The Chautauquan, October 1884

Transcriber’s Note: This cover has been created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

The Chautauquan.

A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture. Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

VOLUME V.
FROM OCTOBER, 1884, TO JULY, 1885.

THEODORE L. FLOOD, D.D., Editor and Proprietor.

THE CHAUTAUQUA PRESS,
MEADVILLE, PA.

Copyrighted by Theodore L. Flood, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C., 1884-5.

INDEX TO VOL. V.

Transcriber’s Note: Only the references within this issue are hyperlinked.

• Air has been Liquefied, How. J. Jamin. 579.
• Animal Biology, Easy Lessons in. 385, 445, 509.
• Animals Feign Death, Do? M. Romanes. 150.
• Apples. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 194.
• Arbor Day. Hon. B. G. Northrop, LL.D. 409.
• Aristotle. William C. Wilkinson. 373.
• Art, American Decorative. C. E. Bishop. 582.
• Bancroft, George. Prof. W. W. Gist. 526.
• Barley. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 137.
• Beets. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 316.
• Beverages, Household. 260.
• Blackberries. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 194.
• Blunders, A Chapter of. 242.
• Books, Paragraphs from New. 371, 431, 555.
• Books Received. [61], 121, 305, 370, 492, 557, 611.
• Books, Talk About. 120, 181, 244, 305, 369, 432, 491, 556, 611.
• Borneo, Natural History and People of. Wm. T. Hornaday. 533.
• Bread. Mrs. Emma P. Ewing. 84.
• Buckwheat. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 137.
• Cabbages. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 316.
• Canada of To-Day. M. Victor du Bled. 529.
• Carrots. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 316.
• Castle Garden. C. E. Bishop. [24].
• Catlin Paintings, The. O. T. Mason. 524.
• Chautauqua—1885. 493.
• Glimpses of the Program. 592.
• In Japan. Wm. D. Bridge. 612.
• Intermediate Class of ’84. 122.
• School of Languages for 1885. 558.
• School of Liberal Arts. Chancellor J. H. Vincent, D.D. 348.
• The Inner. Chancellor J. H. Vincent, D.D. 220.
• The Upper. Chancellor J. H. Vincent, D.D. 284.
• The Trustees Reorganize. 358.
• University. Prof. R. S. Holmes. [60], 119, 170, 231, 295, 433, 547.
• Words from. Chancellor J. H. Vincent, D.D. [45].
• Chautauquans at Home. Chancellor J. H. Vincent, D.D. 100.
• Chemistry and Physics, Home Studies in. Prof. J. T. Edwards, D.D. [5], 68, 141, 199, 252, 323, 375, 440, 500.
• Chocolate. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 257.
• Christmas, Dangers and Christmas Hints. Helen Campbell. 147.
• C. L. S. C. at the Assemblies. [33].
• C. L. S. C. Classes:—
• Class of ’85. [50], 106, 167, 227, 291, 356, 419, 481, 545, 600.
• Class of ’86. 167, 227, 292, 356, 419, 546, 600.
• Class of ’87. [50], 107, 227, 292, 419, 482, 546, 601.
• Class of ’88. 168, 293, 356, 420, 482, 547, 602.
• C. L. S. C. Column, Our. Chancellor J. H. Vincent, D.D. 591.
• C. L. S. C. Graduates, Class of ’84. 306.
• C. L. S. C., How to Help the. Chancellor J. H. Vincent, D.D. 158.
• C. L. S. C., Important to Members of. 558.
• C. L. S. C. Notes on Required Readings. [55], 115, 176, 238, 301, 365, 427, 488, 553.
• Coffee. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 257.
• Corn. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 82.
• Correspondence Schools, The. Prof. R. S. Holmes, A.M. 231.
• Course of Reading for 1885-86. 554.
• Crete, Neb. [44], 604.
• Criticism. Chancellor J. H. Vincent, D.D. 537.
• Custom House, The New York. Coleman E. Bishop. 215.
• Damascene Pictures, Some. Bishop John F. Hurst, D.D., LL.D. 559.
• Dreams, A Trip to the Land of. Robert R. Doherty. 333.
• Editor’s Note-Book. [53], 113, 174, 235, 299, 362, 425, 486, 551, 609.
• Editor’s Outlook:—
• About, Edmond. 362.
• Art in the United States. 425.
• Chautauqua at New Orleans. 360.
• Chautauqua Plan, The. [51].
• Chautauqua Year, A Review of. 550.
• Cholera, The. 549.
• Circles, A Danger for Local. 171.
• C. L. S. C. Books—Practical Loyalty. 233.
• Councils at Baltimore, The. 297.
• Course of Reading for 1885-86. 608.
• Criminals, Reformed. 299.
• Diplomat, An American. 549.
• Dramatists, The Great Greek. 360.
• Electing a Chief Magistrate. 172.
• Fairbairn’s Lectures, Principal. 173.
• Grant’s Illness, General 483.
• Health and Pleasure, Summer. 607.
• Hugo, Victor. 606.
• Liberty Enlightening the World. 550.
• Lighting of Towns, The. 485.
• Morals, Minor. 296.
• Motor, A Poor Man’s. 298.
• Oratory, The Decline of. 111.
• Outlook from the Plainfield Office. 110.
• Pole, The Secret of. [52].
• Presidential Election. [51].
• Prices, The Fall in. 234.
• Public Men in Literature. 423.
• Reading for 1885-86, The Course of. 608.
• Reading of the Periodical Press, Judicious. 112.
• Repudiation, The Dishonesty of. 233.
• Science and Practical Life. 608.
• Senate, The United States. 484.
• Shaksperean Anniversary. 424.
• Soldier, The Modern Treatment of. 485.
• Spirituality in the Church, The Decline of. 423.
• Summer Amusements. 484.
• “That,” The Relative Pronoun. 361.
• Testament, Old, The Revised. 606.
• Winter Sports in Canada. 361.
• World’s Fair, The New Orleans. 111.
• Education, National Aid to. Gen. John A. Logan. 271, 329.
• Education, Popular. [62].
• England and Islam. Pres. D. H. Wheeler, D.D., LL.D. 402.
• English, A Universal Language. Pres. D. H. Wheeler, D.D., LL.D. 435.
• English, Differs from other Languages, How. Richard Grant White. 247.
• English Language, The Mechanism of. Pres. D. H. Wheeler, D.D., LL.D. 497.
• English, Notes on Popular. Isaac Todhunter. 345.
• English, What is. Richard Grant White. 123.
• English, Why we Speak. Richard Grant White. [1].
• Eyes, The, Busy on Things About Us. Josephine Pollard. 443.
• Fish Culture, The Art of. Prof. G. Brown Goode. 404, 470.
• Florida Chautauqua, The. 496.
• Foreign Service, The Machinery of our. Hon. Eugene Schuyler. 455.
• Forestry, A Bird’s-Eye View of. Rev. S. W. Powell. 464.
• Fortress, Palace and Prison. Edith Sessions Tupper. 397.
• Framingham, Mass. [41], 602.
• Geography of the Heavens. Chancellor M. B. Goff. [29], 92, 155, 279, 342, 400, 460, 520, 578.
• George Eliot, The Life of. 407.
• Germany, Some Modern Literary Men of. 585.
• Greek Life, Glimpses of Ancient. Abridged from J. P. Mahaffy. [13], 73, 129, 187.
• Greek Mythology. [15], 76, 131, 190.
• Heart, The, Busy with Things About Us. Josephine Pollard. 506.
• Honesty in the C. L. S. C. Chancellor J. H. Vincent, D.D. 473.
• House, The Homelike. Susan Hayes Ward. 203, 268, 335, 461.
• How to Win. Frances E. Willard. 343, 396, 450, 521.
• How to Work Alone. Chancellor J. H. Vincent, D.D. 411.
• Huxley on Science. 261.
• Institutions, The Merciful, of Pennsylvania. Prof. C. J. Little, Ph.D. [30].
• Island Park, Indiana. [43], 603.
• Jews in Southern Russia, The Christian Revolt of. Bishop John F. Hurst, D.D., LL.D. 218.
• Kitchen, Common Sense in American. Laura Loraine. 97.
• Kitchen Science and Art, Studies in. [8], 82, 137, 194, 257, 316.
• Lake d’Funiak, Florida. [45].
• Lake Grove, Auburn, Maine. [44], 606.
• Lakeside, Ohio. [43], 604.
• Local Circles, The. Lewis C. Peake. 162.
• Local Circles, How to Organize. Rev. J. L. Hurlbut, D.D. 161.
• Local Circles. 102, 163, 222, 286, 351, 413, 475, 540, 593.
• Long Beach, Southern California. [44].
• Madura and its Pagoda. Bishop John F. Hurst, D.D., LL.D. 458.
• M’Cauley, Jerry, and his Work. Coleman E. Bishop. 390.
• Melrose and Holyrood. Edith Sessions Tupper. 93.
• Mexico. 338.
• Milton, as The Poet’s Poet. Prof. William Cleaver Wilkinson. 154.
• Minerals, The Life of. M. J. Thoulet. 453.
• Mohammedan University at Cairo. Bishop John F. Hurst, D.D., LL.D. 327.
• Monona Lake, Wis. [43], 605.
• Monteagle, Tennessee. [44], 603.
• Monterey, California. [41], 603.
• Mountain Lake Park, Maryland. [45], 605.
• Mummies, A Group of. O. T. Mason. 572.
• Museums, Some American. Clarence Cook. 531.
• Museum, of Fine Arts, Boston. Clarence Cook. 562.
• Nature, The Hospitalities of. Rev. Hugh Macmillan, D.D., LL.D., F. R. L. E. [21].
• New Orleans. Geo. Alfred Townsend. 280.
• New Orleans, World’s Exposition. Bishop W. F. Mallalieu, D.D. 340.
• New Zealand. M. Emile Blanchard. 211.
• Niagara, Historic. Edith Sessions Tupper. 586.
• Nicaragua and Panama Routes to the Pacific. Felix L. Oswald, M.D. 518.
• Normal Graduating Class of 1884, Sunday-school. 246.
• Norway, The Liberal Upheaval in. Bishop John F. Hurst, D.D., LL.D. 157.
• Oats. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 137.
• Onions. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 316.
• Ottawa, Kansas. [42], 604.
• Pauper Problem, The, In Germany. Bishop John F. Hurst, D.D., LL.D. 87.
• Pay, Will it. Charles Barnard. 577.
• Peaches. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 194.
• People, Learn to Enjoy. Margaret Meredith. 517.
• Poets, The Laureate. Rev. A. E. Winship. 96, 144, 212.
• Poisons, Two Fashionable. M. P. Regnard. 589.
• Potato. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. [8].
• Potato, The, Methods of Cooking. Mrs. Emma P. Ewing. [9].
• Program, Weekly, of Local Circle Work. [49], 101, 160, 221, 286, 350, 413, 474, 539.
• Program of Popular Exercises. 613.
• Questions and Answers. A. M. Martin. [46], 107, 168, 229, 293, 357, 420.
• Required Readings, Outline of. [49], 101, 160, 221, 285, 350, 413, 474, 539.
• Rice. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 137.
• Romance versus Reality. Frances E. Willard. 88.
• Round Lake, New York. [44], 605.
• Rye. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 82.
• Sciences, The Circle of. 264, 320, 378.
• Shasta, Mt., A Trip to. 573.
• Smithsonian Institution. G. Brown Goode. 275.
• Special Notes. [62], 122, 182, 245, 306, 372, 434, 496, 557, 616.
• Speech, The Bonds of. Richard Grant White. 63.
• Strawberries. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 194.
• Summer Homes for the City Poor. Helen Campbell. 514.
• Summer Resorts, Sanitary Condition of. Hon. B. G. Northrop, LL.D. 564.
• Sunday Readings. Selected by Chancellor J. H. Vincent, D.D. [11], 71, 127, 186, 250, 314, 382, 438, 504, 570.
• Tea. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 257.
• Temperance Teachings of Science. Felix L. Oswald, M.D. [17], 79, 134, 183, 255, 311.
• Turnips. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 316.
• Vegetables, The Preparation of. 318.
• Vesper and Praise Service, People’s Christmas. 180.
• War Department, The. Oliver W. Longan. 151.
• Warren, to the Class of 1884, Bishop. 101.
• Waseca, Minn. [43], 605.
• Wayside Homes. Helen Campbell. 567.
• Weather Bureau. Oliver W. Longan. 393.
• What-to-do Club, The. 536.
• Wheat. Byron D. Halsted, Sc.D. 82.
• Women, Government Employment for. Mrs. Pattie L. Collins. [27], 467.
• Yale College and Yale Customs. George E. Vincent. 208.
• Yosemite, A Trip to the. Miss Frances E. Willard. [20].

POETRY.

• A Prayer by the Sea. Sarah Doudney. 206.
• Alone with my Conscience. [26].
• As Seeing the Invisible. Emily J. Bugbee. 329.
• Consider the Lilies. Mrs. Mary N. Evans. 463.
• Ein Feste Burg ist Unser Gott. 392.
• He Maketh All Things New. Mary Lowe Dickenson. 86.
• How Perseus began to be Great. Elizabeth P. Allan. 529.
• “Invincible”—Class of 1885. Phebe A. Holder. 232.
• Our Ladies of Sorrow. Mrs. E. A. Matthews. 517.
• Perplexities. [23].
• Reassurement. Ada Iddings Gale. 576.
• The Bells of Notre Dame. Ada Iddings Gale. 215.
• The Parson’s Comforter. Frederick Langbridge. 274.
• The Poet’s Vision. Mary A. Lathbury. 267.
• The Spell of the Halcyon. Mrs. Mary N. Evans. 146.
• Two Seas. Ada Iddings Gale. 339.
• We Salute Thee, and Live. Mary Mathews-Smith. 571.

The Chautauquan.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.

Vol. V. OCTOBER, 1884. No. 1.

Officers of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

President, Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio. Superintendent of Instruction, Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn. Counselors, Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.; Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D. Office Secretary, Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. General Secretary, Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Contents

Transcriber’s Note: This table of contents of this periodical was created for the HTML version to aid the reader.

REQUIRED READING FOR OCTOBER.

WHY WE SPEAK ENGLISH.

BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

Learning the reason of anything, by which we generally mean the cause of it, is a process the instructive benefit of which is not limited by the subject immediately under consideration. To trace the relation of cause and effect is a very great and very important part of true education; of which, it needs hardly here to be said, book-learning is only a help and adjunct. Indeed, this learning or finding of causes is an education or discipline which for those who give themselves to intellectual pursuits, continues all their lives. It is the chief occupation of philosophers, of men of science, of investigators, of all real students. Virgil—who was not a very great poet, being of the second, or even of the third rank, because of his moderate creative power, his lack of vividness of imagination and liveliness of fancy, but who is remarkable for a broad and serene thoughtfulness—said: “Happy is he who is able to discover the causes of things.”[A] And indeed this process of finding causes is one of the most delightful and fascinating, and, to the soul of man, most profitable, in which man can engage. Of which the chief reason is the close and intimate relation that exists between all facts and thoughts and things. Isolation and independence are conditions hardly discoverable. Men can not be independent of each other, as we all find very early in life, if we observe and think. But yet, a man may isolate himself upon the top of a pillar; or he may build himself a hut in the woods, and give himself up to contemplation; thinking that in this way he will discover or evolve something that otherwise would be concealed. The discoveries and the evolutions in these cases, however, do not prove of much value, either to the individuals or to mankind. An isolated man, although monstrous, abnormal, unnatural, is possible, but not an isolated fact. An isolated fact is almost, if not quite, a contradiction in terms; for a fact implies conditions and causes from which it can not be separated. We shall thus find that the inquiry into the cause of such a simple, every-day fact as our speaking English will lead us through, although not over, the whole range of the history, known and conjectured, of that great family of the human race to which the people of Europe and of civilized America belong. To follow the steps of this inquiry will not be difficult, and, I hope, not uninteresting to the least learned reader of this magazine.

