her internal problems; and just as an outside force or peril may hold a nation together, so an outside interest or hope or expectation may provide a necessary balance to human life in general. To people who feel that this life is all there is, or all at least that we can count on, the present problems of the world seem more insoluble than to those to whom the visible world, and the life that goes on in it, is all a temporary adventure connected with an existence infinitely more real, more durable and more important. It is no new thing for the people of this world to live by light and strength that they believe has come to them from the world invisible. If we are to have new light, and strength to follow it, the expectation is not unreasonable that it will come from the same source whence light and strength have come to the world before. The most hopeful people in the world are those who believe in the helpfulness and the activity and the boundless resources of the world invisible, and in the power of living people to reach those resources and use them. It is the people who have faith in the invisible world who will pull the visible world through. They are the hardest of all people to beat, the most enduring, the most diligent. Stripped of material things, they

still have spiritual possessions. In despair they still have hope; in misery, expectation.

It is notable too that confidence in the continuance of life after death does not make for the neglect of terrestrial life while we have it. While our adventure on earth lasts it is our great concern to make the most of it; to develop our powers and the bit of earth we live on, in the highest possible degree; to learn all we can, to teach all we can, to get out of earth-life as much as possible, and gain by it all that goes with the conception that the whole of existence is not in sight, nor this world our final home. The enviable people on earth are those who know that there is more awaiting and affecting than they can see, and who can draw wisdom and strength out of the invisible. It is they that are the hope of the world and the number of them seems to be increasing. Moreover, they all seem nowadays to get very much the same message, that comes by various channels to people in all parts of the world, to the learned and the unlearned, the sophisticated and the humble a message of encouragement and of stimulation, and assurance that there is a way out of the present difficulties of earth, and that men can find it.

"HEL

ELL'S bells!" is my favorite swear word. I don't consider it so very wicked-I don't think it means much of anything. I never heard of any bells in that particular place, and if there are any it can do no harm to mention them occasionally, under sudden and trying circumstances.

I did so, quite sharply, when not so long ago I observed among my freshly laundered shirts, neatly piled upon my bed, a garment that manifestly was not my own. It was the second time this thing had happened, and the first experience still rankled. The laundry had refused to redeem that errant garmentto recognize any mistake-had insisted that there could be none, that the shirt was cer

tainly mine, even though clearly built for a smaller man. I tried it, repeatedly, nearly choking myself in the attempt to get even, finally working it off on the janitor.

In the present instance I gradually became calmer. Even the briefest examination showed it to be a shirt of excellent quality, correct as to measurements and captivating as to pattern-captivating from my standpoint, I mean. I like shirts to have a good deal of the cosmic-urge in them, that gripping quality so often referred to in publishers' advertisements. I saw at once that this shirt had it-that to engage with a shirt like that would be to give life, at once, quite a new and wonderful definition.

"H-b-!" I said again, as I checked off its good points, "I'll wear it-I'll wear it now! I'll get even with that bandit, for once."

It certainly was becoming to my style of beauty. When I was enclosed in its rather violent, almost ethiopian, parallels I had a moment of misgiving. Being a commuter, I rode down each morning with many. Suppose some co-traveler should identify his property: it would be inconvenient, even humiliating, to surrender it on the train. Oh, well, there must be more than one of those masterpieces; I would put up a bold front-shirtfront-if one were degenerate enough to make puns. I slipped out, calling good-by to Elizabeth, who was occupied with the dumbwaiter. Something told me to do this.

Nothing happened on the train—not a thing.

It was different, however, at the office. Being July weather, we were stripped for action, and the boys gathered around to admire me. One said, "It's a hummer!" Yet another said, "Hummer nothing! It's an anvil chorus!" and wanted to know how I expected to be able to sleep in the same room with it. Hammond, in his customary disagreeable way, asked if generally I did my shopping along upper Lenox Avenue.

I was not disturbed by these feeble and ancient jokes. I have the courage of my color-schemes, even of borrowed plumage, though I may have been a trifle spasmodic in flaunting it; for in a moment of testing my fountain pen, to see if it had ink in it, I found that it had- -a good deal of it-most of which landed on my new possession, a bit above the waist-line.

The reader will discover nothing amusing in this misfortune, but those imbeciles did, and became less and less considerate in their remarks, the latter quite too silly to repeat, or even to remember. At the end of a loathsome day I went home gloomily-to face a situation.

Elizabeth met me at the door, with no welcome-home expression, her eye nailed to that shirt.

