Puslapio vaizdai
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exquisite that it would drive poets to rhapsodies, But the poets belong to the second class; they are on their uppers.

On a sleeper, if at no other time, I fall in the same category with the poets. I never get to the ticket-office until the day of departure, and the answer is always the same.

"A lower on the midnight to New York," I say, just as if I expected to get it. The clerk consults a chart.

"Nothing but uppers to-night," he says. It is as inevitable as the tides.

But as I climb to my exalted place I have this consolation: I am one of the vagabond class, the army of the care-free. and improvident. Those whose hats nod to the jolting of the train on the hooks. about me are people like myself, who never can keep their accounts up, and never pack their trunks till the last moment, and know what it is to eat a whole restaurant dinner and then find they left their money in their other trousers. Below us the prudent lie behind their petticoat-curtains; we belong to the fellowship of unpreparedness.

The ascent to an upper is an art in itself; and as one would expect of an art, it is long. I do not mean the ascent by step-ladder. There are those who climb mountains by railroad, who let minions put on their bait, who require caddies to tee their golf-balls, who hunt with beaters to drive the game toward them; there are also those who reach their uppers on carpeted steps. Yet the heroic breed, thank Roosevelt, is not extinct. Luxury has not yet completely sapped our national virility. Some of us are made of sterner stuff. We climb unassisted and alone.

The porter leads us down the green alley to our place. We open our bag, and select those articles which we shall need on our adventure. These we throw into the berth. The porter pushes our bag far into the twilight recesses behind the spittoon and the suitcase of the gentleman in the lower and the golf-bag of the gentleman in the next berth. We are ready for the adventure.

What follows happens very quietly.

There are no heroics. No rope is used in the ascent; no guides help us over the difficult places. There is even nothing distinctive about our attire to catch the casual eye: we wear a simple gray climbing-suit, stout, black climbing-shoes, an unostentatious climbing-collar, and a useful climbing-necktie. Quietly we bid good-by to our trusty guide.

"Nonsense, man," we say heartily, "there will be no accident. Still, if anything should go wrong, perhaps it would be easier for you to bear if you had something to remember us by." Tenderly we take off our shoes and hand them to him. His eyes fill with tears. "Keep these until we return. Carry them off with you to your little room; and if in the long night watches you should ever think of us, take out your little brush and black them. Farewell."

We are off. Quickly we assume position A, with both hands grasping the horizontal bar and with our right foot firmly planted on the chest of the old gentleman in the lower. We push off vigorously. If the old gentleman's chest be of a proper firmness and resiliency, this push brings us to position B, with the left knee in the sharp knee-hold on the edge of the upper berth and the right leg at large. The right leg is then brought convulsively upward and forward and laid carefully in the upper berth, and the left leg is at liberty to follow it. From this point on all is plain squirming.

Perfect technic under proper climatic conditions will now have brought us to position C, that is, balancing on the ninth vertebra, with the feet waving gently above us. We have arrived. We are at liberty to enjoy the unrivaled scenic effects which our fatiguing journey has enabled us to secure. And then-we discover that we have left behind an important half of our pajamas.

Let us pass hurriedly over the humiliation of our descent and reascent. Let us modestly draw the curtains-and button them-over the busy scene which follows. Let us suppose the battle ended; the victor prone upon his berth, panting with

triumph; the defeated underwear hanging limply in their little hammock. Now begins the true joy of the Pullman life.

Sleep? Bless you, no, I don't mean that. Sleep is too prosaic. Why, at home you can sleep any night in a civilized bed; anybody who would want to sleep on a sleeper would be a stupid. I mean lying with the light shining in your eyes and feeling yourself quiver like a chocolate. blanc-mange with the vibration of the car. I mean listening to the person in the next upper, who made the ascent in his evening clothes, gasp with the exertion of trying to throw the claw-hammer without stepping out of the circle. I mean poking your head out through the curtain like an African dodger and watching the porter make up a berth, which reminds you of that little game where you say, “Think of a number, and add so-and-so to it, and subtract so-and-so, and add so-and-so, and subtract the number you first thought of, and that leaves 5" (Cheers, and cries of, "I don't see how he does it. Do you, Mr. Nesbit?"). The porter starts with all the blankets and things in one berth, and transfers virtually all of them to the other, and then transfers virtually all of them back again, and so on indefinitely; and the answer is two beds. I mean tasting the excitement of the trainmen's car-shunting gymkhana, which takes place at every station along the journey, and the object of which is to see which can be more successful in waking the porter whom the lady in Upper 12 has been ringing for steadily during fifteen minutes: Team A, which draws off its locomotive to a distance and then charges your car, relying for its success on one prodigious bump; or Team B, which attaches its locomotive to your car

