Atlanta Georgian. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, August 30, 1913, Image 6

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Red, White and Blue By LOUISE HEILGERS. I T was a red. white and blue world which he saw. All about bird popples, cornflowers and mar guerites yielded their quivering stems for the passage of his lurching limbs. Bound around his wounded breast, from which dripped blots of blood redder than an> poppy, were the tat tered colors of his regiment—red, white and blue—the flag of France. He had waved the colors from the Prussians He would save them still. His comrades lay dead on the battle field; behind, the black eagles of Prussia rode rampant, victorious. But the colors of France were atill his. Never, living, would he yield them. He remembered the captain’s Ins* words, the merrv-eyed, handsome captain who now lay cold as wax upon the blood-sodden earth: "Th colors. Gustave, mon vleux, save th colors.” And he had seized them from the stiffening hand of the standard bear er. wrenched them free from the lance that held them, and bound them about his bleeding body. Save the Flag. Then, turning, he had run blindly away from the field of red, white and blue dead into green fields full of red, white and blue flowers. It was early morning, but the sun beat warm unon the uncovered fields. He ran. crouching crookedly among the swaying grasses, as run drunken and wounded men, and the long flow ering things opened and let him pass, then hid him again. It was as if they knew what he carried. Of a sudden, as he ran, he came upon a hedgerow that bounded the end of the field. In the patch beyond a girl, slim and brown and young, dug potatoes. He eyed her longingly as a thirsty man eyes the water “P-s-st," he called, quaverlngly. She raised her head wonderingly, one wooden-shod foot upon the eartn- fllled spade. “Who calls?” she cried. “France,” he said in a husky whis per. It was as if a spark from the flame of his soul set hers afire. She camp running to his call. Over the hedge he handed the tattered re mains of the colors to her. His«wound opened afresh as he tore them from his side. “The Prussians are coming,” he said. “Save these!” Obedient, her sun-burnt hands reached out and clutched across the flowering hedge at what he held. “And you—what of you?” she asked. He shrugged his shoulders. “Run.” he bade her. “Quick, be fore they come. They will not sus pect if they do not see you.” She eyed him gravely, without sur prise or remonstrance. One grows used to meeting men over open graves in war time. “God be with you,’ was all she said. “Amen," he answt red, "and with France.” For a moment he waited, watching her speed across the garden, first casting aside her wooden shoes to run the swifter, and holding fast to her brown breast what looked, as she receded Into the distance, like a buncq of parti-colored flowers. Only when the door of the thatched roof farm house had closed upon her did he turn away and crawl, stumbllngly, the length of another field. Saved! At the end he fell prone and lay quite still. When presently a detachment of Prussians came uoon him, they found only a dead and useless man lying face downward upon the sun-warmed earth, a cloud of gossamer midgets dancing about his hc.*d. while all around him. red white and blue, stretched the colors of Free France. But they were merely flowers. The regiment’s fla*’ lav safely hid den in the brown breast of a peasant girl. ■ Daysey Mayme And Her Folks A lad. whose age might have been guessed as 13. went up to a booking office on the Southeastern and Chatham Railway and said to the clerk: “Two halves to the Elephant and Cas tle. please.” "How old are you?” asked the clerk. "Eleven years,” replied the lad. “For whom is the other half?” “For my brother.” “And how old is your brother?” “Just a month younger than I am. sir." "And the name Is to be?” asked the suave minister, as he approached the font with the precious armful of fat and flounces. “Augustus Philip Ferdinand Codring ton Chesterfield Livingstone Snooks ” “Dear, dear!” Turning to the sexton: “A little more water. Mr Perkins, please ’ • • • Mr. Borem: 'I am opposed to intoxi cating liquors as a beverage, yet I be lieve that liquor, rightly used, is a ben efit to humanity. I am fully convinced that whisky was once the means of sav ing my life." Mis* Cutting: “Perhaps it did. hut 1 don't qute see how that proves It is a benefit to humanity." KODAKS "The B»»t FlnlaMnf and tuturg inn That Ca* Bt Pratfawtf " K.Mtniau Film* and com plete mock amateur nppUaa. tee foe out-nf-town ctMtotnera Send for Catalog and Prica List A. K. HAWKES CO. K °°% K 14 Whitehall St., Atlanta, Ga. Every Woman is Interested and should know about the wonderful Marvel J? Hu,g5pr “’ Douche Ask f''nr drug-gist for h If he cannot