stole a fine
destroyer from Uncle Sam!"

"I don't care," she said, stoutly. "I'm glad they were saved. And,
Billie boy"--her hands were on his shoulders--"if they hadn't stolen
that fine destroyer, I wouldn't be here to-day looking into your eyes."

And Billie, gathering her into his arms, let it go at that.

BEYOND THE SPECTRUM

The long-expected crisis was at hand, and the country was on the verge
of war. Jingoism was rampant. Japanese laborers were mobbed on the
western slope, Japanese students were hazed out of colleges, and
Japanese children stoned away from playgrounds. Editorial pages sizzled
with burning words of patriotism; pulpits thundered with invocations to
the God of battles and prayers for the perishing of the way of the
ungodly. Schoolboy companies were formed and paraded with wooden guns;
amateur drum-corps beat time to the throbbing of the public pulse;
militia regiments, battalions, and separate companies of infantry and
artillery, drilled, practiced, and paraded; while the regular army was
rushed to the posts and garrisons of the Pacific Coast, and the navy, in
three divisions, guarded the Hawaiian Islands, the Philippines, and the
larger ports of western America. For Japan had a million trained men,
with transports to carry them, battle-ships to guard them; with the
choice of objective when she was ready to strike; and she was displaying
a national secrecy about her choice especially irritating to molders of
public opinion and lovers of fair play. War was not yet declared by
either side, though the Japanese minister at Washington had quietly
sailed for Europe on private business, and the American minister at
Tokio, with several consuls and clerks scattered around the ports of
Japan, had left their jobs hurriedly, for reasons connected with their
general health. This was the situation when the cabled news from Manila
told of the staggering into port of the scout cruiser _Salem_ with a
steward in command, a stoker at the wheel, the engines in charge of
firemen, and the captain, watch-officers, engineers, seamen gunners, and
the whole fighting force of the ship stricken with a form of partial
blindness which in some cases promised to become total.

The cruiser was temporarily out of commission and her stricken men in
the hospital; but by the time the specialists had diagnosed the trouble
as amblyopia, from some sudden shock to the optic nerve--followed in
cases by complete atrophy, result