IT is seldom that An American (p. 513) has the opportunity or the knowledge to make so statesmanlike a summary of international conditions as that which occupies the leading pages in this issue. An expert in the fields of finance and government, the writer, who must remain anonymous, has now returned to Washington after months of close and penetrating observation in the other capitals of the world.

Philosopher and journalist, liberal and crusader (when these tags had a meaning), Lincoln Steffens (p. 525) died on August 9, 1936. His trenchant and masculine Autobiography will tell future generations what he and we were like.

The Seven Lively Arts mean much to Gilbert Seldes (p. 531), and so it is with mingled emotions that he regards the approach of Television. Mr. Seldes is the author of fourteen books, the latest of which, Mainland, is a somewhat reassuring survey of the life within our boundaries.

Born in Edinburgh in 1875, William Outerson (p. 542) ran away to sea when he was fourteen. But it was while serving in the Black Watch in the war that he received his Captain’s commission. A firm believer in the adventurous life, he has practised law in Edinburgh, sailed a fourmasted bark around the Horn, globe-trotted through Alaska and the Orient, served an enlistment in the United States Navy during the Spanish War — and now, to cap the climax, he lives in Hollywood.

Elizabeth Morrow (p. 551), poet in her own right, is also the mother of Anne Lindbergh. She contributed three poems to the Atlantic for April 1934.

A twentieth-century Gulliver, Albert Jay Nock (p. 552), for the fun of the thing, holds up the map of Haiti against that of the United States.

Loyal readers of the Atlantic will remember Mary Antin (p. 560) without being told. Brought up within the Jewish pale of a Russian city, she came to this country from a mediaeval background, and while still in her twenties she contributed to the magazine the story of her struggle to grasp the opportunities which America then offered to every immigrant. Her book, The Promised Land, is one which still glows in the memory.

Frederick Winsor (p. 570), the Headmaster of the Middlesex School, has something pertinent to say to those teachers and parents who know that they have an exceptional youngster on their hands.

Greenville, Mississippi, is the headquarters of David L. Cohn (p. 579), and there at first hand he has contended with the pros and cons of share-cropping. As a Southerner, Mr. Cohn also holds very determined views about the tariff — views well expressed in his book, Picking America’s Pockets.

Nature writer and essayist in direct descent from Gilbert White and Richard Jefferies, Henry Williamson (p. 589) has made illuminating contributions to our understanding of the land and its creatures. His novel, Tarka the Otter, was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1930, and of his more recent book, Salar the Salmon (chapters of which first appeared in the Atlantic), Lewis Gannett the critic had this to say: ‘Of all English books of the year 1936, my warmest thanks to Henry Williamson for Salar the Salmon, which I think will be remembered when the year’s bestselling, well-tailored English fiction is all forgotten.’

Gail Hawes (p. 594), who lives on Long Island, appended this footnote to her manuscript: ‘In the household about which I have written in “Spring and Mr. Barnum” the Atlantic Monthly was the only adult magazine subscribed for. I shall never forget the anguish and dismay we experienced when a sick book agent, taken in for the night by my hospitable mother, left at dawn without a good-bye, and with the new and unread Atlantic Monthly! It was an irreparable loss, because, you see, my father could not afford to buy another copy.’ After such a friendly bribe, how could we refuse her first offering?

In view of the coming Exposition, Stephen Leacock (p. 597), Professor Emeritus of Economics at McGill University, wishes to make sure that we have a literal understanding of the French.

Sumner H. Slichter (p. 600) divides his time between the Institute of Economics in Washington and the Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard. He is the author of Modern Economic Society and a well-respected professor of Business Economics.

R. S. (p. 608) is a Boston poet who prefers to conceal his identity between the lines.

North Africa is home to Mrs. Alice Berry-Hart (p. 610), who, with her household, lives on the jump from Carthage to Scotland, and return.

A humanist with no particular chip on his shoulder, Lord Eustace Percy (p. 618), who was President of the Board of Education from 1924 to 1929, goes far to explain the passive but not unresistant policy of England.

