pendent parents didn't altogether spoil the lives of their children. Before Marie had actually married Mr. Cross, the "right man" came upon the scene, and the girl chose to do the unpleasant thing of breaking her engagement to the perfectly good man she had intended to marry for money, in order to take the other.

"I never expected to have money and love both!" she said.

I can just hear the gentle reader say virtuously, "I'd

work my fingers to the bone before I'd marry a man I didn't love, simply because he was rich!"

Perhaps you

would, mad

am, but the

truth is that

when children must bear the burden of their parents' support-almost as bad as when the burden of children is so heavy on parents that they refrain from having them. What Ishall we do about it, then? Make the care of our old age a charge upon the strength of our own youth by saving money enough to live on? This is the good old-fashioned method drilled into us at school, preached to us at church, hurled at us by sanctimonious lecturers. But does anybody ever preach the ills that come from saving? No; they only tell us what hardships come from being poor and old, and these

neither Marie nor Norine nor Leonard had then, or has now, the faintest notion of how to go about that praiseworthy process of working the fingers to the bone. It is not a habit that is easily acquired after maturity. The trouble lay not with the children; they were merely inclining as the twig had been bent. The parents were to blame. They had sacrificed their children to themselves, the future to the past. And even if the children had tried to work, even if they hadn't been "society people," and had known how, is it so sure they could have done it? Do you remember Jennie in "Auld Robin Gray"?

My father couldna work, my mother couldna spin; I toiled day and night, but their bread I couldna win; Auld Rob maintained them baith, and wi' tears in his e'e,

Said, "Jennie, for their sakes, will you marry me?"

And in spite of sentiment and tradition, it is bad business for the community

we

know perfectly well.

I've watched more than one family struggle with this antediluvian bugbear of Thrift.

The Breeses

are fairly typical specimens of the sort. Mr. Breese inherited a small hardware store in a small Eastern city. On the income derived from it he supported a wife and four children. He felt the responsibility of them quite as often as he felt the joy. To take chances with his business, he felt, was to take chances with their future. So he hoarded up all the money that might have bought them a comfortable house, and the money that might have bought them pretty clothes, and the money that might have gone into rest and pleasure. He got his four children into the saving game with him-six saving as one!-and together they amassed a fairly neat little sum.

But just as they had the requisite number of dollars invested to bring in about $1200 a year, Mr. Breese, instead of beginning to live as he had intended, inconside

ately died. But unfortunately, the saving that he did lives after him. His daughters, teaching and saving in their turn, are past forty; one son has a good, responsible, small-salaried position in a bank. None of them has been guilty of the extravagance of marriage and children.

But if a matrimonial firm is neither to be supported by its offspring nor to deny itself, and incidentally the community, sufficently to accumulate a sinking fund, what is it to do? Become a public charge? Well, why not? Do any of us labor under the delusion that we support ourselves?

I always remember with peculiar pleasure the story of how Colonel Newcome retired to the almshouse after his fortune had been swept away. He felt no shame of dependence in being there. Had he not in the days of his strength paid in service to the community many times over for what they gave him now? Was he not much farther-sighted than we of the United States, who, while we contribute $250,000,ooo a year to support the aged poor, yet put them to every indignity of segregation and uniform and regulation?

"Save at whatever cost, or you will be held in contempt like these," would seem to be our cry. "You may have given us wisdom and strength and goodness-you may have taught our children, preached in our pulpits, run engines to bring us meat and bread, built houses for us to live in; you may have served us all with your skill, your wit, your talents, but unless you have also saved money you shall be made to feel every indignity, and all your past services shall be forgotten."

By this admirable method do we so terrify ourselves that the average middle-class family puts about three hundred dollars every year into insurance and savings, at whatever cost to its present efficiency. And as no public opinion can make those who save wise investors, a large part of this money is entirely lost. According to the Massachusetts report, 53.9% of the aged poor are dependent. because they have lost their property. Of these, 60.1% have lost their money through extra expenses on account of sickness and emergencies; through business failures and bad investments, 25.4%; through fraud, 5.1%; through fire, 3.2%; while only 6.2% owe their dependence to intemperance and extravagance.

Since the chances are so greatly against that three hundred dollars a year being act

ually available for the old age of the married couple, and since it is a disadvantage to the community to force children to support their parents, why should not society make some other provision for them?

The problems of keeping physical strength are the most personal and individual parts of the great problem of old age. They can be solved after a fashion by each matrimonial firm for itself. But the financial part of the problem cannot be correctly solved except by the whole community working in unison. The three solutions for it which we have found by working independently-let the old be supported by their children, let them hamper their own young by saving for the future, let them eat the bitter bread of charity-are all bad.