Why, then, do we in the United States of America speak English? Because that language is the speech of the English, or the so-called, Anglo-Saxon people? Because our forefathers came from England? Partly so. These facts have certain relations with that into the causes of which we are inquiring, but they do not wholly account for it. For although we are, in the main, an English people, and the forefathers of most of us did come from England, there are now many, although comparatively few, of us who are of Irish or of German blood. Moreover, in Ireland there are millions of Irishmen, Celts, who hate “the Saxon” (that is the English), but who speak English, and whose forefathers have spoken it for many generations. Now, the first reason why those Irishmen speak, and so long have spoken English, is a very simple, bald and cogent one, and it is the very reason of our speaking that language. It is, necessity: nothing more. The Celtic Irishman whose race-tongue was Erse, spoke English for the very reason that we, whose race-tongue it is, speak it; because he must speak it to be understood; for no other reason. But how came this necessity about? How came English speech into Ireland or into America, or, for that matter, into England?

Language is a mere instrument of man’s convenience; as much so as a spade or a knife, or any other tool. He uses it for the purpose of communicating with those by whom he is surrounded; and he must give to things and thoughts the names which they give them, or he might as well be dumb. If they call a certain animal a horse, it will not do for him to call it a cheval; and if they call it un cheval, it will not do for him to call it ung shovel, as many persons have found in France to their surprise and inconvenience. And if he is born and bred in France, no matter how thoroughly English or Irish he may be in blood, he will call it un cheval, without effort and without thought.

These are obvious facts; but for our present purpose they are not trite, nor is the consideration of them trifling. They have bearing upon the very common belief, or assumption, that language is a product of race; that there is some mysterious and inevitable connection between man’s physical and mental constitution and the language that he speaks. There is no such connection. Manner of speech and style of writing are peculiar in various peoples, as their manner and their style in other things and acts are peculiar. There is a French style of speaking, as there is an Italian, an Irish, and an English, which pertains to those various peoples, and which is a product of their national spirit, their genius, as we say. But there is no such influence of national spirit, or of physiological traits or conditions upon the substance of language—words. The Irish did not speak Erse, because Erse was a natural product of the Irish physical or mental constitution. So with the English; so with all peoples. An English, a German or a French boy, born and brought up in Russia, would speak Russian; and (personal peculiarities apart) they all would speak it alike, and without the least modification dependent upon their respective English, German, and French physical and mental constitution. If, however, their mothers were with them, and their mothers could speak no Russian, each of those boys would speak two languages, English and Russian, or German and Russian, or French and Russian, and, accidents apart, each of them would speak his two equally well, and with equal freedom. He would think with equal freedom in both.

Some of my readers must know, from their own observation, that this is true; and yet I do not doubt that even of these there are not a few who have never thought of it as evidence that, although certain languages are spoken by certain races, this is not because there is any natural and peculiar fitness of the words of any one language to the character or the spirit of any one people. The language used by any and every people has a historical origin; and the peculiar forms of its words are the product of time, of circumstance, and probably, in a certain very moderate measure, of climate, and of physiological conditions.

The sun and the moon received their names for good reasons; the former because it is the creator (light and heat being the causes of inorganic life), and the latter because it was the first measurer of time; and these names they have borne for at least four thousand years—we do not know how much longer. But now those words have become mere names; mere sounds which are the vocal indications of the objects to which they are applied, so that if by some wizardry we were all, with one exception, to wake up to-morrow calling the light which rules the day, moon, and that which rules the night, sun, we should be perfectly satisfied, and find in it no inconvenience; and moreover we should look upon him who used the words in the converse senses, that we had forgotten, as a madman.

Words however have, with very few exceptions, a real meaning, or at least a reason for their use, as sun and moon have. The words without such meaning may be all told upon the fingers. Two words of scientific origin, but very common use, are illustrative examples—chloroform and gas, both of which are of recent, the former of very recent, fabrication. Chloroform is so called because it is, or is supposed to be, a chloride of formyl, which is the base of formic acid, a fluid found in red ants; formica being the Latin for ant. It was desirable to have a convenient name for this substance, and the name was made by uniting the first syllable of chloride, or chlorine, with the first syllable of formyl; whence we have chloro-form. The name gas was invented, we know not why or wherefore, by a Dutch chemist, some two hundred and fifty years ago, for all those compressible, air-like fluids to which it is now applied. It was convenient and came first into scientific and then into general use, so that now it is one of the commonest words, even in a sarcastic, metaphorical sense, in the speech of all civilized peoples. Now nearly all words have a significant origin, like chloroform. Those which are without inherent significance, like gas, are very few indeed. Words like these, and like oxygen (which is only about one hundred and fifty years old, and means acid-maker), are called coined words, because they were recently and deliberately made. The words which form the bulk of language are of very remote origin, and, until lately, of untraced growth.

The tracing of the growth of words which has been scientifically—that is, historically and logically—prosecuted for a little more than fifty years, has brought to light the important fact—a fact the discovery of which is second in importance only to that of the discovery of the law of gravitation—that all the languages of the civilized peoples of Europe and America, together with some in Asia, have a common origin. At one time there was no English, no French, no German, no Russian language, no Erse or Gælic, no Latin, no Greek; but at that time the germ of all these languages, and of others which need not be mentioned, existed in a tongue which for more than four thousand years has been unspoken, but which from the people who spoke it has been called Aryan (pronounced Ahrian). This discovery was sure to have been made in one way or another; but the immediate cause of it was the presence in Hindostan of the British East India Company. In 1776, N. B. Halhed, a servant of that company, who had been an early friend of Sheridan, the orator and dramatist, published a Bengali grammar, in which he mentions as very remarkable, “the similitude of Sanskrit words with those of Persian and Arabic (?), and even of Latin and Greek; and these not in technical and metaphorical terms, which the mutation of refined arts and improved manners might have occasionally introduced, but in the main groundwork of the language, in monosyllables, in the names of numbers, and the appellations of such things as would be first discriminated on the first dawn of civilization.” Soon afterward, in 1786, Sir William Jones, who had gone to Bengal as a judge, in a paper in “Asiatic Researches,” expressed a like opinion more strongly and in more comprehensive terms. “The Sanskrit language,” he says, “whatever may be its antiquity is of a wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar[B] than could have been produced by accident, so strong that no philologer could examine all the three without believing them to have sprung from one common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be added to the same family.”

What Halhed and Jones put forth as strong probability was ere long found, was clearly proved, to be the truth. Persian, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, and of course all languages derived from them, were discovered to be identical in origin with Sanskrit. Now, what was this Sanskrit, this wonderful language which so suddenly and so surely unlocked the mystery of the world’s speech, and revealed the source of all the languages of civilized Europe, and some of those of Asia? Sanskrit, (the name means worked-together, elaborated, highly finished,) is the sacred language of the Brahmans, in which was preserved the religious teachings and legends of the people of India, whom we call Hindoos. It is quite four thousand years old in its existing form. For a very long time it was unwritten, the Brahmans having no letters; and the sacred books (so we must call them) were transmitted orally, but with such veneration not only for their doctrine and their story, but their phraseology in its minutest particulars, that among the Brahmans grammar became a religion, and the slightest variation from the text of the Vedas—this was the name of the sacred books—was regarded as a sin. Punctilio in this respect was carried so far that when letters were borrowed from the West, and an alphabet was formed, and the Vedas were written, it was protested against by the conservatives as a sacrilege. Common sense and convenience, however, carried the day. Sanskrit is the most elaborate, the most minutely divided, the most elaborately inflected speech known to man. The sight of a Sanskrit grammar is appalling to the common sense of our day. There are ten conjugations of verbs; and a verb has ten tenses; and each one of these tenses has three numbers, singular, dual and plural; and each tense has two sets of terminations. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are singular, dual and plural, and have eight cases. Inflections of all words are distracting for multitude and intricacy. Yet this elaborately intricate language was spoken in what we think of as the wilds of Asia long before the history of the human race is known; at least four thousand years ago.

A Frenchman named de Chésy learned Sanskrit from a British officer named Hamilton, who, on his way from India, was detained in France, and taught it, as he says, to Franz Bopp, a German philologist, who made use of it in a work on the system of conjugation, and thus became, unintentionally, a Columbus-like discoverer of the great science of Comparative Philology. For Bopp “builded better than he knew.” His purpose was merely to work out his system of conjugation; but in doing this he revealed and established the unity of speech in all the Aryan or Indo-European peoples. This he himself afterward elaborated in his “Comparative Grammar” of the chief Aryan languages. Then came another great German philologist, Jacob Grimm, who discovered the law, or method, according to which words changed their forms; and the great end was accomplished. This happened in 1816-19; and since that time Comparative Philology has worked upon the lines indicated by Bopp and Grimm. Bopp’s great “Comparative Grammar,” however, did not appear until 1833.

One of the most important, if not the most important of the results of the discovery of Sanskrit, and the consequent prosecution of the study of language upon the historical and comparative method—the only safe method for the study of any subject—is the revelation of the origin, and to a certain and very remarkable degree, of the early unrecorded history of the Aryan or Indo-European peoples; that race which has received the latter name because it occupies, and for two thousand years and more has occupied, all India and Europe. Let us glance at this history as it is thus revealed, for it is very much to our present purpose.

Take a good map of Asia, one which shows the eastern confines of Europe, and turn your attention to the country now called Joorkistan, lying between the Caspian Sea and the western boundary of the Chinese Empire. There, some five or six thousand years ago, (it will not do to be too particular, all the more because we can not, if we would,) about the foot of the Hindoo Kosh, and around the sources of the Oxus, there lived, we have good reason to believe, a people who called themselves Aryan. They were a white race; much fairer, at least, than the people who were then occupying Europe and the other parts of Asia. They were strong of body, intelligent and enterprising. They did not live only by hunting and herding, like the nomadic peoples, their neighbors, but cultivated the ground. Their name, Aryan, means honorable, noble; and there is some reason for believing that it is connected with their agricultural pursuits and distinction. For reasons which of course we do not know, but probably from the pressure of population, more than four thousand years ago this people began to send out bodies of emigrants. They moved westward, toward the Caspian Sea, of the existence of which they were probably ignorant. They had used boats upon the Oxus, but the history of their language shows that they knew nothing of what we call navigation. Their progress seems to have been slow, but continuous, one body of emigrants being ere long followed by another. We may be sure that they had to fight their way. So late as eight hundred years ago all emigration was armed. The strong took the land red-handed from the weak, or at least from those who were not so strong and so numerous as they were themselves. The Aryans reached the Caspian Sea; and took possession of the country lying south of it, since known as Persia. After a time, we know not how long, emigration began again from this point. But here the advancing people divided. Some of them moved in a south-westerly direction; and this stream of emigration continued until it overflowed all the vast territory now known as Afghanistan, Belochistan and Hindostan. Another stream moved westward and northward, and passed through Turkey in Asia into Europe.

We have reason for believing that up to the time when this division took place in the country south of the Caspian Sea, the Aryan people spoke one language; but sufficient time had already elapsed for a considerable change to have taken place in the tongue which was spoken on the plains at the foot of the Hindoo Kosh. Language changes rapidly among people in a low state of civilization, without literature, without letters which are the landmarks and conservators of speech. But this point of time and of place is that of a great division in the speech of the Aryan people. Of the language of those who moved westward into Europe there are no remains which date within many centuries of this period; but of the language of those who moved south into Hindostan, we have in the existing Sanskrit a representative which is of almost indefinable antiquity, and the perfect preservation of which is marvelous. It is no rude, ruinous relic, but complete, elaborate, and finished to the highest point of perfection in its kind. It will be seen (and this must be constantly borne in mind) that Sanskrit is not the original Aryan language, but only the oldest existing offshoot from that language. The great, the inestimable value of the discovery of Sanskrit was not that we find in it the source of other languages, not that in it was the origin of the words spoken by the various peoples of Europe; but that it furnished evidence of the most important fact in the history of language, one of the most important facts in the history of the world. It had been assumed that the countless words which were similar in the language of the European peoples, and the many which were identical, were derived one from another; that they were adopted by one people from the language of another; that they were the product of neighborhood, of intercourse, of imitation, of convection—that is that they were carried from one country and people into another. The discovery and the study of Sanskrit proved that these words, or most of them, came into the various languages in which they are found, not by any or by all of these methods, but by direct descent from a speech which was at one time common to the forefathers of all the peoples in India, in Persia, and in Europe. Of these various languages Sanskrit is not only the oldest, but so very much the oldest that it carries us up very far toward the original speech of the Aryan or Indo-European race; so far that we are not without reasonable hope that philological science may elaborate by its help a proximate form of the elements of the original Aryan speech.

It is worthy of remark that the European language most like the Sanskrit, most like it in substance, and notably most like it in grammatical structure, is the Greek; the language of the people nearest Asia, nearest the point of the division of the Aryan people into two great streams of emigration.[C] And here, too, it may well be remarked that the book of Genesis, in one of those ethnological passages which reveal a knowledge of prehistoric man so perfectly in accordance with the results of modern historical inquiry and scientific investigation that it would seem that they must have been a revelation from Omniscience, makes the confusion of tongues and the consequent dispersion of nations take place upon the plains of Shinar, in the very region, at least, where the Aryan dispersion began.

To resume our brief story of the Aryan advance to take possession of the world; for we are no longer concerned with what went on in India or the East. Many centuries had now elapsed, and the Aryan people had multiplied into many millions of men, and had formed themselves into nations or peoples ignorant of their common origin, and regarding each other as all peoples then regarded each other, as enemies, rivals in the possession of the earth and its products. The emigration continued; those in advance being driven and pushed on by those who followed. Europe once entered, there was again a division of the stream of advancing, conquering men. The dispersion was doubtless greater than before, but again there were two main bodies, one keeping to the south along the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the other moving northward, toward the Baltic. The former has been designated from the principal peoples involved in it, or resulting from it, the Italo-Græco-Celtic strain; the latter is the Gothic. It is with this that we are chiefly, but by no means exclusively, concerned. We are Goths.

It has just been said that those who were in the advance in this great emigration were pushed on by those who followed. Who were the advance of this westward movement, the first Aryans who entered Europe? There is no reasonable doubt that they were the Celts, the people who, some thirteen hundred years ago, were in absolute and complete possession of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and a small part of the northwestern coast of what is now, but was not then, France. These people, this head of the Aryan column, passed through southern Europe, (we know it by the names they left behind them, given to places during their temporary, but not short occupation of the soil,) and coming to the ocean, went northward, then crossed the English channel, and took possession of Britain and Ireland. There they stopped simply because they could go no farther. But they were still pushed by those who followed. The invasion of Britain by the Romans, and yet more, the after invasion and occupation of it by the so-called Anglo-Saxons, our forefathers, were a mere continuation of the Aryan emigration which had begun at the foot of the Hindoo Kosh, in Asia, thousands of years before.

These Celts who went first were followed by the people who, in close connection with them as to time and affiliation of blood, became the Latin races (old Romans, Italians, Spaniards, French), and the Greeks. It was natural that the first stream of Aryan emigration into Europe should take its course through the countries of these peoples, because they lie at the south, on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. Men never go northward to find homes amid snows and ice one half the year, if they can find land of more genial clime unoccupied or occupyable. The leading bodies of the Celts having reached the ocean in the southern part of Europe, and being pushed on by the steady flow from behind, moved northward, and as we have already seen, at last left the continent, and rested in Britain and Ireland. Here, from their insular position, they were able to maintain their footing firmly, if not undisturbed, for many centuries. They were not displaced in Britain until about thirteen centuries ago; and then they were not driven onward, as before they had been driven; for there was no place whither to drive them. They were, in the words of an old adage, perhaps as old as this very time, “between the devil and the deep sea;” and most of them were slain to make room for their fellow Aryans, their far-away kindred, whom they knew not, and had no reason to know, and whom they hated with good reason.

The Goths, of whose race we are, and from whom we directly come, moved northwestward from the western shores of the Black Sea, where they are first heard of. Their language, in its original form, is lost like the great original Aryan tongue; but as in the case of that tongue, a very early offshoot of it has been happily preserved. This is the Mæso-Gothic, into which Ulphilas, a bishop of the Mæso-Goths, who had become Christians, translated the New Testament and part of the Old about one thousand five hundred years ago. Of the former a very considerable part remains. It is written in large silver letters, on parchment of a beautiful purple tint. This work shows us all of the structure and much of the substance of the Mæso-Gothic language; and in the former even more than in the latter affords, like the Greek, evidence of an origin identical with that of Sanskrit.