A battery commander in the Army of the Confederacy, Major David N. Walker (p. 626) left behind him reminiscences of what it felt like to be Reconstructed.

Our mention of the schoolgirl who traveled with the Atlantic as her chaperon (and inside the orange covers a copy of True Confessions) touched off an amusing and rapid succession of stories, cartoons, sketches, and jokes at our expense. Several, of course, submitted the drawing which appeared in the New Yorker of January 23 and which paid handsome tribute to our Rejection Slip. For each story or drawing accepted for our collection we will pay a dollar. But not for duplicates. To the reader sending in the largest assortment we will award a five-year subscription to the Atlantic. We hope, eventually, to share some of the brighter gems with readers.

Shortly after the war, all London was flocking to the Albert Hall for Lowell Thomas’s illustrated lectures on Lawrence of Arabia. Concerning Eric Kennington’s portrait of Lawrence, in the April Atlantic, Mr. Thomas writes: —

Dear Atlantic, —
Many thanks for the Eric Kennington article. It is superb. Yes, my Albert Hall experience now seems as though it had occurred in some past incarnation. Every time I think about Lawrence I hold my head and moan over my lost opportunities. What a chance I had!
It is quite evident that Lawrence was an exceedingly complex personality. He handled some of his friends in a way that has caused them to look upon me as his arch enemy. Little do they know how intimately he was associated with what I did, the numerous times he came to hear me tell about him in London, and the way he worked with me on my book.
At any rate, I broke the story (o the world, a story which his own countrymen had totally disregarded.
Eric Kennington’s pictures are glorious, and his article is one of the most interesting word pictures of Lawrence that I have ever seen.
LOWELL THOMAS
Rockefeller Center, New York City

The report of the American Foundation Studies in Government on the subject of medical care, which was summarized by Esther Everett Lape in the April Atlantic (‘The Health of the Nation’), has aroused considerable controversy in the ranks of the medical profession. The editor of theJournal of the American Medical Associationhas this to say: —

Dear Atlantic, —
If there is one factor that comes out more obviously from this report than any other, it is the unlikelihood that sickness insurance, either voluntary or compulsory, will answer the problem of medical care suitably for the people of the United States. The outlook would seem to be best for a gradual improvement in medical care by the evolution that has been going on for some time. The extension of preventive medicine, increased funds for preventive medicine, and the improvement of medical knowledge are bound to affect the extent, the severity, and the character of illness in corning years. Any fixed plan that failed to take the certainty of these advances into account would involve organization and expenditure far beyond the actual needs of the future.
From ancient Greeks and Romans, through the statesmen of the Middle Ages, down to modern times, the greatest leaders have stated that the care of the public health should be the first interest of the state. Can it be that American statesmen of to-day fail to appreciate the essential truth of this governmental aphorism, evolved from thousands of years of human experience? The mere fact that the present budget of our government for preventive medicine and public health cannot compare favorably with the amount of money spent on the dole has been offered as one reason for keeping public health in a subservient position. Perhaps the proportions that now exist may some day be reversed — a time may come when the nation will spend $4,000,000,000 a year on preventive medicine and $100,000,000 on unemployment and the dole. It will no doubt then be a far happier nation.
MORRIS FISHBEIN, M.D.

‘I could not be happy in a steel cage.’

