Buna adam Bellefonte, Pa., January 6, 1928 HAL WEES. FRONTIERS NEW. Fog, the murky might of winter in the north Pacific, hung over harbor and hills of the city as the dun gray of afternoon drifted into the duller drab of twilight. Beneath it lights began to glimmer in blurs of steel- blue from street arcs, of yellow from windows of shops and houses. Street cars, darting up and down steep thor- | hi oughfares, clanged through it with muffled clamor of gongs. From ships, hidden beneath the blanket of moist- ure, rose throaty blasts of signals— signals of goings and comings of lin- ers from the Orient, of coastwise steamers from San Francisco and Vancouver, of ferries, of fishing boats, of the myriad and motley craft of the Sound. It was a world of hear- ing rather than of sight, an eerie town through which the home-going crowds of the early evening moved like shadows, and David Burt felt something of its clammy mistiness clouding his own usual blitheness of spirit as he started up the hill. From its beginning the day had gone ill with him. Margie hadn’t wakened in time to get his breakfast, and he had quarreled with her while he had dressed in the dingy room. He had fasted until noon. The office auditor had found a mistake in his ledger. At the lunch-counter in the market he had met young Barry, all ready to sail in the morning to China and thrilled to the soul by his chance for high adventure. “Come on with me, Davy,” the boy had urged him. “There’s a chance for another man. A fellow dropped out last night. You can get it if you try. Come on!” He had refused curtly, not daring to explain the ties which held him lest they snap under the pressure of defending them. Margie and the baby! All his life he’d have to think of them before he thought of himself— and he wasn’t two years older than Barry, who had the wide world be- fore him! Through the long afternoon he had pored over involved statements of shipments which meant nothing to him except in the luring names of their destinations, Singapore, Malac- ca, Melbourne, Auckland, Colombo, Bombay. Conning them, he pictured the places, ports of call for the way- farers of the seven seas. Other Burts, going out from New Bedford in days long gone, had known them. His grandfather had known them in his boyhood. Back on the Michigan farm to which he had come when the Civil war was over, he had told Davy of their wonders. His father, going from the Great Lakes country to the prairies, had never seen them, but they had been the dream of Davy’s youth, a dream he had forsworn with his freedom when he had promised to love and honor and cherish Margie. Well, he couldn’t have them now. Fac- ing the prospect of the dreary furn- ished room of their habitation, he tried to whistle back the courage which had brought him to the north- west, but even the whistling died away as he opened the door to the place he tried to call home. Margie was sitting in a chair be- neath the swaying bulb of the elec- tric light, reading. Her short, light hair, elaborately curled, haloed her thin, petulant face with its too rosy cheeks, its too red lips. She looked over her shoulder at David, acknowl- edging his greeting only by a raising of her clipped eyebrows. On the floor amid a pile of newspapers which she was tearing to shreds, the baby played. She lifted her arms to her father as he turned to her, and he lifted her, kissing her with an in- tensity of tenderness which he hardly realized had flooded him out of the sense of contrast between his child’s environment and what his own had been in the spotless little farmhouse on the Nebraska plains. “When do we eat?” he asked Mar- gis, trying to keep his voice cheer- ul “Whenever you take us out,” she said, swinging her silken-clad leg over the arm of the chair. “Why can’t we eat in? stove, isn’t there?” “Well, if you can make a meal out of a stove and nothing else, you're welcome to try.” “Why didn’t you get something ?” “How could 1?” “Why not?” “It takes money to buy food.” “But I gave you two dollars this morning.” “Well, I had to eat at noon, didn’t I? 1 suppose it’s nothing to you if the baby and I starve, though.” “But two dollars would—"’ “Two dollars! What’s that?” “You must have gone to the Wash- ington and ordered terrapin.” “Well, I guess I had to buy stock- ings. I didn’t have one pair without runners.” “If you bought something that wasn’t cobweb, they’d last longer.” “Oh, yes, I know what you’d want me to wear. Well, anyhow, there’s nothing in, and I'm tired of cooking. We can go to the Chinaman’s.” “You know the kid oughtn’t to eat Chink food.” “Why can’t she? noon.” “Do you mean to say that