Josh Merritt's eyes stared their surprise at this altogether new Minnie Kenny, and because she thought she saw accusation in their blue depths, Minnie Kenny sank down on the lowest step and cried again, making futile little dabs at her cheeks with a flimsy, ridiculous, lace handkerchief.

"It's-r-r-rouge," she stuttered. "And I dud-didn't think you were coming."

Josh Merritt put both his hands on her shoulders and raised her up.

"Now whatever," he demanded, "put such a thing into your head? You know it's a sort of standing appointment. I wouldn't break it for anything. Are you ready?"

"I-I will be in a minute. If, if you'll just let me run up stairs and-and wash off this-this" But Josh Merritt put out his hand and stopped her flight.

"No you don't, Minnie. Leave it be. It isn't your fault if you haven't any real color of your own. How could you have it, sticking in that stuffy office? Here! Have you a powder puff? Well, just dust it across your face and eyes. Now come along. Where do we eat?"

AC

CROSS the spotlessly clean table with its shaded pink lights, Josh Merritt leaned toward Minnie Kenny.

"Do you know, Minnie," he said, "this may be the last time I'll see you in a long, long time." Minnie gulped down the bit of cake in her mouth.

"Are you-going away?"

"You hit it the first shot. That's just what. I'm leaving Carroll and Mayers. No chance with them."

Minnie opened her mouth to speak and suddenly shut it-tight.

"You see," he continued. "I'm sick and tired of this jumping around. Getting older. Thirty my last birthday. Can't stand the trains any more-and the makeshift food. I want a home and the comforts that-"

"Then why," began Minnie Kenny, when he abruptly cut her short.

"I'm going to get into another game. This salesmanship business can't land me anywhere. Been at it ten years now and what have I got to show for it? Nothing-except a few dollars in the bank. Every time I've made up my mind to work for the managership of a branch office, or some other post where I can stay settled, up bumps some long lost relative of the boss, or somebody with pull, and does me out of the job. Makes me sick and disgusted.”

Again Minnie Kenny opened her mouth to talk, and again she shut it tightly. Every year since Josh Merritt had come to take her out, there had been this same story of changing jobs. Every year there had been the same howl about pull and influence. And, every year, Minnie Kenny, mindful of the advice offered by the girls in the shop, had listened to Josh Merritt's story and either kept altogether quiet or agreed with him that it was a pretty tough world for a poor man, and that it did take influence to put a man ahead.

But during the last year Minnie Kenny had done a lot of thinking, a lot of reading, and a lot of observing. And the more she thought, and the more she read, and the more she observed, the more certain she became that the old excuses about pull, and influence, and the other things were just plain tommyrot. Men without influential relatives and friends without money, sometimes men who were painfully handicapped, did get on and were successful. She was thinking of these things when Josh Merritt took up his grievance again.

"R

EMEMBER that time I worked so hard to become sales director for Brandon's? It was almost mine when his kid nephew with a lot of high faluting ideas popped in from college and grabbed the job right under my nose. And what could I do? And then there was that manager's job at Arnold Williams. It was as

good as promised to me; and yet, at the last instant they took a new man from Boston and gave it to him. That's the way my life is spent-chasing opportunities."

For another moment Minnie Kenny held her tongue within leash, and then-because for five years she had enshrined Josh Merritt in her heart, and because she had woven her little dreams about him and had secretly hoped things which she dared not confess aloud-she threw to the wind the advice the girls had dinned into her ears. Josh Merritt might become angry at her; he might never see her again; and she might lose even the little taste of romance that he brought into her life. But he was wrong-altogether wrong. And someone ought to tell it to him. And so, when he made that last remark about chasing opportunities, she suddenly sat up straight and stiff in her chair.

"No," she said quietly, but forcibly. "Your life is not spent chasing opportunities, but running away from them!"

"What's that?" asked Josh Merritt. spoke with unusual sharpness.