Rup- ply the MARVEL. * c ep: no other, but ) sec t stamp for book. R»"el Ci„ 44 E. 23d St .HT. W ONDERFUL as are our mod ern means of communica tion, there Is an indefinable older one that is more wonderful still. Or how whs It that less than twenty minutes after Harrifnan had been roused by a telephone message from Baermann—the lant before the serv ice was broken—hundreds of men and women in Tunnel City sensed that something was wrong with their mates In the lower workings? Long before B o’clock a crowd had gathered in front of the administra tion building, and at the entrance to the tubes, and messengers began rac ing back and forth from one to the other gathering with the latest news. H ARRIMAN had had bad news from his son a few days before. The boy was dying in China of some mysterious tropic fever, and he had taken some drug to make h!m sleep. lie jotted down Bnermanns brief message, and it was many min utes before he was even partially master of himself. By the time he was ready for definite Action an im mense crowd, mostly women, had gathered and were demanding news. The first of the trains had reached the surface; but the workmen knew nothing beyond the fact that some thing was wrong—that every one had dropped work and headed for the trains. They began calling to him in shrill, angry voices. In Rives’, absence he was in supreme command, as he was Rives’ chief of staff. He told a new ly roused clerk to go out and tell the crowd that nothing definite had been learned. They Jeered at the young man and he retired in angry dignity; whereupon the crowd began shouting for his chief again. The Dread News. Harrlman went out. There were ignorant and excitable hordes of a dozen different races in the city, and he knew the necessity for keeping them calm. When he stepped out onto the veranda in the gray dawn respectful silence greeted him. Those people had grown to looJ< oil the lords of the workings as their actual rulers, hut every second’s de lay wa8 making them uglier, and their iuick suspicions were spurring them on. He looked them over and saw- that they were almost without exception th«* wives of the workers. “I am sorry to have to tell you,” he said quietly in English, “that there has been a small explosion in the south gallery. Something went wrong with the drilling machine and it blew up. This Is all we know at present, but It is not serious.” There was a low murmur from the crowd as this short speech was swift ly translated into a half score tongues “You mean that’s all you want f o tell!” cried a woman, shrilly. "I wan na know ’bout my husband! Is any of ’em dead?" The cry was taken up on every hand. Harriman flushed. “Don’t act like a lot of fools," he harked angrily. “We don’t know any more about it than you do. Probably there are a few hurt —possibly som° dead, but we will do everything we can.” This little show' of temper had a quieting influence for a time, and the throng gradually drifted over to the tunnel entrance. And then Harriman began to get messages from along th<» line that gave him some idea of the frightful character or the disaster and the appalling confusion in the tunnel. But the trains were coming out. He stopped some of the ingoing trains as long as he dared, for he knew the swelling mob at the entrance would recognize the stoppage of the inbound traffic as a bad sign. All of the tracks were open for 35 miles In. One of them all the way. By shooting trains in to the seventh crossover and bring ing them back he kept up an appear ance of uninterrupted activity that W'h* highly reassuring. Every man that dropped off of the outbound trains the real ones and the fake ones—was eagerly sur rounded, hut they could tell nothing —the early arrivals. They had been on their way out when the explosion occurred -they were working in the first two hundred miles and knew nothing but what they had heard. Still the crowd waited, staring into th< two dark, round openings of the tubes that stared hack like two men acing eyes. And abiuit 9 o’clock came the first train from the panic district of the boring. Gray-faced, wild-eyed nun Hung themselves from the cars before the train had come to a stop. “The tunnel is burning! All hell’s loose. The tunnel’s burning!” The thousands took up the terri ble cry. and In ten minutes Tunnel Pity echoed with It from end to end. Pandemonium broke loose at the en trance Frantic women dashed hither anil yon, screaming the names of their husbands and fathers and sons. Met. cursed and shook their fists’ and reached for hidden weapons. Several women fainted, and here and there wore bursts of hysterical laughter Every man that came off the train was w. -Iged into the center of a olose- Pfo ked circle, to which he told, in broken, tremulous phrases, the story of tire terrible panic. None knew any • •f ’he