you take her there every day?” “Do you mean to say” she mim- icked him, tossing aside her book, “that. you expect me to stay a priso- nex in this room all day while you're out?” “I'm working.” “Well, I'd work, too, if I knew a place where I could park her.” “You will not!” “Well, what do I get out of life? You said when you married me that you were going to be rich in no time. You wouldn’t take a job in Miles City, where I knew everybody and every- body knew me. No, you had to come farther west! All your folks moved west every generation, you said. Well, we've certainly come to the edge of things, all right. If you want to go There’s a She eats it at any farther, you’ll have to choose | Alaska. But I won’t go with you. I can tell you that right here and now.” “I’m not asking you to go any far- ther,” he said sullenly. “I guess this is about the jumping-off place.” “Then we’d better go back to Miles City.” “My folks never turned back once they started west.” “Oh, you make me tired with your folks,” she snarled. “You'd think they had an option on pioneering. What do you s’pose brought my gang to Montana?” “I've often wondered,” he said. The baby, crying, crept close to m “There’s no use in fighting like this,” he said dully. “Put on her clothes, and we'll go out.” She sprang out of the chair with the quickness of triumph and set about getting ready for departure. In an instant all her anger had evapo- rated, and with the magnanimity of victory she began to recount to him the petty details of her day. He listened apathetically as he put on the baby’s bonnet. “lI wonder where you'll go from here,” he thought as he stared at the child. “It’s lucky you’re a girl,” he decided. “It'll be hell for a boy when there are no new places left.” He lifted the baby and stood, wait- ing, for Margie’s primping to end. “Can’t we go to a movie after we eat?” she asked him from the mirror of the battered dresser. “We can’t go to a movie with her.” “It won’t hurt her.” “It’ll hurt here eyes.” “Oh, she’ll go to sleep.” “You know she won't.” “Well, if she can sleep through the shrieks of your old radio, she can sleep through anything.” “That’s different.” “Oh, yes, it’s different because it’s yours. If I had something that I spent all the time and money on that you do on that, I guess you’d make racket enough. They could hear your roar up to Bellingham.” “You know why I spend money on it.” He faced her over the baby’s shoulder. “You know that I'm get- ting it in shape to do something that nobody else has done. I’m going to get London on that radio yet, I tell you!” His voice rose to conviction, and his eyes blazed. “I'm going to have a radio that’ll beat them all!” “What good’ll it do you?” she taunted. “Good? What good did it do Mar- coni to make the wireless? What good did it do Maxwell to discover what he did? What about Pupin? Didn’t all those fellows have to dream, and plan, and test, and tinker, and think before they ever got anything? What good? Why, if I can raise the Crys- tal Palace on that baby there, I'll have got through what nobody else ever has—fog, and mountains, and storms, and ocean! Think of it, all the way across the United States and the Atlantic Ocean!” “Well, Pll believe it when I hear it. “You're going to hear it,” he said, but the flame had died down with her taunting grin. “Ready?” he said shortlv.. | “Reddy.” The baby moved her soft hands over his face as he bore her outward. “Daddy loves you,” he assured her in a tone lowered so that Margie could not hear it. She smiled at him and cuddled her head down on his shoulder. “This is no night to take her out,” he grumbled. “Well, it’s your own fault,” said Margie. She moved beside him airily, her spirits rising as they moved with- in a zone of clustered lights merg- ing in the fog. “Let’s go down the hill to Christensen’s,” she urged. “] can’t afford it.” “You spent eight dollars for that | go she reproached him. “I saw the ill. “Look here,” he told her, “if I can make that radio do what I think I can, we’ll all be riding the gravy wagon.” “I'm sick of tomorrows,” she said. “That’s all I’ve ever had since I mar- ried you.” “Love you, baby crooned. “I love you,” he told her. “It’s a cinch he doesn’t love me,” Margie told the child. Daddy,” the She led the way into the chop suey parlor, showing toward a table near fhe wall and calling the waiter sharp- vy. Under the spell of listlessness which he could not explain David fell silent while Margie ordered their dinner without suggestion from him. As she frowned over the card with its mixture of Chinese and Eng- lish names he studied -her furtively. She was just as pretty