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T was a black, red-bellied mud turtle that taught me the great lesson of concentration. I didn't call it that when I learned the lesson, but that will do to describe it.

I went swimming one hot August afternoon, down at the old swimming hole. On the old yellow stone that stuck up at one corner of the pool, I saw a small mud turtle, about the size of a silver half-dollar, lying in the sun. I crept up and caught him.

I took my prize home, and Mother gave me a big tin wash-basin to keep him in. I filled the basin about a quarter full of water, and put some stones in the middle, on which the turtle could climb up and bask when he got tired of swimming about in the water. Then I caught some flies, and threw them, so crippled that they could not get away, onto the surface of the water.

From the top of the water the basin sloped up in a sharp curve for at least two inches. The surface of the tin was smooth and slippery so that it seemed perfectly certain that the turtle had not the slightest chance of escaping.

The moment I put that turtle into the water he started for the edge of the basin. When he struck the tin with his nose, he tried to raise himself up in the water and crawl up and over the top to liberty. But, just as I had foreseen, the tin was so smooth and slippery that his little claws, sharp though they were, could get no hold on it. After painfully and laboriously forcing himself up half an inch or so from the surface of the water, his feet would slip and down he

would go again into the depths. Time after time the little fellow tried to climb the impossible tin sides of the basin, but as often slipped back again into the water, frequently turning half over as he fell.

I got some fresh flies, and dropped them right in front of the turtle's nose. But he didn't seem to want any flies; they were no temptation at all. He brushed them aside with his flippers, and kept trying and trying to climb the slippery basin. I picked the turtle up, and gently laid him on top of the stones in the center of the water. I thought he certainly needed a little rest. But he plainly didn't want any rest. The moment I let go of his shell, he climbed down from the rocks and swam across again to where the water lapped against the tin sides of the basin.

I noticed, too, that the turtle didn't keep still in one place, trying time after time to climb up at the same spot. He was all the time swimming, as well as trying to climb, and within half an hour had completed the circuit of the basin and had apparently tried every inch of the sides for a possible foothold without

success.

Then I thought: "He will certainly make up his mind that he has been attempting the impossible, and will swim over and take a rest." But he didn't. He started on another circuit of the basin without a second's delay.

I had been watching the little cuss for more than an hour when Mother called me to come and fill the wood-box. Then father came in from town, and I helped

him unhitch the horses and bed them down for the night. When we walked up to the back porch I pointed out the basin, and called his attention to the turtle, which was still trying vainly to mount its sides.

"That turtle has been trying to climb out of there for a couple of hours," I said. "Every time he tries, he slips back again."

"That turtle knows what he wants most," said Father, "and he's just simply bound to git it before he quits."

Well, Sir, before I went to bed, I tried to tempt that turtle with little pieces of fresh beef and some more flies, but he never paid any attention to them. He kept busy all the time swimming around. the edge of the water in that basin and trying to climb out of it.

Finally I turned in, saying to myself that by morning my pet would learn how foolish it was to try to climb that slippery tin and would give it up. I was up at 5 o'clock the next morning-my regular time. Nowadays I often have hard work to get to sleep before that time. First thing I did was to run out on the back porch and look for my turtle. The tin basin was sitting just where I had left it. The water and the stones were still in it, but the turtle was gone.

I just sat down and looked blankly at the basin. To save my life I couldn't figure out how it was possible for the little thing to get up the steep tin sides. But he was certainly gone. All the flies and little scraps of meat were still in the basin. The turtle had not stopped to bother with them. It had kept straight after the one thing it wanted most until it finally got it. How, was to me a mystery.

I thought a good deal about that turtle in after years. You might think the lesson it taught was that of perseverance. But perseverance is an effect and not a cause. It was persevering because it wanted to get out of that basin more than it wanted anything else. It didn't stop to eat flies, or to rest on the stones, because there was always one thing else which loomed so much larger in its eyes.

For a man to win success is a more complicated matter than for a mud turtle

to get out of a basin-but the same general principles are involved. The reason why more men do not succeed is because they have no definite aim in life-because there is no one thing they want more than anything or everything else. Once a man is filled with the idea that there is something he wants so badly that he must have it, I firmly believe that he is almost certain to get it sooner or later— bar circumstances which are beyond human control.

When he starts in, the job he has undertaken is pretty likely to look impossible, at least to everybody but himself. As he goes along he will find plenty of chances to sit down and rest, and to stop and eat and drink, or to enjoy himself in some other way. But if he really wants what he has started after, he'll keep after it in the face of all kinds of temptations.

At the end, people will wake up-just as I did and be terribly surprised to find that he has accomplished it. And nobody will be able to see just how he was able to do it. That is the reason why it is so hard-really impossible-to give the secrets of the success of any successful man. Every successful man is a mystery to everybody else.

