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one night early in January, a junior professor saw a flickering light up in the corner room of Holworthy Hall on the third floor.

"It

"That's strange," he said to himself. was 'lights out' at 10:30, and here it is midnight. I had better look into this party."

He was soon knocking at the door behind which he had seen the light.

Not even an echo answered his knock.
He knocked again, louder.

Then a sleepy-looking head appeared, and the professor recognized Bill Conley in pajamas. "What are you up to, William?" from the professor brought no satisfaction from Bill.

"I beg your pardon, sir?" said Bill, interrogatively, forgetting in his sleepiness to be his usual impolite self.

"What are you doing with that light?" gruffly from the professor.

"What light? I haven't had any light," gruffly from Bill.

Just then another head appeared. "I had the light, sir," it said, in the voice of Peter Ponds, "but I blew it out."

"You know it's against rules. Report to me at the faculty meeting."

"Aw, what did you tell him for?" Bill inquired angrily after the professor left. Bill had enough demerits already, you see, and he feared he might be penalized for his roommate's offense.

"I'll tell you in the morning," said Peter, but Bill grabbed him suddenly around the neck, and they rolled under the iron bed. They wrestled around for quite a while, and when they were tired out each of them had several bruises. In rubbing each other's bruises with

POND'S EXTRACT

they forgot their anger and went to bed.

Peter put a handkerchief soaked with Pond's Extract over his forehead and eyes to stop his head from throbbing, and in three minutes he. was fast asleep.

There was n't any trouble with the faculty. Peter explained that he had the lighted candle so he could finish his essay which was due at that meeting. The faculty gave him one demerit.

Three days later it was announced publicly in chapel that Peter Ponds had won first prize in the Essay Competition on the subject "My Most Exciting Experience." Then, without any preparation, Peter was asked to read it to the whole school.

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As he went up to the platform where all the faculty sat, the whole school applauded, and Peter was, we must confess, both nervous and excited. Probably that explains why he stumbled on the steps and fell up-stairs, striking his forehead against the platform, while his copy of the prize essay went flying in all directions, and some of the younger boys snickered without meaning to.

Before Peter could collect his papers or his wits, the principal, Dr. Sprague, was reaching for the Pond's Extract bottle he keeps with other "first-aid" things in the reading-stand. And before another five minutes Peter was reading his essay just as if nothing had happened.

We should like to let you read all of it this month, but it is too long for that. But here is the beginning. Can't you imagine Peter reading it ?

"MY MOST EXCITING EXPERIENCE,"

he began in a loud tone of voice that wobbled only a trifle. "When I was ten years old, my father and mother took my sister and me on a trip around the world. It was when we were in India that I had my most exciting experi

ence.

"Father had received an invitation to visit a raja's palace a long way inland, in fact in the very heart of the jungle. Polly and I were quite excited, because rajas are very important rulers, much more so than a state governor, and almost like kings. My father says they have more authority than many European kings, even if England does rule India. "It was on a very close, hot day without a

breath of air stirring, that 'My Most Exciting Experience' happened.

"Our train of short, funny English coaches had stopped at a sort of station where they take on water for the passengers and the locomotive. Suddenly out of the 'elephant-grass,' ten feet deep, appeared a monster head with great ears flapping wide, and shiny ivory tusks six or seven feet long. It was an elephant charging and making a terrible uproar. Away off in the distance we could hear other elephants trumpeting. On came the mountainous beast straight for one of the Indian coolies, who was about fifty feet from the side of our car. The poor man ran for dear life. We knew he could n't possibly win the race. phants can run very fast, even if they do look clumsy at the Zoo. I was breathless with excitement. I guess Polly was pale with fright, but I did n't look at her. Our eyes were fixed on the man; we could see he was fast losing the race. Suddenly Polly screamed as the terrible monster grabbed the helpless coolie." (Continued in the March ST. NICHOLAS) POND'S EXTRACT COMPANY'S Vanishing CreamCold Cream-Toilet Soap-Pond's Extract

POND'S EXTRACT COMPANY

131 Hudson Street

Ele

New York

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ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN But cuts and scratches and all the other little hurts get well quickly if dressed with

Vaseline

Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. OXIDE OF ZINC

A healing, antiseptic ointment combining the well-known curative properties of zinc oxide with a pure "Vaseline" base.

Good for children and grown-ups too. Especially efficient and rapid in reducing skin eruptions.

In tubes and jars, at drug and department stores everywhere. Write for booklet describing the various "Vaseline" preparations and their many uses. CHESEBROUGH MF'G CO.

(Consolidated)

38 STATE STREET, NEW YORK

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"WHERE can I get a really good history of Belgium," is a question frequently asked. There are three books which every reader of The Book Man will find profitable and interesting:

"Our Little Belgian Cousins," telling of the life of the boys and girls of Belgium before the present war. Price sixty cents. And if you want a peep into Russia try "Our Little Russian Cousins" in the same series.

"Peeps at Many Lands: Belgium." By George W. I. Ormond, giving an extremely good picture of Belgium's life and people and a brief summary of Belgium's history. It is published by Adam and Charles Black of London, but any bookseller will order it for you; and in the same series are two other books of which you will be glad to know: "Peeps at Many Lands: France," and "Peeps at Many Lands: Germany." Price fifty-five cents each.

Put on your list of modern history reading also, Dr. William Elliot Griffis' "Belgium: The Land of Art," an extremely readable and sympathetic survey of Belgium's history, legends, industry, and modern expansion, which all the family will find worth reading. It is one of the very best, if not the best, brief book on the subject in print, and the price is $1.25 net.

A VERY interesting letter from a fourteen-yearold Maplewood, N. J., reader says:

"My brother, a few of his friends, and myself are reading French, German and English history this winter. We feel we want to know all about the countries now engaged in war."

