Mr. Knickerbocker was nurtured in luxury and educated for the higher walks of life. He had been the brilliant and idolized pastor of two fashionable congregations. But he had fallen by the wayside, had risen, and had fallen again.

Mr. Grannan was born of poor parents. He began life as a bell-boy in a Louisville hotel. He was drawn to the race-track by listening to the talk of horsemen when they gathered in Louisville twice a year to attend the races. His career on the race-track was meteoric. But poverty and hardship were nothing new to him.

The funeral was typical of a new mining-camp. There was no hearse. The remains were conveyed in an express wagon from the undertaker's tent to the improvised chapel, a variety theatre at the rear of the saloon. There gathered an audience so remarkable in aspect that it probably could not be duplicated anywhere else on earth. Men and women of every social station and grade closely commingled. A solemn hush hovered over the strange assembly. Dead silence reigned where a few hours before half-drunken auditors boisterously applauded the ribald jest and obscene songs of low-grade variety actors. But around the bier was gathered a throng of as sincere mourners as ever assembled at the coffinside of a departed friend.

The eulogy pronounced by Mr. Knickerbocker was powerfully dramatic. His appearance was in keeping with the scene. Clad in the rough garb of a miner and wearing high boots, he looked the part of a typical pioneer. He deeply felt his subject. His eyes were dimmed with tears, and at times his voice was choked by emotion.

Standing on a dais beside the catafalque, with one hand lightly touching the forehead of the dead man and the other uplifted, Mr. Knickerbocker told his auditors he proposed to show the deceased to have been a “deadgame sport" and that he had not lived his life in vain. He went on thus:

"I feel that it is incumbent upon me to state that in standing here I occupy no ministerial or prelatic position. I am simply a prospector. make no claims whatever to moral merit or to religion, except the religion of humanity, the brotherhood of man. I stand among you today simply as a man among men, feeling that I can shake hands and say 'brother' to the vilest man or woman that ever lived. If there should come to you anything of moral admonition through what I may say, it comes not from any sense of moral superiority, but from the depths of my experience.

"Riley Grannan was born in Paris, Ky., about forty years ago. I suppose he dreamed all the dreams of boyhood. They blossomed into phenomenal success along financial lines at times during his life. I am told that from the position of a bell-boy in a hotel he rose rapidly to be a celebrity of world-wide fame. He was one of the greatest plungers, probably, that the continent has ever produced.

"He died day before yesterday in Rawhide.

"This is a very brief statement. You have the birth and the period of the grave. Who can fill the interim? Who can speak of his hopes and fears? Who can solve the mystery of his quiet hours that only he himself knew? I cannot.

"He was born in the sunny Southland-in Kentucky. He died in Rawhide.

"There is the beginning and the end. I wonder if we can see in this a picture of what Ingersoll said at the grave of his brother: 'Whether it be near the shore, or in mid-ocean, or among the breakers, at last a wreck must mark the end of one and all.'

"He was born in the sunny Southland, where brooks and rivers run

musically through the luxuriant land; where the magnolia grandiflora, like white stars, glow in a firmament of green; where crystal lakes dot the greensward and the softest Summer breezes dimple the wave-lips into kisses for the lilies on the shore; where the air is resonant with the warbled melody of a thousand sweet-voiced birds and redolent of the perfume of many flowers. This was the beginning. He died in Rawhide, where in Winter the shoulders of the mountains are wrapped in garments of ice and in Summer the blistering rays of the sun beat down upon the skeleton ribs of the desert. Is this a picture of universal human life?

"Sometimes, when I look over the circumstances of human life, a curse rises to my lips, and, if you will allow me, I will say here that I speak from an individual point of view. I cannot express other than my own views. If I run counter to yours, at least give me credit for a desire to be honest.

"When I see the ambitions of man defeated; when I see him struggle with mind and body in the only legitimate prayer he can make to accomplish some end; when I see his aim and purpose frustrated by a fortuitous combination of circumstances over which he has no control; when I see the outstretched hand, just about to grasp the flag of victory, take instead the emblem of defeat, I ask: What is life? What is life? Dreams, awak ening and death; 'a pendulum 'twixt a smile and a tear;' 'a momentary halt within the waste and then the nothing we set out from;' 'a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more;' 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing;' a child-blown bubble that but reflects the light and shadow of its environment and is gone; a mockery, a sham, a lie, a fool's vision; its happiness but Dead Sea apples, its pain the crunching of a tyrant's heel. I feel as Omar did when he wrote:

"We are no other than a moving row
Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the sun-illumed lantern held
In midnight by the Master of the show;
"But helpless pieces of the game he plays
Upon this checker-board of night and days
Hither and thither moves and checks and slays,
And one by one back in the closet lays.

