and has not only enjoyed prosperity, but has given some of the noblest examples to the world. In America large numbers of volunteers have been raised among the Czechs, Jugoslavs, and Poles who had emigrated, and now go to fight against their old rulers in the name of American freedom, which they have enjoyed. (I myself saw the departure of one thousand Serbians, still subjects of the Emperor, who left the State of Pennsylvania to fight in the ranks of the Allies.)

There is a strange comparison to draw between Austria-Hungary and the United States of America. Both are a mixture of races. But opposite principles have brought opposite results. One nation was formed with the free consent of its people, the other is a feudal construction imposed by force. One is clean and prosperous, the other corrupt and decaying. One is strong and growing, the other self-disintegrating.

I shall not quote the many liberal writers who have tried to reveal what the Austro-Hungarian Empire is made of and made

for. Let me only say that I am surprised that a larger publicity was not given to the following statements, which are to be found in "Die Freie Zeitung," organ of the German democrats who emigrated to Switzerland (October 30, 1917): "The interior composition of Austria-Hungary was the source of all European troubles, and will continue to be if the monarchy subsists in one form or another. . . . Austria's dissolution is the only way of making its democratization possible. . . . To let Austria persist after this war, through some petty political 'opportunism' which only the Governments know and not the peoples, would be to betray the future peace.'

To-day the whole world, which was almost unanimously indifferent about it in 1912, is awakened. Every one knows that "there is something rotten in the Empire of Austria. In fact, the whole thing is rapidly crumbling into something else. The question now is this: Will that "something else" be established by us, without us, or against us?

46

“A

RE you part Scotch ?" I asked. "No, sir," said Harry; "I'm Scotch, all Scotch."

Harry Campbell was serving his third term in an institution for the reformation of delinquent boys. But reformation didn't seem to take with Harry. Every time he was paroled, back he came again in a short time, a little "harder" than before. A third term was too much for a boy" all Scotch." He chafed under institutional restraint, longing for his old "pals" and the lawless freedom of the street.

Three times and out-out with a clean getaway. The idea took entire possession of his mind-all through the day, in school, at work, in bed at night. For six weeks Harry planned and plotted to escape.

He had known many other boys who had tried to get away, only to be brought back ignominiously by the neighboring farmers, always on the lookout for the five-dollar bills offered as a standing reward for the return of runaways.

But Harry was "all Scotch," and he had thought it through to the end. He must get some money somehow and some clothes not recognized by the alert farmers as institution uniforms. A natural-born leader, Harry had let into the plot three other inmates and had sworn them to secrecy.

The plot had failed-completely failed-and Harry was in a peck of trouble, marooned in a big dormitory, securely fastened to a steam-pipe with a bracelet and chain.

Here it was that I first met Harry Campbell.

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I'm Scotch-all Scotch," was his reply to my first question. Bit by bit he told me the truth-the whole truth-about the plot, taking all the blame to himself; how for about six weeks he and three other "guys" had been planning to make a getaway-planting a hatchet in one place and an iron in another to have them handy when the best time came; how they had been on the point of "knocking out" the house master several times, but something interfered. Harry denied that they ever thought a blow with such a weapon might kill. They planned only to stun him, then steal his money and his keys, and with his keys unlock the closet where the clothes of the incoming boys were stored, change from their uniforms, and make a break for liberty.

One Sunday morning as the boys were dressing, an Italian boy, egged on by Harry, approached the house master from behind while seated and struck the blow. At the sight of the blood which spurted from a scalp wound Tony dropped his weapon and rushed to the wash-room for a wet towel to stop the bleeding.

Did you say, "Hit him again, Tony?" I asked. "Yes," said Harry," but the guy was so scared at the sight of blood he wouldn't do it." I was stumped. Here was a boy of sixteen with a face as hard as any crook's at forty. For half an hour he had

promptly answered every question I had asked, without so much as the flicker of an eyelash; no regret, no whimpering, no show of feeling of any kind. But the plot was so elaborate, so unusual, and so bold that I knew I had before me the making of a first-class crook or a fine and forceful man. How could I crack that Scotch shell?

Turning to leave him, I said, "Harry, do you think I am your friend?" When the answer came, quickly, "Yes, sir," I knew that sooner or later I would get him—but how?

