Chapter V: Types of Articles (2)

I set myself to playing the devoted and absorbed young mother. But
it was a long, long time before it became the sweetest of realities.
I cried the first time I refused a bridge game to "stay with baby";
and I carried a sore heart those long spring afternoons when I
pushed his carriage conspicuously up and down the avenue while the
other women motored past me out for tea at the club. Yet those long
walks were the best thing that ever happened to me. I had time to
think, for one thing; and I gained splendid health, losing the
superfluous flesh I was beginning to carry, and the headaches that
usually came after days of lunching and bridge and dining.

I fell into the habit, too, of going around by the market, merely to
have an objective, and buying the day's supplies. The first month of
that habit my bills showed a decrease of $16.47. I shall always
remember that sum, because it is certainly the biggest I have ever
seen. I began to ask the prices of things; and I made my first faint
effort at applying our game of substitution to the food problem, a
thing which to me is still one of the most fascinating factors in
housekeeping.

One afternoon in late summer, I found a delightful little bungalow
in process of building, on a side street not so _very_ far from the
proper avenue. I investigated idly, and found that the rent was
thirty dollars less than we were paying. Yet even then I hesitated.

It was Max who had the courage to decide.

"The only thing we are doing without is the address," he said, "And
that isn't a loss that looks like $360 to me."

All that fall and winter we kept doggedly at our game of
substitution. Max bought a ready-made Tuxedo, and I ripped out the
label and sewed in one from a good tailor. I carried half a dozen
dresses from the dyer's to a woman who evolved three very decent
gowns; and then I toted them home in a box with a marking calculated
to impress any chance acquaintance. We were so ashamed of our
attempts at thrift that they came hard.

Often enough we quarreled after we had been caught in some sudden
temptation that set us back a pretty penny, and we were inevitably
bored and cross when we refused some gayety for economy's sake. We
resolutely decided to read aloud the evenings the others went to the
theater club; and as resolutely we substituted a stiff game of chess
for the bridge that we could not afford. But we had to learn to like
them both.

Occasionally we entertained at very small, very informal dinners,
"on account of the baby"; and definitely discarded the wines that
added the "smartness" demanded at formal affairs. People came to
those dinners in their second or third best: but they stayed late,
and laughed hilariously to the last second of their stay.

In the spring we celebrated Max's second respectable rise in salary
by dropping out of the country club. We could do without it by that
time. At first we thought it necessary to substitute a determined
tramp for the Sunday morning golf game; but we presently gave that
up. We were becoming garden enthusiasts. And as a substitution for
most of the pleasure cravings of life, gardening is to be highly
recommended. Discontent has a curious little trick of flowing out of
the earthy end of a hoe.

Later that summer I found that a maid was one of the things I could
do without, making the discovery in an interregnum not of my
original choosing. A charwoman came in for the heavier work, and I
took over the cooking. Almost immediately, in spite of my
inexperience, the bills dropped. I could not cook rich pastries and
fancy desserts, and fell back on simple salads and fruit instead. I
dipped into the household magazines, followed on into technical
articles on efficiency, substituted labor-savers wherever I could,
and started my first muddled set of accounts.

At the beginning of the new year I tried my prentice hand on a
budget; and that was the year that we emerged from debt and began to
save.

That was six very short years ago. When, with three babies, the
bungalow became a trifle small, we built a little country house and
moved farther out. Several people whom we liked best among that
first "exclusive younger set" have moved out too, and formed the
nucleus of a neighborhood group that has wonderful times on incomes
no one of which touches $4000 a year.

Ours is not as much as that yet; but it is enough to leave a wide
and comfortable margin all around our wants. Max has given up his
pipe for cigarettes (unmonogramed), and patronizes a good tailor for
business reasons. But in everything else our substitutions stand:
gardening for golf; picnics for roadhouse dinners; simple food,
simple clothing, simple hospitality, books, a fire, and a game of
chess on winter nights.

We don't even talk about economies any more. We like them.
But--every Christmas there comes to me via the Christmas tree a box
of stockings, and for Max a box of socks--heavy silk. There never is
any card in either box; but I think we'll probably get them till we
die.

The following short confession, signed "Mrs. M.F.E.," was awarded the first prize by the _American Magazine_ in a contest for articles on "The Best Thing Experience Has Taught Me":

Forty Years Bartered for What?

A tiny bit of wisdom, but as vital as protoplasm. I know, for I
bartered forty precious years of wifehood and motherhood to learn
it.

During the years of my childhood and girlhood, our family passed
from wealth to poverty. My father and only brother were killed in
battle during the Civil War; our slaves were freed; our plantations
melted from my mother's white hands during the Reconstruction days;
our big town house was sold for taxes.

When I married, my only dowry was a fierce pride and an overwhelming
ambition to get back our material prosperity. My husband was making
a "good living." He was kind, easy-going, with a rare capacity for
enjoying life and he loved his wife with that chivalrous,
unquestioning, "the queen-can-do-no-wrong" type of love.

But even in our days of courting I answered his ardent love-making
with, "And we will work and save and buy back the big house; then we
will--" etc., etc.

And he? Ah, alone at sixty, I can still hear echoing down the years
his big tender laugh, as he'd say, "Oh, what a de-ah, ambitious
little sweetheart I have!"

He owned a home, a little cottage with a rose garden at one side of
it--surely, with love, enough for any bride. But I--I saw only the
ancestral mansion up the street, the big old house that had passed
out of the hands of our family.

