manufacturers. Undoubtedly, this man's family, friends, and business associates thought his mind was weakening when he set out for Japan, China, and the Philippines with the idea of developing trade for canned goods. Americans at that time knew very little about canned food, and Orientals knew very little about anything that concerned America. This man realized that it would not be feasible for him to force his product immediately on a class of people who had been accustomed to ordering their lives in the same groove for the past thousand years or more. This, however, did not prevent him from personally distributing cans of sardines in native bazaars; anything but a pleasant task, I can assure you, for the smells, yells, and general confusion in the narrow streets and shops that were no bigger than stalls proved a serious handicap when combined with the fact that all business had to be transacted through an interpreter. By the time this man had visited bazaars in Japan and China he was pretty well played out and very glad to reach the Philippines. His early enthusiasm had waned, and after a more or less casual interview, with. an import-andexport firm in Manila he decided to return as quickly as possible to America. Out of his original consignment of sardines four cases remained. These he turned over to the manager of the Manila firm, with the suggestion that they could be distributed in any manner the local representative saw fit. A considerable time passed. The canning official returned to America, and was again immersed in the problems incident to the furthering of the sale of his product. A few orders from China and Japan served to reward him in a slight degree for his valiant efforts to introduce canned fish to those countries. One day a letter arrived from Manila requesting the shipment of a hundred and fortyfour cases to Singapore. Much as the cannery man prided himself on his knowledge of the Far East, he had to hurriedly consult an atlas to find out just where Singapore was located-remember that was a quarter of a century ago. Well, that was the beginning. Year by year the sardine business grew, so that now this same official has but one complaint-he cannot average a large enough pack each year to satisfy the demands. And do not for a moment think that his company has a monopoly on the export of sardines. There are many canneries located along the Pacific coast; Monterey, some eighty miles below San Francisco, is the community where the greatest percentage of fish are they accept the food of their choosing after it has been covered with a carefully measured amount of tomato sauce. A minute copper piece joins other minute copper pieces in the shopkeeper's tin money box, and up the road strolls the contented purchaser, his eyes asparkle with the feast he is balancing on his upturned palm. In the cities better-class natives, such as merchants, office workers, brokers of jute, tea, and rice, go to their favorite shops in the bazaar districts and order a can of sardines, then collect a number of their friends and indulge in an im-, promptu banquet. which these fish are distributed should So it goes. And all because a man had be of especial interest; it emphasizes the old, old story, that mass production and mass distribution—no matter how small the retail price of the article may be― is the surest means of building up a successful enterprise. The packers ship the fish in wooden cases which each contains forty-eight cans. Oftentimes a single transpacific shipment will amount to over a hundred thousand cases, all of which are destined for the countries of the Orient which lie south of the Philippines, for, strange as it may seem, Japan and China have never acquired a marked liking for sardines. Into the ports of Singapore; Pontianak, Borneo; Batavia, Java; Rangoon, Burma; Colombo, Ceylon; and Calcutta, India, goes a portion of each large shipment. Various export houses in these cities take consignments ranging from ten thousand cases down to as few as fifty. Instead of jobbers, each firm has agents in the more remote inland cities and towns. These agents send in orders for ten, fifty, a hundred cases, as few as a dozen tins, and, in the very small villages, one tin. The majority of stores where the sardines are placed on sale are, to our Western eyes, little more than bamboo-matting huts, which huddle by a jungle roadside or front on some swiftly flowing tropical torrent. To these shops go natives in brightcolored garments-Malays, Malay-Chinese, Burmese, Tamils, the Hindus and Mohammedans of a hundred and more races of India; not the coolies, mind you, for coolies live mainly on raw grains and occasionally rice curry; these people who go to buy are the legion of the lower middle class-tailors, cooks, house boys, farmers, metal workers, and a thousand other types of workers. Rarely, if ever, do they buy more than a single fish! Not a single can-a single fish! Sometimes they bargain for half, or a quarter of the delicacy, according to their affluence. On a large wet leaf, four unwanted cases of sardines in Manila twenty-five years ago. Those four cases at current market figures were then worth something in the neighborhood of twenty dollars-surely a small investment for the