stealthily, and then yanks repeatedly and unexpectedly. At the end of fifteen minutes the contest is usually declared a draw, and passengers are permitted to doze while the train proceeds to the next shunting-ground.

Later, when morning comes, you will take scientific interest in the revelations of the wash-room, in arrangements and abbreviations of attire which, like the bromide's sunsets, you would n't believe if you saw them in a picture. You will find a brisk excitement in washing your face with cold water from the hot-water faucet between two shavers who are virtually certain to commit either suicide or manslaughter when the car hits the next curve. You will be moved to pity and terror by the sight of the banker in Lower 4 trying. to heave himself into his trousers without divesting himself of his protecting curtains or entirely losing sight of the berth he started in. Globe-trotters tell me that the struggles of a semi-submerged whale under the harpoon are, if anything, more stupendous; but, then, these globe-trotters are notoriously big talkers; you have to take them with a grain of salt.

The train arrives. Dirty, mussy, sleepy, covered with a fine cinder-dust that the porter has brushed to and fro, but not removed, you go to your club. What a soul-satisfying shave! Hot-water faucets that give hot water; real soap, instead of the kind that squirts; a porcelain basin. that you 're not in danger of falling into bodily. Your bath is entrancing; each clean garment you put on with a separate delight. And as you go to breakfast you offer a little prayer of thanks to the good Mr. Pullman, who put back the savor in the salt of civilization.

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THE LITTLE BAT-LIKE BEAST: "I hear there is to be a grand procession

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THE STEGOSAURUS, to his friends, who have been complimenting him on his striking appearance: "Despite all you say, I am not to be envied. Alas! I find it almost impossible to lead that life of obscurity and peaceful retirement which I have always ardently desired."

TH

The Foreign Loans

By H. V. CANN

HERE might have been no war if European governments and diplomats could have foreseen how great and permanent would be the material gains in America from the waste in Europe.

The new conditions have transferred across the Atlantic an enormous amount of wealth, and rapidly created in the United States enough surplus capital to place its bankers in the forefront of the world's international money-lenders.

Since the autumn of 1914 loans aggregating nearly seventeen hundred million dollars have been negotiated here by European governments, syndicates of bankers, Latin-American countries, the Dominion of Canada, and a number of its provinces and municipalities. These loans were made in various forms; on secured and unsecured bonds, special credits, and short-term notes. A few were current less than one year, but the usual terms were from one to five years, excepting several issues of municipal bonds.

The largest debtor is the United Kingdom, with France a close second, followed, in the order of indebtedness, by Canada, Russia, Argentina, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Yucatan, Norway, Greece, Chile, Sweden, Panama, Bolivia, and Uruguay.

A broad public market for foreign securities has not yet developed here, but a certain volume of trading is carried on, and prices of the leading issues are published daily. It is probable that in time. the flotation of foreign loans will become a matter of course, and then underwriters will reach a larger market among private investors. Great blocks of Anglo-French bonds were taken by two industrial corporations engaged in the manufacture of war-supplies. One of these companies originated an able policy by distributing the bonds to shareholders in lieu of cash dividends.

Probably not more than two thirds of
the whole seventeen hundred millions was
outstanding at any one time, as a number
of the shorter loans have already been
liquidated. Ninety per cent. of the
amount current will mature and likely re-
quire long-term refunding within the next
five years.

