Victor, with law as his vision, crossed the famous old straits of Messina from his island home and went to Naples to study in the law school there.

In the ’80s things began to happen.  Down in Virginia, Thomas was admitted to the bar.  In old Wales, David, who, by this time, had learned to speak English, was admitted to practice law in 1884, and, in 1885, the black-eyed, hot-blooded Sicilian Victor received the documents that entitled him to practice at the Italian bar.

George, in France, by this time had dropped medicine.  Bolshevism had arisen there in the form of the Commune, and he had fought it so desperately that he had been sentenced to death.  He hated kings, and he also hated the autocracy of the mob.  He fled from Paris.

Soon they will sit at a peace table together, the first peace table in all human history from which divine-right kings are barred.  The future and the welfare of the world lie in their four pairs of hands.  Their full names are:  Georges Clemenceau, premier of France; David Lloyd George, prime minister of England; Victor Emanuel Orlando, premier of Italy, and Thomas Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States.

* * * * *

(Saturday Evening Post)

Three half-tone reproductions of wash-drawings by a staff artist.

THE CONFESSIONS OF A COLLEGE PROFESSOR’S WIFE

A college professor—­as may be proved by any number of novels and plays—­is a quaint, pedantic person, with spectacles and a beard, but without any passions—­except for books.  He takes delight in large fat words, but is utterly indifferent to such things as clothes and women—­except the dowdy one he married when too young to know better....  It is always so interesting to see ourselves as authors see us.

Even more entertaining to us, however, is the shockingly inconsistent attitude toward academic life maintained by practical people who know all about real life—­meaning the making and spending of money.

One evening soon after I became a college professor’s wife I enjoyed the inestimable privilege of sitting next to one of America’s safest and sanest business men at a dinner party given in his honor by one of the trustees of the university.

When he began to inform me, with that interesting air of originality which often accompanies the platitudes of our best citizens, that college professors were “mere visionary idealists—­all academic theories; no practical knowledge of the world”—­and so on, as usual—­I made bold to interrupt: 

“Why, in the name of common sense, then, do you send your own sons to them to be prepared for it!  Is such a policy safe?  Is it sane?  Is it practical?” And I am afraid I laughed in the great man’s face.

He only blinked and said “Humph!” in a thoroughly businesslike manner; but throughout the rest of the evening he viewed me askance, as though I had become a dangerous theorist too—­by marriage.  So I turned my back on him and wondered why such a large and brilliant dinner was given for such a dull and uninteresting Philistine!