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than by a resort to a dubious remedy like physical valuation. If this latter be the policy of the President, it stands out in bold contrast with the policy of Governor Hughes, who has met the evil of overcapitalization by requiring the issue of new securities to be approved by a Board of Public Utilities. This is a more rational and practicable method than forbidding the issue of securities on the ground of a physical valuation.

The relation of the question of valuation of railways to taxation is a separate question into which we need not enter here. Everything depends upon the laws of the separate states. If they tax all property upon the basis of the value of its tangible forms, then railways should be taxed upon the same appraisal. On the other hand, unless other going concerns are taxed upon

a valuation based upon earnings, railways should not be. Equality of treatment is the only rule.

In conclusion, we may recall that a freely reproducible article, like a hammer or a plane, would have its value limited by its expense of reproduction. Obviously, a railway in a certain place is not freely reproducible by other persons than the owners, and hence its value could not properly be based on its mere cost of reproduction. But, we also saw that a monopolized plant, practically incapable of reproduction as it stands, would have its value determined by its earnings. To the extent that a railway is a monopoly, its commercial valuation will be based on its earnings. But a physical valuation overlooks sources of earnings properly belonging to a transportation company.

THE DANCING MAN By Charles Belmont Davis

ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. I. KELLER

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ER hands resting on her narrow hips, Eleanor Blythe stood before the bureau and, with levelled brows, looked at the pretty face in the mirror.

Her yellow hair was gathered loosely in a great mass over small, delicate features, and her flat, boyish figure was draped in a pink kimona of almost diaphanous texture, and apparently little else. Mrs. Blythe, dressed in the almost equally unconventional attire of a black silk underskirt and an all too short dressing-sack, sat in a rocking-chair across the room and stared dully at her daughter. The bulky figure of the older woman filled the chair to overflowing; her hands lay idly in her ample lap, and she rocked slowly but incessantly.

"Are you going out like that?" the mother asked.

The girl glanced down at the clinging silk kimona, at the inch of bare ankles and the tips of gold-embroidered Turkish slippers. Then she looked back again in the

mirror at the smiling, pretty face and the blonde curls, and drew the kimona more closely about her.

"I am," she said. "Where?"

"To the bath. Do I look as if I were going to a tea or for a ride?-or perhaps you thought I was going to play tennis." Mrs. Blythe sighed.

The daughter ran her long, tapering fingers through the golden curls, and opening a vanity-box that lay on the bureau, dabbed her nose several times with a miniature powder-puff.

"I think, muzzy," she said, slowly drawing back from the mirror, "I look rather pretty this way, don't you-running across the lawn and in and out among the trees? I really think I look quite like a sprite or a fairy-or something."

Mrs. Blythe glanced at the nickel alarm clock over the fireless hearth.

"There are not many folks about just now. The Springs are always dead at four o'clock. I don't suppose many people will see you."

Eleanor turned and fairly laughed aloud. "You dear old muzzy," she said. "But you never can tell who is peeping out from the cottage windows."

the older woman was seated the girl slipped to her knees at her mother's feet.

"I didn't know, mother," she whispered. "I didn't know we were so near the end. Of course I understood it wasn't far off, but-but you mustn't say there will be nothing left. There will be you and me." With closed eyes the mother put out her

Mrs. Blythe slowly pulled herself from the chair and started to move cumbersomely across the room. "You'll want a bath ticket, too, I suppose?" "I never heard that the baths were free arms and drew her daughter toward her. on Thursdays, did you?” "Yes, little girl," she said, "there will be you and me."

The older woman knelt down before a trunk, slowly unlocked it, and after groping about the tray, eventually discovered the tickets hidden under a confused mass of stockings and handkerchiefs. She handed her daughter one of the printed cards, and then counting those that remained, carefully put them back in their hiding-place. "Only four more," she said, and with the aid of the trunk slowly pulled herself to her feet again. "And when they're gone, that's the end."

The girl threw back her head and laughed until the tears filled her eyes. "Oh, muzzy," she said, "you are so funny sometimes. Can't we ever bathe again, really?"

The older woman looked dully into the smiling face of her daughter, and then, as if a little dazed, turned, waddled across the room, and stood with her great broad back silhouetted against the window. Through glazed eyes she looked out on the orange sunlight as it filtered through the trees and threw long shadows on the great stretches of rolling lawn. For a moment her eyes rested on the big white hotel with its red roof and spreading porticos and white, fat, fluted pillars glistening in the golden light. Some robins were hopping about under an apple-tree, but otherwise the lawn was quite deserted and silent, and the only sign of life was at the Casino, where two old men were dozing with their chairs tilted back and their feet resting on the porch railing. The girl crept noiselessly to the old woman's side, and putting her arm about her shoulders pressed her own cold little cheek against the hot, tear-stained face of her mother. "Is it as bad as that?" she asked.