The Gothic people pushed, and were pushed, northward, and began, in their turn, to divide and to disperse, and soon to be unable to understand each other’s speech, and to regard each other as foreigners and enemies. For it must be remembered that these migrations were slow, extending through centuries; that they consisted of alternate movement and settlement; settlement for many generations in one place; so that the mountains and streams and forests still retain evidences of this residence, in the names given to them by these tribes or sub-tribes of the Aryan people. It must be remembered, too, that in these remote times, at that early stage of civilization, when there were no books, except a few manuscripts on parchment, no strongly built towns, no stability of government, and when inter-communication was slow, difficult and dangerous, an interval of a hundred years was quite as long as one of five hundred of the years last passed, in its effect of separation and isolation of peoples, in its dividing families into tribes, and tribes into strange and hostile little nations.

From the Goths there was now a new offshoot, one destined to power and preëminence in the future of the human race. While the greater number of them remained in the country which for some eighteen centuries has been loosely called Germany, a large body of them moved northward and took possession of the countries now known as Denmark, Sweden and Norway, with the neighboring islands. These people are known ethnologically as the Scandinavians; and it is from them, and from some very near neighbors of theirs, also of Gothic race, who settled in the country in and about the lower part of Jutland (the old name of Denmark), that the English people, of whom we are a part, are descended.[D] It so happened that in the continuance of the westward movement of the Aryan people there was a union on the island of Great Britain, of emigrants from Denmark and the neighboring country on the continent, and from the western part of the great northern Scandinavian peninsula (Norway); and the result of that union, which was some eight centuries in forming, was the English people, by whom chiefly this country was settled only some two hundred and fifty years ago, and by whom its laws, its religion, its manners and customs and its language were determined and established. It is with the last of these, language, that we are here concerned. What that language is, and how it became what it is, will be the subject of our next paper.

[A] “Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.” Georgicon II, 490.

[B] The grammar, it is to be said, is far more like that of the Greek than like that of the Latin language.

[C] There is a language, the Lithuanian, spoken by a Leth-Slavonic people, northwest of the Baltic, near Poland, which has preserved in a remarkable and unique manner forms of the old Aryan speech which are extinct in other European tongues. But it is the language of a small, rude, unimportant people, without a literature, and indeed was not written until the sixteenth century. It is of great interest to the student of comparative philology, but of none to us at present.

[D] The Scandinavians, and all the peoples who are loosely called German tribes, High-German, Low-German, and what-not, are generally regarded as branches of a great Aryan stem, which is called the Teutonic race; and some of my philological readers, should any such honor these unpretending papers with their attention, may be surprised, and even offended, at my omission of any mention of the great Teutonic family. As to this, my only defense, or rather my only excuse, is that I have been unable to convince myself of the existence of any such branch as the Teutonic, antecedent to the Gothic, of which the Mæso-Goths were an early offshoot. I can not see that the Teutones of the Roman historians represent an elder, dominant, or parent branch of the Aryan race of which the Goths were a younger and minor. As to the word German, and its use in “German tribes,” “German dialects,” every scholar knows that it is not an indigenous name, but that it was imposed from without, by strangers, upon the people who bear it, who call themselves Deutch; and that this name was in effect territorial, meaning all the people, of whatever race, who lived within or beyond certain boundaries. As to the identity of origin in Deu-tch and Teu-ton, that seems to me to be by no means clearly made out. For Teutonic race I would substitute Gothic. The question from the present point of view is happily not of serious or intrinsic importance.

HOME STUDIES IN CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.

BY PROF. J. T. EDWARDS, D.D.
Director of the Chautauqua School of Experimental Science.

In our day science invades the kitchen. Knowledge knocks at the sitting room door. Literature and art visit the parlor of even our humble homes. To do anything in furtherance of popular education is a delight. Mine be the task of making the laboratory and the home better acquainted.

The limitations of an article for The Chautauquan cause the first embarrassment. One must at once become an eclectic, and select wisely the best from a wide field. The next difficulty is to give coherency and classification to the truths selected. Upon what golden cord shall we arrange the shining truths?

Let us use an ancient, though incorrect classification of elements: Water, air, earth, fire, adding another, organisms. Indeed, this is about the division of matter which the common people make to-day, although chemists tell us that neither of these is an element, and that the simple, indivisible substances in nature are sixty-six in number. As chemistry and physics are so closely related, we shall consider each of these topics from the standpoint of both these sciences. This will call for ten articles, on the following subjects: Chemistry of Water; Physics of Water; Chemistry of Air; Physics of Air; Chemistry of Fire; Physics of Fire; Chemistry of Earth; Physics of Earth; Chemistry of Organisms; Physics of Organisms.

CHEMISTRY OF WATER. H₂O.

FORMS OF WATER CRYSTALLIZED.

Do not be disturbed by these cabalistic symbols; they are simply the chemist’s name for water; a most expressive name, too, as we shall presently discover. Some names are misnomers. Abel Blackman may be both weak and a white man. Our letters can not mislead. They abbreviate, show the class of each substance, the elements that form it, and their proportions. Berzelius devised this mode of naming. (Who was Berzelius?)

On the table stands a glass of water. How beautiful it is! Even diamonds, costliest of gems, are valued in proportion as they possess its marvelous clearness, those of the “first water” being most highly prized. We are now to speak of some of the chemical properties of water; hereafter we shall consider the physical characteristics.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN ATOMS AND MOLECULES.

See! I have dipped my pencil into the goblet, and brought up a drop of water. What force binds together the pencil and the drop? What holds the drop to other drops? Why is not this ice instead of water? If I shake the pencil in what direction does the drop fall? If the drop were larger than the world, which way would the world go? What other force is there in it which, according to Faraday, is equal to that in a flash of lightning? Here are, then, five great forces in a drop of water, yet none of them changes its nature. It is still H₂O.

Let us place this drop of water in the upright tube of an atomizer. Apply air. See, the drop has broken into thousands of particles. Now, suppose we could take one of these and place it in a flask. Apply heat, and we should separate the little particle into thousands of particles of steam, but each of these, and any lesser division of these, would still be H₂O. The minutest division of the water possible would be called a molecule, yet it would still be water, and composed of two parts of hydrogen and one of oxygen. The old ocean itself contains the same. The Cracow beds of salt are made of chlorine and sodium, and the minutest dust from one of its crystals would be found to contain the same elements, and in the same proportion, both by weight and measure. Molecules, then, combined, make only masses of the same nature. But molecules are composed of atoms, and whenever atoms of two or more different substances are combined they always form something different from either of these. The force that unites them is called chemical affinity, or sometimes the chemical force. For example, tenacious iron unites with a gas and forms a brittle, red substance, rust. Chlorine is a poisonous gas, and sodium will burn on water, both deadly; united they give us salt; absolutely essential to life. Hydrogen is the best substance in the world to burn, and oxygen the best supporter of combustion. When united they form water, which is universally employed to extinguish fire. Blue vitriol is blue, as the name implies, yet it is composed of four elements, two of which, H and O, are colorless, copper, which is red, and sulphur, which is yellow. Sulphur has little or no odor, and hydrogen has none, but when united they form a gas which has the odor of spoiled eggs. White sugar is nothing but black charcoal and water. It will thus be seen that here is a source of new things in nature. Whatever chemical affinity touches is changed.

And so we have found another force in our drop of water taken from the goblet, more wonderful than any yet named, a mighty, transforming energy which has but one worthy rival in the work of creating new things, the vital principle, and even that must yield at last to this all conquering power. If our goblet was large, and held a pound of water, (about a pint,) we should find that to pull the molecules apart, that is, make it into steam, would require a force which would raise four tons to the height of one hundred feet. But more wonderful still, to separate the pound of water into two chemical constituents would require, according to Prof. Cooke, an energy which would raise 5,314,200 pounds one foot. Our pint of water would then occupy 1800 times its present volume.

Let us now give a striking and beautiful illustration of chemical affinity. We will throw into this tumbler a piece of potassium (symbol K) half as large as a pea. This interesting metal was discovered by Davy in 1807. Its affinity for O is very great. As soon as it falls upon the water it abstracts oxygen and forms potassium oxide (potash), while the hydrogen and a small amount of volatilized K escape and are burned with a brilliant violet flame, on account of the heat evolved by the energetic chemical action.

POTASSIUM BURNING BY COMBINING WITH THE OXYGEN OF WATER.

IMPORTANT DATES.

The composition of water was discovered about one hundred years ago. Cavendish found hydrogen in 1776, and Priestly discovered oxygen in 1774, August 1st, a date which some one says “may almost be accepted as the birthday of modern chemistry.”

Is it not remarkable that four of the brightest “red letter days” in the history of this science should be embraced within two decades, from 1754 to 1774? In 1754 Joseph Black discovered carbonic acid gas; in 1766 Dr. Cavendish found hydrogen; in 1772 Dr. Rutherford discovered nitrogen, and in 1774 Dr. Priestly found the King of the Elements, oxygen. Until then mankind were ignorant of the existence of a substance which composes in the aggregate one half the earth.

ANALYSIS OF WATER.

Returning to our glass, let us suppose that the bottom has been so perforated that two little strips of platinum wire can be inserted side by side, at the distance of half an inch from each other, and so as to leave the tumbler water-tight. Now attach the lower ends of these wires to wires connected with the poles of an ordinary galvanic battery. Small bubbles will be seen to rise immediately around the wires in the water. Fill two glass tubes (closed at one end) with water, and having placed a little piece of paper over the top, hold the finger on the paper, and quickly invert the tubes over the wires. The escaping gases will thus be secured. The electric current is counteracting the affinity of the two elements that form water, and they are collecting in the tubes. You will soon find that the H gathers more rapidly than the O, and upon measuring them there will be twice as much of the former as of the latter. Weigh them, and the O outweighs the former eight times. If, then, one atom of O weighs eight times as much as two atoms of H (H₂O is the symbol for water, remember,) then one atom of O weighs sixteen times as much as one atom of H; or, in other words, H is sixteen times lighter than O, and is the lightest substance known.

Place the O and H in a eudiometer over mercury, and send an electric spark through them; the gases will disappear, with a loud explosion, and there, resting on the quicksilver, will be seen the original drops of water which we decomposed. We have now shown the composition of water, both by analysis and synthesis.

HYDROGEN.

An atom of H is the chemist’s unit. This is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas, fourteen times lighter than air. When burned it produces a more intense heat than any other substance. Iron burns in its flame like paper. When united with O, and a piece of lime is inserted in the flame, the latter becomes exceedingly brilliant, forming the Drummond light, which has been seen at the distance of one hundred miles in the daytime. So diffusive is H that if a sheet of paper or gold-leaf be placed over an escaping jet of the gas, it will pass directly through the paper, and may be lighted on the upper side. H is easily prepared, and many interesting experiments may be performed with it, some of which it may be well to mention. Take up on a pointed wire or needle or with tweezers, a piece of the metal sodium, quickly insert it under a tube filled with water and invert in a glass of water; the sodium will at once take the O and leave the H to displace the water in the tube. Remove the tube, still holding it with opening downward; apply lighted match and a slight explosion will follow. What two properties of H have you shown by your experiment?

COLLECTING HYDROGEN EVOLVED FROM WATER BY SODIUM.

Take a bottle holding one or two pints, fit a cork to it, through which pass a glass or metallic tube, the end of which is drawn out so as to leave a small aperture at the top. Place in the bottle a few pieces of zinc, and some sulphuric acid, diluted with water, in the proportions of one part of acid to six of water, then insert the cork. You will immediately see bubbles of H rising. The explanation of this is as follows: The zinc takes O from the water, thus liberating H; the O forms an oxide on the surface of the metal, which would prevent further action, did not the acid dissolve the oxide, thus leaving a fresh surface to take the O, and continue liberating H until the metal disappears. After the H has been forming for two or three minutes, hold over the tube an inverted tumbler for a moment, remove the tumbler and then apply a match to the contents of tumbler. When the bottle has become filled with H you can light the gas at the top of the tube, and thus have a steady flame. Be careful not to attempt to ignite the gas until all of the air has been forced out of the bottle, as air mixed with H produces an explosive mixture. In the intense heat of the faint flame you can melt metals or glass. By placing a larger glass tube, open at both ends, over the flame, you may be able to produce the celebrated acoustic tones, varying in pitch and intensity with the size and length of the tube used. A hydrogen gun can easily be made by taking a tin tube five or six inches long (closed at one end), from one half inch to an inch in diameter; make a small aperture near the closed end; then invert the tube for a moment over the escaping H, keeping the small hole closed with the finger, place a cork in the open end, and apply a match to the hole. The cork will be forced out with a loud explosion. What compound is always produced when H is burned? Let us see. Invert a cold, dry tumbler over a burning jet, and you will always observe moisture gathering on its surface. Another pretty experiment may be performed with H by inserting the stem of a common clay pipe in a piece of rubber tubing, slip the other end of the tubing over the gas jet, prepare some strong soap suds, and with a little care you can blow beautiful soap bubbles with your pipe, which, by a skillful movement may be detached, and they will rise in the air like miniature balloons; by placing a burning match under them they will explode. Strike a bell in a large jar filled with H, and it has a squeaky sound. Our whole art and science of music would be changed if H should be mixed with the air to any great extent.

Nicely balance a flask or jar containing air; fill the same flask with H, and the beam will at once be seen to rise.

Let us find the antipodes of weight. Iridium, hammered to increase its density, is twenty-three times heavier than water; water is about eight hundred times heavier than air, and air is fourteen times heavier than H: 23×800×14=257,600; that is, one quart of Ir would balance 257,600 quarts of H.

OXYGEN.

There are four kings among chemical substances: Oxygen, king of all the elements; gold, king of the metals; oil of vitriol, king of the acids, and potash, king of the bases.

PREPARATION OF OXYGEN FROM MERCURIC OXIDE—MATERIALS USED BY DR. PRIESTLY.

This term of distinction is given to oxygen because of its marvellous activity and range of powers; it unites with all elements save one, fluorine. Its grasping disposition is often resisted by man; he keeps it from destroying his house by painting it; from gnawing at the quivering nerves of his teeth by filling them; from devouring his fruits by canning them; and Monsieur Goffart has now taught us to save green food for our cattle, from its ravages by excluding O from our silos. In spite of its destroying power we can not live without it. The light and warmth in our homes are produced by its rapid union with fuel. Every moment we breathe we are absorbing it into our bodies, where it unites with waste matter, producing heat and energy, and removing that which would clog and poison the system. There is nothing in nature more beautiful than the plan by which the animal and vegetable kingdoms mutually sustain each other by the interchange of O. Look at this little aquarium; here are two or three shiners, some goldfish, and a few water plants. In this little world we may see exactly what goes on in the great world. That goldfish is inhaling O, which is conveyed into the capillaries, unites there with the carbon, forming CO₂, which is exhaled, seized upon by the plant, and in the wonderful laboratory of its cells, the C is separated from the poisonous gas, and retained, while the O is thrown off, again to be used by the fish. Upon the nice adjustment of the plants to the animals, and vice versa, depends the life of both. While upon this subject we might note another interesting evidence of beneficent design in the provision made for both fish and plants.

Water absorbs gases with great readiness—some of them it takes more readily than others; for example, a pint of water will absorb seven hundred pints of ammonia gas. It will take but its own volume of carbonic anhydride under one pressure of the atmosphere.

The descending rain drops absorb these two gases and convey them to the rootlets of the plant, for food. More wonderful still, the Almighty has arranged that water should remove O from the air more readily than it does nitrogen; consequently the rain carries down the O to the fish in river, lake and ocean, adding its life-giving principle to the air, which is always contained in water. It is a pretty sight to watch the breathing of a fish as he sends the rapid currents of water through his gills in the act of aërating the blood, which, as it passes through, gives them a crimson color.

It may easily be proved that plants throw off O, by submerging any vigorous growing plant in a jar of water; in a short time little bubbles will be seen clinging to the leaves; now fill a bottle with water, invert, and touch the little globules gently, when they will detach themselves and pass up into the bottle, displacing the water, and may afterward be used in experimentation. Perhaps some of you, while drinking at the brook, have noted these bubbles of O on the leaves of the graceful water plants below. This is the only place in nature where you can see O free, and indeed you do not see it here, for O is a colorless, tasteless, odorless substance; what you do see is the thin sphere of water which contains it.

O is held by many substances so tenaciously that we can not liberate it; this gives us “terra firma.” Sand, and many rocks consist of O and silicon, but the greatest heat and heaviest blows can not separate them. There are materials, however, which readily yield their O. Dr. Priestly first found it by heating with a burning glass a compound known now as red oxide of mercury. The O went off, leaving the shining quicksilver.

