T

HAT greatest of golf essayis Walter Hagen, once said that "the nearer the hole, the toughe the match." This was a long time ago, a time ago when Hagen was not his present "snooty" self, but just coming along. He has probably forgotten that statement, but he has lived up to it in full measure. So that now the time to watch Hagen is when he is off the line from the tee and has to plunge one gorgeous stocking into a water hazard, so that he may make use of a "rescue" iron. The occasion of the important statement was a match away out in San Francisco just

Essays in Golf

By PEREERT REED (Right Wing)

swer was that if e went over the mark at Del Monte head a better than even chance to subdown on the Exposition course. No greater putting than he accomplished that day has ever been seen by the prince of all putters. Since that time match after match of the first magnitude has been won by putting, the great putts led up to by the dead approach to the pin.

T is in just this way that the big

Monte, to be exact. It is a pretty course, and a flat course, a course that, free from wind, puts something of a premium on putting. Hagen was playing a few preliminary rounds in which his putting seemed to be just a little over-ambitious. He was not merely inches, but feet past the hole every time. I asked him then what seemed to be the matter. His an

game wins, just as Eddie Driggs makes it win for him, just as Abe Mitchell, one of the greatest of the drivers, makes it win for him, when he does win. What Walter Hagen knew was not news, simply a restatement of the basic fact. Which, of course, makes it all the more wonderful when one of the "swipers"

wins a championship. Some of the "swipers" come from the football ranks but their swiping has something of a

Maureen Orcutt

method in its seeming madness. Dr is a fair sample. He was one of th greatest backs that Princeton ever h and he was playing at that time the ty of opportunist football that Prince played. It gave him a touchdow against Dartmouth, and a winni touchdown, as it turned out. He h not at that time taken up golf. Sin he worked into the game of wood at iron he has had an outlet for the oppo tunism that was in his system, not to satisfied with intercepted forward passe or any other "break of the game" th he could not make himself. He play "heads up" football, and now he is pla ing "heads down" golf, with much same results. He is not the only o football player who finds that fine outl for emotions that were perhaps cramp on the gridiron. There is hardly one the modern coaches who is not playin the game.

Bill Roper, the Princet coach, who is known as one of the grea

I

SHALL never forget the time when my great-uncle lost his faith in Viruna. Thirty years ago, in the Middle West, Viruna was the most popular of all patent medicines. The great trinity of the rural population was the Holy Bible, the Republican Party, and Viruna. The first two solved all spiritual and political ills, while the last was the remedy for every bodily ailment from tuberculosis to shingles.

Great-Uncle Henry was one of the original prohibitionists of his neighborhood. Early in his life he had signed the pledge, and it was kept religiously. He was a moving spirit in the fight for local option in our county. His hatred of the Demon in all its forms was a living, burning, personal passion. My life is enriched by the memory of many a stormy argument I heard waged at the general store and post office, and at the railroad station. On most of these occasions my uncle upheld the side of local option single-handed, against the whole tribe of village loafers gathered around the stove. After these verbal battles, when we had emerged from the store, laden with groceries, the old man was always so excited that his goatlike chin-whisker quivered and his voice rose to a bleat as we reviewed the discussion on the way home.

"I tell you, boy," he would say, "Belial has them in his clutches. And he had me too, once, when I was young and full o' the Old Harry. But when I signed the pledge I got so mortal 'shamed o' them old whisky bottles a-layin' in the woodshed and a-testifyin' to the life I'd led, thet one night I took them out to a sartain spot and buried them deep. So thar they are, and they ain't a livin' soul knows whar I put 'em. The signs o' my transgressions 're hid frum worldly eyes, and hid fer good."

But when we had entered the house and set the groceries on the kitchen table I knew that shortly all would be well. For Uncle Henry would reach up into the cupboard, take down the trusted bottle of Viruna, pour out two immense tablespoonfuls of the magic elixir for himself, and soon under its beneficent influence he would recover his normal voice and equanimity. Many a time he has said to me: "Well, boy, I've lived a long time and we've had right smart o' sickness in the family, but I ain't never seen a dis

The Record

By O. F. KERLIN

TH

HEN some one down in Washington discovered that this medicine was compounded mostly of alcohol, with a little flavoring and coloring matter added. When the news reached our neighborhood, the effect was catastrophic. Here was a bolt that shook society to its foundations. Practically all the pillars of the church and the leaders of the local temperance movement were disciples of Viruna. Worthy matrons who had not missed a prayer-meeting for years were dazed to learn that they had been consuming as much alcohol as any moderate drinker in the village, and many who had bought Viruna for years were heard vigorously denying that they had ever used it personally. Our storekeeper asserted that the local trade in Viruna had fallen off to almost nothing, but mentioned that a great number of strangers from the village of X-, some fifteen miles away, had been buying it in our town since the scandal. Only a few good-for-nothing scoffers ventured to draw any general inference from this, and their irreverent remarks were received with a dignified silence by all respectable people.

