Old Lady Ruddick By BILL ADAMS LD lady Ruddick drives a longlegged, lean black horse in a rattledy top buggy. Folks driving autos pass without noticing her, or maybe grumble at a slow old horse on the highway. Maybe they pity the old woman, thinking her poor. Summer heat and winter cold, the rattling buggy makes its steady round. Old lady Ruddick lives all alone in the rear room of a faded, ramshackle white farmhouse set back from the roadside. Tall, widespread walnut trees stand to either side. There are rosebushes between house and road. There is a far-spreading fig tree in the rear. Under it lives old lady Ruddick's brownand-white collie. A narrow dusty drive bordered by acacias and cedars leads from the road to the rear of the house. Weeds grow rank along the drive and roadside. The rose-bushes bloom, untended, amid tall weeds. Birds chatter in the fig trees. The rusty windmill clanks. Old lady Ruddick was in the red barn when I drove up her driveway. The black horse was eating hay in the corral close by. The collie barked, wagging his tail. Old lady Ruddick was milking Tagalong, and rose as I looked in at the barn door. "Hello!" she said. "I thought I heard somebody coming." Next to Tagalong, a yellow Jersey, stood Mutt, a brindle; beyond Mutt, Minnie; beyond Minnie, Buttercup; and beyond Buttercup, three other Jerseys. Old lady Ruddick's right foot was shoeless, bandaged, and bound up in a thick wad of gunny sack. "It doesn't bother me," said she. "I can get about, and it'll soon be all right. 'Twas my fault Minnie trod on it. Wasn't it, Minnie?" She'd a clean gunny sack for an apron and an old frayed straw hat tied on her head. She'd eyes like a fairy; yet not altogether so, since fairies cannot know the things we know. Brown eyes, friendly, smiling, very bright. Ageless eyes, though surrounded with wrinkles. Her hands are small and brown, her wrists thin and withered, her fingers twisty-fingers of one who has milked cows through many, many years. We talked a long time, for old lady Ruddick was done with her evening milking. We talked while she turned the seven cows out, forked the hay from their mangers into the corral, and put new hay ready for the morning milking. Old lady Ruddick milks at half-past three every morning. We talked about However storms may interfere with travel, telephone operators are at their posts An Unfailing Service AMERICANS rely upon quick communication and prove it by using the telephone seventy million times every twenty-four hours. In each case some one person of a hundred million has been called for by some other person and connected with him by means of telephone wires. So commonly used is the telephone that it has come to be taken for granted. Like the air they breathe, people do not think of it except when in rare instances they feel the lack of it. Imagine the seventeen million American telephones dumb, and the wires dead. Many of the every-day activities would be paralyzed. Mails, telegraphs and every means of communication and transportation would be overburdened. The streets and elevators would be crowded with messengers. Newspaper men, doctors, policemen, firemen and business men would find themselves facing conditions more difficult than those fifty years ago, before the telephone had been invented. To prevent such a catastrophe is the daily work of three hundred thousand telephone men and women. To maintain an uninterrupted and dependable telephone service is the purpose of the Bell System and to that purpose all its energy and resources are devoted. $600 $692 11 From San Francisco to Honolulu and Yokohama and return direct to Seattle. Or reverse the itin erary, sailing from Seattle. 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Sailings every 12 days from Seattle direct to the Orient, via the shortest and fastest route across the Pacific. Sailings every fortnight from Boston and New York for the Orient via Havana, Panama and California. Complete information from any ticket or tourist agent or from Dollar Steamship Line Admiral Oriental Line a lot of things. Except that she once paid ten dollars to hear Patti sing, and that she prefers memories of Edwin Booth to going to the movies, she didn't tell me much about herself. She didn't tell me that she was held up and robbed while delivering milk one dark morning last winter. I discovered that she was raised in a swell hotel back East, and that until she was twenty-five she never did any sort of work. "When I tell Tagalong, 'Now, Tag, you give me a good pail of milk,' Tag looks at me. She knows what I'm talking about. Don't you, Tag? "Minnie's jealous when I talk to the others," said she. Once, years ago, a cow swished its tail and knocked the hat-pin from the old lady's hat. "I always wore a white-headed pin so that I could find it