'Yes, mine,' admitted Henry. 'And, apart from other considerations, I can't afford to have you stand before the world as a faker while you bear my name.'

"'Faker!' said Reginald. There you go again!'

"A faker is a mesmerist, a hypnotist, at man who perverts people to his way of thinking. People who want organs go and buy 'em. They can't be persuaded by printers' ink. When you try to persuade 'em by printers' ink, you 're a faker, a dreamer, an unpractical dreamer, and an enemy to the rest of us.'

'All right,' said Reginald, cheerfully; 'at least I'm an honest faker. Is that all?' ""That's all, Reginald. If you 're forced out of business as a consequence to your foolishness, don't blame me. I warned you. And I may have to take a hand myself. I wasted four years on your education, and—'

"And I'm beginning to think I've wasted half an hour this morning,' retorted Reginald, and he went over to Washington Street and laid out an advertising plan that covered the State of Massachusetts like a porous plaster.

"Now, old man Ferguson was born in Massachusetts, lived there, worked there, and hoped to die there with a copy of 'The Boston Journal' by his bedside and a pot of baked beans in the oven. He made organs to sell in Massachusetts, and if a Rhode Islander asked for prices, Henry thought it almost disloyal to his Puritan. ancestors to allow the instrument to leave the State. When Reginald covered all

fourteen counties at one time with his silent salesmen, he earned a few reams of heated correspondence, a good many black looks, cut slightly into the Ferguson Company's business, and found it necessary to get out a catalogue and invest rather more plentifully in postage-stamps and printed forms. It was n't long before he saw that all New England wanted, and might as well have, the benefit of high-class goods at reasonable prices; and shortly after that decision his returns brought him to the belief that his territory was bounded only by the Overland Trail and the Monroe Doctrine.

"Henry was, after all, a pretty fair merchandiser of the old school, and he realized very suddenly that he had always secretly believed in the ultimate certainty. of advertising, and went to it. Other manufacturers followed suit, men whose financial resources made Reginald's appropriation look about as impressive as a ten-cent piece in a Broadway restaurant. Reginald's inquiries decreased; even the young men on the express-wagons had difficulty in engaging room and board in suburban parlors.

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'Well,' said Reginald's partner in the Royal Organ Company, 'what are we going to do now? Make organs to sell at a loss?'

"'No,' said Reginald, 'we 're going to make pianos to sell at a profit.'

'Pianos! But we've never made pianos.'

"'No,' admitted Reginald; 'but, then, we 've never tried.'

"Do you think we can sell them?'
"'I don't know.'

"'Do you think we can loan them?'
" 'I doubt it.'

'Well-'

"I'm thinking of giving them away,' explained Reginald. 'Not many, of course, but a few. We'll see how it works, and to-morrow morning we 'll begin to make pianos.'

"You probably remember that the piano is a comparatively modern machine. When Reginald determined to go into that phase of the business, pianos were a distinct extravagance in most homes. Any one was justified in owning an organ; but when a man bought a piano, it was an indication either of great wealth or of a tendency to living fast. When Henry heard of the

"'It can't be done,' he said bitterly. 'I told him he could n't sell organs, and he could n't; and now I tell him he can't sell pianos, and he can't.'

"And Reginald did n't sell them; that is, he did n't do what Henry called selling them. Instead of sending samples out on express-wagons, he shipped pianos anywhere on one or two months' free trial, and, in the contingency of a sale, offered to take the old family organ in exchange. He made a present of a piano to every conservatory in the State-there were n't many-and to the opera-house in every town large enough to hold public concerts. The little credit notice, 'Royal Piano Used,' was one of his ideas, and he was willing to give or loan an instrument to whomever would use the notice. furnished them free for high-school and college concerts, for lodge entertainments and small theaters, and he got his money back because the school-girls and college men and lodge brothers knew the Royal piano by name when they did n't know any other, and recommended it to their friends, and now and then persuaded father to invest in one himself. Incidentally, it was as good a piano as there was on the market.

He

'Reginald!'

"Reginald tore up the memorandum, and threw it in the gutter.

""There's no blackmail about it,' he insisted. 'You 've been hurting my business a good deal by some of your copy, and I don't like it. The sale is called off; I'll tell you what I'll do instead. In tomorrow's papers I'm going to advertise that we purpose to give away sixty-two Ferguson organs to the first people who call for them. How 's that? If you call in time you can have one for nothing.' "Henry frothed at the mouth.

'You would n't do that, Reginald? You would n't!'

