THE ARENA. 

EDITED BY B. O. FLOWER. 

VOL. IV. 

PUBLISHED BYTHE ARENA PUBLISHING CO. , BOSTON, MASS. 

1891. 

CONTENTS. 

June, 1891

 The New Columbus JULIAN HAWTHORNE

 The Unknown (Part I) CAMILLE FLAMMARION

 The Chivalry of the Press JULIUS CHAMBERS

 Society's Exiles B. O. FLOWER

 Evolution and Christianity PROF. JAS. T. BIXBY, Ph. D. 

 The Irrigation Problem in the Northwest JAMES REALF, JR. 

 Revolutionary Measures and Neglected Crimes PROF. JOS. RODES BUCHANAN

 Spencer's Doctrine of Inconceivability REV. T. ERNEST ALLEN

 The Better Part WILLIAM ALLEN DROMGOOLE

 The Heiress of the Ridge NO-NAME PAPER

 The Brook P. H. S. 

 Optimism, Real and False EDITORIAL

 The Pessimistic Cast of Modern Thought EDITORIAL

July, 1891

 Oliver Wendell Holmes GEORGE STEWART, D. C. L. , LL. D. 

 Plutocracy and Snobbery in New York EDGAR FAWCETT

 Should the Nation Own the Railways? C. WOOD DAVIS

 The Unknown (Part II) CAMILLE FLAMMARION

 The Swiss and American Constitutions W. D. MCCRACKAN

 The Tyranny of All the People REV. FRANCIS BELLAMY

 Revolutionary Measures and Neglected Crimes, (Part 2d) PROF. JOS. RODES BUCHANAN

 Æonian Punishment REV. W. E. MANLEY, D. D. 

 The Negro Question PROF. W. S. SCARBOROUGH

 A Prairie Heroine HAMLIN GARLAND

 An Epoch-Marking Drama EDITORIAL

 The Present Revolution in Theological Thought EDITORIAL

 The Conflict Between Ancient and Modern Thought in the Presbyterian Church EDITORIAL

August, 1891

 The Unity of Germany MME. BLAZE DEBURY

 Should the Nation Own the Railways? C. WOOD DAVIS

 Where Must Lasting Progress Begin? ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

 My Home Life AMELIA B. EDWARDS

 The Tyranny of Nationalism REV. MINOT J. SAVAGE

 Individuality in Education PROF. MARY L. DICKINSON

 The Working-Women of To-day HELEN CAMPBELL

 The Independent Party and Money at Cost R. B. HASSELL

 Psychic Experiences SARA A. UNDERWOOD

 A Decade of Retrogression FLORENCE KELLEY WISCHNEWETZKY

 Old Hickory's Ball WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE

 The Era of Woman EDITORIAL

September, 1891

 The Newer Heresies REV. GEO. C. LORIMER, D. D. 

 Harvest and Laborers in the Psychical Field FREDERIC W. H. MYERS

 Fashion's Slaves B. O. FLOWER

 Un-American Tendencies REV. CARLOS D. MARTYN, D. D. 

 Extrinsic Significance of Constitutional Government in Japan KUMA OISHI, A. M. 

 University Extension PROF. WILLIS BOUGHTON

 Pope Leo on Labor THOMAS B. PRESTON

 The Austrian Postal Banking System SYLVESTER BAXTER

 Another View of Newman WILLIAM M. SALTER

 Inter-Migration Rabbi SOLOMON SCHINDLER

 He Came and Went Again W. N. HARBEN

 O Thou Who Sighest for a Broader Field JULIA ANNA WOLCOTT

 An Evening at the Corner Grocery HAMLIN GARLAND

October, 1891

 James Russell Lowell GEORGE STEWART, D. C. L. , LL. D. 

 Healing Through the Mind HENRY WOOD

 Mr. And Mrs. James A. Herne HAMLIN GARLAND

 Some Weak Spots in the French Republic THEODORE STANTON

 Leaderless Mobs H. C. BRADSBY

 Madame Blavatsky at Adyar MONCURE D. CONWAY

 Emancipation by Nationalism THADDEUS B. WAKEMAN

 Recollections of Old Play-Bills CHARLES H. PATTEE

 The Microscope DR. FREDERICK GAERTNER

 A Grain of Gold WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE

 Religious Intolerance To-day EDITORIAL

 Social Conditions Under Louis XV EDITORIAL

November, 1891

 Pharisaism in Public Life EDITORIAL

 Cancer Spots in Metropolitan Life EDITORIAL

 The Saloon EDITORIAL

 Hot-beds of Social Pollution EDITORIAL

 The Power and Responsibility of the Christian Ministry EDITORIAL

 What the Clergy Might Accomplish EDITORIAL

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

June, 1891

 B. O. Flower

 Julius Chambers

 Out of Work

 Invalid in Chair

 Cellarway Leading to Under-Ground Apartments

 Sick Man in Under-Ground Apartment

 Constance and Maggie

 Exterior of a North End Tenement House

 Under-Ground Tenement with Two Beds

 Widow and two Children in Under-Ground Tenement

 Portuguese Widow in Attic

 Portuguese Widow and Three Children

 The Victoria Square Apartment House, Liverpool, Eng. 

 Rev. T. Ernest Allen

July, 1891

 Oliver Wendell Holmes

August, 1891

 Elizabeth Cady Stanton

 Amelia B. Edwards

September, 1891

 Rev. Geo. C. Lorimer

 Illustrations of "Fashion's Slaves"

 Prominent Actresses in Costume

 Kuma Oishi

October, 1891

 James Russell Lowell

 Mr. And Mrs. James A. Herne

 Mr. And Mrs. James A. Herne Illustrated in Character

November, 1891

 Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge

 Noted Members of the South Dakota Divorce Colony

[Illustration: (signed) Cordially Yours B. Orange Flower]

THE ARENA. 

No. XIX. 

JUNE, 1891. 

THE NEW COLUMBUS. 

BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 

History repeats itself, but on new planes. Often, a symbol appears inone age, and the spirit of which it is the expression is revealed inanother. Each answers the need of its own time. From the creativestandpoint, which is out of time, spirit and symbol are one; but to us, who see things successively, they seem as prior and posterior. 

If this be so, it should be possible for a thoughtful and believing mindin some measure to forecast the future from the record of the past. Nodoubt, past and present contain the germs of all that is to be, were theanalyst omniscient. But it needs not omniscience roughly to body-forththe contours of coming events. It is done daily, on a smaller or largerscale, with more or less plausibility. All theories are grounded in thisprinciple. And it is noticeable that, at this moment, such tentativeprophesies are more than frequent, and more comprehensive than usual intheir scope. 

The condition of mankind, during the last quarter of the fifteenthcentury, bore some curious analogies to its state at present. A certainstage or epoch of human life seemed to have run its course and come to astop. The impulses which had started it were exhausted. In the politicalfield, feudalism, originally beneficent, had become tyrannous andstifling; and monarchy, at first an austere necessity, had grown to be, beyond measure, arrogant, selfish, and luxurious. In science, the oldmethods had proved themselves puerile and inefficient, and the leadingscientists were magicians and witches; in literature, no poet had arisenworthy to strike the lyre that Chaucer tuned to music. As for religion, the corruptions of the papacy, and the corresponding degradation of themonasteries and of the priesthood generally, had brought it down from aregion of sublime and self-abnegating faith, to a commodity for raisingmoney, and a cloak to hide profligacy. Martin Luther was still in thewomb of the future; and so were Shakespeare, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, and Oliver Cromwell. Pessimists were declaring, according to theirinvariable custom, that what was bad would get worse, and that what wasgood would disappear. But there were, scattered here and therethroughout Christendom, a number of men of the profounder, optimistictendency, who saw in existing abuses but the misuse or misapprehensionof elements intrinsically good; who knew that evils bear in themselvesthe seeds of their own extirpation; and who believed that Providence, far from having failed in its design to secure the ultimate happiness ofthe human race, was bringing the old order of things to a close in orderto provide place for something new and higher. 

But that obstacle in the way of improvement which was apparently themost immovable, was the geographical one. The habitable earth was usedup. Outside of Europe there was nothing, save inaccessible wilderness, and barren, boundless seas. There was nothing for the mass of men to do, and yet their energy and desire were as great as ever; there was nowherefor them to go, and yet they were steadily increasing in numbers. TheCrusades had amused them for a while, but they were done with; theplague had thinned them out, and war had helped the plague; but thebirth-rate was more than a match for both. A new planet, with all thefresh interests and possibilities which that would involve, seemedabsolutely necessary. But who should erect a ladder to the stars, ordraw them down from the sky within man's reach? The one indispensablething was also the one thing impossible. 

If, next year, we were to learn that some miraculous Ericsson or Edisonhad established a practicable route to the planet Mars, and that thisneighbor of ours in the solar system was found to be replete with allthe things that we most want and can least easily get, --were such newsto reach us, we might comprehend the sensation created in the Europe of1492, four centuries ago, when it received the information that acertain Christopher Columbus had discovered a brand new continent, overflowing with gold and jewels, on the other side of the Atlantic. Theimpossible had happened. Our globe was not the petty sphere that it hadbeen assumed to be. There was room in it for everybody, and a fortunefor the picking up. And all the world, with Spain in the van, preparedto move on El Dorado. A whiff of the fresh Western air blew in allnostrils, and re-animated the moribund body of civilization. Thestimulus of Columbus' achievement was felt in every condition of humanlife and phase of human activity. Mankind once more saw a future, andbound up its loins to take advantage of it. Literature felt the electrictouch, and blossomed in the unmatched geniuses of the Elizabethan age. Science ceased to reason _à priori_, and began to investigate andclassify facts. Human liberty began to be conscious of thews and sinews, soon to be tested in the struggle of the Netherlands against Philip II. Of Spain, and, later, in that of the people of England against their ownCharles Stuart. Religion was heard to mutter something about the rightsof private conscience, and anon the muttering took form in the heroicprotest of the man of Eisleben. It was like the awakening in the palaceof the Sleeping Beauty, in the fairy-tale. Columbus had kissed the lipsof the Princess America, and at once the long-pent stream of old-worldlife dashed onward like a cataract. 

A new world! Four hundred years have passed, and the New World is less anovelty than it was. We have begun to suspect that no given number ofsquare miles of land, no eloquence and sagacity of paper preambles anddeclarations, no swiftness of travel nor instantaneousness ofcommunication, no invincibility of ironclads nor refinement of society, no logic in religion, no gospel of political economy, --none of these anda hundred other things will read us the Riddle of the Sphinx. _Non taliauxilio, nec defensoribus istis!_ The elements of true life lie deeperand are simpler. Once more, it seems, we have reached the limits of adispensation, and are halted by a blank wall. There is no visible wayover it, nor around it. We cannot stand still; still less can we turnback. What is to happen? What happens when an irresistible forceencounters an impenetrable barrier?

That was the question asked in Columbus' day; and he found an answer toit. Are we to expect the appearance of a new Columbus to answer itagain? To unimaginative minds it looks as if there were no career for anew Columbus. In the first place, population is increasing so fast thatsoon even the steppes of Russia and the western American plains will beovercrowded. Again, land, and the control of industries, are fallinginto the possession of a comparative handful of persons, to whom therest of the population must inevitably become subject; or, should thelatter rebel, the ensuing period of chaos would be followed, at best, bya return of the old conditions. Religion is a lifeless letter, a schoolof good-breeding, a philosophical amusement; the old unreasoning faiththat moved mountains can never revive. Science advances with ever moreand yet more caution, but each new step only confirms the convictionthat the really commanding secrets of existence will forever eludediscovery. Literature, rendered uncreative by the scientific influence, has fallen to refining upon itself, and photographing a narrowconception of facts. The exhausting heats of Equatorial Africa, and theparalyzing cold of the Poles, forbid the hope of successful colonizationof those regions. Social life is an elaborate apeing of behavior whichhas no root in the real impulses of the human heart; its true underlyingspirit is made up of hatred, covetousness, and self-indulgence. Thereare no illusions left to us, no high, inspiring sentiment. We havereached our limit, and the best thing to be hoped for now is some vastcataclysmal event, which, by destroying us out-of-hand, may save us theslow misery of extinction by disease, despair, and the enmity of everyman against every other. What Columbus can help us out of such apredicament?

Such is the refrain of the nineteenth century pessimist. But, as before, the sprouting of new thought and belief is visible to the attentive eyeall over the surface of the sordid field of a decaying civilization. Thetime has come when the spirit of Columbus' symbol shall avouch itself, vindicating the patient purpose of Him who brings the flower from theseed. Great discoveries come when they are needed; never too early nortoo late. When nothing else will serve the turn, then, and not tillthen, the rock opens, and the spring gushes forth. Who that hasconsidered the philosophy of the infinitely great and of the infinitelyminute can doubt the inexhaustibleness of nature? And what is nature butthe characteristic echo, in sense, of the spirit of man?

Even on the material plane, there are numberless opportunities for thenew Columbus. Ever and anon a canard appears in a newspaper, or aromance is published, reporting or describing some imaginary inventionwhich is to revolutionize the economical situation. The problem ofair-navigation is among the more familiar of these suggestions, thoughby no means the most important of them. No doubt we shall fly beforelong, but that mode of travel will be, after all, nothing more than animprovement upon existing means of intercommunication. After theprinciple has been generally adopted, and the novelty has worn off, weshall find ourselves not much better, nor much worse off than we werebefore. Flying will be but another illustration of the truth thatcompetition is only intensified by the perfecting of its instruments. Men will still be poor and rich, happy and unhappy, as formerly. If Ican go from New York to London in a day, instead of in a week, so alsocan those against whom I am competing. The idea that there is any realgain of time is an illusion; the day will still contain itsfour-and-twenty hours, and I shall, as before, sleep so many, play somany, and work so many. Relatively, my state will be unchanged. 

More promising is the idea of the transformation of matter. Science isnow nearly ready to affirm that substances of all kinds are specificconditions of etheric vortices. Vibration is the law of existence, andif we could control vibrations, we could create substances, eitherdirectly from the etheric base, or, mediately, by inducing the atoms ofany given substance so to modify their mutual arrangement, orcharacteristic vibration, as to produce another substance. It is evidentthat if this feat is ever performed, it must be by some process ofelemental simplicity, readily available for every tyro. A prophet hasarisen, during these latter days, in Philadelphia, who somewhatobscurely professes to be on the track of this discovery. He is commonlyregarded as a charlatan; but men cognizant of the latest advances ofscience admit themselves unable to explain upon any known principles theeffects he produces. It need not be pointed out that if Mr. Keely, orany one else, has found a way to metamorphose one substance intoanother, the consequences to the world must be profound. Labor for one'sdaily bread will be a thing of the past, when bread may be made out ofstones by the mere setting-up of a particular vibration. The race forwealth will cease, when every one is equally able to command all theresources of the globe. The whole point of view regarding the materialaspects of life will be vitally altered; leisure (so far as necessaryphysical effort is concerned) will inevitably be universal. For when weconsider what have been the true motives of civilization and itsappurtenances during the greater part of the historical period, we findit to be the desire to better our physical condition. It is commercethat has built cities, made railroads, laws, and wars, maintained theboundaries of nations, and kept up the human contact which we areaccustomed to call society. When commerce ceases--as it will cease, whenthere is no longer any reason for its existence--all the results of itthat we have mentioned will cease also. In other words, civilization andsociety, as we now know them, will disappear. Human beings will staywhere they are born, and live as the birds do. There will be no workexcept creative or artistic work, done for the mere pleasure of thedoing, voluntarily. Society will no longer be based upon mutualrivalries and the gain of personal advantage. Science will not bepursued on its present lines, or for its present ends; for when thehuman race has attained leisure and the gratification of its materialwants, it would have no motives for further merely physicalinvestigation. 

This would seem to involve a new kind of barbarism. And so, no doubt, itwould, were the discoveries of our Columbus to be limited to thematerial plane. But it is far more probable that materialtransubstantiation will be merely the corollary or accompaniment of aninfinitely more important revelation and expansion in the spiritualsphere. What we are to expect is an awakening of the soul; there-discovery and re-habilitation of the genuine and indestructiblereligious instinct. Such a religious revival will be something verydifferent from what we have hitherto known under that name. It will be aspontaneous and joyful realization by the soul of its vital relationswith its Creator. Ecclesiastical forms and dogmas will vanish, andnature will be recognized as a language whereby God converses with man. The interpretation of this language, based as it is upon an eternal andliving symbolism, containing infinite depths beyond depths of meaning, will be a sufficient study and employment for mankind forever. Art willreceive an inconceivable stimulus, from the recognition of its truesignificance as a re-humanization of nature, and from the perception ofits scope and possibilities. Science will become, in truth, the handmaidof religion, in that it will be devoted to reporting the physicalanalogies of spiritual truths, and following them out in their subtlerdetails. Hitherto, the progress of science has been slow, and subject toconstant error and revision, because it would not accept the inevitabledependence of body on soul, as of effect on cause. But as soon asphysical research begins to go hand-in-hand with moral or psychical, itwill advance with a rapidity hitherto unimagined, each assisting andclassifying the other. The study of human nature will give direction tothe study of the nature that is not human; and the latter willillustrate and confirm the conclusions of the former. More than half thedifficulties of science as now practised is due to ignorance of what tolook for; but when it can refer at each step to the truths of the mindand heart, this obstacle will disappear, and certainty take the place ofexperiment. 

The attitude of men towards one another will undergo a correspondingchange. It is already become evident that selfishness is a colossalfailure. Viewed as to its logical results, it requires that eachindividual should possess all things and all power. Hostile collisionthus becomes inevitable, and more is lost by it than can ever be gained. Recent social theorists propose a universal co-operation, to save thewaste of personal competition. But competition is a wholesome and vitallaw; it is only the direction of it that requires alteration. When thecessation of working for one's livelihood takes place, human energy andlove of production will not cease with it, but will persist, and mustfind their channels. But competition to outdo each in the service of allis free from collisions, and its range is limitless. Not to supportlife, but to make life more lovely, will be the effort; and not to makeit more lovely for one's self, but for one's neighbor. Nor is this all. The love of the neighbor will be a true act of Divine worship, since itwill then be acknowledged that mankind, though multiplied to humansense, is in essence one; and that in that universal one, which can haveno self-consciousness, God is present or incarnate. The divine humanityis the only real and possible object of mortal adoration, and no genuinesentiment of human brotherhood is conceivable apart from itsrecognition. But, with it, the stature of our common manhood will growtowards the celestial. 

Obviously, with thoughts and pursuits of this calibre to engage ourattention, we shall be very far from regretting those which harass andenslave us to-day. Leaving out of account the extension of psychicalfaculties, which will enable the antipodes to commune together at will, and even give us the means of conversing with the inhabitants of otherplanets, and which will so simplify and deepen language that audiblespeech, other than the musical sounds indicative of emotion, will beregarded as a comic and clumsy archaism, --apart from all this, thefathomless riches of wisdom to be gathered from the commonest dailyobjects and outwardly most trivial occurrences, will put an end to allcraving for merely physical change of place and excitement. Graduallythe human race will become stationary, each family occupying its ownplace, and living in patriarchal simplicity, though endowed with powerand wisdom that we should now consider god-like. The sons and daughterswill go forth whither youthful love calls them; but, with the perfectingof society, those whose spiritual sympathies are closest will never bespatially remote; lovers will not then, as now, seek one another in theends of the earth, and probably miss one another after all. Each memberof the great community will spontaneously enlist himself in the serviceof that use which he is best qualified to promote; and, as in the humanbody, all the various parts, in fulfilling their function, will serveone another and the whole. 

Perhaps the most legitimately interesting phase of this speculationrelates to the future of these qualities and instincts in human naturewhich we now call evil and vicious. Since these qualities are innate, they can never be eradicated, nor even modified in intensity oractivity. They belong with us, nay, they are all there is of us, andwith their disappearance, we ourselves should disappear. Are we, then, to be wicked forever? Hardly so; but, on the contrary, what we haveknown as wickedness will show itself to be the only possible basis andenergy of goodness. These tremendous appetites and passions of ours werenot given us to be extinguished, but to be applied aright. 

They are like fire, which is the chief of destroyers when it escapesbounds, or is misused; but, in its right place and function, is amongthe most indispensable of blessings. But to enlarge upon this thoughtwould carry us too far from the immediate topic; nor is it desirable tofollow with the feeble flight of our imagination the heaven-embracingorbit of this theme. A hint is all that can be given, which each mustfollow out for himself. We have only attempted to indicate what regionsawait the genius of the new Columbus; nor does the conjecture seem toobold that perhaps they are not so distant from us in time as they appearto be in quality. They are with us now, if we would but know it. 

THE UNKNOWN. 

PART I. 

BY CAMILLE FLAMMARION. 

_Translated from the author's manuscript, by G. A. H. Meyer andJ. H. Wiggin. _

 Croire tout découvert est une erreur profonde: C'est prendre l'horizon pour les bornes du monde. 

 (To fancy all known is an error profound, -- The sky-line mistaking for earth's utmost bound. )

The idea expressed in this distich is so self-evident that we mightalmost characterize it as trite. Yet the history of every science marksmany eminent men, of superior intelligence, who have been arrested inthe way of progress by a wholly contrary opinion, and have veryinnocently supposed that science had uttered to them her last word. Inastronomy, in physics, in chemistry, in optics, in natural history, inphysiology, in anatomy, in medicine, in botany, in geology, in allbranches of human knowledge, it would be easy to fill several pages withthe names of celebrated men who believed science would never pass thelimits reached in their own time, and that nothing remained to bediscovered thereafter. In the army of wise men now living it would notbe difficult to name many distinguished scholars who imagine that, inthe spheres whereof they are masters, it is needless to search foranything new. 

It may be unbecoming to talk about one's self, but as, on the one side, some have done me the honor to ask what I think of certainproblems, --while, on the other side, I have been more than once accusedof busying myself, in a rather unscientific way, with certain vagueinvestigations, --I will begin by acknowledging that the maxim containedin the two verses of my motto has been the conviction of my whole life;and if, from my callow youth until this very day, I have been interestedin the study of phenomena pertaining to the domain of inquiries calledoccult, such as magnetism, spiritualism, hypnotism, telepathy, ghost-seeing, it is because I believe we know next to nothing of whatmay be known, and that nearly everything still remains to beapprehended; for I believe the thirst for knowledge is one of our bestfaculties, the one most prolific, without which we should still bedwelling in an Age of Stone, inasmuch as it is our right, if not ourduty, to seek the truth by all the methods accessible to ourintellectual powers. 

It is for this reason that I published among other things, in the courseof the year 1865, --now a quarter-century past, --a treatise entitledUnknown Natural Forces, and touching certain questions analogous tothose which are to occupy our attention in this paper; and so I ask myreaders to note the following quotations therefrom, as an introductionto our present investigation:

 It is foolish to suppose that all things are known to us. 

 True wisdom involves continual study. 

 In the month of June, 1776, a young man, the Marquis de Jouffroy, was experimenting upon the Doubs, [1] with a steamboat forty feet long by six feet wide. For two years he had been inviting scientific attention to his invention; for two years he had insisted that steam was a powerful force, heretofore unappreciated. All ears remained deaf to his voice. Complete isolation was his sole recompense. When he walked through the streets of Beaume-les-Dames, a thousand jests greeted his appearance. They nicknamed him Jouffroy the Pump. Ten years later, having constructed a _pyroscaphe_ [steamboat] which voyaged along the Saone, from Lyons to Isle Barbe, Jouffroy presented a petition to Cabinet Minister Calonne and to the Academy of Sciences. They refused even to look at his invention. 

 [1] The Doubs is a stream after which one of the Eastern Departments of France is named. Its principal city is Besançon, the birthplace of Victor Hugo. 

 On August 9, 1803, Robert Fulton, the American, ascended the Seine in a novel steamboat, at a speed of six kilometers per hour. The Academy of Sciences and the government officials witnessed the experiment. On the tenth they had forgotten him, and Fulton departed to try his fortunes with his own countrymen. 

 In 1791 an Italian, named Galvani, suspended from the bars of his window at Bologna some flayed frogs, which he that morning had seen in motion on a table, although they had been killed the night before. This incident seemed incredible, and was unanimously rejected by those to whom he related it. Learned men would have considered it below their dignity to take any pains to verify his story, so sure were they of its impossibility. Galvani, however, had noticed that the maximum effect was produced when a metallic arc, of tin and copper, was brought into contact with the lumbar nerves and pedal extremities of a frog. Then the animal would be violently convulsed. The observer believed this came from a nervous fluid, and so he lost the advantage of his observations. It was reserved for Volta to really discover electricity. 

 Yet already Europe is furrowed by wagons drawn by flame-mouthed dragons. Distances have vanished before the patience of the humble workers of the world, which is reduced to pettiness by the genius of man. The longest journeys have become well-trodden promenades; the most gigantic tasks are accomplished under the potential and tireless hand of this unseen force; a telegraphic despatch flies, in the twinkling of an eye, from one continent to the other; without leaving our armchairs, we converse with the inhabitants of London and Saint Petersburg; yet these miracles pass unnoticed. We do not dream to what struggles, to what mortifications, to what persecutions, these wonders are due; and we do not reflect that the impossible of yesterday has become the actual of to-day. 

 There are men who call to us: "Halt, ye small scientists! We do not understand you! Consequently, you cannot yourselves comprehend what you are talking about!" We may reply: However narrow your judgment, your myopia does not afflict all mankind. It must be declared to you, gentlemen, that in spite of yourselves, despite your ravings, the chariot of human knowledge advances further than ever before, and will continue its triumphal march towards the conquest of new powers. 

 Like the spasms of Galvani's frog, certain crude facts, about which you are skeptical, reveal the existence of natural forces as yet unknown. There is no effect without a cause. The human being is the least known of all beings within our ken. We have learned how to measure the sun, to traverse celestial distances, to analyze starlight; yet we are ignorant as to what we ourselves are. Man is a double being, _homo duplex_; and this double nature remains a mystery to himself. We think; but what is thought? Nobody can say. We walk; but what is this organic action? Nobody knows. My will is an immaterial force; all the faculties of my soul are immaterial; nevertheless, if I will to raise my arm, this volition overcomes matter. How does this power act? What mediation serves for the conveyance of the mental command, in order to produce a physical effect? As yet no one can answer. 

 Tell me how the optic nerve transmits to our mentality a vision of external objects! Tell me how thought conceives and where it resides, and of what nature is cerebral activity! Tell me. . . ! But no! I could question you for ten years, without the greatest among you being able to solve the least of my riddles. 

 In this, as in the cases before adduced, we have the unknown for our problem. I am far from saying that the force brought into play in these phenomena can some day be employed like electricity or steam. Such a notion would be neither more nor less than absurd! Nevertheless, though differing essentially from those, occult force is not the less real. 

 Several years ago I designated this unknown force by the title _psychical_. This designation may well be retained. 

 Can we not find the happy medium between absolute negation and dangerous credulity? Is it reasonable either to deny everything we do not comprehend, or to accept all the fantasies engendered in the vortex of disordered imaginations? Can we not achieve at the same time the humility which becomes the weak and the dignity which befits the strong?

 I conclude this statement as I began it, by declaring that it is not in favor of the Davenport Brothers that I plead; nor do I take up the gauntlet for any sect, for any group of people, or for any person whatsoever; but I contend in behalf of certain facts, of whose validity I was convinced years ago, though without understanding their cause. 

I beg the reader to excuse the length of this citation; but it seems tome to serve so naturally as an introduction to this present inquiry thateven to-day, after a lapse of a quarter-century, I really see noimportant changes to be made in this old declaration, except to add thatit now appears to me to have been rather audacious on the part of a manso very young, and that it forthwith won him many hearty enemies amongthe elect of science. 

The experimental method is bound to conquer here, as everywhere. Let us, then, without partisanship, study the question under its divers aspects. 

1

"The immortality of the soul is a matter so important, " writes Pascal, "that one must have lost all moral sensibility if he remains indifferentas to its nature. "

Why should we give up the hope of ever arriving at a knowledge of thenature of the thinking principle which animates us, and of ascertainingwhether or not it outlives the destruction of the body? It must beadmitted that hitherto science has taught us nothing on this fundamentalsubject. Is this any reason for renouncing the study of the problem? Onthis, as on many other points, we are not of the same mind as thosematerial Positivists who declare themselves satisfied with not knowinganything. We think, on the contrary, that we should attack the problemby all methods, and not neglect a single hint which may aid thesolution. 

Personally, I declare that I have not yet discovered for myself one factwhich proves with certainty the existence of soul as separate from body. Otherwise, however sublime astronomical science may be, --though it standat the head of human researches, as the first, the most important, andthe most widespread of all sciences, --I avow that, if the inductivemethod had permitted me to penetrate secrets of existence, I shouldinevitably have abandoned the science of the firmament, for that whichwould have dethroned the other through its prime and unequalledimportance; since it would be superfluous for us to evade the fact thatthe gravest and most interesting of all questions, to ourselves, is thatof our continuous personal existence. The existence of God, of theentire universe, touches us far less intimately. If we ever cease tolive (for what is the span of a human life in the light of eternity!) itis a matter of utter indifference to us whether other things exist ornot. Doubtless this reasoning is severely egotistic! Ah, how can it beotherwise?

If we have no clear and irrefutable proofs, we have still the aid of agoodly number of observations, establishing the conclusion that we arecompassed about by a set of phenomena, and by powers differing from thephysical order commonly observed day by day; and these phenomena urge usto pursue every line of investigation, having for its end a psychicalacquaintance with human nature. 

Let us begin at the beginning, with a recital of observations which, from their very nature, have the disadvantage of being very personal. 

2

At the age of sixteen, on my way home one day from the ParisObservatory, I noticed, on the bookseller's stand in the Galeries del'Odeon, a green-covered volume entitled Le Livre des Esprits (Book ofSpirits), by Allan-Kardec. I bought it, and read it through at asitting. There was in it something unexpected, original, curious. Werethey true, the phenomena therein recounted? Did they solve the greatproblem of futurity, as the author contended? In my anxiety to ascertainthis I made the acquaintance of the high-priest, for Allan-Kardec hadmade of Spiritism a veritable religion. I assisted at the séances. Iexperimented and became myself a medium. In one of Allan-Kardec's works, called Genesis, over the signature of Galilee, may be read a wholechapter on Cosmogony, which I wrote in a mediumistic condition. 

I was at that time connected with the principal circles in Paris wherethese experiments were tried, and for two years I even filled theexacting position of secretary to one of these circles, an office whichmorally bound me not to be absent from a single séance. 

Communications were received in three different ways: by writing withour own hands; by placing our hands upon planchette, in which a pencilwas placed which did the writing; by raps beneath the table, or bymovements which indicated certain letters, when the alphabet wasrepeated aloud by one of the sitters. 