"How in the name of goodness did you come to put that thing on?" she demanded.

"Why-why-" I began, "Why-" and then I seemed to be unable to remember any good reason for putting on that particular shirt on that particular morning. "Whywhy-hell's bells!" I wound up weakly, "what's the matter?"

"Matter! Why, the laundry boy has been here three times after it. He brought your shirt, and said he must have the one left by mistake. I told him I could not find it. He is coming again, now, any time."

“Well,” I said bitterly, “he carefully failed to make any such manifestation before, when he carried off a perfectly good shirt of mine, in exchange for a miniature mockery, about big enough for a chimpanzee. How did I know he would want this one any more than the other?"

"Well, he does," urged Elizabeth, "and he's going to call for it, very soon."

"It will be necessary for him to call again,” I said feebly; "it's in no condition to deliver. I have worn it the space of a long, limp July day; and besides, I squirted my fountain pen on it quite copiously."

Elizabeth glared at me, as I opened my coat to expose the disaster.

"Heavens!" she moaned, "What shall we do now?"

"Yes," I admitted, "it's something to be thought out."

Elizabeth regarded me accusingly.

"You never got ink on one of your shirts before," she observed, apparently with a growing suspicion that for some unworthy motive I had done it this time purposely. The doorbell rang-she jumped, quite smartly. "There he is, now; what shall I tell him?"

I am rather quick in moments of danger— accustomed to driving in close traffic, as it

were.

"Tell him I have been called away-sent for; that I may be back soon, but that my things are locked up-he must await my return. It will give us time-that's what we need, now."

I retreated, and presently heard the alternate voices of Elizabeth and the laundry boy. They seemed to be discussing something. I was not interested to the point even of asking her later how she modified and adapted my invention to suit her emergencies. I merely said when she sought me out:

"They have stuff to remove ink. I will get a pound of it, and work out my salvation. I will eradicate that spot from my life. Then we will send this calamity to Sam Lee's shortorder laundry, and have it for that pestiferous youth when he comes again.”

I did not sleep on this decision. I am prompt about such matters. I went immediately to the pharmacy and cornered the

supply of Ink-out, and, after a somewhat anxious and hasty supper, set to work on my expiation.

I did not know before that an electric bulb can furnish so much heat. But on a July night, in a still bathroom, it can become positively criminal in its energy. I scrubbed and rinsed; I perspired till my eyes were full, and the fluid of life dripped down, and perhaps helped a little, for the ink really seemed to come out, in astonishing quantities. Elizabeth sat outside on the balcony, and looked at the stars, and occasionally called through the window that there was a nice little breeze out there, and to ask how I was getting on.

"It's coming out in quarts," I told her. "I'm getting quite interested and cheerful over it."

Then suddenly, I suppose, she must have heard my favorite words, for she said:

"What's the matter? What's happened?"

I tried to be calm.

"Oh, nothing," I said, "nothing much. I've rubbed a hole in the Liberian flag-that's all!"

She came in then.

"I thought you might do that," she said, reflectively.

Strothmann.

She became considerate.

"It's not a very big hole," she said, "just kind of long, like; and I think the stain will wash out, now, with a little salt, or milk, or something. And maybe I can carefully draw the edges together. It seems really very warm in here."

I suppose it was my appearance that made her kind. I was a rag-a rag that has been wrung out.

"Angels could do no more," I said. "Let me get into this tub, and go to bed."

"Our shirt-" I call it "our," for it now became that was somewhat less promising by daylight. Zones of its glory seemed to have paled with the action of the Ink-out, and there was an area of general vagueness around the former field of offense. Likewise, a very definite rift where I had been a thought too intense in my treatment. There were even other places which might also be termed

likely, it's a favorite pattern. You can remember it, can't you?"

Remember it! I couldn't forget it if I tried. She called after me cheerfully that she was sure I could find it.

But Elizabeth was a poor guesser. I left the office even two hours earlier, and put in a season of fearful agony-the hottest hours of a July afternoon-in the shops of that carefree district that now embraces upper Seventh and Lenox Avenues and is extending in dusky fingers down the side streets. Polite clerks of both sexes exposed to me their choicest selections, but all to no purpose. They had nothing drastic enough-violent enough-to fit my case. One polite young female, of the gold-rimmed variety, after declaring that she had nothing so pronounced as I seemed to require, suggested that I try Broadway.

I caught my train at 125th Street, and tried to forget care in the evening comics and scandals. Elizabeth met me at the door,