"The ball no question makes of ayes and noes,
But here or there as strikes the player goes;
And He that toss'd you down into the field,

He knows about it all-He knows-HE KNOWS."

"But I don't. This is my mood.

"Not so with Riley Grannan. If I have gauged his character correctly, he accepted the circumstances surrounding him as the mystic officials to whom the universe had delegated its whole office concerning him. He seemed to accept both defeat and victory with equanimity. He was a man whose exterior was as placid and gentle as I have ever seen, and yet when we look back over his meteoric past we can readily understand, if this statement be true, that he was absolutely invincible in spirit. If you will allow me, I will use a phrase most of you are acquainted with-he was a 'dead-game sport.' I say it not irreverently, but fill the phrase as full of practical human philosophy as it will hold, and I believe that when you can say one is a 'dead-game sport' you have reached the climax of human philosophy.

"I believe that Riley Grannan's life fully exemplified the philosophy of these verses:

"It's easy enough to be happy

When life flows along like a song;
But the man worth while

Is the man who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong.
"For the test of the heart is trouble,
And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that is worth
The homage of earth

Is the smile that shines through tears."

"I know that there are those who will condemn him. There are those who believe today that he is reaping the reward of a misspent life. There are those who are dominated by mediaeval creeds. To those I have no word to say in regard to him. They are ruled by the skeleton hand of the past and fail to see the moral beauty of a character lived outside their puritanical ideas. His goodness was not of the type that reached its highest manifestations in any ceremonial piety. His goodness, I say, was not of that type, but of the type that finds expression in the handclasp; the type that finds expression in a word of cheer to a discouraged brother; the type that finds expression in quiet deeds of charity; the type that finds expression in friendship, the sweetest flower that blooms along the dusty highway of life; the type that finds expression in manhood.

"He lived in the world of sport. I do not mince my words. I am telling what I believe to be true. In the world of sport-hilarity some. times, and maybe worse. He left the impress of his character on this world, and through the medium of his financial power he was able with his money to brighten the lives of its inhabitants. He wasted it, so the world says. But did it ever occur to you that the most sinful men and women who live in this world are still men and women? Did it ever occur to you that the men and women who inhabit the night-world are still men and women? A little happiness brought into their lives means

as much to them as happiness brought into the lives of the straight and the good. If you can take one ray of sunlight into their night-life and thereby bring them one single hour of happiness, I believe you are a benefactor.

"Riley Grannan may have 'wasted' some of his money in this way. "Did you ever stop and think how God does not put all His sunbeams into corn, potatoes and flowers? Did you ever notice the prodigality with which He scatters these sunbeams over the universe? Contemplate:

"God flings the auroral beauties round the cold shoulders of the North, hangs the quivering picture of the mirage above the palpitating heart of the desert, scatters the sunbeams like gold upon the bosoms of myriad lakes that gem the verdant robe of nature, spangles the canopy of night with star-jewels and silvers the world with the reflected beams from Cynthia's mellow face, hangs the gorgeous crimson current of the Occident across the sleeping-room of the sun, wakes the coy maid of dawn to step timidly from her boudoir of darkness to climb the steps of the Orient and fling wide open the gates of the morning. Then, tripping over the landscape, kissing the flowers in her flight, she wakes the birds to herald with their music the coming of her king who floods the world with refulgent gold. Wasted sunbeams, these? I say to you that the man who by the use of his money or power is able to smooth out one wrinkle from the brow of care, is able to change one moan or sob into a song, is able to wipe away one tear and in its place put a jewel of joy-this man is a public benefactor. I believe that some of Riley Grannan's money was 'wasted' in this way.

"We stand at last in the presence of the Great Mystery. I know nothing about it, nor do you. We may have our hopes, but no knowledge. I do not know whether there be a future life or not. I do not say there is not. I simply say I do not know. I have watched the wicket-gate close behind many and many a pilgrim. No word has come back to me. The gate is closed. Across the chasm is the gloomy cloud of death. I say I do not know. And, if you will allow this expression, I do not know whether it is best that my dust or his at last should go to feed the roots of the grasses, the sagebrush or the flowers, to be blown in protean forms by the law of the persistence of force, or whether it is best that I continue in personal identity beyond what we call death. If this be all, 'after life's fitful fever he sleeps well. Nothing can harm him further.' God knows what is best.