In nearly every case where loans were
granted to neutral borrowers they had
turned to this market for the reason that
old connections in Europe were no longer
in a position to supply the need. The
time was most opportune for America;
with its new banking system, greatly in-
creased fluid capital, and expanding in-
dustries, at least temporary leadership in
exports and foreign loans was easily as-
sumed. These terms are almost synony-
mous, for it is the common experience of
all creditor nations that borrowers coming
from other countries want goods, not
money. If the goods are not produced in
the country to which the borrower applies,
but must be purchased in a third country,
the problem is the same, with an additional
angle. The source of foreign loans is al-
ways traceable to exports of goods, no
matter how indirect and unrelated trans-
actions may appear. This elementary fact
is very clearly illustrated by statistics of
American banking and exports for the last
two years. A glance at these will show a
great foreign loan account built up with-
out sending money abroad. Late in 1914,
before any of the seventeen hundred mil-
lions had been loaned, the gold holdings
in the United States amounted to $1,835,-
000,000. Now, after making the loans,
besides paying several billions for things.
imported and buying back American se-
curities, the gold stock stands at $2,548,-
000,000, or an increase of more than seven
hundred million dollars. Had the loans
been made in money, virtually no gold
would be left in the country. On the

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the assurance with a smile. What! Louis! so simple, kindly, natural; so all-round a good fellow; so like all the rest of us, only nicer!

And I am quite sure that in his inmost heart at this period he could never really have looked forward to or expected the fame which later came to him, and which grows and expands as time gives us the perspective wherewith to view it in all its roundness and bigness and essential simplicity. In fact, in introducing himself to me, he remarked simply that he was "a writer-chap," or hoped to be one.

I was told of another rainy afternoon "blague party," at which I did not chance to be present, during which Bob Stevenson amused himself by forecasting the future careers of those present. When he came to his cousin he remarked with a satirical little smile: "There sits Louis, as smug and complacent as any old type de bourgeois. I have not the least doubt that he fondly imagines that one of these days. they will be publishing all of his dinky, private correspondence-'the letters of R. L. S.'-in boards." And Louis joined as heartily as any one in the laugh which the sally raised. Bob, at least, did live to see the publication of the "Vailima Letters," and I have often wondered if he remembered this little incident as he thumbed their leaves.

But I would not give the impression. that the artist colony of Grez during that memorable summer was wholly masculine in its make-up, for this was far indeed from being the case, and most of the unforgetable dramatic quality of the place. and the time would have been lacking but for the presence of a very fair proportion of the female element. There was a certain return to primitive standards in the relation between the sexes, but primitive standards, nevertheless, in which honor and a regard for the square deal held a high place. In matters of morals Stevenson himself was the least censorious of judges, providing there was no infringement of the law of nature or the law of friendship; though perhaps it would be truer to say that he entered no judgment

either for or against the accused, pre-
ferring to leave the decision in such mat-
ters to the Maker of all laws.

But if he heard of anything mean or
underhand, any tricky blow beneath the
belt, he was a very firebrand, flaming with
a fury which nothing could quell. I re-
member one case in which he forced two
very unwilling opponents to accept a duel
as the only possible solution of an en-
tanglement involving an unmanly act on
the part of one of the pair. Fortunately
the duel was never fought, the chief of-
fender considering discretion the better
part of valor and deciding that the woods
about Barbison at that particular season of
the year offered better material for the
painter than the river at Grez.

I would not, however, by any means
have it understood that there was in the
colony no sense of decency or morality in
the ordinary acceptance of those terms, for
that would be a misstatement as manifestly
unfair and untrue as to claim a standard
of rigid puritanism for the whole region.
If there was a fair sprinkling of the gri-
sette and the model element, which had
followed the painters down from Paris,
there were also a certain number of very
serious women-painters who were study-
ing hard, and some of whom were destined
to make an enviable place for themselves
later on.
Among these I may mention
Mlles. Loestadt and Lilienthal, Swedish
painters of genuine talent, and more par-
ticularly the lady "Trusty, dusky, vivid,
and true" to whom Robert Louis Steven-
son inscribed the most beautiful love-song
of our time, and who later on was destined
to become his wife. Mrs. Osbourne could
not at the time have been more than
thirty-five years of age, a grave and re-
markable type of womanhood, with eyes.
of a depth and a somber beauty which I
have never seen equaled-eyes, neverthe-
less, that upon occasion could sparkle with
humor and brim over with laughter. Yet
upon the whole Mrs. Osbourne impressed
me as first of all a woman of profound
character and serious judgment,
who
could, if occasion called, have been the
leader in some great movement. But she

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