You may repeat this historic experiment by placing the material in a test tube and heating it over an alcohol lamp.

Another substance used for this purpose is black oxide of manganese (MnO₂), but that which is now generally employed is a white salt, kept by every druggist, and usually called chlorate of potash (HClO₃).

PREPARATION OF OXYGEN FROM A MIXTURE OF POTASSIC CHLORATE (CHLORATE OF POTASH) AND MANGANESE DI-OXIDE.

Place a small amount of this, mixed with an equal quantity of the manganese, in a test tube, or flask, and heat over a flame. The O will be liberated, and may be bottled for use. A strange thing about this operation is that the MnO₂ yields none of the O, but comes out of the flask just as it went in. Such action, by mere presence, is called catalysis. We can not explain it, but have some such phenomena in social life, perhaps, when two people with an affinity for each other are having a delightful, confidential chat, and a third person joins the group, immediately producing silence—a plain case of catalysis! Having secured several jars of O we are now ready to test some of its interesting properties. Extinguish a candle and suddenly plunge it into a jar of O. It is relighted. A better way is to make a taper of waxed thread. This will keep the live coal better, and may be relighted many times. Attach to a wire a piece of charcoal bark. Ignite and place in another jar. Beautiful scintillations fill the jar, star like in form. Take a watch spring, heat one end and bend. Split a match and attach to the spring, light and place in the jar. It burns with great brilliancy.

Whittle out a little cup of chalk, or crayon, and place phosphorus in it. Touch the P with a hot wire and lower the cup, with a wire, into a jar of O. A beautiful combustion follows. In like manner sulphur may be burned, and produces a bright blue light.

A TAPER OR CANDLE BURNING IN OXYGEN.

A little ingenuity will supply all apparatus needed for these and other experiments with H and O. For example, a common pail with a wooden shelf in it two or three inches from the top makes an excellent pneumatic trough for transferring or gathering gases, and if the shelf can not be procured, two or three bricks in the pail will serve the purpose.

Before dismissing our glass of water we must remark that no matter where it may be found, in the depths of the sea or on the mountain; as a dew drop, or sparkling as spray; in lake Nyanza, or lake Chautauqua, the chemical constituents of water are just the same. Almighty care and wisdom weighs the atoms, even as “he weighs the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance.” The apparent character of water, as to color, form, hardness, saltness, and so on, is often varied by mixing with it other substances, but the changes produced are not chemical, and belong more properly to the domain of physics.

Note.—The illustrations in this article are from “The Young Chemist” of Prof. John Howard Appleton. We can heartily recommend to the members of the C. L. S. C., all of Prof. Appleton’s admirable works on Chemistry.

STUDIES IN KITCHEN SCIENCE AND ART.

I. THE POTATO.

BY BYRON D. HALSTED.

The potato is undoubtedly the leading addition which the New World has made to the list of garden vegetables. Its importance as a food plant may be judged from the fact that during the year 1880 over one hundred and sixty-nine million bushels of potatoes were raised in the United States. If we could obtain the total yield in all countries for a single year, the figures would express only the simple fact of vastness. It only need be said that potatoes furnish the larger part of the food for many millions of people. Think of Ireland, for example, deprived of her annual crop of potatoes; it means famine and all its attendant ills.

The common, or Irish potato, as distinguished from the sweet potato, bears the botanical name of Solanum Tuberosum, and belongs to the natural order Solanaceæ. This group or family of plants is characterized by rank scented herbage, often abounding in narcotic poison. The flowers are regular, parts usually in fives, and the ovaries mostly two-celled and many-seeded. Among the more important members of the family are the tomato, egg-plant, cayenne pepper, and tobacco. Belladonna, hyoscyamus, and stramonium are better examples of the poisonous and medicinal properties of the plants in the order, which gives us so wholesome a food as the potato, and so vile a weed as tobacco. The herbage of the potato plant is not unlike that of its first and second cousins, but by means of these narcotic leaves and stems the plant is enabled to transform crude materials into starch and other valuable substances which are afterwards stored up in a suitable form for the use of man. The potato itself, which nearly all persons relish when well prepared for the table, is not a thick root, as many have supposed, but an enlarged underground stem, called a tuber. These thickened subterranean stems bear small leaves, reduced to mere scales, under which are buds, better known as eyes. A potato is as much a stem as the tender and delicious shoots of early spring asparagus. The potato plant has three kinds of stems: those bearing the foliage, those bearing the flowers and the underground stems which may be styled starch-bearing.

The early history of the potato is very obscure. It is doubtless a native of South America, where it has been frequently found in the wild state. The Spaniards are given the credit of first introducing the potato into Europe in the early part of the sixteenth century. It passed from Spain into France, and from there on into Germany and other countries of Europe. The first potatoes to reach England were those carried by Sir Walter Raleigh on his return from Virginia in 1584. “In the time of James the First they were so rare as to cost two shillings (sterling) a pound, and are mentioned in 1619 among the articles provided for the royal household.” The culture of the potato was encouraged by the Royal Agricultural Society. Since 1760 it has become an established garden and field crop, and one it would be a calamity to lose.

The chemical composition of the potato tuber varies greatly according to the conditions under which it has been grown, namely: soil, weather, manure, etc. It contains about seventy-five per cent. of water. The composition of the twenty-five per cent. of dry substance is as follows: protein, 2 per cent.; fat, .03; starch and other carb-hydrates, 20.7; fibre, 1.1; ash, .09. By protein is understood the various compounds containing nitrogen, like the gluten of wheat, white of egg, etc. This is considered the flesh-forming part of a food. Lean flesh is made up largely of protein compounds, or albuminoids, as they are sometimes called. The carb-hydrates contain no nitrogen, and are compounds of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Among the most familiar of this class are starch, sugar, and gums. The carb-hydrates, in contrast with the flesh-forming protein compounds are frequently called heat producing substances. This classification aids in giving a general idea of the part the two groups play in the animal economy. Both classes of foods are required, the amount of each depending upon the wear and tear of the body and the conditions of temperature, etc., under which the animal lives. A man who is working hard needs more of the protein compounds to build up the muscles than the person of leisure. When exposed to severe cold, an increase of the starchy substance is demanded to make good the losses caused by the excess of animal heat produced. From the average of many chemical analyses given above, it is seen that the potato is a heat-producing food, and not a muscle-forming food. The fat in foods—of which there is very little in the potato—is used both as fuel and to build up the fatty substance of the body. The proteins or albuminoids are the most expensive portions of any food; the fats come next, and the carb-hydrates last. (In this way a chemist is able to compute the nutritive value of a food from the per cent. of the classes of constituents found present by analysis.) Wheat contains about eleven per cent. of protein, and seventy per cent. of carb-hydrates. There is far less water, but more than that, it has a higher ratio of protein. It is a richer food. Corn has the same per cent. of starchy matter, but only nine per cent. of the albuminoids. It is not so rich a food as wheat. Beans and peas have about fifty per cent. of oil and starch and twenty-five per cent. of the flesh-formers. This is a very high protein ratio, and those grains approach closely to the composition of meats, and may replace them to a large extent. This is all to show that both chemistry and culinary experience do not rank the potato as a rich food. It serves the animal economy best when eaten with some other substance far richer in protein. Thus we have meat and potatoes as a wholesome and complete food.

The potato thrives in an open, warm, deep, mellow and rich soil. If the soil is not naturally fertile it needs to be supplied with well rotted manure; or if this is not available in sufficient quantities, supplement with some good commercial fertilizer. Thorough tillage, that is, frequent plowing and harrowing, will supply two other essentials, namely: depth and mellowness. Drainage may be necessary to remove the excess of water, the presence of which shuts out the air, and renders the soil cold and unfit for growing plants. A soil that will grow a good crop of corn will usually yield a paying crop of potatoes. Both corn and potatoes grow for only a short season, and have no time to wait for plant food. The roots need to have all the plant food they can absorb close within reach. As a rule, land can not be made too rich for potatoes.

There is a wide difference of opinion as to the size and manner of cutting the “seed” potatoes. If we will remember that a potato is a stem it will be seen that planting potatoes is virtually setting out cuttings; as much so as when portions of a grape vine or a currant cane are placed in the ground. The potato to serve as “seed” should be well matured and carefully kept through the winter. It is poor economy to plant small and half matured tubers. As much care should be taken with the “seed” potatoes as in the selection of scions, with which to engraft a tree. This leads to another very important point in potato growing. Be sure and plant good varieties. The list of names of the varieties of potatoes would fill a volume. The Early Rose has been for several years the type of excellence. The Beauty of Hebron takes a front rank for quality and productiveness. The Peach Blow has long been a favorite, though now less grown. The White Elephant, Snow Flake, and Burbank are three of the better sorts. The point of growth in a potato is the bud or “eye,” and the substance of the tuber around this eye furnishes it with nourishment for its initial growth. The results of experiments uphold the deductions of science that it is best to cut large potatoes to single “eyes,” guiding the knife so that each bud shall have an abundance of surrounding substance. The cut pieces may be planted in hills two and one-half feet each way, or in drills. A rapid and satisfactory method is to drop the pieces fifteen inches apart in the furrows made by a light plow. If placed in every third furrow, the rows will be wide enough for horse cultivation. In this way the plow prepares the place for the “seed,” and afterward covers it. When the potato plants are just coming through the ground, the surface may be stirred with the back of an ordinary harrow. This loosens up the soil and kills the young weeds. The further culture consists in frequently passing the cultivator between the rows to keep the surface soil open and free from weeds. The soil may be thrown toward the vines after they have attained considerable size.

The potato has met with some serious enemies. The worst pest of late years is the Colorado beetle. This is now so wide spread and well known that a description is unnecessary. The remedies are numerous, but Paris green and London purple are the most effective. These arsenical compounds are applied in both the dry state and mixed with water. The latter is generally considered the better method. A teaspoonful of either the “green” or “purple” is stirred in a watering-pot and applied to the infested foliage through a fine nozzle. This voracious beetle has a natural enemy in the shape of a mite that sometimes occurs so abundantly as to completely cover the victim. Other insect enemies are the stalk borer and the large potato worm. Burn the vines infested with the former, and pinch off and crush the latter.

The wet rot, so destructive some seasons, is caused by a minute parasitic fungus which grows within the substance of the potato leaves and stems, and afterward descends to the tubers and causes them to decay. Wet and hot weather are particularly favorable for the development of this mould. Nothing has been successfully used to stay its ravages. This rot has swept over Europe, Great Britain and Ireland, at different times, bringing great distress to all the inhabitants, but especially to the lower classes, whose daily food is made up largely of the potato. The tubers should be dug so soon as the fungus is found to have “struck” the foliage. In this way they may be removed before the rot has invaded them. Store the potatoes in a dry and uniformly cool place. As the rot does not come until midsummer, it is best to plant quick maturing varieties, and plant these early. In this way some of the insect enemies may also be avoided. Take it altogether, the potato is an easy and profitable crop to raise.

METHODS OF COOKING THE POTATO.

BY MRS. EMMA P. EWING.

There are only seven distinct methods of cooking potatoes, namely: roasting, baking, boiling, steaming, stewing, frying, and broiling. But the culinary possibilities of this simple esculent are so illimitable it can be served in about as many different ways as there are days in the year, and be acceptable in all of them, if properly done; for no member of the vegetable kingdom returns a richer reward for the care bestowed upon it than the potato.

Roasted Potatoes.—The primitive method of roasting potatoes under, or among the ashes of a wood fire, is an excellent one. Bury the potatoes in hot ashes to the depth of two or three inches, cover with live coals, and leave undisturbed for half an hour, or until thoroughly roasted. As soon as done, which can be ascertained by taking one of them from its bed and testing it, remove, brush clean, break tenderly, place in a dish, and serve. The starch in a potato will absorb moisture when the starch cells are broken by heat, and unless roasted or baked potatoes are cracked as soon as cooked, and the steam allowed to escape, they will become sodden, dark colored, and rank in flavor. After being broken they can be kept for a considerable length of time, without much deterioration.

Baked Potatoes.—Potatoes can be baked by placing them in the oven of a stove or range, either in a pan or on the grate. To bake a potato just right, it should be washed clean, wiped dry, put in an oven at a moderate temperature, and subjected to a gradually increasing heat until the skin assumes a light brown color, and becomes firm. The white flesh inside will then be well cooked and mealy, and will possess the exquisite aroma and delicious flavor of a perfectly roasted potato. If the oven is at the proper temperature, potatoes will bake in from forty to sixty minutes, according to size, and like those roasted under the ashes, should, as soon as done, be removed and broken.

If the flesh is scooped out of partly baked potatoes, mashed, mixed with sausage meat, seasoned, replaced in the scooped-out shells, and re-baked, they are called German potatoes; if it is mixed with grated cheese, bread crumbs and other ingredients, and similarly treated, they are called stuffed potatoes.

Potatoes are nice when pared and baked with fowl or meat of any kind. Wash, pare, parboil, and place them in the pan containing the fowl, or meat. Turn over when partly cooked, that they may brown evenly. They can be baked in drippings, without meat, and also without being parboiled.

Kentucky potatoes are potatoes pared, sliced, put in layers in a baking dish, moistened with milk, seasoned with salt, pepper, etc., and baked in a quick oven. If they are moistened with broth or other liquid, and the seasoning varied somewhat, each variation will produce a slightly different dish, and each can, without impropriety, be named after one of the different States of the Union.

Boiled Potatoes.—Very few people know how to boil a potato so it will be dry, mealy and fine flavored. To prepare potatoes for boiling unpared, or in their jackets, wash well in lukewarm water with a brush, and rinse in cold water. To prepare for boiling without their jackets, wash, pare, remove all the eyes and dark spots, and soak well in cold water. To boil either pared or unpared, put the potatoes, when prepared, in a liberal allowance of slightly salted boiling water, let them boil gently until tender enough to be easily pierced with a fork, then drain, cover with a folded towel, and set back on the range, or near the fire, to dry off. If treated in this manner, they will, when served, be tender and mealy—perfect powdery snow balls in appearance—and will be apt to tempt even the most fastidious.

Scooped potatoes are made by scooping balls of the required size from pared potatoes, with a vegetable scoop, boiling them, and serving with a sauce or gravy of some kind. Old potatoes treated in this manner are quite frequently mistaken for new ones, even by professed epicures.

Steamed Potatoes.—Prepare as for boiling, and cook in a steamer over a pot or kettle of boiling water. When only a few potatoes are wanted, a small sized steamer should be used, but by placing a folded towel or cloth over the potatoes to prevent the escape of steam, even two or three can be nicely cooked, without inconvenience, in almost any sized steamer. This is an excellent mode of cooking potatoes, and should be more generally adopted.

Stewed Potatoes.—Cut pared potatoes in slices about an eighth of an inch in thickness, put in salted boiling water, cook gently until moderately tender, then drain off the water, add milk, and season with salt and pepper.

Use cream and butter, instead of milk, in its preparation, and plain stewed potato is converted into potato à la crème. A little minced parsley, if liked, can be added in either case.

Fried Potatoes.—Slice raw pared potatoes very thin, soak well in cold water, drain the slices in a colander or sieve, dry them on towels by rolling and tumbling from one towel to another, separate them, and drop into a kettle of boiling grease. As soon as they assume a light brown color, lift with a skimmer, drain on a sieve, sprinkle with salt, and serve. The browning will be facilitated if the slices, when partly cooked, are taken from the kettle, exposed to the air a few seconds, and then returned to the boiling grease. These are the famous Saratoga potatoes, or Saratoga chips.

If a crimped knife, instead of a plain one, is used for slicing the potatoes, they will, when fried, be Julienne potatoes. If, instead of being sliced, the potatoes are cut in balls with a vegetable spoon or scoop, they will, when fried, be Parisienne potatoes, etc., etc.

Potatoes cut in thin slices in long strips, in globular, angular, rhomboidal, and other irregular shapes, and fried in a kettle with a quantity of grease, are served as Saratoga, Julienne, Parisienne, and so on, while those fried in a spider or skillet in a smaller quantity of grease are served as potato à la Français, potato à la Provençale, potato à la Barigoule, etc., etc. But however varied the styles and however fanciful the names under which potatoes cooked in grease are made to do duty, they are all simply fried potatoes; and the important feature of their preparation is to have the grease in which they are to be fried—whether lard, butter, oil, or drippings—boiling hot when they are put into it, and to keep it so during the entire process of cooking. It is generally supposed that fried potatoes to be at all eatable must be served the moment they are taken from the fire; but if kept moderately warm, and at an even temperature, any of the above varieties—although not so delicious as when freshly cooked and hot—will remain in quite nice condition a considerable length of time.