as she had been when they married, he decided. She hadn’t changed much, not even in her assertiveness. He had known that quality in the days of their courtship, but it had amused him then, since it had not been trained upon him. No, she was just about the same, and he wasn’t much different. What was it, then, that had come be- tween them? Not the baby. They both loved her, each in a different way, to be sure, but devotedly. What was it? The circumstances of life? That was it, he reasoned. Neither of them was the sort for this haphazard, furnished-room existence. Margie had come from a home back in Montana, not elaborate, to be sure, any more than his own had been. They were both Americans, come out here to the end of the country, and what was it giving them? A sudden doubt as- sailed him with the memory of some long-forgotten words of his grand- father. “No country can give a man anything unless he gives it something first,” he remembered. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t made good in this land. He wasn’t really giving anything. He wasn’t a hewer of wood or a drawer of water. He wasn’t making a home for his family. They were drifters, that’s what they were, and it was his fault more than Mar- giz’s. She was nothing but a girl. But his time was coming. If the radio— “You stick to me, old kid, and you’ll | wear diamonds yet,” he told her sud- denly. She raised her thin eyebrows. “All the diamonds I'll get from you will come from the ten-cent store,” she said. “Here, Baby, don’t eat that salt. Why can’t that waiter hurry?” David fell back to his musings. What was the matter with the set: anyhow? With the seven tubes it had the volume for raising any sta- tion. He'd tested them and retest- ed them for strength. He'd tightened every screw until there wasn’t an- other millimeter to be twisted. He’d brought in WEAF all the way from New York above the local stations, above Denver, above a jazz orchestra in Omaha, above a concert in Chicago, higher than KDKA in Pittsburgh; but others had brought in New York, and Springfield, and Schenectady on other instruments which he knew could not do what his creation might do. If only he could cut out the blur, if only he could swing through the static which the fog held down like a blank- et over the coast, if only he could get London! That was the test. If he could meet it, he knew a dozen men | ready to back him for the manufac- | ture of the sets. Fortune—but it would be only the beginning. Other triumphs waited just beyond, just as new countries had waited for his grandfather and his father. If only he could win just once, he’d know himself for one of his blood, one of : the crew of pioneers. If only— “Well, why don’t you eat it now that it’s here?” he heard Margie ask- ing him. “I was thinking,” he said stupidly. “Well, it’s about time somebody thought,” she retorted. “Don’t eat that egg, Baby,” she warned. “I be- lieve you'd let her eat leather,” she told David. “Say, Margie,” he said, putting down his fork, “would you be glad to live in a regular house if I could make the grade?” “Would I?” Her blue eyes, lifted | swiftly, were so hungrily wistful that | they hurt him. “Would a fish swim? | But what’s the joke?” “Margie, if this thing goes through, I'll be able to get money enough right away to pay the first instalment on a house. How about the new subdivision out on the hill ?” : “Toward the lake ?”’ “That’s it.” “Oh, David!” Longing throbbed in her voice. “But what’s the use? I can’t bank on things the way you do. We've been living on ‘if’s’ for nearly four years.” “Don’t you believe in me?” “I wouldn’t have married you if I hadn’t,” she choked, “but, honest, I get so tired of it all that I think I can’t go on. We're not much good, David, either of us, I guess. I know my faults, but I know yours, too, and one of them is counting your | chickens before they’re hatched. You | are a dreamer, and I’m not.” | “Well, it’s the dreamers who do the big things.” | “Some of them,” she said, “and they’ve been the alibis for the rest | of you, I guess, ever since the world | began. I'm sorry, Davy,” she sail! more gently, seeing the hurt in his eyes, “but you can’t get me excited any more about how you're going to set the world afire. Baby, drink your milk!” “I'm sorry, too,” he said, and could say no more. : When they had ended their meal, he picked up the baby and started for the door. “You can leave us at the movie,” Margie told him, “if you're going to : work.” | “She shouldn’t go,” he objected. i “Oh, let’s not fight any more,” she | said drearily. “I’m sick of fighting.” “Then why—” i “Oh, I can’t sit in that