I would have no honeymoon trip; I wanted the money instead. John
kissed each of my palms before he put the money into them. My
fingers closed greedily over the bills; it was the nest egg, the
beginning.

Next I had him dismiss his bookkeeper and give me the place. I
didn't go to his store--Southern ladies didn't do that in those
days--but I kept the books at home, and I wrote all the business
letters. So it happened when John came home at night, tired from his
day's work at the store, I had no time for diversions, for
love-making, no hours to walk in the rose garden by his side--no, we
must talk business.

I can see John now on many a hot night--and summer _is_ hot in the
Gulf States--dripping with perspiration as he dictated his letters
to me, while I, my aching head near the big hot lamp, wrote on and
on with hurried, nervous fingers. Outside there would be the evening
breeze from the Gulf, the moonlight, the breath of the roses, all
the romance of the southern night--but not for us!

The children came--four, in quick succession. But so fixed were my
eyes on the goal of Success, I scarcely realized the mystery of
motherhood. Oh, I loved them! I loved John, too. I would willingly
have laid down my life for him or for any one of the children. And I
intended _sometime_ to stop and enjoy John and the children. Oh,
yes, I was going really to _live_ after we had bought back the big
house, and had done so and so! In the meanwhile, I held my breath
and worked.

"I'll be so glad," I remember saying one day to a friend, "when all
my children are old enough to be off at school all day!" Think of
that! Glad when the best years of our lives together were passed!
The day came when the last little fellow trudged off to school and I
no longer had a baby to hamper me. We were living now in the big
old home. We had bought it back and paid for it. I no longer did
John's bookkeeping for him--he paid a man a hundred dollars a month
to do that--but I still kept my hand on the business.

Then suddenly one day--John died. _Died_ in what should have been
the prime and vigor of his life.

I worked harder than ever then, not from necessity, but because in
the first few years after John left I was _afraid_ to stop and
think. So the years hurried by! One by one the children grew up and
entered more or less successful careers of their own.... I don't
feel that I know them so very well.

And now that the time of life has come when I must stop and think, I
ask myself: "What did you do with the wonderful gifts Life laid in
your lap--the love of a good man, domestic happiness, the chance to
know intimately four little souls?"

And being honest I have to answer: "I bartered Life's great gifts
for Life's pitiful extras--for pride, for show!"

If my experience were unique it would not be worth publishing, but
it is only too common. Think of the wives who exchange the best
years of their lives, their husband's comfort, his peace of mind, if
not to buy back the family mansion, then for a higher social
position; sometimes it is merely for--clothes!

It is to you women who still have the opportunity to "walk with John
in the garden" that I give my dearly bought bit of experience. Stop
holding your breath until you get this or that; stop reaching out
blindly for to-morrow's prize; _live_ to-day!

THE "HOW-TO-DO-SOMETHING" ARTICLE. Articles the primary purpose of which is to give directions for doing something in a particular way, are always in demand. The simplest type is the recipe or formula containing a few directions for combining ingredients. More elaborate processes naturally demand more complex directions and require longer articles. In the simpler types the directions are given in the imperative form; that is, the reader is told to "take" this thing and that, and to "mix" it with something else. Although such recipe directions are clear, they are not particularly interesting. Many readers, especially those of agricultural journals, are tired of being told to do this and that in order to get better results. They are inclined to suspect the writer of giving directions on the basis of untried theory rather than on that of successful practice. There is an advantage, therefore, in getting away from formal advice and directions and in describing actual processes as they have been carried on successfully.

Articles intended to give practical guidance are most interesting when cast in the form of an interview, a personal experience, or a narrative. In an interview article, a person may indirectly give directions to others by describing in his own words the methods that he has used to accomplish the desired results. Or the writer, by telling his own experiences in doing something, may give readers directions in an interesting form.

Whatever method he adopts, the writer must keep in mind the questions that his readers would be likely to ask if he were explaining the method or process to them in person. To one who is thoroughly familiar with a method the whole process is so clear that he forgets how necessary it is to describe every step to readers unfamiliar with it. The omission of a single point may make it impossible for the reader to understand or to follow the directions. Although a writer need not insult the intelligence of his readers by telling them what they already know, he may well assume that they need to be reminded tactfully of many things that they may have known but have possibly forgotten.

TWO PRACTICAL GUIDANCE ARTICLES. A method of filing office records, as explained apparently by the man who devised it, is well set forth in the following combination of the personal experience and the "how-to-do-something" types of articles. It appeared in _System_ with a half-tone reproduction of a photograph showing a man looking over records in a drawer of the desk at which he is seated.

WHO'LL DO JOHN'S WORK?

BY M. C. HOBART

"It's a quarter after 8 and Schuyler hasn't showed up," telephoned
Beggs, one of our foremen, last Tuesday morning. "I've put Fanning
on his machine, but that won't help much unless I can get somebody
to work at Fanning's bench. Got anybody you can let me have for
to-day?"

I didn't know offhand. But I told Beggs I'd call him back.

Ten minutes later a young lathe operator reported to Beggs. He was
able to run Fanning's machine while the latter temporarily filled
the shoes of the absent Schuyler.

Scarcely a week passes that does not bring a similar call to our
employment office. While our plant, as plants go, is not large, we
always have a number of men working with us who are fitted by
experience and adaptability to do other work than that which they
are hired to do. Such men are invaluable to know about, especially
when an operator stays away for a day or perhaps a week and the shop
is full of orders. Once it was a problem to find the right man
immediately. A few additions to our employment records made it
possible to keep track of each man's complete qualifications.

