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sprinkled with powdered blue from hangings, of it. And thus man finds heaven.

Now in north China, although the light is remarkably clear, so that tourists to such places as Peking find it necessary to use an extraordinarily small stop when making snapshots, the light there is not so nerve-racking as the light of the tropics. Perhaps it is the changes of season that afford relief, the alternation of heat with cold, and of bright with the dull skies of winter. Perhaps from the same cause, the people are not so nervous; they are more stolid and steady-going. And the color almost universally affected by the Chinese for clothing is not red, but blue.

Nature, it appears, has zoned her colors to correspond with climate, and man's predilections respond. I wish some capable scientists could explain this. Meanwhile, I have to be content with my own unlearned explanation, though it runs counter to the usual.

Red, as we know, is a color of low vibrations, the lowest in the visible spectrum. Why Nature has colored the flowers of the tropics a prevailing red I do not know. But in so doing she has given tropical man a valuable hint. When, his nerves racked by exposure to excessive light, he feels his self-control disintegrating under the bombardment, he has only to turn his eyes to the bright red flowers Nature has provided and he feels his selfcommand restored. He is made whole again by the low vibrations proceeding from that pulsating color, which offset and nullify those of the harmful violet rays. Thus Nature provides and offers him relief, that he may live. Tropical man has found the medicine good and has accepted it gratefully. He makes use of it and plants his garden with red flowers; he clothes himself in red; he puts red in his house, making pillows and curtains, or simple

relief for that part of him which suffers most in the tropics, his nerves.

All around the earth, in the region of the equator, live peoples who love red. In that predilection for the flaming color are they betraying a lack of taste and discrimination, or are they pointing a lesson in things we have not thought of before? And when we so glibly quote axioms on the physiological and psychological effects of color, ought we not first to ask, Where do you live?

WHEN THE PIPER' WON THE

PRIZE

IN April, in 1921, Josephine Preston Peabody was entreated by fellow guests at a luncheon given in her honor to relate the story of winning the Stratford-on-Avon prize with her play, The Piper. The tale is so wholly charming, so directly out of the fairy land in which her mind played as by nature, that it should not be lost. This report, made by one of the guests and reviewed and amended by the husband in the story, is set down, as nearly as may be, in her own words.

She said, 'I did not see the notice of the Stratford-on-Avon prize until shortly before the expiration of the time limit set by the committee. My play, The Piper, was then in print, but had not yet been published — that is, it had not been announced in the press or put on sale. I cabled to know if, under the conditions, I might send it to enter in competition for the prize, and, receiving an immediate reply that I might, I did. Then followed a long, trying period of waiting, made the more difficult by the fact that I was for many weeks held prisoner in a hospital bed. My little son had arrived, but with attending circumstances that kept me in weariness and pain for an exasperating number of days. At length a

cablegram came stating that, out of 315 plays submitted, the committee had selected seven. This did not seem very promising, yet the question persisted, Why had they cabled me?

'Presently a second message announced that the committee had reduced the number from seven to two, of which The Piper was one, and that the plays had been sent to the Duke of Connaught, who would make the final choice. This was most exciting, and further waiting seemed too trying to be endured.

'In the olden times, in New England, our ancestors sometimes used the Bible in a necromantic way, requiring of it prophetic answers to set questions. They would hold the Book in their hands, ask it a question, open it at random, place a finger on a verse without looking at it, and then interpret what they found in terms of the question asked. My grandmother had told me of curious and surprising results. Remembering this, I reached over to the stand at the side of my bed and picked up a tiny copy of A MidsummerNight's Dream, one of a miniature edition of the plays belonging to a set I had purchased in Stratford three years before. I held the little volume between my palms and said, "O little book, what is going to happen?" Then I slipped my finger between the pages, pressed it against a random verse, and read, "Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is, that the Duke hath dined. Get your apparel together, good strings to your beards, new ribbons to your pumps; meet presently at the palace."

