some other way; and when he was in college he never dared to talk about his courses for fear Henry would think he was either studying too much or not enough. Henry was very fond of Reginald, too, but he liked to think that he was the only human bureau of information within easy reach of the masses. He gave Reginald twenty dollars a month allowance, and hoped he 'd learn sound business judgment; kept him out of a fraternity because it was n't as democratic as the Y. M. C. A.; and announced that the boy could n't get into a reform school without a political pull because he was graduated a tenth of one per cent. behind the valedictorian. If Reginald had been valedictorian, Henry would have said that the course was too easy, and something ought to be done about it. Then he took Reginald into the plant, and gave him the job of doing nothing in particular at a commensurate salary, with special attention to keeping the time-cards and staying out of the way of the order-clerks. Reginald stood it for two years, and then one day he walked into the private office hand in hand with the head bookkeeper, and announced that they proposed to hunt up. a justice of the peace as soon as the noon whistle blew.

"Henry was n't angry; he was n't astonished; he was n't human. He merely leaned back in his swivel-chair and grinned sarcastically. He was persuading himself that he had known it all the time.

"'Well,' he said to the bookkeeper, 'I'm sorry for your sake. You 're too good a bookkeeper to make a good wife; and you,' turning to Reginald-'you 're not enough of a business man to make a good husband.'

automatically win my consent to go out and earn your living somewhere else. And as long as you 've taken this method of informing me of your plans, I'll tell you. both that I'll never consent to my son's marriage with a working-woman.'

"A few minutes later the people in the outside office heard the door open and saw the three come out. Reginald and the girl had their hats on, and started for the little gate in the railing; the old man talked at them from the place where he stood, so that there would n't be any lack of witnesses when he said, 'I told you so.'

"And as for you,' he was saying to his son in the tone he usually reserved for election year, 'you could n't take over the Bank of England and make a success of it. Your angles are all wrong. You could n't learn to sell organs in twenty years. You 'll turn out a failure because you would n't be told. You'll never get anywhere, and if you'd listened to me-'

"The couple were half-way down-stairs by this time, so Henry went back into his room, sent his clerk to get his will out of the safe, and ran a perfectly straight line. through the second clause; after which he sniffed reflectively, bullied the clerk a little, and returned to the daily routine which his son and the head bookkeeper had carelessly interrupted.

"Perfectly,' said Henry. I understood it even before you mentioned it. Why don't you speak for yourself, Reginald?'

"I had n't thought of resigning,' said Reginald.

""Then I'll save you the trouble,' promised Henry. 'You have n't shown enough intelligence to conduct your own life, so you naturally undertake to conduct hers, too. That's the trouble with young men they 're too impetuous. And when you marry without my consent, you

LXXXVII-25

"The old-fashioned way of disposing of musical instruments was to bait a showroom with a few samples and wait for a customer to come in; and when Reginald left the Ferguson Company he was just learning that the best place to set a trap is in the woods. As soon as the justice of the peace had finished the ceremony and

counted the receipts, Reginald went straight to a struggling manufacturer of low-priced organs with his proposition, and the manufacturer was so weary of the struggle that he cheerfully exchanged a half-interest in his workshop, good-will, and debts for a thousand dollars, which was all Reginald had in the world besides a permanent drawing on his fertile imagination.

"His scheme was as ingenuous as you would expect from a man named Reginald. He simply loaded an organ on an express-wagon, and went out to the suburbs. When he came to a likely looking house with a barn attached he went up to the door and introduced himself. He said that he was trying to deliver that organ to a purchaser whose address appeared to be a mistake, and to save carting it back to town, he wanted to store it somewhere for a week or two. The very handsome barn looked like a comfortable place, and of course he would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for storage.

"Even a woman could n't think of more than three answers to the question: yes, no, and perhaps. Usually she glanced over Reginald's shoulder at the bright, new upright, and thought how grand it would look in the corner of the parlor where the haircloth sofa was then, and she could move the sofa across the windows and put the marble-top table in front of the fireplace. Sometimes she suggested it, sometimes Reginald did, and once or twice he had to back up to the barn and lean the organ against the haymow; but in that case he called for it the following morning with an easy payment plan that sounded attractive. Sometimes he found that there was already an organ in the house, and about that time he remembered the address he was looking for, which usually proved to be the main thoroughfare of Arlington or Hyde Park, six or eight miles away.

"Four times out of five Reginald was allowed to install his Model A-5 in the parlor, and in four cases out of four his express-wagon had n't turned the corner before there was enough music in the air to demonstrate that mother or the girls had lost very little time in trying the foot work and experimenting with the flute, oboe, vox humana, and tremolo stops.