room day in | and day out, and night after night. | I'll go crazy if I do. I hate it. You've | got some place else to go. I haven’t | any place but a restaurant or the | movies. I don’t know a soul in this | town, and even if I did, what could I | do? I couldn't ask them to see us, and so I wouldn't go to them. If it wasn’t for the movies—”" “I'll take you,” he said. “You don’t have to stay,” she said, mollified by his offer. “I know you're dying to be tinkering at that radio. Well, you’ll have it to yourself for a couple of hours. Say ‘by-by’ to Dad- dy,” she admonished the litle girl as they joined the crowd in front of the little motion picture house. “You'd better buy some oranges for the morning,” she reminded him as he turned away after buying her ticket. He went back to the room, but with a lighter heart in spite of his con- tinued battling with Margie, for the knowledge of two unbroken hours for his testing cheered him. He whistled blithely as he sat down in front of the instrument, and shouted with de- light at the sound of the roar which greeted him as he pulled out the plug. “Attaboy,” he triumphed. “Now we’re going to go!” He twisted the dials with expert fingers as sounds of music, of speeches, of ship signals blared forth, filling the little room with strange echoes of distant places. Strains of an orchestra from San Francisco, of a band from Calgary, of a reader from Kansas City. of a chorus in Dal- las crowded each other. He was tun- ing in on KYW from Chicago when the staccato call of an S. 0. S. clam- ored from a ship out at sea, driving all the coast stations from the air. Through Chicago he worked eastward, lifting New York at last. A tenors voice, exclusively lovely, sang through the horn in heart-melting balladry, but David Burt, pushing toward tri- umph of his own, recked nothing of the artistry of what he heard. “She’s coming in fine,” he mur- mured, his fingers caressing the deli- cate instrument. “We'll get through,” he told it. “We'll make the grade.” Minutes sped as he labored, heeding nothing except in its relation to his ultimate object. His jaw set with the tension, and his eyes grew glazed in his effort. “I've got to get through,” he told himself over and over again. The rasping harshness of interfer- ence set him swearing bitterly, and ee he twisted and turned until he had blotted it out. Carefully he re-exam- ined condenser and transformer, wire connections and batteries. Searching- ly he studied the comparative glow of power in the tubes. Tentatively he cut from the seven to the six-tube strength, only to swing back again. “That ought to get it,” he thought, but a tiny ray of discouragement had crept into his tone. “Oh, Lord,” he nuttered, “if it’d only clear, so that I could beat this static!” Then, with the grimness of the pioneer, he went back to the dials. Every possible permutation and combination of condenser dial and wave-length trembled under his lithe hands. Station after station, some big, some little, some on the Pacific, some on the Atlantic, some on the Gulf, some on the Great Lakes, some in Oklahoma others in Georgia stayed in long enough to inform him of their call numbers, then faded out under his restless twisting. A magician of the air, he sat upon his throne of skill with the genii of science speed- ing to his summons, bringing to him such wonders as Alexander and Caes- ar, Genghis Khan and Napoleon never dreamed. For him the cities of the world were sounding their souls, and he, as had his people through the gen- erations, was pshing on to new frontiers. “I'm going to get London,” he banged. “Come on, boy, come on!” The tenor still sobbed, however, through WEAF, defying him to get past the outposts of Manhattan. More wearily David went over a group of logs, his own and a set of newspaper clippings, striving to fit in the London wave-length with others he had al- ready brought in. Narrowing down the radius of his search, he went over the dial with such steadiness of touch as a safe-breaker would have envied. “I might take to breaking ’em open if this doesn’t come,” he thought whimsically. thing, or we’re going smash.” The thought of Margie, intruding itself for the first time since he had come back, pulled him out of his con- centration. The poor kid was having a hard time of it, he decided. no fun living this way—not for a girl, anyhow. He had his hope, his tool, his ambition. She had nothing to entertain her but the baby, and he supposed any one got tired of a baby after twenty-four hours a day. glow of generosity toward her he de- cided that hers should certainly be the first fruits of his success. “We’ll