Broiled Potatoes.—Parboil potatoes, cut in slices about half an inch in thickness, place in a wire gridiron, and broil over a slow fire until well browned on both sides, then season with salt and pepper, and serve hot, with a little melted butter poured over them. Cold boiled potatoes are very nice broiled in the same manner.

Mashed Potato.—Special attention should be given to the preparation of such a universally favorite dish as mashed potato. Boil or steam pared potatoes till well cooked, drain, dry off, mash till fine and free from lumps, in a warm kettle or pan, stir in a little warm milk—unless the potato is preferred dry—add a small lump of butter, season with salt and pepper, and beat until light, with a wooden spoon or potato masher. The secret of making nice mashed potato consists in mashing the potato until very smooth before, and beating it until very light after, it has been seasoned.

Cream potato is made by stirring cream into nicely mashed potato until of the desired consistency—snow potato by rubbing the potato through a colander or sieve, and allowing it to pile up in the dish in a snowy mass, and curly potato by rubbing it through a colander, letting it fall in long, white curls, in a pyramidal form, on the dish in which it is to be served, and then putting it in a hot oven till the surface is crisped.

Potato croquettes are made by enriching mashed potato with beaten egg yolk, seasoning with salt, pepper, nutmeg or other condiments, forming into little balls or rolls, dipping in egg and bread crumbs, and frying in boiling grease.

Duchesse potato is made by adding beaten egg to mashed potato, squeezing it through a pastry bag, or cutting in narrow strips two or three inches in length, and browning in the oven.

Rewarmed Potatoes.—Cold potato should never be thrown away. It should all be saved and utilized. There are numerous ways in which cold potato can be rewarmed, and in many of them it is almost as good as when first cooked. Much of the potato served up at leading hotels in fanciful styles and with foreign names, is merely rewarmed potato, and can be prepared readily and inexpensively in any private kitchen.

To stew cold potato.—Slice cold boiled potatoes, put in a stew pan with cold gravy of any kind, season with salt and pepper, stew gently for ten minutes, or until thoroughly heated, and then serve.

Dust potato, heated in this style, with bread crumbs, grated cheese, etc., and brown in the oven, and it becomes potato au gratin.

Stir together in a sauce pan over the fire, a little butter and flour, add some milk, stew cold sliced potato in it, and the product, when seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon juice and chopped parsley, will be maitre d’hotel potato. Omit the seasoning from potato thus warmed, and pour caper sauce over it, and it will be transformed into potato polonaise.

To fry cold potato.—Cut cold boiled potatoes in slices, dredge lightly with flour, and fry brown in butter, lard or drippings—or, fry without dredging—or, hash fine, season with salt and pepper and fry.

Cut cold boiled potatoes in little balls, fry, with an onion, in oil, butter, lard or drippings, and it will be potato à la Provençale. Cut them in the shape of olives, fry in olive oil, with a spoonful of chopped herbs, and it will be potato à la Barigoule.

Potato Hash.—Melt some butter or drippings in a spider or skillet, pour in a little sweet milk, season with salt and pepper, add cold boiled potato hashed, cover closely, and set where it will simmer slowly until the potato is thoroughly heated.

Potato and Meat Hash.—Mix well, in about equal proportions, finely minced cold meat of any kind, and cold potato, moisten with milk, gravy, or soup stock, season with salt and pepper, make into a roll, or shape into cakes, put in a greased pan and bake in the oven.

Potato Fish Balls.—Mix two parts of mashed potato with one part of finely picked up fish of any kind, season to taste, form into balls or cakes, and fry brown. The grease in which fish balls are to be fried should be boiling hot before they are put into it. Freshly cooked potato is considered best for making fish balls, but cold answers very nicely.

Potato Soup.—Mix together over the fire an ounce each of butter and flour until the mixture begins to bubble, then add gradually a quart of boiling milk, season with salt and pepper, and stir in half a pint of mashed potato that has been rubbed through a sieve. The quantity of potato can be varied to suit the taste, and, if liked, a little minced may be added. This is sometimes called potato purée, and sometimes potage Parmentier—after the man who introduced the potato into France.

Potato Cakes.—Mash cold potato to a smooth paste with a little milk, season to taste, form into cakes half an inch in thickness, and either fry or bake.

Potato Biscuit.—Add a cup of milk to a quart of mashed potato, stir in sufficient flour to make it the proper consistency, mold into biscuit half an inch thick, and bake on a griddle or floured pan.

Potato Soufflé.—Put a quart of mashed potato in a saucepan over the fire, add an ounce of butter, season to taste, pour in gradually half a pint of milk, stir till the mixture begins to thicken, then turn into a baking dish, smooth the surface with a knife, put in a quick oven and brown lightly.

Potato Pie.—Cover the bottom of a baking dish with cold roast meat of any kind cut in small pieces, add a layer of cold sliced potatoes, then meat and potatoes in alternate layers till the dish is full. Add a little gravy or soup stock, or a lump of butter, season with salt and pepper, cover with a crust and bake.

Potato Fritters.—To a pint of milk add the yolks of three eggs, half a dozen medium sized cold, boiled potatoes grated, or finely mashed, and flour enough to make a batter the proper consistency for ordinary fritters—add the beaten whites of the eggs, and a little salt, and fry in boiling lard.

Potato Puffs.—To two cups cold mashed potatoes add two tablespoonfuls of butter, two beaten eggs, a cup of milk, and a little salt. Stir well together, pour into a baking dish, and bake in a quick oven.

With a lively imagination, a liberal supply of potatoes, and a few other ingredients, one can go on and multiply almost indefinitely the different styles in which potatoes can be prepared for the table; but through all the variations the seven cardinal methods of cooking them remain unchanged, and cover and include all the styles of serving, whether designated by plain unassuming names or dignified with pretentious, aristocratic titles.

SUNDAY READINGS.

SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[October 5.]

The Strange Bargain.—In a well known city there lived two merchants—one of them a skillful arithmetician, and generally an able man; the other, inexperienced in figures, and by no means a match for the former in talent. They made the following bargain: The first sold a horse to the second; but instead of fixing a definite sum of money as the price, they agreed that it should be regulated by the thirty-two nails with which the four shoes were fastened to the animal’s hoofs, and should be paid in millet, one grain being given for the first nail, two for the second, four for the third, eight for the fourth, and so on; that is, doubling the number at every nail. The buyer was at first delighted at purchasing a fine charger for what he fancied a very moderate price; but, when the account came to be settled, he found that the quantity of grain which, by the terms of the agreement, he was required to pay, was enormous. In fact, he would have been reduced to beggary, if some sensible friends had not interposed and procured a dissolution of the bargain. Gotthold, who heard the story, observed: “Well does it exemplify the wiles of Satan. By promising merry hours and temporal gain, he persuades and seduces man at first into what he calls venial faults, and labors to keep them in these until they have grown into a habit. Afterwards he advances by geometrical progression. Sin grows from sin, and one transgression follows another, the new being always the double of the old; and so the increase proceeds, until at last the base pleasure which has been bought, can be paid for only with that which is above all price, namely, the immortal soul; unless, indeed, God mercifully interpose in time with his holy spirit, opening the sinner’s eyes, convincing him of the deception, and inducing him to revoke the bargain, and implore help and deliverance from his Savior, Jesus Christ. It is therefore best to keep one’s self aloof in every way from Satan and his concerns, and to regard no sin as venial and small. How can it be that, when it is committed in opposition to the holy will of the Most High God?”

My God! teach me to reckon every sin great, so long as I live; but oh, let me look upon the very greatest sins as little, when I die!

The Lock.—A lock was shown to Gotthold, constructed of rings, which were severally inscribed with certain letters, and could be turned round until the letters represented the name Jesus. It was only when the rings were disposed in this manner that the lock could be opened. The invention pleased him beyond measure, and he exclaimed: Oh that I could put such a lock as this upon my heart! Our hearts are already locked, no doubt, but generally with a lock of quite another kind. Many need only to hear the words Gain, Honor, Pleasure, Riches, Revenge, and their heart opens in a moment, whereas, to the Savior and to his holy name it continues shut. Lord Jesus, engrave thou thy name with thine own finger upon my heart, that it may remain closed to worldly joy and to worldly pleasure, self-interest, fading honor and low revenge, and open only to thee!

The Fruitful Tree.—Passing a garden, Gotthold observed a pear tree whose branches were bending to the ground, as if they would break with the weight of the fruit. On asking a friend, who was with him, “What do you think it is which this tree needs?” he was answered: “A prop or two to support the overloaded boughs.” “No,” rejoined Gotthold, “but hands to pluck, and baskets to contain the fruit. It presents to us a beautiful emblem of the Lord Jesus, our beloved Savior. He needs me, and I him; and so we suit each other, nor think it strange when I say that the Lord Jesus needs me, I mean that he needs me as this tree does baskets, or as the widow’s cruse, which God had blessed, needed empty vessels to contain the oil.… Love constrains the Lord to seek me, as my wants do me to seek him. He possesses all things—heaven, earth, and all which they contain; but these he does not need. What he needs is souls and hearts to replenish with his grace and spirit, and bless with his salvation. O mighty love, tender compassion, and mercy of our Savior! He, who needs nothing else, can not do without sinful and wretched man.”

The Child at Play.—A little boy was running about in an apartment, amusing himself as children are accustomed to do. His money was potsherds, his house bits of wood, his horse a stick, and his child a doll. In the same apartment sat his father, at a table, occupied with important matters of business, which he noted and arranged for the future benefit of his young companion. The child frequently ran to him, asked many foolish questions, and begged one thing after another as necessary for his diversion. The father answered briefly, did not intermit his work, but all the time kept a watchful eye over the child to save him from any serious fall or injury. Gotthold was a spectator of the scene, and thought with himself: “How beautiful an adumbration of the fatherly care of God! We, too, who are old children, course about in the world, and often play at games which are much more foolish than those of our little ones; we collect and scatter, build and demolish, plant and pluck up, ride and drive, eat and drink, sing and play, and fancy that we are performing great exploits, well worthy of God’s special attention. Meanwhile, however, the Omniscient is sitting by, and writing our days in his book. He orders and executes all that is to befall us, overruling it for our best interests in time and in eternity; and yet his eye never ceases to watch over us, and the childish sports in which we are engaged, that we may meet with no deadly mischief.”

“My God! such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, and I can not attain unto it; but I shall thank and praise thee for it. O, my Father! withhold not from me thy care and inspection, and, above all, at those times when, perhaps, like this little one, I am playing the fool!”—From Gotthold’s “Emblems.”

[October 12.]

Thus all history is swallowed up in boundless sorrow and remorse for that he is still laden with his boundless infirmity. But he hath delight and joy in that he seeth that the goodness of God is as great as his necessities, so that his life may well be called a dying life, by reason of such his griefs and joys, which are conformable and like unto the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, which from beginning to end was always made up of mingled grief and joy. Grief in that he left his heavenly throne and came down into this world; joy in that he was not severed from the glory and honor of the Father. Grief in that he was the son of man; joy in that he nevertheless was and remained the Son of God. Grief, because he took upon him the form of a servant; joy in that he was nevertheless a great Lord. Grief, because in human nature he was mortal, and died upon the cross; joy, because he was immortal, according to his godhead. Grief in his birth, in that he was once born of his mother; joy, in that he is the only begotten of God’s heart from everlasting to everlasting. Grief, because he became in time subject to time; joy, because he was eternal before all time, and shall be so forever. Grief, in that the word was born into the flesh, and hath dwelt in us; joy, in that the word was in the beginning with God, and God himself was the word. Grief, in that it behooved him to be baptized, like any human sinner, by St. John the Baptist, in the Jordan; joy, in that the voice of his heavenly Father said of him: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Grief, in that, like others, sinners, he was tempted of the enemy; joy, in that the angels came and ministered unto him. Grief, in that he ofttimes endured hunger and thirst; joy, because he is himself the food of men and angels. Grief, in that he was often wearied with his labors; joy, because he is the rest of all loving hearts and blessed spirits. Grief, forasmuch as his holy life and sufferings should remain in vain for so many human beings; joy, because he should thereby save his friends. Grief, in that he must needs ask to drink water of the heathen woman at the well; joy, in that he gave to that same woman to drink of living water, so that she should never thirst again. Grief, in that he was wont to sail in ships over the sea; joy, because he was wont to walk dry shod upon the waves. Grief, in that he wept with Martha and Mary, over Lazarus; joy, in that he raised their brother Lazarus from the dead. Grief, in that he was nailed to the cross with nails; joy, in that he promised paradise to the thief by his side. Grief, in that he thirsted when hanging on the cross; joy, in that he should thereby redeem his elect from eternal thirst. Grief, when he said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me;” joy, in that he would, with these words, comfort all sad hearts. Grief, in that his soul was parted from his body, and he died and was buried; joy, because on the third day he rose again from the dead, with a glorified body.

Thus was all his life, from the manger to the cross, a mingled web of grief and joy. Which life he hath left as a sacred testament to his followers in this present time, who are converted unto his dying life, that they may remember him when they drink of his cup, and walk as he hath walked! May God help us so to do! Amen.—From Tauler.

[October 19.]

I count it the most grievous offense which the honor of Christianity has to sustain, that some of its ostentatious disciples confine their piety to the Sabbath and its ordinances, and banish God from the week-day employment of ordinary business. Whence that disgusting censoriousness which spreads the tincture of gall over so many a religious conversation? Whence that low tone of honesty and truth, which … is so often found to accompany the uniform appearance, and I believe, too, the occasional reality, of zeal in matters of religion? Whence, in fact, that separation of religious from social duty we so often meet with, not merely in their conception, but in their example and practice?… Alas! against them, too, we can prefer the charge of not “doing all things,” and we can substantiate it. With the mark of godliness upon their forehead, their conduct for the great majority of their time says: “We will not have God to rule over us.” He is only their occasional God. The easy offering of their prayers in the family, or of their attendance in the church and at the table, is ever in readiness. But the living sacrifice of the whole body, soul, and spirit, is withheld from him. He is deposed from his right and sovereignty over every minute of their existence; and instead of his law reaching to all their concerns, and bringing the whole man under its obedience, we see that in the vast majority of their doings they cast him off, and are as much the slaves of their own temper, and inclination, and interest, as if God had not a will for them at all times to obey, and as if Christ had never set an example before them to study and to imitate.

Hold, ye hypocrites! who talk of this as the season that is given to the love of Christ and to the memorial of his atonement! Did not Christ order away a disciple from his altar?—and upon what errand? Upon what you, it seems, would call the very worldly and unsuitable employment of making up a quarrel with a neighbor? Did not Christ say, “If ye love me, keep my commandments?” And yet the minister who expounds these commandments, and presses their observance upon you, is looked upon as preaching another gospel than what Christ left behind him. Oh! when will men cease to put asunder what God hath joined; and taking their lesson from the Bible, as little children, submit to it without a murmur, in all its parts, and in all its varieties!

But let the minister of God be gentle with all men, and humble under the feeling of his own infirmities. Let him, however zealous for the truth as it is in Jesus, learn that there is nothing in the purity of his own practice to justify a tone of indignant superiority to others. It is easy to see and to approve that which is excellent; but how shall we compass the doing of it? It is easy to expatiate on the frailties and the delusions of men; but how shall he manage for himself, when told by his own melancholy experience that he shares in them? It is easy to acknowledge the right and the sovereignty of God in all things, and to press his earnest assurances upon you, that you are wrong, if you suffer not the word of exhortation urging you to the daily walk and duties of the Christian; but to what refuge can he fly, when he finds that he is himself a defaulter, and that after having warmed his heart at the inconsistency of others, and penned his sentences against it, he mingles in the business of his work and his family, and forgetting that the eye of his God follows him there, falls a helpless victim to the imbecilities of our ruined nature?—From Dr. Chalmers.

[October 26.]