"No,' said the son, smiling; 'you 're right. I would n't. But, remember this, Father, -remember it when you think of me, I could afford to do it if I wanted to. Could you? Send around for the organs any time you like, and take 'em away

as a present from me.' He walked away, and left Henry standing on the sidewalk with his mouth wide open.

glass door, he found Henry explaining to an old enemy how Reginald had grossly neglected the sound principles of commer

"All this time, you understand, Reginald had been building up a business from the inside out instead of from the outside in. He had a factory that was about two jumps ahead of the next best in town, and his office was a marvel of efficiency. His sales' force knew mighty little about the theory of salesmanship, but every man could go out and teach a deaf-and-dumb man to yearn for a Royal piano with such a tremendous yearn that it was a question only of the style he preferred. Reginald had made friends with a bank-account, and passed the point where he had to get out his pencil and figure frantically every time he drew a check for the rent. He was living in a much better house than his father was, spent twice as much money, and saved a great deal more. All his interest was in the business and in Mrs. Reginald and the children; and after a few years he was so busy being interested in them and making so much money that he almost forgot that his father was still turning out organs for the country trade. "Modern conceptions of advertising, selling, office organization came along, and found the old gentleman clinging desperately to the pure thoughts of childhood. Instead of conducting his business according to the revolutionized methods, he found himself struggling against a dozen competitors who could sell instruments at less than his manufacturing cost, and then overnight a crop of mail-order men sprang up who slashed the vitals out of his whole system, and let the roof fall in.

have done if he 'd been willing to listen to sage advice from a man who understood all about it.

"The difference between the assets and liabilities was fifty thousand dollars; so that, after a vigorous lifetime of minding the nation's business and acting as 'Constant Reader' and ‘E. Pluribus Unum' for all the dailies in the county, Henry stood at last on the brink of the abyss, and waited doggedly for the referee to come and push him over.

"For some time Reginald had known how matters were tending, but he had no idea how critical the situation was until the crash came, and then he simply got out his check-book and wrote the only kind of advice that is relished by a bankrupt. He took an additional pleasure in it because no one had ever been willing to certify any of Henry's advice in the past. In other words, Reginald was ready and desirous to play the part of the prodigal son, and furnish the fatted calf himself.

"The interview was characteristic on both sides. Henry accepted Reginald's assistance because he could prove conclusively that he had been largely responsible for Reginald's success, and had a deferred claim to the unearned increment.

"'And, now,' said Reginald, in some embarrassment, 'what are you planning to do?'

"Why, yes. The Ferguson Company can liquidate, but it can't continue, can it?'

"I suppose not,' said Henry, dazedly. 'Why, I'm through.'

'Not quite,' said Reginald. 'Your experience is worth something.' 'Something!'

The old man's pride broke the speed limit in coming to his rescue. 'Something! Why, my boy, I 'm worth a hundred thousand dollars a year to some one. Experience!'

"Is there anything in sight?'

"Not yet,' admitted Henry; but he added stoutly, 'there will be, sir, there will be.'

'There is,' agreed Reginald. 'Come

"I mean it. You have a reputation as a sound, conservative manufacturer of high-grade instruments, which you did n't know how to sell. I know more about merchandizing than you ever will. With what we both know, and the Ferguson name, we can make a great deal of money.' "'In organs?'

" 'Never again,' said Reginald, prophetically. 'In pianos. There's a great opportunity for an automatic machine that will play a piano on the style of the old roller music-box, and I mean to try it.' "It can't be done,' declared Henry with great emphasis.

''Do you want to try?'

"And lose the Ferguson name?'

" 'It's a bargain,' cried Henry. 'It 's a bargain. Ferguson & Son it is-Henry Ferguson president and-er-general manager. Where shall we have the stationery engraved?'

"The sign on the door read 'Ferguson & Son,' but every one called them Son & Ferguson until one spring morning, ten years afterward, Henry lay in bed and advised the surgeon how to administer an anesthetic to secure the best results. When he came out of the stupor, he knew that it was all over.

'Is there anything I can do, Father?" begged Reginald.

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'No; only I'm sorry you 're so radical, my son. You'll have to run the business alone, and I 'm afraid you can't make a success of it. You 're too radical, and your angles are all wrong. You can't make a success that way.'

"The doctor led Reginald out of the room, and the lawyers found that Henry had left the half-million that Reginald had made for him to a school of business in a university where all the faculty held D.D. degrees, so that conservatism was assured for the young men who went there. He did n't realize that he had never earned the salary Reginald paid him; and he died complaining that they were using a newfangled tank of oxygen on him instead of holding ammonia under his nose, as they had when he was a boy.

“And that,” said Billy Proctor, "is the kind of father that I don't want to be. My son can make his success in his own way, in college and afterward, and I won't make him peevish by trying to advise him on a subject he 's specializing in. We 're of a different generation, and unless I catch the five-eighteen train, Mrs. Proctor will remind me of several very important and disquieting facts."

"Not to harp on the same subject," I Isaid, as we went into the stream of clockwatching commuters, "I still congratulate you on Bill Junior's getting on the football squad."

"As a matter of fact," Billy confided, halting at the corner where we parted, "I doubt whether he ever makes the team. He won't be told how to do anything, and I don't believe he 'll please the coaches. He's very headstrong. Why, when he was only a little shaver in knickerbockers, he would n't let me tell him how to carry the ball!"

"They 've changed the rules since your day, Billy, have n't they?"

He stared incredulously.

"Why, certainly," he conceded; “but

ways the same.”