highly cultivated, a gentleman. His family is prominent in Southern California. When quite young, he formed the drink habit, got into trouble and was cast off by his people. That was more than twenty years ago. Since then he has been in prison several times, always under the same conditions and for the same offense. He always gets a light sentence, because he pleads guilty, and the courts have had pity for him."

Douglass was brought into the warden's office at my request. He seemed very nervous and embarrassed and not inclined to talk. He told me his time would be up in another month, and he intended to make a supreme effort to conquer the habit that had so wrecked his life. I asked him to call on me when he was released and I would help him to make a new start.

He came directly to my office from the prison. He was still very nervous. His lips twitched, and his voice was broken. But there was a resolute look in his eyes which reassured me.

"Are you quite sure you can hold out this time, Douglass?" I asked.

"I am positive," he said. "I shall never drink again."

"It will be a hard fight," I said. "You have fallen so many times, you know, and each fall makes your will weaker."

"That is true, but this time I have the sustaining influence of a woman's love. This woman has stood by me through two prison sentences, and now, I am going to make the battle for her sake."

Somehow his words convinced me and gave me perfect confidence in him. Ordinarily I should not have been so easily convinced, because I personally knew how insidious the habit is and what tricks the mind would play in its behalf.

Douglass had no money. He needed fifty dollars to tide him over until he could get a position. A portion of the money he wanted to use to pay the expenses of a visit to the woman he loved. I gave him the money and asked him to dine with Mrs. Older and me at the Fairmont that evening at 6 o'clock.

He did not appear at the hour appointed. We both became nervous with fear that he had fallen. I reproached myself for having given him such a large sum of money. We waited hopelessly until 6:30. He came at that hour, but was quite drunk. We made the best of it.

He could eat nothing. When we had finished we took him to our rooms and kept him in conversation for several hours until the effect of the liquor had partly passed away. He promised me faithfully that he would go to his room in a

downtown hotel and see me at my office at 8 in the morning. He did not come, and I felt that he was beyond help.

Early on the following morning, however, he called me up on the telephone.

"I am drunk in a Barbary Coast dive, Mr. Older," he said. "I am right on the verge of sliding back into hell again. Will you hold out your hand and help me?"

He gave me the location of the saloon. I sent a reporter for him with instructions to rent a room, put him to bed and keep him there until he heard from me. This was done.

That evening I had him removed to the Emergency Hospital. He passed the night there. Early the following morning I called on him.

"Douglass," I said, "you are again heading straight for the penitentiary. I know of only one way to save you. That is to have you committed to the alcoholic ward of the Stockton asylum for six months. I'll see that you have good treat

He was glad to go. He left that evening. Each Sunday Mrs. Older and I motored to Stockton to see him. Meanwhile, Donald Lawrie had been paroled and was writing his story for the Bulletin. Having similar literary tastes, Lowrie and Douglass had become fast friends in prison. On one of our visits to the asylum, we took Lowrie with us. Douglass was overjoyed to see Lowrie. He was getting strong again. In fact, he was quite himself, and being normal, the queer people he was compelled to associate with in the asylum began to affect his nerves. He longed to get out and go to work.

In a short time after this visit, I secured a suitable position for him in a nearby dry town. I had him discharged from the asylum as cured and took him to his new job.

"Now, Douglass," I said, "this is your last hope. You can't get a drink in this town, and I want your word of honor that you won't leave it."

Of course, he solemnly promised, and meant to keep his word. He did for several weeks. He had made some kind friends in the town and they helped him to make the fight.

The evil day finally came. He found a bottle of wood alcohol in the office where he worked and drank it. The effect of it on him was dreadful. For days it was thought he would become totally blind. Fortunately, he recovered, resumed his work and kept straight for a short time. He fell again, this time in a nearby city which he visited. He spent all of his money, borrowed all that he could, sold his clothes and went down into the gutter. But the battle was to go on.

