Michigan producer. Buying clubs and small retailers in Eastern cities took the greater part of his output. He had no transportation charges to pay, no sales overhead expense, and, besides, he got fifteen per cent higher prices than ever before. Similar cases of profit to the farmer by this "cutting across lots" to market his produce could be cited in regard to the sale of eggs, maple syrup, vegetables, and cheese. For some time the large creameries of Ohio and Indiana have been receiving orders direct from consumers' clubs and small retailers at the rate of forty thousand pounds per month-not an enormous figure, considering the immense quantities of butter eaten, but none of this business existed heretofore. It is a direct trade and has sprung up and increased quickly, due to the buying club movement. The city of

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Paterson, New Jersey, with forty-odd buying clubs, imports "butter at the rate of nine thousand pounds per month direct from the creamery. A little over two years ago no such direct market was available for the butter manufacturers.

It is of significance that the producer has found a way to market his stuff direct to consumers in the city, even if it be only a small portion of his crop. For it tends to break him away from the unfortunate notion that he is wholly dependent on the chain of middlemen which looms up between him and what he considers a fair profit. If he chooses to be a business farmer, a manufacturer of country produce with sales relations direct with consumers' clubs or retailers, he has a fair chance to "do it now" under the buying club patronage.

H

AVE you ever seen a man who had been shot dead? Or, rather, have you ever entered a house in which

a man had been murdered and the body of the victim was still warm? It is an unpleasant picture to call up, but it is the only way to give some idea of how it feels when you stealthily enter the town of X.

It used to be a flourishing little Austrian city before the war, alive and gay with a civic life and a civic pride of its own. Then came the audacious dash of the Italians for the lower Isonzo, and the Austrian soldiers were driven across the river. There they turned around under cover of their mountain fortresses and shot the little city dead. They might have stopped then, because it is just like a corpse and cannot fight back even if it would but they have riddled its body time and again, uselessly, cruelly, wickedly.

I say this because I saw it done when I went to "view the body as a sort of neutral coroner, and these are my findings upon an actual inspection.

We had driven from Army Headquarters

past the rear lines and encampments through that zone I have heretofore described as being within reach of the long-range guns of the enemy, and where civilians still prefer to take the chance of an occasional bombardment to the severance of the old home ties.

Now we were leaving all that behind us for more exposed highways. Where there was no shelter of wall or cover of trees on the highroad the military chauffeur would put on full power and the machine covered the open stretch on racing time. It is really wonderful how fast an automobile can be made to go when it is a question of dodging shells; it is a speed test which our automobile selling agents might consider.

As we drove into the square of the murdered city a strange sensation seized one; it was very, very still, with houses which were more impressive because of their look of having been absolutely and hastily untenanted than on account of their dismantled appearance.

In all this solitude a lone sentinel presented arms to our colonel as we got out of the car. He was the only fighting man visible, and

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example of how the Austrians make a civic center of no military value uninhabitable when they have to give it up, merely through wantonness and the lust of destruction. cannot pass on the justice of this complaint, but apparently there was only a handful of soldiers there, doing police duty, and absolutely no artillery or defenses of any kind. The place lies on an open plain by a broad river's edge where nothing can be masked.

We walked carefully about the town, with the feeling that some terrible pest had ravaged its citizens and eaten like a gangrene at its very walls. The havoc made by the mere air suction of the Austrian three-hundredand-fives is amazing, while some of the enemy's hits have caused the most bizarre wounds in certain buildings. Half a house would be down, while the household effects of the other half, although it was close to the edge of the "smash," were perfectly all right, even the glass articles uninjured. Most of the house doors were ajar, and through them one could see the furniture thrown about in confusion; or a wall would be left standing with carefully starched curtains at the windows as a frame for the vista of blue sky through the roofless home. Alas for the loving hands which had labored to make that home bright!

From one of the houses came a few bars of music, a few cracked notes of a piano which had weathered the storm so far, touched by a passing soldier; the notes sounded like a mocking, derisive voice. Where bombs or shells had not struck, the walls bore signs of rifle shots; and you could gather handfuls of Austrian bullets along the highways. We were ordered to keep close to the left of the streets and hug the walls, so as not to be seen by the enemy on the near-by mountains; a few days before the Austrians had caught sight of a group of war correspondents and had poured shrapnel for two hours along their road of retreat, forcing the representatives of the mighty press to lie flat on their stomachs till the fire had ceased.