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"At the meeting of the trustees to-night," I said, “ they will probably vote to send you to the reformatory, because they think your influence over the other boys here is bad. I will see you again after supper before the meeting of the trustees." And then I left him.

A Scotch boy can do a lot of thinking in two hours; but when Harry Campbell stood before me again I could see no change whatever in his appearance. His jaws were set and his face was as hard and expressionless as before.

"Harry," I said, " tell me about yourself. Where does your father live?" "In

with a woman who isn't my mother." "Where does your mother live ?"

66 In

with a man who isn't her husband." "Where do you live when you are not here?"

"I go to my father's and he kicks me out, then I go mother's and she kicks me out.'

to my

At a loss to know just what to say next, I ventured, "Do you love your mother, Harry?"

"I hate her," he said, with surprising emphasis. Here was an opening, and I was not slow to take advantage of it.

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Harry, you told me this afternoon that I was a friend of yours, and so I am. You tell me now that you hate your mother. Let me tell you something. I am three times as good a friend of yours now as I was before you told me you hated your mother."

Harry seened just a little puzzled, and for the first time showed the slightest interest. I went on, looking him straight in the eye along my extended finger.

"I once had a mother. Every good thing that ever came to me has been on account of that mother."

His Scotch shell cracked-just a little, but enough; my hand touched his elbow-only slightly-he was Scotch, you know. The unfamiliar, sympathetic, human touch reached the hidden spring of Harry's soul-his eyes filled with tears.

"You're always getting in bad and you're up against it now just because you never had the kind of a mother mine was.' At those words the fountain of his Scotch soul gave way in tears; unconscious and unaccustomed tears ran in streams down

Harry's impassive face-not a whimper or a motion of his hand to brush them away.

"Do you want the trustees at the meeting to-night to send you to the reformatory?"

Yes, sir," came the unexpected reply.

"Why is that?" said I.

"'Cause everybody here's got it in for me." "What makes you think that's so?"

"'Cause some of the guys say I'm a 'stinker' and Mr. Stanton called me a

"Well, what do you think about it yourself? You might have been a murderer; can you blame them much?"

6

"Do you think you have been punished enough, Harry?" I asked, expecting the usual reply.

"No, sir," came the nervy answer through his tears.

Why do you say, 'No, sir,' to that?"

""Cause of the thing I done."

"Then you think it was pretty bad yourself, do you?” "Yes, sir.'

"Now, Harry, listen to me. If the trustees vote to-night to send you to the reform school because they think you're too hard' for this place, you will be one of the youngest boys there among five hundred pretty tough guys-you'll be put wise to a lot of crooked things. You'll be a real crook when you get out, and stay a crook all your life, probably land in State's prison later on. Do you want to be a crook, Harry?"

No, sir," came the emphatic reply.

66 Honest now, do you want to be a man?" With no less emphasis he replied, "Yes, sir."

"Well, Harry, I'm going to try to-night to get the trustees to give you another chance. Before I go away to-morrow morning I will send for you again. I'll have just one more question to ask you."

It was decided that night to postpone action for thirty days and give Harry another chance. The next morning a changed boy stood before me. The hard, haunted, desperate look, as of some wild animal at bay, had vanished. The tears began to flow down his softened face before I had spoken a word.

"The question I want to ask you is this: If no one will have it in for you,' do you want to stay here and get another chance to make a man of yourself?"

That Scotch lad-all Scotch-who told the truth, the whole truth, took all the blame, and then took his punishment like a man, without a whimper, and wanted more because he thought he deserved it, the hardest guy among six hundred, stood before me, the tears again streaming down his face, and in a voice scarcely audible replied, "Yes, sir."

At the time Harry was given another chance a duck pond was just being made into a large swimming pool. He was put to work with other boys building a cement wall around the pool and laying the bottom of the pool with cement.

Our Scotch lad was a husky boy; he loved to work, and very soon assumed the leadership of his working gang. A little later on, to the surprise of all, the gang did not knock off at four o'clock when play time came, but willingly worked on till supper-time, at six o'clock. A week or so went by; bedtime came; the house master was astonished to discover his flock was "shy" about a dozen boys. A hasty search located them at the swimming pool hard at work under the leadership of Harry Campbell.