(Continued on page 117)

He

He sold newspapers on Third Avenue and peppermint lozenges and lemon sticks in City Hall Park and at the Brooklyn Bridge entrance.

He left his bed on winter mornings at a time when children love to cuddle their pillowsat four o'clock-and carried newspapers over a route.

He worked as a hall boy at the New York Athletic Club, and frequently helped into his overcoat Judge Bartow S. Weeks, now sitting in Special Sessions, New York City. Judge Weeks has sat with the former hall boy hearing cases.

It was a way of toil and weariness for the immigrant boy. One Commencement, he was invited to Grammar School No. 83, which he had attended, to tell the inspiring story of his life. He told all that I am setting down in this article; but, most important, he said:

"I'm not here to talk to you because I have any more in me than you have. I haven't. I came to tell you that you must never become discouraged; or, that if you do you must pick yourself up and go on."

an

Miss Schwartz, the principal, the same teacher who had guided Bobby Wagner through the Fifth Reader and fractions, smiled effulgent smile. She is proud of Bobby. She goes to his quiet, comfortable home оссаsionally to tell him so. And she tells his story

They owned the houses in which they lived. Their children were being educated after a fashion both thorough and ornamental. The neighborhood was one of "nice boys." Because the janitor's son had similar attainments he was invited to join them in their games.

True, his clothes were always worn and cheap, but his manners were good. Frequently he could not join in the games because he had to help his father and mother "clean up" the apartment house for which they were the caretakers. But during the few hours he could play, he was welcome. He was missed from the Saturday-afternoon games because, while a holiday for his rich neighbors, it was a day of extra work for him. On that day, he went down to City Hall Park and sold newspapers and lozenges. While it was a day of self-denial as to play it was one of profit. His profit on each box of lozenges was forty cents.

to all the other boys and girls who were not present when he talked to the pupils at Com

mencement.

TH

of B,

HE evolution of Bobby Wagner, newsboy and janitor's son, to Judge Robert F. Wagner of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, is one to set enthusiasm aflame! The story is possible only in this country. The old lands beyond the sea afford no such story of a legitimate rise from low to high levels, from poverty to power, from want to competence.

Bobby Wagner's struggle upward began in East 106 Street, at a time when that thoroughfare was far uptown-a highway contiguous to the fields and the "real" country. The region lying between Madison and Park Avenues, marked the homes of prosperous Americans.

Usually, in a day, he sold three boxes to the crowd en route to Coney Island. Saturday was a “rush" day, too, for newspapers. And when he had finished work on this day, every bone in his young body ached from fatigue; but he had done his share to refill the family coffers. On Sunday, he stood at one of the East Side entrances to Central Park and sold lozenges and newspapers.

On other days, he had the newspaper

and clothing and incidentals remained a difficult one for the family to solve.

His elder brother, a cook in the New York Athletic Club, pointed a way for an increase in Bobby's earning power. He might be a hall boy at the club. So each summer, for four years, small Bobby Wagner handed tall men their coats and hats and sticks for varying bits of compensation.

In a speech, twenty years later, he gave his "confessions" of his "hall-boy" days. "We divided the members of the club into 'live' ones and 'dead' ones, according to the way they tipped us," he said. "Judge Bartow S. Weeks was one of the 'live' ones."

Came his milestone day when he was graduated from Grammar School No. 83. Family councils followed as to whether or not the youth might dare to aspire to college.

"The College of the City of New York is free," he reminded the family.

"But it takes so much time to study that you can earn little or nothing," the family reminded him.

He tried it. He kept on trying. It was not easy. It was, indeed, a long, bitter pull. The family grew discouraged. The student himself grew discouraged. The lad earned as much as he could by tutoring fellow students. His brother, the cook, married, and would walk from his home in Harlem to the New York Athletic Club at 59 Street and Sixth Avenue-about six milesto save a nickel for the younger boy's educational fund.

