publisher of the "New York World," calling his attention to the deluge of facts in my possession that proved flagrant malversation and ingeniously hidden criminality on the part of officers of the big insurance companies, and as no attention was given to the subject I embodied the letter in a subsequent article in order to show my efforts to secure the widest publicity. It was not until the Hyde-Alexander episode which was precipitated after my third article appeared and threatened disruption of the Equitable, that "The World" engaged in the campaign with its customary vigor, because of the local news importance of that event. What that great newspaper has since done is worthy of the highest commendation. At the same time a number of leading newspapers and the press associations began to feature the scandals and there was started a continuous performance of startling melodrama in which equity and right were to triumph finally over rapacity and injustice. In March, 1905, prefacing one of the most impressive and stunning of the narrations, I said:

"The disruption of the giant "Big Three" combine has begun. The conflict for control between the policyholders and the financial buccaneers is irrepressible; the fight must go on; great reforms must come. Not only must Mr. Hyde relinquish his disproportionate control of the Equitable and submit to mutualization but Mr. McCurdy and Mr. McCall must be dislodged from their iniquitous disregard of sacred trust obligations in the Mutual and New York Life. This uprising of nearly six million policyholders whose equities have been outraged by private greed is like the bursting of a reservoir; it is irresistible, uncontrollable, overpowering-nothing can stop it."

As the amazing demoralization and pollution of the great com

panies by men who had posed as being higher and better than their fellows was fellows was unfolded and public confidence in them was shattered, I called upon the state to act in the interest of policyholders and demanded legislative investigation of the charges made, stating that nothing short of a searching inquiry and ventilation by a committee of the legislature would satisfy the public and I further said:

"It should be the pleasure, as it is the manifest duty of every state insurance official to use his utmost authority to put a stop to the monstrous abuses which antagonize and endanger the interests of millions of policyholders. If there is not sufficient authority, let the law-making power be invoked for the protection of policyholders, for nothing is more certain than that the iniquitous practices which we have described, unless summarily arrested by law will lead to the most calamitous results. It may be premature to discuss the ways and means of punishment but the men whose duty it is to guard the people against these dangers should not delay another hour."

From the beginning and during all the time the campaign was in progress, until the appointment of the Armstrong Committee, I was beset in a way that left no doubt of the existence of a criminal conspiracy to destroy "The Era Magazine." News-agents were threatened, printers were intimidated, customers were warned of the withdrawal of valuable patronage, advertisers and advertising agencies were menaced with impending boycott, our employees were watched, our telephone service tampered with, bribes were boldly offered, statements were widely ciculated that the magazine had suspended, the whole vast secret service and army of instruments of the powerful life insurance combine were brought into active and desperate play to

stop an agitation that was working havoc with their atrocious defiance of law and disregard of sacred obligations.

In February, 1905, to get away from what I believed to be hurtful influences, instigated by the agents and instruments of the companies, I changed printers upon advice in which I had entire confidence. I selected a printer thought to be far enough removed from intimidation, but the outcome made more plain than before I had walked boldly, with my eyes wide open, into the camp of the enemy.

After six weeks of exasperating delays and wilful, stubborn neglect. we were able to get a partial edition of a most execrably printed April number. It was such a jumble of crazy mistakes and defects that it would have been laughable had it not been so serious. The errors were plainly intentional but that was not all a large portion of the manuscript of the insurance article. was stolen from the printing office, some of it containing very valuable statistics that could not be duplicated. What was still more strange was that bundles containing thousands of subscribers' copies were taken bodily from wagons between the printery and the postoffice, the edition for the state of Pennsyl

vania vanished mysteriously, the foreign edition was extracted in toto and not a copy got as far as the postoffice, a crate containing several hundred copies consigned to the Albany news company vanished in the same way and in many places, where the magazine appeared on news stands, they were bought up en block. The sleuths of the companies were every where on our trail. For many months I withstood the most determined efforts to prevent the stunning facts of my arraignment from reaching the public, but at last the enemy succeeded in crippling and making necessary a transfer of my magazine. There is however, ample reward and keen satisfaction in the knowledge of having done a good work. I fought a winning fight against the malevolence and hateful reprisals of the people's worst enemies. I propose to continue the work which has already borne such gratifying results until the gamblers of Wall street, the trust plunderers and free booters are driven within the pale of the law and the whole life insurance business shall have undergone such a clarifying process that hereafter the "sacred hoard of the widows and orphans" shall be honestly, economically and scrupulously managed and protected.

