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tion time,' said Wheeling. 'We will try again this time with red and blue. Close your eyes, please. Now!'

Latimer made the correct distinction.

'Extraordinary!' exclaimed Wheeling. "Three seconds. Normal vision should distinguish blue from red more slowly than black from white. You have reversed the process.'

'Perhaps this may be the reason,' said Latimer. 'In the first instance I immediately distinguished the black from the white, but it took me some time to recall that, sitting opposite me, your right hand corresponded to my left and vice versa. In the second experiment I had fixed the identity of your right hand and your left. If you had asked me simply to point out the red and the blue and the black and the white, the results would probably have been different. It might be worth while to repeat the test.'

'Do you think so?' said Wheeling. "I am convinced of it,' said Latimer. They went through the test again, and it was as Latimer had foretold. The revised figures showed that Latimer was slightly above the average in colorperception for the ordinary type of prison inmate. Wheeling was delighted.

'Rapidity of concentration next,' he said. Take this paper and pencil and hold yourself ready to begin writing when I give the order. Ready? Write the names of seven common garden vegetables.'

'Spinach, tomatoes, potatoes,' wrote Latimer. A simple soul,' he thought, as he lifted his eye momentarily to catch the fleeting vision of the next vegetable, and saw Wheeling peering at him with that kindly, meaningless smile through the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed spectacles. 'A simple soul, eager for the truth. Always the same goal; the difference is only in the method of approach. Truth! Men Truth! Men

have sought her through the clouds that cover the awful light of the face of the gods, in the torture of their own flesh, in the eyes of women, in the Arctic silences of their own thoughts, in the forests, in the mountains, in the deserts, in cloisters and catacombs Cucumbers, lettuce, parsley, beans,' he wrote hastily; and then as he caught Wheeling's astonished yet patient gaze, 'I believe I could do it faster than that. My mind wandered.'

'But that is just the point,' said Wheeling. 'As an index of mental coordination it is the first, unrehearsed attempt that counts. As such, the exceptional length of time you have taken is of the very highest significance. Excuse me while I set down a special remark that does not come under any of my schedules. Or, better still, while I am writing, I give you this sheet of paper on which you will kindly draw, without unduly hurrying yourself, the outlines of a pig, a tree, and a house.'

Here indeed was a task that called for the utmost concentration. Outside of the geometrical figures which he had drawn for some forty years on the college blackboard, Latimer was helpless with pencil in hand. The elements of perspective were a mystery to him; and expression was utterly beyond his powers. He succeeded in drawing the rough two-dimensional house which is the favorite of infancy, with curly smoke coming out of the chimney and a flight of steps hanging several feet below the ground level. He did a little worse on his tree, which was only a telegraph pole with arms projecting at acute angles. Recognizable both, perhaps; but the pig was a complete disaster.

"That is pretty poor, is n't it?' he said; and there was no pretense in the anxious query.

'It is not a question of good or poor,' said Wheeling, 'but of the age-class in which your technical execution would

place you. From that point of view the drawings are certainly extraordinary. Somewhere between six and seven years, I should say.'

'You mean a child of six or seven would be expected to do as well as this?' said Latimer, flushing scarlet.

"The average child,' said Wheeling. "Twenty-three children in a hundred of that age-class would do better. So much for manual coördination. Now tell me as fast as you can how much is three times four?'

balance for the mental account. I will read out to you a string of numbers among which will occur the numeral four. As soon as you hear that number you will tap with your finger on the table. It may occur once or several times. You will tap every time. That is plain?' 'Quite,' said Latimer.

"Three, six, seven, six, six, three, eight, nine, six, five, eleven, nine,' began Wheeling.

'Undoubtedly a simple soul,' said Latimer to himself, his mind swimming

"Twelve,' Latimer shot at him be- lazily on the droning rhythm of Wheelfore he had finished.

'Good! Eight times seven?' 'Fifty-six,' said Latimer with the same precipitation.

Wheeling flushed with excitement. "We are on the track of what is evidently a special aptitude. Thirteen times thirteen?'

'One hundred and sixty-nine.' "Twenty-four times twenty-four?' • 'Five hundred and seventy-six.' Wheeling's eyes were agleam. What a case! The doubly abnormal mind! In many instances below the median, in one instance rising far above it; how far above, he trembled to think. Then he took the plunge.

'One hundred and eleven times one hundred and eleven?'

"Twelve thousand, three hundred and twenty-one,' said Latimer.

"Two hundred and thirteen times two hundred and thirteen?'

'Forty-five thousand, three hundred and sixty-nine,' said Latimer.

'Amazing!' said Wheeling; and upon Latimer's soul, still writhing under the humiliation of that subnormal pig, the word fell like balm. In the upswing of spirits, self-confidence returned, and he felt prepared to meet Wheeling on a footing of human equality.

'Let us go back for a moment to a simple reaction test,' said Wheeling. "That is essential if we are to strike the

ing's notation. 'No trace of originality, I should say, but susceptible to guidance from above. A loyal private in the army of science, his not to make reply, but only to follow where others lead. Upon the minds of one hundred thousand such men the true mind of science builds its generalizations. The true mind glimpses the vision and flings it out for a hundred thousand common men to prove or disprove with their life's work. - Four!' He smote the table with both his fists as the signal number pierced to his brain. Wheeling smiled.

"That is the third time I mentioned four. You don't mind my saying that you present the very interesting example of an exceptionable faculty rising above a low level of general mental coördination.'

'Not at all,' said Latimer.

'Of course I should want to look my data over carefully,' said Wheeling. 'But at a venture I should say that you belong,' he hesitated, — 'I speak impersonally, of course, in the thirteenor fourteen-year class.'

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'Allowing for the arithmetical exercises?' said Latimer.

'Yes, that would be the weighted average. To make the test complete I should have to take your cranial measurements.'

'You suspect?' said Latimer.

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'And yet it is plain,' sputtered Latimer, 'that at skipping a rope I should probably be inferior to a child of eight. I should likewise be very low down in the scale at going down a banister, or creeping under a gate, or walking on my hands. And if it came to screaming myself red in the face and getting my toe into my mouth, I should be set very low in the scale of infantilism.' 'But our tests,' said poor Dr. Wheeling.

'I mean,' shouted Latimer and

"That is not part of our regulation caught himself on the edge of an explotest,' he said.

sion

(To be concluded)

MISSING

BY BEATRICE W. RAVENEL

LORD, how can he be dead?

For he stood there just this morn

With the live blood in his cheek

And the live light on his head?

Dost Thou remember, Lord, when he was born,
And all my heart went forth thy praise to seek,
(I, a creator even as Thou,)—–

To force Thee to confess

The little, young, heart-breaking loveliness,
Like willow-buds in Spring, upon his brow?
Newest of unfledged things,

All perfect but the wings.

Master, I lit my tender candle-light

Straight at the living fire that rays abroad

From thy dread altar, God!

How should it end in night?

Lord, in my time of trouble, of tearing strife,
Even then I loved thy will, even then I knew
That nothing is so beautiful as life! . . .

Is not the world's great woe thine anguish too?
It hath not passed, thine hour,

Again Thou kneelest in the olive-wood.

The lands are drunk with sharp-set lust of power, The kings are thirsting, and they pour thy blood. But we, the mothers, we that found thy trace Down terrible ways, that looked upon thy face And are not dead - how should we doubt thy grace?

How many women in how many lands
Almost I weep for them as for mine own
That wait beside the desolate hearth-stone!
Always before the embattled army stands

The horde of women like a phantom wall,
Barring the way with desperate, futile hands.
The first charge tramples them, the first of all!

Dost Thou remember, Lord, the hearts that prayed
As down the shouting village street they swung,
The beautiful fighting-men? The sunlight flung
His keen young face up
like an unfleshed blade...

O God, so young!

Lord, hast Thou gone away?

Once more through all the worlds thy touch I seek.

Lord, how can he be dead?

For he stood here just this day

With the live blood in his cheek,

And the live light on his head?
Lord, how can he be dead?

A PARABLE FOR FATHERS

BY JULIA FRANCIS WOOD

DINNER was perhaps the busiest hour in father's hard-working day. Whatever else Murray and Jean might be learning at college, carving had been omitted from the curriculum. Father was left to struggle alone, as usual, with the huge roasts which were wont to vanish with startling rapidity before the onslaughts of the young Hendersons. No sooner would a first expeditionary force of well-filled plates be sent forth than, before father could do more than cut up Trottie's meat, the long procession would be filing back again to a tumultuous chorus of encores. Between relays, there were the twins' covert scufflings to be suppressed; mother was admittedly the disciplinarian of the family, but father's quiet, 'Boys! I had been looking forward to a quiet dinnerhour!' had power generally to soothe the stormier moments.

It was not until every one else had nearly finished that father, guiltily conscious of delaying dessert, would find leisure for a few hurried mouthfuls, and it was that inopportune moment that Trottie invariably chose to make him a fervent avowal of affection. She must hold father's hand; father must lean over and kiss her. Murray's or Jean's impatient, "Trottie, do let father eat. We have an engagement and it's late already,' would force an issue between food and caresses. Father had not that strong-mindedness one would wish in such a situation; despite mother's protests, he always weakly declared that he had quite finished, and abandoned himself to Trottie's sticky embraces.

It is needless to state that father did not scintillate during the evening meal. Like most quiet men, he had married a vivacious girl; but even mother's volubility collapsed before that hubbub of young voices clamoring for the platform. The fourteen-year-old twins kept up a continuous merry altercation, occasionally rising into shrill-voiced vehemence; eight-year-old Trottie, her genial efforts persistently snubbed, took refuge in soliloquy; twenty-year-old Murray and eighteen-year-old Jean held victorious sway of the rostrum, with a running fire of comment on 'our crowd' and college reminiscences, varied occasionally by kindly efforts to educate mother and father, or to settle for their benefit any problem, from politics to the rearing of children.

Mother sometimes grew restive under this instruction, but father always listened gravely when Murray corrected his business methods or political views. Sometimes, when the college vocabulary grew particularly vivid, he would lift a humorous eyebrow over at mother and complain, - for father always had his quiet joke, 'Is it for this we've been standing in the bread-line all winter?' And mother would reply cryptically, in horror, 'Eastern polish!'

But if father did not talk, there was certainly something radically wrong with the universe when that unfailing background of genial, interested silence was suddenly withdrawn. It began the night when he called down the table to mother, with a gloom that was new to his cheery voice,

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