get that house,” he planned, “I've got to do some- It was In a AER He couldnt get it. He couldn’t get anything. He was a dud. What was there in life, anyhow? “Oh, hell!” he muttered, shoving in the plug and staring ahead of him sightlessly. “What’s the matter?” Margie’s voice came sharp across his musings. “Nothing.” “Something is.” “No, there isn’t.” He turned away his head that she might not see his face, but he knew that she had put down her book to watch him. Suddenly she rose, and came across thie room to him. Dav, are you sick?” she demand- e “No.” “Then what is it?” “Nothing—new.” “Well, what’s the old?” “Oh, the same old thing. good, that’s all.” “What?” “I said it, what you’ve been think- ing ever since you married me. What’s the surprise in that?” “I never said it.” “You thought it.” “I never did! Davy, what’s the ‘trouble? Is it that? Her glance went to the radio. { “Oh, that’s part of it. I thought I could make a go of it, but I can’t.” { “Why not?” I “I don’t know.” | “You're tired out,” she said. “That’s what’s the trouble. You work all day long hard at one thing that you don’t like, and you try to stay up all night { working on something you do.” “But what else can I do? It’s the only chance a fellow has to get | on. “I suppose so,” she admitted. She stood in the yellow light, her lips moving restlessly. “Davy,” she went on, “I’ve been thinking a lot, too. Do you think you’d get on better if Baby and I went away?” “Where 7” “Well, I could go back to Miles City. Pa’s kind of lonesome since Ma died, and I guess he’d be glad to have us.” “And leave me?” “Well, I guess you could stand it.” Her tone was desolately flat. “We haven’t made much of a go of it, and you wouldn’t mind much.” “Do you—want to go?” He was trying to keep his voice steady. “Well, I don’t ache to go, but I don’t want to stay when I'm not wanted. | “It’s because you know I can’t make good,” he declared. I'm no then forgot everything else in a new : idea which sprang at him. He was deep in it when Margie came in, carrying the little girl. She looked tired and a little bedraggled. “Good show ?” he asked her. “Fair,” she said. “Say, she’s get- ting heavy.” “She’s asleep.” “Sure, she is. You don’t suppose they’d let me keep her through the whole show if she hadn’t dropped off ? Lucky for me she did.” She began to undress the child, who awakened in the process and cried sleepily. “I wish you’d turn that off for a while,” Margie complained. “She’ll never get to sleep with it going full blast. I don’t see why you can’t use headpieces. Other people do.” “I’ve told you fifty times,” he said impatiently, “I’ve got to have so much volume for distance that the head- pieces would blow off the top of my head.” He shut off the plug, however, and sat a model for a statue of restrained | desire as he waited for her to put the baby to bed. The child sank back into sleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow, and Margie drew up a chair under the light and re- sumed the book she had been read- ing when he had come home. “Can I start now?” he asked her. “Go ahead,” she said apathetically. Once more he swung back into the wide circuit of sound, but once more the object of his struggle evaded him. “It’s in there somewhere,” he thought, frowning over the apparatus. “I've got the volume for it, and the range, and it ought to come.” Again he filled the room with ev- ery variety of noise, while Margie sat motionless, apparently immersed in her novel. “Don’t you want to go to bed?” he stopped long enough to ask her. “What’s the use?” she said. “I couldn’t sleep. Getting anything ?” “Not yet.” Her silence suddenly became more eloquent than the air-filling sounds of the room. So she thought he couldn’t do it? Well, he’d show her! - With the passionate wish for justification urging him he kept on, but in vain. Moment after moment sped by, bring- ing nothing of greater accomplish- ment. Wearied, he began to sag. What was the use? kept ringing in bis ears under the medley of jazz. Some ‘one would do it some day, per- fecting an instrument which would go beyond his own and accomplish the goal. After that—well there would be other heights to be scaled, but he would have failed in his first great one, and the zest of climbing could not be the same. He was get- ting older, and all over the world boys, boys free to do as they pleased, were crowding up to him. He sighed in the thought, and his fingers moved more slowly. A blur of sound wave, breaking through the music, galvanized him into hope for an instant, but it died away, and he fell back into the widen- ing pool of discouragement. Perhaps it couldn’t