Dear Atlantic, —
Et tu, Brute! I had always thought of you as the last stronghold of individualism, and now comes ‘The Modern House’ in your March issue! Though endorsing much of it, I cannot, with its young author, altogether swallow modernism, standardization, and the implications of ‘the machine age.’
His picture of the many specialists contributing to the development of the housing which is to replace our slums is thrilling. Of this I speak with feeling, having lost much sleep coddling two housing projects in the family. Ours had all the contagious ailments which went the rounds in Mr. lckes’s Nursing Home in the Interior, but did not die, thank Heaven, as so many did. (Incidentally, the infant mortality in that Department was so appalling that it utterly disillusioned me as to the efficacy of Federal Housing. It suffers from too many diseases attributable to location and political climate.)
But my divergence from Mr. Coolidge begins when I see the standardization which is so necessary in low-cost housing stamping itself as a modern style upon all houses — whether one likes it or not. I, for one, don’t like it! I like its simplifications and its designing in mass, not façades; but I do not want a ‘period’ house which is stylistic, and that ’s what I think the modernistic house is — a style set by certain European architects, inspired perhaps by Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work I find neither functional nor logical.
Nor do I want to live in a house whose form had its ‘origin in the solution of the problems of the factory, the grain elevator, and the skyscraper.’ I could not bo happy in a ‘steel cage with a skin coating of synthetic screens.’ I do not want to be regimented or treated as a ‘patient’ and have a committee or a federal bureau prescribe what kind of house I shall live in.
And last, but not least, I don’t want to break completely with the past, but rather to evolve intelligently out of the past.
I want my home to express my philosophy of life — perverse though that may be — and form a fitting background for the furniture I choose to live with (which was not designed for hippopotami). Only thus will it function as my house; and a building which does not express its function is — as the Modernists will admit — ‘tripe.’
MARIAN GREENE BARNEY
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Step forward, all you home owners!

Dear Atlantic, —
‘The Gamble of Home Ownership’ by Mr. Reeves in the April issue would seem to leave nothing to hang a doubt on. Yet millions of home owners will probably not accept the soundness of his conclusion.
I have owned four homes in thirty-two years. Sold two at a profit, one at a loss, and face a loss if I sell the fourth. Yet, I believe in owning my home and have reasons, of sorts, for doing so.
A house usually averages to rent for about 10 per cent of its value. That is the figure that landlords try to secure as an average over the years. Mr. Reeves gives an example — a $20,000 place renting at $2040 per year.
Therefore, if I rent a house ten years I have paid the price of it and can prove it by a boxful of receipts. But that is all those rent receipts are good for.
Suppose I do sell it for less than I paid for it? I will get something out of it, surely, and that is more than I can out of the receipts.
Based on the same reasoning is my policy to stop charging myself interest on the home investment after ten years. If a bunch of rent receipts will pay no interest, why be unfair to the house and ask it to pay interest in my bookkeeping?
There are pages more to be written in support of home ownership, but they are not necessary in the case of anyone who has ruefully contemplated one hundred and twenty neat monthly rent receipts before he shoved them into the furnace.
L. C. DOLE
East Orange, New Jersey

‘The Job Ahead,’ as two of our correspondents see it.

Dear Atlantic, —
One of the premises of Marx which I believe is the most fundamental and persistent in the Russian experiment is given by Arthur Kudner in your March issue as. ’The manufacturer who sells an article for anything more than he pays labor for producing it is exploiting labor.’ No belief was ever more false and yet more far-reaching in its effects.
Wealth, from which Wages can be paid, can only be produced by labor, but the amount of wealth which can be produced by labor alone is exceedingly small. If a man picks wild strawberries with one hand and collects them in the other, he is creating wealth or value. If he uses a pail, not his own, the pail represents borrowed capital, and the owner of the pail is entiled to a share in the profits. Thus the berry picker could not keep the entire amount of money for which he could sell the berries. In general the owners of capital, whether it be private indiv iduals here or the government in the U. S. S. R., deduct a certain amount from the value of labor to pay for the use of capital. If the deduction were not permitted, there would be no inducement to permit the use of capital, and to run the risks of loss which are inevitably involved.
In the early Christian Church a troublesome question was the righteousness of loaning money for interest. It was decided that interest was permissible, but excessive interest was to be condemned as usury. We need to make a similar distinction between reasonable deductions from the profits of labor, as interest on the capital invested in land and machinery, and excessive deductions. But it is difficult to see why excessive charges by the gov ernment for the use of its capital and credit are to be preferred to excessive charges by capitalists.
WINSLOW If. HERSCHEL
Chevy Chase, Maryland

