particular John Stanton ended there and then. At any rate, if he still lives he is, in fact, another and different man. The first followed a soft, ease-loving, thoughtless sort of life, content to go with the crowd, spending his money as freely as he made it, running to seed spiritually and intellectually, his only ambition being to build up so extensive a business that he could retire at the earliest possible moment and amuse himself-presumably as much as possible at the wateringplaces of continental Europe.

To-day- Well, it is the other and I trust the better John Stanton who writes these pages. Indeed, I not only view my ten months in the Pacific as a long sleep, but I account the whole fifty-two previous years of my life as no less spent in dreaming—the dreaming of the materialistic, essentially selfish, if good-natured, American business man, the dreamer of full-fed dreams. It was only when I stepped out of that transcontinental train that I began to wake up. It was only then that I felt the first faint anticipatory quiver of the shock I was soon to get-the shock of the earthquake that in the next thirty days was to set my brain to reeling, to turn my domestic existence topsyturvy, and to leave me clutching at my heart with weak and trembling hands.

The year 1915 had seen munition and industrial stocks generally rocketing starward; bonds had been strong and trade brisk. We at the office gave the

war, at most, two years to run and capitalized our profits with the rest of the Street.

The demand for ships of wood and iron, for copper, steel, dyes, and machinery was beyond anything hitherto known or imagined. To own a steamboat or a foundry was to be a millionaire. One of our clients had a steel-rolling mill out in Ohio and another in New Jersey. He wanted to get hold of half a dozen more and have a merger. Nothing loath, I undertook the job. For five months I slaved day and night, sleeping most of the time on trains, paying no attention to what I ate, my mind concentrated upon a single object to float the Phoenicia Steel Company. The papers were just ready to be signed when the "peace leak" nearly wrecked the whole enterprise. For two days it looked as though my merger would never merge, as though my eggs would never scramble; and then, the excitement having subsided, the respective treasurers affixed their signatures to the necessary documents, shook hands with one another, and it was done.

That afternoon I sat limp in a leather armchair in Frank Brewer's office and heard my doom from the stern lips of New York's leading nerve specialist.

Stanton," he exclaimed impatiently, "you've just missed a complete breakdown! Twenty-four hours more and I'd have had to order you to a sanatorium. You've got to quit right here and now, give up your

business entirely and go away for a year. No; don't call up your office! You'll do exactly what I tell you or I won't be responsible for consequences. I'll see both your partners-they're old friends of mine. Now go up to the club and take a Turkish bath and a rub. Then drink a pint of champagne and go to sleep. I don't want you to go home. I'll call to see you during the evening."

I did as I was told, including the champagne. Strange to say, I slept. At nine o'clock I woke to find Dr. Brewer and my two partners at my side.

"It's all fixed!" said Morris gently. "I've told Helen she must get ready to leave New York on Saturday."

"But-" I protested dizzily. "There's Margery." "Ought to be glad to get her out of New York!" snapped Brewer. "No eighteen-year-old girl has any business here!"

"And she says she's crazy to go to Japan!" added Lord with a grin.

"Japan!"

"And, by the way," continued my brother-in-law, "Tom Blanchard happened to be in the office when Brewer telephoned this afternoon, and he said he wasn't going back to his place in Hawaii again this year, and that he'd be glad to have you go there and stay-all of you-as long as you want. It's a sugarplantation, you know-smiling, brown-skinned na

tives, hammocks, hula-hula girls, and all that sort of thing!"

"Yes," I nodded. "On the Beach at Waikiki’—I know! You fellows seem to have mapped out my whole future life for me. Well, if you've squared it with Helen and got her to agree to separate her subdébutante daughter from the follies of 1916, I'll go you-to Japan or Java or Jerusalem, for as long as you say, and a day longer!"

And so I went.

My wife, Helen, my daughter, Margery, and I sailed on the Canadian Pacific Steamship Empress of China on December 19, 1916, for the Far East, where our travels, our impressions, and our adventures have nothing whatever to do with the purposes of this narrative.

On the steamer the Canadians and English aboard would have nothing to do with us. Even in the usually friendly atmosphere of the smoking-room I was left to myself, except for a couple of compatriots who agreed with me that American stock with the Allies had gone down badly. Indeed, certain passengers, especially the Canadians, took pains to air their uncomplimentary views of the people of the United States in tones obviously intended to be overheard.

Altogether, I was glad when we got to Yokohama,

and so far as Japan was concerned, I observed personally none of the popular hostility to things American I had been led to believe existed there from my reading of newspapers and magazines in the United States.

After two delightful weeks we took ship from Nagasaki for Manila, where I chartered a government revenue steamer and cruised for six weeks more in the archipelago, visiting some islands where the natives had never before seen an American or even a white man, though owing allegiance to the United States. It was the trip of my life, and, in addition to the small arsenal of head-axes and war-knives lying at the other end of the table upon which I am writing, I carried away with me the emblem of the Sacred Turtle tattooed upon my tummy-which proves, to those who know, that I am blood brother of José Aguinaldo Péjaros and a subchieftain of a tribe with an unpronounceable name, whose members for ugliness leave nothing to be desired.

During this period we received no mail and saw no newspapers, these last, before we left, having been pronounced anathema by Brewer.

"Whatever you do, don't look at a paper for three months!" he had ordered; and I had humbly promised to obey. Indeed, it was no burden to carry out his injunction. I could not have done otherwisethere were no papers to read. In Manila, of course, we