* * *

"This may be infidelity, but if it is, I would like to know what faith means. I came into this universe without my volition-came and found a loving mother's arms to receive me. I had nothing to do with the

preparation for my reception here. I have no power to change the environment of the future, but the same power which prepared the loving arms of a mother to receive me here will make proper reception for me there. God knows better than I what is good for me, and I leave it with God.

"If I had the power today by the simple turning of my hand to endow myself with personal immortality, in my finite ignorance I would refuse to turn my hand. God knows best. It may be that sometimes I get very tired of this life. Hedged and cribbed, caged like a bird caught from the wilds, that in its mad desire for freedom beats its wings against the bars only to fall back in defeat upon the floor-I long for death, if it will break the bars that hold me captive.

"I was snowbound in the mountains once for three days. On account of the snow we had to remain immediately alongside the train. After three days of this, when our food had been exhausted, the whistle blew that meant the starting of the train out into the world again. It may be that death is but the signal whistle that marks the movement of the train out into the broader and freer stretches of spiritual being.

"As we stand in the presence of death we have no knowledge, but always, no matter how dark the gloomy clouds hang before me, there gleams the star of hope. Let us hope, then, that it may be the morning star of the eternal day. It is dawning somewhere all the time. Did you ever pause to think that this old world of ours is constantly swinging into the dawn? Down the grooves of time, flung by the hand of God, with every revolution it is dawning somewhere all the time. Let this be an illustration of our hope. Let us believe, then, that in the development of the human soul, as it swings forward towards its destiny, it is constantly swinging nearer and nearer to the sun.

"And now the time is come to say goodbye.. The word 'farewell' is the saddest in our language. And yet there are sentiments sometimes that refuse to be confined in that word. I will say: 'Goodbye, old man. We will try to exemplify the spirit manifested in your life in bearing the grief at our parting. Words fail me here. Let these flowers, Rlley, with their petaled lips and perfumed breath, speak in beauty and fragrance the sentiments that are too tender for words. Goodbye.'

APPLIED TO CHIROPRACTIC

(By Geo. F. Ort of the Chicago, Illinois, Bar)

In the preceding papers is shown the nation-wide jungle of statutes and court decisions in which the way-faring medical man of any "new school" in healing, and his lawyer, may consider themselves fortunate indeed if in passing through the bramble of hair-raising distinctions between the several State requirements, touching practically every element of the subject of medical practice, they escape with a shred of aspiration. By way of analogy, those brambles are the same difficulties which menace a lawyer who has the temerity to try a case in a strange jurisdiction without having engaged or has opposing him local counsel who has played ball with the jurors or burned "cow chips" with the judge. This unethical jealousy is so well recognized that the framers of the Federal Constitution thought it wise to provide a mode of removing cases from state to federal jurisdiction, and numerous decisions make no secret of the motive and object. It is the savage instinct of tribal superstition whereby those who "belong" look upon the new-comer as a strange critter in the herd and manage to "frame up" some pretext to go around and take a "hook" at him. Whether you apply such ethics in an attempt to choke chiropractic or in an effort to palliate hell in general, it shows the low order of ethics in which our doctors, our lawyers, our legislators and our judges commonly disport themselves in conjuring secretly with the immediate tactical or strategical possibilities. So that making all due allowance for the general prevalence of secret cussedness, at best the film of medico-legal ethics is an exceedingly thin veneer of a condition called civilization. Imagine one's emotions on hearing a solemn exhortation of a "staid" lawyer of unblemished national reputation at a bar association meeting discussing the fine ethics of the profession, knowing of certain deals he "put over" for his banker clients; or of an able judge, knowing how he had lent the facilities of his court to prevent the bringing of a case to issue on the pleading and afterwards holding that the unsuccessful lawyer was not entitled to compensation for his "useless" effort; or of the officials of a whole bar association chagrined over the loss of the league covenant, active in a campaign designed to reduce the citizen's franchise to one-fifth of its present influence in state elections, notwithstanding the loss of England's league. Witness a medical organization of the old school covering the nation on the lines of commercial, industrial and financial systems which are organized and affiliated by national, state and city associations whose avowed object is organized plunder of the public. If there is such a thing as ethics in business, trade or finance, the public is not aware of it by way of any benefits. The same, no doubt, is true of professional ethics. Ethics being the observance of conduct which is not covered by punitive law, it is difficult to see how any man could survive on rigid compliance. Indeed, in the hurly-burly that goes down "Main Street," ethics, if honored at all, is more honored in the struggle to observe it than in the accomplish ment of it. Genuine gentility admonishes one that tactful praise of what