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"Thank you," said the attendant, closing his fingers around her offering. "Eight o'clock."

With the buoyant step of youth, Mary went back to the Barker Building where, taking off her hat, she cried long enough to assure herself that it was all coming true, just as she had hoped. She was thinking of Kibbey when his footsteps echoed down the hall.

He knocked and came in jovially. "Mary!" he said. "Mary! What's happened?"

“I—” she said, "I-I've got a bite!" "Not your picture?"

She nodded. "Yes-I can't believe it myself, but it's true! The man's crazy about it he says it's a jewel! Think of it!" Her face was radiant. it!"

"Think of

He took her hands and held them closely. "Congratulations, Mary Ann," he said quietly. "You worked hard-you earned your success. There's no question of the sale?"

"No-it's not a bite. He wants it-he says it's a jewel! It's more than a bite-it's practically sold this minute. Isn't it wonderful?"

"It is wonderful. Do you know, though, what time it is, Mary Ann? Dinner time, and you're dining with me. It's the last day of the exhibition, you know. Had you forgotten your promise?

"Oh-no." Her elation was tempered by sudden pity. "You'll go around with me, won't you? It's partly your picture, anyway-you lent me all the properties." "Of course I'll go. And shall we dine now?"

"Yes-my gloves. All right, sir! You ought to feel very grand-going out with a real artist!"

They dined where the music was to their liking, and the food endurable. Afterward, during the brief journey to the gallery, Kibbey found Mary's hand on his arm, and was astonished to feel it tremble. "I'm so nervous," she said. "My heart won't keep still, and my soul is hurting me! I wish I could tell you how I feel."

"I can imagine, Mary Ann."

"You've been such a dear," she whispered, squeezing his arm a little. "You do understand, don't you? You're willing to wait a little while-until I've done something better?"

Kibbey spoke gently. "I'm happy in

your success," he said. "Some day I hope you can be happy in mine."

"He came three times on pay days just to see my picture! I wouldn't feel half so important if he'd come on free days! I wonder if I'm going to be famous! I can brag a little to you, can't I?"

"I'm bragging about you to myself," said Kibbey.

As they approached the fatal alcove, Mary was seized with fright.

"Don't worry, little girl," urged Kibbey. "It's a plain business transaction. Just tell him the price."

"It's another year in New York," she chattered. "A-a thousand dollars. It cost me that much. Oh, my hands are so cold!"

Before the "Portrait of a Lady" a generous-looking elderly gentleman leaned on a cane while he discussed the downward revision of the wool tariff with the attendant. "That's he!" gasped Mary Ann. "I know it!"

The connoisseur heard her, turned, and at a word from the attendant came forward. "Miss Atherton?" said the elderly gentleman briskly. "Good! You're here! I understand you're the owner of some property I want to buy. Now I don't haggle and I don't bicker. In the first sentence-what's the price?"

Mary hoped that she wouldn't faint before she told him; by the grace of her pride she summoned half her courage, and spoke the words.

"The price is-five hundred dollars." "You said a thousand!" hissed Kibbey in her ear.

"It's high-much too high-but I'll take it," said the elderly gentleman. "When can you deliver it?"

"You can carry it home if you like,” said Mary, essaying a feeble smile, although her knees were wofully weak. "This is the last night-I can have it taken down for you."

"Oh," the elderly gentleman said, "I see! You're talking about the picture. Hang it, madam, I don't want the picture. I'm not a picture-collector-I want to buy the rug!"

There was a terrible thickness in the atmosphere, and the room began to turn slow circles and grow dim and shadowy. Mary forced a pathetic little smile, and put out her hands to Kibbey.

"You tell him," she said shakily. "II surrender!"

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W

Our Halo

By Dr. Woods Hutchinson

Illustrated by Rea Irvin

E are no longer ambitious for saint

hood, but we still love an aureole. We don't fancy the looks of our chaste and classic features unsurrounded by a halo of hair. The picture made by the most beautiful face, the most exquisitely chiseled features, is unpleasing and even repulsive to our conventional eye unless set in a frame of tresses, be they curly or wavy, gray or gold. It is usually ascribed to our ideas of beauty and ornament, but one cannot help suspecting that this explanation was put forward largely because the explainer was at his wits' end and couldn't think of anything else to suggest. The stuff is obviously not useful. It must therefore be an ornament, ran his logic.

Just how our obstinate, irrational prejudice in favor of a hirsute halo around our face grew up is a mystery. It certainly was not based upon utilitarian grounds, for all purposes of protection and warmth would have been much more effectually served by a close, compact, mossy thatch, half or three-quarters of an inch in length. This

would have been far more waterproof and wind-proof than our present fuzz, to say nothing of much less trouble to keep in order.

