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During the next few years, he tried his hand at every job that either man or mammal has ever devised. For instance, after being firedhe claims that he was never "discharged”—the word is too genteel!-from his soda-jerking position, he was once more on the high seas of vagrancy and youthful glory. Since then he has held anywhere from two hours to two years the following positions: bell-hop, hotelclerk, private secretary, salesman, cub reporter, sport writer, editor, copy reader, press agent, collector, and about fifteen other positions that have escaped his memory. The collection of ideal positions are not listed in the order of merit or in the order that he tried them, but they serve to show that he has had a splendid background for the profession of letters. What

technique, and the rest that makes a story valuable to the editors. In his enthusiastic ignorance, he wrote three short stories a week. Three stories a week were duly sent to the magazines. Three stories a week were duly returned with the editors' printed regrets. In fact, his yarns came back so quickly that he now believes that he must have mailed them attached to a rubber band.

He sold his first story March 26, 1915. He was paid five dollars! He raved as only a true author can when a deathless masterpiece is insulted in such a manner. Five dollars! For the moment, he thought seriously of quitting the game and angling for better fish.

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writer! No college could possibly inculcate or approximate the things he observed and stored away in his subconscious mind. And it seems safe to remark that, had he not had such experiences, he would now-provided that his bent was authorship-be writing the pedantic, dull essays that no live person cares to read.

Finally, he found himself. He had often wondered, during the years that he had skipped with gay abandon from job to job, what was his object in life, what was he created for? He was intelligent enough to understand that, before being a success at anything, he must first have a purpose, a plan of life, something to concentrate on.

He chanced to meet a newspaper reporter. And it was this reporter who initiated him into the newspaper game-known to most everybody except reporters themselves, as journalism.

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FTER having had his fair quota of newsgathering positions, he got the idea that he should be a successor to Shakespeare and write for the magazines. So he spent his spare time in concocting weird yarns that were supposed to be salable. No sign of the humorist showed itself in a single line. Sad stuff, sob stuff, dreary stuff! He made the mistake of writing about Newport and "The 400" when he should have written about Times Square and "The 4,000,000." He also lacked a knowledge of how a story should be constructed; its

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'T was his wife who gave him the suggestion that set him upon the right road. She suggested that he stop trying to be literary and highbrow and be himself. To write of things he knew about. To his friends he was really funny, decidedly humorous. So Mrs. Witwer suggested that he write as he talked. He did. And he sold the first two stories-written in his inimitable slang-to a magazine that paid him real money. It was the beginning of real success, the start of his remarkable climb from $5 a story to more than $1800. To date he has made approximately $125,000 from his work, most of it within the past two years. He has also established a record for work that has never been equalled in story writing. In a single year he wrote and sold eighty-five stories, averaging 9000 words each!

In conclusion, it might be well to mention that his path to success was not laid entirely with thornless roses. Far from it. Ill health has been his most constant companion. In fact, he has spent about three years in hospitals, sanatariums, and SO forth. Chief trouble is nervous disorders. He has undergone two major operations, and was told, on each occasion, that he had only a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. Pleasant outlook!

Many a man would have complained about the luck of life, the ways of fate, and given up whatever ambitions he bad, notwithstanding pep.

If I had a mountain to move, I'd call upon H. C. Witwer for assistance.

ON'T surrender your individuality, which is your greatest agent of power to the customs and conventionalities that have gotten their life from the great mass of those who haven't enough force to preserve their individualities.-Ralph Waldo Trine.

Do Not Live By Bread Alone

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Had I but Two Loaves, I Would Sell One and
Buy Hyacinths to Feed My Soul.-Mohammed.

By ORISON SWETT MARDEN

CARTOON BY GORDON ROSS

HERE is an old painting in one of the galleries of Europe called "The Tree of Life." It represents a huge tree upside down, its branches containing delicious fruit, pointing toward the earth, its roots reaching up into the air, towards the heavens instead of into the ground. The tree does not rest on anything; it hangs invisibly suspended.