Dear Atlantic, —
How wonderfully, yet how simply, Mr. Kudner summarizes the whole relationship of business and the proletarians in his inspired analogy of Mr. Patzel’s prowess at porcine enticement!
‘You have to convince the hogs you have something for them.’ That, he says, is the secret of success.
Let us skip over ihe unkind observation that the analogy does not exactly flatter the 100,000,000 prospective convincees. It is too apt in its essentials to be spoiled by its unintentional frankness.
Clearly the job ahead of business — calling the great erring mass of voters back to the right way of thinking arid voting — is closely parallel to Air, Patzel’s task. Clearly, too, success a both endeavors is a matter of appeal — appeal that builds conviction that the dinner pail on the one hand and the trough on the other are indeed full.
We wonder if Mr. Patzel ever tried his dulcet tones over a feeding trough which for four years had stood largely empty. That would be a test worthy of his championship mettle. He should speak to Mr. Hamilton about it — he knows!
But what a lesson there is in the analogy!
LEO A. SCHMIDT
Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Music in the Grand Central Station.

Dear Atlantic, —
Recent notices in the papers of phonograph recordings made by Ralph Kirkpatrick remind me of several delightful experiences (or of a delightful experience several times repeated) I had in New York City last winter. Perhaps the story may be of interest to you.
Last year I was a senior in Yale College, A friend of mine and I used to go frequently to New York to hear concerts and recitals in which we were interested — those of Schnabel and Toscanini at Carnegie Hall, and the Bennington Chamber Orchestra Series at Town Hall. On these occasions we were often joined by our friend Ralph Kirkpatrick, who introduced us to one of the most unusual spots in New York.
One night Ralph hustled us (somewhat to our bewilderment) to the Grand Central Station ten minutes or so before train time, and look us up a short flight of stairs near the entrance to the tracks. There was a blind marble corridor, fifteen or twenty feet wide and several hundred feel long, empty but for two or three charwomen at the far end. Ralph pulled out several pieces of music paper from his pocket, and we noticed that he was more excited than he is in the greenroom about to play the ‘Goldberg Variations.’
‘Canons,’ he said, and started to whistle allegro moderate ma con brio. After a rest of a beat and a half the corridor took up the canon at the unison. The ensemble was perfect, the music excellent. Ralph shuffled his manuscripts and began another canon in the minor mode. We forgot our train and the charwomen their work. Never was ‘the New Music’ so quickly accepted by both the few and the general. A small audience gathered, and listened with scarcely a Cough, a whisper, or a vulgar tentative yodel. Ralph exhausted his repertoire and repeated several canons as encores.
‘It’s all in the tempo,’ he said later as we were waiting for the early morning milk train. ‘You write a good canon at the unison and ascertain the necessary Maezel’s Metronome marking, and that’s all there is to it. But it takes a lot of rehearsals. And remember, the form is n’t that of the “ Echoes” of Purcell and Bach, where one part pauses and the other chimes in with a wisp of the preceding figure; it’s a full-fledged two-part canon at the unison for whistle and Grand Central Station.’
Our trips to New York were made the rest of the winter with an added zest, for Ralph always would have several late opera in his catalogue, the first performance of which we would hear under the general musical direction of the composer.
If you think that there are among your readers those who have not forgotten their counterpoint, and can compose a strict two-part canon (and strict it must he — here is no shuffling of your crotchets and your minims!), who can whistle, and who at times take the 11.50 or the 12.50 out of Grand Central Station for Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, and points north, you perhaps would like to print this letter in your columns. It will show such readers the not too circumscribed possibilities of a musical entertainment in which, I believe, Samuel Pepys himself would have participated ‘with the greatest ecstasy.’
DAY THORPE
Bethesda, Maryland

Did it always have ‘the same yellow cover’?