My uncle was overwhelmed. At first he refused to believe what he read in the newspaper. Finally, however, the town drunkard publicly demonstrated that a person could get riotously drunk on Viruna alone if one took a two days' dose all at once. This convinced him.

One dark, moonless night shortly after he stole quietly out of the house, got a spade in the woodshed, and set about digging a deep hole back of the barn. A few moments later, from my hiding-place in the milk-house, I saw his thin shadow pass into the woodshed and emerge, accompanied by the clink of empty bottles. In the morning the array of empty medicine bottles which had been accumulating cine bottles which had been accumulating in the woodshed for years was gone, and the hole back of the barn was filled with

earth. Nothing was said about the mat ter.

As the days passed into weeks an months I became sensible of a profoun change in Uncle Henry. The props stability seemed to have been knocke out from under him. His faith in the beloved panacea was gone. There wa no salvation in sight, so he snatche wildly at straws. He was gloomily con vinced that his constitution would b unable to withstand the rigors of anothe winter unless he could discover a sure fire remedy that would fit his case, som elixir that would "keep his system toned up."

Every Saturday afternoon he woul come home from the grocery with som new patent remedy. After the cork ha been extracted he would carefully pour out a tablespoonful or two, according to directions. Then slowly, conscientiously he would sample the fluid, cocking hi head sharply to one side and closing hi eyes as he rinsed it around in his mouth before swallowing, so that he might giv it the benefit of a seasoned appraisa After his Adam's apple had made its las long jerk his head would straighten and he would open his eyes, prepared to ren der judgment. This first taste was usu ally followed by a mournful shake of the head and a vast sighing, "I'm afraid thet ain't any good nuther." But he always finished the bottle, if it took two weeks in spite of his disbelief in its efficacy Uncle was economical.

ON

N one momentous night, however the first verdict on a new samp was favorable. "By cracky, this stuf tastes as if it might do somepin' fer feller!" he remarked with enthusiasm "You kin jest feel it burnin' its way down."

I verified his judgment while the ol folks were at prayer-meeting the next Wednesday. The stuff was bitter a wormwood, hot as cayenne. My throa felt as though I had swallowed a red-h poker.

But as time passed Uncle Henry be came convinced that Vitum (the new medicine) was the long-sought remedy It took its proper place in his esteem as the true successor to Viruna. He spread its virtues broadcast to his little wor and it became quite popular. The vil (Please turn to continuation, page 348)

said ab

N

OWHERE is the male seen to worse advantage than in a Pull

man washroom before break

fast. He scatters his things over a even-foot seat in order to monopolize are le mirror above it while he shaves. He snorts loudly into his cupped hands

hile washing. He forgets such inhibions as may have made him, at other imes and in other places, a person fit to associate with. Recalling certain pasges from Dante's "Inferno," I surmise that Hades may witness practices more Endecorous than those of the Pullman ar; but, lacking experience of these delements, I venture the assertion that the washroom of a sleeper is the most obscene spot to be found on this earth. tett What is it that so transforms the male biped at an hour when he should face the world with cheerful confidence? After thirty years of riding in Pullman cars, I believe I can suggest an answer. He has spent the night trying to sleep

a coffin-like space containing some ity cubic feet, ill lighted, practically enventilated, and surrounded by curdains and bedding extremely hospitable Sto germs. And in the back of the passenger's head lurks an unhappy realizaastion that he is being buncoed. In a firstclass hotel he could get a room and private bath, the two containing some two thousand cubic feet of sanitary air, for six dollars, let us say, on a twentyfour-hour basis. For the same period the discomforts and germs of his fifty cubic feet in a Pullman cost him (including a bonus of $3.63 stuck on for good measure to the railroad) $10.88.