From a strictly artistic point of view the average human thatch could hardly be regarded as a thing of beauty and a joy forever-certainly not in its earliest stages, when it was a reddish or rusty mat of kinky wool. Indeed, it is only by the most painstaking and ingenious treatment that most of our "mops" can be made attractive or tolerable even today. We rave over the sunbeams entangled in the glittering meshes of golden hair, or the dusky splendor of raven tresses, but forget that such glorious lights and colors are seen on only about one head in a thousand, and that at least twothirds of the remainder are neither raven nor golden, blond nor brunette, but varying shades of plain mud-color.

However, the united wisdom of humanity has decided that hair is beautiful-or at least that its absence is distinctly unbeautiful-and therefore we must regard it as

such, and make up our minds to get as much of it as possible.

But the problem which confronts us as hair-growers is a perplexing one. We don't We don't know why hair grew in the first place, we don't know what useful functions it now serves, and last but not least, we are required to render beautiful something which often has few possibilities of beauty in it. Still the situation is far from discouraging practically, because most of us have a fairly good "thatch" to begin with, and though we would be delighted with any attainable improvement, we will be quite satisfied if we can succeed in holding onto our original possessions.

Our hair may not be ravishingly beautiful, but so long as we can keep it from wearing through in spots we are fairly content. We are usually in a complaisant frame of mind in regard to our own locks, be they never so stringy, or whispy, as the old lady of Kansas was in regard to the meal which she had hospitably prepared for unexpected guests: "There is plenty of it such as it is, that is, it's good what there is of it!" So long as we are protected from the cry of derision, "Go up, thou baldhead!" the rest is a mere matter of detail.

Of course there are not a few who would fain adorn, embellish, blondine, marcel, or otherwise improve their despised tressesand what can be done for these will be duly considered; but the vast majority of those who are earnestly concerned about the state of their hair, and seek the path of capillary salvation, are anxious only to hang on to what hair they have, and will be perfectly satisfied if but they can literally hold their

own.

The first problem, then, of the practical hair-grower is how to keep a good stand, or crop, of the particular brand of hair which is indigenous upon the cranium under consideration. To make the problem perfectly clear, we must remember that it is not a question of making any particular hair or head of hairs stay on indefinitely, for our hairs are continually being shed and replaced all our lives long. The most venerable and Methuselah-like hair upon our head at any given time is probably not more than a few months or, at the outside, one or two years old. Our problem is simply to insure that, as the old hairs fall, their places will be promptly taken by an equal number of new and vigorous ones.

This gives us a clue, and an important.

one, to one line of our campaign of prevention, and that is keeping the body in general and the scalp in particular in as perfect a condition of health and vigor as possible, so that there will be plenty of rich blood to nourish the hair-glands and stimulate them to produce strong, vigorous hair-buds to fill the places of those that are constantly falling. Even when the length and glossiness of the hair have already begun to fail, on account of anemia or some other impoverished condition of the blood, it is possible so to build up the general health as to produce a better and handsomer type of hair at the next crop. You need not worry because your hair is falling out fairly freely, if only it is coming in again as fast as it falls. Some of the best and glossiest heads, indeed, shed or fall out quite rapidly and freely, but keep up their freshness and beauty by a rapid and constant renewal. Indeed, with the exception of hereditary baldness, it may be broadly stated that in the great majority of cases, anyone who will keep him or herself in a fairly fit and healthy condition and the scalp clean, will be likely to have fairly abundant, glossy, and durable hair.

Most people can distinctly improve their hair, both in appearance and permanence, by taking good and intelligent care of their health and habits. If you want your hair to stand by you, the first and most important thing is to stand by it-by giving it a sturdy and wholesome body as a stalk for it to grow on. There are, of course, many exceptions to this rule, and oddly enough, it does not always work the other way. It has long been a matter of observation that some of those who are delicate in youth, and especially the victims of consumption, have superb and abundant heads of lustrous and beautiful hair. With the majority of consumptives, of course, as with people suffering from other severe chronic illnesses, the hair deteriorates along with the other tissues of the body, and becomes dry and thin and lusterless.

Obviously, if our hair "dies daily," it is impossible to improve its permanence by doing anything to the hairs which have grown out to their full length and are already "ripening for the tomb." Clipping, singeing, curling, smearing the hair with ointments or pomades-in fact, any kind of treatment applied to full-grown hair in the hope of stopping it from coming out or making it stay on longer has about as much effect as if applied to the tips of our fing

nails to make our hands slender, or rubbed on the soles of our boots to increase our height. The only place where applications can be made which will have any effect upon the future of the hair is at the roots, and their influence even there is astonishingly slight.