The employment records I keep in my desk in the deep drawer. They
are filed alphabetically by name. When we hire a man we write his
name and the job he is to fill on the outside of a 9 by 12 manila
envelope. Into this envelope we put his application, his references,
and other papers. His application tells us what kinds of work he can
do and has done in other shops.

There are 29 different kinds of work to be done in our shops, from
gear cutting to running errands. I have listed these operations,
alphabetically, on a cardboard the exact length of the employment
record envelope, 12 inches. When a man tells me in his application
that he not only can operate a drill press, for which he is hired,
but has also worked at grinding, I fit my cardboard list to the top
of the employment record envelope and punch two notches along the
top directly opposite the words "drill press" and "grinding" on my
list. Then I file away the envelope.

I rest secure now in my knowledge that I have not buried a potential
grinder in a drill press operator, or that I do not have to carry
his double qualifications in my mind. I know that if Beggs should
suddenly telephone me some morning that his grinder is absent--sick,
or fishing, perhaps--I need only take my cardboard list and,
starting at A, run it down my file until I come to the envelope of
the drill press operator. I am stopped there automatically by the
second notch on the envelope which corresponds in position to the
word "grinder" on my list.

And there is every likelihood that, with the necessary explanation
to the man's own foreman, Beggs will get his grinder for the day.

From the following article, printed in _Farm and Fireside_ city and country readers alike may glean much practical information concerning ways and means of making a comfortable living from a small farm. It was illustrated by four half-tone reproductions of photographs showing (1) the house, (2) the woman at her desk with a typewriter before her, (3) the woman in her dining-room about to serve a meal from a labor-saving service wagon, and (4) the woman in the poultry yard with a basket of eggs.

TEN ACRES AND A LIVING

SHE WAS YOUNG, POPULAR, AND HAD BEEN REARED IN THE CITY. EVERYBODY
LAUGHED WHEN SHE DECIDED TO FARM--BUT THAT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO

BY ALICE MARY KIMBALL

When she decided to be a farmer everybody laughed. She was young,
popular, unusually fond of frocks and fun. She had been reared in
the city. She didn't know a Jersey from a Hereford, or a Wyandotte
from a Plymouth Rock.

"You'll be back in six months," her friends said.

Four years have passed. Mrs. Charles S. Tupper still is "buried" in
the country. Moreover, she is supplying eggs, chickens, honey, and
home-canned goods to those of her former associates who are willing
to pay for quality.

"Farming," said Mrs. Tupper, "is the ideal vocation for the woman
who feels the modern desire for a job and the need of marriage and a
home.

"I never wanted a job so keenly as when I found myself in a small
city apartment without enough to do to keep me busy. After I'd swept
and dusted and prepared meals for two, I had hours of time on my
hands. The corner bakeshop, the laundry, and modern conveniences had
thrust upon me more leisure than I could use. Mr. Tupper is a young
engineer whose work takes him to various parts of the Southwest. In
his absence I felt strongly the need of filling up my idle hours in
some interesting, useful way.

"I didn't quite like the idea of spending all my spare time on
cards, calling, women's clubs, and social pleasures. I longed to be
a real partner to my husband and to share in making the family
income as well as spending it.

"We had a few thousand saved for a home, and were trying to decide
where to build. One day it flashed upon me: 'Why invest in city
property? Why not a little farm? Then we'll have a home; I'll have a
job, and can make our living.'"

The idea materialized into a modern bungalow on a 10-acre farm in
Westdale, Missouri, an hour's drive from Kansas City. Mr. Tupper's
salary furnished working capital for the enterprise and Mrs. Tupper
has found congenial work as farmer-in-chief.

Poultry, bees, and a vegetable garden are Mrs. Tupper's
specialities. Her side lines are a pig and a registered Jersey cow.
She looks after the poultry, works in garden and apiary, and milks
the cow herself. She employs very little help.

"It wasn't difficult to get a start in learning to farm," Mrs.
Tupper explained. "I visited farms and studied the methods of
farmers and their wives. I asked lots of questions.

"I didn't have any old fogyisms to unlearn, and I didn't acquire
any. I went straight to the agricultural college and the state
poultry experiment station for instructions. While I was living in
the country supervising the building of the bungalow, I read and
digested every bulletin I could get. I'm still studying bulletins. I
subscribe for several farm papers and a bee journal.

"Of course, I learned a great deal from the practical experience of
the people about me, but I checked up everything to the rules and
directions of government and state agricultural experts, which may
be had for the price of a postage stamp. I tried to take orders
intelligently. I ignored old rules for poultry and bee-keeping."

Mrs. Tupper's chickens are hatched in incubators, hovered in a
coal-heated brooder house, fed according to experiment-station
directions, and reared in poultry houses built from
experiment-station designs. From the first they have been
practically free from lice and disease. She gets winter eggs. Even
in zero weather and at times when feed is most costly, her spring
pullets more than pay their way.

"Bees responded as readily to proper treatment," she said. "My
second season I harvested $265 worth of comb honey from twenty
working swarms. And I was stung not a half-dozen times at that."

Some of Mrs. Tupper's neighbors were inclined to joke at first at
her appetite for bulletins, her belief in experts, and her rigid
insistence on pure-bred stock and poultry. They admit now that her
faith has been justified.