The first method was the only one in use in the Society for SpiritualistStudy presided over by Allan-Kardec; but it is the method leaving thewidest margin for doubt. Indeed, at the end of several years ofexperimenting in this fashion, the result was that I became skepticaleven of myself, and for the reasons following. 

It cannot be denied that, under mediumistic conditions, one does notwrite in his usual fashion. In the normal state, when we wish to write asentence, we mentally construct that sentence--if not the whole of it, at least a part of it--before writing the words. The pen and hand obeythe creative thought. It is not so when one writes mediumistically. Onerests one's hand, motionless but docile, on a sheet of paper, and thenwaits. After a little while the hand begins to move, and to formletters, words, and phrases. One does not create these sentences, as inthe normal state, but waits for them to produce themselves. Yet the mindis nevertheless associated therewith. The subject treated is in unisonwith one's ordinary ideas. The written language is one's own. If one isdeficient in orthography, the composition will betray this fault. Moreover, the mind is so intimately connected with what is written, thatif it ponders something else, if the thoughts are allowed to wander fromthe immediate subject, then the hand will pause, or trace incoherentsigns. 

Such is the state of the writing-medium, --at least, so far as I haveobserved it in myself. It is a sort of auto-suggestive state. We areassured there are mediums who write so mechanically that they know notwhat they are writing, and record theses in strange tongues, on subjectsconcerning which they are ignorant; but this I have never been able toverify with any certainty. 

A few years previous to my commencement of these studies, my illustriousfriend Victorien Sardou had undergone similar experiences. As a mediumhe wrote descriptions of divers planets in our system, principally ofJupiter, and drew very odd pictures, representing the habitations ofthat planet. One of these pictures depicted the house of Mozart, whileothers represented the dwellings of Zoroaster and of Bernard Palissy, who seemed to be country neighbors in that immense planet. Thesehabitations appeared to be aërial and of marvellous lightness. The firstof them, Mozart's, was essentially formed of musical instruments andindications, such as the staff, notes, and clefs. The second wasprincipally bucolic. There were to be seen flowers, hammocks, swings, flying men; while underneath were intelligent animals, engaged inplaying a novel game of tenpins, in which the sport did not lie inbowling the pins over, but in crowning their heads, as in the childishgame of cup-and-ball. I reproduced this last design in the workentitled, Les Terres du Ciel (Heavenly Globes), page 180. 

These curious drawings prove, beyond a peradventure, that the signature, _Bernard Palissy in Jupiter_, is apocryphal, and that it was not aspirit inhabitant of Jupiter who guided Victorien Sardou's hand. Neitherdid the gifted author conceive these sketches beforehand, and executethem in pursuance of a deliberate purpose; but at that time he foundhimself in a mental condition similar to that above described. We mayneither be magnetized nor hypnotized, nor put to sleep in any fashion, and yet the brain may remain alien to our mechanical productions. Itscells are functionally agitated, and doubtless act by a reflex impulsionon the motor nerves. We all then believed that Jupiter was inhabited bya superior race. These communications were the reflections of opinionsgenerally held. In these days, however, nobody imagines anything of thekind about Jupiter. Moreover, spirit séances have never taught us theleast thing in astronomy. Such manifestations in nowise prove theintervention of spirits. Have writing-mediums given us other proofs, more convincing? This question we will examine later. 

3

The second method, planchette, is more independent. This little woodenwriter became the fashion chiefly through Madame de Girardin. Itscommunications soothed her last days, and prepared her for a deathfragrant with hope. She believed she was in communication with thespirits of Sappho, Shakespeare, Madame de Sévigné, and Molière; andamidst these convictions she died, without disquietude, withoutrebellion, without regret. She had introduced a taste for suchexperiments into the home of Victor Hugo, in Jersey. Nine years later, Auguste Vacquerie, in Les Miettes de l'Histoire (Crumbs of History), wrote as follows:

 Madame de Girardin's departure [from Jersey] did not abate my desire for experimenting with the tables. I pressed eagerly forward into this great marvel, --the half-opened door of death. 

 No longer did I wait for the evening. At midday I began my investigations, and forsook them only with the dawn. If I interrupted myself at all during that time, it was only to dine. Personally I had no effect upon the table, and did not touch it; but I asked questions. The mode of communication was always the same, and I had accustomed myself to it. Madame de Girardin sent me two tablets from Paris, --a little tablet, one of whose legs was a pencil, for writing and drawing. A few trials proved that this tablet designed poorly and wrote badly. The other was larger, and consisted of a disk, or dial, whereon was inscribed the alphabet, the letters being designated by a movable pointer. This apparatus also was rejected after an unsuccessful trial, and I finally resumed the primitive process, which--simplified by familiarity and sundry convenient abbreviations--soon afforded all desirable rapidity. I talked fluently with the table, the murmur of the sea mingling with our conversation, whose mysteriousness was increased by the winter, at night, amidst storms, and through isolation. The table no longer responded by a few words merely, but by sentences and pages. It was usually grave and magisterial, but at times it would be witty and even comical. Sometimes it had an access of choler. More than once I was insolently reproved for speaking to it irreverently, and I confess to not feeling at ease until I had obtained forgiveness. The table made certain exactions. It chose the interlocutors it preferred. It wished sometimes to be questioned in verse, and was obeyed; and then it would answer in verse. All these dialogues were collected, not at the close of the séance, but at the moment, and under the dictation of the table. They will some day be published, and will propound an imperious problem to all intelligent minds thirsting for new truths. 

 If now asked for my explanation of all this, I hesitate to reply. I should not have hesitated in Jersey. I should have unhesitatingly affirmed the presence of spirits. It is not the opinion of Paris which now retards me. I know what respect is due to the opinion of the Paris of to-day, of that Paris so wise, so practical, and so positive, which believes in nothing but dancing skirts and brokers' bulletins; but the capital's shrugging shoulders would not compel me to lower my voice. I am even happy to say, in the face of Paris, that as to the existence of what are called _spirits_, I have no doubts. I have never had that fatuous vanity as to our race, which declares that the ascending ladder of being ends with man. I am persuaded that we have at least as many rounds above us as there are beneath our feet, and I believe as firmly in spirits above as I do in donkeys beneath. The existence of spirits once admitted, their intervention becomes merely a question of details. Why could they not communicate with man by some means, and why may not that means be a table? Because immaterial beings cannot move a table? But who can say these beings _are_ immaterial? They also may have bodies, but more subtile than ours, --bodies as imperceptible to our sight, as light is to our touch. It is fairly presumable that there are transitional states between the human condition and the immaterial. Death comes after life, as man supersedes the animal. The inferior animals are men, with less soul. Man is an animal with more equipoise and self-direction. Death brings a condition of less materiality, but still with some matter left. I know therefore no reasonable argument against the reality of the table phenomena. 

 Nine years, however, have passed away since all this occurred. I gave up my daily interviews after a few months, for the sake of a friend whose insufficient mind could not bear these breaths from the unknown. I have never reperused the sheets whereon sleep the words which moved me so profoundly. I am no longer in Jersey, upon that rock lost among the waves, where the exile was torn from his native soil, away from life. Myself a living corpse, it did not astonish me to encounter the dead alive; and so little is certainty natural to man, that one may doubt even the things he has seen with his eyes and touched with his hands. 

 Finally, Victor Hugo, who assisted at these experiments, has said: "The moving and speaking table has been greatly ridiculed. Let us speak plainly! This ridicule is misplaced. It is the bounden duty of science to sound the depths of all phenomena. To ignore spiritualistic phenomena, to leave them bankrupt by inattention, is to make a bankrupt of truth itself. " (Les Genies [The Geniuses]: Shakespeare. )

It is table movements which are here spoken of, dictations by tipping orrapping; that is to say, by the third method heretofore referred to. This method has always appeared to be the most independent. In placingour fingers on a planchette, armed with a pencil, and in aiding itsmotions, we are brought into direct personal association with theresults. We may be under the illusion that an outside spirit is guidingthe hand, when we are unintentionally controlling it ourselves. We putquestions relating to subjects which specially interest us. Passively wewrite things which we already know more or less about, and unconsciouslyinspire ourselves with the name of the personage invoked. Far morereliable are the answers given by a table. 

4

Several persons place themselves around a table, their hands restingthereupon and await results. After a given time, if the requiredconditions for the production of the phenomena have been complied with, raps are heard, apparently within the table, and there are certainmotions of the furniture. Sometimes the table tips on one or two legs, and slowly oscillates. Sometimes it rises entirely from the floor, andremains suspended, as if adhering to the palms lying upon it; and thislasts during ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Sometimes the table fastensitself to the floor with such tenacity that its weight seems to bedoubled or tripled. At other times, and almost always when so requestedby one of the sitters, a noise is heard like that of a saw, a hatchet, or a pencil at work. These are physical effects, which have beenobserved, and prove undeniably the existence of an unknown force. 

This force is physical. If one perceived only movements devoid ofpurpose, blind and irrelevant, or movements only in sympathy with thewill of the assistant, one might rest in the conclusion that there is anew and unknown force, which, mayhap, is a transmutation of one's ownnervous energy, derived from organic electricity, and this fact initself would be important; but the blows are apparently struck insidethe wooden substance of the table, and the movements are in response toquestions put to invisible beings. 

In this way did the phenomena begin in 1848, in the United States, whenthe Misses Fox heard, in their chamber, the noise of raps within thewalls and furniture. When their father, after several months ofvexatious inquiry, at last bethought himself of old ghost stories, andappealed to the cause of these noises, the cause answered the questionsasked, by means of certain raps agreed upon, and declared itself to bethe soul of a former proprietor, killed in that very house. This soulasked for their prayers, and for the burial of its former body. 

Is this invisible cause within us, or is it outside of ourselves? Are wecapable of doubling ourselves in some way, yet without knowing it, --ofunconsciously giving, by mental suggestion, the answers to our ownquestions, and of so producing certain physical effects without beingaware of it? Again, is there around us an intelligent atmosphere, a sortof spiritual cosmos? or are there invisible beings, who are not human, but so many gnomes, hobgoblins, or imps?--for such an invisible worldmay exist around us. Finally can these effects really come from thesouls of the departed, who are able to return from the other world? Andwhere is this other world? Four hypotheses thus present themselves. 

The lifting of a table, the displacement of an object, might beattributed to an unknown force, developed by our nervous systems, or bysome other means; at any rate, these movements do not prove theexistence of an outside spirit. But when--by naming the letters of thealphabet or by pointing to them on a tablet--the table, by certainsounds in the wood, or by certain tips, composes an intelligentparagraph, we are compelled to attribute this intelligent effect to anintelligent cause. The medium himself may be the cause; and the easiestway would evidently be to admit that he is tricking us, either by simplystriking the leg of the table with his foot, if he operates by raps, orby directing the movements of the table, through bearing upon it more orless heavily. 

This, indeed, happens very often, and is what discourages so manyinquirers. 

There are conditions, however, in which fraud is not supposable. Thefact that phenomena can be counterfeited is no reason for concludingthey do not exist. In experiments with magnetism and hypnoticsuggestion, many delusions beset the experimenters, and there is more orless intentional foolery on the part of the subjects. Thus have I seen, at the prison-hospital of Salpétrière and elsewhere, young womenoutrageously deceiving the most serious investigators, who did not inthe least suspect such insincerity. At market fairs there may often beseen booths where sleepwalkers are exhibited, who simulate genuinesomnambulism more or less cleverly. Yet one would palpably err whoshould deny the existence of real magnetism, somnambulism, or hypnoticsuggestion, because of these humbugs and mockeries. 

Let us, therefore, pass by fraud, and examine cases where all theexperimenters knew one another, and did not knowingly deceive, and thuslet us consider a series of observed facts. Here are some communicationsfor which I can vouch. They are sentences, dictated by raps:

 God does not enlighten the world with thunder and meteors. He controls peacefully the stars which shine. Thus do divine revelations follow one another, with order, reason, and harmony. 

 Religion and Friendship are two companions, who help us along life's painful road. 

 My brother: in the Law [this communication was addressed to an Israelite] revive thy memory! Saul came to the Pythoness of Endor, and begged her to raise the spirit of Samuel; and the spirit of Samuel appeared, announcing to the King the nation's destiny and his own. (1 Samuel xxviii. ) "The spirit [wind] bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. " (John iii. 8. )

This New Testament text was the more remarkable because it was writtenin Latin. Here, therefore, are intelligible sentences and accuratequotations. Could blind chance have composed them? Without forgettingpossible imposition, our hypotheses still await explication. 

Here are other specimens which demand a certain astuteness and decidedmental struggle for their dictation. One paragraph begins thus: _Suovimrap engèr_. The other: _Arevèlé suov neib_. It is necessary to spellthese two phrases backward, commencing at the end. Here the hypothesisof mental suggestion becomes very complicated, as also the theory ofenvironment, and would imply special adroitness in the medium. Someoneasked: "Why have you dictated thus?" The power replied: "In order togive you marvellous and unexpected evidence. "

Here is another communication of a different kind, beginning, _Aimairsvn oo uu ssevt_. To the demand what this bizarre assemblage of letterssignified, the answer came: "Read every alternate letter!" Thisarrangement brought out these four lines:--

 Amis, nous vous aimons bien tous, Car vous êtes bons et fidèles. Soyez unis en Dieu; sur vous L'Esprit Saint étendra ses ailes. 

This stanza may be translated thus:

 You one and all, oh friends, we love, For you are good, and faithful tread. Be one in God; and then above The Holy Ghost his wings will spread. 

Surely this is sufficiently innocent of poetic pretension; but the modeof dictation was decidedly difficult. This somewhat reduced, as itseemed to us, the supposition of fraud, but did not altogether destroyit. 

A communication of a yet different kind is an imitation of Rabelais, which is not so badly done, but cannot be well translated into English, because of its grotesque and idiomatic character. 

As to the identity of spirits, even if it could be demonstrated that thepreceding quotations emanated from disembodied minds, this would not bea sufficient reason for admitting that the signatures are not entirelyapocryphal. 

5

In a great many cases, too long to be reported in this essay, where thecommunicating cause has declared itself to be the soul of a certain deadperson, --of a father, a mother, a child, or a kinsman, --names, dates, and details were given, which were absolutely in accordance with factswhereof the medium was ignorant; but in the cases where the identityappeared to be best indicated, the questioner had his hands resting onthe table, repeated the alphabet, and might have unconsciously inducedthe result. You try to invoke a man who bore, let us suppose, the nameof Charles. When the letter _c_ is pronounced, you exercise yourinfluence without knowing it. If the experiment is made by rocking thetable; you exercise a different pressure at that particular moment. Ifthe communication is by raps, and the letter passes without the expectedsound, you naturally allow it to be seen that there is a mistake. Wedeceive ourselves without being aware of it. This frequently happened tome during two years with this word Charles, which was the name of mymother's brother, living in New Orleans. During those two years he toldme how he died; yet at that very time he was in the vigor of life. Thiswas in 1860 and 1861, and he did not pass away till 1864. We had, therefore, been the dupes of an illusion. 

Auto-suggestion, or self-suggestion, is also extremely frequent in theseexperiments, as well as with writing mediums. I have before my eyes somecharming fables, published by Monsieur Jaubert, President of the CivilTribunal of Carcassonne, and some delicate poems, obtained throughplanchette, by P. F. Mathieu, --besides some historic and philosophicalworks, --all leading to the conclusion that these mediums have writtenunder their own influence; or, at best, affording no scientific proof ofa foreign influence. 

There remain still unexplained the raps, and the motion of objects moreor less heavy. On this point I fully share the opinion of the greatchemist, Mr. Crookes, who says:

 When manifestations of this kind are exhibited, this remark is generally made: "Why do tables and chairs alone show these effects? Why is this the peculiar property of furniture?"

 I might reply that I am simply observing and reporting facts, and that I need not enter into the _whys_ and _wherefores_. Nevertheless it seems clear that if, in an ordinary dining-room, any heavy inanimate body is to be lifted from the floor, it cannot very well be anything except a table or a chair. I have numerous proofs that this property does not appertain alone to articles of furniture; but in this, as in other experimental demonstrations, the intelligence or force--whichever it be that produces these phenomena, --cannot choose but use objects appropriate to its ends. 

 At different times during my researches I have heard delicate raps, which sounded as if produced by a pin's point; a cascade of piercing sounds, like those of a machine in full motion; detonations in the air; light and acute metallic taps; cracking noises, like those produced by a floor-polishing machine; sounds which resembled scratching; warbling, like that of birds. 

 Each of these noises, which I have tested through different mediums, had its special peculiarity. With Mr. Home they were more varied; but, in strength and regularity, I have heard no sounds which could approach those which came through Miss Kate Fox. During several months I had the pleasure, on almost innumerable occasions, of testing the varying phenomena which took place in the presence of this lady, and it was the sounds which I specially studied. It is usually necessary with other mediums, in a regular séance, to sit awhile before anything is heard; but with Miss Fox it seems to be merely necessary to place her hand on something, no matter what, for the sounds to manifest themselves like a triplicated echo, and sometimes loud enough to be noticeable across several intervening rooms. 

 I have heard some of these noises produced in a living tree, in a large pane of glass, on a stretched wire, on a tambourine, on the roof of a cab, and in the box of a theatre. Moreover, immediate contact is not always necessary. I have heard these noises proceeding from the flooring and walls, when the medium's hands and feet were tied, when he was standing on a chair, when he was in a swing suspended from the ceiling, when he was imprisoned in an iron cage, and when he lay in a swoon on a sofa. I have heard them proceed from musical glasses. I have felt them on my own shoulders, and under my own hands. I have heard them on a piece of paper, fastened between the fingers by a string through the corner of the sheet. With a full knowledge of the numerous theories which have been brought forward to explain these sounds, especially in America, I have tested them in every way I could devise, until it was no longer possible to escape the conviction that these sounds were real, and produced neither by fraud nor by mechanical means. 

 An important question forces itself upon our attention: Are these movements and noises governed by intelligence? From the very beginning of my investigations I have satisfied myself that the power producing these phenomena was not simply blind force, but that some intelligence directed it, or at least was associated with it. The noises, whereof I have spoken, were repeated a determinate number of times. They became either strong or feeble, at my request, and came from different places. By a vocabulary of signals previously agreed upon, the power answered questions, and gave messages with more or less accuracy. 

 The intelligence governing these phenomena is sometimes obviously inferior to that of the medium, and is often in direct opposition to his wishes. When a determination has been reached to do something which could not be regarded as quite reasonable, I have seen communications urging a reconsideration of the matter. This intelligence is at times of such a character that one is forced to believe it does not emanate from any person present. (Researches in Spiritualism, by William Crookes. )

This last sentence might be slightly modified, and the words _forced tobelieve_ might be replaced by the words _disposed to believe_; for humannature is complex, and we are not perpetually the same, even toourselves. What uncertainty we often find in our own opinions, uponpoints not yet elucidated; and this we feel, even when called upon tojudge actions or events! Are we not sometimes contradictions toourselves?

Among the experiments made with these physical and psychicalmanifestations of the tables, I will mention, as among the best, thoseof Count de Gasparin, and of my sympathetic friend, Eugene Nus. TheCount has obtained rotations, upliftings, raps, revelations of numberspreviously thought of, movements without any human contact, and so on. He concludes that human beings are endowed with a fluid, with an unknownforce, with an agency capable of impressing objects with the actiondetermined by our wills. (On Table-turning, Supernaturalism in General, and Spirits. )

Eugene Nus has obtained, besides sentences dictated by the table, certain philosophic definitions given almost invariably in exactly adozen words each. Here are some of them:

 Geology: Studies in the transformation of the planets in their periods of revolution. 

 Astronomy: Order and harmony of the external life of worlds, individually and collectively. 

 Love: The pivot of mortal passion; attractive sexual force; the element of continuity. 

 Death: Cessation of individuality, disintegration of its elements, a return to universal life. 

Let us note, in passing, the strangely singular fact of a departed souldeclaring that death is always the cessation of individuality!

There are whole pages of this kind. Eugene Nus had, as companions in hisexperiments, Antony Méray, Toussenel, Franchot, Courbebaisse, a wholegroup of transcendental socialists. Well, this is absolutely thelanguage of Fourier. The words _aroma_, _passional_, _solidarity_, _clavier_, _composite_, _association_, _harmony_, _pivotal force_, arein the vocabulary of the table. The author therefore inclines towardsthe following explanation, as given in his Choses de l'Outre Monde(Things of the Other World), Volume I. Paris, 1887. 

 Mysterious forces residing in human nature; emanations from inmost potentiality, unknown till our day; the duplication of our experimental power, which gives ability to think and act outside ourselves. 

(_To be concluded in July Arena. _)

THE CHIVALRY OF THE PRESS. 

BY JULIUS CHAMBERS. 

[Illustration: (signed) Yours sincerely: Julius Chambers]

In the splendid days of Rome, the editor was he who introduced thegladiators as they entered the arena to fight the tigers. 

To-day, the editor directs the newspaper and he often affects to believethat his mission on earth is to fight the tiger himself. 

The editor of this class is a barbarian who forgets that Rome is only amemory. 

The successful editor of to-day recognizes the fact that the newspaperexists to amuse and instruct, to uphold public honor and private virtuequite as much as to denounce fraud or expose official corruption. Thenewspaper is powerful exactly in proportion as it is successful inrepresenting the people who read it; in following, rather thandictating, their line of policy; and, whether it exists for the peopleor not, it certainly endures only by their sufferance and good-will. Therefore, it is well that we consider the relations of the people atlarge to the newspaper; then, the editor's relation to his neighbors, the public; and, finally, the chivalry of editors toward each other. 

The newspaper is so large a part of our modern life that it would betrivial to argue the question whether it can be dispensed with. Men wholive abreast of the age cannot consent to miss a single day's communionwith the news of the world. The non-arrival of the mail will render anactive man absent from town utterly miserable. The purchaser of thedaily newspaper of to-day receives for the price of a half yard ofcalico a manufactured article that has required the employment ofmillions of capital to produce, --to say nothing of genius to sustain. 

And he is often somewhat grateful. 

But the chivalry of the public toward the newspaper is peculiar. Thepublic would appear to believe that anything it can coax, wheedle, orextort from the newspaper is fair salvage from the necessaryexpenditures of life. 

Recently I listened in amazement to the Rev. Robert Collyer boast at aCornell University dinner of having beguiled the newspapers of thecountry. He told how he had schemed and got money to build a new churchafter the Chicago fire. He did not make it very clear that the civilizedmembers of his race clamored for the new edifice, but he made painfullyapparent his ideas of chivalry to the press. 

"In this matter, " he began, "I have always been proud of the way inwhich I 'worked the newspapers. ' I succeeded in raising the money, because I coaxed the editors into coöperating with me. I wrote longpuffs about the congregation and its pastor, and got them printed. ThenI hurried 'round with the subscription list and a copy of the paper. "

Of course, this was all said good-naturedly, was meant to be funny, andwas uttered from a public rostrum with an utter obliviousness to themental obliquity that a moment's thought will disclose. It left upon mymind much the same impression as that once made by hearing an apparentlyrespectable man boast of having stolen an umbrella out of a hotel rack. 

Later in the evening, when the reverend gentleman occupied a seat nearmine, I asked, with as much naiveté as I could command, if he had"worked" the plumbers, the architects, the masons, the carpenters, andthe bell-founders? To each of these questions he returned a regretful, "No. "

Despite his apparent innocence regarding the purport of my inquiry, Idoubt if this gentleman would have boasted that he secured his clothesfor nothing, that he wheedled his chops from his butcher, or coaxed hisgroceries from the shopkeeper at the corner of his street. 

And yet, he spoke with condescension of the editor and his means oflivelihood!

Theoretically, the editor is the public's mutton. Men who know him boastof their influence with him, and over him. They dictate his policy forhim--or say they do, which, of course, is the same thing. Men who neversaw him claim to own him. Strangers, casually introduced, ask himquestions about his personal affairs that would be instantly resented inany other walk of life. 

An experience of my own will illustrate what I mean. At a country house, near Philadelphia, I was introduced to a respectable-looking old man. Inthe period following dinner, as we sat on the porch to enjoy a smoke, this stranger interrogated me in the most offensive way. When he hadpaused for breath I gave him a dose of his own medicine. "The deadlyparallel" column will tell the story. 

 WHAT HE ASKED. WHAT I ASKED. 

 I hear you are an editor? I am told you are a hatter?

 Do most newspapers pay? Is hat-making profitable?

 How much do editors earn? How much does your business net you yearly?

 You began as a reporter? Grew up in the trade?

 Does it require any You can "block a hat while I wait"? education to be a reporter?

 Do you write shorthand? You can handle a hot goose?

 Eh? used to? Could once?

 Please write some: let's Please take this hat and show me how see how it looks? it is put together. 

 Curious-looking Have seen a great many queerly shaped characters, aren't they? hats in your time, no doubt?

 How many columns can you How many hats can you make in a day? write a day?

 Do you write by the column? Do you work by the piece?

 What? Don't write at all? Ah? Don't work any longer? Supposed every How strange!--and so on. Hatter made his own hats!--and so on. 

The editor may be to blame for this state of things; but if so, hisgood-nature is responsible. He endures more than other men. He is oftenworried by the troubles of other people; but he never has been weanedfrom the milk of human kindness. He may be over-persuaded, he may bedeceived, and editors have been fooled, like judge and jurors, by theperjured affidavit of apparently honorable men--but he still continuesto believe in mankind. 

The chivalry of the politician toward the press is comprehended to anicety by every man who has served as a newspaper correspondent atWashington. 

The average congressman thinks it clever to deceive a newspaper editoror correspondent. He believes they are to be "used, " whenever possible, for the congressman's advantage. A correspondent is to be tricked orcajoled into praising the statesman, revising the bad English in hisspeeches, "saving the country and--the appropriations. " All thecharities require and demand his aid, and, I am ashamed to say (knowingas I do what a hollow mockery some of the alleged charities really are), generally get the assistance they ask. 

The chivalry of the press toward the public is unquestionable. Theeditor keeps awake nearly all night to serve it, and the facts are notaltered because in best serving the public he serves himself. 

Journalism, I regret to say, is often spoken of as a "profession, " andwhile we may accept the plebeian word "journalism, " as describing adaily labor, I sincerely desire to enter a protest against itsdesignation as a profession. It seems entirely proper to me that thisword be relegated to the pedagogue, the chiropodist, and thebarn-storming actor who so boldly assert a right to its use. 

The making of the newspaper is a mechanical art. It matters very littlehow much intelligence--or genius, if you prefer the word--enters intoits production, the inter-dependence of the so-called "intellectual"branch of the paper upon its mechanical adjuncts is so great that itcannot be maintained that the manufactured article offered to purchasersin the shape of a newspaper is the product of any one lobe of braintissue. Of what value are a hundred thousand copies of the bestnewspaper in this land, edited, revised and printed, if its circulationdepartment break down at the critical moment? And what about thenewsman? Who shall say that he does not belong to journalism? He's tothe service what the Don Cossack is to the Russian hosts. He's theCossack of journalism--our Cossack of the dawn!

While it is easy to determine the point at which the newspaper beginsits existence, it would be very difficult indeed to decide exactly whereit receives its finishing touches. For years, geographers wrangledregarding the point at which the day began. In other words, this beingMonday, they quarrelled regarding the point at which the sun ceased toshine on Monday, and began to shine on Tuesday. 

Philosophers who have discussed the nice points of the daily newspapershave claimed that it dates its origin from the paper mill; but I fail tosee why, if we are to go back to the paper mill, we shall not go muchfurther and seek the component parts from which the paper is originallymade, showing at once the absurdity of any such an assumption. While notinclined to argue this point, it is my humble judgment that thenewspaper begins its existence the moment the managing editor opens hisdesk for the day's work. He is its main-spring! Whatever of distinctivecharacter it possesses in methods of handling the news of the day itowes to him, and it is these very features that render one journalbetter or worse than others. He it is, as a rule, who establishes thechivalry of the press toward the public. It is he who decides the lineof attack or defense when the vast interests which he represents areassailed. 

The peculiar kind of mind required for such a post is probably notdeveloped in any other known business. The longer a man has served theart, the more confidently he trusts to intuition and distrusts adecision based wholly upon experience. Several of the worst blundersever made in American journalism have been committed after a carefulstudy of the historical precedents. Throughout all his troubles, however, all his anxieties by day and by night--because hisresponsibilities never end--the managing editor's thoughts areconstantly dwelling upon the public service that may be rendered to thereading constituency behind him. 

The executive head of a newspaper, great or small, lives in a glasshouse, with all the world for critics. Every act, no matter how suddenlyforced upon him, no matter how careful his judgment, is open to thecriticism of every person who reads his paper. The columns of printedmatter are the windows of his soul. 

These thoughts are all in the line of duty, somewhat selfish in theircharacter, perhaps (because fidelity to the public is the only secret ofsuccess); but the sense of chivalry is there, --should be there and seenof all men, on every page of the printed sheet. 

This idea of the newspaper's duty to the public is a comparatively newphase of the journalistic art. It has arisen since the brilliant RoundTable days of Bennett, Greeley, Webb, Prentice, and Raymond. Theirstandards were high. Their energy was tremendous. And when they came toblows the combat was terrific. But Greeley, the last survivor, found hisCamlan in 1872. He was ambushed and came to his end much as King Arthurfrom a race that he had trusted and defended. In Greeley's defeat forthe Presidency all theorists who had dwelt upon the so-called "Power ofthe Press" received a shuddering blow. The men who had affected tobelieve that the press could make and unmake destinies began to count ontheir fingers the few newspapers that had opposed Horace Greeley. Totheir amazement they found that, excepting one journal in themetropolis, every daily paper in the land whose editor or chiefstockholder did not hold a public office was marshalled in his support. The echoes of their enthusiasm can be heard even to this day. Some ofthose editors ranted and roared like Sir Toby Belch; but theprofessional politicians, serene and complacent as gulligut friars, sawtheir editorial antagonists routed--cakes, ale, and wine-coolers. 

To the believers in printer's ink, that presidential campaign was arevelation. Mr. Greeley was the most thoroughly defeated candidate thiscountry has ever known. 

I remember the period well, for I was a reporter on the _Tribune_, andas a correspondent travelled from Minnesota to Louisiana. It seemedutterly impossible in May that Mr. Greeley could fail of election; inSeptember, his defeat was assured. That revolt of the people against thedictation of the newspapers was momentous in its results. Theindependent voter thoroughly asserted himself, and those editors whocould be taught by the incident knew that the people resented theirleadership. The one sad and pitiful thing about the affair was theingratitude of the negro race. They deserted their apostle and champion. (I speak frankly, for I was born an abolitionist. )

Throughout the Civil War, the newspapers had harangued, badgered, anddictated; had bolstered up or destroyed men, character, and measures. Itwas well, perhaps, that the men who directed these same newspapersshould be taught a severe lesson. 