It appears that the Pullman passenger, despite this country's reputation for hard-headed bargaining, does somewhat poorly in dealing with the sleeping-car monopoly. Of course it is not true that his resentment thereat is always in the back of his head. At times it becomes vocal, finds expression in terms too candid for the comfort of millionaire Pullman stockholders. As a consequence, two railroads have put into service, for short overnight trips only-say from Washington to New York-sleeping-cars made up of single rooms, each containing an actual bed thirty inches wide, six and one-half feet long. But if the passenger thinks the price of a Pullman berth exorbitant, what must he think of these tiny rooms, and of the price he must pay

By SILAS BENT

for privacy while dressing? He must pay one-fourth more for his railroad fare from Washington to New York; he must pay $7.50 for a bed, instead of $3.75 for a berth; and so his trip of 227 miles, instead of costing him $11.99, costs him $21.43.

H

EAVEN forefend that I should say anything unkind about the Pullman Company; but in the years that I have been paying money into its treasury-not for transportation, but for service it has been able to make no improvement in its cars, apparently, save the single-room arrangement for plutocrats I have just described. If there were any inventions to make traveling at night more bearable, something happened to them. It is possible that impoverished Pullman directors have been compelled to buy them up and scrap them. They have had an uphill fight, these directors, as is revealed by a cursory glance at their fiscal affairs. During the week before I sat down to write this their stock advanced only a fraction more than eighteen points. Thirty-six millions was put into the company as an original investment, and now the stock, at the going market rate, is worth only a quarter of a billion. Since 1897, even with the most picayunish watching of the corners, the company has disbursed but $245,000,000 in cash to its partners, and only $260,000,000 in stock. In 1925 its stock paid $12.85 a share, net. In 1926 its net profits were a paltry twenty millions. Last year, after meeting dividends and all other charges, its surplus on operations was but eight mill

ions.

Fortunately, Pullman passengers are enabled to subsidize this hard-pressed monopoly. They do it by tipping the Pullman porters to the tune of seven million dollars a year. The company pays the porter $72.50 a month for an average of eleven hours' work daily, and his average of tips, according to a survey by the Labor Bureau of New York, is $58 a month. There is thus a gross of $130.50 in wages and tips; but the Labor Bureau finds that $33 a month must be paid for vocational expenses; $52 a year for shoe-blacking alone; the cost of

two uniforms a year, the price of lodging and meals. The porter thus has for his own uses $1,160 a year. The United States Bureau of Statistics estimates that the average family requires $2,100 a year to live properly.

IN 1925 Philip Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and set about trying to get better wages, in order to abolish the humiliation of the tip. The Pullman Company agreed to treat with the Brotherhood, provided Randolph would resign. The Brotherhood, knowing that without his eloquence and energy the organization might go to pieces, refused to let him resign. Thereupon the Pullman Company put twelve Chinese to work as porters on club cars of the Northwestern Union Pacific railroads. A Brotherhood organizer was arrested without a warrant in Jacksonville, and employed a lawyer; but he could not be represented in court because the lawyer, like himself, was a Negro. After two weeks he was released and run out of town. The Pullman Company has its very own "company" union, and disapproves of Brotherhood organizers. If the porters don't get enough for a fair living, the American public, stingy with its tips, must be to blame. Despite a Constitutional guaranty, the Negro does not seem to have lived down a previous condition of servitude.

Frank O. Lowden, who married the daughter of the late George Pullman, asked for the Republican nomination for the Presidency (according to the party organ, the "Herald Tribune") on this inspiriting platform:

"A living wage for the submerged thirty per cent of our population.”

There are only 12,000 Pullman porters. The slogan cannot refer to them. No, the context makes it clear that the reference is to farmers, who have a vote even south of the Mason and Dixon Line. The porter's need of a living wage appears to have been forgotten. I wish to nominate the former Governor of Ohio for the Presidency, therefore, on an amended platform:

"Honest wages for porters; decent Pullman cars."

I am confident that with this slogan he could have been nominated and elected.

I

Murder

IN Russia there is a peasant wife who has always worked hard. The farm where she has lived with her husband and seven children is small, perhaps, but for that reason one must waste nothing of it. The house, too, is not large, since it consists of two rooms only-one for living and one for sleeping besides the cellar, which is but a hole in the ground hollowed out for the storing of potatoes. But two rooms must be kept diligently when there are nine living in them.