If Mrs. Tupper had trod in the well-worn neighborhood ruts, she
would have marketed her produce by the
country-store-commission-man-retailer-consumer route; but again she
did not. From the first she planned to plug the leakage of farm
profits in middlemen's commissions. When she had anything to sell,
she put on a good-looking tailored suit, a becoming hat, smart shoes
and gloves, and went to the city to talk to ultimate consumers.

The consciousness of being dressed appropriately--not expensively or
ornately--is a valuable aid to the farm saleswoman, Mrs. Tupper
thinks.

"If a salesman comes to me shabbily dressed or flashily dressed, I
can't give him a fair hearing," she said. "I may let him talk on,
but I decide against him the instant I look at him. So I reasoned
that a trim, pleasing appearance would be as valuable an asset to me
as to the men who sell pickles, insurance, or gilt-edged bonds. It
would mean a favorable first impression and open the way to show
samples and make a sales talk.

"If I tried to interview a prospective customer handicapped by the
consciousness that my skirt hung badly or that my shoes were shabby,
not only would I be timid and ill at ease, but my appearance would
suggest to the city buyer the very slipshodness and lack of
reliability he fears in buying direct from the farm.

"I go strong on attractive samples. It would be useless to try for
fancy prices if I brought honey to town in mean-looking cases or
rusty cans. A slight drip down the side of a package might not be
proof positive of poor quality, but it would frighten away a careful
buyer. Likewise, I do not illustrate my egg sales talks with a
sample dozen of odd sizes and shapes. It is needless to add that
goods delivered to customers must be of the same quality and
appearance as the samples, and that one must keep one's promises to
the dot. A little well-directed enterprise will land a customer, but
only good service can hold him."

When the current wholesale price of honey was $3 a case, Mrs.
Tupper's comb honey has been in demand at from 20 to 30 cents a
pound. She disposes of every pound to private customers and to one
grocery store which caters to "fancy" trade. She sells eggs from her
400 Anconas at from 4 to 6 cents more a dozen than the country
store is paying its patrons who bring in eggs and "take them out in
trade."

Mrs. Tupper figured that if a trademark has advertising pull for a
manufacturing concern, it would help the farm business. She
christened her 10 acres "Graceland Farm," and this name is stamped
on everything that leaves her place. She had cards printed bearing
the name of the farm, its telephone number, and its products.
Graceland Farm is also emphasized on letter heads.

"Prompt attention to correspondence is an easy method of advertising
a farm business," she suggested. "A typewritten letter on letterhead
stationery, mailed promptly, creates a pleasant impression on the
man who has written to inquire the price of a setting of eggs or a
trio of chickens.

"Suppose I delayed a week and wrote the reply with pen and ink, or,
worse, with a pencil on ruled tablet paper. I'd stand a good chance
of losing a customer, wouldn't I? If I didn't miss an order
outright, I should certainly leave a suggestion of inefficiency and
carelessness which could only be charged to the debit side of the
business."

She has found that a $50 typewriter and a letter file have helped
greatly to create the good-will which is as essential to the farmer
business woman as to the woman who runs a millinery shop or an
insurance office.

Mrs. Tupper has encouraged automobile trade. Her apiary is within
sight of the road, and a "Honey for Sale" sign brings many a
customer. Many of her city patrons have the habit of driving to the
farm and returning with a hamper laden with eggs, honey, butter, or
canned stuff from the vegetable garden. The garden last summer
supplied material for more than 900 cans of vegetables.

The neighbors smile at her zeal for fairs and poultry shows.

"It isn't fun altogether; it's business," she tells them.

It was cold, disagreeable work, for instance, to prepare an exhibit
for the Heart of America Poultry Show at Kansas City last fall; but
Mrs. Tupper felt repaid. She won first prize on hen, first and
second on pullet, and fourth on cockerel. Then she exhibited at the
St. Joseph, Missouri, Poultry Show with even better success.

"These prizes will add to the value of every chicken I have, and to
all my poultry products. They give me another advertising point,"
she said.

"The shows gave me a fine opportunity to meet possible customers
and to make friends for my business. I was on the job for days. I
met scores of people and distributed hundreds of cards. I learned a
lot, too, in talks with judges and experienced breeders."

The Tupper bungalow is neat and attractive. In spite of her duties
in the poultry house and apiary, Mrs. Tupper serves appetizing
meals. She finds time for church work and neighborhood calls, and
gives every Thursday to the Red Cross.

The housework is speeded up with such conveniences as hot and cold
water in kitchen and bathroom, and steam heat. The kitchen is an
efficient little workshop lined by cupboards and shelves. Mrs.
Tupper can sit before her kitchen cabinet and prepare a meal without
moving about for ingredients and utensils. A service wagon saves
steps between kitchen and dining-room.

The floors of the bungalow are of hard wood. They are waxed a few
times each year, and a little work each morning with dust mop and
carpet sweeper keeps them in good order. The washing is sent out.

"I couldn't earn an income from the farm if I had a farmhouse
without modern improvements," Mrs. Tupper declared. "Reducing
drudgery to a minimum is only plain business sense. Laundry work,
scrubbing, and dishwashing have a low economic value. Such unskilled
labor eats up the time and strength one needs for the more
profitable and interesting tasks of farm management, accounting and
correspondence, advertising and marketing."