details of the explosion. In the midst of this chaos Harri- man drove up in his car. waving his hand and shouting. A few* hundred gathered around him. and he bel lowed at the top of his lungs in a vain effort to make his words carry. “Cut this out and don’t act like— fools!” he howled. “Haven’t you got sense enough to know that concrete and steel can’t burn? There has been a small explosion and a few timbers at the far end of the tunnel have burned and a lot of cowards ran and started all of this. The tire will he out in short time and you need not ” A heavy stone struck the floor of the tonneau Just below where he was standing. The next instant another whizzed past his head. He crouched down, spoke to the chauffeur and the car dashed out the press and purred down the roadway# in a show r er of stones. He drove madly to Allan’s house to see If. by any chance, Mrs. Allan had received anything like a reply to a telegram he had sent as soon as he realized what the accident might develop In the way of compli cations. A mob Is a great beast. It is with out moral courage. Being cowardly It Is harmless until it is feared. Be ing primitive turns to man’s primi tive weapon the stone. This is one of the reasons that the streets of modern cities are paved with asphalt. Warped and Stunted. When the d 1stphlight Harriman fled at the first missile the panic and rage of the horde of men and women—- especially women—which the habit of respect for the ruling powers had held in check, broke loose. A de tachment of a few thousand pro ceed! d with a rush to the adminis tration building, where they smashed every window in a dozen seconds. A couple of young engineers appeared at a window above the entrance with a revolver in each hand, and this cooled the desire to enter and seek further vengeance. Another assistant phoned to Toms River for troops, w hich wer • always there in antici pation of just such an outbreak as seemed now certain to occur. Roaring threats and curses the fragment of the mob returned to the great seething horde at the tunnel en trance, wrecking the homes of a few of “the bosses” on the way. Allan’s chief of police hastily gath ered as many of hls men as he could and rushed the mob. but his handful were scattered by the first volley of stones, and knowing how heavily they were outnumbered he was afraid to give orders to shoot. An unsuccess ful attempt to break up a mob Is much worse than no attempt 4 at all. and the flames of destruction Soared higher. Behind these men and women there was no tradition or patriotism, no conception of justice. For genera tions they had been bred in social in justice of the most terrible kind. Their forefathers had come to Amer ica as to a land of promise and lib erty, only to find that they had ex changed a comparatively light politi cal slavery for an inhuman industrial one. Of this generation that was digging the tunnel the fathers and grand fathers had worked in factories and mills and mines as children. Only the very strong had survived. They had produced a race <>f iron-muscled, tireless men and women, but utterly warped and stunted morally and mentally. For years they had toiled In the dust and darkness. In n dlhi way thev understood that what they were working in would one day be a means of transportation under the seas to a mysterious “Europe.” Bui they worked because only by the A Heavy Stone Struck the Door of the Tonneau. WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE The Atory opens with Rives, who Is in charge of the technical work ings of the great tunnel from America to Germany, on one of the 'tunnel trains, with Baermann, an engineer, in charge of Main Station No. 4. They are traveling at the rate of 118 miles an hour. Rives is in love with Maude Allan, wife of Mackendrick Allan, whose mind first conceived the great tunnel schema After going about 250 miles under the Atlantic Ocean Rives g«*ts out of the train. Suddenly the tunnel seems to burst. There is a frightful explosion. Men are flung to death and Rives is badly wound€*d. He staggers through the blinding smoke, realizing that about 3,000 men have probably perished. He and oher survivors get to Station No. 4. Rives finds Baermann holding^at bay a wild mob of frantic men who want to climb on a work train, don*ebody shoots Baermann, and the train slides out. The scene is then changed to the roof of the Hotel Atlantic. The greatest financiers of the country are gathered there at a summons from C. H. Lloyd, “The Money King.” John Rives addresses them, and introduces Al lan. Mrs Allan and Maude Lloyd, daughter of the financier, are also pres ent. Allan tells the company of hls project for a tunnel 3.100 miles long. The financiers agree to back him. Allan and Rives want him to take charge of the actual work. Rives accepts. Rives goes to