The lesson this ancient allegorical painting teaches is that our sustenance, our finer nourishment, comes from something above us- -from the unseen, from the spiritual world, from the great cosmic intelligence, instead of from materiality below. Many of us are familiar with the modern picture of Paradise and the Garden of Eden, which represents the Tree of Life getting its nourishment from the earth, and with its branches reaching up toward the heavens.

As we get farther and farther from the animal, as the brute is educated out of us, the man in us advances, our discernment becomes finer, our perception keener, clearer, and we see, feel, and appreciate the grander things in the universe. All of this is like grinding the facets of the rough diamond in our nature, letting in more light and revealing newer and more marvelous beauties.

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is where realities, changeless realities exist, in the unseen pure being.

Few people take life very seriously or dip into it very deeply. We skim along the surface. We sip, we touch, we go. We are shallow in our life views, in our philosophies. We take little pains to try to find out the finer meanings of life and our purpose here. We are absorbed in mere things. The majority of people spend most of their lives on superficial things-things that appeal to the palate and the other senses. What a pity that we should put such a false estimate on mere things-on houses, stocks, lands, and money!

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ULTITUDES of Americans have lost the art of living the life worth while, have missed the glory of life. Nearly everything of real value is sacrificed for material things. The things really worth while are merely incidental in their lives. They pay very little attention to the sweet, beautiful amenities of life.

Millions of people in this country are rich in things but very poor in ideas and ideals. They have money but very little else.

Many people seem to think that if they haven't money they lack about everything that is worth while, but money poverty is nothing compared with mind poverty. Mental penury is the worst kind of poverty-the sort that blights the mind, that dwarfs the soul.

It is the duty of every human being to produce the largest possible man or woman. Merely

HE majority of our people are many times weaker in confidence than any other faculty. A large percentage of those who are failures could have succeeded if this quality had been properly trained and strengthened in their youth.

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to manage to pile up a little property, while the mind lives in penury and the soul is dwarfed because of the lack of an opportunity for growth, is not success. No matter how big the pile of money he may accumulate, if a person is cursed with mental penury, with mind starvation, with

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HERE is no more uplifting habit than that of bearing a hopeful attitude, of believing that things are going to turn out well and not ill; that we are going to succeed and not fail; that no matter what may or may not happen, we going to be happy.

breathes the pure air of the higher altitudes comes a clearer vision of life and its marvelous meaning, a deeper appreciation of its glories.

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HAT a cheap substitute for real life many of us live! How little that is really grand, sublime, and beautiful we get in our monotonous, colorless, daily grind for a living! Most of us live in the lower levels of existence. We linger in the misty and oppressive valleys, when we might be climbing the sunlit hills. God puts into our hands the Book of Life, every page bright with open secrets, but how many of us suffer it to drop out of our hands unread!

Was there ever a sermon half so eloquent as that which we meet on every hand in a walk or a ride through the country? Sermons from butterflies, from robins, from bob-o-links; sermons from croaking frogs and chirping crickets, from the tempting apples in the orchards, the vegetables in the garden; sermons from the mountains which preach majesty, grandeur and sublimity; sermons from the streams, from the running brooks, the glorious ocean; sermons from the mighty oak and the swaying sapling; sermons from grass and trees, from leaf and flower. Everything is eloquent with the glory of life.

When you visit nature's playground where beauty, sublimity, and loveliness are all about you, take time to listen and think and ponder. Try to appreciate the glory surrounding you. Try to drink it all in with your eyes, your ears— with every sense, with your very soul! Try to think what all this means. Think of the intelligence that wrought these wonderful miracles on every hand. You will be amazed at what you can absorb.

I often see men and women walking through the beautiful Central Park in New York with their eyes upon the ground, scarcely ever glancing at the marvelous beauty of trees, grass, and flowers. I have seen them pass through the sections which are glorious with acres of mar

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velous rhododendrons, blind to glories which would entrance an angel. With scarcely a glance at the gorgeousness of the flowers, the exquisite beauty of the hills and valleys which are covered with these wonderful blossoms, they pass by, heedless of their charm.