easily if it should happen to drop. But I looked and looked, and couldn't find it that morning." The cow swallowed the hat-pin with a mouthful of hay. It punctured her lung and killed her. "I was broken-hearted," said old lady Ruddick. "The old horse hasn't missed a day in the ten years I've had him," said she, and, with a smile and twinkling eyes, "neither have I. He used to be the fancy pacer in the big livery barn in town. The swell people hired him, with a rubber-tired buggy. It's all autos now, but he's a good horse yet. He gets just enough work to keep him fit. He's twenty-five. They let me have him because they wanted a good home for him when they sold out." The many who do not know pity old lady Ruddick when she drives by, thinking her very poor. Old clothes, frayed straw hat, patched harness, rattledy buggy with a sagging top. But I've found out a few things. Most of old lady Ruddick's life was spent in taking care of an invalid sister. For two months past she's been delivering free milk to a crippled man whose wife died and left him with five little children. If they ever find some one who needs milk and cannot pay for it, the Salvation Army know where they can get it without pay. Old Lady Ruddick rents the place she lives on, and buys all her hay. Old lady Ruddick is seventy-five years old! Summer heat and winter cold, the rattling buggy makes its steady round. "Give me the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, and I've got all the Bible I need," says old Lady Ruddick. "I like to try to live by the Golden Rule." In writing to the above advertiser please mention The Outlook Volume 144 I To the Looters of Yellowstone Park Hands Off! DAHO is trying to loot Yellowstone National That does not mean that all the people of Idaho want to loot it. There are many Idahoans who are vigorously opposed to the attempt of special interests to despoil National property. Among them is former Senator Dubois, who did more than any other man to make Idaho a State. Among them, too, is H. F. Samuels, Progressive candidate for Senator. There are Idahoans who are still sensitive to their State's good name. But, in spite of these, the political power of Idaho is behind special interests in their plot to take what does not belong to them. The political power of Idaho is bringing pressure upon Congress to give to these special interests eight thousand acres of Park land for a storage reservoir. Senator Gooding of Idaho and Representative Addison Smith are making political capital out of the cupidity of some of their constituents. In their campaign for re-election these members of Congress, trustees of the public domain, have pointed to treasure belonging to the American people and have asked Idahoans to support them in their attempt to get it. They may be elected. But they will not get the. treasure. Not if the people of the Nation learn what is going on. And when they learn they will speak so that Congress will hear. The people of the Nation should rouse themselves and say to Idaho, "Hands off!" Idaho has enjoyed unusual favors from Uncle Sam. She has received more money from the Government for irrigation purposes than any other State in the Union. The money she has received amounts to about $46 per capita, which is more than the per capita money circulation of the United States. Some of this money has been repaid; but a debit balance against Idaho still stands to the amount of more than twenty million dollars. And yet Idaho is scheming for more benefits for herself at the expense of the other States. Idaho complains that her farmers near the southwest corner of the Park (which, by the way, is mostly in Wyoming) lack water for their sugar-beet crops in dry seasons. When a State complains that her people are broke and appeals for help, we have a right to look into the way her people spend their money. How, for instance, do they spend their money for automobiles? The "World Almanac" says that- Tennessee has only one for every 11 4/10 persons. If the reader will turn to the cover of The Outlook, he will note in the lower left-hand corner of the map the region shown in this illustration. These meadows are the grazing ground of herds cf elk and moose Virginia has only one for every 81⁄2 persons. While Idaho has an automobile for every 6 2/10 persons. That does not make Idaho look impoverished. Idaho's wealth per capita is more than 161⁄2 per cent greater than the per capita wealth of the United States. That of the United States is about $3,047, while that of Idaho is $3,553. That does not make Idaho look impoverished. their use and benefit, and put it to making more money for the people of two of her counties. Idaho thinks she can make a million dollars a year out of twelve square miles of a National Park. She wants to destroy the scenic