shall not be afraid any more," they said, one-ideaed, like children.

"I shall kill them," said the outcast, and began to carry his frail kayak to the open water.

"Place my skins and my goods here," he said, imperatively, indicating a spot. They stared after him as he went to the water, launched the kayak, entered it, and laced himself in. His paddle rose and fell, and the narrow canoe-like craft darted out across the water.

Now, this was no more than a trial trip for Sitika to discover how his kayak had stood the winter. But, as it chanced, some five hundred yards out floated a small iceberg-the water was dotted with them, but this was the nearest-and suddenly there was a murmur among the watching Eskimos. One of them, keener sighted than the others, pointed to a shape, two shapes, that were moving on this berg.

"The bears!" he said quaking.

Even as he spoke Sitika, out on the water, seemed to observe the huge white brutes, for the kayak stopped suddenly, and lay rising and falling buoyantly like a resting gull. Sitika was thinking it over. One bear is more than the average Eskimo is eager to attack, even in these days, when many of them possess rifles of a kind. And in Sitika's time the killing of a bear was a matter which taxed the resources of the whole tribe.

Here there were two-and two of the hugest.

At last the kayak shot forward again, and the watchers muttered gutturally in their excitement. Sitika, half believing that he was paddling to his doom, had decided to attack the bears. It had occurred to him that if he were killed his spirit would meet those of the ankoot and his kinsman, and he had no doubt that, on level terms, he could deal with the spirits as he had dealt with the living.

The kayak flashed right under the terraces and miniature pinnacles of the little berg, and the watchers saw the swift movement of Sitika's arm as he launched his first spear at no more than three spears' range. But the bear at which it was aimed twisted his snaky head as the spear flew, and it pricked him in the neck some six inches behind the eye.

The angry coughing roar of the big bear

rolled across the water to the fascinated group that stared from the shore.

Then the kayak had darted back clear of the berg as both bears took to the water silently as otters; they headed swiftly for the dancing kayak. The paddle whirled, dripping, as Sitika maneuvered desperately. The tribesmen could see that he was trying to get the bears far enough apart to give him time to make his thrust at one before the other was upon him. But the white bear of the Arctic is almost as much at home in the water as on the ice or land, and he is enormously swift, despite his heavy build. Twice, it seemed, the kayak swept out under the very paws of one of the bears as the big brute surged up half out of the water to strike.

Minutes passed, and the watchers moved uneasily as they noticed that Sitika seemed to tire. Time and again the kayak escaped swamping by a miracle, wheeling out of danger by no more than the thickness of a man's body. Never once did Sitika have leisure to take a hand from his flying paddle.

Then suddenly, after a wild and perilous evolution, the watchers heard Sitika shout like a mad thing. The bears had fallen farther away from each other. Sitika whirled the kayak facing them, and checked so that the bears and the kayak formed, as it were, a triangle, with Sitika at the apex.

The bears headed savagely at the stationary kayak, converging so that they would meet at the spot where Sitika waited.

They came on, swimming strongly, until no more than three yards separated them -two yards-one-and their bodies rose a little in the water. Two mighty forepaws heaved up, streaming, and the brutes struck at the same instant-an instant too late. Sitika had judged with desperate accuracy, and he literally snatched the kayak out from under the double blow, as a fox may snatch his foot from the snapping jaws o a trap.

And each of the bears took the other's blow in a haze of spray that shut them from sight for a second. A choked roar of agony and surprise came dully out of the smother, and the kayak circled gaily, facing the bears.

Sitika saw that the head of one of them

E are fiddling while Rome burns! Why has the cost of living increased so greatly? Why has the price of bread gone up? Why is it wheat is so scarce, that it is possible for any one to create a corner? Why has the price of beef advanced in the past ten months? We are fiddling while Rome burns; but there is no need to play the alarmist. The laws of nature are fundamental. We cannot break them. Necessity will pull us up sharp and short. Necessity will compel us to look to ourselves if we would avoid the national disaster that has overtaken more powerful nations than we are."

If the speaker were a theorizing socialist holding forth in Cooper Institute, or a long-haired anarchist raving on Union Square, people would pause to listen and laugh, then go home to read flare headings in the newspapers and editorial rhodomontades on the folly of allowing dangerous demagogues to stir up the weak minded to acts of violence.

