that I would have to wait till they had time to look for it. At the end of the second thirty minutes, and seeing that no effort was being made to get the contract, I remarked that perhaps it might be just as well for me to call on the clerk of the district court while waiting. Simple as that statement may seem, it had a surprising effect on the paymaster. Hurrying to the door of his enclosure he urged me to enter, sit down, and wait for the manager. The manager, he assured me, kept all contracts locked in a safe of which he alone knew the combination. On my persisting he followed me along the passageway, begging me "as a friend" to have a little patience. Another odd feature of the performance was that the housekeeper of the Belgrave, though she had held the position for more than ten years, could not direct me to the city hall. Once on the streets every passer-by was able to point out the city hall and tell me in just which corner I would find the clerk of court. This man was or pretended to be as ignorant of Sea Foam as the housekeeper had been of him. When I first stated my case he had some difficulty in recalling that there was such a hotel in Atlantic City-it is one of the largest on the boardwalk and less than five blocks from his office. His negro man-of-all-work was so well informed that he was able not only to locate it exactly but to give the names of the stockholders. "Leastways they call 'em stockholders," the old negro man added. "But everybody knows old Miss Dorset done built the Sea Foam with the money she made out the Jonquil House. Yes'm, that old white 'oman owns both them hotels. She's that stingy she'd skin a flea for its hide and tallow." The reputation given Mrs. Dorset by this negro man was not borne out by the employees of the Sea Foam. Two waitresses who had been longest in the service of the hotel, when boasting of Mrs. Dorset's wealth, had added that she gave large sums to the support of the Atlantic City branch of the Florence Crittenden mission. "Indeed!" I replied. "Quite evidently she is doing her best to keep it supplied with patients." And I meant exactly what I said. The clerk of court, when warning me against "invoking the law" for such a small sum, informed me: "The judge is all right, of course, but when it comes to a case against one of our large hotels there's never any telling which way the cat will jump. I strongly advise you to go back to the hotel and see the manager. Maybe they will have found your contract and will be willing to pay you at the rate of sixteen a month.' Then he added, as he handed me his card: "I wouldn't be surprised you'd find them with the money all counted out ready for you." "Neither would I," I answered, keeping tight hold on the muscles of my face to prevent myself from returning his smile. And it proved even as he said. Not only was the money ready for me but the paymaster's manner had undergone a complete change. Telling me that the manager wished to speak to me, he held open the office-door and politely ushered me in. The manager of the Sea Foam is, or was at that time, a square-built man with red hair. As we stared at each other across the broad top of his mahogany office-table our eyes were on a level. was quite evident that he expected to stare me out of countenance. He made a mistake. His eyes were the first to give way. It "Won't you sit down?" he said, motioning to a chair. "Thank you. I have neither the time nor the inclination," I told him. "What is it you wish to say to me?" "To ask you why you went to the clerk of court." "To prove to the Sea Foam waitresses that they can force the hotel to live up to its contracts." Then I told him of the way little Beulah had been treated. He listened as though hearing of such an incident for the first time. Judging by what I had heard it had been the policy of the hotel toward waitresses for years. At lunch, my last meal at the Belgrave, when describing my experience I distributed copies of the clerk of court's business cards. "It won't do any good until we are organized," one of the older girls said. "If a few of us kick or insist on being paid sixteen instead of thirteen we'll be discharged and blacklisted. If we organize we can force up wages "And cut out tips," a younger girl interrupted. "It's a darn shame for the hotels to put up their rates and expect guests to pay extra for service. It's a darn shame." While this was going on the girls at the other end of the table had been whispering together. Now the girl at the head of the table held up her hand, signalling for silence. Then, after a glance at the adjoining table to make sure the assistant housekeeper was not listening, she informed me that she had been dele gated to ask me to remain in Atlantic City and organize the waitresses, beginning with those working in the boardwalk hotels. The request was so unexpected that for a moment I was dumb. On recovering myself I reminded them that our country was at war. So long as the war lasted we at home must keep our shoulder to the wheel. If the wheel cut into our flesh we must endure it for the sake of pushing the load to safety. 66 'And after the war?" the spokesman asked. "After the war organize. Then, if you prove your consistency by refusing to take tips, the public will help you get a decent wage," I replied. And I still believe that I spoke the truth. ["At Service in a Millionaire's Family," by the same author, in the October number.] THE POOR OLD ENGLISH LANGUAGE By Meredith Nicholson N the whole range of human endeavor no department is so hospitable to the amateur as education. Here the gates are always open. Wide is the field and many are the fools who disport therein. Politics we are all too prone to forget between campaigns; literature and the graphic arts engage only our languid attention, and science interests us only when our imaginations are mightily stirred. But we all know how the young idea should be taught to shoot. We are either reactionaries, lamenting the good old times of the three r's and the little red schoolhouse, or we discuss with much gravity such weighty