Without doubt, the stormy period in which Greeley, Bennett, Prentice, Webb, and Raymond tilted, was necessary as a preparatory era to the morebrilliant age of chivalry that succeeded! We as a people were younger injournalism than in any other intellectual or mechanical art. Greatstatesmen had been grown in plenty--the very birth of the nation hadfound them full-fledged. A constellation of brilliant preachers of theGospel and expounders of the law are remembered. We can all name themover from Jonathan Edwards to Theodore Parker and from John Marshall toRufus Choate. Great mercantile families had been created, such as theAstors, the Grinells, the Bakers, Howlands, Aspinwalls, and Claflins. 

Large fortunes had been amassed in commerce; but not an editor had beenable to accumulate money enough to keep his own carriage!

Journalism languished until about 1840. The great public did not seem torequire editors. The people of New York, possibly, persisted inremembering that the first man in this country to write an editorialarticle had been hanged in the City Hall Park. He had died heroically, immortalizing the occasion when he said: "I regret that I have only onelife to give for my country. " But some people believed he had suffereddeath because he wrote editorial articles. 

The art of making the newspaper steadily gained in public appreciation. To employ the simile chivalric, its young squires were changed intofull-fledged knights by the propagation of a new idea, a new aim--therendering of public service! True enough, the motto of the noblestEnglish princedom, "_Ich dien!_" acknowledges the high duty of service;but, when proclaimed as a journalistic duty it took the form of a newtender of fidelity from the best men at court to the people at large. Itwas so accepted, and has drawn the people and the press closer together. It was as if these true knights drew their weapons before the public eyeand offered a new pledge of fidelity in the thrilling old Norman usageof the word "_Service!_"

A gleam of something higher and nobler than mere swashbuckling was inevery editorial eye. The idea developed, as did the nobility and purityof Chivalry under Godfrey, the Agamemnon of Tasso. In all trulyrepresentative editorial minds the feeling grew that any power whichtheir arms or training gave them should be exercised in the defense ofthe weak and oppressed. They renewed the old vow: "To maintain the justrights of such as are unable to defend themselves. " It was a greatstep--as far-reaching in its results as was the promulgation of thatoath in the age of Chivalry. 

At this point rose the reporter. He had been recognized for years as thecoming servitor of the press. But a few of him in the early days hadbeen dissolute, had written without proper regard to facts, and hadbrought discredit not only on himself but the chivalry which othersbelieved in. He began to brace up, to pull himself together, to bebetter educated, to dress in excellent taste, and, above all, to writebetter copy. Henry Murger had published a series of sketches under thetitle "_Scenes de La Vie de Bohéme_. " These few pictures described theParis life of that period, beyond a doubt; but here in New York a fewbright men sought to revive the spirit and the _couleur de rose_ of theQuartier Latin. It was a clever idea, but it didn't last. 

In one of the bleakest corners of the old graveyard at Nantucket standsa monument to Henry Clapp, the presiding genius of the Bohemian Clubthat sat for so many years in Phaff's cellar on Broadway. Its rollcontained many of the brightest names known in the history of theAmerican press. They were true Bohemians, --once defined by GeorgeWilliam Curtis as the "literary men who had a divine contempt forto-morrow. " How cleverly those choice spirits wrote and talked abouttheir lives away back in the fifties. Get a file of the New York_Figaro_, or some of the Easy Chair papers in _Harper's_ of that period, and enjoy their cloud-land life! I only quote one sentence and it isfrom "the Chair, " though I half suspect Fitz James O'Brien, rather thanGeorge William Curtis, penned it:--

 "Bohemia is a roving kingdom--a realm in the air, like Arthur's England. It sometimes happens that, as a gipsy's child turns out to be a prince's child, who, perforce, dwells in a palace, so the Bohemian is found in a fine house and high society. Bohemia is a fairyland on this hard earth. It is Arcadia in New York. "

Ah! yes, this is all very beautiful, but rent had to be paid; and theliterary workers of to-day never forget that journalism is the onlybranch of literature that from the outset enables a man to live and payhis way. And yet when we remember Henry Clapp, Fitz James O'Brien, N. G. Shepherd, and Ned Wilkins, we feel that every working newspaper man isbetter to-day because they struggled and starved; because they lived inthe free air of Bohemia. 

With the worker in the art, "the struggle for existence" begins with hisfirst day's apprentice task as a reporter. No man ever became ajournalist who did not serve that apprenticeship. There is no hope forhim outside of complete success. It requires several years for him tolearn to get news and to properly write it. One failure will blight hisentire career. Unlike any other commercial commodity, news once lostcannot be recouped. 

Dr. Samuel Johnson was the first Parliamentary reporter. He got a listof the speakers, then went to his lodgings in a dingy court off FleetStreet and wrote out speeches for the Lords and the Commons. He did thisfor years and not one of the men so honored is on record as havingdenied the accuracy of the report(?). Dr. Johnson made the reputationsof half a dozen men who are to-day mentioned among the great Englishorators. They were honorable men, as the world goes, but not one ofthem, except Edmund Burke, ever acknowledged his indebtedness to SamuelJohnson. I never have known a senator or congressman to thank aWashington correspondent for making his speech presentable to educatedeyes. He has been known to grow warm in praise of all classes ofhumanity, from Tipperary to Muscovy, but never a word of commendationescapes his lips for a newspaper man. He believes in philanthropy, butas Napoleon said to Talleyrand, he "wants it to be a long way off!" (_Jeveux seulement que ce soit de la philanthropie lointaine. _)

With the rise of journalistic chivalry came the search for news. Itbecame a precious prize. The special correspondent and reporter soughtit. Truth was to be rescued from oblivion! Facts began to be hunted forlike the ambergris and ivory of commerce. At first the search resembledthe quest for the Oracle of the Holy Bottle, --a test as to the public'sopinion of news. What kind of service did the public want? Adventurefollowed, as a matter of course, but love of adventure was not theimpelling motive. 

The American newspaper, like the American railroad, developed along newlines. Girardin, who had created all that is worth considering in theFrench press, had pinned his faith to the _feuilleton_ and the snappyeditorial article, with its "one idea only. " News was of no account. Inthe English journal, the supremacy of the editorial page was assertedand maintained. News was desirable but secondary; and there was no hurryabout obtaining it. In the Spanish press blossomed--and has ever sincebloomed--the paragraph. News was a good thing, if it could be told in afew lines, but generally, alas, dangerous. A paragraph must only be longenough to allow a cigarette to go out while you were reading it. Waxmatches cost only a cuarta per box, but cigarettes were expensive. Beaumarchais understood the Spanish press when he put the famous epigraminto "Figaro's" lips: "So long as you print nothing, you may printanything. "

The chivalry of the editor toward his "esteemed contemporary" is a sadand solemn phase of this true commentary. 

After you have carefully reread the "editorial" pages of twometropolitan journals from 1841 to date, and remember that thecontemporaries of Guttenberg called printing "the black art, " you willmarvel that public opinion has ever changed. If the contemporaries ofthe old Nuremberg printer had lived in 1882, and taken in the _Tribune_of February 25th, they would have gone out to gather faggots to roast aneditor. The excuse for one of the most savage attacks ever made by oneAmerican editor upon another was that a rival had printed a privatetelegram, sent by an editor to the chief magistrate of the nation, whichhad found its way into wrong hands or had been "taken off the wires, " asmany other messages had been before. And yet, young as I am, I rememberthat in 1871, the treaty of Washington was "acquired" by means even morequestionable and printed entire, to the confusion and indignation of theUnited States Senators. The very same editor laid down a dictum that wasthought to be very clever at the time: "It is the duty of ourcorrespondents to get the news; it is the business of other people tokeep their own secrets. " This was all very well in 1871, but in 1882, the moral "lay in the application on it. "

From the very moment in which the American newspaper attained a definitepolicy and impulse, its direction has been forward, and it has dailygrown in wealth and popular respect. 

I have called the special correspondent the knight errant of thenewspaper. Let me prove it. The greatest, noblest of them all was J. A. MacGahan, of Khiva and San Stefano. He was an American, born in PerryCounty, Ohio. I can sketch his career in a few brief sentences: He wasat law-school in Brussels when the Franco-Prussian war burst uponEurope, in 1870. Having had some experience as a writer for the press, he entered the field at once. Danger and suffering were his, though hedid not achieve renown in that brief campaign. He then made hismemorable ride to Khiva, and wrote the best book on Central Asia knownto our language. Another turn of the wheel found him in Cuba describingthe Virginius complications. There I first met him. Thence he returnedto England, and sailed with Captain Young in the Pandora to the Arcticregions, making the last search undertaken for the lost crew of Sir JohnFranklin's expedition. MacGahan returned to London in the spring of 1876in time to read in the newspapers brief despatches from Turkeyrecounting the reported atrocities of the Bashi-Bazouks. He determinedat once to go to Bulgaria. In a month's time, he had put a new face onthe "Eastern Question. " The great trouble between Christian and Turk wasno longer confined to "the petty quarrel of a few monks over a key and asilver star, " as defined by the late Mr. Kinglake, but assumedproportions that could be discerned in every club and in everydrawing-room of Imperial London. MacGahan had begun his memorable ride, the results of which will endure as long as Christianity! He visitedBatak and painted in cold type what he saw. He caused the shrieks of thedying girls in the pillaged towns of Bulgaria to be heard throughoutChristian Europe. A Tory minister, stanch in his fidelity to the"unspeakable Turk, " sent its fleet to the Dardanelles, but dared notland a man or fire a single gun. Popular England repudiated its oldally. And MacGahan rode onward and wrote sheaves of letters. In everyhamlet he passed through, he said: "The Czar will avenge this! Courage, people; he will come!"

From that time history was made as by a cyclone. The Russian hosts weremobilized at Kischeneff, and the Czar of all the Russias reviewed them. Then the order to cross the Pruth was given, as MacGahan had foretold;our Knight Errant rode with the advanced guard. Through the changingfortune of the war, grave and gay, he passed. Much of his work, nowpreserved in permanent form, is the best of its kind in our language. The assault of Skobeleff on the Gravitza redoubt was immortalized byMacGahan's pen. When Plevna fell, our hero was in the van during the madrush toward the Bosphorus. The triumphant advance was never checkeduntil the spires and minarets of Constantinople were in sight. Bulgariawas redeemed, the power of the Turk in Europe was broken, theaggrandizement of Russia was complete--and all because J. A. MacGahanhad lived and striven. 

At San Stefano, a suburb of the capital, on the Sea of Marmora, our herodied of fever. Skobeleff, whose friendship dated back to the KirgitzSteppe and the Khivan conquest, closed his eyes and was chief mourner athis grave. To-day on the anniversary of his death, prayers for therepose of his soul are said in every hamlet throughout Bulgaria. Hisservice to the newspaper and to the civilized world extended over lessthan eight years, but he accomplished for the public the work of alifetime. 

Hail to his memory! His was the chivalry of the press!

For years the name of Latour d'Auvergne, "first grenadier of France, "was called at nightfall in every regiment of the Imperial GrenadierGuard. When the name was heard, the first grenadier in the rank wouldanswer, "_Mort--sur le champ de bataille_. "

So, when the roll is called of those that have added to the chivalry andglory of the American press, every fellow-laborer who knew "MacGahan ofKiva and San Stefano" will salute and answer: "Dead--and glorious!"

Philogeny, the new and brilliant science that treats of the developmentof the human race from the animal kingdom, teaches that the history ofthe germ is an epitome of the history of the descent. It is equally truein journalism, that the various forms of discouragement, hope, and finalsuccess through which the individual worker in the art passes, duringhis progress from the reportorial egg-cell to the fully developedexecutive-editorial organism, is a compressed reproduction of the longseries of misfortunes and interferences through which the ancestors ofthe American newspaper of to-day have passed. The simile is true, aye, to the supreme part played by "the struggle for existence!" Under itsinfluence, through the "natural selection" of the public, a new andnobler species of journalism has arisen and now exists. The newspaper ofto-day, evolved from rudimentary forms, is a splendid and heroicorganism; and the last upholder of the dogma of its miraculous creationand infallible power is dead. 

SOCIETY'S EXILES. 

BY B. O. FLOWER. 

It is difficult to over-estimate the gravity of the problem presented bythose compelled to exist in the slums of our populous cities, even whenconsidered from a purely economic point of view. From the midst of thiscommonwealth of degradation there goes forth a moral contagion, scourging society in all its ramifications, coupled with an atmosphereof physical decay--an atmosphere reeking with filth, heavy with foulodors, laden with disease. In time of any contagion the social cellarbecomes the hotbed of death, sending forth myriads of fatal germs whichpermeate the air for miles around, causing thousands to die becausesociety is too short-sighted to understand that the interest of itshumblest member is the interest of all. The slums of our cities are thereservoirs of physical and moral death, an enormous expense to theState, a constant menace to society, a reality whose shadow is at oncecolossal and portentous. In time of social upheavals they will provemagazines of destruction; for while revolution will not originate inthem, once let a popular uprising take form and the cellars willreinforce it in a manner more terrible than words can portray. Considered ethically, the problem is even more embarrassing anddeplorable; here, as nowhere else in civilized society, thousands of ourfellowmen are exiled from the enjoyments of civilization, forced intolife's lowest strata of existence, branded with that fatal word scum. Ifthey aspire to rise, society shrinks from them; they seem of anotherworld; they are of another world; driven into the darkness of a hopelessexistence, viewed much as were lepers in olden times. Over their headsperpetually rests the dread of eviction, of sickness, and of failure toobtain sufficient work to keep life in the forms of their loved ones, making existence a perpetual nightmare, from which death alone bringsrelease. Say not that they do not feel this; I have talked with them; Ihave seen the agony born of a fear that rests heavy on their soulsstamped in their wrinkled faces and peering forth from great patheticeyes. For them winter has real terror, for they possess neither clothesto keep comfortable the body, nor means with which to properly warmtheir miserable tenements. Summer is scarcely less frightful in theirquarters, with the heat at once stifling, suffocating, almostintolerable; heat which acting on the myriad germs of disease producesfever, often ending in death, or, what is still more dreaded, chronicinvalidism. Starvation, misery, and vice, trinity of despair, haunttheir every step. The Golden Rule, --the foundation of true civilization, the keynote of human happiness, --reaches not their wretched quarters. Placed by society under the ban, life is one long and terrible night. But tragic as is the fate of the present generation, still moreappalling is the picture when we contemplate the thousands of littlewaves of life yearly washed into the cellar of being; fragile, helplessinnocents, responsible in no way for their presence or environment, yetcondemned to a fate more frightful than the beasts of the field; humanbeings wandering in the dark, existing in the sewer, ever feeling thecrushing weight of the gay world above, which thinks little and caresless for them. Infinitely pathetic is their lot. 

The causes that have operated to produce these conditions are numerousand complex, the most apparent being the immense influx of immigrationfrom the crowded centres of the old world; the glamor of city life, which has allured thousands from the country, fascinating them from afarmuch as the gaudy colors and tinsel before the footlights dazzle thevision of a child; the rapid growth of the saloon, rendered well-nighimpregnable by the wealth of the liquor power; the wonderfullabor-saving inventions, which in the hands of greed and avarice, instead of mitigating the burdens of the people, have greatly augmentedthem, by glutting the market with labor; the opportunities given by thegovernment through grants, special privileges, and protective measuresfor rapid accumulation of wealth by the few; the power which this wealthhas given its possessors over the less fortunate; the spread of thatfevered mental condition which subjects all finer feelings and holieraspirations to the acquisition of gold and the gratification of carnalappetites, and which is manifest in such a startling degree in thegambler's world, which to dignify we call the realm of speculation; thedesire for vulgar ostentation and luxurious indulgence, in a word thefatal fever for gold which has infested the social atmosphere, and takenpossession of hundreds of thousands of our people, chilling theirhearts, benumbing their conscience, choking all divine impulses andrefined sensibilities; the cowardice and lethargy of the Church, whichhas grown rich in gold and poor in the possession of moral energy, whichno longer dares to denounce the money changers, or alarm those who dayby day are anæsthetizing their own souls, while adding to the misery ofthe world. The church has become, to a great extent, subsidized by gold, saying in effect, "I am rich and increased in goods and have need ofnothing, " apparently ignorant of the fact that she "is wretched, poor, blind, and naked, " that she has signally failed in her mission ofestablishing on earth an ideal brotherhood. Instead of lifting herchildren into that lofty spiritual realm where each feels the misery ofhis brother, she has so far surrendered to the mammon of unrighteousnessthat, without the slightest fear of having their consciences disturbed, men find comfort in her soft-cushioned pews, who are wringing from tento thirty per cent. Profit from their fellowmen in the wretched tenementdistricts, or who refuse to pay more than twelve cents a pair for themaking of pants, forty-five cents a dozen for flannel shirts, seventy-five cents a dozen for knee pants, and twenty-five cents a dozenfor neckties. I refer not to the many noble exceptions, but I indict thegreat body of wealthy and fashionable churches, whose ministers do notknow and take no steps to find out the misery that is dependent upon theavarice of their parishioners. Then again back of all this is thedefective education which has developed all save character in man;education which has trained the brain but shriveled the soul. Last butby no means least is land speculation which has resulted in keepinglarge tracts of land idle which otherwise would have blossomed withhappy homes. To these influences we must add the general ignorance ofthe people regarding the nature, extent, and growing proportions of themisery and want in the New World which is spreading as an Eastern plaguein the filth of an oriental city. 

It is not my present purpose to dwell further on the causes which haveproduced these conditions. I wish to bring home to the mind and heart ofthe reader a true conception of life in the slums, by citing typicalcases illustrating a condition prevalent in every great city of theUnion and increasing in its extent every year. I shall confine myself touninvited want as found in civilized Boston, because I am personallyacquainted with the condition of affairs here, and because Boston haslong claimed the proud distinction of being practically free frompoverty. 

I shall briefly describe scenes which fell under my personal observationduring an afternoon tour through the slums of the North End, confiningmyself to a few typical cases which fairly represent the condition ofnumbers of families who are suffering through uninvited poverty, a factwhich I have fully verified by subsequent visits to the wretched homesof our very poor. I purposely omit in this paper describing any membersof that terrible commonwealth where misery, vice, degradation, and crimeare inseparably interwoven. This class belongs to a lower stratum; theyhave graduated downward. Feeling that society's hand is against them, Ishmael-like they raise their hand against society. They complement theuninvited poor; both are largely a product of unjust and inequitablesocial conditions. 

The scenes I am about to describe were witnessed one afternoon in April. The day was sunless and dreary, strangely in keeping with theenvironment of the exiles of society who dwell in the slums. The sobbingrain, the sad, low murmur of the wind under the eaves and through thenarrow alleys, the cheerless frowning sky above, were in perfect harmonywith the pathetic drama of life I was witnessing. Everything seemedpitched in a minor key, save now and then there swelled forth splendidnotes of manly heroism and womanly courage, as boldly contrasting withthe dead level of life as do the full rich notes of Wagner's grandeststrains with the plaintive melody of a simple ballad sung by a shepherdlad. I was accompanied in this instance by the Rev. Walter Swaffield, ofthe Bethel Mission, and his assistant, Rev. W. J. English. 

[Illustration: INVALID IN CHAIR (SEE NOTE). ]

The first building we entered faced a narrow street. The hallway was asdark as the air was foul or the walls filthy. Not a ray or shimmer oflight fell through transoms or skylight. The stairs were narrow andworn. By the aid of matches we were able to grope our way along, andalso to observe more than was pleasant to behold. It was apparent thatthe hallways or stairs were seldom surprised by water, while pure, freshair was evidently as much a stranger as fresh paint. After ascendingseveral flights, we entered a room of undreamed-of wretchedness. On thefloor lay a sick man. [2] He was rather fine-looking, with an intelligentface, bright eyes, and countenance indicative of force of character. Nosign of dissipation, but an expression of sadness, or rather a look ofdumb resignation peered from his expressive eyes. For more than twoyears he has been paralyzed in his lower limbs, and also affected withdropsy. The spectacle of a strong man, with the organs of locomotiondead, is always pathetic; but when the victim of such misfortune is inthe depths of abject poverty, his case assumes a tragic hue. There fortwo years he had lain on a wretched pallet of rags, seeing day by dayand hour by hour his faithful wife tirelessly sewing, and knowing fullwell that health, life, and hope were hourly slipping from her. Thispoor woman supports the invalid husband, her two children, and herself, by making pants at twelve cents a pair. No rest, no surcease, aperpetual grind from early dawn often till far into the night; and whatis more appalling, outraged nature has rebelled; the long months ofsemi-starvation and lack of sleep have brought on rheumatism, which hassettled in the joints of her fingers, so that every stitch means a throbof pain. The afternoon we called, she was completing an enormous pair of_custom-made_ pants of very fine blue cloth, for one of the largestclothing houses in Boston. The suit would probably bring sixty orsixty-five dollars, yet her employer graciously informed his poor whiteslave that as the garment was so large, he would give her an _extracent_. Thirteen cents for fine custom-made pants, manufactured for awealthy firm, which repeatedly asserts that its clothing is not made intenement houses! Thus with one of the most painful diseases enthroned inthat part of the body which must move incessantly from dawn tillmidnight, with two small dependent children and a husband who is utterlypowerless to help her, this poor woman struggles bravely anduncomplainingly, confronted ever by a nameless dread of impendingmisfortune. Eviction, sickness, starvation, --such are the ever-presentspectres, while every year marks the steady encroachment of disease, andthe lowering of the register of vitality. Moreover, from the window ofher soul falls the light of no star athwart the pathway of life. 

 [2] NOTE ON PICTURE OF INVALID IN CHAIR. The picture given in this issue of this apartment represents the poor invalid placed by some friends on a chair while his bed could be made. Our artist preferred to take it this way, knowing that it would bring out the strong face better than if taken on his pallet on the floor, where for two years he has lain. Through The Arena Relief Fund, we have been enabled to greatly relieve the hard lot of this as well as many other families of unfortunates. Now the invalid is provided with a comfortable bedstead, with a deep, soft mattress, and furnished with many other things which contribute to life's comfort. When the bed, mattress, and other articles were being brought into this apartment, the tears of gratitude and joy flowed almost in rivers from the eyes of the patient wife, who felt that even in their obscure den some one in the great world yet cared for them. 

[Illustration: CONSTANCE AND MAGGIE (SEE NOTE). ]

The next place we visited was in the attic of a tenement building evenmore wretched than the one just described. The general aspects of thesehouses, however, are all much the same, the chief difference being indegrees of filth and squalor present. Here in an attic lives a poorwidow with three children, a little boy and two little girls, Constanceand Maggie. [3] They live by making pants at twelve cents a pair. Sincethe youngest child was two and a half years old she has been dailyengaged in overcasting the long seams of the garments made by hermother. When we first called she had just passed her fourth birthday, and now overcasts from three to four pairs of pants every day. Thereseated on a little stool she sat, her fingers moving as rapidly and inas unerring manner as an old experienced needlewoman. These threechildren are fine looking, as are most of the little Portuguese Ivisited. Their large heads and brilliant eyes seem to indicate capacityto enjoy in an unusual degree the matchless delight springing fromintellectual and spiritual development. Yet the wretched walls of theirlittle apartment practically mark the limit of their world; the needletheir inseparable companion; their moral and mental natures hopelesslydwarfed; a world of wonderful possibilities denied them by an inexorablefate over which they have no control and for which they are in no wayresponsible. We often hear it said that these children of the slums areperfectly happy; that not knowing what they miss life is as enjoyable tothem as the young in more favorable quarters. I am satisfied, however, that this is true only in a limited sense. The little children I havejust described are already practically machines; day by day they engagein the same work with much the monotony of an automatic instrumentpropelled by a blind force. When given oranges and cakes, a momentarysmile illumined their countenances, a liquid brightness shot from theireyes, only to be replaced by the solemn, almost stolid, expression whichhas become habitual even on faces so young. This conclusion was stillmore impressively emphasized by the following touching remark of a childof twelve years in another apartment, who was with her mother busilysewing. "I am forty-three years old to-day, " remarked the mother, andsaid Mr. English, "I shall be forty-two next week. " "_Oh, dear_, " brokein the child, "_I should think people would grow SO TIRED of living soMANY YEARS. _" Was utterance ever more pathetic? She spoke in tones ofmingled sadness and weariness, revealing in one breath all the pent-upbitterness of a young life condemned to a slavery intolerable to anyrefined or sensitive nature. Is it strange that people here take todrink? To me it is far more surprising that so many are sober. I amconvinced that, in the slums, far more drunkenness is caused by abjectpoverty and inability to obtain work, than want is produced by drink. Here the physical system, half starved and often chilled, calls forstimulants. Here the horrors of nightmare, which we sometimes sufferduring our sleep, are present during every waking hour. An oppressivefear weighs forever on the mind. Drink offers a temporary relief andsatisfies the craving of the system, besides the environment invitesdissipation and human nature at best is frail. I marvel that there isnot more drunkenness exhibited in the poverty spots of our cities. 

 [3] NOTE ON PICTURE OF CONSTANCE AND MAGGIE. When Mr. Swaffield first visited this little family he found them in the most abject want; a pot of boiling water, in which the mother was stirring a handful of meal, constituting their only food. Their clothing was thin and worn almost to shreds; their apartment but slightly heated; half of all they could earn, even when all were well and work good, had to go for their rent, leaving only one dollar and twenty-five cents a week to feed and clothe four persons. The day we first called they were poorly clothed, with sorry apologies for dresses and shoes laughing at the toes. In the picture we reproduce, they are neatly dressed and well shod from money contributed by liberal-hearted friends to The Arena Relief Fund. 

[Illustration: CELLARWAY LEADING TO UNDER-GROUND APARTMENTS (SEE NOTE). ]

[Illustration: SICK MAN IN UNDER-GROUND APARTMENT (SEE NOTE). ]

[Illustration: PORTUGUESE WIDOW AND THREE CHILDREN (SEE NOTE). ]

[Illustration: WIDOW AND TWO CHILDREN IN UNDER-GROUND TENEMENT (SEE NOTE). ]

[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF A NORTH END TENEMENT HOUSE (SEE NOTE). ]

Among the places we visited were a number of cellars or burrows. Wedescended several steps into dark, narrow passage-ways, [4] leading tocold, damp rooms, in many of which no direct ray of sunshine evercreeps. We entered a room filled with a bed, cooking stove, rack ofdirty clothes and numerous chairs, of which the most one could say wasthat their backs were still sound and which probably had been donated bypersons who could no longer use them. On the bed lay a man who has beenill for three months with rheumatism. This family consists of father, mother, and a large daughter, all of whom are compelled to occupy onebed. They eat, cook, live, and sleep in this wretched cellar and payover fifty dollars a year rent. This is a typical illustration of lifein this underground world. 

 [4] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OF CELLARWAY LEADING INTO PARTIALLY UNDERGROUND APARTMENT. This passage-way is several steps down from the court or alley-way, and leads to the apartment seen in accompanying picture. There are many of these dark cellarways leading to underground tenements. 

 NOTE ON PICTURE OF A SICK MAN IN UNDERGROUND TENEMENT. Leading off the cellar-way shown above, is a tenement shown in this illustration. It consists of one room, over the bed the ceiling slants toward the street, and above the ceiling are the steps leading to the tenements above. In this one room lives the sick man, who for a long time, has been confined to his bed with rheumatism; his wife and a daughter are compelled to occupy the one bed with him, while the small sunless room is their only kitchen, laundry, living room, parlor, and bedroom. 

 NOTE ON PORTUGUESE FAMILY, WIDOW, TWO DAUGHTERS, AND LITTLE BOY. This illustration is a fair type of a number of lodgings. The photograph does not begin to reveal the extent of the wretchedness of the tenement. A little cubby-hole leads off from this room, large enough for a three quarters bed, in which the entire family of four sleep. The girls are remarkably bright and lady-like in their behavior, carrying with them an air of refinement one would not expect to find in such a place. They make their living by sewing; their rent is two dollars a week. 

 NOTE ON WIDOW AND TWO CHILDREN IN UNDERGROUND TENEMENT. This picture of a squalid underground apartment is typical of numbers of tenements in this part of the city. The widow sews and does any other kind of work she can to meet rent and living expenses; the children sew on pants. 

 NOTE ON PICTURE OF EXTERIOR OF TENEMENT HOUSE. This picture is from a photograph of one of the many tenements in the North End which front upon blind alleys. The illustration gives the front of the house and the only entrance to it. In this building dwell twenty families. The interior is even more dilapidated and horrible than the entrance. Here children are born, and here characters are moulded; here the fate of future members of the Commonwealth is stamped. Taxes on such a building are relatively low under our present system so the landlord realizes a princely revenue, and while such a condition remains, it is not probable that he will tear down the wretched old and erect a commodious new building, on which he would be compelled to pay double or triple the present taxes, merely for the comfort and moral and physical health of his tenants. 

[Illustration: UNDER-GROUND TENEMENT WITH TWO BEDS (SEE NOTE). ]

In another similar cellar or burrow[5] we found a mother and seven boysand girls, some of them quite large, all sleeping in two medium-sizedbeds in one room; this room is also their kitchen. The other room is astorehouse for kindling wood the children gather and sell, a littlestore and living room combined. Their rent is two dollars a week. Thecellar was damp and cold; the air stifling. Nothing can be imagined morefavorable to contagion both physical and moral than such dens as these. Ethical exaltation or spiritual growth is impossible with suchenvironment. It is not strange that the slums breed criminals, whichrequire vast sums yearly to punish after evil has been accomplished; butto me it is an ever-increasing source of wonder that society should beso short-sighted and neglectful of the condition of its exiles, when anoutlay of a much smaller sum would ensure a prevention of a largeproportion of the crime that emenates from the slums; while at the sametime it would mean a new world of life, happiness, and measurelesspossibilities for the thousands who now exist in hopeless gloom. 

 [5] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OF UNDERGROUND TENEMENT WITH TWO BEDS. These miserable quarters are four steps down from the street. There are two small rooms, one a shop in which kindling wood is stowed, which is gathered up by the children, split and tied in bundles. The mother also sells peanuts and candy. The back room contains a range and two beds which take almost the entire area of the room. In these two rooms several people sleep. One can readily see how unfortunate such a life is from an ethical, no less than social point of view. 

[Illustration: OUT OF WORK (SEE NOTE). ]

In a small room fronting an interior court we found a man[6] whose facebore the stamp of that "hope long deferred which maketh the heart sick. "He is, I am informed, a strictly temperate, honest, and industriousworkman. Up to the time of his wife's illness and death, which occurredlast summer, the family lived in a reasonably comfortable manner, as thehusband found no difficulty in securing work on the sea. When the wifedied, however, circumstances changed. She left six little children, onealmost an infant. The father could not go to sea, leaving his littleflock without a protector, to fall the victims of starvation, and sincethen he has worked whenever he could get employment loading vessels, orat anything he could find. For the past six weeks he has beenpractically without work, and the numerous family of little ones havesuffered for life's necessities. His rent is two dollars and a quarter aweek. 