the Park Club to meet Wit- tersteiner. a financier At Columbus Circle nows of the great project is being , flashed on a screen. Thousands tire w’atching it. Mrs. Allan becomes a lonely and neglected woman and is much throwm in the company of Rives. Sydney Wolf, the money power of two continents, plots against Allan and Rives. Now Go On With the Story. direst toil could they live, and they worked not for an impersonal corpo ration, but for a man the whole world knew as “Mac.” He was the father of their well-being and their meager pay envelopes, and by the simple ex tension of tins primitive logic he was just as» surely the author of their mis fortunes. If he had deliberately planned the execution of their mates they could not have been more clam orous for his blood. They stood in close-packed * thou sands in the rain and waited and waited with yells and threats for the last word from underground. Thero was a long delay in which no trains i‘«sued from the staring darkneiss of the tuhes, hut at last the train that Baermann had tried to hold at the cost of hls life roared out into the light. "We’re the las»t--no more!” the laborers sobbed and yelled as they piled out of the car? in a mad rush, as if fearing they might bo taken back into the hell which they had escaped. For a moment there was stunned si lence, as the dulled wits of the mob strove to grasp the magnitude of the blow that had wiped out 3.000 hus bands and fathers and sons. Then it was broken by the Shrill, hysterical screaming of a woman un der the lee of one of the cars. She was standing or crouching over the last man to leave the train. He had been carried off. dead, stabbed to death in a fight for place on that “last train." “Cetare! Cesarc!” she shrieked, again and again. And then there was bedlam. • * * * * • Telling Mrs. Allan. No word from Allan at the office. Harriman dashed at top speed through the streets to the chief’s house. He passed scores and hun dreds of shawled women and coatless men hastening all in one direction— toward the tunnel. He closed his eyes and tried to rally hls mind, still par tially numbed from the effect of the narcotic and the suddenness of the disaster. 1/eaving his car at the curb, he ran up the steps of the oceanside home and asked to see Mrs. Allan at once. “She’p just rising. I think.” the maid told him. VPlease tell her it is very impor tant. Do you know if she has heard from Mr. Allan?” “A telegram Just came a moment ago. I don’t know whom it was from. ’ “Please tell her I would like to see her at once.” Maud came down in a dressing gown with the telegram in her hand. "What is it. Mr. Harriman?” she asked pleasantly, hut with a shade of anxiety. “Has anything happened? • : 1 11 you explain this?” sin* handed him the telegram. It read: “Will be home to-night. Don’t worry.” "Do you know what’s happened in the tunnel?” he asked abruptly. “No; my maid said she had heard there’d been an accident.” She was regarding the usually composed engi neer with some wonder. “Is it very serious?” A Terrible Shock. “I am afraid it is." he replied, gravely but quietly. There was no sense in alarming a woman she locked herself In and sank into a chair, stunned. So this was the quick end of all of it! Minute after minute slipped away, and she tried in vain to rally her whirling thoughts and think clearly while that one sen tence rang over and over again in her ears—“this is the end of it all.” It was characteristic of her that she did not weep as the full realization came to her. In spite of the fact of her marriage and her child, some thing had come to her of which she had long ceased to dream—the stain less love of a knightly hearted man. She had hardly slept in the night for the wonder of it. She had felt that she w’as not worthy, that this was not for her. and here was the proof. She knew enough of the tunnel workings to know that if there had been an ac cident, and Rives fciad not been heard from, it was because he was incapable of action—dead or dying. Then came a swift rush of rage and bitter rebellion against the tunnel and all who wrought in Its name. What bad it brought her but misery? It had cost her her husband first, and now the one man who was of fiber fine enough to place her love beyond all else had been swallowed up In its maw in the twinkling of an eye. About her were thousands who were toiling swiftly toward the grave in pain and weariness. Probably thousands of these had been wiped out with Rives, and as many thousands of women found themselves that day as desolate as she.