Dear Atlantic, —
I recently spent five years teaching thirty miles inland from Canton, China. I always had my sister forward the Atlantics after she had read them. When I was packing to leave for America, my servant, a woman who could neither read nor write, asked me if I intended leaving my book with the yellow cover. She pointed to it on the mantel.
I told her I did intend leaving it for other teachers to read. She shook her head woefully and said, ‘I do hope other teachers are smarter than you.’
‘Why?’ I asked, amused.
‘Well, you’ve been reading that same book with the same yellow cover since I came four years ago, and you’ve just now finished it.’
GERTRUDE MITCHELL
Portland, Oregon

The letter of rejection in a new guise.

Dear Atlantic, —
Inspired by Richard Sheridan Ames’s ‘The Art of Pleasing Everybody,’ I conceived an idea which might have aided the radio industry in attaining its long-sought goal. Accordingly, I addressed a letter to one of the big broadcasting companies to say that I had such an idea (and its purpose) and would be pleased to explain it, if they were interested.
A prompt reply was received in the following language: —

Our personnel have considered and discussed practically every radio broadcasting idea that could be conceived. It accordingly follows that 99 per cent of the suggestions that are made to us by outside parties are rejected because they are not new with us and have been considered previously.

We do not solicit ideas and prefer that any ideas for radio programmes be submitted only in the form of a complete dramatic script ready for broadcast. Ideas are not property and are only worth while to the originator if they can be adapted and put in use. Once in use they are in the public domain.

Thank you for writing us in this connection. Cordially yours . . .

I therefore hasten to suggest that you so advise Mr. Ames, and most certainly your subscribers, lest some other misguided individual waste thought or postage on this matter.
Can this be the death-rattle of the New Art?
EDWARD G. BURKE
Newark, New Jersey

‘Little brother’ to Allen Wood’s ‘Town Triangle’ in the JanuaryAtlantic.

Dear Atlantic, —
The Triangle into which Mr. Allen Wood lures us for such an interesting and colorful walk has a little brother. Our farm in Pennsylvania has a triangular swamp that fits neatly into the farthest corner of the pasture. There is a mad little brook that goes rushing through, throwing off fresh water that finds quiet, deep holes in which to lie and stagnate. Our Triangle waves a tiger lily here and there, although its favorite flag seems to be the military cattail.
To me our swamp is most enticing in the autumn, when its gypsy gown taunts the harvested fields and teases the less brilliant pasture lands around. It was most intimate to me in the early mornings when I used to wade into its deeps with high boots and a big basket to pick the waxy and fresh cowslips while a catbird on a near-by rotting fence serenaded me and an invisible bullfrog croaked hoarsely, keeping me nervous lest I step on him or find him in the clumps of cowslips. One of the swamp’s greatest treasures to me has been the nest of large, beautifully speckled eggs that I unearthed among the dried stalks and matted grasses.
Oh, that practical souls would cease draining our swamps for the sake of cultivation and let their w ild beauty ramble on in its glorious profusion!
JEAN BARLOW
Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio

And here, in original form, is a contribution by a ninth-grade pupil of Rochester High School, Rochester, Minnesota, to whom Gertrude Stein’s ‘Butter Will Melt,’ in the February issue, was read aloud.

COBINSON RUSOE

ONCE upon a time there lived on a far away island a queer man named Cobinson Rusoe. Now don’t misunderstand me. It is n’t Robinson Crusoe because this man’s name is Cobinson Rusoe. He did not have a servant named Friday because Friday was Robinson’s servant, not Cobinson’s. The entire island belonged to him because he had explored the island and no one else lived on the island so the entire island belonged to him. He could n’t remember how be came to this island because he could n’t fly or swim and he did not know what a boat was.

This isle was a desolate spot and offered very little amusement but Cobinson always had his five senses and could think of something to do. On Sundays he always lay and bathed in the cool, refreshing water which surrounded the island because an island is n’t an island unless it is surrounded by water. Now all water is n’t cool and refreshing and this water would n’t be cool if it were boiled and if it were n’t cool it would n’t be refreshing, but this water was cool and refreshing so Cobinson lay and bathed in it.

