he could offer no proof of what he said. Barnato gave up his shares in exchange for shares in DeBeers. Control in the Kimberly crater was at last in the hands of the DeBeers Company. It has cost £5,338,650.

Mr. Williams then made a careful examination of the other two craters, the Dutoitspan and the Bultfontein mines, and though these were far less valuable than DeBeers and Kimberly, it was decided to buy them too. The DeBeers Company was on its way to a monopoly of the diamond fields.

Then Rhodes's idea became apparent. In 1888 the DeBeers Consolidated Mines, Limited, was organized with the most comprehensive charter that was ever given to a corporation. It not only included all the mines that the old De Beers Company had been buying, but it was authorized to do anything anywhere that any man, group of men, or nation ever thought of doing. It was a blanket warrant to annex and conduct all Africa, "or anything elsewhere." Not Alexander the Great nor Julius Cæsar ever meditated doing half so much. Practically it outlined Rhodes's huge plan of conquering a continent. But its immediate object was to annex and conduct whatever diamond mining claims in South Africa it did not then own. Beit, Rhodes, Barnato, and Frederick S. P. Stow were its incorporators, and Gardner Williams, presently made a director, was its General Manager. He had played a doughty part in the financial warfare, and continued to play it till the DeBeers Consolidated controlled all three diamond craters. By this time, too, he knew more about diamond mining than anyone else. So in 1888 he took hold of the problem of regulating the diamond supply of the world and of conducting a stupendous mining enterprise that employs 15,000 workers and has paid more dividends than any other mining enterprise the world ever saw.

The first step was to work out a system of underground mining that should be safe and economical, for the methods in use had been neither. At successive levels in the tunnels the workmen had been assiduously cutting the blue-ground from under the feet of the workers on the level just above, and they were leaving behind them diamond-bearing rock in the pillars they carved as supports in lieu of timbers. He solved the problem by driving a set of tunnels clear across the mines from crater wall to crater wall. The miners in these tunnels had cleared out the blue-ground

above them, and had moved back from the crater edge, before the next group of miners in a set of tunnels forty feet below had begun in turn to blast down the blue-ground above their heads. So on to the lowest levels. These men

had moved back before the men in another set of tunnels below had begun to blast. All the blue-ground was thus taken out, and no gang at work had another gang blasting just beneath it. The system was a revolution in diamond mining.

He kept several men at work on experiments, until one of them discovered that if a mass of pebbles be carried across a heavily greased surface, every diamond in the mass will stick in the grease, though all the other pebbles, and even glass, will flow away. Greased pulsators were at once installed, and the diamonds are now separated automatically.

The fuel problem is a serious one in the coal-less and almost treeless country about Kimberly, where the diamond fields centre. Recently a coal mine was discovered in Rhodesia. He at once arranged to have most of its output delivered at the mines. It was of poor quality and "clogged the fire bars cruel." Nothing daunted, he devised grates that would burn it economically. It was this sort of ready resource, this quickness to step out of the rut, that marked his whole policy.

He picked his assistants from various countries, many from the United States, but he never lost touch of the affairs of the mines in all their ramifications. Nothing of importance was done that did not pass over his desk, and he kept the loyalty of his men by always treating them with scrupulous justice. When the DeBeers mine took fire through the carelessness of a Kaffir who left a lighted candle near the timbers on one of the upper levels shortly after the consolidation, imprisoning 685 men below, he hurried at once to the mine, and as Barnato said afterward, "worked night and day for the relief of the sufferers." Five hundred of the imprisoned men escaped, because, with due precautions to prevent the escape of Kaffirs with stolen diamonds, exit into the old open workings had been left to provide against such a contingency. One of his mining axioms was that the first thing to consider in sinking a mine is to prepare exits in case of accident, and the way he has followed it has given him a wide popularity among the miners. Some people have wondered why the thousands of Kaffirs who work under the white bosses are content to give up the freedom of their savage

life to live in "compounds" and toil in the mines. They work, of course, in order to save enough to buy many wives and afterward live in ease. Such is their treatment that when Mr. Williams went to a native chief, to ask his assistance in securing labor, the chief replied, "I cannot tell my people to leave their kraals and go to Kimberly, but if a boy come to me and say 'I want to go to work in the mines' I say 'Go,' for he go to work for you."

Mr. Williams saw Kimberly grow from a small mining town to a city of imposing proportions. There he made his home in a beautiful wide-verandahed house, covered in the fall with wistaria bloom and surrounded by fruit trees and vineyards. When the Boer War broke out he took an active part in the defence of the city, and it was under his direction that George Labram built in the De Beers Company workshops "Long Cecil," the famous gun that stiffened the notable front the city made against the Boers. When famine threatened he turned over his orchards and vineyards to the people of the town. To help the defence he offered the military leaders every facility for using the mines in their operations. There was much dynamite on hand for blasting. Colonel Kekewich, in command of the British forces, asked him to devote it to planting mines about the city to guard against a Boer rush. "Put down ten pounds every thirty feet," was the request. No sooner said than done. But the report sent back to the Colonel was "Mines laid. We put down thirty pounds every ten feet."