As we drew closer to the end of the town, nearer to the enemy's lines, the houses were battered into all sorts of strange, dead attitudes, like men you see, on a battlefield after an assault on a wired intrenchment. The silence, when unpunctuated by the cannonading, added to the awful brooding feeling which seemed to hang stealthily and furtively over everything. The scene was so oppressive that in the end any sociable thing, even if smashed and in ruins, had a sort of wild

charm and mad attraction. The awkwardly painted signs on the Osterie yielded the pleasurableness of works of art; a bureau or a pitcher and basin in a dismantled house made you breathe more easily. When I climbed through the débris of the Teatro Sociale and entered one of the few boxes left standing, I felt like clapping my hands; the stage was down, but you could see the dressing-rooms at the back and the sylvan scenery in a heap in the pit. Duse had played here and the Commedia dell' Arte had found a hospitable home. The theater-goers of this Austrian town had evidently been loyal Venetians; they had raised a marble tablet to Gallina and a bust to Goldoni, masking their allegiance to Italy under a permissible admiration for Italian comedy. Somehow, after the tenseness outside, you felt strangely joyous here; thousands had laughed and enjoyed themselves right where you stood, and not so very long ago. The sense of their pleasure was still about the place, despite the havoc. I could see the throng of fathers and mothers, of children and youths, gathered here, enjoying the simple, imperishable art of Carlo Goldoni. The wickedness of the Teutonic military castes in disturbing a peaceful Europe never struck me as so criminal, so unnecessary, as here in this homely playhouse as I looked over the ravaged theater of this little town whose deserted streets bore every index of a laborious, peace-loving community.

I walked back in a melancholy mood towards our starting-point, where our machine was waiting. Yet as I walked the cloud lifted very quickly. Though all was desolation about us and only immovable ghosts seemed to have been left of a past busy life, yet the spell of Italian geniality was somehow making itself felt. Even a corporal's guard on the place sufficed for the miracle. I saw the "geniality" walking down a ravaged street in the shape of a young peasant soldier with a flask of rubyred wine in one hand and a bright rose in the other. Then I became aware that there were many, many birds singing in this desolation of man, and that flowers were blooming in profusion and in fragrant loveliness all about us.

The tenseness seemed over, and my heart exulted with every crash of the guns on the bloody mountain slopes beyond. I felt certain that, though this poor stricken town had been "buried alive," the good wine of the country, the humble wholesome bread, and the kindly care of that handful of good guardsmen would keep its poor heart going until the glad day when its hurt body would be lifted gently out of its living tomb and the Italian tricolor run up over those ancient walls which were its historic pride and which the Venetians built against the barbarians centuries ago.

From the Italian Front, May, 1916.

A

T the period when the tides of lite rise most rapidly and the social nature of the youth unfolds, team play, at once the most exhilarating and the most developing form of play, makes its most powerful appeal. Now the personal interest sinks to its proper level, and with passionate abandon the player throws his fine young powers into the struggle, not for his own sake, but for the glory of the team. It is

The first article in this series appeared in The Outlook of August 23, and the second in the issue of August 30. Another article will follow.-THE EDITORS.

not the danger nor the touch of brutality that constitutes the fascination of football. It is the rhythmic soul-beat that the players feel as they fight all together as a single man; it is the absolute soul-satisfaction of a sacrifice play. It is the soul coming into its own, rising to what should be the normal plane of adult life, the plane of co-operation. This spirit of play, culminating as it does during the college period, should pass without a change into the work of life. When it does, the spirit continues to expand and the buoyancy of youth lingers. But too often the

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itself and will not notice many trivial things except where they affect the success of the day's work. Many of the rest may be pretty poor team players, but that need not spoil your sport. In fact, if you win against odds, it will be only the more stimulating. It is true that this attitude is likely to win appreciation and recognition from employers. But if you do these things with your mind on the promotion, you may get the promotion just the same, but you will have spoiled the game. It is absolutely forgetting yourself in these larger ideas and interests that exhilarates and refreshes the spirit.

Every new study of the life of the Apostle Paul leaves us with fresh wonder at the buoyancy of his spirit. He had tasted toil under trying and discouraging conditions, he bore heavy burdens in loneliness, but nothing aged his soul. Within him something always sang. And when we read his declaration, "We are God's fellow-workers," we believe we have an echo of the song that never failed him. Nor do we think he was less conscious of working with God when he wove at his loom than when he preached on Mars Hill. Paul loved to use the great games of his time as illustrations of spiritual things, because he felt their spiritual meaning. He would understand the view-point that identifies the great passion that fired his soul with the simple, self-forgetful joy of the child doing his best that his side may win. It was Jesus who set a little child in the midst that the grownups might learn from him. worker has a right to the same conviction that glorified life for Paul. God is doing his utmost for the well-being of this world. Whatever contributes to that end helps him to carry out his great plans, and is therefore full of interest and importance for that reason, if all other reasons should fail.

