and I am quite sure it is good for you to be married. As for not caring enough for your husband, it's all nonsense. All women care a great deal too much for their husbands - unless they hate them! they always think there's nobody else in the world like them. But men, as a rule, take a much more modest and rational view of their wives.

I should think of the three alternatives of means proposed, the cutlery was clearly the right one, but I don't see why you should n't get your husband to realise my vision in 'Fors' of the Holy Tapster. I think that part of the old book commends itself to me, more when I'm travelling, than any other.

I'm just going to send a case of flasks of Italian wine to Brantwood (-nominally because the flasks are so picturesque!).

Anyhow don't go colonizing - I expect lots of work from you when you're 'settled,' in Sheffield. - It's quite a providential call to you, I think! I'm here just now on Sheffield business, you know, not that I'm doing any but anyhow I came to do it. Write again as soon as you are minded to Hotel de l'Univers here will be safe for a week after you get this.

With sincere congratulations to you both, I am, my dear Jessie,

Ever your affectionate

JOHN RUSKIN.

I am not quite as sympathetic in the whole matter as you would like me to be, and on the whole am better pleased at its close than its opening. I did not think your letters were at all indicative of a mind prepared for marriage — nor as far as I knew the G.'s, did I think the match suitable for you. My impression is that you may be much more useful and tranquilly happy, single, than in a marriage which left you much to wish for in your husband's ways or gifts. And you would probably at first bore him extremely with Fors Clavigera - and in the end throw it out of the window-which I should feel sorry for.

Another most serious and prolonged breakdown in health incapacitated Mr. Ruskin for all correspondence, and the only news I had of my friend and Master I owed to the kindness of Mrs. Severn. This break in the letters lasted from July 4, 1885, till September 27, 1887. Mr. Ruskin was then staying at Folkestone. I myself was on a visit to friends at Hythe, where my host was then mayor. One Sunday morning I was prevented from attending morning service at Hythe Church and learned afterward that I had thereby missed a chance of seeing my old friend once more. He had walked over to the service, and after its close was introduced to my host. They walked together some part of the road to Folkestone, and my name came up in the

I am only 'well' — and that in very qualified sense on condition of never writing a word I can help to friend(or against foe) — but I am glad to hear you are so well and happy-I suppose it was the Mayor of Hythe who spoke or wrote of me to you? I like his face-and if it was his daughter sate before me in church I like her's and should think she must be a nice friend for you.

Tell me of your present surroundings and work-keeping your letters from flying or growing too high-your hand is a little too sprawly-for easy reading. Ever affectly yrs

Next and last letter.

MY DEAR JESSIE,

J. R.

FOLKESTONE, 3rd Oct., '87.

Your letter is beautifully written give me the sequel of it at your leisure

but do not think of seeing me I absolutely decline all seeings - and being without my own people only makes me more savage.

You have borne much-I hope happier life is before you - what life remains to me depends wholly on my being left at rest.

Ever faithfully yrs
J. RUSKIN.

In 1893 circumstances led to my taking up my residence on the Italian

Riviera, where I remained till 1914, only returning to England each year for the summer months. For years it was one of my greatest pleasures to send off to Brantwood at frequent intervals boxes of the choicest rosebuds and violets from my garden, and to hear from Mrs. Severn how much pleasure their arrival gave the Master. For his eightieth birthday I sent a large basket of fruit and flowers, and it gave me joy to hear from her that 'of all the costly and beautiful gifts he received nothing gave

him more pleasure than your beautiful basket of roses and oranges; he has a bunch of the roses still on his table, and they are still fresh.'

But even this slight link was suddenly snapped when a young girl staying with me, looking over the newly arrived English papers, remarked with an abruptness which told how little she knew what the tidings would mean to me, 'I see that Ruskin is dead.'

And the world was a poorer place to me from that day onward::

FOLLOWING my resignation from Wall Street, I arrived at my new job on the morning of a great Company celebration, the first gathering of all local employees and executives, together with their families, in the something over forty years' history of the Mohawk Instrument Company. More than thirty thousand people had been admitted to the fairgrounds. It was a sparkling October day, and to watch the sturdy young workmen going through broad jumps, potato races, tugs of war, - all the sports of a typical field day, the married workmen in their best and leading their children to one booth after another, where, free of charge, the children could float themselves in lemonade and pop and gorge themselves on 'wienies'

and popcorn, must have been a satisfaction to the executives who had built up this organization. Forty years

without a strike, this company could honestly boast.

My new chief, Mr. McGill, was being congratulated on every side on the huge success he had pulled off in the Company's first big affair of the sort. A newcomer, he was the Company's first manager of industrial relations, and was reputed to be a brilliant man who could get things done.

Since I had been informed by Mr. McGill that he liked to have his staff on hand promptly at eight in the morning, it was with almost as much nervousness as I had suffered on my first day in Wall Street that I hurried along toward the high building that housed the executive offices. The hilarity I had witnessed on the previous Saturday had hardly prepared me for the austere atmosphere in which I found myself on entering the spacious vestibule.