 [6] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OUT OF WORK. The young man photographed in his dismal lodging is a widower with six small children; he is strictly sober, an American by birth, but parents were Scotch and Irish. Until the illness and death of the wife last summer, everything went reasonably well. The husband and father followed the sea and managed to provide for his family, even saving a little. The wife's sickness and burial expenses ate up all and more than he had saved, while being left with so many little children and no one to look after them, he found it impossible to engage in sea voyages; he was compelled to seek work which would enable him to be home at night. This winter, work has been very slack; for six weeks he has only been able to obtain employment for a few days; meantime his rent, which is two dollars and a quarter a week, has eaten up almost all the man could earn. Through the aid of the Baptist Bethel Mission and The Arena Relief Fund, this family has been provided with food and clothes. 

[Illustration: PORTUGUESE WIDOW IN ATTIC (SEE NOTE). ]

In the attic in another tenement we found a widow[7] weeping and workingby the side of a little cradle where lay a sick child, whose largeluminous eyes shone with almost phosphorescent brilliancy from greatcavernous sockets, as they wandered from one to another, with a wistful, soul-querying gaze. Its forehead was large and prominent, so much sothat looking at the upper part of the head one would little imagine howterrible the emaciation of the body, which was little more than skin andbones, speaking more eloquently than words of the ravages of slowstarvation and wasting disease. The immediate cause of the poor woman'stears was explained to us in broken English, substantially as follows:She had just returned from the dispensary where she had beenunsuccessful in her effort to have a physician visit her child, owing toher inability to pay the quarter of a dollar demanded for the visit. After describing as best she could the condition of the invalid, thedoctor had given her two bottles of medicine and a prescription blank onwhich he had written directions for her to get a truss that would costher two dollars and a half at the drug store. She had explained to thephysician that owing to the illness of her child she had fallen a weekand a half in arrears in rent; that the agent for the tenement hadnotified her that if one week's rent was not paid on Saturday she wouldbe evicted, which meant death to her child, so she could not buy thetruss. To which the doctor replied, "You must get the truss and put iton before giving anything from either bottle, or the medicine will killyour child. " "If I give the medicine, " she repeated showing us thebottles, "before I put the truss on, he says it will kill my child, " andthe tears ran swiftly down her sad but intelligent face. The child wasso emaciated that the support would inevitably have produced terriblesores in a short time. I am satisfied that had the physician seen itscondition, he would not have had a heart to order it. 

 [7] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OF PORTUGUESE WIDOW IN ATTIC. In an attic with slanting roof and skylight window lives a poor widow with her little family of four, a full description of which is given elsewhere. The long-continued sickness of the little child has made the struggle for rent and bread very terrible, and had it not been for assistance rendered at intervals, eviction or starvation, or both, must have resulted. This woman and her children are sober, industrious, and intelligent. Cases like this are by no means rare in this city which claims to be practically free from poverty. 

I thought as I studied the anxious and sorrowful countenance of thatmother, how hard, indeed, is the lot of the very poor. They have to buycoal by the basketful and pay almost double price, likewise food and alllife's necessities. They are compelled to live in frightfuldisease-fostering quarters, and pay exorbitant rents for theaccommodations they receive. When sick they are not always free fromimposition, even when they receive aid in the name of charity, andsometimes theology under the cloak of religion oppresses them. This lastthought had been suggested by seeing in our rounds some half-starvedwomen dropping pennies into the hands of Sisters of Charity, who wereeven here in the midst of terrible want, exacting from the starvingmoney for a church whose coffers groan with wealth. O religion, ineffably radiant and exalting in thy pure influence, how thou art oftendebased by thy professed followers! How much injustice is meted out tothe very poor, and how many crimes are still committed under thy cloakand in thy holy name! Even this poor widow had bitterly suffered throughpriests who belong to a great communion, claiming to follow Him whocried, "Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I willgive you rest, " as will be seen by the following, related to me by Rev. Walter Swaffield, who was personally cognizant of the facts. The husbandof this widow was out of work for a time; being too ill to engage insteady work, he found it impossible to pay the required ten cents forseats in the church to which he belonged, and was consequently excludedfrom his sitting. Shortly after he fell sick, his wife sought thepriest, imploring him to administer the sacrament, and later extremeunction, which he positively refused, leaving the poor man to diewithout the consolation of the Church he had from infancy been taught tolove and revere. 

It is not strange that many in this world of misery become embitteredagainst society; that they sometimes learn to hate all who live incomfort, and who represent the established order of things, and from therank of the patient, uncomplaining struggler descend to a lower zone, where the moral nature is eclipsed by degradation and crime, and lifetakes on a deeper shade of horror. This class of people exist on thebrink of a precipice. Socially, they may be likened to the physicalcondition of Victor Hugo's Claude Frollo after Quasimodo had hurled himfrom the tower of Notre Dame. You remember the sickening sensationproduced by that wonderful piece of descriptive work, depicting thefalse priest hanging to the eaves, vainly striving to ascend, feelingthe leaden gutter to which he was holding slowly giving away. His handssend momentary messages to the brain, warning it that endurance isalmost exhausted. Below he sees the sharp formidable spires ofSaint-Jean-de-Ronde, and immediately under him, two hundred feet fromwhere he hangs, are the hard pavement, where men appear like pigmies. Above stands the avenging hunchback ready to hurl him back if he succeedin climbing over the eaves. So these poor people have ever below themstarvation, eviction, and sickness. Above stands Quasimodo in the formof a three-headed monster: a soulless landlord, the slave master whopays only starvation wages, and disease, the natural complement of thewretched squalor permitted by the one, and the slow starvationnecessarily incident to the prices paid by the other. Their lot is evenmore terrible when it is remembered that their fall carries with it thefate of their loved ones. In addition to the multitude who are condemnedto suffer through uninvited poverty, with no hopeful outlook beforethem, there is another class who are constantly on the brink of realdistress, and who are liable at any time, to suffer bitterly becausethey are proud-spirited and will almost starve to death before they askfor aid. Space prevents me from citing more than one illustration ofthis character. In an apartment house we found an American woman with ababe two weeks old and a little girl. The place was scrupulously clean, something very rare in this zone of life. The woman, of course, was weakfrom illness and, as yet, unable to take in any work to speak of. Herhusband has been out of employment for a few weeks, but had just shippedon board a sailing vessel for a cruise of several months. The woman didnot intimate that they were in great need, as she hoped to soon beenabled to make some money, and the portion of her husband's wages shewas allowed to draw, paid the rent. A week ago, however, the little girlcame to the Bethel Mission asking for a loaf of bread. "We have hadnothing to eat since Monday morning, " she said, "and the little babycries all the time because mamma can give it no milk. " It was Wednesdayevening when the child visited the Mission. An investigationsubstantiated the truth of the child's words. The mother, too proud tobeg, struggled with fate, hoping and praying to be able to succeedwithout asking for aid, but seeing her babe starving to death, sheyielded. This case finds many counterparts where a little aid bridgesover a period of frightful want, after which the unfortunate are able, in a measure, to take care of themselves. 

I find it impossible in this paper to touch upon other cases I desiredto describe. The above illustrations however, typical of the life andenvironment of hundreds of families, are sufficient to emphasize acondition which exists in our midst and which is yearly growing, both inextent and in intensity of bitterness; a condition that is littleunderstood by those who are not actually brought in contact with thecircumstances as they exist, a condition at once revolting and appallingto every sense of humanity and justice. We cannot afford to remainignorant of the real status of life in our midst, any more than we canafford to sacrifice truth to optimism. It has become a habit with someto make light of these grim and terrible facts, to minify the sufferingexperienced, or to try and impute the terrible condition to drink. Thismay be pleasant but it will never alter conditions or aid the cause ofreform. It is our duty to honestly face the deplorable conditions, andcourageously set to work to ameliorate the suffering, and bring aboutradical reformatory measures calculated to invest life with a rich, newsignificance for this multitude so long exiles from joy, gladness, andcomfort. 

We now come to the practical question, What is to be done? But beforeviewing the problem in its larger and more far-reaching aspects, I wishto say a word in regard to the direct measures for immediate reliefwhich it is fashionable among many reformers to dismiss as unworthy ofconsideration. It is very necessary in a discussion of this character toview the problem in all its bearings, and adjust the mental vision so asto recognize the utility of the various plans advanced by sincerereformers. I have frequently heard it urged that these palliativemeasures tend to retard the great radical reformative movements, whichare now taking hold of the public mind. This view, however comfortableto those who prefer theorizing and agitation to putting their shoulderto the wheel in a practical way, is, nevertheless, erroneous. There isno way in which people can be so thoroughly aroused to the urgentnecessity of radical economic changes as by bringing them into suchintimate relations with the submerged millions that they hear thethrobbing of misery's heart. The lethargy of the moral instincts of thepeople is unquestionably due to lack of knowledge more than anythingelse. The people do not begin to realize the true condition of life inthe ever-widening field of abject want. When they know and aresufficiently interested to personally investigate the problem and aidthe suffering, they will appreciate as never before the absolutenecessity for radical economic changes, which contemplate a greater meedof justice and happiness than any measures yet devised. But aside fromthis we must not forget the fact that we have a duty to perform to theliving no less than to the generations yet unborn. The commonwealth ofto-day as well as that of to-morrow demands our aid. Millions are in thequicksands: yearly, monthly, daily, hourly they are sinking deeper anddeeper. We can save them while the bridges are being built. To withholdthe planks upon which life and happiness depend is no less criminal thanto refuse to face the question in its broader aspects and labor forfundamental economic changes. A great work of real, practical, andenduring value, however, is being wrought each year by those in chargeof local missions work in the slums and by individuals who mingle withand study the actual condition of the very poor. The extent of goodaccomplished by these few who are giving their lives to upliftingsociety's exiles is little understood, because it is quiet andunostentatious; yet through the instrumentality of the silent workers, thousands of persons are annually kept from starvation and crime, whilefor many of them new, broad, and hopeful horizons are constantly comingin view. [8]

 [8] The extent and character of this work will be more readily understood by noting the labor accomplished by the Bethel Mission in the North End, which is doing more than any other single organization in that section of the city for the dwellers of the slums. Here under the efficient management of the Rev. Walter Swaffield, assisted by Rev. W. J. English, work is intelligently pushed with untiring zeal, and in a perfectly systematic manner. From a social and humanitarian point of view, their work may be principally summed up in the following classifications: [1. ] _Looking after the temporal and immediate wants of those who are really suffering. _ Here cases are quietly and sympathetically investigated. Food is often purchased; the rents are sometimes paid; old clothes are distributed where they are most needed, and in many ways the temporal wants are looked after while kind, friendly visitation of between one and two hundred very needy families comprise a portion of each month's work. [2]. _The sailors' boarding house. _ A large, clean, homelike building is fitted up for sailors. Every American vessel that comes into port is visited by a member of the Mission, who invites the sailors to remain at this model home for seamen. In this way hundreds yearly escape the dreadful atmosphere of the wretched sailors' boarding houses of this part of the city, or, what is still more important, avoid undreamed-of vice, degradation, and disease by going with companions to vile dens of infamy. [3]. _Securing comfortable homes and good positions for the young who are thus enabled to rise out of the night and oppression of this terrible existence. _ This, it is needless to add, is a very difficult task, owing to the fact that society shrinks from its exiles; few persons will give any one a chance who is known to have belonged to the slums. Nevertheless good positions are yearly secured for several of these children of adversity. [4]. _The children's free industrial school in which the young are taught useful trades, occupations, and means of employment. _ In this training school the little girls are taught to make themselves garments. The material is furnished them free and when they have completed the garment it is given them. [5]. _Summer vacations in the country for the little ones_ are provided for several hundred children; some for a day, some a week, some two weeks as the exigencies of the case require and the limited funds permit. These little oases in the children's dreary routine life are looked forward to with even greater anticipations of joy than is Christmas in the homes of the rich. I have cited the work of this Mission because I have personally investigated its work, and have seen the immense good that is being done with the very limited funds at the command of the Mission, and also to show by an illustration how much may be accomplished for the immediate relief of the sufferers. A grand palliative work requiring labor and money. It is not enough for those who live in our great cities to contribute to such work, they should visit these quarters and see for themselves. This would change many who to-day are indifferent into active missionaries. 

Let us now examine a broader aspect of this problem. So long as thewretched, filthy dens of dirt, vermin, and disease stand as the onlyshelter for the children of the scum, so long will moral and physicalcontagion flourish and send forth death-dealing germs; so long willcrime and degradation increase, demanding more policemen, more numerousjudiciary, and larger prisons. No great permanent or far-reachingreformation can be brought about until the habitations of the people areradically improved. The recognition of this fact has already led to apractical palliative measure for relief that must challenge theadmiration of all thoughtful persons interested in the welfare ofsociety's exiles. It is a step in the direction of justice. It is notmerely a work of charity; it is, I think, the most feasible immediatemeasure that can be employed which will change the whole aspect of lifefor tens of thousands, making existence mean something, and giving awonderful significance to the now meaningless word home. I refer to theerection of model tenement apartments in our overcrowded sections, such, for example, as the Victoria Square dwelling of Liverpool. Here, on theformer site of miserable tenement houses, sheltering more than athousand people, stands to-day a palatial structure built around ahollow square, the major part of which is utilized as a largeshrub-encircled playground for the children. The halls and stairways ofthe building are broad, light, and airy; the ventilation and sanitaryarrangements perfect. The apartments are divided into one, two, andthree rooms each. No room is smaller than 13 × 8 feet 6 inches; most ofthem are 12 × 13 feet 4 inches. All the ceilings are 9 feet high. Asuperintendent looks after the building. The tenants are expected to beorderly, and to keep their apartments clean. The roomy character ofhalls and chambers may be inferred from the fact that there are only twohundred and seventy-five apartments in the entire building. The returnson the total expenditure of the building, which was $338, 800. 00, it isestimated will be at least 4-1/2 per cent, while the rents are asfollows: $1. 44 per week for the three-room tenement, $1. 08 per week forthose containing two large rooms, and 54 cents for the one-roomquarters. In Boston, the rents for the dreadful one-room cellar are$1. 00 a week; for the two-room tenements above the cellars, the rent, sofar as I heard, ranged from $1. 50 to $2. 50; three rooms were, of course, much higher. The rooms also are far smaller here than those in thebeautiful, healthful, and inviting Victoria Square apartments. Yet itwill be observed that the Shylock landlords receive _more than double_the rental paid in this building for dens which would be a disgrace tobarbarism. A similar experiment, in many respects even more remarkablethan that recently inaugurated by the Liverpool co-operation, isexhibited in the Peabody dwellings in London. These apartments have beenin successful operation for so many years, while the results attendingthem have been so marked and salutary, that no discussion of thissubject would be complete that failed to give some of the most importantfacts relating to them. I know of no single act of philanthropy thattowers so nobly above the sordid greed of the struggling multitude ofmillionaires, as does this splendid work of George Peabody, by whichto-day twenty thousand people, who but for him would be in the depths ofthe slums, are fronting a bright future, and with souls full of hope arestruggling into a higher civilization. It will be remembered that Mr. Peabody donated at intervals extending over a period of eleven years, orfrom 1862 to 1873, £500, 000 or $2, 500, 000 to this project of relievingthe poor. He specified that his purpose was to ameliorate the conditionof the poor and needy of London, and promote their comfort andhappiness, making only the following conditions:--

 "_First_ and foremost amongst them is the limitation of its uses, absolutely and, exclusively, to such purposes as may be calculated directly to ameliorate the condition and augment the comforts of the poor, who, either by birth or established residence, form a recognized portion of the population of London. 

 "_Secondly_, it is my intention that now, and for all time, there shall be a rigid exclusion from the management of this fund, of any influences calculated to impart to it a character either sectarian as regards religion, or exclusive in relation to party politics. 

 "_Thirdly_, it is my wish that the sole qualification for a participation in the benefits of the fund shall be an ascertained and continued condition of life, such as brings the individual within the description (in the ordinary sense of the word) of the poor of London: combined with moral character, and good conduct as a member of society. "

[Illustration: THE VICTORIA SQUARE APARTMENT HOUSE, LIVERPOOL, ENG. ]

Realizing that little could be hoped for from individuals or theiroffspring, who were condemned to a life in vile dens, where the squalorand wretchedness was only equalled by the poisonous, disease-breedingatmosphere and the general filth which characterized the tenementdistricts, the trustees Mr. Peabody selected to carry forward his work, engaged in the erection of a large building accommodating over twohundred, at a cost of $136, 500. This apartment house, which issubstantially uniform with the seventeen additional buildings sinceconstructed from the Peabody fund, is five stories high, built around ahollow square, thus giving plenty of fresh air and sunshine to the rearas well as the front of the entire building. The square affords a largeplayground for the children where they are in no danger of being runover by vehicles, and where they are under the immediate eye of many ofthe parents. The building is divided into tenements of one, two, andthree room apartments, according to the requirements of the occupant. There are also nine stores on the ground floor, which bring a rental ofsomething over $1, 500 a year for each of the buildings. By careful, honest, and conscientious business management, the original sum of$2, 500, 000 has been almost doubled, while comfortable, healthful homeshave been procured for an army of over 20, 000 persons. Some of theapartments contain four rooms, many three, some two, others one. Theaverage rent is about $1. 15 for an apartment. The average price forthree-room apartments in the wretched tenements of London, is from $1. 45a week. In the Peabody dwellings, the death rate is . 96 per one thousandbelow the average in London. Thus it will be seen that while large, healthful, airy, and cheerful homes have been provided for over 20, 000at a lower figure than the wretched disease-fostering and crime-breedingtenements of soulless Shylocks, the Peabody fund has, since 1862, grownto nearly $5, 000, 000, or almost twice the sum given for the work by thegreat philanthropist. No words can adequately describe the magnitude ofthis splendid work, any more than we can measure the good it hasaccomplished, the crime prevented, or the lives that through it havegrown to ornament and bless society. In the Liverpool experiment, thework has been prosecuted by the municipal government. In the Peabodydwellings, it has, of course, been the work of an individual, carried onby a board of high-minded, honorable, and philanthropic gentlemen. To mymind, it seems far more practicable for philanthropic, monied men toprosecute this work as a business investment, specifying in their willsthat rents shall not rise above a figure necessary to insure a fairinterest on the money, rather than leave it for city governments, as inthe latter case it would be in great danger of becoming an additionalstronghold for unscrupulous city officials to use for politicalpurposes. I know of no field where men with millions can so bless therace as by following Mr. Peabody's example in our great cities. If, instead of willing every year princely sums to old, rich, andconservative educational institutions, which already possess far moremoney than they require, --wealthy persons would bequeath sums for theerection of buildings after the manner of the Victoria Square or thePeabody Dwellings, a wonderful transformation would soon appear in ourcities. Crime would diminish, life would rise to a higher level, andfrom the hearts and brains of tens of thousands, a great and terribleload would be lifted. Yet noble and praiseworthy as is this work, wemust not lose sight of the fact, that at best it is only a palliativemeasure: a grand, noble, beneficent work which challenges ouradmiration, and should receive our cordial support; still it is only apalliative. 

There is a broader aspect still, a nobler work to be accomplished. Aslong as speculation continues in that great gift of God to man, _land_, the problem will be unsettled. So long as the landlords find that themore wretched, filthy, rickety, and loathsome a building is, the lowerwill be the taxes, he will continue to make some of the ever-increasingarmy of bread winners dwell in his foul, disease-impregnated dens. 

The present economic system is being rapidly outgrown. Man's increasingintelligence, sense of justice, and the humanitarian spirit of the age, demand radical changes, which will come immeasurably nearer securingequal opportunities for all persons than the past dreamed possible. Nosudden or rash measure calculated to convulse business and work greatsuffering should be entertained, but our future action should rest on abroad, settled policy founded upon justice, tempered by moderation, keeping in view the great work of banishing uninvited poverty, andelevating to a higher level the great struggling millions without for amoment sacrificing individualism. Indeed, a truer democracy in which ahigher interpretation of justice, and a broader conception of individualfreedom, and a more sacred regard for liberty, should be the watchwordof the future. 

EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY. 

BY PROF. JAS. T. BIXBY, PH. D. 

In the life and letters of Charles Darwin there is a memorandum, copiedfrom his pocket note-book of 1837, to this effect:--"In July, openedfirst notebook on Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly struck withthe character of the South American fossils and the species on GalapagosArchipelago. "

These facts, he says, were the origin of all his epoch-making views asto the development of life and the work of natural selection in evolvingspecies. 

His suspicions that species were not immutable and made at one cast, directly by the fiat of the Creator, seemed to him, at first, he says, almost like murder. 

To the greater part of the church, when in 1859, after twenty years ofwork in accumulating the proofs of his theory, he at last gave it to theworld, it seemed quite as bad as murder. 

It is very interesting now to look back upon the history and career ofthe Darwinian theory in the last thirty years; to recall, first thefierce outcry and denunciation it elicited, then the gradualaccumulation of corroboratory evidence from all quarters in its favor;the accession of one scientific authority after another to the newviews; the softening, little by little, of ecclesiastical opposition;its gradual acceptance by the broad-minded alike in theological andscientific circles; then, in these recent years, the exaltation of thenew theory into a scientific and philosophic creed, wherein matter, force, and evolution constitute the new trinity, which, unless themodern man piously believes, he becomes anathematized and excommunicatedby all the priests of the new dogmatism. 

In the field of science, undoubtedly, evolution has won the day. Nevertheless, in religious circles, old time prejudices and slowconservatism, clinging to its creeds, as the hermit crab clings to thecast-off shell of oyster or clam, still resist it. The great body of theChristian laity looks askance on it. And even in progressive America, one of the largest and most liberal of American denominations hasrecently formally tried and condemned one of its clergy for heresy, forthe publication of a book in which the principles of Evolution arefrankly adopted and applied to Christianity. For a man to call himself aChristian Evolutionist is (we have been told by high Orthodox authority)a contradiction in terms. 

I think it is safe to say to-day that Evolution has come to stay. It istoo late to turn it out of the mansions of modern thought. And it is, therefore, a vital question, "Can belief in God, and the soul, anddivine revelation abide under the same roof with evolution in peace? Ormust Christianity vacate the realm of modern thought and leave it to thechilling frosts of materialism and scepticism?"

Now, if I have been able to understand the issue and its grounds, thereis no such alternative, no such incompatibility between Evolution andChristianity. 

There is, I know, a form of Evolution and a form of Christianity, whichare mutually contradictory. 

There is a form of Evolution which is narrowly materialistic. Itdogmatically asserts that there is nothing in existence but matter andphysical forces, and the iron laws according to which they develop. Life, according to this school, is only a product of the happycombination of the atoms; feeling and thought are but the iridescence ofthe brain tissues; conscience but a transmuted form of ancestral fearsand expediences. Soul, revelation, providence, nothing but illusions ofthe childish fancy of humanity's infancy. Opposed to it, fighting withall the intensity of those who fight for their very life, stands aschool of Christians who maintain that unless the special creation ofspecies by divine fiat and the frequent intervention of God and Hisangels in the world be admitted, religion has received its death wound. According to this school, unless the world was created in six days, andJoshua commanded the sun to stand still and it obeyed, and Hezekiahturned the solar shadow back on the dial, and Jesus was born withouthuman father, and unless some new miracle will interfere with theregular course of law, of rain and dew, of sickness and health, of causeand effect, whenever a believer lifts up his voice in prayer, why then, the very foundations of religion are destroyed. 

Now, of course, between a Christianity and an Evolutionism of this sort, there is an irreconcilable conflict. But it is because neither of themis a fair, rational, or true form of thought. 

When the principle of Evolution is properly comprehended and expounded;when Christianity is interpreted in the light that history andphilosophy require, --the two will be found to have no difficulty injoining hands. 

Though a purely naturalistic Evolutionism may ignore God; and a purelysupernatural religion may leave no room for Evolution, a naturalreligion and a rational Evolutionism may yet harmoniously unite in ahigher and more fruitful marriage. 

Let us only recognize _Evolution by the divine spirit, as the process ofGod's working in the world_, and we have then a theory which has a placeand a function, at once for all that the newest science has to teach andthe most venerable faith needs to retain. 

In the first place, Evolution is not itself a cause. It is no force initself. It has no originating power. It is simply a method and law ofthe occurrence of things. Evolution shows that all things proceed, little by little, without breach of continuity; that the higher everproceeds from the lower; the more complex ever unfolds from the moresimple. For every species or form, it points out some ancestor ornatural antecedent, from which by gradual modification, it has beenderived. And in natural selection, the influence of the environment, sexual selection, use and disuse, sterility, and the variability of theorganism, Science shows us some of the secondary factors or conditionsof this development. But none of these are supposed by it to be firstcauses or originating powers. What these are, science itself does notclaim the right as yet to declare. 

Now, it is true that this unbroken course of development, thisomnipresent reign of law, is inconsistent with the theological theoriesof supernatural intervention that have so often claimed a monopoly offaith. But independent of all scientific reasons, on religious andphilosophical grounds themselves, this dogmatic view is no longer to beaccepted. For if God be the God of all-seeing wisdom and foresight thatreverence conceives him to be, his work should be too perfect from theoutset to demand such changes of plan and order of working. The greatmiracle of miracles, as Isaac Taylor used to say, is that Providenceneeds no miracles to carry out its all-perfect plans. 

But if, I hear it asked, the huge machine of the universe thus grinds onand has ever ground on, without interruption; if every event is closelybound to its physical antecedent, life to the cell, mind to brain, manto his animal ancestry and bodily conditions, --what other result willthere be than an inevitable surrender to materialism? When Laplace wasasked by Napoleon, on presenting to him his famous essay on the nebularhypothesis of the origin of the stellar universe, "Why do I see here nomention of the Deity?" the French astronomer proudly replied: "Sire, Ihave no need of that hypothesis. "

Is not that the natural lesson of Evolutionism, to say that God is ahypothesis, no longer needed by science and which progressive thought, therefore, better dismiss?

I do not think so. Old time materialism dismissed the idea of Godbecause it dismissed the idea of a beginning. The forces and phenomenaof the world were supposed eternal; and therefore a Creator wasunnecessary. But the conception of Evolution is radically different. Itis a movement that demands a motor force behind it. It is a movement, moreover, that according to the testimony of modern science cannot havebeen eternal. The modern theory of heat and the dissipation of energyrequires that our solar system and the nebula from which it sprangshould have had a beginning in some finite period of time. Theevolutionary process cannot have been going on forever; for the amountof heat and the number of degrees of temperature and the rate ofcooling, are all finite, calculable quantities, and therefore theprocess cannot have been going on for more than a certain finite numberof years, more or less millions, say. Moreover, if the originalfire-mist was perfectly homogeneous, and not impelled into motion by anyexternal force, it would never have begun to rotate and evolve intoplanets and worlds. If perfectly homogeneous, it would have remained, always balanced and always immobile. To start it on its course ofrotation and evolution, there must have been either some externalimpelling power, or else some original differentiation of forces orconditions; for which, again, some other cause than itself must besupposed. For the well-known law of inertia forbids that any materialsystem that is in absolute equilibrium should spontaneously start itselfinto motion. As John Stuart Mill has admitted, "the laws of nature cangive no account of their own origin. "

In the second place, notice that the materialistic interpretation ofEvolution fails to account for that which is most characteristic in theprocess, the steady progress it reveals. Were Evolution an aimless, fruitless motion, rising and falling alternately, or moving round andround in an endless circle, the reference of these motions to the blindforces of matter might have, perhaps, a certain plausibility. But themovements of the evolution process are of quite a different character. They are not chaotic; no barren, useless circlings back to the samepoint, again and again; but they are progressive; and if often they seemto return to their point of departure, we see, on close examination, that the return is always on a higher plane. The motion is a spiral one, ever advancing to loftier and loftier ranges. Now this progressivemotion is something that no accidental play of the atoms will accountfor. For chance builds no such rational structures. Chance writes nosuch intelligent dramas, with orderly beginning, crescendo, and climax. Or if some day, chance builds a structure with some show of order in it, to-morrow it pulls it down. It does not move steadily forward withpermanent constructiveness. 

The further Science penetrates into the secrets of the universe the moreregular seems the march of thought presented there; the more harmoniousthe various parts; the more rational the grand system that isdiscovered. "How the one force of the universe should have pursued thepathway of Evolution through the lapse of millions of ages, leavingtraces so legible by intelligence to-day, unless from beginning to endthe whole process had been dominated by intelligence, " this issomething, as Francis Abbot well says, that passes the limits ofconjecture. The all-luminous intelligibility of the universe is theall-sufficient proof of the intelligence of the cause that produced it. In the annals of science there is nothing more curious than theprophetic power which those savans have gained who have grasped thissecret of nature--the rationality of the universe. It was by thisconfidence in finding in the hitherto unexplored domains of nature whatreason demanded, that Goethe, from the analogies of the mammalianskeleton, discovered the intermaxillary bone in man; and Sir WilliamHamilton, from the mathematical consequences of the undulation of light, led the way to the discovery of conical refraction. A similar story istold of Prof. Agassiz and Prof. Pierce, the one the great zoölogist, theother the great mathematician, of Cambridge. Agassiz, having studied theformation of radiate animals, and having found them all referable tothree different plans of structure, asked Prof. Pierce, withoutinforming him of his discovery, how to execute all the variationspossible, conformed to the fundamental idea of a radiated structurearound a central axis. Prof. Pierce, although quite ignorant of naturalhistory, at once devised the very three plans discovered by Agassiz, asthe only fundamental plans which could be framed in accordance with thegiven elements. How significantly do such correspondences speak of theworking of mind in nature, moulding it in conformity with ideas ofreason. Thus to see the laws of thought exhibiting themselves as alsothe laws of being seems to me a fact sufficient of itself to prove thepresence of an over-ruling mind in nature. 

Is there any way of escaping this obvious conclusion? The only methodthat has been suggested has been to refer these harmonies of nature backto the original regularity of the atoms. As the drops of frozen moistureon the window pane build up the symmetrical frost-forms without designor reason, by virtue of the original similarity of the component parts, so do the similar atoms, without any more reason or plan, build up theharmonious forms of nature. 

But this answer brings us face to face with a third still moresignificant problem, a still greater obstacle to materialism. Why arethe atoms of nature thus regular, thus similar, one to another? Here aremillions on millions of atoms of gold, each like its fellow atom. Millions and millions of atoms of oxygen, each with the same velocity ofmovement, same weight and chemical properties. All the millions onmillions on millions of atoms on the globe are not of infinitely variedshape, weight, size, quality; but there are only some seventy differentkinds, and all the millions of one kind, just as like one another asbullets out of the same mould, so that each new atom of oxygen thatcomes to a burning flame does the same work and acts in precisely thesame way as its fellows. Did you ever think of that? If you have everrealized what it means, you must recognize this uniformity of the atoms, billions and billions of them as like one another as if run out of thesame mould--as the most astonishing thing in nature. 