founding of such a vast export business. There are some people who will say that the growth of the sardine business was a matter of luck. I contend such is not the case any more so than the success with which half a hundred other American products have met with in the countries of the Far East. It must be borne in mind, however, that this business has come gradually during the past twenty-five years, in the face of terrific competition. Yet once the natives were convinced that the taste of American sardines were superior to any other fish they had ever eaten, they promptly vetoed their home-caught variety. This is but another instance of the importance of personal contact in foreign trade. Years of experience in doing" my best to promote foreign trade prove that the yearly visits I make to various world centers, where I call upon business men who have interests kindred to mine, have done more than anything else to bring to pass the culmination of many of my ideals. And surely, if I, a man with more than fourscore birthdays to my credit, can still exert this amount of energy in behalf of my business, a few younger men can do likewise, with the same results. E If we knew the color of their hat-bands, we could tell you whether these were Government troops or revolutionists More Letters from Nicaragua Nicaragua, ACH day starts with the chickens. All the roosters that a cockfighting people gather around them sound the final note of a night that has been made hideous by myriads of dogs, all mangy and half-starved. One of the officers said his hardest job was to keep the dogs awake during the day, so that they would sleep at night. When the clamor has subsided, there is nothing left to do but get up. Therefore each morning before six o'clock I may be seen completing my toilet on the balcony at the end of the room, suspended over the street, where I can watch the native women coming in from the country to the early market. Sometimes it is a whole family, but usually the man stays at home-this, on the assumption that he is not off to the wars. All the produce is carried on the headin wooden trays, gourds as big as pumpkins, or, rarely, in an enameled washbasin. If there is but little to be carried, the youngest carries it; if more, the youngster carries more, and it takes an unusual quantity for some of the cargo to work its way up the line to the heads of the older women. While shaving I take a hand in the marketing for the day, watching the trays as they are carried beneath my balcony. A few eggs here, chicken from another, fruits and red beans are about all that is offered. The other day we had papaya without any lemons or limes to go with it, and to repair the omission at the first opportunity I called to a girl carrying a tray of limes to bring them up. She did not dare run as she wanted to do and she was scared stiff when she got to the top of the stairs. The mother did not expect to see her again, and the relief on the faces of the family was obvious when this small child returned unharmed to the street, having sold several dozens of limes at four cents a dozen instead of at the current price of one cent. Now mother and daughter come under my window daily, with a "Buenas dias" and a tender of the day's prod uce. Both sides are sick of the fighting and talk with longing of the return of the days when they shipped so many heads of cattle, so much dyewood and mahogany, and when the sugar mill was grinding. Not only has the evil of suspended or destroyed business and business plants flattened the pocketbooks of the owners, but there has come in its train the greater evil of enforced idleness or sol diering, a compulsory choice for the hundreds of peon employees. If they cannot work for food and clothes for their families, they take up the red or blue hat-band as a license to acquire by pillage what they formerly helped to create. I March 2, 1927. CANNOT withdraw myself from the horror and misery that rides this poor country. My days are started with tales that if only half true would move a heart of stone, and on until the night one pitiful story is piled on another. This morning before I had had breakfast a poor woman came here to ask for protection in the future, not for justice for the wrongs done her and her niece by thirty beasts of men. Another has had his coffee crop taken from him, the product of his labor for months, and his payment is a blow. Again, I am asked to find out what has been done to a brother since his arrest and disappearance. The 'phone rings, and the outpost reports that some two or three soldiers have robbed a near-by farmer of his horses, tied the women on them, and are starting for the hills; and, "What shall we do, sir?" To all the answer is the same. We are here to stop all fighting that endan gers the lives and property of foreigners. This we will do and no more, let vice and misery multiply among the natives. as it will. Thus, in a country where nature is ready to supply food in abundance and shelter for all, want and fear walk hand in hand. Such is the condition in this Liberal city now in the hands of the Conservatives; it is equally true in town and country controlled by the Liberals. If this savage warfare is directed towards the armed forces of