"The reference to the Duke was most happy, delighting me with its suggestion of postprandial content. The whole passage was surely prophetic; but when my husband came, and I had told him, he took the volume, turned

the page, and completed the message. He read, "Every man look o'er his part; for the short and the long is, our play is preferred.”

'And then, a few days later, a cabled message reported that The Piper had been preferred, though it did not use the Shakespearean words to tell me so. Urgent messages followed, asking that I come over to England to assist in the rehearsing of the play, to attend its presentation, and to receive the prize.

'At first it seemed as though the journey would be an impossibility for me, but my husband and I, with our two babies and a nurse, crossed the ocean. Fortunately my husband's family live in England and we could leave the wee ones with them and go to Stratford ourselves. There I was shown every consideration and all courtesy. I remember with particular gratitude the generous praise of the critics and the press, who would, presumably, have preferred that an English writer should take the prize.

"The play was presented in the afternoon. I was given the seat of honor, in the box at the right of the stage. The audience was as cordial as the press and the critics had been, and I, unused to publicity, was almost overcome with gratitude and joy; but the best moment came later. You remember that the Memorial Theatre has a window so large that it occupies the end of the building and opens upon a panorama of the Avon River and the church, in the distance, where you are forbidden to dig certain dust. When the play had begun and I knew that it held the thought and the heart of the audience, that they had forgotten me, I sat all by myself, as it were, looking up the quiet river to his church. Then came to me the moment of purest creative joy of my life!'

THE CONTRIBUTORS' COLUMN

As a political and social philosopher Samuel Strauss will be remembered. For years he was publisher of the New York Globe. Later he wrote and printed a little journal of personal philosophy, The Villager, extraordinary in the freshness of its observation. To-day he is an absentee Iowa farmer living near New York, and, as his writings indicate, emphatically discontented with the tyranny which Things have come to exert over the modern spirit. ¶A New York lawyer, M'Cready Sykes seeks an answer to that question which, more than any other, is agitating conscientious parents. Grace Zaring Stone is the wife of a United States naval officer now serving with the Yangtze Patrol. ¶In recent years Mark M. Jones has centred his attention upon problems of organization and management in large industries, and in certain international religious movements. Constructively, we think, he applies business methods to the activities of a vast and manifold enterprise.

***

One of the younger literary generation, Joseph Wood Krutch, formerly of the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University, has faced disillusion 'in a time haunted by ghosts of a dead world and not yet at home in its own.' His essay is a companion piece to his acute analysis of "The Modern Temper,' which appeared in the Atlantic for February. After so reasoned a struggle with 'thoughts to try men's souls' it is refreshing to turn to Agnes Repplier's account of collective unreason, equally indulged in, we note, by both sexes. R. S. is a Harvard sonneteer who makes his first appearance in our pages. Edwin Muir is a young English writer whose critical studies, Transition and Latitudes, have helped to unlock the door of many modern mysteries. Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, military critic of the London Telegraph, has not confined his attention to contemporary leaders. He has to his credit a biography of

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Ralph Linton is captain of the Marshall Field Expedition to Madagascar. In reading his narrative, which we publish by courtesy of the Field Museum, it is well to remember that he stands six feet two inches and is broad in proportion. Roderick Morison is the most seafaring poet we know. As the editor in charge of the wireless edition of the Daily Mail, he has crossed the Atlantic well over sixty times. And he's never, never sick at sea. Like many an Englishman whose home is where he hangs his hat, Henry W. Nevinson, a press correspondent of the first rank, finds solace in an occasional visit to the Mother of Men. ¶There are times when we all pine for a nice, polite illness and several weeks in a cool bed. Flora McIntyre has a philosophy for just such an occasion. ¶Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and for generations a famous teacher at Harvard, George Herbert Palmer took occasion last spring to point out certain discrepancies in the foundation of the Junior College. From the correspondence that came to him in reply he has selected certain questions to answer in his postscript.