The Christian minister needs often to be reminded of this great end of his office, the perfection of the human character. He is too apt to rest in low attainments himself, and to be satisfied with low attainments in others. He ought never to forget the great distinction and glory of the gospel—that it is designed to perfect human nature. All the precepts of this divine system are marked by a sublime character. It demands that our piety be fervent, our benevolence unbounded, and our thirst for righteousness strong and insatiable. It enjoins a virtue which does not stop at what is positively prescribed, but which is prodigal of service to God and to mankind. The gospel enjoins inflexible integrity, fearless sincerity, fortitude which despises pain and tramples pleasure under foot in the pursuit of duty, and an independence of spirit which no scorn can deter and no example seduce from asserting truth and adhering to the cause which conscience approves. With this spirit of martyrs, this hardness and intrepidity of soldiers of the cross, the gospel calls us to unite the mildest and weakest virtues; a sympathy which melts over others’ woes; a disinterestedness which finds pleasure in toil, and labors for others’ good; a humility which loves to bless unseen, and forgets itself in the performance of the noblest deeds. To this perfection of social duty, the gospel commands us to join a piety which refers every event to the providence of God, and every action to his will; a love which counts no service hard, and a penitence which esteems no judgment severe; a gratitude which offers praise even in adversity; a holy trust unbroken by protracted suffering, and a hope triumphant over death. In one word, it enjoins that, living and confiding in Jesus Christ, we make his spotless character, his heavenly life, the model of our own. Such is the sublimity of character which the gospel demands, and such the end to which our preaching should ever be directed.

… We need to feel more deeply that we are entrusted with a religion which is designed to ennoble human nature; which recognizes in man the capacities of all that is great, good and excellent, and which offers every encouragement and aid to the pursuit of perfection. The Christian minister should often recollect that man, through prepense to evil, has yet power and faculties which may be exalted and refined to angelic glory; that he is called by the gospel to prepare for the community of angels; that he is formed for unlimited progress in intellectual and moral excellence and felicity. He should often recollect that in Jesus Christ our nature has been intimately united with the divine, and that in Jesus it is already enthroned in heaven. Familiarized to these generous conceptions, the Christian preacher, whilst he faithfully unfolds to men their guilt and danger, should also unfold their capacities for greatness; should reveal the splendor of that destiny to which they are called by Christ; should labor to awaken within them aspirations after a nobler character and a higher existence, and to inflame them with the love of all the graces and virtues with which Jesus came to enrich and adorn the human soul. In this way he will prove that he understands the true and great design of the gospel and the ministry—which is nothing less than the perfection of the human character.—From Channing.

GLIMPSES OF ANCIENT GREEK LIFE.

Selected from J. P. Mahaffy’s “Old Greek Life.”

I.—THE GREEK TOWN AND HOUSE.

Whereas modern life is very much a country life, and we see all our plains and hills studded with farmsteads and well kept houses, it was seldom so with ancient, as it is never so with modern, Greece. In old days the fear of pirates and plunderers, in later days the taste for talking and for politics, kept men from staying in the country, and brought them into the towns, where they found safety and society. The tyrants alone insisted upon country life. Thus we find in Homer that outlying farms belonging to the nobles were managed by trusty slaves, who grazed cattle, and stall-fed them for city use. In Hesiod’s time it was the poor farmer only who dwelt in the country; fashionable and idle people always came together in the towns. The very same facts meet us when we read the Greek novels of the latest age, such as the Story of Daphnis and Chloe. There the rich citizens of Mitylene only come out rarely, like many Irish landlords, to visit their tenants and their flocks. There are only two large instances of Greek gentry living from choice in the country. The first is that of the old Attic gentry, whom Thucydides and Aristophanes describe as living luxuriously on their estates, and coming seldom to Athens. The second is that of the gentry of Elis, who were often, Polybius says, complete strangers for generations to the town. This was so because Attica was protected by her forts and fleets from sudden attack in these early days, and because the Greeks by common consent respected the land of Elis as sacred on account of the Olympic games. Accordingly, Xenophon, who was a sportsman, settled in this country when he retired from his wars. But we must pay our chief attention to city life as the almost universal form of Greek society.

The older Greek towns were usually some miles from the sea, because many pirates went about the coasts. These towns grew out from a castle, or Acropolis, which at first had been the only fortified refuge for the neighboring people in times of danger. Of this we have a remarkable example in the very old ruins of Tiryns on the plain of Argos. When the population increased, they built their towns round this fort, and walled them in. But the Acropolis or hill fort, generally on some steep crag, was of course the strongest and safest part of the town. It was also the seat of the oldest temples, and of the god who took the town under his special charge. Hence it was often a sacred place altogether, and not occupied with common houses. If the town prospered, there grew up at the nearest harbor a roadstead or seaport town, where merchants and sailors carried on their trade. Thus Athens with its Acropolis is three miles from the nearest sea, and more than four miles from the Peiræus, which became its port because the harbor was so excellent. The same may be said of Argos, Megara, and other towns. Thus Corinth had even two ports, one on either sea, and both at some miles distance from the great rock on which its citadel, the Acrocorinthus, was situate. Sparta alone had no citadel, because the passes into its plain were very difficult and easily defended. It had not even walls, but looked like a few mean villages close together. This was a remarkable exception.

The citadel was defended by walls, wherever the natural rock was not steep enough, and supplied with tanks for water, except in such rare cases as that of Corinth which has a rich fountain on the top of its great rock. If you looked down from any of these great citadels upon the town beneath, the most striking objects were always the temples and other public buildings which were meant to be admired from without, whereas the private houses were externally poor and shabby. So also the public squares and markets were large and imposing, often surrounded by colonnades and porticoes where people lay in the sun, or even slept at night. These colonnades were adorned with rows of statues; but the streets were narrow and dirty. The great contrast to any modern city must have been first of all the absence of all spires and pinnacles, as all Greek architecture loved flat roofs, and never built even in many stories. Then the forest of modern chimneys was also absent—an advantage which may be held fully to make up for the absence of even splendid steeples. All private houses were flat and insignificant, for the Greek never intended his house to be admired from without, he merely meant to shut out the noise and the thoroughfare of the street, and spent all his care on inner comforts.

While we build our houses facing the street, with most of their ornament intended to be seen by those who pass by, the Greek did all he could to shut out completely all connection with the street. He never had ground floor windows facing the street, and his house looked like a dead wall with a strong door in it, furnished with a knocker and a handle. This door opened outward, which made it safer for those within, but when they were coming out they used to knock inside lest passers-by might be thrown down when the door was pushed open. Richer houses did not open directly on the street, but on a porch which was not regarded as part of the house. Directly inside the hall door was a narrow hall with a porter’s lodge opening off it, in which a slave sat, who was put to that work or to that of attending boys, when not useful for anything else. You passed through the hall or passage into an open square court, which was the center of the house, and was surrounded by a covered colonnade or cloister. The various men’s rooms and the dining room opened upon this cloister. The same general plan was adopted by the Romans, and inherited by the modern Italians, so that most Italian palaces in Genoa, Florence, and elsewhere are built in this way. Opposite the entrance was a second door, which led from the court into the women’s apartments, and here was situated the bed chamber of the master and mistress of the house. In richer houses the women’s rooms were built round a second court like the first. But more commonly they did not occupy so much room, and were often placed on a second story, raised over the first at the back part of the building, with a staircase going up from the court. The Greeks preferred living on the ground floor, and their houses were not lofty blocks, like those of our streets. The bed rooms and sitting rooms round the court were usually small and dark, being mostly lighted only through their door into the cloister. The upper story had windows. The roof, which was tiled, like ours, was so flat as to allow people to walk upon it. The pantries and store rooms were generally at the back of the house, and near them the kitchen, which alone was supplied with a chimney. The other rooms seldom required a fire, and, if necessary, were heated with braziers of hot coke, or charcoal. The covered way upon which they opened made them cool in summer. Of course the palaces of early kings and the country houses of the rich Attic nobles had larger rooms and courtyards than ordinary city houses, but their plan was not different. Homer describes their halls as ornamented by plates of bright metal on the walls—a fashion preserved in the house of Phocion at Athens, and of which we still have traces in the so-called treasure house of Atreus, near Mycenæ. Fresco painting and rich coloring on the walls did not come into fashion till the fourth century B. C., and then became so common that we find almost all the houses in Pompeii, which was really a Greek town, though in Italy, ornamented in this way. There are large panels of black, scarlet, or yellow, surrounded with the borders of flowers, and in the center of the panel there are figures painted, when the owner could afford it. The same style of ornament, with far better execution, may be seen in the chambers of the palace now excavated on the Palatine at Rome.

As the Greek citizen lived chiefly in the open air, and in public, and regarded his house merely as a safe and convenient place to keep his family and store his goods, it was not to be expected that his furniture should be expensive or elaborate. The small size of the rooms and the dislike of the Greeks for large entertainments also tended to the same economy. Besides, the low valuations of furniture alluded to in several speeches made in the law courts of Athens prove it clearly as a general rule in earlier days, though some cities, such as the rich Sybaris, may have formed exceptions. In later days, with the decay of public spirit, greater luxury prevailed in private life.

We must therefore consider early Greek household furniture to have been cheap and simple, but remarkable for a grace of design and beauty of form which have never since been rivalled. And these were combined with a diligent attention to comfort and to practical use. Thus the Greek chair which is often drawn on vases, and which is reproduced in marble in the front row of the theater at Athens, as we still see it, is the most comfortable and practical chair yet designed. So also the pots and pitchers and vases which have been discovered in endless variety, are equally beautiful and convenient. The chief articles of which we hear are chairs, stools and couches made in ornamental wood work, with loose cushions (unlike our modern upholstery); there were also high-backed arm-chairs, and folding stools often carried after their masters by slaves. Though men of ruder ages and poorer classes were content to sleep between rugs and skins on the ground, and a shake down for a sudden guest was always such (and is so still); yet the Greeks had beds of woolen mattresses stretched on girths. Tables were only used for eating, and were then brought in, and laid loosely upon their legs. In early days each guest had a separate table for himself. This absence of solid tables must have been the most marked contrast between a Greek room and ours. People wrote either on their knees (as they now do in the East) or upon the arm of a couch. Whatever ornaments they kept in their rooms seem to have been placed on tripods, which often carried a vase of precious metal and of elegant workmanship. The wonderful variety and beauty of their lamps must also have been a remarkable feature. They possessed all manner of cups, bowls, jars, and flasks for wine, and water, and oil, and we have long lists of names for kitchen utensils, probably not very different from those found at Pompeii. They used plates and dishes, and sometimes knives and spoons at meals, but never forks.

II.—THE GREEK—HIS DAY AND HIS DRESS.

The Greeks learned the division of the day into twelve hours from Babylon, and Plato is said to have invented a water clock marking the hours of the night in the same way. But in ordinary life, according to the old fashion, a night and the following day were regarded as one whole and divided into seven parts. There were three for the night, one when the lamps were lit, the next the dead hours of the night, and then the dawn, when the cocks begin to crow. The day was divided into four: early morning, the forenoon, when the market place began to fill, the midday heat, and the late afternoon. As in all southern countries now-a-days, where midday is a time of sleep or idleness, so in old times the Greek rose very early, generally at the dawn of day. His ablutions were but scanty, and there is no trace of any bath in the morning. Indeed the general cleanliness of the Greeks must rather be compared with that of other modern nations than with ours. In older days the hair was worn long, and elaborately dressed, as we can see from coins, so that this must have cost some trouble. But shaving the beard did not come in as a general fashion till Alexander’s time, and even then shaving often and having very white teeth are mentioned as rather foppish.

When dressed, the Greek took a very slight meal, corresponding to the coffee now taken in Greece and elsewhere upon getting up, and merely intended to stave off hunger till late breakfast. It is said to have consisted of bread and wine. He then went to call on such friends as he wished to see on business, before they left their houses. The same fashion prevailed at Rome. When this was done, he went for a morning walk or ride, and if a townsman, to see his farms and crops, and give directions to his country steward. But if he lived in the country, he must start early to be in the city when the market place filled. For if there was important public business the assembly met very early, and in any case he there met all his friends, visited the markets and shops, and if a merchant, was practically on ’Change at this hour.

At noon all business stopped, and the public places were deserted, when he returned to his breakfast. The modern Greeks, in country parts, still spend half the day in this way before they breakfast. The poorer classes who dined early in the afternoon, and who probably had eaten something more at early breakfast, spent their midday hours, without going home, in barber’s shops, in porticoes, and other places of meeting, where they either slept or gossiped, as their fancy led them. Law-suits, at which speeches were made and evidence taken, must have been carried on during this part of the day also. The breakfast of the better classes was a substantial meal, probably serving as dinner for the children, and consisted, like the modern Greek breakfast, of hot dishes and wine. It was, however, thought luxurious to eat two heavy meals in the day, and much wine drinking before dinner was regarded with the same aversion as tippling is now-a-days. When the day became cooler, men went out again, partly to practice gymnastics, which ended in later times with a warm bath, partly to see others so occupied and talk to their friends. Toward sunset they returned home to their dinner, the principal meal of the day, and the only one at which the Greek entertained his friends. If not a very studious man, or a leading politician, he devoted the evening to conversation and music, either in his family circle, or among his friends. In the former case, he went to bed early; in the latter he was often up all night, and sometimes went from his first feast in company with his noisy friends to knock up other banqueters and enjoy their hospitality unasked. There were no clubs or public houses open at night in the old Greek towns. It should be added that the hours of meals got gradually later, as luxury advanced.

The dress of a Greek gentleman was simple both in form and color. He wore a shirt or under garment of wool called chiton, without sleeves, and drawn tight with a girdle round the waist. As luxury increased, the Athenians adopted linen instead of wool, the Ionians wore the chiton down to the feet, and sleeves were frequently added. Trousers were also considered a foreign dress. Over the chiton was thrown a large cloak shaped something like a Scotch shawl, but squarer, which was wrapped about the figure so as to have only the right shoulder and head free. This was regarded as the principal garment, for while it was not thought polite to throw it open, and a man without it, though in his chiton, was called stripped, on the other hand a man wrapped in his cloak without any under garment was thought perfectly dressed. Most of the portrait statues of celebrated men which have reached us are indeed represented in this very way. White was the full dress color for both garments, but other colors, especially various shades of red, dark blue, and green, were not unfrequently worn.

The cloak was also doubled, when men were actively employed, and fastened on the shoulder with a clasp or pin. This was done in imitation of the smaller but thicker cloaks, some of which were of semicircular shape, and borrowed from Macedonia. These were worn in war and on journeys. As to head dress, the Greeks seem to have usually gone about their cities bareheaded. In case of bad weather, they put on a fur or leather cap fitting closely to the head, and this was commonly worn by slaves. They also used in traveling, to keep off the sun’s heat, broad-brimmed felt hats, very like our “wide-awakes” in form. They were often barefooted, but also wore ornamented slippers at home, and in the streets sandals strapped with elegant thongs. In hunting or war, buskins of various kinds, reaching high on the leg, were adopted. If we add a walking stick, which up to the time of Demosthenes was even obligatory at Athens, and was always carried at Sparta, and a seal ring, we complete our picture of the Greek gentleman’s dress. In Socrates’ day a tunic cost ten drachmæ, a cloak sixteen to twenty, a pair of shoes eight. Lower class people, such as farm laborers and slaves, wore the inner garment alone, but with sleeves, or (in the country) clothed themselves in tanned skins. The general colors of a Greek crowd must have been a dull woollen white, relieved with patches of crimson and dark greens and blues.

GREEK MYTHOLOGY.

Before introducing, as is proposed, condensed excerpta from our available sources of information on Greek Mythology, it may be important for a large class of readers to define the term, and also to show some of the advantages arising from well directed mythological studies.

Mythology is a compound Greek word, meaning the science of—or, more literally, discourse respecting—myths. What is a myth? No exact definition of the word can be given, because there are many varieties of myths, and the term has been used in several distinct senses. In the New Testament it occurs five times, and is in every instance used in an evil, or severely disparaging sense. In our English version it is translated “fables,” not such as have been invented to convey and illustrate the truth, but cunningly devised fictions, used to convey ethical notions in themselves false. No such condemnation can be pronounced against the Grecian myths in general, many of which, like those of Plato, are charming figurative representations of important ideas, the splendidly imaginative embodiment of subjective truths, and, like the inimitable parables of our Lord, claim no credence for themselves, only as media for conveying the lessons taught. Such myths are not only free from any just reproach, but are commended, as a proper and effective method of teaching, analogous to allegories, fables and parables, and often found in the writings of the wisest and best of mankind. If in this way falsehood has been embellished, we may repudiate their false doctrines, though we admire the mythological dress in which they are presented.