the other side, it falls wide of the mark. In such case there would be danger of a counter-blow, but how can the unarmed and unfriended resist? As a matter of fact, the damage done in the direct warfare between Diaz and Sacasa is negligible. It is the wholesale brigandage that their warfare makes possible that is the bane of the country. Rest assured that as long as the world permits Diaz and Sacasa to quarrel, to wage war in the name of "sovereign right," this savagery will continue until the appetites of man are satisfied. . . . Two reports have just come in. The first tells that a village to the northwest is burning in sight of one of our outposts and that the Liberals are moving on to, another village in the same neighborhood. The next report comes from a village where two Government generals with their respective forces arrive fro the scene of a fight two Chinendega in ruins, the aftermath of civil war days ago. The generals fell into an acrimonious debate as to who was entitled to the glory of the victory over the enemy, and the dispute soon reached such lengths that their men were drawn up on opposite sides of the city's plaza, ready to settle the matter with force and arms. Result: we send more men to the outpost to drive back the Liberals if they should seek to enter here, and the commander of our detachment is directed to disarm both Government forces and to send them out of town unless their nonsense ceases. Such is a day in a revolution. THE March 3, 1927. HE local politico was in to see us today about our nightly patrols. The citizens are anxious that some of our men move around the streets at night by way of discouraging cutting out raids. I have told him that we would patrol, and that the people could rest assured that there would be no fighting allowed around here. I took advantage of the opportunity to ask him to remove the barbed-wire entanglements from the streets of the city and to have the plaza cleaned up. In a few days we expect to have a band organized, and with three concerts a week I miss my guess if the people do not begin to think of something besides the revolution. Now stores are opening, children playing on the streets after nightfall, and a feeling of security pervades the place. I must tell you the sad story of Juan, the beer-seller: Picture us on the day we came, four hundred men loaded like pack-horses, toiling and sweating under a noonday sun, as we spread our tents in a field ankle deep in dust. And never have I seen such dust-a fine, dry, volcanic powder that penetrated everything and left every throat hot, dry, and raspy. Obviously, beer was the remedy, and two beer-sellers appeared. They were both welcomed and richly rewarded. The first was a friend of the general, the second only a plain man with vision; the first held a seat near the mighty, the second had a home in a hovel. But such is the nature of man that the first could see no reason why he should share the golden harvest with the other. Why divide in this manner while holding a seat near the mighty? If the hovel will not claim its own, there is always the jail, guarded by men of the general, and to the jail went the visionary man from the hovel. He writes: Yester, I have been arrested for injustificable cause, the only crime is because I sell beer in the Camp. Now I'm a prisoner with charge of any king, please come to see me. I beg you to do thonthin in my favor in order to get my freedom. Cinserely your JUAN The beer seller. I Assisi, the Italian hill-town that witnessed so many of the dramatic chapters in the life of St. Francis T is more than seven hundred years since that spring morning when a young squire, attired like a prince and mounted on a charger as gorgeously caparisoned as himself, rode down the hill from Assisi on his way to the wars. Assisi was hoary even then, and the hills were festooned with vines and softly gray with the olives, but the marvelous Gothic building which is the city's glory to-day had not even entered Tedesco's dreams, for the one in whose honor it was to be built was that lighthearted boy, who was off to fight for Innocent III. La Verna By MAY ELLIS NICHOLS pened. Had Francis lived five hundred Those were not the days of planes and gas and machine guns; even gunpowder was unknown. War was hardly more than a pageant; every youth of position, ambition, and love of adventure participated in it. The father of Francis Ber nardone-that was the boy's nameshared his son's ambitions, and had Maurice Francis Egan calls the saint spent money lavishly on his accouter- "Everybody's St. Francis," and some ment; his gentle mother, Pica, had ac- one else says he is the best-loved saint quiesced, as is the way of women; and in Christendom. This is not due enhis merry young companions, some of tirely to his sweetness, his gentleness, whom had shared his imprisonment in nor even to his piety. His humor is inPerugia not so long before, welcomed fectious, and no mediæval romance is him to their ranks. They sang their old more fascinating than the simple story rollicking songs as they wound round of his life. Poets love his songs, painters under Mount Subasio and took the road have made him the subject of numberto Spoleto. less pictures, and old and young alike But that