slightly his junior, but he concealed his aversion and stated the case.

"I've made good here, have n't I? I'm the paying teller? I'm swinging the job just as well as anybody ever did? Well, then, is n't it getting about time I drew the payer's salary? Seems to me the regular January boost would be about the right time to make it eighteen hundred. It'll begin to look queer if you hold me off very much longer."

The assistant cashier had been fully prepared for this request for over a year, and had been surprised that it was so long in coming, yet in a half-amused way very disconcerting to Dale he expressed extreme surprise at its "suddenness." He gently, even diffidently, suggested that such a "demand" might create a bad impression on the carpet, that it was better to "take things as they came," yet when Dale held to his former opinion, he agreed to speak with Mr. Van Brunt, the vicepresident, about it.

When Dale had spoken to the assistant cashier three times about the matter, and the assistant cashier had "forgotten" three times, and promised three times to speak to Mr. Van Brunt, and the January pay-checks were out with no increase for the paying teller, Dale decided to speak to the vice-president himself.

Mr. Van Brunt was suave. It seemed that he could do nothing himself, but he agreed to take the matter up with the board of directors at the next regular meeting. Dale found himself dismissed.

When the directors finally met and consumed high-priced cigars behind closed doors, and separated with great joviality, since the semiannual dividend had gone up another half-point, and Dale had nerved himself to speak to the vice-president, who made no move to speak to him, he was not altogether unprepared for the news that the vice-president had forgotten to mention the matter.

Having once been a capitalist himself, Dale began to see through the situation in all its length and breadth and fullness. For nearly two hours that evening he lounged in his empty cage and smoked and meditated and smiled.

"The next time it will be June and a slack time," he decided, "and then I'll get my answer." As though to confirm him, the assistant cashier paused to say:

"By the way, Dale, we 're going to break in a money-counter to help out your assistant-begins the first."

"Sure," said Dale, and he added to himself, "An 'assistant' that I did n't need, and now a 'money-counter' that he does n't need to be his 'assistant' after I am out. They must feel pretty sure that somebody 'll be wanting to quit just about three months from now. I wonder why." It gave him a sort of satisfaction to foresee the clumsy moves by which these rich men planned to keep possession of his extra dollar a day. It almost amused him. "I'll wait," he told himself. "Oh, I'll wait!"

"OH, yes-Dale," said Mr. Van Brunt, absently, when approached three months later. "Yes, I spoke to the directors about your case. They were opposed to giving you any increase whatever. The fact is, you are n't worth a dollar more to us than the fifteen hundred you are now getting. We could get a dozen men at that price who would do just as well. or better. No, sir, I don't see how we could possibly give you any increase of salary at all now. Was there anything else?"

The value of a paying teller consists largely in his knowledge of the signatures and faces and standing of his own bank's patrons, and the bank can no more purchase that knowledge in the open market than the payer can realize upon it in the service of another bank. The assistant payer is an effectual check upon hold-ups of the pay-roll by the payer. There is no check upon a hold-up of the payer by the bank. Both men understood this perfectly.

"I'm certainly much obliged to you, Mr. Van Brunt. I'm sorry to have put you to so much trouble. I thank you." It was said with such seeming frankness and courtesy that the sarcasm was lost upon the vice-president. He was even turned aside from the rage into which most men find it necessary to lash themselves when they do another an injury, though the other be only a clerk.

"You 're welcome," said Mr. Van Brunt, groping vainly about in his memory for some favor for which he should be thanked.

