person has a special gift and taste in that direction it should become a part of the sales department as well as the home supply. It is a miserable apology for a home that leaves out the æsthetic. My opinion is there is more money in the beautiful than there is in the useful; there certainly is quite as much soul and character. I take it that your main object in getting into the country is to be yourself and to grow yourself. The trouble with the city is that it suppresses individuality. So it comes about that in the country we cannot have a real home if we meddle with Nature's plan of scattering flower seeds as freely as fruit seeds. No man can live by bread alone, and no family can live on that which goes in at the mouth. In fact, I would lay out this country place of mine, or yours, at the very outset, with an intent to make it beautiful-beautiful in every part of it. I would have it attractive and bewitching. The rear of the acres should be as cleanly and comforting as the street front. It is with the outdoor life as it is with the indoor, a slovenly kitchen or slovenly corner is as disgusting as a slovenly front yard or slovenly parlor. I should like to impress this in your consciousness very strongly. Then you may as well be reminded that, in case you ever wanted to sell, the beautiful is very marketable.

I do not mean to mislead you for one moment, or turn aside from the primal fact that it is a home that we are creating. I believe that the street front is as much a part of home as the lawn, and I am quite sure that a beautiful shrubbery lawn pays in the long run quite as well as a berry garden; and I am confident that a berry garden should be as tidy and beautiful as a front yard; and then, when you get all through, you will be ten times the man or woman for having kept your thumb on things. You need not fret, but act.

All this while you cannot forget for one moment that the world is moving, and that nowhere is there more progress than in horticulture. Our Agricultural Colleges are already at the front, more important and more influential than the classical colleges, and every state has its Experiment Station for finding out the best ways. You also must know the best ways. It will not pay to be behind the times, producing half a crop where a whole one is needed.

That is just the trouble now with our country homes; they are not up to date, and if you are coming out of the city to add one more to the inadequate affairs, don't do it. You had better stay in the city, and let other people compel you with municipal statutes-dictating every step that you take. If you go to the country put yourself en rapport with the Experiment Stations at once, and get their bulletins. Then begin a series of experiments, and all the time, instead of walking directly in the routine lines, see what new thing you can discover or invent. We are going to Burbank the world after awhile, and every country homestead must be experimental in its nature. Plant seeds of trees and shrubs. After awhile you will learn how to cross-breed scientifically. There is nothing easier than to start new varieties of grapes and berries and currants. You will have to throw away ninety-nine hundredths, but if you get one grand good thing out of a hundred it will pay you well.

In this way you make your home intensely interesting to the young folk as well as to yourself. Work becomes gilt edged in another way than in winning cash returns. You will find your boys captivated with the novelties, and the girls will grow ruddy and stout muscled, as well as keen witted, by having their problems in the soil. I have not found it difficult to originate more choice berries, beans and flowers than I can take care of. This kind of business is going to become almost universal, and a homestead in the country that does not create something new as well as grow old things after the best manner, will be the exception. No one can coax your young folk away from you into village and city life if you take my advice. The garden is the grandest schoolhouse ever invented.

Go farther; make your country home broad and rich in other ways. Build a shop, and over it a laboratory. I have said something about the machinery and shop before, but the laboratory should be a room for the study of insects, soils, birds, plants; in other words for botany, entomology, geology, ornithology. Do not forget that all these subjects belong right here on your five acres. You cannot understand your home and your work without these sciences.

EDDINGTON was a misfit in business, and a genius in his home life; but like most prophets he found little honor in his own country, although Mrs. Reddington

was naturally of an appreciative temperament, and in the early days of their rosy courtship she had properly enthused over the creations of his mind. If in the interim she had wavered in her faith, it was not so much to her discredit as to the unfortunate train of circumstances which conspired to shatter the first fine illusions of their marital felicity. What woman can live with a man for twenty years and not learn to her cost that he is fallible like the rest of mankind cast in the same old mold?

From which it must not be inferred that the family jars were of an unusual nature, or that Mrs. Reddington was obsessed by the idea that she was matrimonially yoked to a mate greatly inferior to the rest of his kind. In point of fact, she considered herself rather fortunate on the whole, and barring a few exceptions she was not willing to admit that she had made a mistake in her choice of a side partner. Habit had run their lives in grooves so that friction was reduced to a minimum-and they were not by any means unhappy together.

Therefore, when Reddington announced that he had decided to spend his summer on a houseboat of his own creation, it excited less perturbation in his wife's mind than the occasion might seem to warrant. Their summer vacations in the past had marked a point of difference in their temperaments, and the question had sometimes assumed an importance out of all proportion to its influence on their domestic economy. (Other families may be more fortunate in this respect, and they are to be congratulated.) One thing wor

thy of note in passing, Mrs. Reddington had made no preparations or decisions for the coming summer, and she was consequently in a receptive mood.

