Cooper's museum of Proverbial Realities had proven such a source of delight to himself and his friends that the news of its destruction by fire came with a shock to all who knew him. Of all his treasures he succeeded in saving only part of his priceless collection of straws—the straw that showed which way the wind blew, the straw grasped at by a drowning man, the straw that does not enter into the manufacture of bricks, and the last straw that broke the camel's back. How would Cooper stand the blow, his friends wondered. He took it very well. Within a week he had set to work on a new fad, the collection of Statistical Realities, and in a half-year he had filled three good-sized lofts and a large back-yard with his treasures. Yesterday he took me through his galleries.

"What do you make of this?" he said, stopping before a glass jar some four feet high, in which, to the peril of one's nerves, you could distinctly see the upper two-thirds of a child's body. Head, trunk, and arms were beautifully fashioned, but there was no vestige of growth below the knee-caps. I could only show my astonishment. "Well," he went on, "you must have seen the statement by the president of Bryn Mawr that the average number of children among college-bred mothers is 3-6/10. This is the six-tenths of a child. Here," he said, pointing to another and somewhat larger jar, "you see three-fifths of a woman; 1-3/5 women to one man is the ratio in some parts of Ireland. Here, in adjoining bottles, are three-tenths of a physician, seven-eighths of a lawyer, and four-fifths of a clergyman, the latest census having shown that we have 23-3/10 physicians, 29-7/8 lawyers, and 17-4/5 physicians for every 1,000 of our population."

Stopping before a glass case containing little heaps of ordinary copper coins, Harrington pointed out that these were the odd cents which the scrupulous science of statistics insists on leaving attached to vast sums of money. He showed me the 27 cents which, added to $3,469,746,854 represented the value of the foreign commerce of the United States in 1910; he showed me the twopence ha'penny which, increased by £788,990,187, constitutes the total funded debt of Great Britain; and he laid special emphasis on the eleven pennies which Tammany's most vigorous efforts at economy could not pare off from New York City's budget of $166,246,729.11 for the year 1909.

Another row of glass cases contained what appeared at first sight a collection of comic dolls. Cooper pointed to a sturdy little mannikin in boots and a Russian blouse, who, with mouth fearfully distended, was endeavouring to swallow an iron bar four or five times his own size. "You may have read," said Cooper, "that the annual consumption of pig-iron in Russia is 3.7 tons per capita. This figure shows the fact concretely. Here," indicating the figure of an infant apparently a week or two old, "is a French baby. You may observe that she is engaged in counting her share of the national wealth, which is estimated in France at 1,254 francs 63 centimes for every man, woman, and child. She is wondering whether she ought to invest her capital in Russian treasury bonds or in Steel Common. This," pointing to a group of seven or eight dolls riding on a perfectly modelled brindled cow, "represents the proportions of domesticated cattle to the total population of the United States."

The fire which flashes up in the eye of every amateur when he contemplates the gem of his collection, was visible as Cooper led the way to a good-sized platform of polished mahogany and brass on which was set up what I took to be a beautiful reproduction of the planetary system in miniature. I was right. "But observe," said Cooper, "the details of construction. The sun is made up of infinitely small eggs, since we know that the weight of all the hen's eggs consumed by the human race since the beginning of the Christian era is equal to one-billionth the weight of the sun. The planets are fashioned in the same way. Jupiter you see is made up of little, squirming animal-like units; that is because Jupiter occupies the same amount of space that would be filled by the descendants of a single pair of Australian rabbits in five hundred years, if left unchecked. Observe the orbit of the earth. It is marked out in twopenny postage stamps, for statisticians assure us that the path of the earth around the sun is equivalent in length to all the postage stamps consumed since the beginning of the nineteenth century, if laid end to end. In the same way the seven rings of Saturn are made up of copper pennies, obtained by reducing the world's annual output of gold to coins of that denomination."

We passed into a cosy little alcove lined to the ceiling with books. There seemed nothing out of the ordinary about them at first sight, but my host soon undeceived me. "These," he said, "are the books that might have been written in the last hundred years, if the time and energy that are spent on smoking, drinking, whist, bridge, and out-door games were devoted to the cultivation of literature. Here, for instance, are three plays quite as good as 'Hamlet,' written by two million men named Smith, who gave up the use of tobacco. Here is a philosophical poem which shows on every page an inspiration higher than Goethe ever attained; it embodies the concentrated ideas produced by twenty-five thousand former golf players, thinking half an hour a day for three days in the week. Here is a poetic version of the future life which completely outclasses the 'Divina Commedia.' It is compounded out of the experiences of forty-three thousand moderate drinkers who became total abstainers, seventy disbanded croquet associations, and 1,125 obsolete euchre clubs.

"Perhaps," concluded Cooper, "you should see this before you go," and he pointed to a single shelf of books with a curious mechanical arrangement at one side. "This shelf," he said, "is exactly five feet long. This little electric motor at the side is so constructed that it gets into motion every day for twenty minutes, and stops. By a system of cogs and levers the motor propels a fine steel needle straight through the five feet of books. A glance at this brass dial shows at once how far the needle point has reached. At the present moment, for instance, it is halfway through the front cover of the 'Journal of John Woolman.' And while the dial is recording the distance covered on the five-foot shelf, the blue liquid in this glass tube measures the rising level of culture. It is a very ingenious application of President Eliot's idea, don't you think?"