yer's face. It was the look of a man who
asks himself a question over and over again.

On Thursday, in conspicuous type, black faced and double-leaded, there
appeared on the front page and again at the top of the editorial
column of every daily paper, morning and evening, in the United
States, and in every weekly and every monthly paper whose date of
publication chanced to be Thursday, the following paragraph:

"There is a name which the press of America no longer prints.
Let every true American, in public or in private, cease
hereafter from uttering that name."

Invariably the caption over this paragraph was the one word:

SILENCE!

One week later, to the day, the wife of one of the richest men in
America died of acute pneumonia at her home in Chicago. Practically
all the daily papers in America carried notices of this lady's death;
the wealth of her husband and her own prominence in social and
philanthropic affairs justified this. At greater or at less length it
was variously set forth that she was the niece of a former ambassador
to the Court of St. James; that she was the national head of a great
patriotic organisation; that she was said to have dispensed upward of
fifty thousand dollars a year in charities; that she was born in such
and such a year at such and such a place; that she left, besides a
husband, three children and one grandchild; and so forth and so on.

But not a single paper in the United States stated that she was the
only sister of Congressman Jason Mallard.

The remainder of this account must necessarily be in the nature of a
description of episodes occurring at intervals during a period of
about six weeks; these episodes, though separated by lapses of time,
are nevertheless related.

Three days after the burial of his sister Congressman Mallard took
part in a debate on a matter of war-tax legislation upon the floor of
the House. As usual he voiced the sentiments of a minority of one, his
vote being the only vote cast in the negative on the passage of the
measure. His speech was quite brief. To his colleagues, listening in
dead silence without sign of dissent or approval, it seemed
exceedingly brief, seeing that nearly always before Mallard, when he
spoke at all upon any question, spoke at length. While he spoke the
men in the press gallery took no notes, and when he had finished and
was leaving the chamber it was noted that the venerable Congressman
Boulder, a