Now, among the atoms, there can have been no birth, no death, nostruggle for existence, no natural selection to account for this. Whatother explanation, then, in reason is there, than to say, as those greatmen of science, Sir John Herschel and Clerk Maxwell, who have, in ourday, most deeply pondered this curious fact, have said, that thisdivision of all the infinity of atoms in nature into a very limitednumber of groups, all the billions of members in each groupsubstantially alike in their mechanical and chemical properties, "givesto each of the atoms the essential characters at once of a manufacturedarticle and a subordinate agent. "

Evolution cannot, then, be justly charged with materialism. On thecontrary, it especially demands a divine creative force as the starterof its processes and the endower of the atoms with their peculiarproperties. The foundation of that scientific system which the greatestof modern expositors of Evolution has built up about that principle(Herbert Spencer's synthetic philosophy) is the persistence of aninfinite, eternal, and indestructible force, of which all things that wesee are the manifestations. 

To suppose, as many of the camp-followers of the evolution philosophydo, that the processes of successive change and gradual modification, which have been so clearly traced out in nature, relieve us from theneed or right of asking for any anterior and higher cause of theseprocesses; or that because the higher and finer always unfolds from thelower and coarser, therefore there was really nothing else in existence, either at the beginning or at present, than these crude elements whichalone disclose themselves at first; and that these gross, sensuous factsare the only source and explanation of all that has followed them, --thisis a most superficial and inadequate view. For this explanation, as wehave already noticed, furnishes no fountain-head of power to maintainthe constant upward-mounting of the waters in the world's conduits. Itfurnishes no intelligent directions of these streams into ever wise andordered channels. To explain the higher life that comes out of these lowbeginnings, we must suppose the existence of spiritual powers, unseen atfirst, and disclosing themselves only in the fuller, later results, themoral and spiritual phenomena that are the crowning flower and fruit ofthe long process. When a thing has grown from a lower to a higher form, its real rank in nature is not shown by what it began in, but by what ithas become. Though chemistry has grown out of alchemy, and astronomy outof astrology, this does not empty them of present truth or impair at alltheir authority and trustworthiness to-day. Though man's mind has grownout of the sensations of brutish ancestors, that does not take away thefact that he has now risen to a height from which he overlooks all thesemists and sees the light which never was on sea or land. The realbeginning of a statue is not in the rough outline in which it firstappears, but in the creative idea of the perfect work which regulatesits whole progress. The real nature of a tree is not to be discovered inthe first swellings of the acorn, or the first out-pushing of itsrootlets, but rather are acorn and rootlet themselves parts of thatgeneric idea, that _evolutive potentiality_, which is only to beunderstood when manifested in its completer form in the full-grownmonarch of the forest. So to discern the real character and motor-powerof the world's evolution, we must look, not to its beginnings, but toits end, and see in the latest stages, and its highest moral andspiritual forms and forces, not disguises of its earlier stages, butampler manifestations of that Divine power and purpose which is theever-active agent, working through all the varied levels of creation. 

The evolution theory is, also, it must be acknowledged, hostile to thatphase of theology which conceives of God as a being outside of nature;which regarded the universe as a dead lump, a mechanical fabric wherethe Creator once worked, at the immensely remote dawn of creation; andto which again, for a few short moments, this transcendental Powerstooped from His celestial throne, when the successive species of livingbeings were called into being in brief exertions of supernatural energy. But this mechanical view of God who, as Goethe said, "only from withoutshould drive and twirl the universe about, " what a poor conception ofGod, after all, was that; not undeserving the ridicule of the greatGerman. 

Certainly, the idea of God which Wordsworth has given us, as a Power notindefinitely remote, but ever present and infinitely near, "A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, And rolls through all things, "

is a much more inspiring and venerable thought. This is the conceptionof God that Paul has given us, "the God in whom we live and move andhave our being;" this is the conception that the book of Wisdom givesus, "as the Divine Spirit who filleth the world. "

And to this conception of God, Evolution has no antagonism, but on thecontrary, throws its immense weight in its favor. Evolution, in fact, instead of removing the Deity from us, brings him close about us; setsus face to face with his daily activities. The universe is but the bodyof which God is the soul; "the Interior Artist, " as Giordano Bruno usedto say, who from within moulds his living shapes of beauty and power. What else, in fact, is Evolution but the secular name for the DivineIndwelling; the scientific alias for the growth and progressiverevelation of the Holy Spirit, daily putting off the old and putting onthe new; constantly busy from the beginning of time to this very daymoulding and forwarding his work?

Not long ago I came across the mental experience of a working geologistwhich well illustrates this. "Once in early boyhood, " says Mr. James E. Mills, "I left a lumberman's camp at night to go to the brook for water. It was a clear, cold, moonlight night and very still, except the distantmurmuring of the Penobscot at some falls. A sense of the grandeur of theforest and rivers, the hills, and sky, and stars came over the boy, andhe stood and looked around. An owl hooted, and the hooting was not acheerful sound. The men were all asleep, and the conditions were lonelyenough. But there was no feeling of loneliness; for with the sense ofthe grandeur of creation, came the sense, very real and strong, of theCreator's presence. In boyish imagination, I could see His almighty handshaping the hills and scooping out the valleys, spreading the skyoverhead, and making trees, animals, and men. Thirty years later Icamped alone in the open air on the bank of the Gila. It was a clear, cold, moonlight night. The camp-fire was low, for the Apaches were onthe warpath. An owl again hooted; but again all loneliness was dispelledby a sense of the Creator's presence, and the night of long ago by thePenobscot came into my mind, and with it the question: What is thedifference to my mind between the Creator's presence now and then? Tothe heart, it was very like, but to the mind very different. Now, nogreat hand was shaping things from without. But God was everywhere, reaching down through long lines of forces, and shaping and sustainingthings from within. I had been travelling all day by mountains of lavawhich had cooled long ages ago, and over grounds which the sea, now faroff, had left on its beaches; and with the geologist's habit recalledthe lava still glowing and flowing, and the sea still rolling itspebbles on the beaches. But now I knew it was by forces within the earththat the lava was poured out, and that the waves which rolled thepebbles were driven by the wind and the wind by the sun's heat. And theforces within the earth and the heat within the sun come from stillfurther within. Inward, always inward, the search for the originalenergy and law carried my mind, for He whose will is the source of allforce, and whose thought is the source of all law is on the inside ofthe universe. The kingdom of God is within you. "

"Now this change from the boyish idea of God creating things fromwithout, to the manhood's view of God creating and sustaining all thingsfrom within, " is indeed as this working geologist so well says, "theessential change which modern science has wrought in the habit ofreligious thought. From Copernicus to Darwin, every important step inthe development of science has cost the giving up of some idea of a Godcreating things as man shapes them from without, and has illustrated thehigher idea of God reaching His works from within. Every step has ledtoward the truth that life and force come to the forms in which they areclothed from God by the inner way; and by the same way, their law comeswith them; and that the forms are the effects of the force and life, acting according to the law. "

This is certainly a most noble, uplifting conception of the world. Buthow, perhaps it will be asked, can we find justification for such a viewof the Divine Spirit as indwelling in nature? It is a question worthdwelling upon, and when we carefully ponder it, we find that one of thephases of the evolution philosophy that has been a chief source of alarmis precisely the one that lends signal support to this doctrine ofDivine Indwelling. 

Evolution is especially shrunk from, because it connects man so closelywith nature; our souls are traced back to an animal origin;consciousness to instinct, instinct to sensibility, and this to lowerlaws and properties of force. By the law of the correlation of forces, our mental and spiritual powers are regarded as but transformed phasesof physical forces, conditioned as they are on our bodily states andchanges; and the soul, it is said, is but a child of nature, who is mostliterally its mother. 

To many minds this is appalling. But let us look it candidly in the faceand see its full bearing. We will recall in the first place, thescientific law, no life but from proceeding life. Let us recollect nextthe dictum of mechanics, no fountain can rise higher than its source. The natural corollary and consequence of this is "no evolution withoutpreceding involution. " If mind and consciousness come out of nature, they must first have been enveloped in nature, resident within itsdepths. If the spirit within our hearts is one with the force that stirsthe sense and grows in the plant, then that sea of energy that envelopsus is also spirit. 

When we come to examine the idea of force, we find that there is onlyone form in which we get any direct knowledge of it, only one place inwhich we come into contact with it, and that is, in our own consciousexperiences, in the efforts of our own will. According to the scientificrule, always to interpret the unknown by the known, not the known by theunknown, it is only the rational conclusion that force elsewhere is alsowill. Through this personal experience of energy, we get, just once, aninside view of the universal energy, and we find it to be spiritual; thewill-force of the Infinite Spirit dwelling in all things. That theencircling force of the universe can best be understood through theanalogy of our own sense of effort, and therefore is a form of will, ofSpirit, is a conclusion endorsed by the most eminent men ofscience, --Huxley, Herschel, Carpenter, and Le Conte. There is, therefore, no real efficient force but Spirit. The various energies ofnature are but different forms or special currents of this OmnipresentDivine Power; the laws of nature, but the wise and regular habits ofthis active Divine will; physical phenomena but projections of God'sthought on the screen of space; and Evolution but the slow, gradualunrolling of the panorama on the great stage of time. 

In geology and paleontology, as is admitted, Evolution is not directlyobserved, but only inferred. The process is too slow; the stage toogrand for direct observation. There is one field and only one where ithas been directly observed. This is in the case of domestic animals andplants under man's charge. Now as here, where alone we see Evolutiongoing on, it is under the guidance of superintending mind, it is ajustifiable inference that in nature, also, it goes on under similarintelligent guidance. Now, it is the observation of distinguished men ofscience that we see precisely such guidance in nature. There is nothingin the Darwinian theory, as I said, that would conduct species upwardrather than downward. To account for the steady upward progress we mustresort to a higher Cause. We must say with Asa Gray, "Variation has beenled along certain beneficial lines, like a stream along definite anduseful lines of irrigation. " We must say with Prof. Owen, "A purposiveroute of development and change, of correlation and inter-dependence, manifesting intelligent will, is as determinable in the succession ofraces as in the development and organization of the individual. Generations do not vary accidentally in any and every direction, but inpre-ordained, definite, and correlated courses. " This judgment is onewhich Prof. Carpenter has also substantially agreed with, declaring thatthe history of Evolution is that of a consistent advance along definitelines of progress, and can only be explained as the work of a mind innature. 

The old argument from Design, it has been frequently said of late, isquite overthrown by Evolution. In one sense it is: _i. E. _ the old ideaof a special purpose and a separate creation of each part of nature. Butthe divine agency is not dispensed with, by Evolution; only shifted to adifferent point of application; transferred from the particular to thegeneral; from the fact to the law. Paley compared the eye to a watch;and said it must have been made by a divine hand. The modern scientistobjects that the eye has been found to be no hand-work; it is the lastresult of a complicated combination of forces; the mighty machine ofnature, which has been grinding at the work for thousands of years. Verywell; but the modern watch is not made by hand, either, but by a scoreof different machines. But does it require less, or not moreintelligence to make the watch in this way? Or if some watch should bediscovered that was not put together by human hand, but formed byanother watch, not quite so perfect as itself, and this by anotherwatch, further back, would the wonder, the demand for a superiorintelligence as the origin of the process be any the less? It strikes methat it would be but the greater. The farther back you go, and the moregeneral, and invariable, and simple the fundamental laws that broughtall things into their present form, then, it seems to me, the moremarvellous becomes the miracle of the eye, the ear, each bodily organ, when recognized as a climax to whose consummation each successive stageof the world has contributed. How much more significant of purposiveintelligence than any special creation is this related whole, this hostof co-ordinated molecules, this complex system of countless interwovenlaws and movements, all driven forward, straight to their mark, down thevistas of the ages, to the grand world consummation of to-day? What elsebut omniscience is equal to this?

All law, then, we should regard as a divine operation; and all divineoperation, conversely, obeys law. Whatever phenomena we consider asspecially divine ought, then, to be most orderly and true to nature. Religion, as far as it is genuine, must, therefore, be natural. Itshould be no exotic, no foreign graft, as it is often regarded, but thenormal outgrowth of our native instincts. Evolution does not banishrevelation from our belief. Recognizing in man's spirit a spark of thedivine energy, "individuated to the power of self-consciousness andrecognition of God, " as Le Conte aptly phrases it; tracing thedevelopment of the spirit-embryo through all geologic time till it cameto birth and independent life in man, and humanity recognized itself asa child of God, the communion of the finite spirit with the infinite isperfectly natural. This direct influence of the spirit of God on thespirit of man, in conscience speaking to him of the moral law, throughprophet and apostle declaring to us the great laws of spiritual life andthe beauty of holiness, --this is what we call revelation. The laws whichit observes are superior laws, quite above the plane of material things. But the work of revelation is not, therefore, infallible or outside thesphere of Evolution. On the contrary, one of the most noticeablefeatures of revelation is its progressive character. In the beginning, it is imperfect, dim in its vision of truth, often gross in its forms ofexpression. But from age to age it gains in clearness and elevation. Inreligion, as in secular matters, --it is the lesson of the ages, that"the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. "

How short-sighted, then, are they who seek to compress the broadeningvision of modern days within the narrow loopholes of mediæval creeds. "There is still more light to break from the words of Scripture, " wasthe brave protest of Robinson to the bigots of his day. And as we sayAmen to that, we may add: "Yes, and more light still to come from thewhole heavens and the whole earth. " If we wish to see that light andreceive the richest rewards of God's revealing word, we must face thesun of truth and follow bravely forward. 

As we look back upon the long path of Evolution up which God's hand hasalready led humanity; as we see from what lowliness and imperfection, from what darkness and grossness God has led us to our present heritageof truth and spiritual life, can we doubt, that, if we go forwardobediently, loyal to reason, we shall not find a new heavens and moreglorious, above our head, a new earth and a nobler field of work beneathour feet?

THE IRRIGATION PROBLEM IN THE NORTHWEST. 

BY JAMES REALF, JR. 

Unless artesian irrigation is introduced extensively in the central partof both Dakotas, their future, unlike their skies, will be heavilyclouded. True, the valley of the Sioux, a strip about seventy-five mileswide from the eastern border, of which Sioux Falls is the chief city, and the valley of the lower Missouri about the same extent south ofthis, of which Yankton is the metropolis, have never had a crop failure. Also, the Red River Valley in North Dakota, about ten thousand squaremiles, which contains the famous Dalrymple farm and produces the bestwheat in the world, has the same unblemished record as an agriculturalarea. But these fertile and fortunate sections suffer from the generaleffect on the country of the drouths in the Jim Valley adjacent, whichhave been severe for four years and are increasing in severity. In theJames or Jim Valley, as it is generally called, the year 1887 showed apartial crop failure, 1888 a little more, 1889 and 1890, a total loss. 

Of course, every country is liable to crop failure at times, and must betill man makes his own weather, which will, no doubt, some day be doneto an extent now unguessed. Nor is the record of three grievous yearsout of ten in the agricultural history of a section so very bad, exceptjust in the way it has happened here, with a continuous and cumulativeeffect. But the central Dakotans have been disheartened, and thecumulative and often, perhaps, exaggerative, reports of their conditionspread over the country have checked immigration into the States for thepast two years, and thus retarded the growth of the fortunate valleys. 

This deplorable condition lately attracted the attention of a young Yalegraduate, who is editing an evening paper in Sioux Falls, and he beganto collect the views of experts on the question of artesian irrigation. 

Mr. Tomlinson, of the _Argus Leader_, had, probably, no idea of the massof literature with which the theme was potential, and the way thepapers, even outside the State, have followed his lead must beflattering to him both as an editor and public-spirited citizen. Myindebtedness to Mr. Tomlinson for some of my facts being thus cheerfullyacknowledged, let me plunge _in medias res_ into the turbid waters ofthe irrigation problem. 

Shall we make it "rain from the earth, when the sky fails"? is now, thanks to an editor, the great Dakotan question. It is a question ofmany facets. What does it cost, will it pay, is it safe, or must itultimately poison the ground by sowing the land with salt like a vandalconqueror, and creating a Sahara for immediate posterity? Finally, if itis to be done on a proper scale, how shall the burden of theintroduction be borne; by the township, the county, the State, thenation, or by private enterprise? Let us take up these points_seriatum_. Professor Upham, of the United States Geologic Survey, a manof unquestionable honesty and no mean authority generally, thinks thatthe cost alone demonstrates the futility of attempting the artesiansystem. He bases his opinion on the Jamestown well, which cost $7, 000. Yet if, as there seems to be no doubt, irrigation will increase thewheat crop by at least ten bushels an acre, even this large expensewould be warranted by the increase in land value. But it is probably notknown to Professor Upham that wells between Jamestown and Huron arebeing sunk now for half, in some cases one-third, and in a few casesone-tenth of his reckoning. So with this change of former figures, thequestion of cost may be said to cut no figure. But will it paypermanently, and to what extent? Prof. G. E. Culver answers thisquestion with great ability. He says positively that it will notmaterially change climate nor by attraction increase appreciably theannual rainfall, though he thinks it may tend to equalize thedistribution of the rainfall. As to climate one might be inclined todisagree with him. There has certainly been a great change in theclimate of Utah since irrigation was begun there, and an appreciablechange in some parts of Southern California, though not in Colorado, asfar as can be learned. It is a well-known fact that rain storms followthe course of streams, and as a system of irrigation multipliesuniversally the evaporation of a region, besides multiplying smallstreams and enlarging others, and as hollows would often be ponded bythe waste water, an increase in the area watered by local showers isnaturally to be expected. Moreover, the burning winds that so oftenscorch the crops will be somewhat softened by traversing so much moistground and so many streams. Trees, too, grow more readily in themoistened land, and in turn protect the land from the hot winds. Given aproper system of irrigation in operation for twenty-five years, and theepithet, treeless, need not be applied to Dakota. 

Let us consider irrigation a moment historically. Certainly half of theworld's population depend on it to-day. Modern Egypt has the mostextensive system ever known, except the one recently unearthed in India, so massive in construction and vast in stretch that one writer hasdeclared it would take the entire wealth of the British Empire to put itagain in order. The Egyptian system cost $200, 000, 000, and two, sometimes three crops, are raised for one of former times. 

No division of the United States has a better credit in commercialcircles than Utah, and this is not due to the peculiar institution ofpolygamy, but to the perfect system of irrigation. The carefulhusbanding of the waters that come down the Wahsatch Range on mountains, has transmuted a dreary desert of sand and sage brush into what mosttravellers regard as a garden, and what possibly to the faithful appearssymbolically a Paradise. 

Senator Stewart, of the United States Irrigation Committee, stated thathe had inspected nearly every irrigated region of the world, and knew ofno place supplied by so vast a reservoir of water, with either thevolume or the pressure of the artesian belt of Dakota. Much of the landin the Jim River Valley is comparatively level and susceptible of subsoil irrigation. It would take from two to three years to put the landin prime condition and to make each acre that is now valued at fromthree to ten dollars, worth fifty, at least, and probably seventy-five. 

Now, $5, 000, 000 would more than cover the cost of the suggestedirrigation in the Northwest--a mere trifle, if the certainty of crops isthereby guaranteed. Nor is the certainty of crops the only object to beconsidered. According to dealers in Sioux City, Iowa, the quality ofcattle, shipped from some places in Clay and Yankton Counties since theintroduction of irrigation, has increased twenty-five per cent. , whichappears not improbable when we note the difference between the warm, sweet flow of artesian water and the icy, brackish stuff of a prairieslough. 

The next and really the most important question--for man should not workfor the present and immediate future without the keenest regard to therights of posterity--is whether, under Dakotan conditions, artesianirrigation is safe; whether there is not danger of its poisoning theground. Professor Upham unhesitatingly declares that on account of thealkaline and saline properties in these artesian waters a continued useof them for many years would render the land worthless. The assertion isa rounder one than scientific men generally make, and must be receivedwith caution, though emanating from so high a source, for many samplesof South Dakotan waters, tested at Brookings, have shown no alkalinereaction at all, and the professor's reasoning seems to rest chieflyupon the North Dakotan waters, which for some reason show larger salinepercentages than the South. Then, too, he proceeds on the theory that ayearly supply of one foot of water is necessary, whereas half thatamount during the dryest year, supplied through the five growing months, would insure good crops. Four inches last July would have saved theharvest. But anyway the entire amount of saline matter in South Dakotanwaters, according to Prof. Lewis McLouth, does not, on the average, exceed one fifth of one per cent. After substracting all inertsubstances, such as sand, clay, limestone, and iron ores; so that, ifsix inches of water were applied to the lands, and all evaporated on thesurface, the salty crust would be one 1/160 of an inch thick. But as apart of the water would run off into the streams, and much of it, diluted with rain-water, would soak into the ground, the saltyingredients would be mixed at once with at least a foot of the surfaceearth, and would form less than one fifteenth of one per cent. Of theweight of that soil. These ingredients are salts of lime, magnesia, potash, and soda. Now Dr. Bruckner, in an analysis of some soil inHolland, which he pronounces remarkably rich, says that it contains overfifteen per cent. Of these same ingredients, or two hundred andtwenty-five times as much as six inches of artesian water would give toa foot of Dakotan soil within a year. So it would take two hundred andtwenty-five years for this soil to acquire as much of these salineingredients as the rich soil of Holland already possesses. 

We might go further into this subject and show that every ingredient ofthese artesian well salts is a necessary food for many plant tissues;but even if the accumulation of salty substances were thought dangerous, it is to be remembered that during five of the ten years since thesettlement of the Jim Valley, the rainfall has been ample, and if thisaverage should continue, the land could be allowed to rest fromirrigation for one half of the time so that the floods of rain-waterwould wash away the surplus saline matter. 

Enough has now been said to show that in South Dakota, at least, no harmis likely to accrue to the soil under five hundred years, if SouthDakota chemists are to be trusted. By that time chemistry will haveadvanced from an analytic to a creative science, and if what was onceignorantly termed "The Great American Desert" should suddenly lapse intoa saline state, a speedy cure for that condition may be counted on withconfidence. 

Dismissing, then, this danger as something too dim in the distance to beregarded even as ultimately certain, we are confronted with a reallygrave question--a question fraught with serious immediate peril, ifanswered practically in the way it seems likely to be, unless patrioticDakotans coöperate to prevent it. How shall the burden of the cost beborne? The farmers individually are mostly too poor, and in theNorthwest, which the oppressions of the railroads and the teachings ofDonelly have honeycombed with tendencies to State socialism, the firstanswer is, "By the State, of course. " But the need of action in thismatter is pressing, and the State of South Dakota certainly is too poorat present, for her debt-limit, under her constitution, is alreadyreached. 

For the counties to attempt it would be equally difficult, for manypersons not directly benefited would be forced to share the expense, andunder the pressure of continued hard times an irrigation rebellion mightresult and most certainly dissatisfaction as to the location of thewells would ensue. There is another plan against which none of theseobjections can be raised. A bill has been introduced in the legislature, providing that when thirty voters shall so petition, the State engineerof irrigation shall select proper sites for nine six-inch or sixteenfour and one half inch wells. An election shall then be held to votebonds of the township. If they carry, the supervisors shall have thesewells sunk, and shall rent the water to such farmers as wish it, at asum in no case exceeding a _pro-rata_ share of seven per cent. Of thevalue of the bonds, the title to the water to go with the title to theland so long as the rent is paid. 

The details of the bill are carefully worked out, and it would seem thatthis plan is feasible. It will enable the present owners to retain theirland, and to water it at reasonable cost, while those benefited willbear the expense. 

But the great danger is that what is known as private enterprise, whichin the West has been as a rule simply the legal twin of highway robbery, will seize the situation which this irrigation problem so temptinglypresents. Some of the investment companies are already becoming aware ofthe possibilities, and are taking advantage of the farmers by buyingtheir land at a nominal price, and it is not improbable that speculatorswithin a year will appropriate ("convey" the wise it call) vaststretches in the Jim Valley, crowding out the present owners and keepingthe land comparatively idle for years. This is the peculiar peril of theDakotas, and the Farmers' Alliance would do well to spend some of theirsuperfluous energy on a co-operative plan of introducing irrigation, else they will be at the mercy of a greedy crowd of embryo Jay Goulds. There is, indeed, no reason why the nation, if it can appropriate moneyfor river and harbor bills, should not appropriate so small a sum as$5, 000, 000 to an enterprise of such moment as this, and if theRepublican party had a dying glimmer of their olden shrewdness, theywould have tightened their relaxing hold on the affections of theDakotans by a measure of this kind. But so cumbersome is our presentsystem of republican government, that it would take too long in thiscase to set governmental aid in motion. So, as it is, the Dakotas arebetween the devil of drouth and the deep sea of further capitalisticoppression, their only hope of a fair solution lying in the townshipscheme. 

Before parting with this theme, as indicative of what might be done withthe drouth belt of the Dakotas, the following table deserves acomparative glance. It consists of the tax lists of several Californiacounties before and after the application of irrigation. 

 COUNTIES. 1879. 1889. 

 Fresno $6, 354, 596 $25, 387, 173 Los Angeles 16, 368, 649 84, 376, 310 Merced 5, 208, 245 14, 146, 845 Orange 2, 817, 700 9, 270, 767 San Bernardino 2, 576, 973 23, 267, 955 San Diego 8, 525, 253 31, 560, 918 Stanislaus 6, 232, 368 15, 594, 003 Solano 2, 651, 367 6, 966, 007 Tulare 5, 204, 777 24, 343, 013 ---------- ------------ Total $55, 939, 928 $234, 912, 991

A few words more on the first question of cost, which is one a practicalmind is always asking and re-asking. The Aberdeen _Daily News_, whichought to know, for there are several wells in its neighborhood easy tostudy, states that a six-inch well can be put down for less than $2, 300, and that any of the principal wells at Aberdeen, Hitchcock, Redfield, Woonsocket, Huron, or Yankton will irrigate six hundred and forty acres, which would bring the cost to less than $4. 00 per acre for twelve inchesof depth during the growing season. Mr. Hinds, of the Hinds ranch, hasbeen charging adjacent farmers, however, only $1. 00 per acre for waterfrom his well, and considers it a paying investment. I cannot resist thetemptation of closing this brief inquiry into and commentary upon thismost important question by citing a picturesque passage from theAberdeen _Daily News_:--

 "The power of these wells is almost inconceivable. An iron bar eight feet long and two inches in diameter was accidentally dropped into the tubing of one of them, decreasing the flow for a short time, but it was soon ejected by the water with such force as to break the elbow of a strong iron pipe. When the well at Huron was first put down, no make of water mains was strong enough to withstand the full pressure of the water. The same may be said of nearly all the wells. The fact is that the artesian wells of this valley furnish _the mechanical power of the world_. This power requires no fuel, no engines, no repairs, no extra insurance. It never freezes up, nor blows up, nor dries up. _It can be managed by a girl baby_; $1, 500 will furnish everlasting fifty horse-power. The wonder is that all the woolen, cotton, silk, and linen mills of the world do not rush to take possession of it. _It is a Niagara Falls already harnessed for use. _ All the textile fabrics could be manufactured here _cheaper than in any other part of the universe_. The time will come when this will be recognized, and natural gas will be extinguished by _the giant gushing wells in Dakota_. "

This vivid writing, this rhetoric of artesian force, may be the resultof an editorial fancy that has long bestridden a western boom, insteadof tame old Pegasus; but, leaving out the manufacturing prospectus, there can be no gainsay of the statement that, with a million acres ofthe opulent Dakotan soil under the brilliant Dakotan sun, tended by twothousand artesian wells, the great drouth belt of the Northwest would bethe richest agricultural area in the world. 

REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES AND NEGLECTED CRIMES. 

BY PROF. JOSEPH RODES BUCHANAN. 

There is a crime which has run in wild unbridled career around theglobe, from the most ancient recorded time, beginning in barbarictyranny and robbery of the toiler, advancing with the power and wealthof nations, and flourishing unchecked in modern civilization, sappingthe strength of nations, paralyzing the conscience of humanity, impoverishing the spirit and power of benevolence, stimulating withalcoholic energy the mad rush for wealth and power, and making abortivethe greater part of what saints, heroes, and martyrs might achieve forhuman redemption. But alas! such has been its insinuating and blindingpower, that it has never been opposed by legislation, and never arrestedby the Church, which assumes to obey the sinless martyr of Jerusalem, and to war against all sins, yet has never made war upon this giant sin, but has fondled and caressed it so kindly that the pious andconscientious, believing it no sin or crime, have lost all conception ofits enormity, and may never realize it until an enlightened people shallpour their hot indignation upon the crime and the unconscious criminals. 

This crime which the world's dazzled intellect and torpid conscience hasso long tolerated without resistance, and which antiquity admired in itsdespotic rulers, splendid in proportion to the people's misery, is thatmisleading form of intense and heartless selfishness, which grasps theelements of life and happiness, the wealth of a nation, to squander anddestroy it in that OSTENTATION which has no other purpose than to upliftthe man of wealth and humiliate his humbler brother. That purpose is a_crime_; a crime incompatible with genuine Christianity; a crime whichwas once checked by the religious fervor of Wesley, but checked only fora time. Its criminality is not so much in the heartless motive as in its_wanton destruction of happiness and life_ to achieve a selfish purpose. 

This feature of social ostentation, its _absolute cruelty_, has notattracted the investigation of moralists and pietists. On the contrary, the crime is cherished in the _higher_ ranks of the clergy, and aneminent divine in Cincinnati occupying an absurdly expensive church, actually preached a sermon in vindication of LUXURY--defending it on theaudacious assumption that it was right because some men had veryexpensive tastes and it was proper that such tastes should be gratified. A private interview with John Wesley would have been very edifying tothat clergyman, as the more remote example of the founder ofChristianity had been forgotten. 

That squandering wealth in ostentation and luxury is a crime becomesvery apparent by a close examination of the act. There would be no harmin building a $700, 000 stable for his horses, like a Syracusemillionaire, or in placing a $50, 000 service on the dinner table, like aNew York Astor, if money were as free as air and water; but every dollarrepresents an average day's labor, for there are more toilers whoreceive less than a dollar than there are who receive more. [9] Hence the$700, 000 stable represents the labor of a thousand men for two years andfour months. It also represents seven hundred lives; for a thousanddollars would meet the cost of the first ten years of a child, and thecost of the second ten years would be fully repaid by his labor. Thefancy stable, therefore, represents the physical basis of seven hundredlives, and affirms that the owner values it more highly, or is willingthat seven hundred should die, that his vanity may be gratified. 

 [9] According to J. R. Dodge, there are five million agricultural laborers in this country whose wages do not average over $194 a year. 

