ne dominant characteristic to which even his
brilliancy, his clarity of style, his excellent mechanism as a writer
are subordinate; and to which, as a man, even his sense of duty, his
powers of affection, of forgiveness, of loving-kindness are subordinate,
too; and that characteristic is cleanliness.

The biggest force for cleanliness that was in the world has gone out of
the world--gone to that Happy Hunting Ground where "Nobody hunts us and
there is nothing to hunt."

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.

Chapter 1. THE RED CROSS GIRL

When Spencer Flagg laid the foundation-stone for the new million-dollar
wing he was adding to the Flagg Home for Convalescents, on the hills
above Greenwich, the New York REPUBLIC sent Sam Ward to cover the story,
and with him Redding to take photographs. It was a crisp, beautiful day
in October, full of sunshine and the joy of living, and from the great
lawn in front of the Home you could see half over Connecticut and across
the waters of the Sound to Oyster Bay.

Upon Sam Ward, however, the beauties of Nature were wasted. When, the
night previous, he had been given the assignment he had sulked, and he
was still sulking. Only a year before he had graduated into New York
from a small up-state college and a small up-state newspaper, but
already he was a "star" man, and Hewitt, the city editor, humored him.

"What's the matter with the story?" asked the city editor. "With the
speeches and lists of names it ought to run to two columns."

"Suppose it does!" exclaimed Ward; "anybody can collect type-written
speeches and lists of names. That's a messenger boy's job. Where's there
any heart-interest in a Wall Street broker like Flagg waving a silver
trowel and singing, 'See what a good boy am!' and a lot of grownup men
in pinafores saying, 'This stone is well and truly laid.' Where's the
story in that?"

"When I was a reporter," declared the city editor, "I used to be glad to
get a day in the country."

"Because you'd never lived in the country," returned Sam. "If you'd
wasted twenty-six years in the backwoods, as I did, you'd know that
every minute you spend outside of New York you're robbing yourself."

"Of what?" demanded the city editor. "There's nothing to New York except
cement, iron girders, noise, and zinc garbage cans. You never see the
sun in New York; you never see the moon unless you stand in the middle
of the street and bend backward. We never see flowers in New York except
on the w