Conscious that the best verbal definitions that can be given fail to define or precisely indicate the generally accepted character of the Grecian myth, we unconsciously multiply words and amplify their meanings, till the attempt becomes rather descriptive than definitive. Others, however acute and discerning, have had the same difficulty. In his attempt to tell us just what a myth is, Dr. McClintock says: “It is best described as a spontaneous product of the youthful imagination of mankind—the natural form under which the infant race expressed its conceptions and convictions about supernatural relations, and prehistoric events. It is neither fiction, ordinary history, nor philosophy; it is a spoken poetry, an uncritical and child-like history, a sincere and self-believing romance. It does not invent, but simply imagines and repeats; it may err, but it never lies. It is a narration, generally marvelous, which no one consciously or scientifically invents, and which every one unintentionally falsifies.” “It is,” says Mr. Grote, “the natural effusion of the unlettered, imaginative, believing man.” “It belongs to an age in which the mind was credulous, or confiding, the imagination full of vigor and vivacity, the passions earnest and intense. Its very essence consists in the projection of thought into the sphere of facts; and it arises partly from the unconscious and gradual objectizing of the subjective, or the confusing of mental processes with external realities; that is, from imaginatively attributing to external nature the feelings and qualities which exist only in the percipient soul.”

Myths, then, belong to that period of human progress in which the untaught mind regards “history as all a fairy tale.” Before the dawn of science, and the increase of knowledge by the general dissemination of books, men’s fancies respecting the past, and the uncertain conjectures of their nascent philosophy could be preserved only by these traditional and semi-poetical tales of the mythologists. To borrow the fine expression of Tacitus—Fingunt simul creduntque—“They at once fabricate and believe.”

“The real and the ideal,” again says Mr. Grote, “were blended together in the primitive conceptions.… The myth passed unquestioned from the fact of its currency, and its harmony with existing sentiments and preconceptions.” So to the intensity of a fresh, undisciplined imagination, and the paucity of terms in the language yet in its extreme adolescence, the origin of a vast number of myths can easily be traced. “In those early days men looked at all things with the large open eyes of childish wonderment, and much of what they saw was incapable of any other than a metaphorical description at their hands. They had no words for the purpose, and if the language had been richer it would have responded less accurately to their thoughts, since they transferred their own feelings and sentiments to the world about them, and made themselves the measure of all things.” “Thus,” says one, “the hunter regarded the moon which glanced rapidly along the clouded heavens, as a beaming goddess with her nymphs,” and

Sunbeams upon distant hills,

Gilding space with shadows in their train,

Might, with small help from fancy, be transferred

Into fleet Oreads, sporting visibly.—Wordsworth.

Among a race of unlettered, but intellectually active, stalwart men, on whose path science shed but a dim, uncertain light, even natural phenomena so imperfectly understood, and many things in the realm of the spiritual and unseen being imaginatively conceived, and described in metaphors, myths must abound. Nor is it wonderful that those belonging to a remote prehistoric age are sometimes shrouded in a veil of impenetrable mystery.

We may not be able to reach their true meaning, since when personifications are so manifold, it is often impossible for us to tell just what was regarded as fancy and what was believed to be fact. It is worthy of remark that the same is as true of the grotesque incredible legends current among semi-barbarian tribes at the present day, as in the earliest Grecian myths. In many of them there is a substratum of facts, of which there was some rather shadowy knowledge; after some progress, and the introduction of letters among them, their guesses and imaginings that were uttered in metaphorical expressions not fully understood, are in a manner evaporated, or crystallize into dogmas that are accepted as parts of the tribal faith.

So the more ancient narratives, that are called mythological, as we will hereafter see, when collected, systematized and written by masters in the art, have a value not only as indicating the incipient, though imperfect development of the race, but in most cases, after the winnowing processes applied have driven away the chaff, some kernels of truth will remain, more than enough to repay those who mostly study them as interesting relics of a primitive society, the earnest, impassioned deliverances of nature’s children, yet unsophisticated by “philosophy falsely so called.”

We will a little further extend, and corroborate these views by another quotation from a high authority on the subject.

“Myths,” he says, “are figurative representations of events or ideas in the garb of history; they develop themselves spontaneously, and unartificially in the consciousness of a primitive people; instead of being products of design and invention, they symbolize the forces of nature under whose influence they are formed, and have an essentially religious character.”

The same authority further says: “The myth proceeds from an idea, either true or false; the legend proceeds from facts, more or less clearly apprehended, in which the idea was discovered. The one transforms poetry, religion or philosophy into history; the other modifies history with reference to conceptions of poetry, religion and philosophy.”

All persons interested in classical studies, and having given much attention to comparative philology, find in the early history of mankind an age in which words were very few—mostly names of things, and not used to express abstract ideas, or any other than those things necessary to the simplest modes of life. As words increased in number, some were introduced expressive of qualities, relations and acts. They are found variously related, phrases and brief sentences appear, the language becomes organic, and the first elements of its grammar are discovered.

In a second period, as in the Aryan and Semitic tongues, language is found advanced to a more systematic, grammatical development, and invites us to a more critical study and analysis of its forms. As yet there were neither abstract nor collective nouns, and every name designated a definite individual object. All these names of things had terminations suggestive of sex. Neuter nouns were yet unknown. Of course it was impossible for them to speak of any object, though inanimate, without ascribing to it something of an active, individual, sexual, personal character; and for this reason, if for no other, personification is a special characteristic of all languages in their earlier stages of development, and it is found to have a close correspondence with the mythical conceptions in the development of thought in those remote ages. There was then nothing prosaic in men’s thinking or speaking. Their language was a kind of unconscious poetry, every word a poem, every phrase embracing the germs of something metaphorical, or sparkling with the scintillations of some bright conceptions. Verbs, too, were strongly expressive of the mind’s various moods and emotions, and needed few auxiliaries that are employed in more abstract prose. Thus sunset was described as the sun growing old, decaying, dying; the sunrise as night giving birth to a brilliant, beautiful child. Spring was Sol greeting the happy earth with a warm embrace, and showering his treasures into the lap of nature. Rivers, fountains, grottoes, forests, mountains, rain, storm, the ocean, fire, thunder clouds and the heavenly bodies were all clothed with the attributes of living beings, and all descriptions of them were myths.

Volumes have been written, and much more might here be said explanatory of the general subject, and to remove prejudice against mythological studies as useless or misleading in their tendency.

Some well meaning persons ask how Christians who know the truth and rejoice in it can be either pleased or profited by communing with the thoughts or fancies of those on whom the sun did not shine, and who had none to lead them.

It is important for all such to distinguish the point of view in which mythological narratives were contemplated by the ancients, by mythologists themselves, and that in which we are to regard them. To them they were in many respects realities closely connected with their national history and their religious faith. To us they are unreal, but affording evidence of the little nature taught them or that was acquired by merely intellectual processes, and their evident, but often vaguely felt, need of supernatural manifestations.

Classical study and literature are regarded as so important in education, and a knowledge of Greek mythology is so obviously necessary to a full understanding of the best Greek authors, that many works have been published on the subject. The writers have either merely stated the fables as reported among the ancients, or in addition have sought to trace them to their origin, either by making conjectures of allegorical, historical and physical meanings in the stories, or deriving them from the events of the early ages, recorded in the Bible. But as these traditions themselves arose in various ways, and often accidentally, there of course must be error in every system which attempts to refer them to a common cause and purpose.

The foundation of very many of the fictions of mythology is laid in ideas that arose from the simplicity and inexperience of persons conversant only with objects of sense. Wherever an unusual fact or appearance was observed it was ascribed to a distinct being or existence, operating directly or immediately. This creation by them of personal existences out of natural phenomena, this ever ready personification of physical objects and events, was, in all probability, one of the most fruitful sources of fable and of idolatry, for which the stars and the elements seem to have furnished the most common occasion.

“One source of fable,” says an able writer, “is the perversion or alteration of facts in sacred history; and indeed this is its earliest and principal source. The family of Noah, perfectly instructed by him in religious matters, preserved for a considerable time the worship of the true God in all its purity. But when the members of this family were separated and scattered over different countries, diversity of language and abode was soon followed by a change of worship. Truth, which had hitherto been intrusted to the single channel of oral communication, subject to a thousand variations, and which had not yet become fixed by the use of writing, that surer guardian of facts, became obscured by an infinite number of fables which greatly increased the darkness that had enveloped it.”

The advantages of an acquaintance with mythology are many. They have been admirably shown by Rollin, from whom we quote:

1. It apprises us how much we are indebted to Jesus Christ the Savior, who had rescued us from the power of darkness and introduced us into the wonderful light of the Gospel. Before his time what was the real character of men? Even the wisest and most upright men—those celebrated philosophers, those great politicians, those renowned legislators of Greece, those grave senators of Rome? In a word, what were all the nations of the world, the most polished and the most enlightened? Fable informs us they were the blind worshipers of some demon, and bowed the knee before gods of gold, silver and marble. They offered incense and prayers to statues, deaf and mute. They recognized as gods animals, reptiles, and even plants. They did not blush to adore an adulterous Mars, a prostituted Venus, an incestuous Juno, a Jupiter blackened by every kind of crime, and worthy for that reason to hold the first rank among the gods. See what our fathers were, and what we ourselves should have been, had not the light of the Gospel dissipated our darkness! Each story in fable, every circumstance in the life of the gods, ought at once to fill us with confusion, admiration and gratitude.

2. Another advantage from the study of fable is that, by discovering to us the absurd ceremonies and impious maxims of paganism, it may inspire us with new respect for the majesty of the Christian religion, and for the sanctity of its morals. Ecclesiastical history informs us that a Christian bishop (Theophilus of Alexandria), to render idolatry odious in the minds of the faithful, brought forth to the light and exposed to the eyes of the public, all which was found in the interior of a temple that had been demolished; bones of men, limbs of infants immolated to demons, and many other vestiges of the sacrilegious worship which pagans render to their deities. This is nearly the effect which the study of fable must produce on the mind of every sensible person; and this is the use to which it has been put by the holy fathers and all the defenders of the Christian religion. The great work of St. Augustin, entitled “The City of God,” which has conferred such honor upon the Church, is at the same time a proof of what I now advance, and a perfect model of the manner in which profane studies ought to be sanctified.

3. Still another benefit of great importance may be realized in the understanding of authors either in Greek, Latin, or even French, in reading which a person is often stopped short if ignorant of mythology. I speak now of the poets, merely, whose natural language is fable; it is often employed also by orators, and it furnishes them frequently with the happiest illustrations, and with strains the most sprightly and eloquent.

4. There is another class of works whose meaning and beauty are illustrated by a knowledge of fable, viz., paintings, coins, statues, and the like. These are so many enigmas to persons ignorant of mythology, which is often the only key to their interpretation.

TEMPERANCE TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE;
Or, THE POISON PROBLEM.

BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D.

CHAPTER I.—THE SECRET OF THE ALCOHOL HABIT.

“Consistency is the Test of Truth.”—Wilberforce.

Among the strange legends of the Middle Ages there are certain traditions which have evidently a figurative significance, and whose origin has often been traced to the allegorical mythology of an earlier age. An allegory of that sort is the legend of the “Marvel of Nikolsburg,” near Vienna; a miraculous image that appeared always an inch higher than the person standing before it. “It overtopped a giant, and all but condescended to the stature of a dwarf,” says the tradition.

That image is a symbol of nature. The lowest savage must dimly recognize the fact that man can not measure his cunning against the wisdom of the Creator, and the highest development of science has only revealed its own incompetence to imitate, or even comprehend, the structural perfection of the simplest living organism. The Author of life deals only in masterpieces; the marvelous fitness of his contrivances is as infinite in his smallest as in his greatest works, and the apparent exceptions from that rule can nearly all be traced to the influence of abnormal circumstances. Our own interference with the order of nature has caused the discords in the harmony of creation which furnish the chief arguments of pessimism. The winter torrents which devastate the valleys of southern France with a fury which Condorcet calls the “truculence of a vainly worshiped heaven,” flowed in harmless brooks till the hand of man destroyed the protecting forests that absorbed and equalized the drainage of the Alpine slopes, the same imprudence has turned the gardens of the East into deserts and obstructed with sandbars the channels of once navigable rivers. The wanton extermination of woodbirds has revenged itself by insect plagues. Consumption, that cruel scourge of the human race, is the direct consequence of the folly which makes us prefer the miasma of our tenement-prisons to the balm of God’s free air. We are too apt to confound the results of our sins against nature with the original arrangements of Providence. But the strangest instance of that mistake is the fallacy which has long biased our dealings with the curse of the alcohol habit. Drunkards plead their inability to resist the promptings of an imperious appetite. Their friends lament the antagonism of nature and duty, the weakness of the flesh frustrating the resolves of a willing spirit. Even temperance orators dwell on the dangers of “worldly temptations,” of “selfish, sensual indulgences,” as if the alcohol habit were the result of an innate propensity—deplorable in its collateral consequences, but withal entitled to the compromising concessions which ascetic virtue owes to the cravings of an impetuous natural instinct. In other words, we palliate a flagrant crime against the physical laws of God, as if nature herself had lured us to our ruin; the votaries of alcohol plead their ignorance, as if the Providence that warns us against the sting of a tiny insect and teaches the eye to protect itself against a mote of dust, had provided no adequate safeguards against the greatest danger to health and happiness.

And yet those safeguards would abundantly answer their protective purpose if persistent vice had not almost deadened the faculty of understanding the monitions of our physical conscience. It is true that the stimulant-thirst of the confirmed drunkard far exceeds the urgency of the most impetuous instincts, but by that very excessiveness and persistence the far-gone development of the alcohol habit proves what the mode of its incipience establishes beyond the possibility of a doubt, namely, the radical difference of its characteristics from those of a natural appetite. For,

1. Under Normal Circumstances the Attractiveness of Alimentary Substances is Proportioned to the degree of their Healthfulness and their Nutritive Value.—To the children of nature all hurtful things are repulsive, all beneficial things attractive. Providence has endowed our species with a liberal share of the protective instinct that teaches our dumb fellow-creatures to select their proper food, and even in this age of far-gone degeneration the dietetic predilections of children and primitive men might furnish the criteria of a general food reform. No creature is misled by an innate craving for unwholesome food, nor by an instinctive aversion to wholesome substances. Our natural repugnance to nearly all kinds of “medicines,” i. e., virulent stimulants, has already begun to be recognized as a suggestive illustration of that rule. A child’s hankering after sweetmeats is only an apparent exception, for, as Dr. Schrodt observes, the conventional diet of our children is so deficient in saccharine elements that instinct constantly strives to supply an unsatisfied want. Human beings fed chiefly on fruit syrups would instinctively hanker after farinaceous substances. The savages of our northwestern prairies are as fond of honey as their grizzly neighbors. Nurslings, deprived of their mothers’ milk, instinctively appreciate the proper component parts of artificial surrogates. Sailors in the tropics thirst after fruit, after refrigerating fluids, after fresh vegetables. In the arctic seas they crave calorific food—oil or fat.

But in no climate of this earth is man afflicted with an instinctive hankering after alcohol. To the palate of an unseduced boy rum is as repulsive as corrosive sublimate. I do not speak only of the sons of nature-abiding parents, but of the children of vice, left to the guidance of their enfeebled, but not intentionally perverted, instincts. The intuitive bias even of such is in the direction of total abstinence from all noxious stimulants, for nature has willed that all her creatures should begin the pilgrimage of life from beyond the point where the roads of purity and vice diverge. In their projects for the abolition of the stimulant habit, temperance people are, indeed, rather inclined to underrate the difficulties of a total cure of a confirmed poison vice, but equally apt to overrate the difficulty of total prevention. The supposed effects of an innate predisposition can generally be traced to the direct influence of a vicious education. Jean Jacques Rousseau expressed his conviction that a fondness for intoxicating liquors is nearly always contracted in the years of immaturity, when the deference to social precedents is apt to overcome the warnings of instinct, but that those who have escaped or not yielded to the temptations of that period would ever afterward be safe. Dr. Zimmerman, too, admits that “home influences are too often mistaken for hereditary influences.” And boy topers are not always voluntary converts. The year before I left my native town (Brussels), I found a drunken lad on the platform of the railway depot and carried him to the house of a medical friend, who put him to bed and turned him over to a policeman the next morning. The little fellow was recognized as an old offender, but when the court was going to send him to a house of correction my friend offered to take him back, and, on condition of keeping him away from his parents, was permitted to take care of him, and finally made him his office-boy. His parents were ascertained to be both habitual drunkards, but their son (æt. 11), showed no inclination to follow their example, and voluntarily abstained from the light wines which now and then made their appearance on the doctor’s table—though he never missed an opportunity to rejoin his old playmates, and, as his patron expressed it, “was a dangerous deal too smart to be entrusted with the collection of bills.” Six months after his last scrape I found him alone in the doctor’s office, where he had collected a private library of picture papers and illustrated almanacs. “What made you get so drunk last Easter?” I asked him, “are you so fond of brandy?”