One of the most pitiable objects in the universe is the mere shell of a man-a man whose very soul has been dried up and in whom all that was finest and best has shriveled and atrophied. To see one of these men, who has cultivated only the money-making faculties, retire from business rich, and try to enjoy himself in the way he dreamed he would when fresh, young, and responsive to all that was best and noblest in life -when all capacity for such enjoyment has long ago died out of him, so that there is nothing left but a burned-out shell-is distressing. It seems tragic that an intelligent human being should reach such a miserable condition.

To be happy, we must cultivate the faculties and the qualities which can make happiness possible. A man who goes through life exercising his greedy, grasping money-making faculties, and catering to his animal appetite, cannot experience the joys of the cultivated mind, to be found in intellectual pleasures. They only appeal to the higher man. The man who has lived in the basement of his being, who has never developed his æsthetic or artistic faculties, will not enjoy nature, books, works of art, or travel. He must get back to the animal rut for his satisfaction, because his undeveloped faculties cannot appreciate or enjoy the higher things.

Everything in life is filled with some special meaning, but will only give up its secret to the soul that responds to it. To the man who develops his intellectual and æsthetic faculties comes untold satisfaction. He understands what real living is.

If you have not learned to get nourishment from the unseen, if your eyes have not been trained to see the beauties and the glories of life in the higher things, if your ears have not been tuned up to the harmonies and melodies of nature and the world about you, you are not really living, and your life will be a failure. It will be dull, flat and unprofitable.

To cultivate the lower at the expense of the higher is one of the greatest tragedies of life.

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Heads Department of Agriculture

Henry C. Wallace, of President Harding's Cabinet, Says, "You Must Mix Brains with the Soil"

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By CHESLA C. SHERLOCK

ENRY C. WALLACE, Secretary of Agriculture in President Harding's Cabinet, was once private secretary to the late James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture in the cabinets of Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft.

It was back in the days when James Wilson was dean of the Agricultural College at Ames, Iowa, and young Henry Wallace was seeking his degree. In order to complete his education at the college and support his family at the same time, Mr. Wilson made Henry Wallace his private secretary.

From that day until the death of Secretary Wilson, last year, the Wallaces and the Wilsons were great friends. James Wilson was a frequent visitor at the Wallace home, and he and "Uncle" Henry Wallace, father of the present Secretary of Agriculture, toured Europe together when Mr. Wilson left the Cabinet.

"I owe much to Wilson," said Secretary Wallace. "It was through his influence that I returned to Ames to complete my college work. It was through his kindness that I was enabled to graduate and to support my wife and two babies while winning the college degree. And when I was graduated, it was Mr. Wilson who brought me back to Ames as assistant professor in dairying. I owe a great deal-not only my start in agriculture-to him; but, also, for his aid, advice, and friendly interest when we were building my publication, Wallace's Farmer. He was a friend indeed!"

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Hostetler Studios, Des Moines Henry C. Wallace

are only two members of our family so far back as we can trace it," said Mr. Wallace, "that were not farmers-'dirt farmers'-and they were both dealers in foodstuffs. Agriculture is the central interest and activity of the entire Wallace family."

"Uncle" Henry Wallace, his father, was a strong advocate of education, and although most country boys, in his day, were content with a common education in the country schools, he insisted on his children having every advantage.

Young Henry went to the schools of Rock Island, finally being graduated from high school. Then he determined to enter Ames Agricultural College, at Ames, Iowa. There he spent two years-until it was necessary for him to go to work to support himself.

He purchased a farm in Adair county, Iowa, married, and settled down. For five years he was a successful farmer and breeder of live stock.

"In order to get money to help hold up the family budget," says Mr. Wallace, "I used to write short sketches of my farming experiences for the agricultural press. I did quite a bit of writing on the side.

"Some of this matter attracted the attention of Professor Henry of the Agricultural College at Madison, Wisconsin. Professor Henry was the dean of agricultural instructors. He was so interested in my literary output that he took the trouble to write me a letter in order to find out more about me. When he discovered that I was an actual farmer, he continued to cor

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