THE PERSONALITY SKETCH. We all like to read about prominent and successful people. We want to know more about the men and women who figure in the day's news, and even about interesting persons whose success has not been great enough to be heralded in the press. What appeals to us most about these individuals is, not mere biographical facts such as appear in _Who's Who_, but the more intimate details of character and personality that give us the key to their success. We want to see them as living men and women. It is the writer's problem to present them so vividly that we shall feel as if we had actually met them face to face.

The purpose of the personality sketch may be (1) to give interesting information concerning either prominent or little known persons, (2) to furnish readers inspiration that may bear fruit in their own lives, (3) to give practical guidance by showing how one individual has accomplished a certain thing. Whether the aim is to afford food for thought, inspiration to action, or guidance in practical matters, the treatment is essentially the same.

The recognized methods of describing characters in fiction may be used to advantage in portraying real persons. These are (1) using general descriptive terms, (2) describing personal appearance, (3) telling of characteristic actions, (4) quoting their words, (5) giving biographical facts, (6) citing opinions of others about them, (7) showing how others react to them. By a judicious combination of several of these methods, a writer can make his readers visualize the person, hear him speak, watch him in characteristic actions, and understand his past life, as well as realize what others think of him and how they act toward him.

Material for a personality sketch may be obtained in one of three ways: (1) from a more or less intimate acquaintance with the person to be described; (2) from an interview with the person, supplemented by conversation with others about him; (3) from printed sketches of him combined with information secured from others. It is easier to write personality sketches about men and women whom we know well than it is about those whom we have never met, or with whom we have had only a short interview. Inexperienced writers should not attempt to prepare sketches of persons whom they know but slightly. In a single interview a writer who is observant, and who is a keen judge of human nature, may be able to get an impression sufficiently strong to serve as the basis of a satisfactory article, especially if the material obtained in the interview is supplemented by printed sketches and by conversations with others. Personality sketches sometimes include long interviews giving the person's opinions on the subject on which he is an authority. In such articles the sketch usually precedes the interview.

EXAMPLES OF THE PERSONALITY SKETCH. The first of the following sketches appeared, with a half-tone portrait, in the department of "Interesting People" in the _American Magazine_; the second was sent out by the Newspaper Enterprise Association, Cleveland, Ohio, which supplies several hundred daily newspapers with special features.

(1)

"TOMMY"--WHO ENJOYS STRAIGHTENING OUT THINGS

BY SAMPSON RAPHAELSON

Six years ago a young Bulgarian immigrant, dreamy-eyed and shabby,
came to the University of Illinois seeking an education. He inquired
his way of a group of underclassmen and they pointed out to him a
large red building on the campus.

"Go there," they said gayly, "and ask for Tommy."

He did, and when he was admitted to the presence of Thomas Arkle
Clark, Dean of Men, and addressed him in his broken English as
"Mis-terr Tommy," the dean did not smile. Although Mr. Clark had
just finished persuading an irascible father to allow his reprobate
sophomore son to stay at college, and although he was facing the
problem of advising an impetuous senior how to break an engagement
with a girl he no longer loved, he adapted himself to the needs and
the temperament of the foreigner instantly, sympathetically, and
efficiently.

In five minutes the Bulgarian had a job, knew what courses in
English he ought to take, and was filled with a glow of hope,
inspiration, and security which only a genius in the art of
graciousness and understanding like "Tommy Arkle," as he is amiably
called by every student and alumnus of Illinois, can bestow.

This is a typical incident in the extremely busy, richly human daily
routine of the man who created the office of Dean of Men in American
universities. Slender, short, well-dressed, his gray hair smartly
parted, with kindly, clever, humorous blue eyes and a smile that is
an ecstasy of friendliness, "Tommy" sits behind his big desk in the
Administration Building from eight to five every day and handles all
of the very real troubles and problems of the four thousand-odd men
students at the University of Illinois.

He averages one hundred callers a day, in addition to answering a
heavy mail and attendance upon various committee, board, and
council meetings. He is known all over the country as an authority
on fraternities and their influence, and a power for making that
influence constantly better and finer. In business, farmer, and
school circles in the Middle West Mr. Clark is famous for his
whimsical, inspiring speeches. His quick, shaft-like humor, his
keen, devastating sarcasm, and his rare, resilient sympathy have
made him a personality beloved particularly by young persons.

They still tell the story on the campus of an ingenuous youngster
who walked into the dean's office one fall, set his suitcase on the
floor, and drawing two one-dollar bills and a fifty-cent piece from
his pocket, laid the money on the big desk, saying:

"That's all the money I have. I've come to work my way through. Will
you help me to get a job?"

In a flash "Tommy" noted the boy's eager, imaginative brown eyes,
his wide, compact lips and strong jaw. Reaching over, he took the
two bills and pocketed them, leaving the half-dollar.

"The traditional great men," said the dean, "started their
university careers with only fifty cents. I don't want you to be
handicapped, so I'll keep this two dollars. You can get work at ----
Green Street waiting on table for your meals, and the landlady at
---- Chalmers Street wants a student to fire her furnace in exchange
for room rent."

The boy earned his way successfully for several months. Then
suddenly he was taken sick. An operation was necessary. Mr. Clark
wired for a Chicago specialist and paid all expenses out of his own
pocket. The student recovered, and two years after he was graduated
sent "Tommy" a letter enclosing a check for five hundred dollars.
"To redeem my two dollars which you have in trust," the letter said,
"and please use the money as a medical fund for sick students who
need, but cannot afford, Chicago specialists."