Some months after my turtle disappeared, Mother told me one night that she was probably responsible for that turtle's escape.

"I saw the poor, little thing trying so hard to get out of that basin," she said, "and I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. He was working so hard, and he kept slipping back every time he got started up. So I put a little stone into the water at the side of the basin, so that he could rest himself on that. I really had no idea it would enable him to get away. But I suppose it did."

That's the way it works among men, too. Once a fellow demonstrates that he is simply determined to get something, other people will go out of their way to help him a little. Determination seems to compel helpfulness. And I fancy you would find in the life of almost every successful man some little stone placed at the edge of the deep water, by somebody who was moved by his struggles to do a little something to make the fight easier for him.

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A Severe Fire Test

HE BALTIMORE FIRE was the severest test to which buildings of steel construction have been subjected; and their sound condition afterwards as to supporting columns, girders, joists, and the structural parts of the floors thoroughly vindicates the main principles of modern fireproof construction. Every building in the path of the fire that was not of steel construction was leveled to the ground, only a mass of debris being left to give evidence of what once was. Thus it follows that modern fireproof construction will enable a burnt building to stand while others will fall. On the other hand, the inadequacy of steel-frame buildings as at present constructed, was made manifest in the fact that the fire was able to come in at the windows, and everything was burnt entirely out, from basement to cornice, except the steel skeleton. Therefore, as in this case the window openings proved to be the vulnerable points where the fire was admitted, and as no building is strictly "fireproof" so long as it is possible for fire to shoot in at any opening, adequate window protection as well as steel construction is necessary for complete safety.

of about 300 tons during six weeks. At the end of that time, there was no appreciable settlement or displacement of the pile.

The method of sinking this test pile was particularly interesting. A hydraulic screwing machine with a stroke of 18 inches was prepared, and was tested to a water pressure of 1,500 pounds per square inch. The bottom of the pile was

fitted with a screw about 5 feet in diameter, pitched to 12 inches. A remarkable feature of the experiment was the varying distance the pile was driven at single turns of the screw. One turn sunk the pile 1.2 feet, while another only showed 21. foot. The average was 10.7 inches. During the fortieth revolution, even though subjected to a turning moment of 439,800 foot pounds, the pile refused to move, and the tests for supporting strength were begun. During the first five days there was a subsidence of 4 inch under a dead load of 500,000 pounds. This was the only noticeable change, except a compression of about 1-250 inch

be cut in the course of construction, one -the famous Galera tunnel—a mile and a-half long.

It is on this road that the signal achievement of constructing a lofty steel bridge connecting two tunnels was accomplished (see the accompanying illustration). In building this bridge, which spans a crevice 575 feet wide and hundreds of feet deep, it was necessary to lower all material from the top of the cliffs by wire cables.

The whole stupendous task was made possible only by the liberal use of the "V switch," or "switchback." In one instance on the Peruvian railroad it was

in the pile itself. The entire series of tests lasted for nearly six months, with weight varying from 400,000 pounds to 600,000 pounds. A number of drop tests. were also made.

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A Marvel of Engineering O-DAY there are more than 200,000 miles of railway tracks in the United States, and each ten miles represents an engineering achievement. There does not seem to be any obstacle too great to be overcome by that little body of silent, modest workers we characterize merely as railway builders.

How many of us can call to mind the names of the engineers who projected and built that marvel of engineering, the Oroya Railroad of Peru, which reaches an elevation of more than 15,000 feet above sea-level? The two Americans who constructed this road, Messrs. Meiggs and Thorndike, were considered crazy when they proposed it. It was necessary to carry the roadbed for miles through galleries cut in the solid face of the rock, and the workmen engaged in cutting the galleries were in many cases lowered in cages from the cliffs above. More than sixty tunnels had to

found necessary to construct a switchback in the side of a mountain, the train heading in on the lower level and backing out through an upper tunnel almost exactly above.-H. H. LEWIS in The World's Work.

Coaling at Sea

VER SINCE THE FIRST USE

E OF STEAM as a motive power,

methods of coaling ships at sea have constituted one of the important problems of naval strategy. Broadside coaling has always been dangerous, and the majority of fore-and-aft systems have been so complicated as to be of doubtful value. The Lidgerwood Mfg. Co. of New York have on the market, however, a marine cableway for coaling that seems to have at last satisfactorily solved this difficult problem. One of their installations was on the Russian battleship Retvizan, recently brought into prominence-or, rather, put out of action-at Port Arthur.

From a mast on the floating source of coal supply, the cableway is connected to the after mast of the ship to be coaled, in such a manner that if the single towline connecting the two boats becomes