be done. to think that he’d be the one to do it, when the coast was full of men and boys who had the same hope. If only he could be free to work night after night upon it! If only he weren't held to the other job of bread-win- ning! He could starve if he had to, he could get along on next to nothing while he worked, but with Margie and the baby, what could he do? There was no use in trying to hold out. He might just as well give in that he was a failure. He looked down to the radio set, gleaming in coils and wires, shining of dial board, and saw them He was a fool | “You know it’s not.” She whirled around to face him. “You know that’s a lie. I've stood beside you through everything, and you know it. Have we ever been anything but poor? Why, I haven’t had but three new dresses since we were married, and I got them at sales. Maybe I do want stockings, and movies, and eating out- side this one room. Who wouldn't? Maybe I do want a home for the baby and me. Who wouldnt? But I've stuck, and I've been willing to stick as long as I saw you wanted me. You don’t want us any more, though. Can’t I see it?” { “That isn’t true,” he said dully. “Yes, it is. Haven’t I eyes? Don't I see how you treat us? The only thing you love in this room is that radio. You think about it all the time. You don’t think of us except when we're right in front of you, and not even then when you're sitting there. I suppose you think that if it wasn’t for us, you could do anything with that. Well, I'll give you the chance. Just give me the fare back to Miles City, and you’ll never see me again.” “Margie!” Fear and pain made poignant his cry. “Why, what'd I do without you both?” ..“You’d get on—better.” “I wouldn't. Why, I'm doing all this for the two of you more than I'm doing it for myself.” “No, you're not,” she said. “You'd be doing this and more if the.two of us weren’t in the world at all. No, I know how you feel, and I know how I feel, and I'm not going to live this way all the rest of my life.” “But if I make the grade—" “You get me straight,” she said. “I ain’t quitting you because you’ve failed on this. Maybe you won't fail. 'I think you'll win by keeping at it. But I don’t care if you do, except for. . yourself. What I mean is that I won't stick around where I'm not wanted.” | “But I want you!” |. “You don’t,” ! “I do.” He lifted his eyes, still tear-wet, to her. “I know I’ve been la fool,” he said. “I know I've tink- ‘ered with this thing when I should , have been seeing that the baby and i you had a little recreation. I've spent { money on it we couldnt afford, and i I've—yes, I do love it. I love the | thrill of it. I love the feeling that ‘maybe in another minute I'm going | to get something big. But it hasnt , come between me and you. Why, I do love you, Margie, just the way I loved you when I met you back there in Montana. And I—I don’t i want to be free,” he lied valiantly, so carried away by his own emotion that he believed he told the truth. “I “never wanted to be free again. What'd ‘anything matter to me if I didn’t have you folks to share it with? Oh, be yourself, Marge!” i “I am,” she persisted. “There’s no use in fighting about it now, Davy. i Pve seen this coming a long time. | Don’t you suppose I know it when T ‘see it? Didn't Pa used to get like that every spring until he got too old? Wasn't he always wanting to go to new places?” “That’s it,” David cried. “It’s in our blood. All of us Americans do want the new places, I guess. My folks wanted them, and they took them. But the new places are gone, Margie. This is our way. We're try- ing to shove out into something we haven’t known. The air—that’s our new frontier. I'm fighting forward in it just the way your father and my father fought into the West. Don’t you suppose your mother knew what he was doing? My mother knew what my father felt. She stuck. Your 1 mother stuck. Aren't you going to stick to me?” mist before the coming of his tears. | a “My mother stuck all right.” Her voice wavered. “It killed her, though, in the end.” “My mother’s alive.” “Maybe your father’s different: from mine. Maybe—are you like: your father, Davy?” “Some ways. Oh, Marge, be a sport! This can’t go on this way. I —TI'll tell you what I'll do. I'll sell the radio tomorrow for anything it'll bring, and you can buy yourself a dress, and—any maybe we could get a flat somewhere and buy a little on the instalment plan, and—” “I won’t let you sell it,” she pro-- tested. “It’s your way out. You're right about it. It is new country. And’ I guess we're pioneers. And—and if my mother could stand it when Mon-- tana was what it was when she came,. I guess I