replied in awe-struck tones, "Cheese it the coller!" "The cellar door," I hoarsely whispered, and sped down in dishabille to let them in. They were soon hidden behind the stoves in a corner and I went up to dress and reconnoiter. I dressed in two seconds, but when I reached the front door the fun was over and I received the whole story from the lips of others.

String-Beans, the coller-coller means policeman and String-Beans meant that particular policeman-had managed to surprise the boys at their fire, and, fires being unlawful, had chased them. He was right on their heels, but he lost them at the tree-box, where the girls all averred he tripped on his club. When he recovered himself no one was in sight but Mickey and Paul. He "arrested" Paul. Then my father went out, and my mother and my aunt, and they rescued Paul, and the women folks scooped him and carried him in, and my father and the coller indulged in mutual apologies outside.

Paul cried of course; you can't help that, it comes natural if you have cottony hair. But the fuss my mother and aunt made over him was simply scandalous. "Poor little Paul, to have such a startling experience," they would say. "What a shock it must have been, mentally and physically, for the policeman did jerk him about. And then to be arrested right on the street before everybody. Poor little fellow!" This was going it pretty strong I thought. I was envious and disgusted. Why hadn't I been arrested? As it was, I hadn't even seen the adventure. "Sister," said my aunt "don't you think I had better take him to the country with me, so that his nervous system may recover?" This was too much. "Pshaw!" I said, "boys like to be tooken up. If he hadn't been a baby he wouldn't have cared." And then I went over to Biederman's woodyard to talk to the boys. This was the day after the arrest.

When I arrived at the woodyard each boy in turn was recounting what would have become of the coller, had he tried to arrest him. I am vindictive by nature, and in common with the other members of the gang, I was very much "down on" String-Beans, but the thought of his undergoing in this life or the next all that was implied in those retrospective threats would be in itself a treason against the higher criticism, from which I shrink. The talk then became discursive and took in the whole subject of criminal arrest and penal detention.

"You can't arrest nobody in his house or on his steps without you have a warrant," said Jimmie. "That's why the coller never said a word to Mikey."

"No, that aint it," said Lennie Morgan, who had been to Denver, whose mother and father were divorced, and who knew a great deal. "They can arrest you anywhere if you aint a doctor. or a fireman, but they can't search you." Aw come off," said Jimmie. "Don't I know that? I know that? Aint my daddy a fireman, and aint my uncle had a job hauling rock for the city?"

66

"Und if," joined in Josie Biederman, a little late to be sure, but then Chosie had an oratorical manner all his own. "Und if vun of dem shudt zerch you vidout a baper vat says you haf concealed veapons or someding, you could haf dem all whoefer he is fined goot, all de vay up to fife dollars."

6

"If

"That's so, too," said Jimmie. String-Beans or any other coller was to pull me, I don't care for what, if it was for killing a man or knocking him senseless with brass knuckles or kidnapping somebody, and tried to go through me, I'd say Hands off! where's your warrant ?' And if he didn't have none he'd be afraid to do it. And he'd have to take me to the Four Courts. And he'd want to call the hoodlum wagon, but I'd sayNo, I'll walk;' because it costs fifty cents to ride. And they have a room at

the Four Courts where they search you. And they take off your clothes, and you can't hide nothing if you don't swallow it. And if it's a diamond they're after, that don't stop 'em neither. And I can prove it to you by Patsy McGouldrick, who has been in the holdover for smashing windows."

"I'll tell you about the hoodlum wagon," put in Lennie. "It aint nothing but a wagon with eight policemen in it, and I've seen it more'n a thousand times at big fires, and I never seen it anywhere else. 'Taint so much to arrest you, but if you're a bank robber, it's to rush in sudden and capture your den when there's only one of the gang watch ing night and day; and they bust in the door, and you can't shoot more'n three, and they have you; and they get back the sacks of gold, and more'n a hundred thousand dollars in paper. Here we all began to stare, and Chosie nearly expired in a vain endeavor to grasp the figures. "Most always though," resumed Lennie, "when a policeman opens a telephone box and gets inside, there's your time to run or to hit him; but there is generally a blunderbuss inside which he can throw at you. And the chief to him over the telephone, 'Are you scared?' And if he says yes, he is fired, and if he says no, the hoodlum wagon don't come."

says

"That's all right," responded Jimmy, "but if you've burnt up a house with people inside and some man you are down on, or if you've killed your father and cut off his head and gone crazy, I guess you're dangerous aint you, and the wagon has to come; for handcuffs aint a thing to a man that's crazy and that's tasted blood."