* She would leave that day and go somewhere where she would never hear the accursed -word “tunnel” again, and—then came a timid knock at the door, and little Edith’s voice calling. A poet who knew women—as poets are likely to—once told in graceful little lines of a 1 woman whose lord was slain, and who could not be in- " W’h at is it?” she demanded j dured to Weep until a wise nurse put quickly. j her child in her arms. Five minutes “There’s been an explosion at the| n ft#= extreme end of the boring on this after Edith had snuggled Into heV lap the mother had given the woman a new and cleaner vision. “You run along now. darling, and get dressed." she told her with a kiss. “You’re going out with mother.” The Mob. The anger and bitterness had passed. She was no longer the lover robbed of her love. She was a wom an. and all about her was the call to which a woman is never deaf—the cry of suffering and grief and misery. Hundreds would be injured and they would be brought out and taken to the hospital. There would be wives and mothers to console and comfort. The hospital forces and supplies would probably have to be reinforced from other cities. All this was part of her chosen work, and this was the one time that she must not fail. , , , i When they were about to leave she crazy to get Mr. Allan here as quick- j reflected that the hospital of all 1>’ ns possible. I’ve got to get amng places would be the last one for Edith now. and—by the way. there is likely ; to S pend the day. But to-day. more to be. a good deal of excitement and I than any other, she felt reluctant to wouldn’t roam around much if I "ere, j e ave the child with the servants. She you.” . | “I won’t,” said the woman, dully. | 1 — 1 .ll . ■■■e'jilhjuzl_ . And he was gone Maud groped her way back up stairs to her dressing room, where side," he told her. “We don’t know yet how serious it is. but I am afraid that a lot of men have been hurt— perhaps killed.” Maud suddenl** went deathly white and unconsciously crushed the little yellow paper in her small Angara. “Where is Ja—Mr. Rives?” sh° asked, forcing her?*elf with tremen dous effort to spea*v steadily. The gray-haired man passed his hand across his closed eyes and shud dered. “I wish to God I knew!” he ex claimed. “I” “He was—down there?” Her lips were white, but her manner was calm. “I’m sorry, but he was. It isn’t any use, Mrs. Allan,” he said desperately, "I can’t conceal it from you. I’m afraid the accident is just about as bad as it can be. That’s why I’: fina'ly decided that she would take her to Mrs. Mordock, who lived only a few hundred yards from the hospital and whose little girl was Edith’s chum. She had utterly forgotten Harrl- man’Fi warning, which was not very impressive and elected to walk through the fine rain, to prepare her self for the long day indoors amid the odor of anesthetics and other smells suggestive of merciless clean liness which make a man shiver when he enters a hospital. The Kreets for a time were quiet and deserted, and there was nothing to remind Maud of Harriman s warn ing. At last she was co/iaoious that for some time she had been aware of a far-off murmur wnierf was steadily growing louder and nearer. They were 9tlll on the ocean sid*' driveway, but when they turned off into the broad avenue that led down past the hospital to the tunnel en trance the murmur suddenly swelled into a roar. To Be Continued Monday. HE bitter wound set to our keenest pain Time soothes; The furrow in our brow will go again— Time soothes. If memory wakens suffering at last, We feel; Life moves in struggle to forget the past, Hearts heal. But still the wound a little scar has left— Dream days Arise in thought—of sing hey are bereft. There stays But memory that stirs the old re frain, A little sob sounds, in the heart and brain. And then “to-day” is here agadn. Time soothes. • • • What a grim thing it is! that you and I So intimate, so bound by every tje, Can never read each other’s secret thought—- Must be contented with the glimpse we’ve caught! m Can face each other calmly, eye # to eye. And. with our souls protesting, speak a lie— That while you wound me with in difference, Or cruel words, or meager recom pense, your heart with love for me may be aglow. Yet looking in your eyes—I can not KNOW. A FICTIONLESS FABLE. There was once a woman whom Life hurt. It drained her heart of joy, and left it empty and .throbbing with sor row. She bore it moaning for a tim^ and then she set about filling the empty shell. She seized upon all the things that lay near at hand and packed them tightly into the throbbing loneliness of her barren heart. There were Cards and Song and Dancing and Wine ahd Gay Compan ions and Loud Merrymaking, and she forced them all—a motley company— into the cold emptiness of her desola tion. Oblivion and the forgetfulness she sought did not come, hut fever and ex citement kept her brain whirling far away from the sadness of reality. It chanced one day that True Love passed by, and he stopped at the door of her heart. He knocked, hut the ears of her Soul were dulled with minstrelsy