, Walter Gilkyson knows the way of the legal brotherhood from the inside. Mr. Gilkyson's first novel, Oil, has recently been published by Scribners.

That the Berkshire horizon once bounded the ideal of home and peace is the whimsical memory of Carroll Perry. As editor of the American Lawn Tennis Magazine, Stephen Wallis Merrihew is particularly qualified to discuss tennis writers and tennis-players. Mr. Merrihew is one of the Committee of Seven which is to decide the Tilden case. Ramsay Traquair expresses the hearty wish that the scientist, the artist, and the mystic should untie the apron strings that bind them to the feminine and practical civilization of the United States. Why this civilization is both feminine and practical, Mr. Traquair explained in the Atlantic of last November. With strong and fine old words has the English poet, Wilfrid Gibson, raised a spirit from the dead. James Truslow Adams is an American historian and the author of The Founding of New England and Revolutionary New England (1691-1776), both published by the Atlantic Monthly Press. Mr. Adams is at present engaged on a third volume of Colonial history. ¶From Eastern lore, L. Adams Beck has chosen this story of a lover who suffered a sanitary, although none the less dramatic, sacrifice.

***

Walter Lippmann, as successor to Frank I. Cobb, is in charge of the editorial page of the New York World. F. E. Haynes, professor of sociology at the University of Iowa, and the author of Social Politics in the United States, here describes the political ideas and ideals suggested by a single name. William Henry Chamberlin

It was with the greatest pleasure that I read Miss Thompson's article on the Friendly days of her youth. My mother was also a Philadelphia Quaker and some of the tales of her youth are like Miss Thompson's.

My grandfather was a man who followed his own convictions and was very liberal for his day. Yet later when he found a flute on which his young son was learning to play, and which for safe-keeping the lad had hidden among the tablecloths, grandfather confiscated the little instrument and destroyed it. Music of course of any sort was forbidden, as having a pernicious influence on the young.

Once grandfather had burned a borrowed book, some harmless novel of the day, and great was my mother's fear that he would find Pickwick hidden under the sewing work in her basket. Pickwick had just come out and she was enjoying it greatly. He did find it, and opened it, as was inevitable, at the spot where the greatest freedom of language was set forth, the daughter holding her breath at the possible outcome. He closed the book and laid it down observing, 'I do not see, daughter, how thee can get pleasure or profit from such a book.'

He was an ardent Abolitionist and of course had many trials and provocations of spirit, but he never showed his perfectly justifiable irritation beyond a hand clenched tight and a fiery flush on head and face. His Quaker training had taught absolute control. Even when, on a visit of 'religious concern' to Delaware, he was tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail by the proslavery men of Salem, he offered no resistance to the insult, but spoke to them gently, and courteously invited them to visit him in Philadelphia.

The Yearly Meeting was truly a fearful time for the housekeepers. They stocked the larder with all sorts of food which could be prepared beforehand and could be counted on to keep, as well as with toothsome and more perishable viands. They set long tables in the dining-room never knowing whether there would be two

guests or two dozen. Everybody kept open house and the out-of-town friends ate when they pleased. Every available bed in the house was made up fresh, and mother used to tell how she slept on the covered bathtub, and how John G. Whittier, coming upstairs to the room provided for him, met his young hostess bringing down a mattress on her head to spread on this improvised bedstead.

Speaking of Yearly Meeting reminds one of the tale of Lucretia Mott and a rather bashful stranger from the countryside. Dear Mrs. Mott trying to make him feel at ease asked in her gentle fashion, "Thee has never been married, Friend Thomas?' 'Oh! frequently, Lucretia,' he hastened to reply.

In her article Miss Thompson criticizes the grammar of the American Quakers. We do not say 'thee' for thou,' and our English Friends do not, and I protest in memory of similar protests made by my mother that we American Quakers do not say 'thee' for 'thy.' That we elide the word and drop the y, saying 'th' hat' for 'thy hat' I agree to, just as we all say 'm' hat' instead of 'my hat.'

If Miss Thompson still uses the 'plain language' and will watch herself she will find she does it that way. We all do.

Lord Moulton's discourse on 'Law and Manners' in the July Atlantic, is a classical presentation of the case against the vice of overprescribing by legislative fiat what one shall or shall not do. We live in a welter of regulatory law. Though it voice the will of the majority it is often a prohibition from without against which we inwardly rebel. If civilization is a growing thing, if human betterment is a reality, if the individual will, and hence the social will, can be educated, then the trend must be toward a narrowing of this domain and an expansion of the domain of good manners. If human progress is a fact there will be an ever increasing obedience to the unenforceable. This progress will voice itself in a common desire to perform duty as earnestly as it demands rights. And when men recognize their duties as they do their rights a social balance is struck which ends the need for defining the boundaries of conduct by positive law. When one sees what he ought to do he has at least made a fair start toward obedience, and having had so much of insight it may be reasonably expected that he will have