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ing women? Should he smoke, vote, preach in church? How can he arrange his life so as to be happy though unmarried? Are his manners less graceful than they were? Is he becoming unmasculine, unsexed? Should he play violent games? Is he incomplete without fatherhood? Is he an individual, or mainly intended for a helpmeet to woman? Is the modern youth different from his grandfather? What constitutes a surplus man? What, in brief, is man really like?

Meanwhile, I should like to offer any daily and nearly any weekly paper a wager that it will not be able to keep woman, as a topic, in one aspect or another, out of its columns for a clear month from now.

When did this thing begin? Has it always been so throughout the ages

(except among the Early Fathers and mediæval saints, by whom woman was written of, not as a topic, but as a temptation)? Did Adam speculate and talk about Eve, her dress (or undress), her habits, mentality, status, and uses, while Eve took Adam for granted as a being much like herself? Probably; and Eve, no doubt, was a little flattered by such interest, a little amused, and a good deal bored. Perhaps she would really have preferred to have been taken for granted, which is so restful.

Anyhow, there it is. Woman is a topic, never out of date; and even if man, too, can be made into one, she need have no fear of being superseded. There must be something about her more interesting and more perplexing than appears to the casual eye.

QUAKER SCHOOL-LUNCHES

BY FRITZ PASTORIUS

From Berliner Tageblatt, July 17
(LIBERAL DAILY)

'RR! RR!' Short staccato whispers listen intently and watch Dr. Fuchs, trill across the schoolroom.

Every boy understands: Quaker! Here and there a head is raised and turned, exhibiting a school-lad's laughing features. Interchanges of intelligence by wink or gesture follow. All this is meant to say: 'Ready now! Only five minutes more!'

Eight boys rise quietly, and tiptoe out of the room like Redskins on the warpath except that each carries a dish instead of a tomahawk. As soon as they are out of sight, the other boys

the schoolmaster. He also stops a minute and listens.

Then he makes a motion toward the door, muttering through his teeth, 'Young savages!' However, he thinks better of it and, turning to the class, remarks, good-humoredly: 'Well, it's the sooner over that way!'

He refers to the first-grade boys who are storming down the hall toward the gymnasium. They rattle their spoons in their tin dishes as they go, delighted with this lovely harmony; and here and

there a boy is unable to repress a shout of gleeful expectation.

By this time 'Quakers' are coming from their class-rooms in all directions, and forming a long queue in the gymnasium. There are nearly a hundred of them; quite a sixth of the pupils in the school. They are undernourished boys, who have been selected by physical examination to receive a supplementary meal each day.

A doctor examined them at the close of the previous semester. One of the school officials took the pupils to the principal's office where they received the laconic order: 'Strip to the waist.' Some of the boys refused as soon as they discovered what the purpose was; whereupon their schoolmates promptly nicknamed them, 'Fatty,' or the like, or solicitously asked whether their shirts were torn. Those who complied were then examined by the doctor, who noted whether they were pale or not, whether their muscles were firm or flabby, whether their spines were straight or crooked. Then he listened carefully for heart weakness, one of the surest symptoms that these little lads had not escaped the effect of war privations. After this they were listed: 'Yes,' or 'No,' or 'Under observation.'

It is in this way that the boys in the gymnasium were selected. A male teacher in charge there stands at the head of the long line, holding a punch like that of a tramway conductor in his hand. When all are in order, the smallest boys in front, he says, 'Let her go!'

The first lad, a tiny, spindling, second-grade boy, with big brilliant eyes, has been peering curiously through the doorway toward the side of the next room, where a lady teacher presides over a huge steaming kettle. Kulicke, the gymnasium assistant, is stationed by her, in charge of a pile of uniform thick slices of round white bread.

The youngster's ocular inspection

was obviously insufficient; for when he hands his red ticket, with its separate square for every day of the month, to the teacher, to be punched, he whispers confidentially: 'What do we get today, sir?'

'Oh, you just wait a moment!'
'Chocolate soup?'

The teacher nods with a laugh, and in an instant the whole queue is dancing up and down with joy.

'Ah, fine! Chocolate soup! That's bully!'

Their impatience increases. 'Shove along!' Hands are stretched forward, holding their tickets toward the teacher. Click! Click! It is a jolly little click to the waiting school-lads.

Evidently some of the cards are hard to punch. Next month,' says the teacher, 'you must n't paste your tickets on such heavy pasteboard. You, lad, must have glued yours to a piece of a book-cover. I can't make any impression on it.'

The embarrassed owner stammers: 'My father he thought — -'

'Pass along there!' the teacher interrupts, crossing out the date with his pencil, instead.

The next lad steps up to the teacher quickly, and whispers in a timid voice: 'I forgot my ticket.'

"Tut, tut! Next time you won't get anything. But since we have chocolate soup to-day, run along. I'll punch your ticket to-morrow. Next!'

As soon as the boys are admitted, they skip and jump down toward the kettle. But no; to-day is Monday. They must first pass over to the right, to the desk of the gymnasium director; for on Monday they have to pay for the previous week: six times twenty-five pfennig equals one mark fifty pfennig.

The first boy to reach the desk, Deubner, a fourth-grade lad, has a two-mark bill.