I had said nothing so far, mainly for the reason that my father was not a fireman but only a book-keeper in a china store, and had never run a woodyard, or been divorced. But here I put in: "There's just two things," I said.

"There's being jerked, and there's being run in. If you're jerked three times they run you in. I've been jerked twice. by other collers, but I guess String-Beans knows about it, because everytime I go by him I whistle Meet Her when the Sun goes Down,' or something, and he keeps his eye on me and says, 'Move

on."

"Ven dey dake you to de Vore Courts," said Chosie," dey dake you in de hoodlum vagon ven you don't valk, but ven dey pring you oudt dey pring you in de Plack Maria."

"And they have to put you out two blocks from where you were arrested," added Lennie Morgan. "And if your pals are there you can sass them and call them all the names you choose, and I've seen it done; and they can't arrest you again the same day, because that's plain against the law."

"A coller," said Jimmie, "kin chase you for playing ball or having a fire, and he kin break up your cave and stamp on your stovepipe, like String-Beans did to ourn, and you can't do nothing if he knows who you are, because he has you right there. But if a coller didn't know you, and you was standing by Old Man Robinson's fence, say, and he'd come along and get flip, and say 'Get off the grass. And you'd say, 'What'll I do that for?' And he'd say, 'What's your name, and where do you live?' Then I'd say, if he was giving me his mouth, I'd say, Eighteent and Cass avenue;' and he'd know that was close to Kerry Patch, and he'd dassent never say another word."

reduced me to the position of second fiddle at home. I panted for revenge. So did we all, but we could think of no feasible plan to obtain it.

One evening shortly after this we were playing on Moody's new building, a halfcompleted, four-story structure, unroofed as yet, unplastered, with no stairway and no floor. You climbed up ladders at the risk of your neck, and walked the joists if you were game; if not you sat down on a warped plank covered with dry mortar, and shuddered and clung and said your prayers. In the middle of the building was a temporary elevator run by a windlass, but the ropes dangled and you could stand on it and pull yourself up.

We were playing "conquer your leader " on the fourth tier of joists, and taking fearful chances. Jimmie had just come up the ladder, having disposed of Mikey by placing him for safe keeping in a great rectangular lime box which stood empty behind the building. That was all that saved us too, and what if Mikey's eyes were sore and his skin rough for a month? It was a small price topay, we thought, for the fun that followed, and we couldn't see why Mikey complained.

String-Beans must have seen us enter the building, but he gave us time to go up the ladder. He took a circuit of two blocks and stole down the alley. Mikey peeped over the side of his box and saw him stride past. Mikey's mental operations were a trifle slow. He had recognized an old enemy, but didn't fully realize the fact till String-Beans entered the door. Then the hushed twilight air was startled and shaken by a voice of lamentation; steady, strong and growing, like the roar of a young saw-mill, the sound went up, spread out and penetrated to each remote corner and blind recess of the neighborhood; the windows rattled, the sign-boards shook, the warped planks clapped and turned over, and the sky itself reverberated to the wail that

issued from the stentorian lungs of Michael Hester McGrath.

It may be that we saw the policeman; it may be that instinct told us what to do. We slid down the ladders, or we fell down. I myself distinctly remember falling the four stories without stopping. We all got

out. In the meantime String Beans had reached the elevator and pulled himself up to between the second and third stories. A great thought struck along my brain. I seized the two ropes and gave them a double twist around the crank of the windlass. String-Beans could now pull himself neither up nor down. Something tipped over a nail keg in the upper story and fully a bushel of iron fell upon the astonished coller.

We

We got across the street and listened and watched in the twilight, quaking but very joyful. We could hear our prisoner shaking and tugging at the ropes. could imagine him reaching for a joist, sitting down on the platform, standing up again, meditating a leap. We could. picture him climbing overhand up the ropes, and we heard him drop back again. It was full twenty minutes before he gave it up and began to call, and ten minutes more before my father heard him and went to the rescue. He wouldn't tell then how it happened, and my father to this day regards the thing as a strange accident, and has added it to his collection of amusing stories.

We began to feel more kindly toward String-Beans after that; in fact, more charitably inclined toward the whole world. Jimmie bore his mother's scolding about Mikey with patient resignation, and when the next day Paul started to the country with my aunt, I told him when he got there he might play with my last year's buckeyes if he could fish them out from between the strings on the sounding board of the piano. "Well, Ι declare; that accounts!" said my aunt as the bus door closed upon them.

EDWARD BATES.