night a strange thing hap- have hung on the stories of his wonder 1 ful adventures. Among these tales the outstanding one is the account of the miracle of La Verna, the story of how St. Francis received the stigmata. This is not the time to prove the authenticity of that story, the truth of the miracle. Sufficient to say, as did the young monk in the church of St. Francis at Assisi, as he showed us the sacred manuscript given by the saint to Fra Leone, "This is not a legend; it is a fact." Those who prefer to cherish doubt rather than to enter into the content of belief are referred to Sabatier, the authoritative biographer of St. Francis. He says, simply: "The vision of the Crucified One took fuller possession of his faculties as the day of the Elevation of the Holy Cross drew near (September 14, 1224). Francis doubled his fasting and prayers. He passed the night before the festival alone in prayer. In the rays of the morning sun he suddenly perceived a seraph with outstretched wings. In the center of the vision appeared a cross, and the seraph was nailed upon it. When the vision disappeared. . . Francis perceived upon his body the stigmata of the Crucified." This was really the climax of St. Francis's life, and it seems strange that, while hundreds annually visit Assisi, the place of his birth and death, only the occasional traveler goes to La Verna. One July morning found our little party of five making the start from Bibbiena, which we had reached by leaving the main line from Perugia to Florence at Arezzo, before the dew was off the wayside poppies. Oh, those dazzling Italian mornings! How fresh and fragrance-laden is the air! How every castle-capped hill stands out as if etched in silver on a sapphire sky! First we went careering down the hill into the valley of the Arno. A man was threshing with a flail, women were washing clothes by the side of a mountain brook, great kindly white oxen were the only visible beasts of burden. It was the heart of Italy. Our driver chattered in Italian, and laughed, and sang, and cracked his long whip over, but not on, his galloping horses. We were hardly out of Bibbiena when we began to discern a gray mass silhouetted against the distant horizon, and our driver stretched out his whip toward it and shouted, "La Verna! La Verna!" As we approached, the details of the rock and the building built upon it rapidly pricked out like the developing picture on a photographic film. At the foot of this rock we were forced to leave the carriage, as no road had ever been constructed to the summit. The paved path ran between two - high walls, but the shade was grateful, and the walls were festooned with vines, and every cranny was filled with feathery ferns and bright-tinted flowers, especially the blue and white violets that grow so luxuriantly in Italy. Reaching the end of the path, the merest touch of the bell brought a brother in the familiar rope-girdled brown robe, who looked as pleased to see us as if he had been standing there since daybreak awaiting our arrival. We were ushered into the broad court, and were asked if we would be the guests of the brothers for dinner. The meal was served in a small room by two of the brothers, and was substantial though simple, consisting of meat, vegetables, goat cheese, a sweet, and a relish of pickled mushrooms, which had grown at the very door. Dinner ended, Brother Samuel again appeared-merry, kindly Brother Samuel, who took us to every building, descended with us to every grotto, showed us every cranny and crevice. He had no English, and we had little Italian and hardly more French; but we shall never cease to be grateful for the valiant way in which by picture, gesture, dumb show, and a composite of Italian, French, and even Latin he struggled to make us understand the significance of the sacred things he had to show. Brother Samuel, of La Verna, where tradition tells us St. Francis received the stigmata There are two churches the little Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, supposed to have been begun by St. Francis himself, and a larger one, begun in 1348, to accommodate the increasing number of worshipers. The larger is rich in della Robbias. There are also several chapels, each with its tradiseveral chapels, each with its traditions, its history, and some with art treasures, but most famous of all is the Chapel of the Stigmata, supposed to be built over the exact spot where the miracle occurred. A loggia more than two hundred feet long connects this chapel with the larger church, and four times during each twenty-four hours, three times daily and at midnight, the Friars go in procession from the church to this chapel. This part of the daily service of the Franciscan friars is exceedingly beautiful and impressive. and impressive. Brother Samuel had brought us to the door of the chapel a few minutes before the appointed hour. The first hint of their approach was the faint sound of music in the distance, rising and swelling into a great volume of harmony as they marched two by two, chanting one of the grand old Latin hymns of the Church. There were more than fifty brothers, and the chapel was large enough to accommodate th so we stood reverently outside by the cross, they filed by, e |