From correspondence with Mr. McGill prior to my coming I had gathered that I was to be his first assistant. His own field was assumed to cover labor relations, not only.at the executive offices and at the manufacturing plants in the city, but at the Company's offices or plants all over the country. First of all, I was to establish a modern employment department such as I had built up at the International Investment Corporation in Wall Street. Each of the manufacturing plants had its own employment department, but, although some fourteen hundred people worked at the executive offices, thus far the 'hiring and firing' had been done in the old way each department head finding his own help, with little coöperation between departments.

The higher executives to whom I was introduced met me with a heartiness that was in marked contrast to the aloof attitude I had encountered in Wall Street. Another contrast struck me. In Wall Street things moved at a furious tempo. Here, in spite of the whir of machinery and the enormous volume of business, there was a leisurely atmosphere. In the executive offices I had already observed a good deal of aimless sauntering around and some unconcealed loafing. No one I could see anywhere was hurrying except my own chief. The new manager of industrial relations was dawning on the Company, I suspected, as an amusing but rather terrifying example of Western 'push.' I was all the more surprised, since I had been chosen by this energetic man as his first assistant, to find myself consigned at the start to almost complete inactivity.

Each morning the letters were brought in to me from my chief's desk

a high stack, but rapidly dispatched, as it was hardly necessary to do more than classify them and hand them to a

typist. There was no mention of my doing anything else, though my chief himself continued to fly hither and yon, busy keeping tab on the many enterprises he had instituted in the course of a year.

I employed my leisure in looking over files, studying the Company's past history and present structure, and cultivating acquaintance with the porter sweeping outside my door, the boy who filled my inkwell, the electrician who came to change the bulbs, the carpenter putting up walls to another cell. News spread that I was not a formidable person, and very soon visitors of all sorts were dropping in.

-

One day I had a visit from a quiet elderly gentleman with no pretensions of dress or manner, but his call, I learned later, had created a stir. He was Mr. Coleman, the president. He said he hoped I was going to like my new home both the Company and the city. My thoughts darted back to Wall Street. This was a better start! I wondered, however, what Mr. Coleman- vastly wealthy but likewise thrifty- would think if he knew of the waste in bringing me from New York to do what any fifteendollar-a-week clerk in his organization could have done quite as well.

I tried to curb my growing impatience, and at last cornered my chief. 'Mr. McGill, I must have an understanding. Why should I have left New York-'

'Oh, now, be patient,' he interrupted; adding in an undertone, 'Industrial relations work is on trial. We have to go very, very slowly.'

I

'But was n't it understood began, to be cut short with, almost in a whisper, 'The sales department is unwilling that you should have anything to do with employment. There's to be a meeting this afternoon.'

He came in with an air of elation

next morning to tell me the result of the meeting. The sales manager had said some caustic things, but had been overruled by other executives present, and I was to start at once interviewing applicants.

I began with the idea of very gradually taking over prerogatives that had formerly belonged to others. But the job I had planned to pace slowly paced itself. The comptroller, with many departments under his general charge, immediately saw the advantages of an employment department at the executive offices. He gave me his support from the start. Lesser executives followed his lead. In no time at all I was as busy as I had ever been in my most rushing days in Wall Street.

It was during these first months that the cashier blustered into my office one day and, without preface, shouted: 'Say, did n't you know we had an agreement with and (mentioning two other large concerns in the city) 'not to take their help, and they're not to take any of ours?'

I nodded. I had heard rumors of this gentlemen's agreement.

'Well, what did you mean, then,' he asked excitedly, 'by sending that girl up for the paymaster's job?'

'She seemed just the type the paymaster's looking for.'

'Where's her application?' The cashier began tearing through the papers on my desk. 'See where she's working?' He pointed to the sheet in his hand.

'Yes, but she's going to leave, whether we take her or not. Notice what she's getting! Says she's wanted for a long time to find something else, but has her mother. Did n't dare look around.'

'Look around!' the cashier echoed scornfully. "That's it! They're all shopping around.'

'Why should n't they, if their own

company won't recognize they've got to have more to be even as well off as they were a year or so ago?'

The cashier looked at me a moment without speaking, and then burst into a laugh. 'Gee, you sound like the Labor Herald!'

'You read it?'

'Read what? The Labor Herald! Say, you're joking, ain't you?'

'I find some valuable suggestions in the labor press.'

The cashier leaned over my desk. His voice dropped to a confidential pitch. 'You'd better not let 'em find out upstairs that you're reading those Bolshevist papers!'

'Some of us had better find out what they're saying, had n't we? We ought at least to know their state of mind if we're to cope with "Bolsheviki."

'Might be something in that,' the cashier admitted, with a shrewd look, as if the idea had occurred to him for the first time. 'But watch your step!' he counseled, a twinkle in his eye.

If the question of more production was in the very air, no less was 'Bolshevism.' Every discussion in business hours drifted toward it, and at dinner tables where I met socially some of the executives of the Mohawk Company, besides other business leaders, and lawyers, judges, and doctors of the city, conversation invariably centred on this latest bugaboo.

An organization that apparently, in the main, during the four decades of its history had treated its workers with consideration might reasonably have been expected to escape the current hysteria, but the Mohawk Company fell in line, circulating a fevered 'Letter from the President,' in which employees were warned of 'the poison that had gained a foothold in the community,' and exhorted 'to crush its vile head.'

In spite of ominous signs that attention to the human factor in industry'