"When Henry heard of Reginald's sys

tem, he said it could n't be done. The answer that Reginald was doing it was flippant and beside the point. He said it could n't be done; that he had been in the organ business thirty years, and it never had been done; and he proved by statistics that it was impossible. In the meantime Reginald continued his peripatetic philosophy until his entire stock was sojourning in the suburbs, and he was demanding more organs so forcibly that his partner, who looked after the manufacturing end, was trying to remember how to hold a saw to keep the blade from wabbling.

"In the course of the month Reginald and his wife ate their hygienic breakfast of bread and milk one sunny morning, got on the front seat of the wagon, and set out to the harvest-fields. Whenever there was a good opportunity, Mrs. Reginald sat down at the organ and played hymns, secular music, and as much of her repertoire as she thought fitting, winding up with the contemporary classic, 'The Battle of Prague,' with all the stops open, and the bellows carrying the maximum overload.

"Now, an old-fashioned reed-organ had a character all its own. It had a vivid personality. When it sat comfortably in the parlor with a lambrequin on it, and the photographs of Uncle Silas and Aunt Martha from Wiscasset, and the painted sea-shells from Old Orchard Beach, it belonged to the family, and looked it. In three instances Reginald did n't have to sell the organ, for it had already sold itself. In two others the enemy was met and defeated on the battle-field of Prague. Two elderly ladies were affected to sympathy and a first payment by Reginald's evident desire to rid himself of the instrument at a bargain price, and a wholesale grocer in Melrose offered to pay half in cash, half in trade. Reginald was willing, and enjoyed better breakfasts than bread and milk for an extended period of time. He disposed of seven organs during his first campaign, which was an increase of six over the sales of the previous month.

"Then he met Henry on the street. "'What 's this bunco-game of yours I hear about?' snapped Henry. 'What kind of business man are you, anyway?'

""That's what I'm trying to find out,' said Reginald.

"I can tell you,' volunteered his fa

ther: 'you 're a radical. Do you hear? A radical. You can't succeed that way. Your angles are all wrong; it is n't good business. When people want to buy organs they go and buy 'em. It's always been that way, and it always will be that way. You 're not a business man at all; you 're a peddler.'

"Well,' suggested Reginald, at least I'm a pretty fair peddler, am I not?'

"The old man did n't hesitate a moment.

"'No,' he replied; 'you 're too radical. You 're not even a good peddler.'

"It took Reginald something less than half a year to adjust his income to his living expenses and his selling price to his cost of production; but by the time cold weather came along, his wife had learned how to take a lot of apparently useless ingredients and concoct a marvelous Irish stew, and his partner had found out that ten specialized workmen can build more and better organs in a few days than thirty or forty journeymen, all getting in one another's way, can turn out in a fortnight. They added to the factory with a little borrowed capital, hired some new hands, and sent out half a dozen bright young fellows to see America first and forget the address of the mythical customer whose organ would be perfectly safe in any one's barn, or in the house, if you prefer. Reginald sat in the office and thought up new schemes to compromise his father's opinion of him.

"Before long they could afford to be more dignified. Instead of introducing the Royal organ by means of a subterfuge, they came out into the open. Their young men stopped in the suburbs just the same; but when the lady came to the door, she got an offer to loan her the organ for a month without charge. If she liked it, she could buy it; if she did n't, there was no harm done. Reginald even furnished sheet-music and hymn-books, and had a list of teachers he could recommend for the little girl in pigtails who was peeping around the corner. After she had received three or four pupils, the teacher naturally felt it a matter of duty to buy a Royal organ herself.

"The new plan did very well, but Reginald was n't satisfied. He wanted to progress faster; but his next innovation was so startling that some of the neighbors

"And why should n't a big, first-class musical house advertise?'

"Henry delivered himself of an axiom of the period.

"If a conservative, reputable house begins to advertise, it ceases to be conservative and reputable.'

"Reginald anticipated his century by about one decad.

66

'Whether you know it or not,' he said, 'you can't help advertising any more. than you can help breathing. Your instruments advertise you; your store advertises you; your clerks, and your musicbooks, and your own personality advertise you; you advertise yourself in the street, in the factory, in your bank, in church. Why? Because advertising is merely calling attention to yourself and your product.'

"Rot!' said the old man, impatiently. 'The business won't stand it. You can peddle your organs if you choose, but you can't sell 'em through the papers.'