cret of this low cost of living is simple enough: the food is produced on the place and the cooking is done by the young women students.

Three times a day, for an hour before breakfast, dinner, and supper, you will find them in the kitchen busily engaged in preparing the various meals for the entire college. They go about the work carefully and scientifically, and they seem to enjoy it.

Here is a sample dinner menu at Blackburn:

Cream of tomato soup, roast beef, baked potatoes, peas, bread and butter, tapioca, and cake. The cost of the materials for this meal was a fraction under ten cents per student. Breakfasts and suppers usually cost less, the average for the three meals a day being about twenty-one cents. A breakfast sisting of oatmeal cream, bacon, fried apples, cocoa, biscuit and butter is furnished at a cost of six cents, and a supper of curry of meat and rice, creamed potatoes, fruit salad,

con

and

bread and butter, and tea, at four and a half cents.

Dr. Hudson states that it will be possible in another year to reduce the cost of food per student to a dollar and a quarter a week, which will leave a little larger margin out of the one hundred dollars.

The various meals are figured down to a quarter of a cent, not even omitting such small things as the flour in the gravy and the salt on the potatoes. The only other expense, since the students do all of the cooking and serving, is for the fuel consumed in the range.

The fact that there is no help to pay or to feed, important items in figuring up the cost of serving food in most colleges, plays an important part in this economical showing. The selfhelp plan not only cuts down expenses, but gives the young women such a practical course in domestic science that they will be benefited by it all their lives. The theory, of course, they get in the class rooms,

FINDING THE GOOD AND BAD POINTS

part of their laboratory work, for instance, being to prepare each week four new dishes in sufficient quantities to feed all the people in the dining hall. They not only study domestic science, but do all the work in their own rooms, the laundry work, etc., and at the end of four years they come out able and, it is expected, willing, to do anything and solve any problem that is likely to confront a woman in the home.

Of the eighty acres comprising the farm, twelve are given to raising ensilage for the dairy cattle, eight to corn, five to alfalfa, and two to potatoes. The remainder is divided into pasture, orchard, experimental plats, and gardens. Just now the college has onehalf acre of strawberries with five hundred berry plants, one hundred grape vines, and three hundred and fifty apple, peach, and plum trees. The majority of the young men students, who expect to be agriculturists, remain, of course, at the college through the summer months to run the farm and to secure the practical training which this work will furnish.

All of the farm build

ings are put up by the stu

Another unusual feature of Blackburn is that the students know as little of the cost of high living as they do of the high cost of living. The college puts a ban on smoking, drinking, and evils commonly found in the college world. A boy must keep himself clean, if he belongs to the Blackburn College community.

The students at Blackburn all work -three hours a day. All pay the same and work the same.

Two particularly interesting students at the college are foreigners-a bright-eyed little Jap and a curlyhaired Persian. The Japanese student came to America to get an education, believing that all one had to do was to come here and after that everything was free. But he was disappointed in his dreams. He had planned to spend

three years here and then go home to found a little school on the fundamental principles of Christianity. A friend in Japan had said that he would furnish the money as soon as the young man finished his education. So he tried a large state university. They were very sorry, but they had so many American boys, and then he knew nothing about our language or customs. They didn't see how they could do anything for him. At a large endowed university the story was the same. Finally he heard of Blackburn and went there. The president asked him what he could. do and he said he believed he could cook. So he was put in the kitchen and he works there three hours a day, assisting the young women. He

makes the small sum needed to attend the college by selling Japanese articles.

The other boy came all the way from Persia, with the same exalted notion of opportunity in America. He had received a little training in a hospital, but he wanted to be a real doctor and go home to his people as a medical missionary. He spent fourteen months. looking for a college that he could afford. Finally a Persian doctor in Chicago directed him to Blackburn and he went right along and has made a fine record. He is the head of the cleaning force.

all side issues. We are looking out for the young men and the young women the other colleges have passed by, the great class of young people who are willing enough to work. It is not our purpose to help any student who ought to help himself, but simply to provide the means whereby he may secure an education.