A "Study of Workingmen's Insurance in Europe" states forcibly: "Provision for old age is based upon services rendered in the past, and upon contributions of the most varied character to all forms of social and community prosperity . . . . a benefit of this character . . . . should not be subject to defeat for any contingency whatever. . . . but should be secured by the mere fact of survival. The idea is that the pension is a deferred and contingent additional compensation for past services."

And Section 10 of the bill to provide oldage pensions which was introduced into the Sixty-second Congress says:

"This act shall be liberally administered to effect its purpose, which is to provide out of the public purse sufficient income for the old to enable them to enjoy the last remaining years of their lives in such freedom from the fear of want as they have earned by a long service for society, as citizens of the Republic."

Just suppose such a law were passed! Think of a generation from which the fear of want was suddenly removed, a generation able to conserve its strength so that there should be no worn-out nor sick old people, a generation able to serve the state to its utmost capacity, because there was no need to save. Would not the matrimonial firms which were assured these things greatly increase the products of matrimony

happiness, service, and children of the right sort? Is not this problem of age, like the problems of education, of home management, of marketing, of health, and of children, one that no matrimonial firm can solve for itself, but which all the profession of matrimony can easily solve together?

T

HE top floor of the Barker Building was tenanted by people who called themselves artists, because they sometimes drew pictures; but even in New York, where art is a synonym for almost anything you please, there were few top floors on which defenseless nature was portrayed with such vivid imagination as in the Barker Building.

Bison City's delegate to the congress of geniuses-elect was Mary Ann Atherton, predestined by her physique and her vocabulary to be pointed out as a type. For the glory of the metropolis she was branded a typical Westerner, in spite of Bison City's pride as a terminus of the least important suburban trolley-line out of Pittsburgh. Mary Ann was tall, lively, and handsome in a grown-up sort of way; and when she walked, she swished. Fashionable ladies swish no more-all that once was swishable has been elided from the wardrobe-but Mary Ann Atherton swished and spoke frankly and so typified to Manhattan the personal attributes of the upper Middle West.

From her earliest youth her ambition had been to be a painter. The neighbors praised with exceeding rapture her sketches of them-and told each other in strict confidence that her work was all right, but that the medium of expression was all wrong. Her talent, they said, entitled her to sweep triumphantly through life; but her implement should have been a broom instead of a brush. When they met Mary in front of the butcher's, they revamped some of the best phrases from the recent art lecture at the Woman's Club, and exalted to immortality her portrait of her uncle Silas especially the prismatic air and the brown under-basing. The result was natural and spontaneous: Mary was convinced that she

ought to go to New York, and the neighbors who had convinced her said that Mary was conceited.

Her departure caused much greater excitement in Bison City than her arrival bestirred in New York. It was hastened by the third clause of Uncle Silas's will, which the weekly newspaper heralded as "a munificent endowment to one of the fairest belles of our thriving city," and the neighbors considered a sufficient reason for some of the distant relatives to claim hallucination on the part of the testator. They did not realize that many an artistic career has had less foundation than laurels in a suburb. and a thousand dollars from Uncle Silas.

On the top floor of the Barker Building Mary hired a dusty studio and a model named Sarah, and set bravely to work. She was very much in earnest, and she did not expect to achieve fame and fortune in less than a twelvemonth. The subject of her first picture was a society woman in court costume. The subject was to sit in a genuine Sheraton chair, with one foot idly straying over a genuine antique rug. It was to be a realistic portrait, with plenty of atmosphere and no parsimony in paint; and it was calculated to bring the élite of the island to her door with an overwhelming desire to be flattered on canvas.

The model was accommodating, and agreed to furnish the gown—a black net over black satin, with a permanent red rose in the corsage. The chair was to be adapted from the pages of a Grand Rapids furniture catalogue. For the present, the model disposed herself on a common divan in the attitude she had acquired the week before when sitting for an advertisement of massage cream, and Mary Ann Atherton tied a gingham apron around her neck, and began to paint.

At the end of the twentieth day she laid down her palette, and sighed heavily. "Oh, dear!" she said. "I wish I had a rug!”

The model was a philosopher. For three decades she had advised struggling young artists. Fake it," she suggested kindly.

"Oh. I can't," said Mary. "It's too important. It's the key to the whole thing."

"Then use yours," said the model. “All you have to do is make a square place, and fill it in with green."