But the prophet is neither a theorizing socialist of the sort to stir the waters muddy in order to make them look deep, nor a long-haired anarchist with his pockets full of dynamite and his head full

of nonsense about curing all ills by the simple creed of taking away from those who have and giving to those who haven't.

The speaker is a man who has built his own life up from the everlasting rockbottom realities of hard work with both his hands and his head; of stick-to-it-iveness that doesn't know how to quit; of the thrift that turns one dollar into two and two into ten and ten into a thousand, like nature with the grain of wheat; and above all, of a foresight that has become almost a sixth sense of divination! Sum up those qualities-hard work, perseverance, thrift, foresight and you have the secret of the Sphinx, the secret of existence, for that matter, namely-how to succeed, which is the whole trick of keeping yourself in tune with the great underlying laws of life, which you can't break but which will break you if you don't keep them.

The speaker is James J. Hill, the creator and builder and operator of a great railway system, the creator and builder and pretty nearly father of a great western empire. Mr. Hill, himself, you cannot bribe or cajole into talking of his own success. Like all great workers, he is too busy for any posturizing in the limelight; but if you get him talking on national success, you find that the secret for the nation is the same as the secret for the

individual, to quote the words of one of his public addresses-"organization on the basis of old fashioned common sense.

The average man is often more interested in speculative theories than in his plain duty toward himself and his neighbors. The average State is filled with visions of its place in the procession of the years while it overlooks the running account of daily expenses. Problems, we have found and trifled with, in confusing number and variety; but the problem of the future material condition of our country has been a subject for little more than a passing thought. . . . To the nation and race as to the individual, nature -the unrelenting task mistress of the centuries-holds out in one hand her horn of plenty and in the other her scourge. The pathway to prosperity is still open. The divinity of the earthly life at heart is kind. There is work and abundant reward for all; but these must be won in her designated way and no other. Her pointing finger which has never varied since man came upon earth . shows the old and only way to safety and honor. Upon the readiness with which this is understood will depend the individual well-being of millions of generations. Largely by this method will posterity, our fit and righteous judge, determine whether what issues from the twentieth century is a bit of rejected dross to be cast aside, or a drop of golden metal to shine forever upon the rosary of the years."

"WE ARE FIDDLING WHILE ROME BURNS"

I had asked Mr. Hill what he thought of the practical side of Conservation, whether there were need for it nationally, and if so, how all the theory and preachment and talk could be reduced to terms of fact in the practice of every-day life; and his answer was: "We are fiddling while Rome burns! Why is there so much alarm over the scarcity of wheat? Why is there a scarcity of wheat? Consider the answer history gives to the questions confronting our own age. The Valley of the Euphrates was once the garden of the earth. Why did that scepter of greatness pass away? When Greece was master of the known world, why were laws enacted pronouncing sentence of death on any one

shipping grain beyond Crete? Why did Rome build her wonderful roads but to bring food from foreign countries? Why did Spain launch out on a policy of foreign conquest but to bring from abroad the wealth which her own soil could no longer yield? Why did Greece and Rome and Spain fall back from the leadership of the nations, just as soon as produce ceased to pour in from abroad?

DEMAND FOR WHEAT BECOMING GREATER

And

"We are growing more wheat than ever before in the history of this country; but the demand is growing far faster than the supply. European countries, that formerly used scarcely any white bread, now use from a pound to a pound and a half of flour per capita a week; and our own population is growing faster than the food supply. Why is wheat dear? Common sense answers that there isn't enough wheat grown. European buyers must have wheat to fill their contracts; and our shippers suddenly awakened to the fact they hadn't enough wheat for foreign delivery let alone local supply. Then prices began to soar; and the speculators got busy; but the primal cause for the high prices is the simple primal fact-the country is not raising enough wheat. if we are in that condition now, what will conditions be when we have a population of 200,000,000 instead of 80,000,000? Any one can calculate from the figures of the past that at just the normal rate of increase, this country will have that population before the end of the century. If we are short of wheat now, what will we be then? For while our population is increasing, while foreign demand for wheat is increasing, our yield per acre is decreasing, is steadily and surely shrinking. Formerly, our western plains yielded crops of thirty and forty and forty-five bushels to the acre. To-day, our averages are down between eleven and fifteen bushels to the acre. If you take the exact statistics on crop returns for the last twenty years, you will find the shrinkage has been at the rate of about a bushel for every two and a half years-say a bushel smaller average for every three years. If the present rate of shrinkage goes on, where are we at as a nation? In fifteen years at