This is not an imaginative estimate. A thousand dollars would save notone but many lives in the Irish famine. It would save more than a scoreof lives in New York, if diligently used among those who are approachingthe Potter's Field, which annually receives eight thousand of the deadof New York. It would establish, if invested at seven per cent. , aninstitution that would permanently sustain educating to a virtuousmanhood, two hundred and fifty of the waifs gathered in from thepollution of the streets, sending forth fifty redeemed ones every year. When $700, 000 is squandered, such is the amount of human life destroyed, by destroying that for want of which the benevolent are unable to staythe march of disease, of crime, and of death. 

The thought of snatching food from the starving, or turning outhalf-clad men and women to perish in the wintry snow, excites ourhorror, but which is the greater criminal, he who for avarice thusdestroys one family, or he who in riotous ostentation destroys the meansthat would save a hundred lives? Does the fact that they are not in hispresence, or may be a mile or two away, change the nature or results ofhis act? And does his accidental possession of the basis of lifeauthorize him to destroy it?

It is not unreasonable to say that every thousand dollars wantonlywasted, represents the destruction of the one human life that it wouldhave saved, and while this slaughter of the innocents proceeds, societyis cursed with the presence of over 100, 000 criminals, paupers, tramps, and vagrants in the State of New York, who might have been reared intorespectable citizenship with a small fragment of the wealth that issquandered in the hurtful ostentation that panders to a vicious taste. While poor women in New York are fighting hunger at arm's length, orlooking through ash barrels and offal buckets, their wealthy sistersthink nothing of spending ten, twenty, or thirty thousand dollars ontheir toilet, or wearing a $130, 000 necklace, or half a million indiamonds in a Washington court circle, --all of which I hope to see intime condemned by a purer taste as _tawdry and offensive vulgarity_, even if it were not done in the presence of misery as it is. "Twenty-four hours in the slums" (says Julia H. Percy, in the New York_World_)--"just a night and a day--yet into them were crowded suchrevelations of misery, and depravity, and degradation as having oncebeen gazed upon, life can never be the same afterwards. " Such is life inNew York. What it is in "Darkest England, " as portrayed by GeneralBooth, is too wretched and loathsome to be reproduced here. But we mustnot fail to understand that five sixths of the people of themillionaire's metropolis, New York, live in the tenement-house region, abreeding centre of intemperance, pestilence, crime, and future mobs, where wretched life is crushed to deeper wretchedness by the avariciousexaction of unfeeling landlords[10] worse than those against whom theIrish rebel. Is not the splendor of such a city like the hectic flush onthe consumptive's cheek? The statistics of the past year reveal thestartling fact that New York is a decaying city; that its population hasno natural growth, but had 853 more deaths than births. 

 [10] Fifteen to forty per cent. Is the usual profit exacted on tenement-house property, according to witnesses before a Senate Committee, --forty per cent. Being common. Is not this the plunder of poverty by wealth? Has Ireland anything approaching this or resembling the horrid conditions in New York? "All previous accounts and descriptions" (says Ballington Booth) "became obliterated from my memory by the surprise and horror I experienced when passing through some of the foul haunts and vicious hotbeds which make up the labyrinth of this modern Sodom. " "How powerless" (said Mr. Booth) "are lips to describe or pens to write scenes which baffle description, and which no ink is black enough to show in their true colors. "

The desire for ostentation as one of the great aims of life is inwoveninto the whole fabric of society to the exclusion of nobler motives, forostentation is death to benevolence. How many bankruptcies, how manydefalcations, and frauds, how many absconding criminals, how manystruggles ending in broken-down constitutions, how many social wrecksand embittered lives are due to its seductive influence, because theChurch and the moral sentiment of society have not taken a stand againstit, and education has never checked it, for it runs riot at theuniversities patronized by the wealthy. 

New York has been said to spend five millions annually on flowers, whichis far more a matter of ostentation than of taste, for as a rule"whatever is most costly is most fashionable. " Nor is the cost the onlyevil, for the costly dinners and parties of the ostentatious are notonly characterized by an absence of serious and elevated sentiment, butby intellectual poverty and frivolous chatter. To waste $5, 000 for anevening's lavish display of flowers to a thoughtless and crowded throng, almost within hearing of the never-ending moan of misfortune in a cityin which police stations shelter 150, 000 of the _utterly destitute_every year, is a picturesque way of ignoring that brotherhood ofhumanity, which is gently and inoffensively referred to on Sunday. 

Moralists and pietists have been so utterly blind to the nature ofCRIMINAL OSTENTATION, that society is not shocked to read in parallelcolumns the crushing agonies of famine and pestilence, and the costlyrevels of aristocracy, or the millions wasted on royal families, thatmanifest about as much concern for the suffering million as a farmerfeels for the squealing of his pigs in cold weather. No one is surprisedor shocked to hear that in India, a land famed for poverty, famine, andpestilence, the maharajah of Baroda could offer a pearly and jewelledcarpet, ten feet by six, costing a million of dollars, as a present tothe woman who had pleased his fancy. [11] How many lives and how much ofagony did that carpet represent in a country where five cents pays for aday's labor? Twenty million days' labor is a small matter to a pettyprince. 

 [11] This love of ostentation has much to do with the degradation of India. The silver money which should be in circulation is hoarded up or used for silver ornaments. A wedding in that country is not marked by proper preparation for the duties and expenses of conjugal life, but by a display of jewelry and silver. A thousand rupees' worth must be furnished by the bride, and two thousand by the bridegroom, if they are able to raise so much, and sometimes they raise it by going in debt beyond their ability to pay. This love of ostentation marks an inferior type of human development. 

CRIMINAL OSTENTATION stands ever in the way of man's progress to ahigher condition, like a wasting disease that comes in to arrest therecovery of a patient. All schemes of benevolence, all efforts to gain agreater mastery of nature's forces, and thus emancipate the race frompoverty and pestilence, languish feebly, or totally fail, for want ofthe resources consumed in the blaze of ostentation. The resources of aChurch that might abolish ignorance and pauperism must be given touphold the royal state of lord bishops, who sit in parliament, and makea heavy incubus on all real progress, obstructing the measures whichmight uplift into comfort, decency, and intelligence, England's _threemillions_ of submerged classes who live in destitution and misery. [12]

 [12] These suggestions are not offered in a hostile spirit. The writer fully realizes the large amount of moral sentiment and fervent piety assembled in the Church to uplift society in this country, but he deeply regrets that it is not more enlightened in ethics and in doctrine, and that the Church has never got rid of its ancient taint, mentioned by the Apostle James, that the brethren paid more respect to the man with a gold ring than a man in cheap clothing. 

The upward progress of humanity is foreign to their thoughts, and thegrandest problems of human life and destiny that ever interested themind of man are investigated not by the aid of the millions thatostentation wastes, but by the heroic labors of the impoverishedscholar, thankless until his only reward can be but a monumental stone. How seldom do we hear from the pulpit so bright a remark as that of theRev. S. R. Calthrop, "If the governments of the world would spend onscientific discovery a hundredth part of what they spend on killing men, or rather in making preparation for killing men and then not doing it, the secrets of the earth would be laid bare in a time inordinatelyshort. " But this very warlike ambition is a matter of CRIMINALOSTENTATION, like that of the bullying pugilist, seeking the belt--thedesperate determination to shine and boast as the master power in thefield of war, which is to-day the insane ostentation fostered by theleading powers of Europe. Vanity, literally meaning emptiness, is theantithesis of wisdom, and military vanity is a half-way station on theroad to insanity. 

The profligacy of private ostentation extends in this country to publiclife, as was scandalously displayed in the twenty million State Housejob at Albany (which our arithmetic makes equivalent to twenty thousandlives) and renders all governmental affairs needlessly expensive[13](except in that admirable republic Switzerland), nor is it arrested bythe solemnity of death, for a prodigal funeral and a hundred thousanddollar tomb for an individual eminent only by wealth is but afashionable matter of course to-day. Against this my moral senserevolts. Had I the wealth of Croesus, or the power of Napoleon, I couldnot consent to the evil record that my last act in life, in ordering afuneral and monument, was the effort to destroy as much as possible, andtake from the resources of benevolence that which might gladden athousand lives. To look back from the enlightened upper world upon such, a monument of base selfishness, would be the hell of conscience; but asimple rose or hawthorn over the couch of the abandoned form wouldharmonize well with the sentiments of heaven. 

 [13] The salary that was sufficient for the commanding dignity and ability of Washington is not sufficient for the third-rate politician who occupies the White House to-day. The numerous allowances which are added to his $50, 000 salary raise it to $114, 865. But why should he have any salary at all? Would any man require the bribe of salary to induce him to accept the Presidency? The honor of the office would be more than sufficient pay for the third-rate men that are accidentally chosen to a far higher rank than nature gave them. We have too many ideas and fashions inherited from old-world kingdoms, and the ridiculous rules and etiquette of precedence and punctilio are as carefully enforced in the court circle of Washington as in the old world which still rules our fashions. But far worse than they, we have the criminal ostentation of a funeral for a Congressman, costing from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars, which is simply an unconstitutional and shameful robbery of the people to imitate the style of royalty. 

What is it but a matter of course, and fashionably proper for a ministerrepresenting the moneyless and homeless saint of Jerusalem, to spend invarious ways ten or twenty times the average income of an Americancitizen. But _has any man a right to indulge in needless and thereforeprofligate expenditure for himself, while misery unrelieved surroundshim_?[14] Could he, if he had an occasional throb of the sentiment ofbrotherhood, the divine love enforced by Jesus? Suffering, intensesuffering of mind and body, is ever present in society, and _we cannotignore it_ or disregard it. Has any human being a right to look on athuman suffering, and turn away contemptuously? to see men drowning andrefuse to throw them the plank which lies conveniently by? to pass bythe chamber of dying, with loud, unseemly revels? to titter and laughalongside of the grave where an unrecognized brother is being buried? tofeast upon costly wines and far-fetched elaborate viands at tablesoverloaded with fresh flowers and artistic gold, while the pallid facesof a hundred hungry ones are looking on, and who are not even recognizedso much as the dog that receives a bone? To know that the city isattacked by a powerful army and refuse either to enlist for its defence, or to contribute means to help the defenders, would not be tolerated;but to do such things is precisely what selfish and unfeeling wealthdemands, and what the aroused conscience of humanity will, ere long, forbid. It refuses to establish the industrial and moral education forall which would protect society from the invading forces of pauperism, crime, and pestilence. It refuses to suspend its costly royal revelsuntil the voices of hunger and despair are silenced. It refuses tomoderate its giddy round of fashionable frivolity and ostentation in thevery presence of death, in the tenements where human life is reduced toless than half its normal length, so that death and revelry confronteach other in the city. 

 [14] The writer once started a society upon this principle, to be called the BROTHERHOOD OF JUSTICE. Its principle was the abnegation of selfishness by strictly limiting the expenditure of every member to the amount really necessary to his comfort, dedicating the rest to humanity. It did not appear difficult to gather members, and an able apostle of this principle would be a world's benefactor. 

I can imagine the voice of the million which says to the millionaire, wedo not ask you to be a hero and leap in to save the drowning; we do noteven require you to be a manly man and bestir yourself before a life islost; but we do say that the drowning man shall not be doomed to drownby your indifference? but if there is a rope which may be thrown to him, or a plank to uphold him, that rope or that plank shall be used, even ifyou forbid and claim them as your vested rights. You have no vestedrights paramount to the rights of the commonwealth. It can order you intimes of danger to all to place your body for the protection of the cityin the path of the cannon ball, and if the commonwealth can demand yourlife for the benefit of all, do you think it will allow its members tobe slaughtered in order to sustain your revelry, and leave your piles ofhoarded gold and silver to accumulate as a magazine of corruption anddanger to society? No, Mr. Millionaire, poverty, pestilence, and crime, are making war upon society and tumbling their slaughtered thousandsinto Potter's Fields. And if the commonwealth does not demand yourpersonal service, but simply demands that you shall not make perpetualfor the sake of ostentation all of the present unnatural inequality, youare surely treated justly and kindly. 

When the planter objected to General Jackson's using his cotton bales asa rampart for the defence of New Orleans, tradition says the Generalordered him to take a musket and stand behind them as a common soldier. At present we ask only your _superfluous_ cotton bales, and it would notbe wise for you to oppose our demand. The people remember the unholydistinction of classes thirty years ago, which enabled a favored fewpatricians to flourish as vampires on the commonwealth, while theplebeians were giving it their sufferings, their blood, and their lives, and hence they seek justice through our enormous system of pensions. 

Patricians would retain commanding superiority of wealth for power andostentation, but the people object to this power and scorn theostentation. 

The immense concentration of wealth by syndicates, corporations, andtrusts alarms us all, because we see in it a formidable danger to therepublic. [15] Colonel Higginson admits the evil, but denies that anymethod of counteracting it is known, yet it may easily be shown that wehave several effective methods. 

 [15] It is not only in the strong language of many political meetings, conventions, and the independent press, that this danger is recognized, but in that wealthy and conservative body, the United States Senate, it is distinctly recognized and frequently expressed; the language of Senators Ingalls, Stewart, Call, Gorman, Vest, Berry, and others, shows that they are alarmed and would warn their colleagues. 

 Senator Call, of Florida, said:--"It is well for the people to form some idea of the extent to which the powers of the government are becoming subject to the control of a very small number of people, and the extent to which these powers are becoming absolute, despotic, monarchical, almost as much so as the Czar of Russia. 

 "The present system places the control of the wealth of this country in the hands of a very small number of persons, an almost infinitesimal portion of the people; gives them money to buy those who represent the people. "

 Senator Berry said:--"So much injustice has been done to the people, so many wrongs have been perpetrated in the interests of wealth and capital by the passage of unjust laws, that the people are in open revolt to-day, and they have a right to be; they have determined to have relief, and they are entitled to it. "

 Senator Stewart said:--"If there is no reason nor humanity in the possessors of accumulated capital there is power in revolution. "

 Senator Gorman, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said:--"We stand to-day, Mr. President, upon a financial volcano. The labor of the country appeals through every channel it can to this administration and this Congress to stay the awful wreck that is threatened. "

 The eloquent address of Senator Ingalls presented still more forcibly and fully the evils of plutocracy, which is "threatening the safety if it does not endanger the existence of the republic, " by "the tyranny of combined, concentrated, centralized, and incorporated capital. " "The conscience of the nation is shocked at the injustice of modern society. The moral sentiment of mankind has been aroused at the unequal distribution of wealth, at the unequal diffusion of the burdens, the benefits, and the privileges of society. " "At this time there are many scores of men, of estates, and of corporations, in this country, whose annual income exceeds, and there has been one man whose monthly revenue since that period exceeds the entire accumulations of the wealthiest citizen of the United States at the end of the last century. " "By some means, some device, some machination, some incantation, honest or otherwise, some process that cannot be defined, less than a two-thousandth part of our population have obtained possession and have kept out of the penitentiary, in spite of the means they have adopted to acquire it, of more than one half of the entire accumulated wealth of the country. That is not the worst, Mr. President. It has been chiefly acquired by men who have contributed little to the material welfare of the country, and by processes that I do not care in appropriate terms to describe. " "The people of this country are generous and just, they are jealous also, and when discontent changes to resentment, and resentment passes into exasperation, one volume of a nation's history is closed and another will be opened. "

 This feeling of resentment must arise in a community which is deeply in debt, and is not prospering. The last census shows in Iowa a mortgage indebtedness equivalent to over five hundred dollars upon every head of a family. 

Our wealthiest are beginning to have incomes of over $5, 000, 000 a year, and it is very plain from the concentration of this wealth that a fewwealthy men who could easily form themselves into close and secretcorporation, will in time outweigh the entire republic, as Mr. Shearmansays that 250, 000 families are already a three fourths financialmajority. 

It was thought that this was impossible in our republic because we hadno law of _primogeniture_, but we have another kind of geniture that isvery effective. Recent statistics have shown that the very wealthyinhabitants of Fifth Avenue, New York, have in one year but oneeighteenth as many children as the same number of families in the poorerneighborhood of Cherry Hill. Thus poverty multiplies itself rapidly, while wealth concentrates and needs no primogeniture to hold ittogether, _because its numbers do not increase_; and a similar fact, butnot so extreme, appears in the reference to our Back Bay region in ourown statistics, and in the statistics of Philadelphia. Thus it seemsthat we are destined to have the richest aristocracy by far that theworld has ever dreamed of. 

We know that concentrated wealth is power--and that great power isalways dangerous to its neighbors. Like the slumbering power ofdynamite, we are unwilling to have it near us, no matter how wellguarded. I hold, therefore, that a republic has a right to guard itselfagainst such dangers as much as the city has a right to prohibit theestablishment of powder magazines in the centre of its population. 

The profound and prophetic mind of Abraham Lincoln presaged this, and hesaid: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves meand causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result ofthe war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption inhigh places will follow, and the money power of the country willendeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of thepeople until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republicis destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of mycountry than ever before, even in the midst of the war. God grant thatmy suspicion may prove groundless. "

Wealth has a natural tendency to grow into an overwhelming power, for amillion of dollars well managed will become $1, 000, 000, 000 in a centuryand a half, and there are millionaires to-day who may becomebillionaires in forty or fifty years. But this growth has always beenkept down by a generous or prodigal consumption, by ostentatious luxury, by profligacy, by pestilence, and by war. Yet when these checks arediminished; when, as in our republic, the danger of war is removed; whenthe generous consumption is hindered by wide-spread poverty; whenpestilence is checked by sanitary improvements, and industry is enforcedon the millions by daily necessity, then that growth of wealth which hasbeen interrupted every few years in the old world by war, tyranny, taxation, standing armies, ignorance, and disease, will advance in ourcountry as a mighty flood, impelled by the rains from heaven. The floodfrom heaven which is enriching us is the inspiration of genius in everyform of science, art, and mechanical progress, which doubles andredoubles our productive power. We must look to human wisdom for themeans of regulating the flow that it may act as a fertilizing rain, andnot as a devastating flood, wasting the hillsides into barrenness, andsweeping away the bulwarks that the wise have erected. 

It is no rhetorical exaggeration to speak of accumulated and unequalwealth as a dangerous flood. All ancient history proves it to be adanger. Rome, Greece, Egypt, Persia, and India, have shown by theirterrible record how wealth in a few hands has ever proved a curseinstead of a blessing to society. The pyramids of Egypt, an awfulmonument of the blood and toil of slaves, are a gloomy record of thesenseless ostentation of despots, yet who ever speaks of the pyramids asthe monuments of a crime?

Immense wealth for personal use is not a normal desire. It is anunsound, unhealthy appetite, resembling that of gluttony anddarkness--an appetite that grows by what it feeds on and becomesinsatiable. 

It is an unsound appetite, for the increase of wealth already beyond allhuman wants, adds nothing to a man's comforts or happiness--it adds onlyto his cares, which it increases, to his selfishness, which itintensifies, and to his power of indulging arrogance and ostentation. Itimpairs his sympathy with his fellowman, and inflames his egotism. 

The superfluous mass of wealth serves only to supply an overruling powerdestructive to the social rights of others, and a haughty ostentationthat humiliates fellow-citizens. It is, therefore, a hostile anddangerous element in a republic, although a few may hold great wealthand resist its insidious influence. 

Both extreme wealth and extreme poverty are injurious to man andinjurious to society, and if it is the law of nature that the fittestshall survive, the extremely wealthy are not the fittest, for throughthe centuries they do not survive. The extremely wealthy are dying out, for they do not have children enough to maintain their numbers. It isour duty so to shape our policy as to relieve the commonwealth ofpossible dangers from both extreme wealth and extreme poverty. They aretwin evils; extreme wealth indicates extreme poverty, as mountainsindicate valleys. Wealth, corruption, and despotism, are groupedtogether in history, as liberty has been grouped with equality, simplicity, hardihood, the mountain and the wilderness. 

Great wealth is timid, narrow-minded, and opposed to reform, its methodof opposition being corruption, and these characteristics areintensified in hereditary wealth. Wealth everywhere gives power tomonopolize the face of the earth, and thus establish a hereditarynobility; for the landlords of millions of acres are the mostsubstantial and formidable lords that society knows, and nowhere in theworld have there been greater opportunities to establish such anaristocracy, which may be able to buy and sell the aristocracy ofEurope. Our present national wealth, which is about one thousand dollarsper capita, represents not the increased wealth of the masses but theenormous accumulations of a few. Our gain of about two thousand millionsannually, does it represent the prosperity or the decline of therepublic? If it is but aggregation of wealth, it is a decline, it iscorpulence instead of strength. 

Our social system has the elements of decay already as conspicuous as inthe tuberculous patient. Invention increases the power of wealth insteadof increasing the resources of manhood, for wealth absorbs and usesmachinery and diminishes the relative value of the man by making him amachine attendant. In leather work he sinks from the independentshoemaker, safe in the patronage of his neighbors, to the mere tenth ofa shoemaker who if dislodged from the factory is helpless. Theindependence of the hunter and the farmer is fast disappearing. Population is gathering in cities, and the country becoming the home oftenant farmers or day laborers on large estates. The middle class isdeclining, and society becoming slowly an aggregation of capitalists andemployers, an unhealthy social condition, premonitory of struggles andconflicts that were not possible fifty years ago. At this moment astrike of 150, 000 is threatened. But it is not merely the laboringclasses, for all classes are threatened by our present dangerous systemwhich is running on to sure destruction, like a locomotive let loose andflying wildly over the railroad. If there were no other formidabledanger, the trust or syndicate is in itself a fatality. When a thousandmillions enter the field they enter as master, in the Standard Oilfashion. They can buy out or crush out, as they may choose, everycompetitor in the field they may seize. There is _not a single form ofindustry_ which they cannot monopolize, and where the monopoly isestablished, demand what prices they please for that which they alonecan supply. Can we imagine the conventional brother Jonathan held downby the throat with iron grip, and his pockets open to the holder, orwill he rebel before the grip is fastened? He does not seem aware howwell it is fastened upon him already; but something decisive will bedone long before a syndicate senate can rule the entire country. Tenyears more will introduce the struggle. The struggle must come, forplutocracy is advancing to universal absorption, and labor is becomingdefiant, and well it may, for the COMMONWEALTH represents _not money butman_, and when plutocracy, absorbing ninety-five per cent. Of thenation's wealth, assumes the practical government, the commonwealth witha firm hand will thrust it aside; but will it be a peaceful change, willthe conquerors yield to the conquered? As the vampire bat fans itssleeping victims while absorbing their life blood, the advocates ofcapital deny that there is any such thing as plutocracy, or anythinggoing on but the natural legitimate and healthful development of trade;and the medical corporations called colleges in seizing a stern monopolyof the healing art, assure us that it is only for the benefit andprotection of the dear people who have not sense enough to distinguishbetween a successful and an unsuccessful doctor, and have sounpardonable a partiality for those who cure them cheaply withoutcollege permission. There is nothing too small for monopoly to grasp, not even the cheap dispensing of established remedies from thedruggist's counter. 

It is a just and patriotic sentiment which looks with apprehension uponthe great and irresponsible power developed by extreme wealth, whichlifts the wealthy far above society, enabling them to indulge inprofligate luxury, and to squander in a single evening's pleasure (ordisplay without pleasure) an amount that would make life prosperous to ahundred suffering families, or on a single piece of architecturalsplendor, enough to complete the education of the entire youth of acity--wealth enabling them to rival the despots of Europe in socialostentation, while almost within hearing of their revelry, ten or twentythousand are suffering from want of employment, want of health, want ofeducation, want of industrial skill, which society did not give them, suffering the slow death that comes through debility, emaciation, anddisease, from toil and poverty, the sufferer being sometimes a woman inwhom all the virtues have blossomed only to perish in the chillingatmosphere of poverty. [16] This may be utterly senseless talk to thosein whom the sentiment of brotherhood is dead, but it expressessentiments to which millions respond, and it is refreshing to see thatthese statements, which at last have found free expression through THEARENA, are also beginning to find a home in the minds of public leaders, whose voices will compel attention. I allude to the philanthropicexpressions of the Emperor of Germany, and to the language of Mr. Gladstone, who shows that the necessity of philanthropic action on thepart of the wealthy is increased by their changed attitude, as they arebecoming more isolated from the people, and no longer take that friendlypersonal interest in their tenants and employes of every grade, whichwas formerly common. In this country, social ostentation is a greatpower to increase this separation of ranks, and the book of Jacob A. Riis, "How the Other Half Lives, " ought to be studied by every wealthycitizen as well as by reformers. Herbert Spencer, in a recent thoughtfulessay, refers to this increasing interest in social welfare thus: "He isstruck, too, by the contrast between the small space which popularwelfare then occupied in the public attention, and the large space itnow occupies, with the result that outside and inside Parliament, plansto benefit the millions form the leading topics, and every one havingmeans is expected to join in some philanthropic effort. " This is becausethe millions demand it, and they who, like the writer, have for half acentury been interested in behalf of the millions, may now be listenedto. 

 [16] And society is still organized to ensure the perpetuation of this poverty, no matter what the bounties of nature, or what the increase of wealth by art and invention. The army of the dissatisfied, the hungry, and the demoralized, continually grows and becomes more dangerous. The President of the National Home Association at Washington stated a few months since that there were _sixty thousand boy tramps_ in the United States. 

The enormous wealth developed in our republic, in which a single cityholds a thousand millionaires, controls the press, controls legislation, and teaches the ambitious to sell themselves to the wealthy who are thecontrolling power. Under such influences arises that moral insensibilitywhich, in New York, could squander twenty millions on one building, while half the children were out of school, and a large portion of theinsane were left wallowing in indecent filth, worse than that of a hogpen, as shown in the Albany _Law Journal_. 

In presenting these views, I am not assailing millionaires as men moreobjectionable or censurable than any other class. It is not true thatthe mere ability to gain wealth implies moral inferiority, for itimplies many substantial and honorable qualities. Reverse the socialranks, give the wealth to the poor, and our condition would not beimproved, perhaps it would be much worse. The fault lies in our socialsystem of struggle and rivalry, and while that system generates, as italways has, extreme wealth and extreme poverty, we must combat these twoevils, and to control them is the purpose of this essay. Whether abetter social system is possible that would PREVENT them, is not nowunder consideration, but surely there must be a system which will makeunlimited wealth and unlimited poverty impossible, for such conditionsare incompatible with a permanent, peaceful, and prosperous republic. Aswell might we expect a successful voyage from a ship with four-fifths ofits cargo on the upper deck, as from a republic top heavy withmillionaire capital. Can we believe that republics are forbidden by thelaws of progress and evolution; that they must, as Macaulay maintained, come to a fatal crisis? I trust not. But does not our social system, inherited from barbarism, built up on the hot ashes left where the firesof war have desolated, necessarily develop that inequality which hasswept the great empires of antiquity to their doom. When all the wealthof the nation has fallen into the possession of two per cent. Of thepopulation, the period of danger has arrived. Five per cent. Of ourpopulation had, in 1880, absorbed four fifths of the national wealth, and at present, according to the careful statistics of Mr. Shearman, less than two per cent. Hold seven tenths of our wealth, and are rapidlyadvancing to nine tenths, their progress being assisted by the indirecttaxation which places the burden of government on the shoulders ofpoverty. Popular ignorance of public affairs has tolerated this, and hastolerated a financial system far worse, which has given capital allpossible advantage of labor. We are drifting in the rapids; how far offis our Niagara? But labor is roused, and a change in our system oftaxation is imminent. 

Unlimited wealth and unlimited poverty are the necessary results of thewarlike stage of progress, which develops the conquerors and theconquered in the great battle of life. Unnumbered centuries of tribaland international war have developed to high perfection the wolfish andtigerish instincts of humanity. What is called peace is a state offinancial war. Beneath the smooth skin of the civilized man, we find thewolf in undiminished vigor. The triumphant wolf rides in his chariot;the conquered wolf sleeps in the open air along the alleys, wharves, andstreets; but what cares the wolf triumphant for that? for the 30, 000homeless in London? The policeman's club, or the bayonet, is the onlything that keeps down riot and arson, and the uncertainty of the resultis all that hinders the French, German, and Russian wolves from turninga continent into a pandemonium. Is Europe truly a civilized country? Notif tried by an ethical standard. VON MOLTKE, the great man of Germany, who has so recently passed away, considered war a _permanent_institution. 

In this wolfish stage of human development, altruism is almost unknown, except as an eccentricity. It is safe to say, as a general rule to whichthere are not many exceptions, that _no man is fit to be entrusted withany more than he needs for his own comfortable existence_. Every dollarbeyond that sum is wasted in his hands. He has not the faintestconception that he is a trustee of all such wealth, responsible toheaven for its use. As he cannot consume it, he can but squander it togratify his vanity, and lift himself to a position from which he can, orthinks he can, look down upon his fellows. The leading idea of theaverage citizen is to construct a palace that will cost ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred times as much as the residence that would be amplysufficient and pleasant. [17] His talent for the destruction of wealthgrows by indulgence, and thus the millions that the financial conquerorshave won from the conquered are thrown into the blazing flame ofostentation, and might as well be thrown into a literal conflagration. Such is the humanity with which we have to deal at present. Wealth, nomatter who holds it, does not restrain the destruction of the resourcesof the commonwealth, but the growl of the suffering millions may, andmay lead to a recognition of the grand truth that everything beyond thedemands of human comfort is a sacred trust for humanity, and with themillions thus aroused, I believe it may be possible to introduce lawswhich will gradually change the entire condition of society, and leavein this broad land neither an American prince nor an American beggar--achange which will be a greater forward movement than that of 1776. 

 [17] Nob Hill, in San Francisco, is crowned with five huge buildings in imitation of foreign palaces, utterly unfit for private residences, which may possibly sometime be utilized for public purposes. They but illustrate the crazy ostentation of selfish wealth. Can it be possible, as stated by the St. Joseph _Herald_, that "George Vanderbilt is building a genuine old-fashioned mediæval baronial castle at Asheville, N. C. , at a cost of $10, 000, 000"?

The leading purpose of such legislation will be the controlling of thatlawless selfishness, which wantonly destroys all in which the communityis interested; which on the prairies exterminates the buffalo, in themountains and forests destroys the timber, bringing on as a consequencethe drouth, floods, and desolate barrenness, under which a large part ofthe old world is suffering; which would exterminate the seals ifgovernment did not interfere, and would infect every city withpestilential odors of offensive manufactories; which would destroy thepeople's national money for the benefit of private bankers, and pervertall the powers of government for the benefit of monopoly and organizedspeculation. 

May we not look to that struggle for justice which to-day assumes theforms of Nationalism, Farmers' Alliance, People's Party, Knights ofLabor, and Land Nationalization, to accomplish this purpose andemancipate the present from the barbarian ideas of the past?

(_To be concluded in July Arena. _)

HAS SPENCER'S DOCTRINE OF INCONCEIVABILITY DRIVEN RELIGION INTO THEUNKNOWABLE?

BY REV. T. ERNEST ALLEN. 