and its eyes were blinded by the glare and glitter of revelry, so neither Heart nor Soul could tell the woman that he who stood without was True Love. At last—and timidly—Love opened the door of the Heart that offered him no welcome, but when he saw how crowd ed that heart was with tinsel and paste Jewels, he sighed. “Alas! thefe is no room for me.” and went his way. And the woman went on playing that she was happy and content. -• But Love—hurt and slighted—would not pass that way again forevermore. —LILIAN LAUFFERTY. By FRANCES L. OARSIDE. F OR six weeks sympathizing friends had been asking Lysander John Appleton if he had the rheuma tism. “No,” he would reply sadly, trying to | make his legs, which were twisted like Harry Lauder's walking stick, stay on the same sidewalk—"I am sleeping in the hammock." “Your face,” the boy* had been saying to Chauncey Devere afT summer, "looks as if you had the smallpox.” “Marks of the buttons on the parlor lounge,” was hls reply. Women stand martyrdom better, thriving on it in a measure, and Mrs. Appleton and Daysey Maj'me bore no marks of trying to curve their forms over the trunk top and around the flour and sugar boxes on the pantry shelf. No war cry such as "Remerhber the Maine!" ever incited soldiers to greater deeds of frenzy and devotion than the words "Remember, we have guests.” have incited women. “Where.” asked Lysander John one morning, trying in vain to straighten out his legs in such a way he could have both in the kitchen at the same time, "are my gray hat and gray suit?” “Your hat," replfeiT his wife, “is on the top shelf of the closet of the room occupied by Mrs. A.; your coat is under three rows of dresses in the closet of the room occupied by Mrs. B., and your trousers are being pressed undef* the mattress of the bed on which Mrs. C. is sleeping. They left word last night they didn't want to be wakened before ten to-day. so go back to your hammock till they leave their rooms.” The Solution. Half an hour later, forgetting his di lemma, she carried off the suit he had been wearing to the cleaner's. A few minutes later the telephone rang, and Lysander John, realizing that his wife had gone out and his daughter was still asleep on the pantry shelf, fell out of his hammock to answer it. “The offToe is on fire," called his as sistant. “Better get a taxi and come at once.” He couldn’t find his brown suit, and, remembering his wife’s directions of where he woukj find the gray, hurst into the room occupied By Mrs. A. “Fire!" he managed to stammer, trying to make the closet door shield him, as he threw out layer after layer of skirts, petticoats, waist?, kimonos, jackets, dresses and coats. “Fire!” he screamed, growing so excited he threw the gar ments out of the window in trying to dig his way down to his coat. “Fire!" he howled a moment later, pulling down twenty hat boxes from the Shelve? of the closet of the room where slept Mrs. B. and pitching them out the window. “Fire!" he howled in greater despera tion in the third room, upsetting the guest out of bed in an effort to get his trousers from under the mattress, and “Fire!”*“Fire!” “Fire!” began all the guests at once, thinking the house was ablaze. In the excitement Lysander John failed to find what he wanted and rushed out of the house with a pale pink pic ture hat on hls head, a blue silk ki mono over his shoulders, and his Harry Lauder walking-stick legs concealed in a petticoat. “T refuse to be balled out,” he said defiantly next day to a friend. “I am a guest here, and it is the first chance I've had to sleep on a bed all summer.” Fiction. In Aiken they tell this story as having happened in Augusta, but in Augusta they tell the same story on a clergyman of Aiken: "A very devout clergyman decided to take up golf as a means of outdoor exercise. “Buying a kit of tools and hiring a caddy, the good man hit the trail for the links and teed up for a drive-off. At the firsft swing he missed the ball by about six yards. At the next swat he got a little nearer, but was still too far away to cause the ball any gi^at in convenience. “Several more swings that racked hls ribs, and finally the clergyman hit the little sphere. Instead of beautifully sail ing away over the scheduled route, how ever, it took a side road at the right an gles, ricocheted down over in the box cars and semaphores. “ ‘That settles it,’ exclaimed the dis appointed clergyman in a decisive voice, 'I have got to give it up!* “ ‘What!’ exclaimed the caddy, won deringly. ‘Give up golf?’ “ ‘No,’ was the quick response of the clergyman, ‘the ministry.’ ’’ CHICHESTER S PILLS THK DIAMOND BRAND » Funeral Desisrns and Flowers FOB ALL OCCASIONS. Atlanta Floral Company 455 EAST FAIR STREET. Belt.S»f«t,’AlwM,V.l'ab* i SOLD BY DRIOWSTS EVERVWHFK i VILLE THROUGH SLEEPERS Lv.7:12AMu5:i0PML