IT is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds; and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the dead and the distant, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof-if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise; and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart; and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom-I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.

-Channing.

THE FIRST membership tickets for the Free Library were issued in the early summer of 1894, and were dated for three years. As July 1st, 1897, marks the expiration of this term all card-holders are asked to renew their applications

for membership as soon as they expire. The date on the back of the ticket is the exact date of expiration of each card, and if each reader will file his new application, with guaranty, at least a week before his old ticket expires much delay and annoyance to himself may be avoided. A full statement of the various reasons for this re-registration will be given in the July number.

If you find this Magazine useful, tell your friends about it. You can assure them that the July number alone will be worth the year's subscription.

A GUIDE TO NOVEL READERS.

THE SUMMER temperature of St. Louis is not conducive to serious mental effort. To some few persons, indeed, it is the season of leisure and consequently the best opportunity for reading books of all kinds; but the preponderating call in summer, more than at any other time, is for fiction.

The MAGAZINE for July will be a fiction number. It will contain: 1st, a list of the novels, supplementary to the finding list published in the Monthly Bulletin, added to the Library from January, 1897, up to June 1st, 1897; 2d, a list of the more noteworthy novels that have appeared since January, 1884; 3d, several

lists of "best ten" and "best hundred" novels; 4th, the favorite novels of American novelists; 5th, two lists compiled from statistics of English and American Libraries, showing the most popular novels in the respective countries; 6th, a list of the best historical novels; 7th, a list of musical novels; 8th, a list of books and magazine articles relating to the history and criticism and bibliography of fiction; 9th, articles on novels and novel reading.

Of the lists of "best novels," two are individual lists prepared by competent persons; the other two represent a con

sensus of opinion among, in one case, some 75 and in the other 65 men and women in all parts of the country. Such a summary of information regarding novels has not before been brought together; and such a guide for the reader of fiction can not be obtained elsewhere for ten times the cost.

GIVE THE FACTS.

AN UNFAIR and misleading comparison has been going the rounds regarding this Library. Its last appearance was in the May Bookman. It rests on the statement, purporting to be taken from our annual report for the year 1894-'95, that in that year 331,000 volumes were issued for home reading at a cost of $60,000. It is true that in this first year of the Free Library the home issue was 331,000 volumes; but, as is stated both in the table of receipts and expenditures and in the body of the report, the total expenditure was $48,358.88. Part of this was expended in acquiring and putting into operation the machinery, which in the year just ended enabled us to circulate 551,000 volumes with an outlay of $46,721.

But even this does not constitute a fair basis of comparison with other Libraries mentioned, because they have buildings of their own or are housed in some public building with no rent to pay; while this library is at an expense of $5,000 a year for rent and about $1,500 additional for elevator service. Deducting this, we enter the field of comparison with a circulation of 551,000 volumes, and a total expenditure of $40,000. Moreover, it is only fair to mention that of this more than $12,000 was expended for books, periodicals and binding.

OUR "COLLECTION OF DUPLICATES." A SOLUTION OF THE NEW BOOK PROBLEM. A NEW book that is well advertised or catches the popular fancy, is wanted immediately by, it is safe to say, anywhere from 100 to 5,000 of our card

holders. Such an eager and multitudinous demand can be supplied only by a library like Mudie's of London, with a subscription fee of from $5 to $100 a year, which orders in advance a whole edition, 2,000 copies, of a new book. A public library that should attempt to meet this demand would expend all its book fund for numerous copies of a few new books, chiefly light and ephemeral publications; and its shelves would soon be crowded with duplicates, out of date and useless.

The St. Louis Public Library follows the practice prevailing in other public libraries, by purchasing from one to six copies of a new book, according to its worth and its probable popularity. Additional copies, in numbers limited only by the demand, are placed in what is called the "Collection of Duplicates", a special department from which books are issued on payment of five cents a week per volume. The fees thus paid serve to keep up this "Collection", which supplies all persons who would rather pay five cents and get the desired book promptly than take their chances in competition with scores or hundreds, or it may be, thousands, who are eager to secure one of the "regular" copies. The "Collection of Duplicates", therefore, not only serves those who use it, but also benefits other readers by lessening the number of competitors for the "regular" copies of popular books. If the "Collection of Duplicates" did not exist, there would be no material addition to the number of copies of new books added to the regular library, while all the cardholders who use the special collection would be added to the number now competing for regular copies of the new books. To illustrate by a particular instance:

When Trilby was at the height of its popularity, 100 copies were for some time. insufficient to supply the demand. The Library would not have been justified in