Never idle, always alert for new knowledge, he studied and experimented till he knew as much about diamonds as any man living. He proved that they were not formed in the blueground where they lie, but far underground, where the bubbles of gaseous carbon of which they are crystallizations were compressed by the weight of overlying strata. They were afterward shot up, he reasoned, by volcanic mud rushes which later hardened into blueground. In acknowledgment of his scientific work, just before his departure from Kimberly he was elected president of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, and he recently received the medal of the Swedish Academy of Science. With all his many activities, moreover, he found time to write the standard book on diamond-mining under the title "The Diamond Mines of South Africa," unique volumes crammed with all the fascinating lore of diamonds, legendary

and scientific, filled with stories of the world's diamond mines, and made intensely interesting by their account of the mines he developed himself. Much of what is told in this brief sketch he tells there in most entertaining detail, hiding, however, his own share in the great undertakings that came to his hand beneath his enthusiastic appreciation of Rhodes and other men. Written with all the picturesqueness that the subject suggests, the book is not only a revelation to engineers and scientists, but a narrative of deep human interest, and the last word on diamonds. The illustrations he has gathered of all the world's great diamonds and of the early scenes in and about the South Afrcan mines are remarkable. As a writer, he is as convincing and distinctive as he is as engineer, scientist, and man of affairs.

On his departure from Africa last spring in a very storm of regrets and farewell celebrations, he left his son, Alpheus Williams, behind him as General Manager. At Rhodes's request the young man had been made Assistant General Manager, and the directors of the DeBeers Corporation insisted that he replace his father. The son is on the path to a career perhaps as notable as his.

Mr. Williams is now building a house in Washington, where he will live with Mrs. Williams and his daughter Dorothy. He was besought by his associates to live in London, but he said, "No, I'm going home."

He is now deeply interested in the important political developments that are going on at the scene of his labors. He believes that the British Government will make a profound mistake if they grant, as the new Liberal Government seems disposed to grant, a constitution to the conquered Boers that will offer a possibility of a Boer government in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony.

"All that the war cost in blood and treasure will be thrown away," he says. "The Boers are unreconstructed, they continue to teach Dutch in the schools, and their attitude has not changed since the days of Kruger. Under the proposed d stricting of the colonies, the Boers are likely to have a majority in the colonial parliaments, and neither Natal nor Cape Colony is secure against the possibility of a Boer or a pro-Boer Government. And if this should come about, the dream of a progressive Africa for which Rhodes' life was a titanic struggle may be set back a hundred years."

The kind of exercise that hits the mark is the kind a man likes for its own sake; and the kind a man likes for its own sake has something of the play-spirit in it-the life and go of a good game. It will give a chance for some rivalry, a definite goal to aim at, a point to win: something, in other words, to enlist his interest and arouse his enthusiasm. You cannot look at such exercise merely for its effects on the neuromuscular apparatus. It reaches the man's very self. Its psychological value is as important as its physiological.

The good a man gets out of a brisk horseback ride in the park is something more than what comes simply from the activity of his muscular system or from the effect of the constant jolting upon the digestive organs. There is the stimulus to the whole system which comes from his filling his lungs with fresh, outof-door air. There is the exhilaration of sunshine and blue sky and of the wind on the skin. There is the excitement of controlling a restive animal. All this makes the phenomenon a complex one-something much larger than the mere term exercise would imply. A man could sit on a mechanical horse in nasium and be jolted all day without getting any of these larger effects.

gym

The best forms of exercise will call the big muscles of the body into play-the muscles that do the work. This gives bulk effects. It reaches the whole system. Playing scales on the piano, though exhausting to oneself and others, does not belong to this class.

Exercise should not be too severe. Many ambitious people injure themselves through trying to accomplish too much along this line. Where the mind is already tired the body can only lose by a few moments of violent exertion. Exercise breaks down tissue, exhausts nerveenergy. If any good is to be gained from it this body-waste must be repaired. But when the system is already exhausted, it cannot afford an additional expenditure. A city man with a conscience is in danger of making too hard work of his exercise when he takes it at all.

Tennis is a game that nervous, excitable, overworked people like to play. They ought to avoid it. It works them too hard and too fast. Instead of resting them it wears them

out.

There is no better out-door exercise for a city man than a game of golf. The alternate activity and rest that it provides for, the deep breathing caused by the necessary hill-climbing,

the sociability of the game-all these are admirable features. Rowing, paddling, bowling, tramping-any form of recreation that brings a variety of physical exertion and that appeals to a man's interest and enthusiasm-belong in the class of "A-1" exercises.

THE BUSINESS OF DIGESTION

The body is like a stove. If you put the wrong kind of fuel into a stove you cannot get good results out of it. A hard-coal stove will not get along well on soft coal. It will suffer from indigestion. It must be thoroughly cleaned out, too, at certain times, or its works get clogged and there is trouble of another sort. Right coaling and right cleaning are important considerations if the stove is to carry on its legitimate business.