problems as the extension or curtailment of the elective system, or we fly to the defense or demolition of the ideas of Dewey and other reformers. It is folly not to hold opinions where no one is sure of anything and every one is free to strut in the purple robes of wisdom. Many of us receive at times flattering invitations to express opinions touching the education of our youth. Though my own schooling was concluded at the algebra age, owing to an inherent inability to master that subject or even comprehend what it was all about, I have not scrupled to contribute to educational symposia at every opportunity. Perhaps I answer the riddles of the earnest critics of education the more cheerfully from the very fact of my benightedness. When the doors are closed and the potent, grave, and reverend signiors go into committee of the whole to determine why education does not indeed educate-there, in such a company, I am not only an eager listener but, with the slightest encouragement, I announce and defend my opinions. Millions are expended every year for the public enlightenment, and yet no one is satisfied either with the method or the result. Some one is always trying to do something for culture. It seems at times that the efforts of the women of America to increase the remnant that is amiably disposed toward sweetness and light can not fail, so many and so zealous are the organizations in which they associate themselves for this laudable purpose. A little while ago we had a nationwide better-English week to encourage respect among the youth of this jazzy age for the poor old English language. I shall express without apology my opinion that in these free States we are making no marked headway in the attempt to improve spoken or written English. Hardly a day passes that I do not hear graduates of colleges confuse their pronouns; evil usages are so common as to arouse a suspicion that propriety and exactness of speech are regarded by many as more highly honored in the breach than the observance. And yet grammar and rhetoric are taught more or less intelligently by a vast army of overworked and underpaid teachers, according to text-books fashioned by specialists who really do try to make themselves intelligible. My attitude toward this whole perplexing business is one of the greatest tolerance. I doubt seriously whether I could pass an examination in English grammar. A Japanese waiter in a club in my town used to lie in wait for me, when I visited the house at odd hours in search of seclusion, for the purpose of questioning me as to certain perplexing problems in grammar. He had flatteringly chosen me from the club roster as a lettered person, and it was with astonishment that he heard my embarrassed confession that I shared his bewilderment. To any expert grammarians who, inspired by this revelation, begin a laborious investigation of these pages in pursuit of errors, I can only say that I wish them good luck in their adventure. At times I do manifestly stumble, and occasionally the blunder is grievous. A poem of my authorship once appeared in a periodical of the most exacting standards with a singular noun mated to a plural verb. For proof-readers as a class I entertain the greatest veneration. Often a query courteously noted on the margin of a galley has prevented a violence to my mother tongue which I would not consciously inflict upon it. To add to the fury of the grammar hounds, I will state that at times in my life I have been able to read Greek, Latin, Italian, and French without ever knowing anything about the grammar of either of these languages beyond what I worked out for myself as I went along. This method or lack of method is not, I believe, original with me, for there are, or have been, inductive methods of teaching foreign languages which set the student at once to reading and made something rather incidental of the grammar. This is precisely what I should do with English if I were responsible for the instruction of children at the age when it is the fashion to begin hammering grammar into their inhospitable minds. Ignorant of grammar myself, but having-if I may assume so much—an intuitive sense of the proper and effective manner of shaping sentences, there would be no text-books in my schoolroom. All principals, trustees, inspectors, and educational reformers would be excluded from my classes, and I should insist on protection from physical manifestations of their indignation on my way to and from the schoolhouse. The first weeks of my course would be purely conversational. I should test the students for their vulgarities and infelicities, and such instances, registered on the blackboard, would visualize the errors as long as necessary. The reading of indubitably good texts in class would, of course, be part of the programme, and the Bible I should use freely, particularly drawing upon the Old Testament narratives. I should endeavor to make it appear that clean and accurate speech is a part of good manners, an important item in the general equipment for life. When it came to writing, I should begin with the familiar letter, leaving the choice of subject to the student. These compositions, read in the class, would be criticised, as far as possible, by the students themselves. I should efface myself completely as an instructor and establish the relation of a fellow-seeker intent upon finding the best way of saying a thing. If there were usages that appeared to be common to a neighborhood, or intrusions of dialect peculiar to a State or a section, I might search out and describe their origin, but if they were flavorsome and truly of the soil I should not discourage their use. early years is to be avoided. The weaknesses of the individual student are only discernible where he is permitted to speak and write without timidity. Self-consciousness in these anyhow. The idea that children should be seen and not heard belongs to the period when it was believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. Children should be encouraged to talk, to observe and to describe the things that interest