Charles A. Beard is a professor of politics, an authority on American history, and a writer whose words, particularly when they also bear his wife's initials, may be taken at par value. The Reverend C. Stanley Smith sends us his manuscript from the Missionary Home, Shanghai. ¶A dirt farmer with a good many Wisconsin acres

under his plough, Glenn W. Birkett tells us that his paper 'is the result of pains caused by the revival of Farm Aid.'

***

Justice

In the January issue of this year, we printed a paper by Clifford A. Tinker entitled 'Jinx or Jeopardy,' in which the author, accepting the verdict of an official Naval Board of Inquiry, charged Captain John H. Diehl, skipper of the City of Rome, with negligence in connection with the sinking of the submarine S-51.

In justice to Captain Diehl, we wish to report that a Federal jury has recently cleared him of all blame and the presiding judge has stated that 'the evidence proved pretty conclusively that the cause of the accident was defective lights on the submarine.' Experts at the trial, including naval officers, testified that the lights on all the vessels of the S-51 class were illegal.

The blame for the disaster is thus laid at the door of the Navy Department. There was a good deal of a clutter there already.

***

'Jalna,' twenty years later.

DEAR ATLANTIC,

I am sending you the ending to Miss de la Roche's very interesting prize story. I think we shall all like to know what became of the Whiteoak family after the celebration of 'Granny's' one-hundredth birthday. I believe the author will be pleased to know these facts herself.

Twenty years later, on a beautiful June morning, we are again at the Jalna home in Canada. Granny died the night of her one-hundredth birthday, of exhaustion. Nicholas and Ernest outlived their mother but a short time, and Granny's money eventually came to Renny. On this pleasant June day we find Jalna much changed and improved. Renny and Alayne live here with their boys and girls-two boys and two girls. Renny continues to be the 'head of the clan,' though the clan are separated now, some dead and some far away. The notice of Eden's death in California came to Renny two years after his grandmother passed away, and later Renny and Alayne were married and Alayne came back to Canada to be the mistress of Jalna.

Meg and Maurice still live at Vaughanlands.

They have one son, Maurice, now nineteen years old. Piers and Pheasant live on the Jalna estate in a new house built for them by Renny. They have twin boys, Renny and Piers, and one girl, Alayne. Finch has become a famous musician and composer. He and his wife, also well known in musical circles, live in New York. Wakefield grew stronger and healthier as he became older. He won an Oxford scholarship, and is now an Anglican clergyman, vicar of All Saints Abbey, with a strong chance of soon becoming the bishop of his diocese. He is a High-Churchman, has never married, and will make an ideal Anglican bishop. We remember Wakefield as a mischievous little fellow, but notwithstanding this he always had a religious complex. Aunt Augusta is dead too. She returned to England, where she died five years ago.

Now we leave the Whiteoak family all settled and happy, each in his or her right place. VIRGINIA VAN PELT

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Mrs. Downes's article, "The Cost of Illness,' in the October Atlantic, holds for me a painful interest. I would rather forget this 'secret anxiety,' but Mrs. Downes reminds us that our problems should be viewed in the light of community interest.

We have been married thirty-five years. We not only belong to the large percentage of less than $5000 income, but we have never had more than half that amount. Yet we live under the assumption of being 'rich'! Because my husband's father was (for the then small town) successful; because, some thirty-seven years ago, my fiancé bought a good lot on Main Street on which we later built a pretty home (for less than $5000), we are 'Main Street' people and therefore 'rich.'

The allowance on which I run my home and pay all personal expenses is what any good hired housekeeper would get for herself alone. It is not hard to do now, but when we were bringing up

and educating three children it took management as well as economy.