WT

LOVE TRIUMPHS

E put Douglass on his feet again, only to find that his employer, disgusted, had discharged him. But his friends paid all of his bills and this made the employer feel that he, too, should do his part, and he took him back. He not only did this kindly act, but, in order to strengthen him in the fight, arranged to publish Douglass' prison poems in book form. We all became very much interested in preparing the book, Lowrie especially so. It finally made its appearance under the title of "Drops of Blood," Lowrie writing for it the following foreword:

"A strain of music, the scent of a flower, the ripple of running water-how often they sweep a chord, mute but yet attuned, awakening the pent floods of memory. It is thus with this little book of verse, wrung from the silent gloom of unending prison nights-nights we spent together in the semidarkness of a forgotten world.

"Behind the graven figures '19173,' I see you tonight as I saw you then, seated at the tiny deal table in our little eight by four cell, the dim light from the smoky oil lamp falling fitfully upon your face as you wrote in silence line after line, page after page-and I, lying on the narrow bunk against the wall, wondering what your were wresting from the Universal Source and setting into words amid such sombre surroundings.

"To all the art of 'setting words prettily together,' as Ruskin puts it, you have added the color which can be drawn only from the fountain of hard experience. May the message you are sending out find its way to the heart of the world, and there plant the seed of a deeper, larger and kindlier understanding.

"In those years of the past, we studied the theme of life together. Today we labor apart, and yet together as beforeyou in your way and I in mine-to turn the thoughts of men and women toward the needs of the 'proscribed,' seeking to redeem ourselves, and in so doing to encourage others."

It is rare, indeed, for a book of verse, even though of fine quality, to have a large sale. Only a few hundred copies of "Drops of Blood" were sold. Perhaps this fact discouraged Douglass. He fell again. It was then that the woman who loved him, and who had never lost hope, decided to marry

him, relying upon the strength of her love to sustain him. Then began our preparations for the wedding.

It was decided that Douglass' wedding should be held at Medora's home in the mountains, in the open air and under the trees that she loved. Douglass at last was to be reclaimed. This was to be be our triumph. We all motored over for the great event-Donald Lowrie, Buck English, old Charlie, Clarence Darrow, Mr. Barry, Mrs. Older, and myself. The aged father, and the other members of Douglass' family that had been estranged from him for nearly a quarter of a century, were there. Douglass and they were friends again. The simple ceremony under the trees was very impressive.

At last the young woman who had never lost faith, who had unfalteringly stood by while the man she loved served two terms in the penitentiary, was also to justify the faith he had in her when in his prison cell he wrote the "Open Road." Here are the lines:

THE OPEN ROAD

Where wends the road beyond these walls?

I do not know-I may not see;

But every hour its freedom calls
And leads me, spirit free.

So swift it sweeps in curving gleams,
So clear beneath the sun and moon,
It calls me from my work and dreams,
At midnight and at noon.

A clanging bell! The bolts fly back
As each day brings its task anew;

A purr of wheels-the looms' "click-clack"-
I see the road and you.

To know this helpless, hopeless throng-
This bar-bound death in life-the prayer—
The muttered curse of nameless wrong-
The silence of despair!

And yet a garden blossoms there

That breathes of Omar's roseblown bower;

And love's blood-rose set in your hair

Perfumes my every hour.

Where wends the road beyond these walls?

I know not whither it doth wend;

But this I know: whate'er befalls,

You're waiting at its end.

She was waiting at the end. And here in this lovely mountain setting the ceremony took place that testified to her faith and long devotion.

He

The happy affair over, we all returned to the city. A day or two later the old father called on me at my office. tried to speak, but instead he wept like a child. Becoming calmer, he said between his sobs: "You have saved a brand from the burning. I cast him off, I turned him out of the house, and sent him away from his mother who loved him."

I told him I had only extended to his son the hand of friendship. "It is as little as one can do, and as much as need be done in most cases," I said.

"Yes," he said, "I realize it all now when it is too late."

I assured him that it was not too late, that there were many years of happiness in store for them.

The battle was not yet entirely won. Douglass fell occasionally, but the distances between the bad spells were widening with the years. He and his devoted wife often visited us at the ranch, and when Mrs. Older and I complimented him on how well and strong he seemed, he would look at her through his happy tears and say: "She has done it all." Love has done it all for Douglass, as it would for all of us if we would only give it a chance. It is the greatest force in the world.