anecdotes? No class of beings is more in need of the consolations of
intercourse. Perpend, brothers! Let us order a tierce of malmsey and
talk it over! Perchance, too, a trade union among readers might be of
substantial advantage. Is it not sad that a man should read manuscripts
all the sweet years of his maturity, and be paid forty dollars a week?
Let us make sixty the minimum--or let there be a pogrom among the
authors!




WILLIAM McFEE

M'Phee is the most tidy of chief engineers. If the leg of a
cockroach gets into one of his slide-valves the whole ship knows it,
and half the ship has to clean up the mess.

--RUDYARD KIPLING.


The next time the Cunard Company commissions a new liner I wish they
would sign on Joseph Conrad as captain, Rudyard Kipling as purser, and
William McFee as chief engineer. They might add Don Marquis as deck
steward and Hall Caine as chief-stewardess. Then I would like to be at
Raymond and Whitcomb's and watch the clerks booking passages!

William McFee does not spell his name quite as does the Scotch engineer
in Mr. Kipling's _Brugglesmith_, but I feel sure that his attitude
toward cockroaches in the slide-valve is the same. Unhappily I do not
know Mr. McFee in his capacity as engineer; but I know and respect his