Won't the writer of this letter, and any other girls and boys who are following a similar course of reading, send The Book Man a list of the books on these subjects they are finding really worth while?

You cannot, of course, read "heavy" books all the time; and here are some more or less recent books by writers of the day, all worth your reading, and full of entertainment.

There is Jean Webster's "Daddy-LongLegs"-every sixteen-year-old girl will love it, and want to see the play based on the book. There is Frances Hodgson Burnett's "T. Tem(Continued on page 15)

THE BOOK MAN-Continued

barom," going on a year and a half old now; but a story-of a New York newsboy who inherited an English estate-which lures one happily on to the very last page. There is Holworthy Hall's "Henry of Navarre," just jolly nonsense, but wholesome as it can be.

There is Maria Thompson Daviess' pretty tale of good times in a little Southern town she knows well, "Phyllis." And Frances

Little's sunny letters of an American missionary in Japan, "The Lady of the Decoration." And Dr. S. Weir Mitchell's last novel, "Westways," one of the best pictures of Civil War days ever written.

No list of "best" books can be absolute and final; but here is a list of the "Best Fifty Books of the Greatest Authors Conde sed for Busy People," by Benjamin R. Davenport, which should be of interest to the older boys and girls who read these pages:

Homer's "Iliad"

Dante's "Inferno"
Boccaccio's "Decameron"

Shakespeare's Plays

"The Arabian Nights"

Cervantes' "Don Quixote"

Milton's "Paradise Lost"

Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress"

Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe"

Swift's "Travels of Lemuel Gulliver"
Pope's "Essay on Man"

Le Sage's "Gil Blas"

Fielding's "Tom Jones"

Voltaire's "Zadig"

Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas"

Sterne's "Tristam Shandy"

Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield"

St. Pierre's "Paul and Virginia"

Boswell's "Life of Johnson'

Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship"

Scott's "Ivanhoe"

Scott's "The Antiquary"

Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans"

Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus"

Disraeli's "Vivian Grey"

Balzac's "Cousin Pons"

Warren's "Ten Thousand a Year"

George Sand's "Consuelo'

Eugene Sue's "The Wandering Jew"

Bulwer Lytton's "The Last Days of Pompeii"

Bulwer Lytton's "My Novel"

Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo"

Thackeray's "Vanity Fair"

Thackeray's "Henry Esmond"

Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre"

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BETTY'S LESSONS

In which she finds that some lessons can be very interesting indeed

I. PHYSIOLOGY

"My! but this is a stupid subject!", Betty used to say about Physiology. She couldn't see why she needed to know whether her heart pumped 8,321,224 red corpuscles, or 691,321,877 white ones every minute, or whatever it was.

But one day Physiology became the most interesting subject of all to her. She had a toothache.

We don't need to tell you how she felt.

Betty was in class. Her tooth hurt so much that for a long time she did n't even hear what the teacher said.

But suddenly the word "tooth" made her listen with both ears. And this is what she heard:

"Nothing is so bad for you as decayed teeth. 'Decay' is just another word for 'sick.' The worst thing about sick teeth is not that they hurt-(Betty thought that was bad enough) -but that they make you sick too. The best way to keep teeth well is to cleanse them night and morning with the best and safest dentifrice that you can get. A perfect dentifrice both tastes good and does good." You know what dentifrice she meant, don't you? You won't forget to brush your teeth twice a day, will you? Be sure to use the just-exactly-right dentifrice

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ADVERTISING COMPETITION No. 158
(See January Advertisements)

A Druggist and a Grocery-man both went to sleep one day in
their stores, there being no customers to wait upon.

And they both dreamed that they woke up in Topsy-Turvyland to find their packages all jumbled together, the labels all changed, some of the drug-store packages bearing the labels of grocery goods, and everything all mixed up. Even the labels were different, being just initials. So they got together, but all they could do was to number the packages.

Your task then, ST. NICHOLAS reader, is to help out these poor men by listing the full name of the articles that belong in each of the numbered packages. For instance, if we had placed "W.H.C." (Woman's Home Companion) on a bottle numbered 12, you would know that was wrong, because the magazine comes in a big flat envelop; if you then found a big flat envelop numbered 13, and marked with the initials "P.E." (which stand for Pond's Extract), your answers would read like this:

12. Pond's Extract.

13. Woman's Home Companion.

Will everybody please help these befuddled and discouraged storekeepers?

In addition, please write at the bottom of your list what bicycle you own, or if you have none, what one you would like to own.

Here are the Rules and Regulations. Be sure to comply with all of these conditions if you want to win a prize:

1.

Send in a list showing, in numerical order, the names of the articles that belong in the packages.

2.

Write on the bottom of your report the name of and some interesting facts about the bicycle you own; or if you have none, what make you would like to own, and why.

3. The prizes will go to those who write the most interesting and specific
bicycle letter and also send us the correct list. Care should be taken
to write the names exactly as they have appeared in the January ST.
NICHOLAS, and also to follow the Rules and Regulations strictly.
In the upper left-hand corner of your answer paper give name, age,
address, and the number of this competition (158).
Submit answers by February 20, 1915.

4.

5.

6.

Do not use a lead-pencil.

7. Address answers: Advertising Competition No. 158,ST. NICHOLAS MAGAZINE, 353 Fourth Avenue, at 26th Street, New York City. There will be twenty-seven One-dollar prizes awarded, according to the above Rules and Regulations.

Note-Prize-winners who are not subscribers to ST. NICHOLAS are given special subscription rates upon immediate application.

This Competition is open freely to all who may desire to compete without charge or consideration of any kind. Prospective contestants need not be subscribers to ST. NICHOLAS in order to compete for the prizes offered.

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