The fairy fern seed hidden
Within her tripping shoon
Will hide from sight,
Or morn, or night,
Or glorious golden noon,
The mortal maid

Who, unafraid,

Trusts in its subtle boon.

Old Song.

HE had left the familiar behind; and a new world vividly foreign, so alluringly, poignantly extraneous as to daze and almost confound her baby senses, stretched away and away, defying vision, to the very borderlands of far impossibility. Above, laughed the morning sky; below, dreamed the meadows, freshly verdurous, flower decked, bedewed. Her little legs in sudden helplessness gave way beneath the magnitude of the adventure. Unexpectedly she sat, and the fernbrake trembling, swayed, and met above her head.

The walls of her palace were green. The sunlight filtering through the tremulous arched branches flickered and played in bright elusive patches upon her white pinafore. Ecstatically she laughed; then solemnly, almost painfully, button by button, she unloosed her little shoe. She remembered! Fortunately she reremembered, and all should be well!

Had not Cousin Grace, who was grown up, quite a young lady indeed, confided to her the secret of the tiny dark seeds glued closely to the undersides of the delicate plumelike fronds?-how a child instruct

ed in her power might wonderfully blot herself from prying authoritative eyes. The morning of the picnic she had listened awestruck to the magic news. And now she remembered! With mystery the dimpled fingers labored. Again the small shoe was pulled into place; to rebutton it would have proved too severe a task. Rosy as any naiad the hidden child emerged.

The daisies! oh the daisies! like constellations they bespangled the meadow in distant scattered patches. of fair bloom with nodding buttercups between, and splashes of blood red sorrel here and there to emphasize their snowy tints. Often since her inexplicable arrival in the springtime at the country home of her aunt the child had stood in pleasant contemplation watching from the high windows of her nursery the dip and sway of the tall grasses, wondering at the little birds that skimmed and flurried with beating wings the undulating stretches of the plain. Often she had walked the highways with Jane, the tyrant, primly by her side. But this morning she was free-strangely emancipate! Stealthily she had crept down the long dark stair. Unable to analyze, her little heart responded the more confidently to the adventure. She might wander inviolate. The daisies nodded gay invitation, and the breezes murmured songfully of joy.

A beautiful gay winged butterfly had lighted on a clover blossom close to where she stood, and hung there quivering in the sunshine. With rapturous rapturous eyes the child child brooded, then sprang forward gleefully to grasp the treasure in covetous little hands. But the butterfly was up and away! Far over the meadow it wafted its flight, and only the clover blossom squeezed tight in the dimpled fist remained to be wondered and pondered over, when, unlocking her fingers one by one, the little girl peeped within.

"I wanted her," she argued loquaciously, "that butterfly; and she couldn't have seed me. I have fern seeds in my shoe. She couldn't have seed me at all. Then why did she fly away?" The problem opened strange avenues for speculation from which her infantile philosophy turned, instinctively distrustful.

But, oh! what was this? The invisible baby gasped. Her little fat legs gave way, and again under the stress of a too keenly appreciative emotion she sat helpless.

A bird's nest hidden here amid the grass! A little nest, a charming nest! And yet, how could it be?-for birds builded their homes high in the branches of trees, and-and the creatures that were in it! Never had there been such birds!

They squirmed, they writhed, they twisted about. They lifted flat hideous heads, and glared from yellow-lidded eyes! They opened. great gaping mouths! They were grimacing at her! The frightened child covered her face with her hands and wept aloud.