No man can be useful or efficient in the world without proper food and without giving attention to the disposal of waste. Nearly all the discases and most of the pains people have are related, first or last, to disturbances of nutrition. It pays a man to know something about the way his stove works and how to give it the best chance.

As for coaling, then, what and how ought a man to eat? The first important problem here has to do with the mouth and its work— with mastication. No one has ever made a hard and fast rule for that which is of any practical value. If food be not chewed enough, there's a bad time due. If it be chewed too much, there's a waste; patience and energy are thrown away. So much is obvious.

Now the purpose of mastication is two-fold: first, to break up the food so that the digestive juices can get at it readily; and second, to mix it with the saliva of the mouth. Food that is bolted is likely to ferment in the stomach before the gastric fluids can work their way into it. Food that is not well mixed with saliva is hard to digest, for saliva is an alkaline substance and stimulates the flow of the acid stomach juices. It is intended to help them in the dispatch of their work.

Many people get into the habit of dosing themselves with a "digestive" or some other kind of medicine in order to stimulate the secretion of the gastric juice. This is a dangerous habit. If the same effect can be obtained through natural means, it is better from every point of view. The natural remedy for faulty digestion is often simply to chew the food slower. This increases the amount of

saliva that mixes with it. Not a picturesque nor exciting method of treatment, perhaps, but it often brings the right results.

Eating a dry cracker twenty minutes before meals may be still more efficacious. No water should be taken with it and the cracker should be thoroughly chewed. The saliva that gets into the stomach by this means starts the gastric juices flowing, and by the time the meal itself arrives, the stomach is able to cope with it.

Nobody has escaped being informed by some earnest friend that it is injurious to take water with meals. The "Health Hints" of the average newspaper are fertile with this sort of advice. There is really a sound reason at the basis of it, but it is carried too far. The trouble with the majority of people is that they drink water simply to wash down their solid food. This is a thoroughly bad habit. It cuts off the secretion of saliva; the stomach juices lack their normal stimulus.

Further than this, if the water be cold, it puts a temporary injunction on the work of the alimentary canal. The stomach is unable to carry on business again until the regulation temperature has been restored. And this takes time. The moderate use of water or other liquids at meals does not harm if one take them not as a wash but as a drink.

PRECAUTIONS AGAINST INDIGESTION

There are plenty of other causes for indigestion besides slipshod mastication. A faulty circulation of blood through the abdomen is one. This may be due to interference either from within or without. Tight clothes are the commonest form of outside interference. Not only is the blood circulation hurt by them, but also the free action of the great diaphragm muscle beneath the lungs, one of whose duties is to keep the walls of the stomach kneading and churning the food contents. Military coats, stays, tight belts-anything that really binds the body is sure to be harmful.

It is hard to get people, particularly women, to admit that their clothes are too tight. A pressure mark left on the skin after undressing is an infallible sign. Internal interference with the circulation is most often due to some trouble with the liver. Anything which stops the free flow of blood through this organ dams it back into the region of the stomach and produces a congestion there. A bad liver circulation frequently comes from the use of

liquors, particularly from drinking on an empty stomach. If a man drink liquor at all he should do so only when he eats. The evil effects and the morbid appetite developed by drinking occur largely in connection with indulgence between meals.

In a great many cases the cause of digestive troubles is to be found in a bad carriage of the body-neck forward, ribs depressed, abdomen protuberant-what has been termed gorilla position. This allows a slight displacement of all the important organs of the abdominal cavity; and such a displacement along with the reduced power of the heart and diaphragm may work great harm. The first step in getting the digestion into better shape is often the correction of this easy but villainous habit.

Another great aid is deep breathing. After your breakfast and lunch, as you are walking on the street, breathe just as deeply as you can ten times in succession. Then breathe normally for a minute. Then take ten more deep breaths. Do this four or five times the first day and increase it by one round every day until you are taking from three to four hundred deep breaths daily as a regular habit. This consumes no time. You do it while you are walking on the street. It improves the action of the diaphragm. It stimulates the circulation of the blood in the head. It increases the activity of the intestinal movements. It costs no money. Right there, perhaps, lies the chief difficulty with it. If each breath cost a man a cent a great many more men would cultivate the habit.

Most of us take but little exercise. We sit in chairs and work with our heads. Nature intended our bodies to do muscular work. When she did that job, she did not look ahead to the complex and artifical conditions of modern city life. But it is clear that one of the best methods we have of raising the efficiency of the bodily functions is exercise. It is especially helpful to imperfect digestion.

If a man will go to a gymnasium, or swim, or bowl, or box, or play golf, or do anything else that involves a good deal of exertion for the big muscles of the body, the whole system will respond energetically. The digestive organs will be among the first to feel the effect of the new life.

But we must make a clear distinction between what is called general exercise and other forms. A man can work his hand or his throat or the muscles of his face most conscien