ganization left over because they wouldn't fit in anywhere. The personal
equation is magnetic. It comes along and acts, and every part falls into
place, and the organization is capable of performing a lot of new
functions.

Not one person in five hundred possesses the faculty. Those who don't,
like to comfort themselves with the assurance that it is a gift which
Providence forgot to hand out to them. Innumerable stories grow up around
the man who does possess it. One glance from his eagle eye, people say,
and he reads you through. One word, and he enforces instant obedience.
Thus the personal equation is glorified and mystified. But men who really
have this valuable Something seldom make much mystery about it. They
insist it is largely a matter of common sense, which everyone ought to
have at their disposal.

[Footnote 4: Henry Altemus Company, Philadelphia.]

The personal equation has an interesting way of raising moral issues.

One morning in August, 1863, a young clergyman was called out of bed in a
hotel at Lawrence, Kansas. The man who called him was one of Quantrell's
guerrillas, and he wanted him to hurry downstairs, and be shot. All over
the border town that morning people were being murdered. A band of raiders
had ridden in early to perpetrate the Lawrence massacre.

The guerrilla who called the clergyman was impatient. The latter, when
fully awake, was horrified by what he saw going on through his window. As
he came downstairs the guerrilla demanded his watch and money, and then
wanted to know if he was an abolitionist. The clergyman was trembling. But
he decided that if he was to die then and there, it would not be with a
lie on his lips. So he said, yes, he was, and followed up the admission
with a remark that immediately turned the whole affair into another
channel.

He and the guerrilla sat down on the porch, while people were being killed
through the town, and had a long talk. It lasted until the raiders were
ready to leave. When the clergyman's guerrilla mounted to join his
confederates he was strictly on the defensive. He handed back the New
Englander's valuables and apologized for disturbing him, and asked to be
thought well of.

That clergyman lived many years after the Lawrence massacre. What did he
say to the guerrilla? What was there in his personality that led the
latter to sit down and talk? What did they talk about?

'Are you a Yankee abolitionist?' the guerrilla had asked.

'Yes--I am