But Robert Wagner kept on. He struggled through college. He won two prizes, and was the valedictorian of his class.

"Don't do it, Robert," he said. "It is a clamping vocation. If you get into it you may never get out."

"But I must make my way through the law school," said young Wagner.

The school examiner gave him a letter to a relative. "He is interested in helping boys to an education," he wrote. "Perhaps you can make an arrangement with him."

The arrangement was that the school examiner's relative should pay the boy's tuition

in the law school. He

kept his pact. The lad kept his selfassumed part of the agreement, for he returned the money, which the donor reluctantly accepted. At twenty-two years of age, Robert

SUPREME COURT

F. Wagner had completed college, finished his law course, and was admitted to the bar. At this juncture, he evinced further proof of his sturdiness of character. He might have found a berth in a firm of prosperous lawyers. He preferred to found a firm of his own. With Jeremiah Mahoney, aged twenty five years, he opened a law office.

It was an election year. Contemporaneously with the opening of this office, Wagner called at the political headquarters in his district. "I am interested in politics," he said, "and I would like to make a speech."

The district leader gave the shabby youth a sweeping survey, and replied: "Want to make a speech, do you? All right. Come around Thursday night and make one.'

Robert F. Wagner departed, his heart beating high with hope and pride. Fortunately for both, he did not know that there was a dearth of volunteer speakers-that anyone who imagined he could was welcome to "make his speech."

On that particular night, young Wagner made his speech-and made a friend. Dan Sheehan heard him and walked home with him. He counseled him with fatherly earnestness. He sent him law "cases."

A long period of unfailing friendship followed, and Dan Sheehan has been rewarded. He is an attendant in the Supreme Court and rises with the rest when the rustle of a heavy black-silk robe announces His Honor Judge Wagner's approach.

Slowly, steadily Robert Wagner built a substantial law practice. Rapidly his star rose, and luminously it shone in the political sky. He was elected to the State assembly, then to the senate. When but midway in his twenties, he was made majority leader of the senate; and was scarcely in his thirties when he was elected lieutenant-governor of the Empire State. His party offered him the nomination for governor. Because his heart was elsewhere, he declined.

Two years ago, the desire of his heart was fulfilled. Recognition of his rank as a lawyer came when he was made Justice of the Supreme Court of New York.

For this he sacrificed the governorship of the chief State in the Union. For this he gave up a law practice that would have been worth $50,000 a year.

"Success should not be measured by money," he says. "The pendulum of enlightened public opinion is swinging slowly away from that standard. Success is making some contribution to the public for the benefit of posterity."

One of his ideals is free speech. "Don't arrest a picket for an interview with a nonstriker," he says in judicial language. “Let them talk about the principles involved. It is only by talking that they will reach an understanding. Nothing is ever gained by repression. That is what is the matter with Russia. It was repressed too long. It will right itself."

When tenants were battling with the czarism of landlords, they hailed Judge Wagner as a deliverer. In a case involving those issues, he delivered an opinion that is regarded by the tenants as their Magna Charta.

SAL

AID one of Judge Wagner's closest friends: "He has everything that a man should have."

"What should a man have?" I asked. The answer: "He has brains and integrity. He is a good fellow and he can be stern when it is necessary."

A good summary of a man!

To this might be added that he remembers his friends. The school examiner, who secured him freedom from the school room, told him that the office of school examiner should be made permanent. And it was Robert Wagner made it so.

Judge Wagner has the fine habit of gathering his friends about him. Jeremiah Mahoney, his partner of more than twenty years, practices beneath the same roof which shelters Judge Wagner's chambers. I have told you that Dan Sheehan, who doled him advice and sent him his first law cases, is one of his court attendants. And so is the brother who did all he could to aid him in acquiring an education.

This is the success recipe of the janitor's son who became a Supreme Court Judge: "Determination. Industry. Desire to contribute something for the public good and the benefit of posterity."