Russian Dream (Continued from Page 7) his stable boy. "Invite all my close friends to come here tonight,' he said. That evening when his guests arrived, they found him before the fire as usual. When they had all seated themselves he turned to them and without any explanation read his epic from beginning to end, telling the solution to his problem. After he had finished there was a long silence. Then the critics present nodded their heads and told him that his treatise had great literary value. All were impressed by it, for it made them think. There was one, however, a general in the army, who objected to the thesis. He waited till the rest had spoken. Then he said: "I'm no critic; so I can't appraise the literary value of your piece, Ivan, but as for its being the answer to anything, that's inane. Anybody knows that there are human experiences besides death that peoples are sure of before they happen. For instance I have a gun I used in the Revolution. You have all seen it and heard the story behind it a hundred times. It hangs on the wall of my trophy room, has done for years. No, I'd stake anything money, reputation, ves, even my life that that pistol is still hanging there." Instantly a strange light came into Ivan's eyes. He jumped to his feet, rushed to the desk and drew out his own pistol, which he put in his pocket. Then he took his coat and turned to the party of men. "I'll take that wager, General, only on my terms. Come with me." They left and went to the house of the general. When they got there they entered the trophy room and found the pistol on the wall as the general had said it was. But Ivan didn't look at it. He merely put a chair about ten feet from the wall on which the firearm hung. The chair was placed so a person seated in it could see neither the gun nor the wall itself. "Now, General," he said, "I want to take a good look at that gun and make quite sure it is on the wall." "Why, of course, it's on the wall. I can see it. I'm sure of that despite all your damned theories." "Then," continued Ivan, "sit here in this chair." The general did so. Ivan pulled his pistol from his pocket and leveled it at the general's head. "Now general, you said before that you would stake your life on the truth of that which you just now saw. Well, I'm going to give you a chance to do just that." "In what way?" asked the general. "If you swear that the gun is on the wall and it is, I will turn this pistol on myself and forfeit my life. But if you are wrong about the gun's being there I will pull the trigger and blow your brains out. Remember, it is a whole three minutes since you saw the object in question. I shall count ten. If you refuse to answer I will kill you anyway, so consider carefully, General. Now . . . One . . . Two . . . Three ..." The sounds in that room were unearthly Only the slow counting and the heavy breathing of the general were audible. As the count reached five, beads of sweat broke on the general's forehead, and behind them the thoughts raced like a whirlwind- "Why am I hesitating? I know the gun is there. I just saw it And yet if it isn't, I die But I'm no fool; it's there as it always has been. Maybe he moved it as I sat down. Maybe he's trying to trick me into saying it's there No, it must be there. And yet he's so sure that he'll bet his life on it and he can see whether it's there or not eight, only two more He's trying to trick me It's there It must be, and yet-" Ivan counted to eight and paused. He seemed to take delight in prolonging the wait between words. He thought, "Give him plenty of time, the more the better. Poor fool; he thinks perhaps I've moved the gun so I can trick him. He doesn't realize that I haven't been out of his sight. He's too much taken with the knowledge that his life is at stake." Ivan spoke the last number. "There! All right, General. Quickly now; is it there or not ?" The general's face shown with wild desperation. He shouted, "I don't know! I don't know! Put down that gun . . . You're crazy I don't know" He started from his chair, but a bullet struck him in the chest and another in the head. He slumped back and fell to the floor. Ivan cried out, his voice filled with hysterical triumph: "You see, he wasn't sure. Nobody's sure until he can actually see or feel or hear a thing That's my answer . . . ! He said more, but his words were a frenzied babbling and his thoughts incomprehensible. The family malady had taken its toll. be so easily duped this time. There may even be one whose purpose is to snare a few victims to torture just to get even for the suffering he has endured. Experience has taught this fellow to set his traps capriciously because there is no science that can accurately dictate rules for laying snares as the ladies lay them. But if he is bent on taming and keeping the creature thus ensnared, and if the unwary victim is willing to accept him, he must be a bird of a certain feather. (For this information we are indebted to the omniscient Miss Dix.) Miss Dix first takes a young fellow in good health at the age of fourteen, kicks him out of bed every morning to milk a dozen cows, and then sends him off on a five-mile walk to school. She adds to this a thorough buffeting at the handles of a plough, stirs well for four years, and if he comes up fresh for the nineteenth year, she has some material to work with. She consults the dream book (and this is the only way you can tell) to see what line of work he wishes to pursue. Let us say that he wants to go to college. He starts college on a shoestring, works nights, and in the ensuing four years, during which he studies hard, she has his heart broken or badly dented three or four times. This is necessary, Open Season on Males (Continued from Page 9) says Miss Dix, as a conditioning against fickleness in the female sex. Then she takes this fellow and imbues him with the following qualities: modesty, thrift, sincerity, ambition, humor, and character. Then, she says, you have a bird worth gunning for. Much obliged for the information, Miss Dix, but you have just described to us a fellow doomed to bachelorhood. He has a groundwork of virtues, but his plumage is dull. He may be found hidden in the bushy trees, but only after intensive searching. His drab colors make him hard to find and equally hard to hit after being spotted. What we have here is a fellow who must, to be eligible, develop a weakness of some sort. He must be a jitterbug or have some petty vice. With such plumage he becomes a quarry easy to find and makes a fair target to aim at. Being virile creatures at best, gentlemen, you may balk at the prospect of being hunted and bagged like any common fowl, but a powerful weapon is yours if you accept. Let us say that you have just beaten the milkman by a nose and your wife has clouded up for a storm. "What's the idea of playing poker half the night?" And you answer sweetly, "Honey, I don't see what you can do about it. I didn't ask you to marry me." page eighteen