The question of origins, theoretic and transcendental as it may seem, is really of great practical importance in dealing with the problems of hair-growing and baldness. If we only knew why hair is, we should be able to make a much better guess as to why it isn't. If we were at all certain what influences brought it into existence in the beginning and what useful functions it now performs, we should know what to do to restore its vigor when it begins to fail. But alas! we don't.

Of almost every other tissue and organ in the body we know the function and how it works, so that all we have to do to improve its vigor is to feed it well and then give it work to do within its powers-exercise it, in fact. But we can't exercise the hair, because we don't know what work it does in the body. As far as we are able to judge, it is purely ornamental -and not a howling success at that in most of us. As already suggested, it will neither turn rain, keep off sun, nor deaden the force of a blow to any appreciable degree. In fact, for all these protective purposes the short, compact double coat of our prehuman ancestors was far superior. But for at least two to five thousand years past our hair has exercised no protective function of any importance; indeed, it has been almost constantly protected from the weather by either a roof or a hat, helmet, turban, or other headgear.

It is therefore irrational to suppose that by going bareheaded in all weathers we shall revive the failing vigor of our hair. The only crop that going bareheaded usually succeeds in raising upon a denuded scalp is one of blisters, while often the fierce heat and light of the sun destroys what little vitality is left in falling hair.

For the same reason, all attempts to account for baldness in civilized races by tightfitting and ill-ventilated hats or by indoor habits, or to stop its progress by wearing soft hats instead of chimney-pots, or caps instead of derbies, is entirely beside the mark.

The human hair is an indoor plant, a hothouse exotic almost, which has been carefully kept under cover for hundreds of generations. To attempt to restore it suddenly to its supposed natural environment by going bareheaded is about as rational as suddenly turning a canary-bird out of its cage into a London fog, or a tropical parrakeet out of doors in a snow-storm. The scalp requires, of course, the same amount of air and light as does the rest of the surface of the body, but that anything beyond this will be of the slightest benefit to it we have no reason to believe. Indeed, our practical results show clearly that too much exposure to either sun, wind, or cold does more harm than good-though, of course, the more we can live an outdoor life and the more perfectly pure and sweet we can keep the air in our houses, the better it will be for the scalp, together with the rest of the body.

But it is not necessary to make any violent and radical changes in our habits or surroundings in order to preserve our hair, and the impression, widespread and deep rooted though it is, that the conditions. of modern civilization are specially unfavorable and injurious to the hair is almost entirely unfounded. Our hair, such as it is, has survived equally unfavorable-indeed, for the most part far worse-conditions than any which it is called upon to face today. Never, in fact, has human hair had as good a chance for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as in this twentieth century.

Our savage forebears piled it up into bird's-nests and shakos and haystacks, filled it with mud, smeared it with ocher, and plastered it with rancid grease and oils. Our more than half-savage fathers of the middle ages stewed it under iron pots called helmets, or filthy caps of fur and felt, filled it with powder and drenched it with musk and civet, seldom brushed it, and never, never gave it a bath except involuntarily when swimming across a river in the flight from a lost battle, when they ducked their heads under water to escape the arrows or slugs of the pursuing enemy. Even fine ladies often wore the same headdress or coiffeure for ten days at a stretch, and

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If you want your hair to stand by you, the first and most important thing is to stand by it. But that does not mean attacking the scalp with electricity or smearing it with germicides. It means giving it a sturdy body as a stalk for it to grow on

openly carried beautifully carved, longhandled, three-clawed scratching-forks, with which to relieve their tortured scalps. While as for population, the most thickly settled modern scalp is as a howling wilderdess, a comb-swept desert, to a city slum, compared with the swarming myriads of the average seventeenth-century scalp. Here is one place at least where depopulation and the decay of ancient civilization need excite no regret, and where a falling birth-rate has no terrors.

This brings us to the next great problem of hair-raising-that is, keeping the soil free from weeds and insects. Here the principles of successful hair-raising are really amusingly similar to those which apply to other crops. One simple requirement covers

both fields; namely, keep the soil clean! First, keep the seeds of the weeds out, and second, keep the soil so constantly stirred up that those which do get in will have no chance to catch a foothold. For none of the animal, and very few of the vegetable, or germ, parasites which attack our scalp fly into it of their own accord, or are carried in in currents of air, or even in dust or showers of accidental dirt. The overwhelming majority are planted there either by personal contact with an infected person, or by dirty and infected brushes, combs, caps, pillows, or garments. So that, as the old proverb puts it, "we cannot help the birds' flying over our heads, but we can keep them from building nests in our hair."

As a beginning, don't wear other people's

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