The dean has an abnormal memory for names and faces. Every year he
makes a "rogues' gallery"--the photographs of all incoming freshmen
are taken and filed away. And many an humble, unknown freshman has
been exalted by the "Hello, Darby," or "Good morning,
Boschenstein"--or whatever his name happened to be--with which the
dean greeted him.

Mr. Clark once revealed to me the secret of his life. Fifteen years
ago he was professor of English and had strong literary ambitions,
with no little promise. There came the offer of the office of Dean
of Men. He had to choose between writing about peoples lives or
living those lives with people. And he chose, with the result that
at all times of the day and night it's "Tommy this, and Tommy that";
an accident case may need him at two A.M. in the hospital, or a
crowd of roystering students may necessitate his missing a night's
sleep in order to argue an irate sheriff into the conviction that
they are not robbers and murderers. He has been known to spend many
evenings in the rooms of lonesome students who "need a friend."

"Tommy Arkle" is one of the Middle West's finest contributions to
the modern ideal of human service.

(2)

TWO NEW MACHINE GUNS ARE INVENTED FOR THE U.S. ARMY BY THE "EDISON
OF FIREARMS"

BY HARRY B. HUNT

HARTFORD, CONN., NOV. 12.--"Well, Old J.M. has done it again."

That is the chief topic of conversation these days in the big shops
of Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport, where the bulk of the rifles,
pistols and machine guns for Uncle Sam's army is being turned out.

For in these towns to say that "Old J.M. has done it again" is the
simplest and most direct way of stating that John M. Browning has
invented a new kind of firearm.

This time, however, "Old J.M." has done it twice. He has invented
not one, but two new guns. Both have been accepted by the United
States government, contracts for immense numbers of each have been
signed, and work of production is being pushed night and day. The
new weapons will be put into the field against Germany at the
earliest possible day.

Who is John Browning? You never heard of him?

Well, Browning is the father of rapid-fire and automatic firearms.
His is the brain behind practically every basic small firearm
invention in the past 40 years. He has been to the development of
firearms what Edison has been to electricity.

"Unquestionably the greatest inventor of firearms in the world," is
the unanimous verdict of the gun experts of the Colt, Remington and
Winchester plants, whose business it is to study and criticise every
development in firearms.

But if Browning is our greatest gun inventor, he is the most
"gun-shy" genius in the country when it comes to publicity. He
would rather face a machine gun than a reporter.

A few years ago a paper in his home state--Utah--published a little
story about his success as an inventor, and the story was copied by
the Hartford Courant.

"I'd rather have paid $1,000 cash than have had that stuff printed,"
Browning says.

Friends, however, who believe that the world should know something
about this firearms wizard, furnish the following sidelights on his
career:

Browning comes from an old-stock Mormon family of Ogden, Utah. As a
young man he was a great hunter, going off into the woods for a
month or six weeks at a time, with only his gun for company. He was
only 24 when he worked out his ideas for a gun carrying a magazine
full of cartridges, which could be fired rapidly in succession. He
pounded out the parts for his first rapid-fire gun with hammer and
cold chisel.

Since that time, pump and "trombone" shotguns, automatic pistols,
rapid-fire rifles produced by the biggest firearms manufacturers in
the country have been Browning's products.

The United States army pistol is a Browning invention.

A Browning pistol manufactured by the Fabrique Nationale of Belgium
was made the standard equipment for the armies of Belgium, Russia,
Spain, Italy and Serbia.

On completion of the one-millionth pistol by the Fabrique Nationale,
King Albert of Belgium knighted the modest inventor, so he is now,
officially, "Sir" John Browning.

Browning is tall, slender, slightly stooped, 62, bald except for a
rim of gray hair, and wears a closely clipped gray moustache. His
face is marked by a network of fine lines.

Although Browning will not talk of himself or of his career as an
inventor, he can't help talking when the conversation is turned on
guns.

"I always think of a gun as something that is made primarily to
shoot," he says. "The best gun is the simplest gun. When you begin
loading a gun up with a lot of fancy contraptions and 'safety
devices,' you are only inviting trouble. You complicate the
mechanism and make that many more places for dirt and grit to clog
the action.

"You can make a gun so 'safe' that it won't shoot."

Of Browning's new guns it is not, of course, permissible to give any
details. One, however, is a light rapid-fire gun, weighing only 15
pounds, which can be fired from the shoulder like the ordinary
rifle. Each magazine carries 20 rounds and the empty magazine can be
detached and another substituted by pressing a button.

The heavier gun is a belt-fed machine, capable of firing 600 shots a
minute. Although it is water-cooled, it weighs, water jacket and
all, only 28 pounds. For airplane work, where the firing is in
bursts and the speed of the machine helps cool the gun, the jacket
is discarded and the gun weighs only 20 pounds.

Both guns are counted upon as valuable additions to the equipment of
our overseas forces.

THE NARRATIVE IN THE THIRD PERSON. Although the interview, the personal experience article, and the confession story are largely narrative, they are always told in the first person, whereas the term "narrative article" as used in this classification is applied only to a narrative in the third person. In this respect it is more like the short story. As in the short story so in the narrative article, description of persons, places, and objects involved serves to heighten the effect.