"Yes, Eleanor. It's as bad as that. We seem to have come to the end. Perhaps a week or two more and there will be nothing -just nothing."

She took her mother's hand and led her slowly back to the rocking-chair, and when

And then with a low sob the daughter buried her face on the broad, soft bosom of her mother, just as she used to do when she was really a little girl.

It was on the same day, and almost at exactly the same hour, when Eleanor Blythe learned just how desperate was her financial condition, that the new dancing man first made his appearance at the Madison Springs.

Janet Hone and Arthur Wayne were on their way to the little village at the foot of the hill where the guests go to register their letters or to buy cheesecloth and red paper muslin for occasional fancy-dress balls and private theatricals. The stranger was standing at the edge of the path, looking on at a tennis match, and as they passed he drew back and, raising his black felt hat, bowed to them with a show of old-time courtesy.

"He's very handsome, too," Janet said as they passed out of hearing. "Looks like Thomas Jefferson in extreme youth, what?"

At the same moment Wayne was thinking, too, how typical the young man's clearcut features were of pictures he had seen of some of the former great orators and statesmen of the South.

For a moment they stopped while Janet gathered her skirts about her, preparatory to picking her way over the narrow stream that crossed their path.

"Do you think Thomas in extreme youth," she asked, "is from the village, or could he be one of those rare specimens— a new beau at the Springs?"

"From the village," Wayne ventured, and he based his supposition on the young man's much-worn and ill-fitting suit of gray clothes, which Janet had apparently overlooked on account of the cameo face and the straightforward but deferential glance from the stranger's dark eyes.

"Oh, do you really think so?" she sighed,

slowly picking her way across the steppingstones. "That would be a real calamity. I counted ten couples of perfectly beautiful blondes dancing together in the cotillion last night, all trying to look as if they preferred it that way and as if their mothers wouldn't let them dance with men, even if they had been asked."

Wayne took her ungloved hand and helped her across the last puddle.

"It's good to have a man," he suggested, "even an old one, to depend on always at the Springs-no?"

With an almost imperceptible pressure, Janet dropped his hand and smiled at an apple-tree in a neighboring field. Wayne had his winters quite free, but for several summers he had loved Janet Hone with a very moderate passion.

"You're not so awfully old," she said. "You might be much older and still be rated as eligible-at the Springs."

"That helps some," Wayne sighed, "because I never feel old except at a summer resort. I suppose it's because all the girls appear so very young and—and attractive. In town one never seems to have the time or inclination to resent old age or rainy weather. Do you know that only last night I was thinking that when I first met you, ten years ago at Seabright, you were ten and I was thirty-just three times your age. But now' you are twenty and I am forty-just half as old as I am."

She looked up and contracted her eyebrows in a look of mock perplexity.

"Isn't it terrible?" she said. "I suppose if you had kept on with your calculations, you would have found that in a few years more I would be as old as one of those nice grandmothers who gossip on the hotel porch, and you would be a boy making horrible noises with a mechanical toy."

They had reached the village store by now, and while Janet went in to make her modest purchases Wayne sat outside and swung his legs from a molasses barrel and talked town gossip with some barefooted pickaninnies and a few homeless dogs. On their return they again passed the tennis-court, but the young man with the Thomas Jefferson features had disappeared, and neither of them saw him again until late that evening.

Since his arrival at the Springs, Wayne had occupied a bedroom in one of the out

buildings, formerly called "The Bar," but now generally known under the more refined name of "The Casino." On the lower floor the bar still existed; the second and only other floor was divided into two bedrooms and one larger room which was furnished with a round table and many canebottomed chairs. This was called "The Meeting-Room," and was devoted to those of the male guests who cared less for golf and tennis and dancing than they did for the great American game of draw-poker.

On this particular evening, which was early in August, and when the season at the Springs, to quote the words of the local society reporter, was at its "very height," Wayne had gone to his room to dress for supper. When far advanced in his somewhat ornate toilet-indeed, when just about to add the very last touches which would perfect the whole-the wick of his lamp gave a few dying splutters and went out, leaving him in complete darkness. He lighted a match in the hope of finding a friendly candle, but in this he was disappointed. However, he had heard some one stirring about in the next room, and without more ado went out into the hallway and knocked at his neighbor's door.