A JAP AND A PERSIAN

"There is a lot more to our plan." said Dr. Hudson, "than just helping young people to get through college. who would not otherwise get there on

W

ASHED by the sea whose waves rolled mountain high for days, the shores of California gave up acres of valuable land to the devouring Pacific. During the same season the New Jersey shore was a similar victim. Brief storms they were both, comparatively minor conflicts in the great war the oceans are carrying on every day, every hour, every minute, seizing the little bits of shore and tearing down the bulwarks and bridges which man. has built.

Great Britain has lost in the past thousand years some five hundred square miles of land. The Dutch alone seem to have learned the lesson, to have been able to build up a defense, and even to drive back the sea and reclaim vast areas of invaluable farm land. It is because the Dutch, driven into a difficult position hundreds of years ago by invaders, have been forced to keep back the sea or die. Their dikes have been famous for hun

dreds of years. Their methods, however, are only just beginning to be appreciated; it is the plan of American engineers to put them into use in preventing such disasters as occurred only the past spring on the east and west. coasts of the United States. Of late years the Dutch engineers have been replacing their first dikes with embankments of clay and sand.

A shore line slope should be covered with stone or brick on a gentle grade, which reaches far below the water's edge. The great waves which pile up these slopes send the water whirling up, wearing on this surface, though at the same time there is a great total weight of water. The force of gravity, carrying the water back. puts all the action of the water on the part-the base of the slope-which is least able to withstand it. An embankment which is not constructed to withstand this insidious attack is rapidly destroyed.

An embankment should have the appearance of a well-constructed brick road

sloping into the sea. With a clay base topped with concrete, the finishing material is brick or stone. A granite coping at the top gives an ornamental effect. But for a considerable distance under the surface beyond low water is placed a fascine foundation with heavy ballasting of lime stone, shipped, in the case of Holland, all the way from Belgium. That is the sort of protection which is used by various cities along the Holland-Belgium Coast, but it is not the sort that can be used along the great stretches of coast which flank the farm lands of almost every country. It is there that man must join hands with Nature, and give only the basis of a natural dike. The European engineers have learned to do it by planting tundra grass, and slowly that means is being taken up in other countries.

Tufts of the sea grass growing on the dunes are planted in rows spaced about a foot apart. The great sandy beaches are covered with these methodically planted rows, and just back of them are planted a few rows of reeds which stand some four feet above the sand. When the winds blow, the drifting sand is caught by the grass and a day of heavy wind will often almost completely cover the plantation. The process is repeated whenever this occurs, and soon a great dike is built which forms an effective barrier to the waves, preventing them from reaching farther back from the shore line. On the other hand, storms strike these dunes and carry down vast quantities of sand, but the other process is repeated, and gradually a permanent embankment is built up which, at a comparatively small cost of upkeep, prevents loss.

The natural rebuilding of shore lines and the reclaiming of large areas has been accomplished with an elaborate system of dikes and jetties. The Petten dike in Holland was built at a cost of over a million dollars, and stands as a model of what can and has

to be done to protect the shores of a nation. In this construction there are over fifty jetties which extend at right angles to the shore line into the sea. They are built of willow mats packed down solidly, with a cover of basaltic rock. Most of them are about three hundred and fifty feet long, and about forty feet wide, and they serve to form a deposit of sand between them, extending from shore, even beyond the ends of the jetties themselves. The backs of these slopes are protected by an elaborate system. A rock surface is packed upon a mat of willows, which have been made into bundles about five inches in diameter and often from forty to sixty feet long, or packed on the clay without the willows. Back of this rock surface on the clay slope, the willows are made into fascines, or bundles, and used with a row of stakes driven firmly into the clay, separating the rock surface from the clay surface adjoining. This long flat slope between the rock covering and the sea slope is covered each year with bundles of wheat straw fastened into the clay with withes, which are forced into the clay with an iron tool. This layer of straw withstands the waves for about a year, breaking up the undercurrent and leaving a deposit of sand.

The sea slope proper, going down towards high water level, is very solidly built of basaltic rock held in place by small stakes five or six inches in diameter, placed a foot apart, which serve to break the action of the waves and protect the flatter straw slope above. These stand a few inches above the surface of the rock.

Different kinds of shore line, however, require an entirely different treatment; in the county of Suffolk, England, because of the action of the sea for centuries, nothing is left today but a little village of what once was a flourishing city and the seat of government of the kings of the seventh century. This town furnished many ships