"Not to me," asserted Hartley. "It may be to you, of course."

The impractical man appeared to be able to take a very practical view of some matters, and Connorton was the more perturbed and uneasy in consequence.

"They say you're crazy," suggested Connorton.

"And I guess they can prove it, too," rejoined Hartley, cheerfully.

"You've said the same thing yourself, and I know you wouldn't lie about a mere trifle like that. Then, the conductor, the engineer, and the fireman of the train we came down on will swear to it ... not to mention the cooper, the hotel clerk, a few bell-boys, and the policeman who arrested me. Yes, I guess I'm crazy, Connorton. Too bad, isn't it?"

"It's likely to be bad for you," said Connorton.

"Oh, no," returned Hartley, easily, "I'm not violent, you know, just mentally defective; unable to transact business, as you might say.

They'll find that out and let me go; but there will be the taint, the suspicion, the doubt. Very likely a conservator will be appointed when I get back home--some shrewd, sharp fellow, with a practical mind."

Such a very impractical man was the inventor, and so very troublesome in his impracticality! Connorton could only begin at the beginning again, and go slow.

"Suppose we get you out," he ventured, "what would you be willing to do?"

"What would you be willing to do?" retorted Hartley.

"What do you mean by that?" demanded Connorton.

"I'm sure I don't know," replied Hartley, with an air of the utmost frankness. "I seldom mean anything, of course, and it is such a lot of trouble to find out what I do mean when I mean anything that I usually give it up. But you are so deeply interested in me--so much more interested in me than I am in myself--that I thought you might want to keep me sane; that you might not like to feel that you had driven me crazy."

Paulson was about to interrupt, but Connorton motioned to him to be silent. Connorton was in the habit of handling his own business matters, and he wanted his lawyer to speak only when a legal proposition was put directly up to him. It may be admitted that he was sorely perplexed now; but he found nothing in the inventor's face but a bland smile, and he did not think Paulson could help him to interpret that.

"Hartley," he said at last, "I'll get you out of here and add five thousand to what you've already had the moment that patent is properly transferred to me."

"Connorton," returned the inventor, "I believe I'm crazy. When I think of the events of the last few days--of your more than brotherly interest in me, which I have pleasurably exploited during our delightful association--I believe I am crazy enough to say, come again!"

Connorton drew a long breath and conceded another point. "Hartley," he proposed, "you may keep the money I have already given you--"

"Thank you," said Hartley; "I shall."

"--and you may also have a quarter interest in the patent," concluded Connorton.

"It's all mine now," suggested Hartley.

"If so," argued Connorton, who well knew that much of the money had been spent, "you owe me twenty-five thousand dollars."

"If so," returned Hartley, the impractical man, "I infer from your anxiety and extraordinary generosity that I can sell it for enough to pay you and make a little margin for myself. Besides, you can't collect from a crazy man, Connorton; and I'm getting crazier every minute. Business always goes to my head, Connorton. You must have noticed that up in the woods. I'm really becoming alarmed about myself. But perhaps, you'd rather do business with a conservator, Connorton."

"A half interest," urged Connorton, desperately, as he mentally reviewed the weakness of his own position in view of the unsuspected perspicacity of the inventor. "Consider that I have paid you twenty-five thousand dollars for a half interest, and the other half is yours. I'll defray whatever expense is incurred in marketing the invention, too."

Hartley reflected, seeming in doubt. "Connorton," he said at last, "I think I am still getting the worst of it somewhere, but an impractical fellow like me deserves to get the worst of it. Go ahead! Have that agreement put in legal form, and then you may get me out while there is yet time to save my reason."

Connorton had finished his appeal for the release of Hartley. "Of course," he was told, "if you and Mr. Paulson will assume the responsibility and will immediately take him away, we shall be glad to let you have him; but he is undoubtedly demented."

"Demented!" snorted Connorton. "Say! you try to do business with him, and you'll think he's the sanest man that ever lived!"

JENKIN LLOYD JONES.

Jenkin Lloyd Jones is one of the best-known Wisconsin ministers. We say "Wisconsin," for, though he is now a resident of Chicago, his parents moved from South Wales to Wisconsin in 1843 when Jenkin Lloyd Jones was an infant.

During his boyhood he worked on the home farm; then in 1862 he enlisted, and served for three years in the Sixth Wisconsin Battery in the Civil War. He is a graduate of the Meadville, Pennsylvania, theological seminary of the class of 1870. He holds an honorary degree of LL. D. granted by the University of Wisconsin in 1909. He was pastor of All Souls Church, Janesville, from 1871 to 1880. He established, with others, "Unity," a weekly paper, now organ of the Congress of Religion, and has been its editor since 1879. He organized All Souls Church in Chicago, and has been its pastor since 1882. He is the author of almost countless pamphlets and several books, among the latter being "Love and Loyalty,"

"What Does Christmas Really Mean," "On the Firing Line in the Battle for Sobriety," and his creative instinct has shown itself in the organization of many societies and institutions for the uplift of mankind.

NUGGETS FROM A WELSH MINE

Copyrighted by Olive E. Weston, 1902.

THE HOME (Page 14).

Love is the only safe and justifiable basis for a home. All Bibles, as well as all stories, all philosophy and all experience assert this.

Go to housekeeping, and, if possible, to house-building. Do not be outdone by the beaver. Do not sink lower than the bird, who builds its own nest, making it strong without and beautiful within.

That home alone is home where love generates generous impulses, noble purposes. True love will breed heavenly plans, nurse world-redeeming schemes, and enlist all the forces of earth in the interests of heaven.

There is no home where there is no common toil.

The world is the larger home. The child must early learn to feel its dependence on and its obligation to this larger home circle if it is to grow noble.

There are no furnishings to a house that really convert it into a home, which have not won their places, one by one, in the heart and brain of the housewife.

Civilization rests, not primarily on the court-house, or the college, or the public school building, or the post-office, or the railway station, or yet in the club, but in the home.

The trouble with our young people is not that they are too poor in material things to make for themselves a home, but that they are too poor in spiritual things to confess the poverty which might enable them to lay the foundations of a home, humble but altogether holy....

The beautiful heron, mad with a maternal love, blind to all dangers from without, bent only on protecting her brood, giving her life to her little ones, was killed by the woman who wears the graceful aigrette--that marvel of Nature's embroidery woven for a nuptial robe to the gracious bird. She, and none other, is responsible for that life, for it was for her sake that the bloody deed was done.

THE SCHOOL (Page 29).

The highest task that life holds for men and women is the choosing of an ideal to grow toward. It should be sufficiently far away to require a whole lifetime to pursue it.

It has taken a hundred years of agony and study to prove even in advanced America a man's right to his own body; a woman's right to her old soul; and the child's right to the development of his mind as of his muscle.

I plead for the true perspective in the training of your children. I believe, of course, in good bodies, comfortable and beautiful clothing, generous houses, and all the learning of the schools; I believe in intellectual joy and all the powers of thought, but only when they are subordinated to high affections and strong wills.

There is a power at work in the world that estimates gifts, not by the amount, but by the purpose that dictated them.

The kindergarten contains the seed of the gospel for children in its terminology when it seeks to develop the child by its "occupations."...