Dale had foreseen this rebuff; he had

and that his As the blow

thought that he expected it mind was prepared for it. fell, he realized that he had never for a moment given up hope. It was not primarily the money; it was his whole future. His first impulse had been that of the blinded boxer who clinches to save himself from going down-he had clung to his job. The ostentatiously elaborate preparations for his resignation at this time had warned him more than anything else against the folly of yielding to the natural impulse to resign. As the sickening shock of disappointment passed, or, rather, ceased to stun, Dale began to take stock of his situation. He realized clearly that he was never to rise higher in this bank or to receive a higher rate of pay. Neither could he hope to change to another bank except at a sacrifice. It was quite probable that he would gain nothing in the end if he should change, for he would still stand only on his merits, a man without a pull. To leave banking would be to leave the only business that he knew, a thing peculiarly unthinkable to a bank teller who knows little of the business world outside of bank walls. From Dale's point of view there was nothing to be done but to fight it out to some sort of a finish right there in his own little cage, be the odds what they might.

Two possible courses at once suggested themselves. The first, naturally, was to steal. Dale, like all bank clerks, knew that a comfortable percentage of defaulters are never traced, enjoying their stealings undisturbed. He knew, too, that those who took large sums, who "lost" the money in "speculation" in such a way that it might be recovered again at some future time, and who then stood trial, were likely to be given comparatively short sentences, and leave behind them devoted friends who would work, often successfully, for their pardon. A defalcation of this sort was satisfying to contemplate, both for what it would mean financially and as a revenge. The "innocent depositor" would not be touched. In a large bank like this only the dividends would suffer. Behind the dividends were the same stockholders and directors who had instituted the squeeze, and who profited by it.

The obstacle to this plan was Dale's mother. She had seen no harm in oppressing the poor or in gambling in cotton

or wheat, because these practices carried with them no social stigma. She had been upborne through her husband's suicide. and their loss of fortune by her proud consciousness that no moral fault could possibly be laid at their door. Dale knew that if her son were published abroad as a criminal, the disgrace would almost, if not quite, kill her. It was the name "thief," not the thing itself, which she abhorred. He could not but despise her for it, and yet he loved her enough to act upon her prejudices rather than on his own inclination. He reluctantly abandoned the idea.

The only alternative was to cut expenses to the bone, and save. The very idea of it hurt. It was going back two generations behind even old Grandfather Dale, and it would be inhumanly hard and slow. Of the fifteen hundred dollars, five hundred must still be sent to help support his mother, five hundred would be required to maintain his own existence, and five hundred might be saved if no emergency arose. When he was forty he would be worth five thousand dollars, when he was fifty he might be worth ten thousand. It was feasible, provided a man did not marry.

It suddenly dawned upon Dale that many of these sixty-odd clerks, with their pitiful "salaries," were married. For the first time he dimly realized the total of privation and misery which the squeeze entailed. As paying teller he saw the payroll twice every month, and hastily allowing a twenty-dollar-a-month "saving" per man, he was again surprised when his calculation showed him that the whole heartless exploitation of its servants, from payer's-cage to messenger-table, netted the bank less than one per cent. on its capitalization, an amount less even than the salary of the president, a negligible fraction of the eight per cent. dividends.

"WHAT luck?" The assistant cashier paused, hands in pockets, outside the payer's-cage.

"No luck," Dale informed him, shortly, entirely aware that he already knew.

"Too bad. I was afraid that you were making a mistake, though, all the time. Oh, well, cheer up, old man! Be a sport! You may bag an assistant cashiership some of these days!"

"Oh, yes, I may," said Dale, with a wealth of sarcasm lost upon the blithe assistant cashier. "I may be the president yet."

The president? It reminded him of the tradition of a Boston paying teller who had gotten away with half a million, had purchased immunity and silence by the return of half his stealings, and had then gone into business with an unblemished reputation and a quarter of a million dollars, ultimately to become president of the very bank he had robbed. The tradition among bankers has it that neither public nor press ever learned the facts, and that the man died finally full of honors and greatly respected. As he thought of it, Dale fairly ached to do to the Stockholders & Directors National what that payer had done to his bank. There is no system of accounting invented by man, no system of auditing, that cannot be tampered with. Dale had long known of at least two reasonably safe and sure ways in which he might rob the Directors National.