beauty of the Bechler meadows, destroy the feeding-ground of elk and moose, destroy one of the finest approaches to the Park's scenery, destroy the setting which nature has made for mountain and cascade, because she thinks she can get more money out of Uncle Sam than she could get by building dams outside of the Park limits. Before ever Idaho was a State this land was reserved for the people of the Nation. No State has a right to it. No special interest has any business there. Americans, keep the looters out. And yet Idaho wants to take land that belongs to the American people, land set aside in perpetuity for The Outlook invites the co-operation of public and press in its campaign for the maintenance of the integrity of Yellowstone National Park The New and Old Germany at Grips T HE old Germany has ventured lately to challenge the new Germany. For the present the German Republic has vanquished the unreconciled supporters of the former German Empire. But the test of strength has shown afresh how perilously narrow is the margin of safety for the new régime in Berlin, how strong and unchanged are the forces of the old régime. The circumstances leading up to an incident which has stirred all Europe were apparently simple. Evidently as a favor to the former Crown Princess Cecilie, General von Seeckt, Chief of the General Staff of the army, permitted the eldest son of the former Crown Prince who bears the name of Wilhelm, like his father and his grandfather, the exiled Kaiser to take part in the recent German army maneuvers. General von Seeckt omitted to inform Dr. Gessler, who as the Minister of Defense was the responsible civilian official. Dr. Gessler is a member of the Democratic Party, which supports the Republic. Both his party and the other pro-republican parties when the facts came out-were immediately up in arms. Dr. Gessler brought the issue before the Cabinet. The result of his protest was that Gen eral von Seeckt tendered his resignation to President Hindenburg. The reactionary Nationalists went frantic with rage. The Week Himself an old Prussian military official, Hindenburg was reluctant to let go such an experienced army chief as von Seeckt. But Chancellor Marx made it clear to the President that the entire Cabinet stood back of the Minister of Defense. He urged the seriousness of the constitutional question whether Germany is in the hands of militarists or republicans. Hindenburg acquiesced, accepted von Seeckt's resignation, and named Lieutenant-General Heye as "Chief of the Army Command." The change means that control of the army really rests with Hindenburg for Lieutenant-General Heye is subordinate in rank to the two army corps commanders, both of whom are full generals. The President, however, has constitutional authority to issue orders to them direct. As an old field marshal, he is considered likely to exercise his prerogative rather than leave control of the army in the hands of a civilian Defense Minister. Back of the incident is all the complicated plotting of the Hohenzollern faction aiming at a return of the former dynasty to power. In this movement the former Crown Princess Cecilie is known to be a leading spirit, moved by ambition for her eldest son. And the re-emergence of Hindenburg as commander of the German armies will hardly be entirely reassuring to the Allies. As Chief Executive he has been notably and scrupulously loyal to his oath of allegiance to the Republic. Yet his personal sympathies inevitably are bound up with the Imperial order which the revolution swept away. So far as the influence of the army on the future course of events in Germany is concerned, everything will now rest with him. General von Seeckt was notoriously an irreconcilable adherent of the old Germany. As Chief of the General Staff he wielded a power for which the civilian Government had seemed unable to call him to account. In his removal the new Germany has won a significant victory. But the difficulty with which the result was achieved has been a warning to all the world that the German military caste remains determined and well organized, only waiting an opportunity to assert itself. Royalty up to Date A HAIR-BOB and a permanent wave -so we learn from the cable despatches are part of the preparations of Queen Marie of Rumania for her visit to the United States. Not one visit of the Queen to the beauty parlors of Paris seems to have escaped the watchful attention of the correspondents. We are assured that when she lands on our shores Queen Marie will look as modern as the most emancipated of American matrons. To be in the mode, and even to encourage or create it, is undoubtedly as much the right of royalty as any of its other attributes as Queen Marie herself has proved more than once before. And certainly it enhances popular |