"I've got a great idea," continued Mr. Reddington enthusiastically after the first blunt announcement, "and I'm going to carry it out. I've always longed to build a houseboat according to my ideas, and now I'll do it."

"You're no boat-builder, Henry," mildly protested his amiable wife.

"No, but I'm a designer-a creator. I can make the design, and others can do the work that is, the menial work of putting the thing together."

"What are your plans, Henry?" unemotionally, and with placid disregard of the frenzied fire of genius in his eyes.

"They're sketched out here-a design for a catamaran houseboat."

He unfolded lengthy rolls of blueprint, which to the uncritical eye looked very businesslike and attractive.

"It's made of two flat-bottom boats fastened together," he explained. "That makes it uncapsizable-absolutely uncapsizable, Mary. Why, you could put a ton on this side and it wouldn't turn it over. I'll calk up the flat-bottom boats and cover their decks with waterproof canvas. That will make them unsinkable pontoons. So you see, the houseboat will be unsinkable as well as uncapsizable."

Mary scanned the blueprints with evident interest and curiosity, noting the division of the houseboat in living room, bedrooms, kitchen, and a pretty awningcovered deck with pink and green flower pots sprinkled artistically around.

"And you expect me to spend my summer on it?"

The voice had unfathomed sarcasm in its rising inflection.

"The Blakesleys have already engaged

rooms on it," Henry parried with infinite skill. "When I discussed the plans with them the other night, they both asked to be counted in. I'm making it suitable for two families a sort of floating, twofamily, summer house, with a common living room but separate chambers. It would be delightful to have the Blakesleys with us all summer to share half the expense."

"I should think the Blakesleys would go to the mountains this year for Harold's cough. Alice owes it to him to take him away from the salt air."

The judicial nature of this reply did not totally eclipse Mr. Reddington's enthusiasm; he spent two long hours explaining the details until wearied eyelids opposite began to droop.

Mr. Reddington had one other good quality; he was persevering-even in his mistakes. He never acknowledged defeat. The houseboat germ was therefore nourished and strengthened secretly and openly until the idea became a tangible fact. Possibly the novelty of it appealed after all to his wife, or knowing from past experience that it was useless to oppose Henry when riding one of his hobbies, she decided to raise only mild opposition. At any rate she placidly watched the course of events taking shape and gradually prepared her mind for the houseboat vacation.

It was christened the Mary R. It was mounted on two long flat-bottom boats that Mr. Reddington had picked up secondhand from the owner of an oyster smack. There was a platform front and rear-just large enough to hold a chair if you dangled your feet overboard. There were two bed rooms fore, a kitchen aft, and a living room amidship. The upper deck had its canvas covering, but a ladder served for steps,

and the flower pots were still to materialize.

"Not quite as com

plete as I expected," Henry explained, “but it will be cosy and comfortable, my dear." "I'm glad the Blakesleys are going inland," was the comforting retort.

The new ark had its hall-marks of genius. There was a device for storing provisions under the deck where they were out of the way until needed; a collapsible dining table which could be extended for the accommodation of six or converted into a china closet at other times; jointed chairs which could be put together in sections to form anything from a divan to a bureau or writing desk, and beds which could be let down by a chain from the walls and folded up in the day time to form painted panels of restful water scenes and woodland views. There were walls which shielded the occupants from cold, bleak weather or opened out on fair days to permit the air free circulation through the boat; an upper deck for hammocks; an adjustable spring board for diving, and a fishing contrivance which jingled a bell when there was a bite.

It was all a jumble of Mr. Reddington's inventive genius. The boat was provisioned for two weeks, and was towed down the bay just inside the crescent of white beach that hid the ocean from view.

"Here we can live in peace and comfort," was the felicitation of Henry when the tug puffed away in the distance.

"When will the tug come back, Henry?" anxiously inquired Mrs. Reddington.

"In two weekswith more provisions."

Mrs. Reddington sighed and looked toward the western sky. The Mary R. was anchored stern and bow, but the tide was swift inside of the crescent, and the gurgle of water lapping around and between the flat-bottom boats made ominous music.

The night passed in a

Those anchor chains would hold a Lusitania."

Nevertheless, Mr. Reddington experienced a species of nightmare which had for its refrain the song of the breakers tossing on the bar just outside of the inlet.

"I think, Mary, we might find a better anchorage place than this," he announced next morning before breakfast.

"Yes, I think so, too," was the firm reply of the one who had toiled over a refractory stove that smoked but refused to give out heat. "I'd rather be with Noah on Mount Arrarat than in this ark."

"Why, dear, has anything gone wrong?" "No, nothing particular. The stove doesn't burn, the sink basin dropped out with most of our china in it, the provisions under the deck are all water soaked, and that bell on the upper deck has been jingling all night. No, nothing has happened -but-but I want to go home."

