exquisite that it would drive poets to rhapsodies, But the poets belong to the second class; they are on their uppers. I On a sleeper, if at no other time, I fall in the same category with the poets. 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 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. tion 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. Quickly we assume posi 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. THE LITTLE BAT-LIKE BEAST: "I hear there is to be a grand procession to-morrow. Are you going?" DIPLODOCUS: "Am I going? Why, I am the procession." THE STEGOSAURUS, to his friends, who have been complimenting 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 In nearly every case where loans were other hand, had gold been brought in for the value of all goods exported since the war began, no coin or bars would be left in the outside world. Any great excess balance of exports over imports must take the form of foreign loans, as the surplus capital of a creditor nation invested abroad on interest. England has enjoyed a great income of this kind for two generations, but it is a new item in the American balance-sheet, grown rapidly under conditions which made the accumulations of two years greater than might have been expected in one or two decades of normal growth. The tangible evidences of this prosperity and the power they represent in international financial affairs will increase or decrease in close ratio to the rise or fall of foreign trade. The varieties and distribution of exported goods are broadening every day, but the Allies are still the principal buyers. Last year they bought a large percentage of the total exports in the form of a comparatively few articles, a narrow and abnormal demand that will cease when the war is over. Manufacturers and exporters will strive to replace that loss of business by trade in other goods. Individual mercantile or banking enterprises are more substantial and permanent if dealing with many customers of moderate size rather than with a few of large size; so it is with a nation's export trade. A few years ago it was estimated that England's exports were well distributed among fifty countries, only one of which, India, received over ten per cent. of the whole. internationally, the capital may do much to mend the war-crippled finances of other countries. The United States has greatly enlarged its industrial equipment and shipping facilities; its workmen were never so prosperous and independent. This very condition, however, may fail to produce the kind of effort that will be put forth by the workmen of Europe striving under the spur of poverty. On the other hand, none of the war-worn countries can mobilize such an industrial army as there is in America, where nearly eleven million people are engaged in mechanical and industrial occupations, creating labor values. estimated at ten billion dollars per annum. England began to win her position as a creditor nation on a great scale in the decades of hard work and retrenchment which were forced upon her by the Napoleonic Wars. All Europe may be moved to similar efforts by the sharper trials and discipline endured in this war. Nevertheless, the United States has advantages which cannot be gainsaid, being virtually free from debt, with great natural resources in mines and soil, possessing the control of raw cotton and the world's largest stores of fixed and fluid wealth and twice as much gold as any other country. Depleted gold holdings in Europe must be applied as reserves against enormous issues of paper currency, while excess stocks of the metal here may be used to upbuild the system of production for the domestic and foreign markets. The strong financial position of this country has attracted deposits from foreigners to American banks-deposits which will probably grow larger when the great losses and inflation in Europe are more generally realized. A year or so ago some enthusiasts were predicting that New York would become the new moneycenter of the world. Leaders of opinion deprecated such ideas, but, as things keep going in the world, if Americans themselves could agree that New York should be a dominant money-center, those predictions might not be far from the truth. THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK |