honey, which until a few generations ago was the world's universal sweetener, is as profitable as it is delicious and wholesome, being far more digestible than white sugar, especially by children and invalids.

In France they are now making sugar out of sweet grapes, of which it constitutes twenty-six per cent. Bananas have a sugar content of twenty per cent. Plums have a sugar percentage of about fifteen; prunes, of over sixteen; apples, nearly twelve; dates, thirty. By eating freely of our fruits, most of which have a high percentage of sweetness, we can almost dispense with white sugar entirely. Nothing, therefore, could be more patriotic than a diet made up largely of fruits. Our country is the fruit-eaters' paradise, and at present our fruits are cheaper and better than ever because there are no bottoms available to ship them to Europe. The best of all lunches are made up of fruits, fresh and dried.

Am I wrong in asserting that war-time pleasures of the table can be made more varied and intense than those of peacetime? But we must use our brains and ger out of the ruts. Take apple pleasures as an example. Most of us eat raw apples, baked apples, apple sauce, pie, and perhaps brown betty; but how many realize that there are hundreds of ways of cooking apples? The Canadian Government has printed a "Book of Apple Delights," with over two hundred receipts. Send for it; also for our own Government's Bulletin on the "Use of Fruit as Food."

HOW TO MAKE VEGETABLES POPULAR

Fruits and vegetables are the two classes of foods we are especially asked to favor in order to save meats and cereals, because they are too perishable and bulky to be easily shipped. While our fruits, though not eaten as much as they should be, are generally liked, most vegetables seem to be generally disliked or at least neglected. A herculean effort should be made at once to overcome this unfortunate prejudice. That it exists is not strange, for the American way of cooking vegetables is discouragingly unappetizing. I

have tried the war time "vegetable lunches" offered in diverse New York restaurants, but one dose in each case was quite enough.

In our public eating-places, as in our homes, vegetables are almost always boiled, a procedure which deprives them of most of their flavor and of fully thirty per cent. of their mineral and other nutriment. Vegetables should never be boiled except in soups. By far the best way to cook them is to steam them. Yet steaming receives no more than brief "honorable mention" in our cook-books. The only American book I have been able to find which treats the subject adequately is "Experimental Domestic Science," by the chemist, R. Henry Jones. He gives a striking table showing how much nutriment is lost when vegetables (and meats) are boiled instead of steamed. He attests- what I most emphatically indorse-that "the flavor of the steamed article is far superior to that of the boiled." He points out furthermore that vegetables are far more digestible when steamed, while some of them, like cabbage and turnips, lose their rank plebeian odor and become converted into delicate dishes fit for a millionaire's table. Steamed carrots are a revelation to those who think they do not like this vegetable, which is particularly rich in mineral salts.

Steam is destined to create as great a revelation in the kitchen as it has in transportation on land and sea. There are now in the market utensils in which three or four kinds of vegetables, meat, or fish can be steamed at once. This is the time for their makers to advertise them freely. Let us all strive to make vegetables as alluring as possible. During the summer, when heating foods are not needed, we should be vegetarians, and, if possible, raise our own greens and roots; for the home-grown, gathered fresh every morning, are far more delicate and appetizing than any on sale in the markets. Last summer at least two million new backyard and vacant-lot gardens were planted. We can double or treble that number this year, thus adding greatly to our dietetic and war-time pleasures of the table.

THE

HE bookkeeper of the Atlas Storage and Transfer Company was manifestly disgusted.

"No, madam, we don't know where he is. Where did you want to get moved to?" The woman placed a finger on her lips and thought.

"Well," she finally announced, "I guess I will go and see my sister again. Maybe this is n't the place she meant." And with that she walked out.

The bookkeeper jabbed his pen into a glassful of shot and closed his book with a bang that alarmed the office cat, whereupon she also walked out.

The manager, having noted the departing customer, now came to make inquiry. "Well, what was the trouble with her?" he asked.

"Oh, it's another case of wanting that fellow to move them. They come in here and tell me what their sister says and what Mrs. Jones says and want me to send the same man around with the van; and when they find he is n't here any more, they turn on their heels and walk out. That's the second one this morning."

The manager, too, was disgusted. A moving corporation does not take kindly to the star system in moving. When a hired man starts in to eclipse the company it is irritating and exasperating. The hired man should be anonymous and simply reflect his virtues on the firm. It

is particularly trying, after you have discharged a man, to have women come in for weeks afterward and ask for him; and then, after you have tried to explain yourself and detract from his virtues till you are tired of the subject, to have them walk right out in the face of your condemnation.

As it was the height of the moving season, and this thing had been going on for nearly a month with no signs of abatement, the manager began to have violent emotions.

"I wish," he said, "that that young whelp had never seen the inside of this door. I'd kick him out before I saw him coming. I wonder if there is any way we could get him back."

This statement, of course, was inconsistent and incongruous; but yet it expressed the manager's sentiments.

"No, I guess not," answered the bookkeeper. "The foreman saw him the other day and says he is working in a stable on the north side and likes it. And he said he was going to get the boss to trade off a hearse and put in a van."

If the manager had been angry before he was now irate.

"I wish," he said, "that the officer had put him in the jug and kept him there. If I had it to do over again, I 'd have him locked up and then given sixty days. And then I'd tell these women where they could find him."

In the midst of the tirade the axlegrease salesman arrived on the scene by way of the arched entrance. His orderbook was in his hand, and his smile was on his face; but when he caught sight of trouble in the office he decided not to enter. It was not the right weather in there to sell anything. Consequently he dropped the smile, having no use for it just at present, and rambled back through the stable to where the sun was extending an invitation through the alley door.

Here he found Swallow, the barn foreman, and McNamara, the hostler. Swallow was leaning against the edge of the doorway with a joyless look on his face as of dough that has fallen. McNamara

where he would be outside the "no smoking" limits of the barn, and lit a cigar. "How 's business?" he inquired. "Business is movin'," said McNamara, smiling faintly.

"What seems to be the unpleasantness in the office?"

This question was addressed more particularly to Swallow. Swallow's apathetic countenance took on a still more vacuous expression as he began to think. But his mental efforts did not seem to come to anything, and he scratched his head.

"You tell it to him, McNamara. You know the names of the people and things."

"Well," said McNamara, "goin' back about a month, I 'll tell ye what started it. Several parts have already happened, and more of it keeps comin' out. But, anyway, about a month ago, which was early in April, a fellow by the name of Buck Summers comes along here lookin' for work around horses. 'T was comin' on the busy season when we would be needin' men, so the boss looks him over and asks him a few questions; and when he saw the fine strong build of him he hired him and put him on And Whallen would teach him. "But 't was little Whallen needed to teach him. He knew all the holts and ways of managin' things. "T is all in the science of the muscles,' says he. 'And 't is the intelligence of the body.' He knew all that and more. But the great point about him was that the women took a likin' to him. He knew how to speak to them."

a van.

"He was a pretty good josher, eh?" "Not a bit of it. He was different. If I had the money to put up a barn and storage place and could get him for manager, I know how I would get rich. I would put out a sign, 'Refined movin' done here.' Or 'Painless movin',' or 'Movin' made a pleasure.' Or somethin' like that. When it come to helpin' a piano down-stairs, or handin' a cook-stove. over a newel-post at a landin', he did it as if 't was all a pleasure to him and nothin' at all to get excited about. ""T is all a case of usin' your brains and doin' your thinkin' on the hoof," says he.

"And he was good, too, at puttin' things into places where they would n't go. 'Ye don't understand the geometry of it,' he would say to Whallen; and then he would take hold of a fancy davenport and slip it through a narrow door in just the way it was willin' to go. 'Never use force on dumb animals,' he would say to Whallen, 'Show them what you want them to do. A davenport,' says he, 'is no better. than its driver.'

"Well, ye can see how a thing like that would work out. Movin' is a great trouble and worry to a woman. 'T is because she has n't got confidence in us. When a man like Whallen comes along with his legs under him like a grand piano, the woman feels uneasy. He is so much stronger than the furniture. But when this Buck would come along, the effect on her was entirely different. He would come into the house smilin' as cheerful as a doctor that was goin' to perform an

operation; and by the time he had assumed charge of the place and said a few educated words about it, a woman would see that she might as well leave it all to him. 'T is that that women like.

"And right there is where all the trouble comes in. When a woman has got acquainted and taken a likin' to ye, she is goin' to have you again in six months or a year, accordin' to when her lease runs out. But you won't be that long hearin' from her, for she will tell her sister and Mrs. Jones what an interestin' and goodnatured mover she had and how thoughtful-minded he was about every little thing.

"Where he learnt the style of it I dunno. 'Movin' is a most intimate relationship,' says he. 'If you will treat the bureau and bedstead kindly, the woman is goin' to feel differently toward ye,' says he. 'If ye don't believe in yourself, no one is goin' to have confidence in ye. 'T is all

in the psychology of it. And always keep smilin',' says he. He was full of them queer ideas. And ever since then the women have been in here inquirin' for him."

"I don't see where the trouble comes in. There is no trouble about that," said Axle-grease.

"Wait till I tell ye. Nothin' is trouble till ye make trouble out of it. 'T was a sunshiny day in April with no prospects of rain. 'T was a regular movin' day, and it seemed as if the whole of Chicago wanted to be picked

up and carried away at once. We were busy carryin' cookstoves and piannys and barrels of dishes up and down crooked flights of stairs, and all the vans were out. There was a woman wanted to be moved from Twenty second out

his mornin' bath and throwin' the water all around.

"Ye are a dirty little bird,' says he, 'and I guess I will have to carry you different.'

"So then he let his arm hang over the side of the seat, with his finger through the ring at the top of the cage, so that the water could jibble into the street. And after that he paid it no more attention.

to Fifty-third, f'r she was expectin' company on the train and wanted to be nicely settled. And so we sent Buck and Whallen out on the stake-body dray to tend to the job.

"Well, when they had got the first load on, there was a canary bird in a cage that the woman was awful' particular about, and it had to be moved with care. They could n't pack it in with the load of chairs and beds and flat-irons and things, so the woman handed it to Whallen to carry. And Whallen handed it to Buck to hold in his lap.

"They had n't gone far when the water got to jibblin' out, and Buck saw that his lap was full of a mixture of bird-seed and water and lettuce and cuttle-bone and what not; and then the bird got to takin'

"Well, 't is a long way from Twentysecond out to Fiftythird. And when they got to the end

of the trip and Buck rose up to straighten out his legs after the long drive, he took a look at the cage and discovered that the bird was gone. The tin bottom had dropped off the cage somewhere along the route, and 't was a birdless cage he had been

carryin' so careful' all the time.

"The two of them stood there lookin' at the cage and then down the long street for miles and miles; and they did n't say much to one another except "The bird is gone,' and 'T is too bad 't is gone,' and 'I wonder where 't is gone,' and things like that. And all the time they were thinkin' of the woman. For the bird's name was Peter, and she thought the world of him.

"Well,' said Buck, climbin' down off the wagon to take what was handed down to him. 'Chicago is a large city.'

"What?" said Whallen, bitin' it off

short.

"I say,' said Buck, 'Chicago is a large place.'

""The hell ye say. What have you got to do with its bein' a large place?'