Narrative methods may be employed to present any group of facts that can be arranged in chronological order. A process, for example, may be explained by showing a man or a number of men engaged in the work involved, and by giving each step in the process as though it were an incident in a story. The story of an invention or a discovery may be told from the inception of the idea to its realization. A political situation may be explained by relating the events that led up to it. The workings of some institution, such as an employment office or a juvenile court, may be made clear by telling just what takes place in it on a typical occasion. Historical and biographical material can best be presented in narrative form.

Suspense, rapid action, exciting adventure, vivid description, conversation, and all the other devices of the short story may be introduced into narrative articles to increase the interest and strengthen the impression. Whenever, therefore, material can be given a narrative form it is very desirable to do so. A writer, however, must guard against exaggeration and the use of fictitious details.

EXAMPLES OF THE NARRATIVE ARTICLE. How narration with descriptive touches and conversation may be effectively used to explain a new institution like the community kitchen, or the methods of recruiting employed in the army, is shown in the two articles below. The first was taken from the _New York World_, and the second from the _Outlook_.

(1)

NOW THE PUBLIC KITCHEN

BY MARIE COOLIDGE RASK

The Community Kitchen Menu

+--------------------------------------------------+
| Vegetable soup pint, 3¢ |
| Beef stew half pint, 4¢ |
| Baked beans half pint, 3¢ |
| Two frankfurters, one potato and cup full of |
| boiled cabbage all for 7¢ |
| Rice pudding, 3¢. Stewed peaches 3¢ |
| Coffee or cocoa with milk half pint,3¢ |
+--------------------------------------------------+

"My mother wants three cents' worth of vegetable soup."

"And mine wants enough beef stew for three of us."

Two battered tin pails were handed up by small, grimy fingers. Two
eager little faces were upturned toward the top of the bright green
counter which loomed before them. Two pairs of roguish eyes smiled
back at the woman who reached over the counter and took the pails.

"The beef stew will be twelve cents," she said. "It is four cents
for each half pint, you know."

"I know," answered the youth. "My mother says when she has to buy
the meat and all and cook it and put a quarter in the gas meter,
it's cheaper to get it here. My father got his breakfast here, too,
and it only cost him five cents."

"And was he pleased?" asked the woman, carefully lowering the filled
pail to the outstretched little hand.

"You bet," chuckled the lad, as he turned and followed the little
procession down the length of the room and out through the door on
the opposite side.

The woman was Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, jr.

The boy was the son of a 'longshoreman living on "Death Avenue," in
close proximity to the newly established People's Kitchen, situated
on the southeast corner of Tenth Avenue and West Twenty-seventh
Street, New York.

So it is here at last--the much talked of, long hoped for, community
kitchen.

Within three days after its doors had been opened to the public more
than 1,100 persons had availed themselves of its benefits. Within
three years, it is promised, the community kitchen will have become
national in character. Its possibilities for development are
limitless.

Way was blazed for the pioneer kitchen by Edward F. Brown, executive
secretary of the New York school lunch committee.

The active power behind the cauldrons of soup, cabbage and
frankfurters, beans and rice pudding is vested in Mrs. James A.
Burden, jr., and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, jr.

The evolution of the community kitchen is going to be of interest to
every housewife and to every wage earner in all classes of society.

First of all, let it be distinctly understood that the kitchen as
inaugurated is not a charity. It is social and philanthropic in
character, and it will ultimately reduce the cost of living by
almost 50 per cent. This much has been demonstrated already to the
extent that the Tenth Avenue kitchen has not only paid expenses, but
has so overrun its confines that plans are in preparation for the
establishment of other and larger kitchens in rapid succession.

The object is to give to the purchaser the maximum quantity of
highest grade food, properly cooked, at minimum cost. This cost
includes rent, light, heat, power, interest on investment,
depreciation, cost of food materials, labor and supervision. The
principle is that of barter and sale on an equitable business basis.

The project as now formulated is to establish for immediate use a
small group of public kitchens having one central depot. This depot
will be in constant operation throughout the twenty-four hours. Here
the food will be prepared and distributed to the smaller kitchens
where, by means of steam tables, it can be kept hot and dispensed.
The character of the food to be supplied each district will be
chosen with regard to what the population is accustomed to, that
which is simple and wholesome, which contains bulk, can be prepared
at minimum cost, can be conveniently dispensed and easily carried
away.

Opposite a large school building, in a small room that had been at
one time a saloon, the kitchen of the century was fitted up and
formally opened to the public.

Three long green tables with green painted benches beside them
encircle the room on two sides. Their use was manifest the second
day after the kitchen was opened.

At 4 o'clock in the morning, from various tenement homes near by,
sturdy 'longshoremen and laborers might have been seen plodding
silently from their respective homes, careful not to disturb their
wives and families, and heading straight for the new kitchen on the
corner. From trains running along "Death Avenue" came blackened
trainmen after their night's work. They, too, stopped at the corner
kitchen. By the time the attendant arrived to unlock the doors forty
men were in line waiting for breakfast.

Ten minutes later the three tables were fully occupied.

"Bread, cereal and coffee for five cents!" exclaimed one of the men,
pushing the empty tray from him, after draining the last drop of
coffee in his mug. "This kitchen's all right."

Noon came. The children from the school building trooped in.

"My mamma works in a factory," said one. "I used to get some cakes
at a bakery at noontime. Gee! There's raisins in this rice puddin',
ain't there?" He carried the saucerful of pudding over to the table.
"Only three cents," he whispered to the little girl beside him. "You
better get some, too. That'll leave you two cents for a cup of
cocoa."

"Ain't it a cinch!" exclaimed the little girl.