“Nenni, mais Pa m’en fit prendre,” he replied—“father made me drink it.”

2. The Instinctive Aversion to any Kind of Poison can be Perverted into an Unnatural Craving after the same Substance.—Poisons are either repulsive or insipid. Arsenic, sugar of lead, and antimony, belong to the latter class. To the first-born children of earth certain mineral poisons were decidedly out of the way substances, against which nature apparently thought it less necessary to provide special safeguards. But, though less repulsive than other poisons, such substances are never positively attractive, and often (like verdigris, potassium, etc.), perceptibly nauseous. Vegetable poisons are either nauseous or intensely bitter. Hasheesh is more unattractive than turpentine. Opium is acrid caustic. Absinthe (wormwood extract) is as bitter as gall. Instinct resists the incipience of an insidious second nature.

But that instinct is plastic. If the warnings of our physical conscience remain unheeded, if the offensive substance is again and again forced upon the unwilling stomach, nature at last chooses the alternative of compromising the evil, and, true to her supreme law, of preserving existence at any cost, prolongs even a wretched life by adapting the organism to the exigencies of an abnormal habit. She still continues her protest in the feeling of exhaustion which follows every poison-debauch, but permits each following dose of the insidious drug to act as a temporary re-invigorant, or at least as a spur to the functional activity of the exhausted organism, for the apparent return of vital vigor is, in fact, nothing but a symptom of the morbid energy exerted by the system in its efforts to rid itself of a deadly intruder, for each new application of the stimulus is as regularly followed by a distressing reaction. And only then the slave of the unnatural habit becomes conscious of that peculiar craving which is entirely distinct from the promptings of a healthy appetite—a craving uncompromisingly directed toward a special—once repulsive—substance, a craving defying the limiting instincts which indicate the proper quantum of wholesome foods and drinks, a craving which each gratification makes more irresistible, though for the time being each indulgence is followed by a depressing reaction. The appetite for wholesome substances—however palatable—is never exclusive. A child may become passionately fond of ice cream, yet accept cold water and fruit cake as a welcome substitute. A predilection for honey, strawberries, or sweet tree fruits will not tempt the admirers of such dainties to commit forgery and highway robbery to indulge their penchant—as long as their kitchen affords a supply of savory vegetables. Unnatural appetites have no natural limits; but the art of the best pastry cook would hardly induce his customers to stupefy and bestialize themselves with his compounds. There are no milk topers, no suicidal potato eaters, no victims of a chronic porridge passion. In spite of occasional surfeits the craving for alimentary substances increases and decreases with the needs of the organism, while that of the poison drinker yields only to the temporary extinction of consciousness.

In a state of nature every normal function is associated with a pleasurable sensation, and instead of resulting in agonizing reactions a feast of wholesome food is followed by a state of considerable physical comfort—“the beatific consciousness of perfect digestion,” as Baron Brisse describes the pleasures of the after dinner hour. But no length of practice will ever save the poison slave from the penalties of his sins against nature. Each full indulgence is followed by a full measure of woful retributions, while a half indulgence results in a half depression to the verge of world-weary despondency, or fails to satisfy the lingering thirst after a larger dose of the same stimulant. And every poison known to modern chemistry can beget that specific craving. “Entirely accidental circumstances, the accessibility of special drugs, imitativeness and the intercourse of commercial nations, the mere whims of fashion, the authority of medical recommendations, have often decided the first choice of a special stimulant, destined to become a national beverage” and a national curse. The contemporaries of the Veda writers fuddled with soma-wine, the juice of a narcotic plant of the Himalaya foothills. Their neighbors, the pastoral Tartars, get drunk on Koumiss, or fermented mare’s milk, an abomination which in Eastern Europe threatens to increase the list of imported poisons, while opium is gaining ground in our Pacific States as fast as lager beer, chloral and patent “bitters” on the Atlantic slope. The French have added absinthe to their wines and liquors, the Turks hasheesh and opiates to strong coffee. North America has adopted tea from China, coffee from Arabia (or originally from Ceylon), tobacco from the Caribbean savages, highwines from France and Spain, and may possibly learn to drink Mexican aloe-sap, or chew the coca leaves of the South American Indians. Arsenic has its votaries in the southern Alps. Cinnebar and acetate of copper victimize the miners of the Peruvian Sierras. The Ashantees are so fond of sorghum beer that their chieftains have to keep special bamboo cages for the benefit of quarrelsome drunkards. The pastor of a Swiss colony in the Mexican State of Oaxaca told me that the mountaineers of that neighborhood befuddle themselves with cicuta syrup, the inspissated juice of a kind of hemlock that first excites and then depresses the cerebral functions, excessive garrulity being the principal symptom of the exalted stage of intoxication. A decoction of the common fly toadstool (agaricus maculatus) inflames the passions of the Kamschatka natives, makes them pugnacious, disputative, but eventually splenetic (Chamisso’s “Reisen,” p. 322). The Abyssinians use a preparation of dhurra-corn that causes more quarrels than gambling. It is a favorite beverage at festivals, and is vaunted as a remedy for various complaints, though Belzoni mentions that it makes its votaries more subject to the attacks of the Nile fever. According to Professor Vamberg, the Syrian Druses pray, though apparently in vain, to be delivered from the temptation of foxglove tea. Comparative pathology has multiplied these analogies till, in spite of the arguments of a thousand specious advocates, there is no valid reason to doubt that the alleged innate craving for the stimulus of fermented or distilled beverages is wholly abnormal, and that the alcohol habit is characterized by all the peculiarities of a poison vice.

3. All Poison Habits are Progressive.—There is a deep significance in that term of our language which describes an unnatural habit as growing upon its devotees, for we find, indeed, a striking analogy between the development of the stimulant habit and that of a parasitical plant, which, sprouting from tiny seeds, fastens upon, preys upon, and at last strangles its victims. The seductiveness of every stimulant habit gains strength with each new indulgence, and it is a curious fact that that power is proportioned to the original repulsiveness of the poison. The tonic influence of Chinese tea is due to the presence of a stimulating ingredient known as theïne, in its concentrated form a strong narcotic poison, but forming only a minute percentage of the component parts of common green tea. On the Pacific coast of our country thousands of Chinese immigrants carry their thrift to the degree of renouncing their favorite beverage, but neither considerations of economy nor of self-preservation will induce the same exiles to break the fetters of the opium habit. Not one hasheesh-eater in a hundred can hope to emancipate himself from the thraldom of his vice. The guests of King Alcohol, too, would make their reckoning without their host in hoping to take in the fun of intoxication as a votary of pleasure would engage in a transient pastime: his palace is an Armida castle, that rarely dismisses a visitor.

“In describing the effects of the alcohol habit,” says Dr. Isaac Jennings, “I want to impress the reader with another feature of it—its perpetuity. It can never be put off during the lifetime of the individual; it may be covered up to appearance, but it can not be effaced.… It seems to be a common impression that alcohol circulates through the body, excites the action of the heart and liver, quickens and enlivens the animal spirits, and then passes off, and leaves no trace of its visitation, or at most only a temporary loss of power, which is soon restored by a self-moved power pump. This is a great and fundamental error. Every drop of alcohol that enters the stomach inflicts an injury that will continue as long as the old stock lasts, and reach even to the young sprouts. It may not be enstamped on them in precisely the same way, but it will affect essentially the same parts.” (“Medical Reform,” pp. 173-175.)

“If a man was sent to hell,” says Dr. Rush, “and kept there for a thousand years as a punishment for drinking, and then returned, his first cry would be, ‘Give me rum, give me rum!’”

“The infernal powers blindfold the victims of their altars,” says Lessing, and the stimulant vice seems, in fact, to weaken not only the physical constitution of its votaries, but their moral power of resistance, and often even the faculty of realizing the perils of their practice, as if the poison had struck its roots into the very souls of its victims.

But the alcohol habit grows outward, as well as inward. We have seen that each gratification of the poison vice is followed by a depressing reaction. But his feeling of exhaustion is steadily progressive, and the correspondingly increased craving for a repetition of the stimulant dose forces its victim either to increase the quantity of the wonted tonic, or else to resort to a stronger poison. The experience of individual drunkards probably corresponds to the international development of the alcohol habit. Its first devotees contented themselves with moderate quantities of the milder stimulants: must, hydromel and light beer. But such tonics soon began to pall, and the jaded appetite of the toper soon resorted to strong wines, to hard cider, and finally to brandy and rum. Others increased the quantity, and learned to drink horse-pails full of beer, in which “diluted and harmless form” many German students manage to absorb a quart of alcohol per day.

“People sometimes wonder,” says Dr. Jennings, “why such and such men, possessing great intellectual power and firmness of character in other respects, can not drink moderately and not give themselves up to drunkenness. They become drunkards by law—fixed, immutable law. Let a man with a constitution as perfect as Adam’s undertake to drink alcohol, moderately and perseveringly, with all the caution and deliberate determination that he can command, and if he could live long enough he would just as certainly become a drunkard—get to a point where he could not refrain from drinking to excess—as he would go over Niagara Falls when placed in a canoe in the river above the falls and left to the natural operation of the current. And proportionally as he descended the stream would his alcoholic attraction for it increase, so that he would find it more and more difficult to get ashore, until he reached a point where escape was impossible.” (“Medical Reform,” p. 176.)

Now and then the votaries of the stimulant habit exchange their tonic for a stronger poison. Claude Bernard, the famous French pathologist, noticed that the opium vice recruits its female victims chiefly from the ranks of the veteran coffee drinkers. In Turkey, too, strong coffee has prepared the way for tobacco and opium; in Switzerland arsenic eaters have exchanged their kirschwasser for a more potent tonic; many French and Russian hard drinkers have learned to prefer ether to brandy.

But no poison vice can be cured by milder stimulants. The Beelzebub of alcohol does not yield to weaker spirits; hence the fallacy of the antidote plan. Nothing was formerly more common with temperance people of the compromise school than to comfort converted drunkards with stimulating drugs and strong coffee, in the hope that the organism might somehow be induced to acquiesce in the quid pro quo. That hope is a delusion. The surrogate may bring a temporary relief, but it can not satisfy the thirst for the stronger tonic, and only serves to perpetuate the stimulant diathesis—the poison hunger which will sooner or later revert to the wonted object of its passion. Unswerving loyalty to the pledge of the total abstinence plan is not at first the easiest, but eventually the surest way. For even after weeks of successful resistance to the importunities of the tempter, a mere spark may rekindle the smothered flames. “What takes place in the stomach of a reformed drunkard?” says Dr. Sewall—“the individual who abandons the use of all intoxicating drinks? The stomach by that extraordinary self-restorative power of nature gradually resumes its natural appearance. Its engorged blood-vessels become reduced to their original size, and a few weeks or months will accomplish this renovation, after which the individual has no longer any suffering or desire for alcohol. It is nevertheless true, and should ever be borne in mind, that such is the sensibility of the stomach of the reformed drunkard that a repetition of the use of alcohol, in the slightest degree, and in any form, under any circumstances, revives the appetite; the blood vessels again become dilated, and the morbid sensibility of the organ is reproduced.”

The use of any stimulating drug may rewaken the dormant propensity, and it will not change the result if the stimulant has been administered in the form of a medical prescription. Strong drink is a mocker, in disease as well as in health, and the road to the rum shop leads through the dispensary as often as through the beer garden.

The logical conclusion of all these premises thus reveals the two-fold secret of the alcohol habit: the anomaly of its attractiveness and the necessity of its progressiveness, and we at last recognize the truth that the road to intemperance is paved with mild stimulants, and that the only safe, consistent and effective plan of reform is total abstinence from all stimulating poisons.

A TRIP TO THE YOSEMITE.

BY MISS FRANCES E. WILLARD,
President of W. C. T. U.

The famous San Joaquin Valley is as large as the State of Ohio. It opens into the Sacramento Valley, and the two are about six hundred miles long. A plow could go the length of both and never touch a stone. In the San Joaquin they have a ranche where the gang plow starts in the morning, goes on a straight line all day, turns back and plows its twin furrow the next, having thus retraversed the length of one California farm.

It was through seven hours by rail of this valley that we went, in a southeasterly direction, from San Francisco to Madera, where two coaches were waiting to carry us over the one hundred miles in a northeasterly direction that still separated us from the wonderland ruled by “El Capitan.” There were twenty-three of us, and “none smoked or chewed, or drank or swore,” as I was credibly informed by our “El Capitan,” the Rev. Dr. Briggs. By the way, if Chautauqua wants a first class attraction let this name go on the list. We traveled rapidly. I counted thirty different horses on our coach in one day. We killed rattlesnakes, that is, the Dr. did, marching squarely forward and whacking them unmercifully with his stout cane, while we women, securely perched on our high seats in the coach, really enjoyed the sight. We saw horse-shoes enough for wholesale good luck, scattered along the road. We believe, and always shall, that we perceived a bear track, and wondered if it was made by famous “Club Foot Joe”—whose annals are they not in all the Tourist’s Chronicles? We told stories all strictly true. There was no Baron Münchausen amongst us, though had prosaic Easterners been within earshot of our driver they might perhaps have promulgated a different declaration. We did not fear robbers, for “a count” developed the fact that in our coach—chiefly inhabited by ministers, their wives, and sundry visiting philanthropists—gold watches were the only “plunder,” and these were all inscribed “Presented by” to that degree that no well regulated “road agent” would have wished such a “free advertisement” of his base conduct, as these trophies must have furnished. We sang old songs of the fireside and sanctuary, talked of the Chautauquas east and west, “marked” our favorite trees in “the ample forest of Bishop timber” (to be revealed after next General Conference), and regulated the affairs of the nation generally. We fitted ourselves out with a “local government” administered on the everlasting principles of justice and equality, i. e., we counted the women in, not out. I copy our rules from the log book of the expedition:

1. Unquestioned submission to constituted authority.

2. Silence when entering the valley.

3. Wives, be obedient to your husbands.—The Chaplain.

4. Wives, don’t you do it.—The Chaplain’s wife.

5. Whenever a dispute arises, the vote of every woman shall count two.—A widower.

6. Eat dinner often.—Little Walter Bland.

7. No one shall be required to speak grammatically on this trip.—F. E. W.

All of which were unanimously adopted except the one about “counting two,” which evoked a loud dissent.

The first day we rode seventy-two miles, stopping at Clark’s hospitable caravansary, and kindly permitting sweet sleep to knit up the raveled sleeve of care. Decoration Day (May 30th) came next, and with patriotic intent we had made out a program, intending to “celebrate” in the chapel built for Dr. Vincent when he conducted a miniature “Chautauqua Assembly” in the Yosemite a few years since. But when, after a mountain ride of half a day, surrounded by inclined planes of evergreens, each of which would have been a world’s wonder, at the East, with superb curves in the road evermore opening fresh vistas of illimitable height, verdure and beauty, we rounded

INSPIRATION POINT,

“there was no more spirit in us.” Nay, rather the spirit of beauty and divinity so possessed us that “plans” and “programs” sunk into oblivion. Word-pauperism oppresses one upon this height as nothing else on earth. There is in Europe a single revelation of art which has power to silence the chatter even of fashion’s devotees, and that is Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. I have been in its seraphic presence for hours at a time, but never heard a vocal comment. The foamiest natures are not silenced by Niagara, by Mt. Blanc, by the Jungfrau’s awful purity, or the terrors of Vesuvius for their flippant tones have smitten me in all these sacred places. But from the little child in our midst—a bright faced boy of four—to the rough, kind hearted driver, not one word was spoken by our party as