Every honest

Neither Bethmann Hollweg, German Chancellor, nor Lloyd George, English Secretary of War, is to be classed as a 'hyphenate," though many newspapers insist on printing their names Bethmann-Hollweg, Lloyd-George. A recent conspicuous offender as to the German Chancellor's name is the "Century Magazine," which heads an article "Bethmann-Hollweg and German Policy," though it also prints a facsimile signature by the Chancellor without the offending connective.

On August 22 the price of the New York "Herald was reduced from three cents to one cent. The "Herald" thus returns to its original price in 1835, when for a few months it was a "penny" paper. From August, 1835, till 1862 its price was two cents. The war carried it up to four cents. Since 1887 its price has been three cents, though most of its newspaper rivals have sold for only one cent.

A recent book about Central Africa gives this remarkable incident as illustrating the native's

absorption in present prosperity. The author was traveling on the Congo River, among cannibal tribes; with the natives who came down to see him when he stopped at a Fan village was a man who had formerly been his steersman; he said he was a captive in the village and was destined for the pot. The captain urged. him to jump aboard and save himself. To his intense surprise, the native refused! The Fans, it seems, give their intended victims "the time of their lives" preliminary to the feast, and in the midst of his enjoyment the future knife had no terrors for the unimaginative captive!

To avoid that exasperating jolt one gets when going down into the cellar and trying to step down another step when none is there, or the equally disconcerting mistake of stepping off two steps instead of one, an exchange suggests that the bottom step of the cellar stairs be painted white. Then one will always know just when he has reached the bottom.

Dr. Foster, President of Reed College, Portland, Oregon, tells in "Harper's Magazine" of his old master in a Boston public school, whose motto in scholarship for his boys was One hundred per cent, or zero." The same motto, says Dr. Reed, but with a difference, was apparently held to by a boy who came home from school the other day and said to his father, "I got one hundred per cent in school to-day." "Did you?" exclaimed the proud father; in what subject?" "Oh," was the reply, "I got fifty per cent in arithmetic and fifty per cent in geography."

The old stories about swordfish ramming boats, either by mistake or in malice, are matched by a newspaper account of the experience of the fishing schooner Reita. Twice

within a few weeks, it is stated, her hull has been pierced by the weapon of a swordfish. The last time the sword not only penetrated the planking but transfixed a suit-case belonging to a member of the crew. He had to go ashore in his sea togs while the boat was sent to the marine railway for repairs.

Bird lovers will be glad to read the report that a treaty for the protection of insect-destroying birds on both sides of the Canadian boundary has been entered into between the United States and Great Britain. Its administration will be left to local authorities. It is said that this is the first treaty of its kind.

A despatch from London says that a new invention, called a piano typewriter, reproduces in ordinary musical notation whatever the performer plays. A pianist can make a copy of any piece of music by merely playing it through. The inventor is an Italian.

"The three best American stories ever written by one author," in the estimation of a writer in the "Christian Register," are "In His Name," "The Man Without a Country," and "My Double." The author, it need scarcely be said, was the Rev. Edward Everett Hale.

Among islands named after animals, says the London "Chronicle," there are the Isle of Dogs and Whale Island, Pewit Island in Essex, and Crane and Gull Islands off the coast of Cornwall. Near Lundy Island are Rat Island and the Hen and Chickens. Transatlantic travelers, it may be added, are familiar with the Bull, Cow, and Calf Islands, near the English coast. Elephant Island has lately been associated with Shackleton's exploring party; Cat Island, in the West Indies, has been regarded as Columbus's original landing-place.

A page advertisement in a New York paper gives one a good idea of the relative rents asked for New York City apartments. It begins with a palace on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park; apartments here range from 15 rooms and 4 baths at $15,000 a year to 24 rooms and 9 baths for $28,000 a year! From this one can descend at the bottom of the page to an apartment on Eighty-first Street near Lexington Avenue, consisting of 4 rooms and bath, for $660. Most of the apartments advertised rent for $2,000 and over.

A subscriber calls attention to an amusingly uninformative headline in his local paper, apropos of the paralysis epidemic. The Associated Press despatch read: "The disease is beginning to assume serious proportions in the eyes of medical authorities," etc. The headline interpreted this as follows:

EYES AFFECTED

BY THE PLAGUE OF INFANTILE PARALYSIS AND DOCTORS GROW UNEASY