The director exclaims with a touch of

irritation: 'Why have n't you even change? Wait there!' And crossing out the six minus-signs on his book to make them plus-signs, he calls, 'Next! Bredow!'

'I was here only three times. I was sick.'

'Well then, seventy-five pfennig! A mark? Wait then!' and he makes three crosses.

So these two lads stand aside on the director's left, like the goats at the day of judgment, casting longing glances toward the steaming chocolate kettle. Usually they had run ahead of the others and were first in line, and The third is already at the desk, and they watch little Masovius, who has brought precisely a mark and a half, run past them and reach the promised land.

'Here, Deubner, are your fifty pfennig.' The lad was sunk in thought, and jumped with fright when his name was mentioned. He has hardly picked up the fifty pfennig when the director calls, 'Next. Domke!'

him in change. Taking them, he steps a little closer to the director and asks, timidly, and with great embarrassment: 'My father told me to ask why we have to pay?'

'Well, my lad, you ought to know that already. Here! Read for yourself.' The doctor points to a big poster in the

corner.

The boy reads: 'American Friends' Service Committee of America. Notice.' 'Now read paragraph three.'

Wilhelm knows that the director can be impatient, and so he stammers: "The parents' contribution is not to pay for the food, but merely to meet part of the cost of preparation.'

'Do you understand it?' The boy nods eagerly, 'Yes.' 'What do you think it means?' The boy is frightened. "That-that the Quakers do not prepare the foodbut that that

'Well, then, what next?'

but that we eat it.'

'Oh, nonsense, boy! Now listen to what I tell you! The Quakers furnish rice and flour and beans and all the rest, and the city of Berlin provides for its preparation, supplies cooking utensils, and distributes the cooked food to the different schools. Your father pays twenty-five pfennig a luncheon towards that part of it. Next!'

Hesitating, and with fear in his big eyes, almost certain he would be turned back right now, on chocolate-soup day, this little fellows whispers inaudibly: 'I have forgot my money." "To-morrow!' is the good-natured answer; and the little lad bounds off toward the soup-kettle like a rubber ball. 'Next! Steinfeld!' He pays, and passed and hasten on to get their porgets his pluses.

And so it goes.

By this time there are a few more goats on the left; but eventually all are

tion of chocolate soup, and a slice of white bread. It is honest-and-true

'Here, Bredow, are your twenty-five white bread, a beautiful white bread, pfennig!'

The boy who had been second in the row steps forward eagerly for his change at last; he had almost given up hope.

'Next! What's your name?'

'I came to pay for my brother, Wilhelm!' At the same time the lad hands a ten-mark bill to the director, and seven little bills are thrust back to

which the poor little slum children have not seen for years, to say nothing of eating.

Three slices are left over. Little Senkpiel, a third-grade boy, comes up and asks: 'May I have another piece?' 'Half a slice. Some others will want more, too.'

By this time quite a group of little

Over

folks again surrounds the teacher at the kettle, to get a second portion. On chocolate-soup day there is no lack of applicants. The children sit on low benches by long tables, and diligently ply their spoons. One boy has a tin basin, others have brown, blue, green, and white enamel-ware dishes. in a corner is a boy with a soldier's field plate. He says proudly: 'It's dad's. I borrowed it.' Farther to the left, a timid little lad is diffidently concealing his dish as he eats. It is an old tin can. But they all do their duty; the spoons scrape busily against the sides of their dishes.

Indeed it is a merry sight, and one that makes your heart beat faster, to see all these little boys reveling so wholeheartedly over their food. To-day in particular they are racing each other. But that does not prevent a constant chatter. One big lad has seated himself in a distant corner, as if to get more elbow-room. Next to him is little Siebe from the primary class. Although he evidently enjoys his chocolate, he dallies over it and nibbles at his slice of bread, instead of attacking it voraciously the way the others do. The teacher says to him: 'Lay to, Siebe! Brace up! You'll never get through!'

The little fellow blushes; he is embarrassed, and casts a half-smiling,

half-diffident, but touchingly appealing glance on either side. For a moment he plies his spoon vigorously, and bites valiantly into his white bread. But a minute later he is again 'slow Peter.' The boy next to him jumps up and hastens over to the kettle. 'Can I have another helping?'

'All gone,' answers the lady.

'Gone already?' exclaims the boy, in a disappointed voice. And a number of others echo, 'Gone already?'

'Chocolate-soup day you want to lick the kettle, don't you?'

'There's a little on the edge. Can't I scrape it off?'

The teacher and the other children burst into laughter. 'Go 'long with you; get what you can.' And the boy actually does manage to find a teaspoonful in the bottom, which naturally tastes better than all he had had before.

Just then the bell rings. But some of the children still delay. The teachers who have classes waiting for the next period hurry them.

Little Seibe lingers, plying his spoon vigorously, but his basin is not yet empty. The teacher waits patiently a moment, intuitively realizing that some of these delicate, blood-impoverished children of the slums have no real appetite for the very food which their systems so urgently need.

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Fling out bare arms, bend down a peach His glazed eyes stare into the street,

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And shake down storms of white petals. With long mellifluous taunts at fate.

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