The first time that I underwent an operation (in our nearest large city) I had not the courage beforehand to mention the cost. The surgeon, finding that we live on Main Street, sent a bill for $350. That operation is considered a minor one, and was performed for relatives of mine in New York City for $100 in one case and $75 in the other. Their income was as large as ours. My surgeon went on a false assumption, and my husband, from pride and inexperience and desire to save me worry, said nothing. I did not know of the bill until months afterward when the receipt came.

This false assumption of wealth comes from the fact that merchants are supposed to be making money. In Mrs. Downes's list of prices charged, those to business men are from two to five times those of the clerks. In our case, as in many another, no such difference exists. It is the overhead expense in these days that makes running stores so difficult. The outside investments that members of my family have made have been mostly disastrous. Hence, to-day our economies, which have seemed so queer to well-meaning, remonstrating friends, are as necessary as ever.

Figure, then, what it has meant when other operations and serious illnesses have occurred. When for five months we had to have a night nurse in the home, she received from two to three times the amount that I receive weekly for all expenses. 'Practical' nurses drew the smaller pay, and trained nurses the larger. Fortunately the latter do not get as much here as in New York City. The nurse's bill was only one item of the increased expense, but added to all the other sources of anxiety and sorrow, the cost of the illness was nerve-racking.

As nurses belong to a union which fixes the price, I see no help for this worry but to forestall it by sickness insurance.

Specialists and surgeons have seemed like hard-hearted materialists, but perhaps our acquaintance with them has been unfortunate. On the other hand, I have known some skillful doctors who seem to be filled with the spirit of the Great Physician. Their reward is greater than that of the almighty dollar. (You see I spell this god without capitals, for while absence of it is a hardship, its worship is disastrous.)

Most of the world seems so money-mad that I doubt anything will be done to stop this increasing cost of illness. If by discussion of it you induce some young people to invest in sickness insurance, or place a reserve fund inviolable by the temptation of bubble investments, you will have done a good thing.

M. F. J.

DEAR ATLANTIC,

OHIO

Undoubtedly Anne Miller Downes's article will draw fire, as it should.

On the first page we note that nurses are paid seven or eight dollars a day. In my country (Ohio) nurses are paid six dollars for maternity and medical cases. This is for either twelve or twenty-four hours' work. That is, therefore, twenty-five to fifty cents an hour. Remember, this is the rate paid to high-school graduates with at least three years' additional training. For contagious cases, when the nurse risks life and health, she is more than compensated by receiving thirty-three cents an hour.

Now we come to the harrowing experience of the poverty-stricken professor. This gentleman received only $425 a month for his labors in the vineyard. He could not, according to the worthy historian, pay $150 for his treatment. In my city I will find five men, men with at least three years' special training, who will do this operation for no more than $40. I myself will wager my last year's income that I can remove these offending members in fifteen minutes.

In regard to fees charged. I will quote from the fee manual of the Ohio State Compensation Board. These fees, understand, are those paid to physicians by the state for patients injured in any accident taking place in any establishment employing more than three persons.

Abscess (listed as minor dressing) Amputation, easy (listed as foot, hand, fingers)

Anesthesia (hospital)
(physician)

Tracheotomy (see minor operations)
Trepanning (as skull fracture)

$3.00

25.00 to 50.00 5.00 10.00

5.00 to 10.00 25.00 to 100.00

These rates are construed as a fair average of those charged throughout the state. Of course some men, by reason of their training and experience or cupidity, are able to charge more, but then many, many more charge less. This last statement does not require proof. Any average, of a necessity, represents many more less than the mean than are represented above.

Now turn to the doctor's side of the story. 'You have invested a capital of $10,000 at the least.' This is only too true. My pre-medical work, taken, of course, after the usual highschool period, was of three and one half years' duration. This represented $3500 in cold cash. I defy anyone to go to a respectable college or colleges for less. My medical course was, as the law requires, four years in length. These years averaged me about $1400 each. The total to date then being, at the time of my graduation, $8900. Then came twenty-two months' interneship. This did not cost anything in cash, but netted me the magnificent sum of $225 — in addition, of

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