There were tears in the voice, and Mr. Reddington came to the rescue with caressing terms.

"I'll make the fire hereafter," he said in self-abnegation, "and fix the sink, and stop that bell jingling. As for the provisions, I'll bring them on the upper deck and dry them in the sun."

Instead of trying to move the Mary R. to a new anchorage, Mr. Reddington spent a strenuous day in repairing the damages

horror of uncertainty.

of the previous night. Then when sleep would woo him he was deprived of rest by a snapping of the chain that held the folding bed in position. It was caused by the rolling of the houseboat in an unseemly swell.

"It's raining," whispered Mrs. Reddington when they had escaped from the flapping, rollicking bed.

"And our provisions are on the upper deck drying."

"Henry, we must get ashore, or we'll be drowned."

Mr. Reddington thought so, too, and expressed himself thus:

"If, you hadn't made me work all day fixing up the things you broke, I'd have had the boat out of this channel. And those provisions--"

He groaned in an agony of spirit, but Mary cried softly.

A gentle spatter overhead hit him on the forehead. He turned his eyes skyward and caught the stream in his mouth. It was sickishly sweet, and oily, with a pungent taste of spices.

"The roof is leaking," he exclaimed anxiously, "and our provisions are soaking through. I taste sugar, molasses, sweet oil and spices."

"And this is flour paste, dear," murmured Mrs. Reddington rising from a viscid pool of white.

The drip of dissolving provisions increased until the bedroom was uninhabitable. They adjourned to the living room. A blast of wind and rain nearly swept them off their feet. They stood exposed to the full brunt of the storm. One glance showed the inventor that his patent walls had opened outward and were now idly flapping like two big barn doors back and forth. Mrs. Reddington shrieked and retreated to the leaking bedroom and thence to a corner where the roof had not yet sprung. Henry crossed to the kitchen. Here at least things were in order. It is true that at every roll of the houseboat the foamy brine surged up through the patent sink and overflowed; but there was no other disorder.

"Mary! Mary!" he called.

But his wife was at the other end of the craft, and nothing could induce her to traverse that open space of wind-swept deck. Mr. Reddington tried twice to span the intervening space, but the rocking of the boat nearly threw him into the water. "Mary!" he called pathetically, "are you comfortable where you are? If so ' It was a feminine voice which he heard above the roar of wind and rain.

"

"Very comfortable, dear. Are you? I have all the provisions here, and there is no danger of my starving. If I only had the stove I might cook your breakfast for you. You couldn't possibly bring it, dear?"

Mr. Reddington bit his lip, and heroically refrained from a hasty answer.

The night passed in a horror of uncertainty. It was the first time the two had been parted for many a moon, and how each dragged through the long hours was unknown to the other. Mrs. Reddington resigned herself to the inevitable watery grave; Henry pinned his faith to the selfbailing rowboat which he had designed and made himself. This craft, at least, was good and seaworthy.

Morning dawned clear and calm, and in the light of the sun they could inspect their damages. They were less than they anticipated. The houseboat was still intact and riding free on its pontoon flat-bottom boats. Their personal appearance and temper were more damaged than their summer home.

"I am going home-at once!" announced

Mrs. Reddington's eyes flashed scorn and anger.

"Henry Reddington," she answered wrathfully, "if you want breakfast you can get it. I'm not going to cook any of that leaky, sticky mixture."

The inventor gazed ruefully at their provisions scattered in little pools and puddles over the upper and lower deck.

"But, Mary, it is a long row to the mainland, and

Henry didn't finish his sentence. Around the spit of sand dunes a white motorboat suddenly swung in full view. They both gazed at it in wonderment. Had some kind providence relented and sent a rescuer? Mrs. Reddington did not hesitate to accept this intervention for all it was worth. She tore from her shoulders a wet shawl of red worsted and waved it frantically over her head. She tried to attract attention in a piping voice that had grown hoarse with exposure. Then in desperation she turned to her husband:

"Henry, do shout to them! They must take us off!"

Under the stress of this feminine appeal, Henry loosened his lungs and shouted loudly.

"Ahoy! Ahoy, there!"

The motorboat held on its course, then wavered and swung toward them, while the occupants waved an answering signal. The two stranded vacationists watched the craft cut its way swiftly through the water, and when it was close to them they breathed a sigh of relief. They could see that there were two aboard--a man and a woman. Even at a distance Mr. Reddington saw that the woman was young and extremely pretty. Mechanically he tried to dust off some of the accumulated food-stuff from his clothes and straitghen his tie.

"Ahoy, on the Mary R," shouted the man in the stern of the motorboat.

"Ahoy, yourself!" promptly responded Henry. "We are in distress and need assistance. My wife wants to go ashore."

The woman in the bow of the motorboat turned and spoke to her companion. The