"Come in, please," said a low voice with a very Southern accent, and Wayne opened the door.

The young man whom he had met that afternoon while on his way to the village he found standing in his shirt-sleeves at the mirror, carefully brushing his hair.

"I have the next room," Wayne said, "and my lamp has gone out. I wanted to know if you could loan me a candle for a few moments."

"Of course," the young man said, "but won't you sit down?"

Wayne could not understand at the time why his host should be so embarrassed and his manner so confused, but his hospitality was evidently sincere, and so Wayne accepted a chair and began the conversation by telling him his name.

"I'm very glad to have the honor of your acquaintance," the young man said. "My name is Blackwood-John Blackwood." "I hope you have come for a long stay, Mr. Blackwood. I find it much pleasanter having a neighbor."

The young man seemed still more confused at Wayne's greeting, and then sud

denly turning his eyes on him looked him slowly over, from the part in his hair to the tips of his shining pumps. The survey seemed to cause him some little amusement, for his lips broke into a most charming smile, and he slowly shook his head.

"I don't quite know," he said, "that is, if all the men dress as-as you are dressed

now."

For a moment Blackwood hesitated, and even in the dim light Wayne could see the color come into the Southerner's face. "You see, I haven't got a dress suit," he stammered. "We don't wear them at Sackettthat's my home town. It's a very small place in Georgia."

"That's all right," Wayne laughed. "It doesn't make the slightest difference what you wear. I just happened to put these things on because there is to be a dance after supper."

His statement did not seem to assure the young man, for he looked at Wayne rather incredulously and shook his head.

"I suppose it wouldn't make any difference to you," he said, "but you see it's not the same with me. I'm a dancing man. Of course it's not known, but I get half rates at the hotel if I dance every night. It was the only way I could afford to come here at all."

This sudden burst of confidence somewhat embarrassed Wayne, and he was a little nonplussed as to what to say next, for, as a matter of fact, there is probably no place where there is as much absurd stress laid on a young man's wearing apparel as at the Madison Springs. Blackwood took several steps up and down the narrow room and then sat down on the edge of his bed, absolutely dejected.

"I want you to be quite frank with me," he said at last. "Do all the men in the ball room dress as you do?"

"To be quite honest," Wayne replied, "I think they do."

"Do you mind if I explain?" he asked. Wayne nodded his head as assuringly and as sympathetically as he could.

"My mother used to come to the Springs, a long time ago," Blackwood began, "and she has always wanted me to visit the place where she had once been so very happy. But that was more than thirty years ago, and she said that, as well as she could remember, the men wore pretty much what they chose, and that it was only the girls who thought of pretty things and finery. That must have changed, for I noticed this afternoon how carefully the men dressed, even those who were playing tennis."

"Yes," Wayne said, "I know of no place where a pair of purple silk socks is so great an asset as at the Madison Springs, and a tie to match is a source of genuine porch gossip. But I do not believe that the lack of a dress suit, or even purple socks, is going to damn you entirely or altogether mar your good time. Don't you think if I opened that door and called downstairs to the bar, a mintjulep would brighten your point of view?"

But the young man refused to be consoled, and only shook his head. The situation indeed seemed desperate and one with which, apparently, Wayne was entirely unable to cope.

For many moments they sat facing each other, the young man on the edge of the bed and Wayne on the wicker-bottom chair leaning against the whitewashed wall. And then Wayne had an inspired thought which, if carried through, would seem to relieve the present difficulties at once.

"In the bottom of a trunk," he suggested, "I have another dress suit, and somewhere a store of linen which I am quite sure will fit you finely. Nothing would please me more than to be your tailor and haberdasher during your stay at the Springs. I brought at least twice as many things as I need."

The young man blushed, protested in a number of quite unintelligible words, to For a few moments there was silence. which Wayne promptly replied with sound "And the worst of it is," Blackwood arguments-and the young man was lost. stammered, "I can't go back home. You In less than half an hour John Blackwood don't know just how much this trip means stood before his mirror as well, if not better, to-to all of us." arrayed than any man at the Springs. In "I'm very sorry," Wayne said, somewhat any case it was certain that the same clothes tentatively.

Blackwood looked up at him, and once more his lips broke into the same charming smile, but there was no smile in his eyes.

never looked so well on the man who had paid for them. The despondency that threatened the all-important visit and the gloom that had filled the little bedroom

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