It was unfortunate for Dale that he had been reminded of that Boston payer. The readjustments by which he hoped to cut his expenses in half were more painful even than he had expected. The cheap neighborhood within walking distance of the Loop to which he now moved was at its worst in the heat of early summer, and offended him at night with noise and smells and grime and the stored-up heat of the long day. The food repelled him. He allowed himself nothing for amusements, and begrudged himself the cheap and unattractive cigar which was his single luxury. Day and night the situation fretted and wore upon him, and was the worse because there was always before him a fighting chance of escape, of revenge, even of wealth, with no harm to his mother involved.

After a suitable interval, the "moneycounter" was transferred to the receiver'scage. Dale was plainly considered beaten. The assistant paying teller went for his two-weeks' vacation, and the conditions were ideal for a coup. At this point the condition of Dale's nerves came to the surface in a miscount of cash resulting in a one-hundred-dollar shortage. Dale spent an entire night hunting without success for the error, and it was decided to

He

deduct the amount from his August check. Thus his savings for the entire summer were wiped out in a single moment. was counting the cash at the close of business the next day, numb with despair of ever being able to save his way out of this trap, when the assistant cashier paused at his cage door and shook it gently.

"Open up! I want to talk to you."

"Say it where you are," said Dale, a queer trembling getting into his fingers, and a dryness into his throat.

"Open up!" purred purred the assistant cashier, shaking the door. Dale went on trembling, and counting the money, and swallowing and gasping unevenly for breath, and said nothing. He felt that something strange was about to happen, but he had no idea what. The assistant cashier's key slipped into the lock, it clicked, and Dale heard the grating slide back. He turned to face the intruder with a creepy feeling that the end of all things had come. Then the sleek, mocking face of the assistant cashier leered into his, and seemed to cry out to him to strike it if by any chance he was still a man. A wave of superhuman strength rose up and flooded him in answer to it, and a wild, savage lust of murder, and like a sledgehammer he drove his fists right and left into the unprotected face. The assistant cashier reeled back across the narrow aisle, and doubled across an arithmometer which stood there.

The young woman in black who had been tapping the keys and pulling the lever of the machine drew her chair back as he crashed down upon the keyboard. She was a quiet, dark girl, and as the assistant cashier struggled off from her machine, with his hands to his face, she turned to Dale, standing in his door, and in a clear, quiet voice said:

"What right have you to strike an officer? What right have you to order an officer out of your cage?"

"Because," the girl again interrupted, "he went in yesterday when Mr. Dale was not there, and I saw him take some money, and they say that Mr. Dale had to stay here all last night trying to find out what became of it."

The vice-president glared at her in dense silence. The clerks stared with popping eyes.

"It's a lie," said a thick voice from under the table, and the clerks laughed. Dale backed slowly into his cage, his look lingering on the dark form of the girl, and closed the door. At his cage window was the face of the elderly director. When Dale turned toward him, that gentleman reached a hand through as far as he could under the gate, and exclaimed:

"I'm with you, young man. I saw and heard it all. You shall succeed that young man as surely as I am a director of this bank. I am not a believer in violence, but-there are times-and it was a clever blow you struck him, too."

Dale laughed a little hysterically. He was shaken. He had supposed that his outbreak had ended his days in the bank, perhaps in banking. He knew enough of the business to know that if this man said that he should be an assistant cashier, and sit at a desk on the carpet, and draw twenty-five hundred a year, it would surely come to pass. And the man had said it. He gripped the hand which he held still tighter. He was elated, almost intoxicated, for the moment. He saw himself no longer a mere teller, a clerk, but an officer, the assistant cashier.

In the very moment of his triumph his elation faded. He would be the assistant

cashier, true, but he would have to do the assistant cashier's dirty work. His it would be to encourage with false hopes, trick with false promises, deceive with half-truths and adroit evasions and skilful lies, and in the end disappoint where disappointment would mean bitter hardship, perhaps. He might even come to enjoy the "game," as the old assistant cashier had seemed to enjoy it. Once he could have done it, but not now. He shook his head, and pushed away the hand that he held.