Gradually the smiles broke through Harry's mask as the work rapidly progressed. Now and then he talked a little. The swimming pool was finished by the end of June, filled with clear water, and the boys-three hundred of them-shouting and laughing, Harry Campbell in the lead, plunged in.

As a means of grace" for all the boys the swimming pool was a huge success, but for Harry Campbell it was indeed a new birth. At their first meeting after the pool was finished the trustees sent for the boys to whom belonged the chief credit for the rapid and excellent work they had done.

Into the board room marched a dozen or more boys behind their leader, the justly proud and happy Harry Campbell, his upright bearing and cheerful countenance in strange, almost amazing, contrast to his dejected and sorrowful appearance in the same room only three months before.

In a short time Harry was paroled for good behavior and went, at his own request, to a place where no one would know him. Harry looked me up soon after the first pay-day came around, proud in a new cap and radiant over a brilliant new necktie, paid for with the first money he had ever earned.

Conscious of a new-born self-respect, he said: "Don't let the parole officer come to see me ever. I can make good faster if he never comes around."

"Some fine day, Harry," I said, "you'll wake up and find you've made a real man of yourself."

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"A Scotchman-that's the kind of a man you mean, I suppose." Say, Harry, how would you like to have me tell you a real 'honest to God' Scotch story?"

"All right," said Harry.

He seemed eager to hear it. There was a reason why I told it to him. Perhaps there is as good a reason why I should tell it here. "It is something that happened to me in Edinburgh when I was just a few years older than you are now-how I came to have a Scotch mother. You see, I have had two mothers of the right kind, so of course it has always been easy for me to be good. "When a kid's three thousand miles from home in a big city like Edinburgh, as I was once upon a time, day after day seeing only strange faces, by and by you get sort of lonesome and you want to have somebody smile at you and say, 'Good-morning.' For more than a week nobody smiled at me except the collie dogs. Every little while one would come along and find out with his nose what kind of a guy I was, then let me smooth his head while he smiled back at me by wagging his tail. It's lots of comfort to have a dog smile at you with his tail when you're lonesome.

"One day in Grey Friars-that's an old burying-ground in Edinburgh-I met a Scotch woman. Her hair was gray. She seemed to be about the same age as my own mother in America. Perhaps she knew I was a little homesick, and she just wanted to be kindly. Anyway, we got to talking as we walked along with her little party.

"What the guide said about the dukes and the lords who were buried there I have forgotten. The place was full of themmust have planted one on top of the other sometimes, I guess.

"But there's one little grave there, Harry. People come a long way to see that little grave, hardly more than a foot long. They leave more tears on that little grave than on all the other graves put together."

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Baby's grave?"

"No. Just a dog's grave. Bobby-Grey Friars Bobby-they call him. Some one wrote a whole book about that dog. One kind lady built a monument to Bobby just outside the gate.

"It's funny, isn't it," said I, "that people should have forgotten all those swell guys who were buried there and only remember and weep over the grave of that little Scotch dog? Believe me, Harry, that dog had a heart! When his master died, he just came and lay down on the grave and moaned. He didn't sleep. He wouldn't eat a thing the children brought to him; he was just skin and bones when he died of a broken heart."

"Gee! but that was some dog! Good night!" said Harry. "Sure that was some dog, but let me go on about the old Scotch lady-she was some mother, too!

"The next day and the next, I went around with that little party seeing all the sights of Edinburgh. From this time on I'm going to be your Scotch mother,' said Mrs. Henderson. 'I want you to come, laddie, and live at my home as long as you stay in the city. Now that I am your Scotch mother, you must obey me and come right away.'

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After I had lived with my good old Scotch mother nearly a month the time came to say good-by.' As I was going away I said, 'How can I ever pay you back for all the kind things you've done for me? You don't need to; just pass them along to some one else,' she said. 'Sometime you may meet a Scotch laddie who's in trouble. Help him out-that's the way you can pay me back.""

"Then that's why ?" said Harry. "Yes," said I. "That's why.

As for the story of Harry himself, let me add that promotions and better jobs for him came along in quick succession. One day Harry appeared in a brand-new soldier's uniform. To-day he is "Somewhere in France."