Until a little while ago, the husband of this woman was known for his gay and pleasure-loving temperament, with which he held her in continual fear and torment. For it was easy for him to remember vodka and those women whose dispositions matched his own. Easy for him to forget an old and ugly wife and hungry children. Easy for him to remember curses and blows.

Still, when he was not about-which was most often-there was all the work to be done. And when he was at home he was worse than no one. For then he was more helpless than the youngest one, more useless than the animals. A great lump of a man, drunk, heavy and snoring. Meanwhile, she and the two oldest girls must get on with only the horse to help them.

They

They were good girls-but what would she have done without that horse? He was all that the man was not. The strong legs, the heavy shoulders and back-here was her comfort. No burden was too great for that animal. would have starved without him. There had been times, before they had had this good beast, when the man had been too much for this peasant wife. The times she had left him were not to be counted on her rough, short fingers. Nor the times she had returned. Why, she could not say. To hold and nurse and humor him again. To bear more children. To plow and dig and hoard. To be beaten. The truth was, she belonged to this man, to the two rooms, and the farm, and the children. Το the horse, even. She was rooted deep. The two oldest girls, fifteen and sixteen, were at last a help. The five small ones would be growing big. Soon she would be old.

By IBBY HALL

But this was a hard summer. There was nothing this year in the house-only a few potatoes. from last winter. Not a ruble--and the bitter cold ahead. They had not seen money in so long a while they would not know what to do with it if it should fall on them. There were too many needs that cried for it.

There was only one hope for all of them that July. The hay. Soon it would be ready to cut. Ripe and warm and sweet smelling, it would bring a good price. Fearfully and in snatches she prayed to a majestic God to allow them this crop; to see to it that the man was on hand to cut it at the right time. For a long time now he had not left the farm. No rubles-no vodka. But with every day as the hay slowly ripened his temper had been growing worse. With every day the blows and curses had become heavier; but she had welcomed them, for at least he was present to attend the crop.

The second waited on the idle wagon But the horse was gone.

That morning the peasant wife an the two big girls stored the waiting loa in the shed. Laboriously they dragge the heavy wagon, empty again, to field. When the horse should retur they would be ready. The man wou be no good; but with the horse, the crop could still be saved.

By noon the clouds began to gather The woman called out the younger chi dren to the field. All afternoon the worked like animals. At least by eve ning he must return! From near byfrom farther and farther down the fiel from the far stretch-they dragged the hay and piled it on the wagon.

The clouds drew together slowly with approaching night. The load stood hig and ready, but there was neither sig nor sound of the returning horse.

All night the woman lay and listened No sound. By morning the rain had no yet fallen. He must be back by noon

no more. If the rain fell-if the hors did not return-how could they meet the winter?

Out in the field the wagon waited wit its load. They gathered what was lef into one great haycock-watching the That day came finally when the hay road, watching the sky. They could d was ready to be cut. Under the man's scythe the spears fell ripe and sweet, to lie in the warm sun before they should be raked and pitched upon the wagon. By nightfall they would have in two loads at least-half the crop. The rest could be gathered into haycocks, for the night would be fine. The next morning would see the whole crop safe and sheltered.

But as the sun died it was plain that the man had taken a strange turn. He had become silent, but with an unpleasant smile. For he would look at the woman threateningly and turn away to laugh. She grew uneasy. Was his head, too, becoming touched with thirst?

Her last look at the sky, she went to bed that night thinking only of the two loads in the field. The man lay silently. He did not move. He did not snore. Was he already asleep?

not

By afternoon the horse had not re turned. By night there was still no sign Yet there was hope, for the rain had no yet fallen. And then, at midnight, sh heard them, and her heart lurched heav ily. A stumbling horse-a helpless man She got up quietly and dragged the man inside. Patiently she hauled and shove until she got him into bed. Then sh went out to stable the horse.

It was now that she understood wha ing heart stood still together as sh had happened. Her thick wits and fai stared at the horse. For here was a creature weaker than herself. Old, raw boned and spavined, the forlorn anima drooped in front of her. The fine young horse-their strength, their hope, thei living-was gone. Traded for vodka And for this bag of bones.

The woman led the poor beast to shelter. She returned to cover the sodden man. Then she waited for dawn. When the day broke, she roused her two daughters and under the heavy gray (Please turn to continuation, page 348)