can stand it.” “Margie!” He jumped up to catch her in his arms, pressing her too- rouged cheeks close to him, and lift- ing her face then to kiss her too-red: lips. “I love you,” he said brokenly.. “Well, how do you suppose I feel when I'm staying?” she tried to say lightly, but her voiee broke. “On, r love you, Davy,” she sobbed. “I love you enough to do it, if you want me- to go.” “I don’t want you to go,” he said, and knew that he spoke the deeper- truth of life. He didn’t want free- dom now, if it had to be bought with: the baby and Margie. He’d make good" for them, somehow, even if it weren’t on this line. “Life wouldn't be living: without you,” he told her. She smiled up at him, then slipped’ out of his embrace. “Don’t you want to try agaih?” she asked him. “You're going to get it sometime, honestly, Davy,” she soothed him as she some-- times promised sweets to the baby. “You'll bring it in.” “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, but- the weariness had gone from his: voice. “Maybe some night when the- fog isn’t so heavy—” “You’ll hear it roar, and then some--- thing’ll snap, and the announcer’s voice’ll say—" “Crystal Palace.” “One-two-three—XY.” “Two LO London!” “You'll get it, Davy, tomorrow.” “Tomorrow.” They stood, smiling at each other im anticipatory joy. “I'll cut down that C battery,” he said. “Maybe four-- and-a-half’s too high for it. Il try” it one less.” “I bet that'll do it, Davy—dear.” She moved out toward the window,. lifting the shade, and David snapped off the light. Below them lay the: lower streets of the city, and beyond: that, the harbor. In long streamers. of cloud the mist which had hidden. the Sound and the hills was floating- away. A crescent moon shone dimly through the fleecy whiteness. Lights: of street arcs twinkled bright blues. lights of houses gleamed yellow. Searchlights on steamers flared over: the water. David put his arm over Margie’s shoulders as they stood, . watching. “Fog’s lifting,” he said. “StaticIl be better.” “Tomorrow’ll be clear,” she told him. “Who cares about tomorrow now?” He drew her closer. “Tonight’s ours.” “Ours,” she said, and closed her eyes under the fire of his kisses. RE Old-Fashioned Football Game Thing of the Past. Hard, straight football of the old- fashioned type is disappearing and trickery is taking its place, in the: opinion of Dewey Graham, Norwich university gridiron coach. He believes that the new rules are. responsible for less interesting foot- ball for the spectators, a loss of the body contact element and inferior play in several phases of the game. “The game is more of a puzzle than. a pleasure for the spectators,” Gra- ham complains. “Penalties inflicted’ in former years were nearly all un- derstoed by the spectators, but this: year there are numerous weird rules calling for penalties that are entirely unknown to the average fan. “The: new rules tend to distract at- tentien of players: from the game.. Too much is being left to the judg- ment of officials. Good officials are few. A great many games will be unjustly’ won or lost by decision of a referee, umpire or head linesman, rather than an opponent’s errors or luck. The players had enough rules under: the old’ system” Tenant Has No Right te Make Re-. pairs on Flat, Very often a tenant will assume to make repairs without authority from the owner or his agents and deduct the cost from the rent. This he can- not do and maintain his action. The courts have ruled that a lease being an instrument under seal, the agreements and intentions of the parties become merged in the instru- ment itself, and any evidence as to understanding and intention to aid its construction cannot be used to vary the terms of the lease itself. Where the lease contains a specific agreement between the parties as to certain: repairs: to be made by the lessor it would he binding upon the landlord, but under no other condi- tion.. ——— ee e——————— Divorces Exceeding Marriages. Divorce has registered another in- crease in the United States, census bureau figures for 1926 reveil. Divorces advanced 31.1 per cent last. year over 1925, and marriages only 1.2. If allowance is made for in- crease in population during the pe- riod, an actual percentage drop is shown for marriages while divorces gain. Marriage vows were taken by 1,- 202,079) couples in 1926, or 10.26 mar- riages for every 1,000 inhabitants. The year previous the average was 10.30: weddings. The rate for divorce was 1.54 in 1926 against 1.52 in 1925, judges having untied 180,868 knots last year besides granting 3,823 annulments. ——The “Watchman” is the most readable paper published. Try it.