Mary gazed sorrowfully at her three-bysix Brussels velvet, and shook her head. "It can't be done. You're supposed to be somewhere around number ten in the Four Hundred, and Brussels won't go. You see, Sarah, this rug has got to look expensive. I'll have to copy it out of a window on Fifth Avenue."

"Calm yourself," said Sarah pensively. "I think one of the boys on this floor's got a rug. I posed for him once for a Goddess of Liberty. It looked sort of silky, with designs on it-the rug, I mean. what you want?"

Is that

"That listens very Oriental, Sarah. What was his name?"

"Well, now that you ask me," said Sarah, "I don't remember."

Mary sighed again. "Well, we'll try to go on without it," she said.

But an hour later she removed the apron in despair, and began to fluff her hair before the mantel mirror. "It's no use, Sarah," she announced. "I simply can't get the spirit of tainted wealth into it unless I have a rug. If there's a real rug on this floor I'm going to borrow it. Don't you remember the man's name, or even what it was like?"

"No, I don't. McCarthy-Smith-I've forgotten. Anyway, he had gray eyes.'

"Gray eyes?" said Mary hopefully. "I'll be back as soon as I've worked the floor, Sarah. It ought not to take me more than fifteen minutes to borrow a rug. You can be resting while I'm gone."

Her studio was at the rear of the building; she strode boldly to the front and knocked on a door that bore the inscription:

HIGGINSON Illustrator

ise, the door was opened trator, and Mary stated ithout introduction.

"Good morning," she said. "I believe you have some rugs?”

The illustrator had rheumatism, and he had just been reproved over the telephone for limning a lady in a motor-car when the author of the story had written a few thousand words about a horse. "No, I haven't,” said Higginson. "Do I look like a secondhand shop?"

Mary went bravely down the corridor to the next room, where she faced a landscape painter, who came impatiently to the threshold with a brush between his teeth.

"Good morning," said she cheerfully. "Do you own any rugs?”

The landscape artist satisfied his curiosity before he removed the brush from his teeth. "What kind of rugs?"

"Baluchistans, Kazaks, Bokharas-" The artist raised a deprecating hand. "Thanks for the compliment," he said. "I had one last year, until the second instalment came due. You're a dealer, aren't you? I'm very busy."

Number Four was out; Number Five was out; and Number Six had been out the night before. Number Seven owned an ingrain carpet, and was proud of it; but Number Eight, who painted worse than any man on the floor, gave her the first smile and the first encouragement. He was a well-built young man in a Norfolk-jacket, and he was smoking a pipe. His mouth was large and sympathetic, and his eyes were an angelic

gray.

"What variety of rug are you after?" returned the young man to her query.

Mary drew a long breath, and recited her list. "Baluchistans, Kazaks, Bokharas-”

"Yes," interrupted Number Eight, waving his hand reassuringly. "All of them. I can use more if they're good ones—but pardon me! Did you want to buy or sell?"

"I'm a painter," explained Mary. "I'm doing a society sketch, and I want to borrow a rug. The lady has one foot on it. I'll pay for any damage she does."

"Come in and pick it out," invited the young man, and through a curtain of fragrant smoke she passed into a luxurious. little chamber where, surrounded by furniture of plutocratic appearance, and charmingly offset by the cheap mahogany stain of the floor, were half a dozen marvelous rugs-soft, silky, mellow Oriental rugs. They caught the light and shimmered; they yielded softly to the tread, and they possessed the soul of Mary Ann.

"I'm a painter," explained Mary. "I'm do

ing a society sketch, and I want to borrow a rug"

"What a grand studio!" she gasped. "Look at those bronze things in the corner! Why, you must be a real artist!"

"I'm not," said Number Eight. "I'm probably the worst artist in the world. I paint things up here to keep from working. This place represents years of saving and selfsacrifice on the part of my father. And yet" -he exhaled softly"and yet my debts aren't so large that, by exercise of the strictest economy, he can't eventually pay them." Her face was so horrified that he hastened to recant.

"Don't take it literally," he pleaded. "I say it rather often because it generally takes well. But it's perfectly true that I don't make any money here. It's a recreation. Now, you're probably paying your model by the hour, so I won't detain you with a monologue. Take your choice of the rugs.' "Oh, may I?" "Take two if you like."

"I think I forgot to identify myself," said Mary. "My shop's at the end of the hall."

"It's quite all right," said Number Eight. "Pick out your rug. What's your colorscheme, blonde or brunette?"

"Brunette," said Mary, "but only recently. It doesn't matter. May I have the big one?"

"I admire your judgment," said the