submitted by an unknown woman writer had been written thirty years ago and that the author was now in the alms-house. Through his column he interested outsiders who bought many of her books and in this way a goodly collection was secured.

This same spirit of kindliness is characteristic of many of these writers who interest themselves in humanity. Mortimer Lewis of the Houston Daily Post is endearingly termed "Uncle Judd" by hundreds of orphans for whom he has found com

fortable homes. This placing of orphans is with him a personal philanthropy and he uses his column to find the proper foster parents. To a woman in Pennsylvania who wished to adopt "a friendless, destitute boy of sixteen," he wrote: "What you are looking for is a hired man."

Like Mr. Adams with his "letters to Dulcinea," Don Marquis, who first assisted Joel Chandler Harris on the Uncle Remus Magazine and later ran "The Sun Dial" on the New York Evening Sun, chose the ir

I studied German and Greek the same year at school, you know; and of course, while the two languages are really quite different they have that one point about them in common, you know that the letters most of them are very different looking from English letters. It's odd, isn't it how one finds these basic similarities in quite different things?

You know that principle runs through the entire cosmos. It makes up to one for so many things, too, doesn't it? Like the law of compensation. Don't you just dote on the law of compensation? Newton discovered it, you know when the apple fell from his son's head -or was it William Tell?-and then Emerson wrote his beautiful poem about it and then Hubbard took it up in a serious way.

Oh, to understand! Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself: "Have I understood to-day? Or have I failed?"

And this is the way Franklin P. Adams does it in his "Letters of Dulcinea :" Grayce dear :

Helen came up here Saturday. She isn't much to look at but she's one of the best hearted girls I know. And she has stacks of

girl friends. You know, if a girl hasn't got girl friends there must be something wrong, That Princeton boy was around last night and he said the same thing was true of men and men friends. I guess college brings out everything a man has in him-either makes him or breaks him.

He also used to know Helen when they lived in Pittsburg. How small the world is! There's only one trouble about the table here. It's like a restaurant and you always know what's coming. If I can have good bread and butter that's all I need. There goes the luncheon bell, so no more from your

DULCINEA.

P. S. There's another boy here whom I met last summer. I can't think of his name. I never forget a face, but I simply cannot remember names.

The chief reason for making the foregoing quotations is that they show typically what one might call the 1915 styles in humor. Other selections from a long list of spirited, popular humorists of the present decade might be made as readily, dozens of them. Such writers as Charles Battell Loomis, W. D. Nesbit, E. W. Howe, William Allen White, Walt Mason, Gelett Burgess, Strickland W. Gillilan, Wallace Irwin, Ellis O. Jones, Thomas L. Masson, Burges Johnson and a host of others deserve more complete recognition.

One more, however, and he one of the younger exponents of true American humor must conclude the list, Irvin S. Cobb of Paducah and New York. He in full measure may be named as typical. With him dwells the power to bring tears or smiles, to search hearts and find the truth, to preserve a kindly philosophy and a forbearance even while he uncovers the false, all these essential qualities of the humorist in the best sense.

IT was in the air! There had been no

important communiqués for two weeks. Even the Dardanelles appeared to hold second place in the general expectation of something more important, which was just about to happen.

When one asked: "What is it?" Ministers and diplomats smiled; under-secretaries shrugged their shoulders and looked exceedingly pleased. Others, holding less important official positions, allowed one to surmise it; others even whispered it; and whether the whisper came from the attachés, from the aids de camp, or from the habitués of the club, it was always one word, and the same word: "the Dutch."

I talked with my friend, M. von Marsten, who had just come from the Low Countries and who was, I know, in touch with the

Cabinet Ministers and Queen Wilhelmina's Court. He said: "No one can prophesy what will happen, but everything is ready; even the Prince Consort is not now admitted to the Cabinet meetings."

At Hôtel Meurice, I met an American friend of many years' residence in Holland. He had just come from The Hague. In answer to my question, he said: "Dutch anger is red hot. Politicians won't be able to keep the lid on much longer."

An Englishman who had just come with important dispatches from London, said: "Watch the Dutch!"

The positiveness of this laconic method. of giving no information was getting on my nerves. I devised all sorts of excuses to talk again and again with the Dutch Minister. In one conversation he inciden

tally remarked: "Yes, we are stating officially that we have but 250,000 men mobilized, but in reality we now have 400,000 on the frontier."

That was enough. I determined to leave for Rotterdam on "personal business" as soon as I could get the forty different types of passports necessary to leave Paris, to cross the Channel, to get into and out of London, and to run over to Rotterdam. It was a long and tedious journey, but it was worth it.

Everywhere in Rotterdam I found an air of suppressed feeling and of intense activity. The Beurs station was packed. The Groote Markt was crowded with people and produce. At Gouda the brickyards are employing more men than ever before. At Utrecht the old Rhine and the Vecht (the two rivers by means of which the Rhine empties into the sea) and the two great canals were all crowded with commerce boats sunk to the waterline. In Amsterdam the Dam was busier than ever, and the lines

before the windows in the Bank of the Netherlands were indicative of extraordi

nary business. In Haarlem the factories along the Spaarne are employing all the men they can get; some are running night and day. At the Vieux Doelen, at The Hague, I met von Hoorn, who simply remarked: "We are ready."

Holland is a beehive. All the ports, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden, Schieden, Delft, and Hoorn show an activity never before seen in Dutch cities. I knew the Hollanders to be a slow people, slow in thought, slow in motion. I now find they can hustle "à la mode Américaine."

All western Holland is one gigantic storehouse filled with everything necessary for the support of the Dutch people; with a surplus sufficient to meet the needs of an army during a nine months' campaign. All eastern and southern Holland is one great armed camp from the most northeastern boundaries, opposite Emden in Germany to

Bergen-op-Zoom, north of Antwerp. Preparations have been steadily and uninterruptedly going on since the outbreak of the

war.

Holland has imported during the last eight months many times the amount of raw and manufactured materials she usually imports during a similar length of time. It has been supposed in Norway, in Sweden, and in America that this surplus of materials was being secretly sent into Germany.

While it is true that a large quantity of copper, cotton, wheat, and medical supplies have found their way up the Scheldt and up the Rhine, yet the portion which has crossed the border into Germany is indeed small compared with the amount that has been placed in storage within Holland itself.

Holland has made importations of wheat, canned meats, and other prepared food products, not only from England and America, but she has also imported through her northern ports great quantities of fish

and cheese and cereals from Norway and Sweden. The storage houses at Hartingen, Stavoren, Campen-in fact, all the ports on the Zuider Zee, are filled with such products.

Moreover, Holland has been buying ammunition from Norway and Sweden and America, and even from England herself. Shoes, socks, and woolen shirts have been imported from America, while quantities of woolen cloth have been shipped across from Liverpool. Nickel, copper and gasoline have been imported in great quantities from America and Canada, and much of that imported still remains in the country.

Not only has Holland prepared as far as supplies are concerned, but earthworks and trench fortifications have been constructed along the west bank of the Meuse from Mook to Roermond, a distance of fifty miles, and on the east bank of the Meuse from Roermond to Maestricht, a distance of twenty-five miles.

Moreover, the Dutch nation has stead