On Tuesdays when he awoke he was always very hungry so he ate whatever he could find because he had to find the food before he could eat it. It was either bananas or cocoanuts depending upon which was nearer his reach because Cobinson was very lazy and did not like to stretch his limbs very far.

Now on Wednesdays after eating bananas or cocoanuts whichever had been nearer his reach he washed his clothes because it is difficult to prevent spilling when you are eating while reclining. He used sand and the cool, refreshing water because there was no hot spring or stove to furnish hot water and be had never heard of soap and very likely would n’t have known how to use it if he had had lire soap but he did rr’t have the soap to use because you see poor Cobinson had just been dropped on this lonely place.

On Thursdays he rested because he had worked very hard on previous days and needed the rest because he was tired.

Friday was the day set aside to clean his house. Although he did not have a house he called the haven under the largest palm tree his ‘house’ because that was where he ate and slept. On cleaning day he gathered fresh bananas and cocoanuts and laid down fresh palm leaves for his bed.

Every Saturday he took a trip to some distant part of the island if the weather was n’t too hot. But the sun shone on this island very brightly so the weather was often very hot. On many Saturdays t he trips had to be postponed. But one Saturday Cobinson took a trip because it was not too hot to take a trip and he discovered a large bush covered with black, luscious berries. He tasted a berry and decided that it was very good so he removed his stockings which he had made out of shirt sleeves because one day if had become too hot to wear the shirt sleeves and he filled the two stockings with the black berries. Cobinson then started for his ‘house’ with his lovely black berries eating a few as be walked along.

When he reached his destination he sat down and ate the remaining berries which was one full stocking full because he had eaten the contents of the other stocking on his journey home. As Cobinson sat eating the black berries his thoughts were on tomorrow which was his bath day. But Cobinson was not to have another bath for he ate many black berries, and that night he was very sick but he could not call a doctor to give him castor oil because Cobinson was all alone on the island so there was no doctor to call.

No one knew when Cobinson died, not even his parents or friends because he did n’t have any parents or friends. No one knows where the island is so no one has ever gone to the island and Cobinson is still all, all alone.

Accompanying two very interesting manuscripts recently sent to theAtlanticwas the following note which we think worth sharing, particularly with those readers who early acquired ‘theAtlantichabit.’

Dear Atlantic, —
To be sure your readers know that we in Mississippi do not spend all of our time chasing Negroes with bloodhounds or having Legrees lash them in the cotton fields; although my mother about decided ten or twelve years ago that you thought so.
I was just a small boy, but I remember Dad and Uncle’s teasing her because she said that she was going to write to you about an article dealing with a Negro hunt in Mississippi. They said she just w anted to get her name in the Atlantic.
She did not write. Her protest took the form of not reading your magazine for months. Finally Dad said, ‘It is no fun to read the Atlantic if I can’t discuss it with you, so I guess I’ll just drop my subscription after this year.’
Mother must have done some real hard thinking, for she decided that it was narrow not to allow the other man to enjoy his opinion; or perhaps it was love for Dad; anyway she began to read the Atlantic again and has read it ever since — when she could procure a copy.
No, she does n’t subscribe for it now. Since Dad’s death she has had the responsibility of trying to educate us two boys, with the result that she has done without many things some of which she not only wanted but needed. I felt that the Atlantic was among the latter, so last year when I was required to have it for my English at the university I saved all my copies and took them home to her. And did she enjoy them!
Please pardon me if this sounds like a little boy’s letter to a long-lost and lately found uncle. I am in reality a young man studying at a university, but writing about Dad and Mother and the Atlantic carried me back to the time when they discussed your opinions in such a way that I thought of you as one of their most intimate friends.
C. G. PROSPERE
WASHINGTON, Mississippi

The author of the following letter, a former contributor to theAtlantic,has been handicapped for years by certain physical limitations. She has developed, a friend informs us, ‘a philosophy of the molehill, so to speak, which seeks the comedy and tragedy of life within the limits that handicaps have set.’ She writes of the difficulties encountered in making photographs to illustrate a children’s book on the honeybee.