Behind the counter the women who had made these things possible
smiled happily and dished out pudding, beans and soup with generous
impartiality. The daughter of Mrs. Vanderbilt appeared.

"I'm hungry, mother," she cried. "I'll pay for my lunch."

"You'll have to serve yourself," was the rejoinder of the busy woman
with the tin pail in her hand. "There's a tray at the end of the
counter--but don't get in the way."

So rich and poor lunched together.

"Oh, but I'm tired!" exclaimed a woman, who, satchel in hand,
entered, late in the afternoon, "It's hard to go home and cook
after canvassing all day. Will you mind if I eat supper here?"

Then the women and children poured in with pails and dishes and
pans.

"We're getting used to it now," said one. "It's just like a store,
you know, and it saves us a lot of work--"

"And expense! My land!" cried another. "Why, my man has only been
working half time, and the pennies count when you've got children to
feed and clothe. When I go to work by the day it's little that's
cooked at home. Now--" She presented a dish as the line moved along.
"Beef stew for four," she ordered, "and coffee in this pitcher,
here."

(2)

GATHERING IN THE RAW RECRUIT

BY KINGSLEY MOSES

MEN WANTED FOR THE UNITED STATES ARMY

A tall, gaunt farmer boy with a very dirty face and huge gnarled
hands stood open-mouthed before the brilliant poster displayed
before the small-town recruiting office. In his rather dull mind he
pictured himself as he would look, straight and dignified, in the
khaki uniform, perhaps even with the three stripes of the sergeant
on his arm.

"Fifteen dollars a month," he thought to himself, "and board and
clothes and lodgings and doctor's bills. Why, that's more than I'm
gettin' now on the farm! I'd see the world; I might even get to
learn a regular trade." He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Well, I
ain't gettin' nowhere now, that's sure," he concluded, and slowly
climbed the stairs.

This boy had not come to his decision in a moment. His untrained but
thoroughly honest mind worked slowly. He had been pondering the
opportunities of army life for many weeks. The idea had come to him
by chance, he thought.

Over a month ago he had been plowing the lower forty of Old Man
Huggins's farm. The road to the mountains lay along one side of the
field, and as the boy turned and started to plow his furrow toward
the road he noticed that a motor cycle had stopped just beyond the
fence. "Broke down," the boy commented to himself, as he saw the
tan-clad rider dismounting. Over the mule's huge back he watched as
he drew nearer. "Why, the rider was in uniform; he must be a
soldier!"

Sure enough, when the fence was reached the boy saw that the
stranger was dressed in the regulation khaki of Uncle Sam, with the
U.S. in block letters at the vent of the collar and two stripes on
the left sleeve.

"Broke down?" the boy queried, dropping his plow-handles.

The corporal grunted and continued to potter with the machine.

"You in the army?" the boy continued, leaning on the fence.

"You bet!" assented the soldier. Then, looking up and taking in the
big, raw-boned physique of the youngster, "Ever think of joinin'?"

"Can't say's I did."

"Got any friends in the army?"

"Nope."

"Fine life." The motor cycle was attracting little of the recruiting
officer's attention now, for he was a recruiting officer, and
engaged in one of the most practical phases of his work.

"Them soldiers have a pretty easy life, don't they?" Evidently the
boy was becoming interested.

The recruiting officer laid down his tools, pulled out a pipe, and
sat down comfortably under a small sycamore tree at the roadside.

"Not so very easy," he replied, "but interesting and exciting." He
paused for a minute to scrutinize the prospective recruit more
closely. To his experienced eye the boy appeared desirable. Slouchy,
dirty, and lazy-looking, perhaps; but there were nevertheless good
muscles and a strong body under those ragged overalls. The corporal
launched into his story.

For twenty minutes the boy listened open-mouthed to the stories of
post life, where baseball, football, and boxing divided the time
with drilling; of mess-halls where a fellow could eat all he wanted
to, free; of good-fellowship and fraternal pride in the
organization; of the pleasant evenings in the amusement rooms in
quarters. And then of the life of the big world, of which the boy
had only dreamed; of the Western plains, of Texas, the snowy ridges
of the great Rockies, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, the
Philippines, Hawaii, the strange glamour of the tropics, the great
wildernesses of the frozen North.

"It seems 'most like as I'd like to join," was the timid venture.

"What's your name?"

"Steve Bishop."

"All right, Steve, come in and see me the next time you're in town,"
said the corporal, rising. "We'll talk it over."

And, mounting his motor cycle, he was gone down the road in a whirl
of red dust. Nor did the farmer boy think to wonder at the sudden
recovery of the apparently stalled machine.

"Missionary work," explains the corporal. "We never beg 'em to join;
but we do sort of give 'em the idea. Like joinin' the Masons, you
know," he winked, giving me the grip.

So it happened that Steve Bishop mounted the stairs that day,
resolved to join the army if they would take him.

In the small, bare, but immaculately clean room at the head of the
stairs he found his friend the corporal banging away at a
typewriter. "How are you, Steve? Glad to see you," was the welcome.
"Sit down a minute, and we'll talk."

The soldier finished his page, lit his pipe again, and leisurely
swung round in his chair.

"Think you'll like to soldier with us?" he said.

Unconsciously the boy appreciated the compliment; it was flattering
to be considered on a basis of equality with this clean-cut, rugged
man of the wide world.

"I reckon so," he replied, almost timidly.

"Well, how old are you, Steve?"