"I don't want it not at any price. Is n't there some honest job I could get outside, though? You ought to know of something." He hung anxiously upon the old man's answer.

"Well, well, I'm surprised! This is -why, yes, I suppose that-I might give you a position as a salesman myself, if you'd care for it. I could give you a hundred a month to start."

"And who is the young woman?" he asked two minutes later, when the details of the sudden change had been arranged.

Dale turned to look. He did not know her name. Somehow he had never before noticed her except as a part of her machine. It occurred to him suddenly that she was good to look at and that he might owe much to her. The capitalist in him was almost dead. It did not occur to him that she was an arithmometer girl; he saw only that she was a fearless, good woman and desirable. She looked up, caught his eyes upon her, and looked down again quickly. Dale saw the slow color begin to come in her face and neck, and he drew a deep breath, and gripped the edge of his desk.

"I don't know who she is," he said slowly, "but I'll find out."

who through our ap

new organization has made an encourag

realize the uplifting influence upon any civilized community emanating from adequate performances of serious opera must regard with gratification the advancement that is being made through well-directed efforts to supply a wide-spread popular need. Art progress, perhaps to a greater extent than obtains in other forms of progress, ensues only as the result of patient, sustained effort for what is fundamentally sound. Here in the United States, where opportunities opportunities for the majority to hear and see creditably performed operas have been limited on account of the heavy expense attached to their presentations, there has come a necessarily slow growth of the people's fullest understanding of the finest compositions of more than a single school and period.

That part of society fortunate in possessing the financial means has been provided with opera-opera that attracted because of the glitter arising through the presence in casts of distinguished singing stars, and because it served a distinctly social purpose; but the masses, where there is always a greater number of persons with an inherent love for music, has hungered for what could be seldom obtained, and usually even then in unsatisfactory form. These hundreds of thousands of souls have been forced through existing conditions to accept such operatic morsels as came their way.

Now, however, a change for the better throughout the entire country is approaching. In New York City it has already arrived. There opera for and by the people, as shown by the accomplishments of the Century Opera Company, now less than a year old, is seemingly assured. Fostered by a group of gentlemen who secured the money primarily essential to shape into actuality the idea to give continuous and long seasons of opera in English at moderate prices, and managed by Messrs. Milton and Sargent Aborn, this

betterment.

Strange though it may seem, for the first time in the history of American operatic development a stable institution has been created to cater specifically to the American public of moderate means and to the American musician of a trifle more than moderate ability. Nevertheless, with only seven months of practical effort behind it in the way of performances, the Century Opera Company has vaulted the initial barrier long raised against a so-called popular grand-opera organization seeking a permanent home.

In the face of predicted early financial failure, this company has moved instantly into a seemingly successful position with a sureness that has amazed experts. To-day it occupies the beautiful structure erected at a cost of $3,800,000 by New York millionaires to house a national dramatic undertaking, the former New Theatre, and has had an advance subscription sale for its introductory season of $200,000. Reinforcing this very satisfying situation is the single-seat patronage, especially for the less-expensive places in the auditorium, where the demands for twenty-five-cent accommodations have caused an official announcement of plans to reconstruct next summer the upper balcony to admit the installation of one thousand more seats.

A few years ago Henry W. Savage made something of a stir with his Englishsung opera presentations,-exclusive of his "Parsifal" and "Madame Butterfly" and "The Girl of the Golden West," splendid efforts,-but his undertakings, with these exceptions, never were blessed with such backing and distinction as is provided for the Century. Mr. Savage was sowing the seed in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and elsewhere throughout the United States that is at present yielding a crop of opera-in-English adherents beneficial to the Century Opera Company. All of which indicates the wisdom of letting the other fellow do the missionary work.