[Illustration: (signed) Cordially yours, Ernest Allen]

The service rendered to humanity by Mr. Herbert Spencer in theelaboration of the Synthetic Philosophy, should command the admirationand gratitude of all broad-minded men. There are certain fallacies inthe argument by which Religion is relegated into the "Unknowable, "however, to which it will be the purpose of this essay to call thereader's attention. If Religion really be, by its very nature, unknowable, it follows that as man grows in intelligence, the extent towhich it occupies his thought will tend to diminish towards finalextinction. It is a thoroughly wholesome state of affairs that, like allthings which claim our consideration, Religion should again and again becompelled to step into the arena to vindicate its right to hold swayover humanity. Nor is the attitude of many minds which places Religionupon the defensive, unreasonable, or the outgrowth of a perverse spirit, but, on the contrary, it results from the questionings of those eager tofind the truth and anxious to "prove all things" and cast error aside. Let us see if Religion can withstand the fierce onslaught, threateningits very life, which Mr. Spencer makes in his "First Principles" (pp. 3-123). 

Our author's first attempt is to "form something like a general theoryof current opinions, " so as neither to "over-estimate nor under-estimatetheir worth. " As a special case from the examination of which he hopesto derive a general method, he traces the evolution of government fromthe beginning until now. It is held that no belief concerning governmentis wholly true or false; "each of them insists upon a certainsubordination of individual actions to social requirements. . . . From theoldest and rudest idea of allegiance, down to the most advancedpolitical theory of our own day, there is on this point completeunanimity. " He speaks of this subordination as a postulate "which is, indeed, of self-evident validity, " as ranking "next in certainty to thepostulates of exact science. " As the result of his search for "ageneralization which may habitually guide us when seeking for the soulof truth in things erroneous, " he concludes: "This method is to compareall opinions of the same genus; to set aside as more or lessdiscrediting one another those various special and concrete elements inwhich such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after thediscordant constituents have been eliminated, and to find for theremaining constituent that abstract expression which holds truethroughout its divergent modifications. "

What did Mr. Spencer discover by the application of his method togovernment? A postulate which he announces to be of "self-evidentvalidity, " an "unquestionable fact"--that is all! His method is astatement of the process of abstraction. Very useful though it is indetermining what one or more predicates may be affirmed of many objectsof thought which differ widely otherwise or in revealing truths, as hepoints out, respecting which men can by no possibility disagree, itcannot assist us in discriminating between true and false "discordantconstituents, " for which purpose a simple method would be helpful. Certainly this is not the method which gave us the most "advancedpolitical theory" of the day! The fact is, that when used, as Mr. Spencer suggests, it shrivels the total content of any subject underconsideration, down to the one truth lying at the foundation of the mostprimitive theory. In the case of Religion, he alleges that the one pointupon which there is entire unanimity between the most divergent creeds, between the lowest fetichism and the most enlightened Christianity, isthis: "That there is something to be explained. " An interesting piece ofinformation, surely! Yes, but "the Power which the Universe manifests tous is utterly inscrutable. " Over against this, we have the magnificentsuperstructure of modern Science, erected by the employment of methodsquite other than the one which he esteems competent to overthrowReligion. 

The postulate, a straight line may be drawn between two points, while itmakes a geometry possible, reveals nothing as to the properties oflines; so, in the present case, the proposition resulting from theprocess of abstraction, "there is something to be explained, " affirmsthat, at least _à priori_, Religion is possible, but decides nothing asto the truth or falsity of unnumbered statements which millions ofpeople have believed for centuries to belong to the domain of Religion. This method does not and cannot discredit Religion. 

"Religious ideas of one kind or another, " says Mr. Spencer, "are almostuniversal. . . . We are obliged to admit that, if not supernaturallyderived, as the majority contend, they must be derived out of humanexperiences, slowly accumulated and organized. . . . Considering allfaculties, " under the evolutionary hypothesis, "to result fromaccumulated modifications caused by the intercourse of the organism withits environment, we are obliged to admit that there exist in theenvironment certain phenomena or conditions which have determined thegrowth of the feeling in question, and so are obliged to admit that itis as normal as any other faculty. . . . We are also forced to infer thatthis feeling is in some way conducive to human welfare. . . . Positiveknowledge does not and never can fill the whole region of possiblethought. At the utmost reach of discovery there arises, and must everarise, the question--what lies beyond?. . . Throughout all future time, asnow, the human mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertainedphenomena and their relations, but also with that unascertainedsomething which phenomena and their relations imply. Hence if knowledgecannot monopolize consciousness--if it must always continue possible forthe mind to dwell upon that which transcends knowledge; then there cannever cease to be a place for something of the nature of Religion; sinceReligion under all its forms is distinguished from everything else inthis, that its subject matter is that which passes the sphere ofexperience. " Religion is "a constituent of the great whole; and beingsuch must be treated as a subject of Science with no more prejudice thanany other reality. "

It will suit our present purpose to divide the cognitive faculties intointuitive and non-intuitive. If I rightly understand Mr. Spencer, whenhe says of the subject matter of Religion that it "passes the sphere ofexperience, " he means that the content of Religion results from theaction of the non-intuitive faculties upon material furnished by theintuitive faculties, and not from the immediate action of the latterupon environment. For the sake of the argument, I will grant thisposition. In order that mankind may build up sciences in which itreposes such confidence, the action of the non-intuitive faculties mustbe trusted, for it is only through such action that sciences can ever beconstructed from the materials of experience. Granting, then, thegeneral trustworthiness of mental operations, the mind cannot abstract_out of_ human experiences what was not already in them; cannot evolvewhat was not involved. The separation of the true from the false inReligion, then, must be accomplished, as in the case of Science, byverifying the intuitions and going repeatedly over the chains ofreasoning which lead to the conclusions farthest removed fromintuitions, to guard as much as possible against error. Thus, becausedrawn out from given data, certain conclusions will embody to-day whatis true in Religion, and later, with an enlarged experience, more orless modified conclusions will express what will then be seen to betrue. This is in accord with the general law of evolution which holdsfor Science. From the present point of view, Mr. Spencer seems to concurin the above, since he says of religious ideas, that "to suppose thesemultiform conceptions" to "be one and all _absolutely_ groundless, discredits too profoundly that average human intelligence from which allour individual intelligences are inherited. "

To the statement that the mind cannot abstract _out of_ humanexperiences what was not already in them, Mr. Spencer could make, Ithink, but one answer, to wit: that while the operations of the mind aregenerally reliable, and while there has been an element in humanexperience which seemed to warrant conclusions derived from them, nevertheless, mankind has egregiously erred in thinking that it had thepower to build up a valid content to Religion, since the very nature ofReligion is such, that the mental operations which are reliable in therealm of Science cannot be so in the realm of Religion. To answer this, we must consider the argument for conceivability as the touchstone whichis to separate the "Knowable" from the "Unknowable. " Corresponding tosmall objects, a piece of rock for example, where the sides, top, andbottom can be considered as practically all present in consciousness atonce, and large ones, like the earth, where they cannot, our authordivides conceptions into complete and symbolic. Great magnitudes andclasses of objects also produce symbolic conceptions which, whileindispensable to reasoning, often lead us into error. "We habituallymistake our symbolic conceptions for real ones. " The former "arelegitimate, provided that by some cumulative or indirect process ofthought, or by the fulfilment of predictions based upon them, we canassure ourselves that they stand for actualities, " otherwise "they arealtogether vicious and illusive" and "illegitimate" and here belongreligious ideas. 

The foregoing is applied by Mr. Spencer in his argument relative to theorigin of the Universe respecting which, he asserts that "three verballyintelligible suppositions may be made": (1) that it is self-existent, (2) that it was self-created, (3) that it was created by an externalagency. "Which of these suppositions is most credible it is not needfulhere to enquire. The deeper question, into which this finally merges, is, whether any one of these is even conceivable in the true sense ofthe word. " He shows that, since the mind refuses to accept thetransformation of absolute vacuity into the existent, the theory ofself-creation forces us back to a potential Universe whose self-creationwas transition to an actual Universe, and that then, we must explain theexistence of the potential Universe and that, similarly, creation by anexternal agency demands that we account for the genesis of the Creator, so that both of these theories involve the self-existence of asomething. Therefore, I shall analyze his presentation of the firsttheory only. "Self-existence necessarily means existence without abeginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form aconception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort canwe do this. To conceive existence through infinite past-time, impliesthe conception of infinite past-time, which is an impossibility. To thislet us add, that even were self-existence conceivable, it would not inany sense be an explanation of the Universe. . . . It is not a question ofprobability, or credibility, but of conceivability. "

In making conceivability the supreme test as to what is knowable, Mr. Spencer sets up a criterion which he himself violates. If it can beshown that he places at the very foundation of Science a postulate or, what is generally conceded to be a demonstrated truth, which, equallywith the conception of the Universe as self-existent, involves theconception of infinite past-time, it is evident that we shall havebroken down the fundamental distinguishing characteristic whichseparates his "Knowable" from his "Unknowable, " and thus leave Scienceand Religion standing upon the same level of validity in their relationto the human mind. In the second part of "First Principles, " whichtreats of the "Knowable, " Mr. Spencer says (p. 180): "TheIndestructibility of Matter . . . Is a proposition on the truth of whichdepends the possibility of exact Science. Could it be shown, or could itwith any rationality be even supposed, that Matter, either in itsaggregates or in its units, ever became non-existent, there would beneed either to ascertain under what conditions it became non-existent, or else to confess that Science and Philosophy are impossible. For if, instead of having to deal with fixed quantities and weights, we had todeal with quantities and weights which were apt, wholly or in part, tobe annihilated, there would be introduced an incalculable element, fatalto all positive conclusions" (p. 172). Considering that in times pastmen have believed in the creation of Matter out of nothing and in itsannihilation, he points out that it is to quantitative Chemistry that weowe the empirical basis for our present belief. 

Next he inquires "whether we have any higher warrant for thisfundamental belief than the warrant of conscious induction, " and writesas follows of logical necessity (pp. 172-179): "The consciousness oflogical necessity, is the consciousness that a certain conclusion isimplicitly contained in certain premises explicitly stated. If, contrasting a young child and an adult, we see that this consciousnessof logical necessity, absent from the one is present in the other, weare taught that there is a _growing up_ to the recognition of certainnecessary truths, merely by the unfolding of the inherited intellectualforms and faculties. To state the case more specifically:--before atruth can be known as necessary, two conditions must be fulfilled. Theremust be a mental structure capable of grasping the terms of theproposition and the relation alleged between them; and there must besuch definite and deliberate mental representation of these terms asmakes possible a clear consciousness of this relation. . . . Along withacquirement of more complex faculty and more vivid imagination, therecomes a power of perceiving to be necessary truths, what were before notrecognized as truths at all. . . . All this which holds of logical andmathematical truths, holds, with change of terms, of physical truths. There are necessary truths in Physics for the apprehension of which, also, a developed and disciplined intelligence is required; and beforesuch intelligence arises, not only may there be failure to apprehend thenecessity of them, but there may be vague beliefs in theircontraries. . . . But though many are incapable of grasping physicalaxioms, it no more follows that physical axioms are not knowable _àpriori_ by a developed intelligence, than it follows that logicalrelations are not necessary, because undeveloped intellects cannotperceive their necessity. 

"The terms '_à priori_ truth' and 'necessary truth' . . . Are to beinterpreted, " he continues, "not in the old sense, as implyingcognitions wholly independent of experiences, but as implying cognitionsthat have been rendered organic by immense accumulations of experiences, received partly by the individual, but mainly by all ancestralindividuals whose nervous systems he inherits. But when during mentalevolution, the vague ideas arising in a nervous structure imperfectlyorganized, are replaced by clear ideas arising in a definite nervousstructure; this definite structure, molded by experience intocorrespondence with external phenomena, makes necessary in thought therelations answering to absolute uniformities in things. Hence, amongothers, the conception of the Indestructibility of Matter. . . . Ourinability to conceive Matter becoming non-existent, is immediatelyconsequent upon the nature of thought. . . . It must be added, that noexperimental verification of the truth that Matter is indestructible, ispossible without a tacit assumption of it. For all such verificationimplies weighing, and weighing implies that the matter forming theweight remains the same. In other words, the proof that certain matterdealt with in certain ways is unchanged in quantity, depends on theassumption that other matter otherwise dealt with is unchanged inquantity. "

In answer to the above it can be said:--

First. The current explanation of the existence of Matter is that it wascreated by an external agency. Mr. Spencer's lucid statement of the wayin which Matter has been proved indestructible does not go far enough. Where he stops, logic might justly pronounce the whole procedure afallacious one, a begging of the whole question at issue. The bindingforce of the whole argument rests upon a rational principle hereoverlooked by Mr. Spencer, the principle of sufficient cause. Thechemist in making the experiment found that certain substancescounterbalanced a given weight; after combustion, the productscounterbalanced the same weight. If the weight did not change during theexperiment, then no matter had been destroyed. The weight is believednot to have changed, because it existed under ordinary and quiescentconditions: which, in view of past race experience, rendered itextremely improbable that any force sufficient to vitiate the result hadcome into play during the experiment. _The absence of a sufficient causeto change the weight_, is, then, the critical point of the argument, andthe perfect trust of the mind in the principle of sufficient causeforces us to the conclusion that Matter is indestructible. 

What has really been accomplished, however, by the experiment? I do notobject to the statement that Matter is indestructible, but the meaningof this explicitly stated, is that in the light of the present knowledgeof the race, we have experimented with Matter under certain extremeconditions--some chemical changes seeming, at first glance, toannihilate it--and have not been able to destroy it, therefore, Matteris indestructible. While this is true to an extent which preserves theintegrity of the foundation for _our_ Science and _our_ Philosophy, itis at the same time consistent with the hypothesis that a Beingsurpassing man in intelligence and power, may be able to convert Matterinto a not-matter--from the standpoint of present definitions of Matterand Space--quantitatively correlated with it, or _vice versa_; and thisstatement of the case harmonizes Science and Religion. Now, what fromthe point of view of Science Mr. Spencer accepts as indestructibility, is identical with what Religion means when it affirms self-existence, and as he has demonstrated to his own satisfaction that self-existencein the abstract is an illegitimate conception, a conception of what byits very nature is unknowable, because it involves the impossibleconception of infinite past-time, he is logically bound by accepting onehorn of the dilemma, to admit the conception of self-existence into therealm of the Knowable, or by choosing the other, to transfer his"Indestructibility, " his "possibility of exact Science" into the realmof the Unknowable! In either event, we place an ultimate religious ideaand a scientific conception whose denial he admits to be theannihilation of exact Science, upon the same footing, and so reduce thedistinguishing characteristic which he has set up to differentiate theKnowable from the Unknowable, to zero. 

Second. We come now to the statement of some of the consequences whichfollow from Mr. Spencer's view--already explained--as to how the higherwarrant, by which we know the Indestructibility of Matter to be anaxiom, a self-evident truth, originated. In his chapter upon "UltimateScientific Ideas" he says that Space and Time are "whollyincomprehensible, " and that "Matter . . . In its ultimate nature, is asabsolutely incomprehensible as Space and Time. " He affirms, as pointedout, that no experimental verification is possible without assuming whatwe set out to prove. If the chemical balance cannot demonstrate thistruth, how, then, can we know it? It is, we are told, an _à priori_ ornecessary truth which arises in our consciousness through the"cognitions that have been rendered organic by immense accumulations ofexperiences, received partly by the individual, but mainly by allancestral individuals whose nervous systems" we inherit. This is Mr. Spencer's answer. This commits us to the absurdity, that the truth ofthe doctrine of the Indestructibility of Matter has come to be acceptedas axiomatic by the repetition of cognitions of an inconceivable"absolute uniformity" of things, by an indefinite series of ancestors, in the face of the fact that the present development of Science does not_now_ permit us, with the aid of all its apparatus, to receive a singlelogically valid cognition from the same phenomenal world which suppliedall the others; _ergo_, add together a sufficient number of cognitionsof the inconceivable, and you arrive at an axiomatic truth! To lift aton weight, apply a vast number of forces of one ounce intensity, acting_successively_ in time, and the thing is done!

Mr. Spencer cannot point out the characteristics which separate thoseinconceivable things and qualities which may legitimately furnish theraw material for the development of axioms, from those which cannot, since this would at once remove them to the category of the conceivable, and he cannot exhaustively catalogue the axioms, since the process ofevolution which he puts forth as the sole and sufficient explanation oftheir origin and growth is still going on. We therefore see that we arejustified in saying that conceivability is worthless as a test as towhether an object of thought lies within the domain of the Knowable orUnknowable. Further, should a theologian say to Mr. Spencer "To me, theexistence of God and his Infinite Love, Wisdom, and Power rank asaxioms, " I do not see how, consistently with the above, he could denythat these truths were valid to the theologian, even if they were not soto his own mind. How completely we have placed Religion and Science uponthe same level is evident from our author's statement that "a religiouscreed is definable as a theory of original causation" and from the factthat a self-existent Universe is one of the three possible hypotheseswhich he mentions in his argument. 

Space forbids the criticism of Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the relativityof knowledge and of the speculations concerning the Infinite andAbsolute based upon the writings of Hamilton and Mansel. I have beenrestricted, also, to the negative side of the question, but so far asinconceivability enters as a factor into the argument against Religion, I contend that it has broken down; that so far as that element affectsthe problem, Religion has as high credentials as Science. 

THE BETTER PART. 

BY WILLIAM ALLEN DROMGOOLE. 

Some barks there are that drift dreamily down stream, ever near to theshore where the waters are shallow. Some catch the current and gobounding on with sweep and swirl until the river, placid at last, slipsinto the tideless Everlasting. Some, alas! commanded by iron-heartedFate, are headed _up_ stream to fight--who dares call it Folly'sbattle?--against the current which yields only to the invincible willand the tireless arm. They lie who swear that life turns on mereaccident. There are no accidents in fate. The end is but a gathering ofthe means; the means but byways to the end; and at the last fate ismaster still, and we its victims are, as was _she_, my Claudia. 

I am an old woman, childless and loveless; I know what it is to standalone with life's hollow corpses, --corpses of youth, and love, and hope. Perhaps this is why my heart turned to her in her sweet youth andguileless innocence. I used to fancy, when I saw her, a child under theold-fashioned locust's shade that fell about her father's modest place, that she was unlike other children. She had a thoughtful face--notbeautiful, but soulful. I thank God now that the child was spared thatcurse. Fate set snares enough without that deadliest one of beauty. Yetshe had soul; her eyes betrayed its strength and mirrored its deeppassion, --that mightiest, holiest passion which men call _genius_. Hergenius merely budded; fate set its heel against the plant and crushedit. 

I knew her from her birth; knew her strong-hearted mother, and hergentle father, who slipped the noose of life when Claudia was a tinything, too young to more than lisp his name. Yet, with his last breathhe blessed her, and blessed the man into whose arms he placed her, andleft her to his care. 

"You have said you owe me something, " said the dying man; "if so, pay itto my child, my girl-babe, in fatherly advice and guidance. "

That man had been a felon and would have met a felon's doom but for thefriend whose child had been confided to his guidance. He had saved himby silence and by loans which had beggared him in lending. He was astrong man, and left his daughter something of his strength forheritage, and that was all. But from her mother, her great-souledmother, the child received enough of courage, and of hope, and faith, and energy, to make her life a _sure_ thing at all events. 

I lost her 'twixt the years of girl and womanhood, for both of us werepoor, and I took such scanty living here and there as offered. But oneday she found me out, and begged me to go with her to her old home underthe locust trees. All were dead but her; she was alone; needed me forprotection, and I, she argued, needed part of the old roof, too largefor one small head. 

"There's a mortgage on it, dear, " she told me, "but I am young andstrong, and have some education and some little energy; and, --" shelaughed, "the note is held by that old boy-friend of my father whopromised to look out for me, you know. So I have no fears of beingturned out homeless, Gertie. "

So I went, and tried to be to her a friend. Instead, I was herlover--her worshipper. Her soul, as it opened to me day after day, expanding under the _visé_ of poverty, took on such strength, suchgrandeur, that I almost stood in awe of her. She was so young, too, yetstrong--strong as God, I used to think--and full of hope, and courage, and ambition. Ambition! that isn't a word often applied to women; yet Isay Claudia was ambitious. I upbraided her one day for this. She winced, and came and knelt down at my feet, her face upon her hands, her armsupon my knees, her sweet soul seeking mine through her eyes. 

"Gertie, " said she, "I wonder why God made me a woman and fixed no placefor me in all the many niches of creation. There is no room for suchwomen as I am; women with bodies moulded for womanhood, and soulsmeasured for man's burdens. "

The words had a solemn sound--a solemn meaning likewise. I had no answerfor such awesome words, and so the child talked on. 

"I had a mother once, " she said, "who loved me, and who unfitted me--Godrest her sainted memory--for my battle with adversity. Nay, dear, don'tlook so shocked. I say that she unfitted me by instilling into my hearther own great grandeur, and her own grand courage. There is no room forsuch, I tell you. As a frail female weakling the slums would havecradled me; as a wife the world would have respected me; as a toiler forhonest bread there is _no place_ for me. My mother was to me a creaturenext to God, and I have sometimes dared to put her first when I havefelt most deeply all her nobleness. My father died, then came ourstruggle, hers and mine. I was her idol, she my God. We clung as onlychild and parent can. I could have made good money in the shops orfactories. The neighbors said so, and advised that I be 'put to work. '

"'What need had paupers of such training as she was giving me? Povertywas no disgrace, so it be honest poverty. '

"Aye, that's it. How long will poverty be honest in children's untrainedkeeping? My mother understood, and knew my needs, as well. 

"'The child is what the mother makes it, ' was her creed. And so she sether teeth against the factory and its damning influence, and she bade melook higher, teaching by her own life that hunger of body is better thana starved soul. 

"Ambition was the food she gave my young life; that she declared the onerope thrown by God's hand to the rescue of poor women. At last my soultook fire with hers; my heart awoke. 

"My struggles for opportunities tortured her. She sold her thimbleonce, --a pretty golden one, my father's gift--that I might have a book Ineeded. She did our household drudgery that the servant's wage might gofor my tuition in a thorough school. Oh, how we labored, she and Itogether, cheating night of many hours o'er books and study that were torepay us at the last with decent independence. 

"The school days ended, the neighbors urged again the _shops_. But 'no'again. She had not spent her strength to fit me for the yard-stick andthe shop-girl's meagre living. She read the riddle of my being as onlymothers can; saw the stamp upon my soul and fondly called it genius. Pinned her faith upon that slumbering curse, or blessing, as we chooseeach to interpret it. 

"I had a little school some sixty miles from home. She had agreed that Imight teach; that was in the course in which she wished my life to go. The schoolhouse was a cabin in the wood, through which flowed a river. We cannot tell the route by which we run to fame, and mine lay throughthis cabin in the woods. I scribbled bits of rhyme and broken verse, constantly; and found it fame enough if in the hurried jingle my motherdetected 'improvement, ' 'promise. '

"But one day when the river burst its banks, the cabin, deluged, layunder water for ten days, and I became a temporary prisoner in mymiserable boarding-house, I wrote a story, a simple, earnest littlestory. It sold, and more, it won a prize. Two hundred and fiftydollars, --it would take ten months of the little school to make so much. When it came--Gertie, I cannot tell you how I felt!--I thought thatsomehow in the darkness I had reached my hands out and found themclasped in God's; held tight and fast, and strong and safe. I kneeleddown in that cabin schoolroom, with the awe-struck children gatheredround me, and choked with sobs and happy tears, thanked God who sent theblessed treasure. 

"I had but one thought--Mother. I sent the children home--my work withthem was done. Now I could go to _her_, and with a sprig of laurel tolay upon my brow, could silence stinging tongues while I worked quietlyon at home. Home! never would I leave its blessed roof again. Oh, how mylonging heart hurried my laggard feet. I did not write; no pen shouldcheat my tongue of the blessed story. I wished to feel her arms, see hersmile, catch her heart-beat while I told her. God! I whispered His namesoftly in gratitude and love. I planned my surprise well, but I wasdoomed to disappointment. It was midnight when I reached the town; thestreets were silent and no one spoke to me. 'Some one must have toldher, ' I said, as the hack in which I rode drew up before the door, and Isaw the house was lighted; every window was wide open; and her room, where I, a child, had learned my woman's lesson, was filled with people. Solemn, sitting folk; it was not a jubilee at all. 'She is sick, ' Igasped, as my trembling fingers sought the gate latch. No, I saw herbed, the bed where I had nestled in her arms for eighteen years. It waswhite and stiff in its familiar drapings. I tore the gate ajar andbounded up the steps. My youngest sister met me in the doorway, weeping. I brushed her aside and passed in among the friendly neighbors who hadhurried out on my arrival. I felt, but scarcely saw them as I said: 'Iwant my mother. ' Then some one burst in tears and pointed to the openparlor door. Merciless heaven! resting upon two chairs stood a long, brown box; a coffin. I gave one shriek, so wild, so full of agony thatnot one who heard it stayed to offer the hollow mockery of comfort. 'Merciful God! not my mother?'

"But it was. I never saw her face again. I would not look on it indeath; that face which had been my life. But I love to think I have herpresence with me here, together with her teaching, in my bosom. And withher help, for the dear dead always help us, I am working out my destinyafter the pattern she set me. It is a _hard_ task; grows harder everyday; but I am young yet, and strong. "

Poor child. She did not know the _dangers_ of the road she travelled;she only knew its hardships. Day after day she toiled, hopeful even infailure. The bloom left her cheek; but faith still fired her eye. Oneday she put away her manuscript, and left the house. The next day shereturned. She had been to ask for her old place in the cabinschoolhouse. Too late; the place was filled. She sought one of hermother's friends and asked for work, copying. She returned with whiteface and set lip, and a look of horror in her eyes. I understood. Godhelp the poor, the respectable poor, those starvelings who cannot riseto independence and cannot sink to vileness. And oh, I prayed, God pityher, --my Claudia. 

I watched her struggles with my own power palsied by that same oldcurse, poverty. She did her best; her struggles were torture to me evenwhen she smiled and met them with sweet faith in her own strength andGod's goodness. She never once murmured, although I knew that many anight she had gone hungry to her desk, and rose from it, hungry still, at dawn. 

And oh, when hope began to die, I saw it all; saw it in the weary eyes;heard it in the step that lagging past my door, climbed to its task, itshopeless task, again. I saw it in the cheek where hunger, --the hunger ofthe common herd--had set its fangs upon the delicate bloom. To ask forbread meant to receive a stone, a stone like unto the stones cast ather, that one in old Jerusalem. Perhaps she hungered too; who daresjudge, since Christ himself refused to condemn. 

She tried at shops at last, but no man wanted modest Quaker maids tomeasure off their goods. The shop-girl's smile was part and parcel ofthe bargain, and if the smile beguiled a serpent in man's clothing, whythe girl must look to that. 

One night I sought her room, her tidy little nest--my poor solitarybirdling--and found her at her work, her old task of writing. She hadgone back to it. There were rings about the eyes where tears wereforbidden visitors. I took the poor head in my arms. 

"Don't, Claudia, " I cried. "The youth is all gone from your face. ""That's right, " she said. "It left my heart long ago, and face and heartshould have a common correspondence. "

And then she laughed, as if to cheat my old ears with the sound ofmerriment. 

"I needed stamps, " she said. "The question rested, stamps _vs. _ supper. Like a true artist I made my choice for art. But see here. Thatmanuscript when it is finished, means _no more hunger_. Something tellsme it will succeed, and save me. So I have called it _Refuge_, and on itI have staked my last hope. "

She playfully tapped the tidy page, and laughed again. But her words hada solemn earnestness about them to which her pale pinched face lentsomething still of awe. 

Day after day I watched her, as day after day the battle became too muchfor her. Too much? I spoke too quickly when I said so. She was a mysteryto me. I felt but could not understand her life, and its grand, heart-breaking changes. She had planned for something which she couldnot reach. The doors to it were closed. Her starving woman's soul calledfor food; the husks were offered in its stead; the bestial, grovelling, brutish swine's husks. She refused them. Her soul would make nocompromise with swine. She was so strong, and _had_ been so full of hopeI could not understand her. You who have studied the tricks of the humanheart, you who have held your own while faith died in your bosom, or youwho have felt it stabbed and crushed _refuse_ to die, perhaps you canunderstand that strange and fitful strength that came and went; thatoutburst of hope, that silence of despair which made, in turn, my dearone's torture. 

One night I found her sitting in the moonlight with her face droppedforward on the windowsill. So pure, so white, so frail of body, and sostrong of soul, she might have been some marble priestess waiting therefor God's breath to move in passion through the pulseless stone. 

"Claudia, dear, are you asleep?" I whispered. 

"No, I was thinking if the moon would ever shine upon the night when Ishall feel no more the pangs of hunger. "

I took her in my arms and wept, although her eyes were strangelytearless. She put out her hand and stroked away my tears. 

"Don't, dear, " she begged. "It is all right. It is only that there is noplace for me. The niche I wish to fill has never been chiseled in thewall of this world's matters. It is God's mistake if one is made, andGod must look to it. I tell you, Gertie, " and she rose up grandly in herpride and in her wrath, "there are but two niches made for woman in thisworld. There's but one choice, wife or harlot. The poor, who refusestill to be vile, must step aside, since honest poverty by man's decreeis but a myth. There's no room in this world for such. "

She was growing bitter, bitter, driving on, I thought, to that fatalrock from which the wrecks of lost women cry back to rail at God whowould not save them from destruction, although they prayed aloud andshrieked their agony up heavenward, straight to His ears. I thinksometimes I should not like to sit in God's stead when such women cometo face His judgment. Women who called, and called, and never had ananswer, and so went down, still calling. 

It was thus _she_ called. 

One day I came upon her where she had thrown herself upon a littlegarden stool to rest. A book lay on her knee, her eyes upon the page;and as I listened, for she read aloud, slowly, as when one reads to hisown heart, I caught the meaning of the poet's words as they had foundinterpretation by her:--

 "'For each man deems his own sand-house secure, While life's wild waves are lulled; yet who can say, If yet his faith's foundations do endure, It is not that no wind hath blown that way?'"

She was silent a moment, then repeated the first line of the stanzaagain, even more softly than before, "'For each man deems his own sand-house secure. '"

Then, tossing the book aside, she burst out wildly, all the pent-uppatience, all the insulted and outraged womanhood within her, breakingbonds at last. She lifted up her hand as if calling down from God acurse, or offering at His register an oath. It might have been an oath, indeed; who knows? Thinking of her since I think it _was_ an oath, made, in that moment of her frenzy, betwixt her soul and God, and registeredwith Him. 