them in the course of the day. In this way they will form the habit of the intelligent reporter who, on the way to his desk from an assignment, plans his article, eager to find the best way of telling his story. Instead of making a hateful mystery of English speech it should be made the most natural thing in the world, worthy of the effort necessary to give it accuracy, ease, and charm. When a youngster is made to understand from a concrete example that a sentence is badly constructed, or that it is marred by a weak word or a word used out of its true sense, the rules governing such instances may be brought to his attention with every confidence that he will understand their point. My work would be merely a preparation for the teaching of grammar, if grammar there must be; but I should resent such instruction if my successor failed to relate my work to his. I consider the memorizing of short passages of verse and prose an important adjunct to the teaching of English by any method. "Learn it by heart" seems to have gone out of fashion in late years. I have recently sat in classes and listened to the listless reading, paragraph by paragraph, of time-honored classics, knowing well that the students were getting nothing out of them. The more good English the student carries in his head the likelier he is to gain a respect for his language and a confidence and effectiveness in speaking and writing it. Let the example precede the rule! If there is any sense in the rule the example will clarify it; if it is without justification and designed merely to befuddle the student, then it ought to be abolished The scraps of conversation I overhear every day in elevators, across counters, on the street, and in trolley-cars are of a nature to disturb those who view with intense satisfaction the great treasure we pour into education, believing that where the investment is so generous the dividends must be proportionately large. The trouble with our English is that too much is taught and not enough is learned. The child is stuffed, not fed. Rules crammed into him for his guidance in selfexpression are imperfectly assimilated. They never become a part of him. His first contacts with grammar arouse his hostility, and seeing no sense in it he casts it aside with the disdain he would manifest for a mechanical toy that refused to work in the manner prescribed by the advertisement. THE MAGIC TOUCH By Rhoda Hero Dunn THE summer night was soft upon the land; Or was it from the first ordained to be PEOPLE BY THE WAYSIDE ANOTHER CRUISE OF THE "DINGBAT OF ARCADY" W By Marguerite Wilkinson Author of "Bluestone," "New Voices," "Beauty," etc. HEN Jim and I go out on the open road it pleases us not to know exactly where we are going, or when we shall get there. A destination is more troublesome than much luggage. If we have one folded up with our blankets, we find it necessary to forego many a pleasant chat by the wayside. Therefore, we usually leave our destination at home with our best clothes. They belong to gether! Another joy of the road is not knowing what acquaintances we shall make, or how we shall make them. Getting acquainted with people is a dullard's adventure if you know all about them ahead of time. But if you must learn the meaning of a human being from the poise of the head, the flash of the eye, the locking of the jaws, the behavior of the fingers, and from the individual life, communicable and yet inexplicable, which animates all of these, then a meeting is an inviting hazard. With letters of introduction we may meet Mr. and Mrs. John Brown Jones Smith. Without them we may find Socrates in a general store at the crossroads, Le Penseur on a lonely hill, and Thersites and St. Francis tramping side by side along a dusty road; we may even have the good fortune to hear Confucius talking to his disciples of "poetry, history, and the up-keep of courtesy.' We enjoy the complex simplicities of pioneering in the hearts and minds of our kind. People who seem quite commonplace to themselves and to their neighbors shine for us with a light well known before there were candles, the ancient light of romance. For us they wear the plumes of knights, the caps of goblins, the haloes of saints, the garlands of delectable sinners, without ever knowing that they are clad in more than serge and gingham. And sometimes the light is reflected upon us, who seem quite commonplace to ourselves save in moments of elation. What could be more delightful to a couple welladvanced toward middle-age?· Once when we were driving home from Delaware Water Gap in Frankie Ford, the ramshackle and rakish, we were allowed to feel the radiance of this glamour upon us. The road was dusty. Great wreaths of dust whirled past us through sultry air, dimming our eyes and making our hair gritty. As for Frankie, the gray of the dust was so thick on him that only clairvoyance could have told his true color. Jim subdued him to about ten miles an hour and we rolled slowly through a small town, looking for a place where it would be possible to stop and prepare supper. Ahead of us, as far as we could see, dust was thick over the road and gray as death. By all the laws of hygiene and æsthetics it would be wrong to stop where we were for the purpose of eating. I looked about me anxiously. Then I saw, at one side of the road, a rusty-colored, benevolent, old-fashioned house. A stubby hedge enclosed a lawn on which a hose was playing. On a veranda, in a chair tilted back against the wall, sat an old gentleman in rusty black. His feet hung limp without touching the floor. His head was sunk on his breast. I gave little thought to him then, however, for I was thinking of the lawn (how good it would be to sit on!) and of the hose (how good it would be to get under the spray !). I stepped out of Frankie. Said I to Jim: "I'll ask that old gentleman to let us eat supper on his lawn." Never before had we asked such a privilege. We had cooked our meals in meadows and orchards, but never on a lawn near a home. I went quickly for fear of losing courage. "Pardon me, sir, but we have been |