Dear Allie, —
The other Sunday afternoon near two o’clock and before we had had our dinner, Mother called to me, ‘The bees are swarming!’ I received the news with joy and dismay mixed. With joy because here was a fine chance to get a good swarm picture; it was Sunday, no classes to claim ray time; and it was afternoon — the light would be perfect. The dismay was over my costume, for I was clad in embroidered silk lounging pyjamas much too elegant for handling swarms. But I snatched a queen cage from the cupboard and rushed out, embroidery and all. I arrived in time to see the queen come forth. Since her wing had been clipped weeks before, it was a simple matter to get her into the cage. Then, as the bees were still rushing out, I judged that I should have time to run in, undo the twenty-two fastenings of those convenient pyjamas, and get into something more suitable.
When I returned to the hive, the swarm was still in the air. Fine. Nothing could stop me now from guiding those bees to the oak branch I had selected days before. There, with the swarm hanging just at the right height against a perfect background and lighted by the slanting rays of the afternoon sun, I would produce a masterpiece of photography. Such a chance might not come again for a year. I picked up the cage — and groaned aloud. It was empty. In my haste I had not closed it properly. But clipped queens have a way of crawling about on the ground in front of the hive. I began searching eagerly, hoping to find the one that had escaped before the swarm missed her and came back to the old home. I examined every inch of ground for several feet from the hive. She was not there. In despair and disgust I turned away thinking, ‘I’ll go light the smoker and open the hive. Of course she has n’t gone inside, but — ’ Then away around behind the hive my eye caught a suspicious little knot of bees in the grass. I pounced upon it and poked it with my finger. There, sure enough, was the lost queen. In a few seconds I was over by the lemon trees holding the caged queen high among the flying bees. Presently bees began settling on the cage and on my hand. I walked slowly to the place where I wanted them to cluster and tied the cage among the leaves.
At that moment I had no doubt that in a few minutes the entire swarm would be clustered ready for photographing. I went into the house, buttoned the dress I had merely thrown on, collected the chair, stool, and cracker box that I used for a tripod, also the old coat that serves as headcloth, and the camera.
Then I started carrying the paraphernalia out to the swarm. As I neared the tree I noted with satisfaction that the air was clear of flying bees; doubtless I had a fine cluster awaiting me. But when I arrived where I could see them, a measly little double handful of bees clung to the cage; all the rest had gone back to the hive. I decided to try shaking the bees from the combs on to the ground under the caged queen, hoping that they would be called by her odor and cluster on the branch around the cage. I had tried that unsuccessfully the week before, but those bees were not trying to swarm. Perhaps these would behave differently. I began the tedious task of carrying each comb the seventy feet or so from the hive to the tree, shaking off the bees, and carrying it back again. Each time some of the bees stayed with the queen and some went back to the hive. I kept on until I had carried all the eight combs in the broad-chamber at least twice and some of them three times. Finally I had a very respectable swarm hanging in the tree.
By that time it was nearly three-thirty and only about fifteen minutes remained before the shadow of a tree would fall on the cluster. Bat fifteen minutes would be enough, and I set to work arranging chair and stool and BOX and camera, pleasantly excited by the certainty of success. Then, with the coat over my head and the golden-brown bees beginning to show clear and bright on the ground glass, I suddenly felt faint. Too much running about on an empty stomach. I tried to hurry, but it was no use; I had to stop and lie down on the ground.
That was the darkest moment of the afternoon. To fail after so much effort, and with success so sure. I struggled desperately to overcome the faintness quickly; I propped my feet up on the chair, drank a glass of buttermilk Mother brought me, fanned myself with a hat, and breathed deeply, now and then squinting anxiously at the narrow strip of blue between the sun and the treetop. And I am glad to be able to give this little near-tragedy a happy ending after all. I got up presently, and, by working fast, took two very good pictures of that swarm in the last five minutes before the shadow fell upon it.
FLORA MCINTYRE
Pasadena, California