"Gertie, " she said, "to-day a man offered me money. Offered me all Iasked, offered to make me his mistress. Do you hear? Do you? or has yoursoul gone deaf as mine has? His mistress! I meet it everywhere. Yet why?Because I am respectably poor. To-morrow the roof tumbles about my ears. The mortgage closes. You and I alike are homeless. I went to him, myfather's friend, to whom, in dying, he entrusted me for guidance. Ibegged of him that guidance, or, at the least, a little longer time uponthe mortgage. He laughed. 'Don't worry, ' said he, 'and don't soil yourpretty hands with ink stains any further. Leave that for the printer, orthe devil. You and I will make an _easier_ trade. ' Ease! ease! I tellyou 'tis these flowery beds of ease on which poor suffocated women wakein hell. 'Soil' my soul and leave that for the 'devil, ' too, his trademeant. He put it in plain words, that gray-haired _guardian_ of a deadfriend's honor. Ease! _I_ did not ask for ease, but work. I am strong, and young, and willing; but my 'sand-house' trembles with the lashing ofthe tide on its foundation. O my God! what fools we women be to kickagainst the pricks of fate. "

 "Each man deems his own sand-house secure. "

I repeated the words when she had left me there with the echo of herbitter rebellious words still ringing in my ears. I felt no anger and nofear for her, only sorrow, sorrow. My poor, proud darling. Her father'shouse had sheltered many; his hand had been open and his bounty free. And yet not one reached out a hand to her. She might have begged, orheld a hireling's place. She was 'not too good for it, ' the old friendssaid (so few are friends to poverty), but yet none found such a placefor her. 

Through my tears I saw her go down the garden walk, stopping to pluck ahandful of the large Jack roses growing near the gate and tuck them inher belt, so that the dullish red blooms lay upon her heart, like blotsof blood against her soft white dress. I shuddered, and drew my handacross my eyes. Blood! those old blood-roses rise before me now, indreams at night. I heard the latch lift and click again into its place, and when I looked the child was gone. 

 * * * * *

She stayed a long while. Over all the garden and across the openwindows, the moon was shining when I heard her step upon the doorway. Ithad a weary sound. Those feet which had begun so bravely were tired outalready. Still had I no fear for her. She might have stayed until thegray dawn cleft the black of night and not one doubt of her could stingmy faith. She climbed the stairs wearily, as if old age had of a suddencaught and cramped the young life in her feet; and listening thus Iswore a mighty oath against the thing called Fate. 

She so young, so strong, so willing, so full of aspiration, so loyal tofaith and honor, with _every_ door barred against her. O my God! wasthere none, not one human heart open to her cry? Was there but oneresource--one opening for her pure soul and her proud heart--theharlot's door? O my God! my God! women are driven to it every day, everyday. Is it, indeed, the only door that opens to their knock? And wouldshe, too, seek it at last, when faith should be quite dead? No, never!not while my palsied fingers could find strength to draw a knife acrossher throat. 

I arose, and went to find her in her room. The door stood slightly open, and I entered, softly. Why so softly, I never could have told; only itseemed the proper thing to do. She had thrown herself across the bed, near by the open window. The moonlight flooded the room, showing me thestrong, pale face lying against the pillow. Her white dress fell abouther like a silverish shroud; and on the table near the window where shehad sat to finish her task lay a manuscript. The moonlight fell upon thetitle page with mocking splendor. I stooped and read:

 "'_Thou art our Refuge and our Strength. _'"

Dear heart! dear, sad soul! She had sought her refuge and indeed foundstrength. Strength! I brand him liar who calls it other. 

One hand lay on the coverlid beside her, and one upon her breast halfhidden by the dark blood-roses covering her heart. And that heart when Iplaced my hand over it--was still. 

_Broken!_ who dares say _suicide_? I say it was the grandest blow thatweakness struck for virtue, --her life, offered in the name of outragedwomanhood. The choice lay open. Shame or suicide! and like the realwoman that she was, she made her choice for virtue. Conquered by fate, overcome by adversity, those who should have been helpers turnedtempters. Who dares meet God in his soul and say she did not choose thebetter part?

 "'Thou art our Refuge and our Strength. '"

I whispered it above her grave and left her there, under the stars andbroken lily buds. 

But when the grand Jack roses bloom, I always think of her, andthinking, I ponder again the same old riddle, _Fate_, whose edictswears, "No room for honest poverty; no niche for such as she. " Andthinking thus I wonder, --where shall the blame rest? Whose shall thecrime be?

THE HEIRESS OF THE RIDGE. 

NO-NAME PAPER. 

The "Ridger" is quite a different person from the Mountaineer. He looksupon the latter individual as a sodden and benighted unfortunate, whoseinaccessible habitation entitles him to the pity of the favored dwellerson the "Ridge. "

That the Ridge is but a low out-put of the Mountain, that it is barrenand isolated, does not disturb the comfortable theory of itsinhabitants. To the people of the Valley the Ridger is a twin brother ofthe owner of the hut on the top-most peak of the range. 

They look alike. Their bearing and habits are similar. To the Valley eyetheir clothes are of the same material and cut; but to the Ridgerhimself there is as wide a difference between him and his less favoredbrother on the "mounting" as that to be found by the stroller on FifthAvenue when he gazes with profound contempt upon the egotistic biped whoplainly hopes to deceive the elect into a belief that he, also, belongsto the charmed circle and has not simply "run over" from Jersey City, orSt. Louis, or New Bedford. 

The Mountaineer is frequently a Tunker, the Ridger rarely. Therefore theRidger is likely to have a shaven face, and, for the younger contingent, a mustache is the rule, a "goatee" the fashion. To the Tunker none ofthese are permissible. The beard may not be cut, a mustache may not beworn, and, with the first of these propositions in force it will be seenat once that "a goatee" is quite out of the question. 

When I say that the Ridger is likely to have a shaven face I do notintend to convey the impression that he ever uses a razor. He shaves hisface with the scissors. His Tunker neighbor up the mountain performs thesame feat on his own upper lip. The result is effective and satisfactoryfrom both a religious and artistic outlook in the eyes of thesesticklers for fashion and dogma, albeit, it might be looked upon as moreor less disappointing by the habitués of the Union League Club or thedevotees at St. Thomas. 

If the rivet, which at some previous date had held the two halves of thescissors together, happens to be lost, or if it has worn so loose thatthese members "do not speak as they pass by, " a jack knife or even abutcher's knife is no stranger to the tonsorial process of thesefollowers of the elusive god of style. 

I do not know that I have ever met a Tunker so lost to a deep sense ofreligious duty, or a Ridger sufficiently devoid of the pride of personalappearance, that he would "go to town" without having first performedthis rite. 

It is a serious business. 

In the house of my old friend Jeb Hilson there had once been a "lookin'glass" of no mean proportions, if those of his neighbors may be taken asthe standard, and how else do we measure elegance or style? It hadoccupied a black frame, and a position on the wall directly over a"toilet, " which was the most conspicuous piece of furniture in the room. At the present time there was nothing to tell the tale but a large nail(from which hung a bunch of seed onions, ) and the smoked outline ofsomething which had been nearly fourteen inches long and not far fromthe same width. In front of this drab outline Jeb Hilson always stood toshave. His memory was so tenacious that I never observed that he noticedthe absence of the glass. He gazed steadily at the wall and worked thescissors so deftly that the stubble rained in little showers upon thetop of the "toilet" and within the open bosom of his tennis shirt. Notthat Jeb Hilson ever heard of tennis, or knew that he was clad in agarment of so approved a metropolitan style and make; but that was thepattern he had worn for many years, and it was the one which his womenfolk were best able to reproduce. His flannel ones were gray, and histrousers were belted about with a leather strap. For full dressoccasions he wore a white cotton shirt of the same pattern and a brownhomespun vest. This latter garment was seldom buttoned. Why hide theglory of that shirt? If Jeb owned a coat I have never seen it. Heappeared to think it a useless garment. 

I believe I did not say that Jeb Hilson was the leader of those whoeschewed all hair upon the face. Whether this was done to show aprofounder contempt for the Tunker superstition, or whether Jeb had asecret pride in the outline of his mouth and chin, and a desire to givefull expression to their best effects, it would be hard to say. It iscertain, however, that his motives must have been powerful, for heunderwent untold torture to achieve his results. If the blades of thescissors clicked past each other or wabbled apart too far to even click, Jeb would resort to his knife and proceed to saw off the offendingbeard. 

"Hit air saw off er chaw off, " he would remark laconically, as he triedfirst one implement and then the other. "I wisht ter gracious thet theerscisser leg'd stay whar't war put; but Lide trum the grape vines with'em las' week an' they is wus sprung then they wus befo'. But wimmenfolks is all durn fools. I'd be right down glad ef the good Lord had asaw fit ter give 'em a mite er sense. Some folks sez it would er spilt'em, but I'm blame ef I kin see how they could er been wus spilt thanthe way they is fixed now. "

He gazed intently at the smoked image on the wall, and collecting, between his thumb and finger, a pinch of hair on his upper lip began tosaw at it with his knife. His large yellow teeth were displayed, and theappearance of a beak was so effectively presented by the protruded lipthat words came from behind it with the uncanny sound of a parrot; butit did not occur to him to cease talking. 

"I fromised" (his upper lip was drawn too far out to form the letter p, or any with like requirements), "I fromised the young 'squire ter be atthe cote house ter day, an' I tole him thet I'd ast the jedge fer ter'fint a gyardeen fer thet theer _de_mented widder uv Ike's. "

He grasped a fresh bunch of stubble, shifted onto the other foot, turnedthe side of his face to the smoked image of the one time mirror, androlled his eyes so that in case a glass had hung there he might havebeen able to see one inch from his left ear. The shaving went steadilyon. So did the conversation. 

"Ef I don't make considdable much hase I'm gwine ter be late, an' ef thejedge don't 'pint a gyardeen fer thet theer Sabriny she's goin' fer tersquander the hull uv her proppity. Thet theer wuthless Lige Tummun isgoin' fer ter git the hull uv hit. Thet's thes persisely what he's afiggerin' fer in my erpinion. He hev thes persuaged her fer ter let himhev the han'lin uv hit, an' she air a goin' ter live thar fer the res'erher days; but I'd thes like ter know what's a goin' ter hinder him fum abouncin' her thes es soon es he onct gits holt er the hull er thet theerproppity. An' then whose a goin' ter take keer uv her? Nobody air ahankerin' fer ter take keer uv a _de_mented widder woman onless she airgot proppity. But I hain't a wantin' ter say much, fer they is folksmean enough ter up an' think I mout be a try'n ter git holt er thetproppity myse'f, an' have the han'lin uv hit; so I thes tole the young'squire abouten hit, an' he thes rec'mended me fer ter thes go ter townnex' cote day an' erply ter the jedge fer ter 'pint a gyardeen overSabriny. "

The shaving was finished at last and the homespun "weskit" donned. Hestood in front of the smoked reminder while he performed this latterfeat, and, after staring intently at the wall, appeared to be perfectlycontent with the result. Then he trudged away and joined the innumerablehost which would as soon think of staying away from town on court day asit would think of standing on its head to pray. 

All Ridgers of the masculine gender went to town on court day, and asfew Valley men failed to do the same--whether because they knew it wouldbe a good chance to see everybody in the county and talk politics, orbecause few men were so destitute as to be without lawsuits of theirown, --certain it is that they all went and that it furnished topics ofconversation which lasted until court day rolled around again. 

As I was a guest at the "young 'squire's" house I was privileged to hearon the following day some further conversation on the subject ofSabriny's guardian. I was sitting on the front porch with the sweet andsimple-hearted mother of the young 'squire when Jeb Hilson's lithe formappeared. 

Jeb was still in full dress. The fronts of his vest hung beneath hislong arms as he walked, and he wore his white cotton shirt, somewhat theworse for its "Cote Day" experiences, it must be confessed. On his headwas one of those delightfully soft straw hats which the young men of thevalley buy by the dozen for fifty cents, wear until they get damp, orfor some other reason droop about the face and head like a "Havelock, "and then cast aside for a new one. But a Ridger does not pay out fivecents recklessly. One of these straw coverings must last him all summer. But for all that a Ridger must see, and therefore the front of thedrooping brim is sacrificed to stern necessity when it can no longer bekept off of the face. The effect is unique. A soft straw crown, run to apeak; a pendant wide brim touching the back and shoulders; a few"frazzles" of straw on the forehead which tell where a brim once was;for the Ridger cuts the front out with the same scissors or knife withwhich he shaves, and with no more accuracy of outline. The young farmerswear these broad straw hats to protect their faces and eyes from thedown-beating sun. The Ridger appears to wear them purely for ornament, since the only protection which they offer in their new shape is to theback of necks already so wrinkled and tanned that even a Virginia suncould hardly penetrate to a discomforting degree. 

Jeb nodded to me. Then he took his straw ornament by the top of the peakand lifted it high above his head, so that he could bring it forwardwithout scraping his hair, and "made his manners" to the young"'squire's" mother. He seated himself on the upper step of the widegallery, crossed his long legs, placed his straw ornament carefully onhis knee, with the pendant portion falling toward his foot, and began abit of diplomatic manoeuvring. 

"Howdy, Miss Brady, howdy. I hope yo' health is tollible. I thes thoughtI'd like t' see the young 'squire. Air he in? Hit air thes a leetlebisness matter twixt him an' me, thes a leetle matter uv mo' er _less_intrust' t' us both. "

But the young 'squire was not at home. His mother indicated awillingness to convey any message to him upon his return; but Jeb, always contemptuous of women, was in a state of elusive subtlety. Someone in town had lent wings to his already abnormally developedcaution in the matter of the application for the appointment of the"gyardeen" for his weak-minded sister-in-law, and had hinted that hemight have to swear to her mental condition if he became the sponsor forsuch a move. Jeb was wily. He had tasted of his brother's wife's wrathon more occasions than one, and whatever his opinion may have been ofthe strength of her mind, he entertained no doubts as to the vigor ofher temper when it was aroused. Jeb wanted to be appointed her"gyardeen. " He looked upon the "proppity" as a vast and importantfinancial trust. If he asked the judge to appoint a guardian, andSabriny knew that he had said that she was of defectiveintellect--well--Jeb would face much to be allowed to handle that$134. 92. (This was the "proppity" in question. It was a "back" pensionand there was to be $2. 11 per month henceforth. ) But Jeb was notfoolhardy, and he had trudged back from town without having done whatthe young "'squire" had advised, and Sabriny's "proppity" was injeopardy still. 

"No, " he said, wagging his head and looking slyly at the young 'squire'smother. "No, I thes wanted ter see the young 'squire fer a leetleprivate talk. I thes promised him fer ter do sompin, an' then I neverdone it. Not as he'd _keer_; but I thes wanted ter make my part fa'r an'squar'. "

He espied a straw that had straggled out from the ragged cut in thefront of his hat. He took it firmly between thumb and finger and gave ita quick sidewise jerk, whereupon it parted company forever with itsfellows. Jeb inserted this between two of his lower front teeth at theirvery base. When it was firmly established he continued his conversation, leaving his lower lip to struggle in vain to regain a position ofhorizontal dignity. The straw was tenacious, and the lip was held atbay. He did not want to tell his story to anyone but the young 'squire;but an opportunity to display his mental vigor and business acumen tothe 'squire's mother did not present itself every day, and might he nottell the tale, and yet not tell it? Could he not give an outline andstill conceal his own motives and desires? Certainly. Women were veryweak minded at best, and even the young 'squire's mother would not beable to sound the depths of his subtle nature. 

"The young 'squire, he tole me fer ter ast the jedge ter 'pint agyardeen over the proppity o' Sabriny, along o' her beein'--thet is tersay--_wimmen_ bein' incompertent ter--thet is, Miss Brady, _mose_ wimmennot havin' the 'bility fer ter hannel a large proppity--even if theyis--. I aint sayin' that Sabriny is diff'nt fum mose wimmen, you mine. They is folks thet say her mine is--thet she aint adzackly right in herhead; but lawsy, _I_ aint sayin' thet; an' you mus' know thet wimmin'aint in no way fit fer ter manage a proppity--a large proppity---moreespecial if they is any man a-tryin' fer ter git hit away frum 'em. "

"Why, is anybody trying to get poor Sabriny's money, Jeb?" asked theyoung 'squire's mother in sympathetic wonder. 

But Jeb had been warned that he would better not commit himself if hehoped for fair sailing. He turned his straw over and put the stiff endbetween his teeth again, glanced covertly about, concluded that the ladywas not setting a trap for him, and began again. 

"I aint a sayin' as they is, an' I aint a swarin' thet they aint. Mebbyyou mout o' heard uv Lige Tummun?"

"Yes, I have heard that he is a trifling fellow, " said the young'squire's mother. "I hope there is no way he can get Sabriny's littlepension. "

"I aint a sayin' nothin' agin' _Lige_, " said Jeb, with wily inflectionwhich said all things against that luckless wight. "I aint sayin'nothing' _agin_ Lige, an' I aint sayin' thet he wants ter git hole uvSabriny fer ter git her proppity; but he hev drawed up a paper, an' shehev sign hit, fer ter live with him an' his ole 'oman the res' er herdays fer, an' in consideration, uv the hull uv thet back pension _down_, en half--er as near half as $2. 11 kin be halft, --every month whilse shelive; an' he bines hisself fer ter feed, an' cloth, an pervide fer herso long as they both do live, by an' accordin' ter the terms uv thettheer paper he hed draw'd up and Sabriny hev sign. "

"Too bad, too bad, " said the young 'squire's mother; "but the judge willappoint you, don't you think, since she is weak-minded, and Lige is sounreliable? Poor Sabriny would have very little comfort in thattorn-down hut I'm afraid. Did the judge say he would see to it?"

Jeb took the straw from between his teeth, and his lip resumed itsnormal position. He turned and twisted, seated himself on the lowerstep, and readjusted his hat on his knee. Then he went on:--

"I aint sayin' I _want_ ter be 'pinted her gyardeen. Thet air fer thejedge ter say, pervided somebody er other fetch the needcessity ter hismine befo' all thet proppity air squandered. I haint sayin' that Sabrinyair weak-minded, nuther--thet is weakmindeder then thet she air a--shehev the mine uv a female, an' nachully not able ter hannel proppity. An'I haint sayin' she aint gettin' mighty well took keer uv by Lige, nuther. The last time I war theer she war roolin' the roost. She slep'in the bes' bed, an' et offen the bes' plate, an' had the bes' corndodger an' shote; but what I air--that is what _some_ air thinkin' aboutair whence Lige onct gits the hull er thet proppity in bulk, air hitgoin' ter be thet away? Mine you, _I_ aint asten this yer question; butthey is them thet does, an' whilse they does hit do seem only right an'proper fer hit ter be looked inter by the proper 'thorities. Now I tolethe young 'squire thet I'd lay the hull caste befo' the jedge las' coteday, but the fack air that whence I git theer I met up with a few er mybisness erquaintainces an' on _re_flection I made up my mine thet I bes'thes say nothin' to the jedge. Thet's what I kem ter tell the young'squire so's he won't ercuse me in his mine er lyin' ter 'im whence hefine out thet I never tole the jedge. They was reasons--numbrous andgineral reasons--fer me ter _re_fleck an' _re_track my plan. "

He reflected for a moment now, and then lifting his hat by the peak, turned it around, raised it high over his head, carried it back and putit on; then from its mutilated front just above his eyebrow he snippedoff, with a deft jerk, another straw and started down the steps. 

"They is some thet say Sabriny hev a temper thet don't stop ter be litup, Miss Brady, but lawsy, _I_ haint sayin' nothing agin' Sabriny'stemper, ner agin' Lige, ner nobody. Some folks will talk thet away. Youcan't stop 'em long es they's 'live en kickin'; but _I_ got mightylittle ter say. "

There was a long pause. Then with studied indifference of inflection hecontinued:--

"I reckon my leetle bisness with the young 'squire kin wait withoutmouldin' over night. I thes reckon hit wouldn't be edzackly bes' fer terdiscuss hit with nobody else, " and he inserted the straw between histeeth with great care and precision, and took his high stepping waytoward the Ridge, secure in his self-esteem and approbation in that noteven the wiles of a lady of the position of the young 'squire's mothercould betray him into divulging his secret. For, after all, she was buta woman, and--well--this whole matter was a question of "proppity, " andtherefore quite beyond her capacity. 

As he disappeared over the hill, his straw havelock flapping gently inthe wind, and his vest spread wide against his pendent arms, the young'squire's mother laughed gently and said:--

"Poor Sabrina, she _is_ a little weaker minded than Jeb, and Jeb is akind soul in his way. We must let the judge know the trouble, and see ifsome honest and capable person cannot be found to handle that 'proppity'and not squander, too recklessly, the two dollars and eleven cents inthe months that are to come. The life of an heiress is, indeed, besetwith pitfalls even among the Ridgers. "

THE BROOK. 

BY P. H. S. 

 I love the gentle music of the brook, Its solitary, meditative song. On every hill Some stream has birth, Some lyric rill, To wake the selfish earth, And smile and toss the heavens their shining look, Repeat and every flash of life prolong. In spite of play, Along its cheerful way It turns to rest beneath some sheltering tree In richer beauty; Or at call of duty Leaps forth into a cry of ecstacy, And sings that work is best, In brighter colors drest Runs on its way, Nor longer wills to stay Than but to see itself that it is fair, -- Thou happy brook, true brother to the air. 

 I fear the steady death-roar of the sea, Its sullen, never-changing undertone; Round all the land It clasps its heavy strength, A liquid band Of world-unending length, And ever chants a wild monotony, A change between a low cry and a moan. The earth is glad, The sea alone is sad; Its swelling surge it rolls against the shore In mammoth anger; Or, in weary languor, Beaten, it whines that it can rage no more, And sinks to treacherous rest, While from the happy west The sun is glad; The sea alone is sad. Its voice has messages nor words for me, All, all is pitched in one low minor key. 

 Then take my heart upon thy dancing stream, O tiny brook, thou bearest my heart away. Run gently past The breaking of the stones, Nor yet too fast; And on thy perfect tones Bear thou my discord life that I may seem A harmony for one short hour to-day. Why wilt thou, brook, Not check thy forward look? Why wilt thou, brook, not make my heart thine own? The wild commotion Of the frantic ocean Will madden thee and drown thy sorry moan, And none will hear the cry; Then run more slowly by-- Nay, for this nook Was made for thee, my brook, Stay with me here beneath this silver shade And think this day for thee and me was made. 

 Thy present sweetness will be turned to brine; Thou'lt hardly make one petty, paltry wave. Lovest thou the sun? He will not know thee there. Is't sweet to run, Know thine own whence and where? 'Tis here thy joy, thy love, thy life are thine; There thou wilt neither be, nor do, nor have. The mighty sea Will blindly number thee To bear the ships, send thee to shape the shore That thou art scorning; Or some awful morning, Set thee to pluck some sailor from his oar And drink his weary life; O fear this chance of strife! Or what may be Else, dead monotony. Give o'er thy headlong haste, dwell here with me, Why lose thyself in the vast, hungry sea?

 These thoughts I cast into the wiser stream, And lay and heard it run the hours away; And then above The beauty and the peace, It sang of love; And in that glad release I knew my thoughts had run beyond my dream, Had seen the laboring river and the bay. "'Tis joy to run! Else life would ne'er be done, I ne'er should know the triumphing of death, Nor its revealing; Nor the eager feeling Of fuller life, the promise of the breath That fleets the open sea: All this was given to me Once as I won My first great leap; the sun I knew my king, and laughed, and since that day I run and sing; he wills, and I obey. "

EDITORIAL NOTES. 

OPTIMISM, REAL AND FALSE. 

Much has been written of late about the pessimistic spirit pervadingmodern reformative literature. When an earnest writer presents a gloomypicture of life as it really is, he is frequently judged by that mostshallow of all standards, "Is it pleasing or amusing?" His fidelity tothe ideal of truth is often overlooked or dismissed with a flippantword. We all know that great and dangerous evils exist and menace ourcivilization. They are growing under the fostering influence of the"conspiracy of silence"; yet we are seriously informed that we must notexpose them to view; that there is so much tragedy in real life thatsociety should not be annoyed by sombre pictures in fiction or thedrama. "Prophesy to us smooth things or hold thy peace, " is the tenor ofmuch of the criticism of the hour. Optimism is at present a popularShibboleth, hence many thoughtlessly echo the cry against every exposureof growing evils. Writers who are popularly known as optimists belongmainly to three classes. Those who after a general survey of life becomethorough pessimists, believing that the social, economic, religious, andethical problems can never be justly or equitably solved; that in theweary age long struggle of right against might, of justice againstgreed, of liberty against slavery, of truth against error, the baserwill win the battle, because there is more evil than good present in theworld, and therefore, it being useless to break with the establishedorder, assume a cheerful tone, crying down all efforts to unmask thewidespread and ever-increasing evils which are festering under the coverof silence, and in substance urge us to eat, drink, and be merry, takingno thought for the morrow or for the generations which are to follow us. 

A second class, comparing the ignorance, superstition, brutality, andinhumanity of the past with life to-day, arrive at the conclusion thatthe nineteenth century is the flower of all the preceding ages, which istrue. That the present, registering the high-tide water-mark of thecenturies, is to be extolled rather than assaulted, and all efforts tocreate discontent are unwise, and should be frowned upon. The mistake ofthese individuals lies in the fact that they fail to see that the chiefcause of humanity's triumphs is found in the works performed by thosethinkers who in all ages have corresponded to the persons flippantlycharacterized pessimists at the present time: they who have assailed theexisting order of things, who have thrown into the congregation of thepeople the shells of doubt; who have confronted the priests andpotentates of conventionalism with a disturbing "Why"; _who havecompelled the people to think_. 

A third class of writers who pitch their thoughts in a hopeful key, appreciate the injustice of much that is accepted by conventionalthought as right, or which is tolerated by virtue of its antiquity, butseeing the profound agitation which a thoughtful and earnestpresentation of the evils of the hour produces in the public mind, theyhave become alarmed, fearing lest the rising tide of angry discontentsweep away much that is good, true, and beautiful, in its blind attemptto right existing wrongs, and inaugurate an era of justice. Oldinstitutions, ancient and revered thought, accepted lines of policy, even when palpably unjust, are safer, they urge, than the suddenblinding light of justice, the instantaneous widening of the horizon ofpopular thought. The strong light of a new era thrown suddenly upon thefoul, monstrous and iniquitous systems in vogue, the awakening of thepublic mind to the enormity of the injustice, hypocrisy, and immoralityof respectable conservatism of to-day will turn the brain of thepeople--they will become mad; a second French Revolution willensue--such is their fear, and from a superficial view theirapprehensions seem reasonable. Their error lies in the fact that thehorrors of the French Revolution were the legitimate result of a policyexactly analogous to what they are pursuing. It arose from _justice longdeferred; from wrongs endured for generations. It was the concentratedwrath_ of the people who for many decades had been oppressed by Church, by nobility, and by the crown. Though the motives are entirelydifferent, these writers, in striving to procrastinate the feud ofjustice against entrenched power and established customs, are acting onthe lines of Louis XV. , who, when told that a revolution would burstforth in France, inquired, "How many years hence?" "Fifteen or twenty, sire, " was the reply. "Well, I shall be dead then; let my successor lookout for that. " So in seeking to put off just and rightful demands, theseshort-sighted philosophers lose sight of the fact that the longerjustice is exiled from the throne of power, the more terrible will bethe reckoning when it comes. Yet history teaches no lesson moreimpressively, unless it be that a question involving justice once raisedwill never be settled until right has been vindicated. 

Those reformers, on the other hand, who have been popularly creditedwith sounding a pessimistic note in all their writings, by virtue oftheir fidelity to actual conditions and prevailing customs, are chieflyoptimists in the truest sense of the word. They are men and women whobelieve profoundly in the triumph of right, liberty, and justice. Theirfaces are set toward the morning. The glorious ideals that float beforeand beyond the present have beamed upon their earnest gaze. They havetraced the ascent of humanity through the ages; they have noted the slowmarch, the weary struggle from age to age of the old against the new, ofdawn against night, of progress against conservatism, but they have alsoseen that the trend has been onward and upward, and what is far moreimportant, they have noted that the prophets, sages, and reformers, --ina word, the advance guard, who have blazed the pathway and opened thevista to broader and nobler conceptions of justice and liberty, havebeen those who have assailed the popular conventionality of their times;who have been denounced as enemies to social order, as dangerouspessimists and wreckers of civilization. But they have also observedthat these honest and far-sighted spirits have set in motion the thoughtthat has borne humanity upward into a more radiant estate. Furthermore, they realize that only by a fearless denunciation of existing evils, byfaithful though gloomy pictures of life _as it is_, by raising theinterrogation point after every wrong or unjust condition sanctioned byvirtue of its antiquity and conservatism and by appealing to the reasonand conscience of the people has humanity been elevated. They havestudied the problem of human progress profoundly; they have strong faithin the triumph of justice, but they realize that victory can never beattained as long as conventionalism lulls to sleep the publicconscience. They know that only by bringing the truth effectively beforethe people, only by raising questions and stimulating the mind canreforms be inaugurated. The present calls for honest thought, for truepictures, for brave and earnest agitators. Give us these, and humanitywill soon take another of those great epoch making strides which atintervals have marked the ascent of man. 

THE PESSIMISTIC CAST OF MODERN THOUGHT. 

Much of the best thought of to-day necessarily takes on a gloomy cast, because the most wise and earnest reformers keenly realize the giantwrongs that oppress humanity. They see the splendid possibilitiesfloating before mankind, even within the grasp of the rising generation, if the heralds of the coming day are courageous and persistent; if theysink all hope of popularity, all thought of self-interest; if they areloyal to their highest impulses, regardless of what may follow. 

_The era of the questioner has arrived. _ Soon mankind will refuse toaccept anything simply because others believed it. Traditions andancient thought, though weighed down with credentials of past ages ordead civilizations, will be cast aside. All problems will be weighed inthe scales of the broader conception of justice which is daily growingin the mind of man. The twilight is passing, the dawn is upon us, andto-morrow will be indebted chiefly to these true brave men and womenwhom the superficial call pessimists, for the glorious heritage whichwill fall to humanity; for they are related to the manifold reformswhich crowd upon the present, as were Copernicus and Galileo related tothe science of astronomy, as Luther was to the Reformation, Jefferson tomodern Democracy, as Wilberforce in England and Garrison in America tothe overthrow of black slavery. They denounce the iniquity of thepresent hour; they unmask the carefully concealed evils which areundermining public morals; they demand a higher standard of life. Ifthey aim to destroy the old wooden building, it is because they seearound them not only the quarried stone, the mortar and iron beams, buta million hands waiting to erect upon the ruins of the old a noblerstructure than humanity has yet beheld. 

 Transcriber's Note: The page numbers in the Table of Contents have been converted to issues in the following way:

 Issue Pages June, 1891 1-128 July, 1891 129-256 August, 1891 257-384 September, 1891 385-512 October, 1891 513-640 November, 1891 641-768 Index to 4th Volume 769-771

 Please note that the November issue's Contents are as printed, although the issue does have more articles than stated. 

 Also, the illustrations are shown in the correct issue, but may be in a slightly different order than that listed.