A soft whir of wings-a gentle fanning of the air above her! Dared she look up? Ten dimpled fingers

spread themselves over forehead and nose, two tear bright eyes peeped cautiously through the rosy lattice.

A wonderful bird, brown, and soft, and dainty, hovered fascinated above the nest; while the monsters. with fierce cries and horrid devouring jaws reared menacingly.

"Go away! Oh, go away!" shouted the child. "That's not your house!" And she sobbed with relief as the bird darted upward and sped skimming across the meadow.

Then the child rose too. She could bear no longer to remain near the haunted spot; though it pleased her to know that she had been able to warn the pretty brown bird of its peril.

"They'd have eated her up, if ! hadn't," she communed as she trotted soberly along. "Poor little birdy! She couldn't ever have flewed any more at all."

But here her attention was vividly attracted by a curious mottled stone that lay directly in her path. It was smooth and beautifully moulded; yet what was still more remarkable was the charmingly decorative plaid with which its surface was embossed.

Captivated, yet doubtful, the child stared down upon it; when, to her amazement, the stone becoming suddenly instinct with life thrust out a queer inquiring face, and, after blinking at her for a moment with an air of supercilious indifference, began to shuffle stupidly away on flabby wide spread feet.

Gravely the baby followed, her mind lost in a fog of dazed enchantment, till a bumblebee bumping rudely against her cheek and passing onward with loud complainings caused her to raise her eyes for an

instant from the ground; and when she looked again for the marvelous stone it had vanished!

Only a a grasshopper, a funny green fellow, whose goggle eyes seemed almost ready to pop out of his head from some astounding thought of a clearly intimate and domestic character, was balancing himself with cautious precision on the edge of a plantain leaf close to where she stood to observe him, instantly oblivious of previous prodigies, and the insect apparently overcome by embarrassment at the interest he was exciting sprang madly into space and disappeared.

The child shook her head disapprovingly. "Now he's gone and losted hisself," she said. "It was very silly for him to jump so high. Maybe he won't never be found again."

A swift shadow trembled abruptly across her path, blotting out the glory of the way, shrouding even the sunny foxgloves and the daisies in its gloom. A delicate restraining hand laid anxious grasp upon her shoulder.

The blue eyes were raised in

round amazement. There stood Aunt Annabel!

"You naughty little girl!" the lady exclaimed, in nervous, strained reproach. "Dorothy, you have run away! You have been disobedient, and more troublesome than I could have believed."

Dorothy stared in silence.

"Jane," Aunt Annabel then appealed to the stout maid who, with a face expressive of conventional disapproval, stood a few paces behind her mistress, "take her directly in doors and put her to bed. See,she has not even a bonnet, in this sun, too! Undress her, lower the

shades, and leave her to rest. Really it seems hard that my summer should be burdened by such unlooked for responsibility."

Still the child neither moved nor spoke. But when Jane actually approached and taking her by the hand essayed to lead her dully away, a full realization of the magnitude and foulness of injustice

she was now about to suffer overwhelmed her little soul, and she lifted up her voice in outraged protest.

"You can't see me!" she wailed. "You can't see me! Oh, you can't see me, and it isn't fair!"

Aunt Annabel raised her hand to her head with a querulous gesture.

"Why do children always resent correction so unreasonably?" she inquired. "If they were not naughty it would never be necessary to punish them. Take her to the nursery at once, Jane. I simply cannot endure such uproar."

So Dorothy, fighting furiously against an unjust fate, was lifted up in Jane's strong arms and born relentlessly away; while Aunt Annabel, freeing her skirts with an impatient swish patient swish from the officious. grasp of a ribald blackberry vine, followed slowly across the meadow.

Suddenly she stooped and lifted something from the ground.

"Dear me, the child has lost one of her shoes," she said; but Dorothy did not hear.

Her heart was filled with mutinous wrath at the callous cruelty of a skeptic world. She did not know that the magic seeds were still within the small lost shoe, and so she could not understand why it was that though she sobbed over and over again, "You can't see me! You can't see me!" neither Jane nor Aunt Annabel believed her.