THE SCRAP BOOK.

A MARVELOUS RECEPTION.

Nothing is a success until it is a proved success. The ideas that seem best frequently turn out the worst. If it were not for this fact, a fact with which we are thoroughly familiar, we should feel that we have in The Scrap Book the hit of a century. Indeed, it is difficult not to let ourselves go a bit, even now, and talk about this new creation in magazine-making in a way that would sound like high-pressure fiction.

Six weeks ago The Scrap Book was nothing but an idea. It had had a good deal of thought in a general way, but nothing effectually focuses until actual work begins. Filmy, desultory thought, in cloudland, counts for little.

In the early conception of The Scrap Book it was as unlike this magazine as a mustard-seed is unlike the full-grown tree. Rebelling as I did, and still do, at the restraints of the conventional magazine, and realizing the added strength that should come from the rare old things and the best current things—the scrap bits that are full of juice and sweetness and tenderness and pathos and humor—realizing all this, I undertook to incorporate in Munsey's Magazine a department which I intended to call The Scrap Book.

I had special headings and borders drawn for this department, with a view to differentiating it from other parts of the magazine. I had sample pages put in type, and more or less work done on the department. But it did not fit Munsey's Magazine, and Munsey's Magazine gave no scope for such a section. It was atmospherically antagonistic to a magazine which consisted wholly of original matter. This was the beginning of The Scrap Book—the thought nebula.

It was as late as the middle of January when I came to my office one morning and startled our editorial force by saying that The Scrap Book would be issued on the 10th of February. Up to this time no decisive work had been done on it. As I stated in my introduction last month, we had been gathering scrap books from all over the world for some time, and had a good deal of material classified and ready for use. It was an accepted fact in the office that The Scrap Book would be issued sooner or later. Indeed, the drawing for the cover was made more than a year ago. But no one on the staff, not even myself, knew just what The Scrap Book would be like or when it would make its appearance.

With a definite date fixed for the day of issue, however, and that date only about three weeks away, intense work and intense thought were necessary, and from this thought and work was evolved The Scrap Book as we now have it. From the first minute, as it began to take shape, it became a thing of evolution. Enough material was prepared, set up, and destroyed to fill three issues of The Scrap Book, and display headings were changed and changed—and a dozen times changed—to get the effect we wanted.

As it was something apart from all other magazines, we had no precedents to follow, no examples to copy, either in the matter itself, the method of treating it, or the style of presenting it. Our inspiration in producing The Scrap Book was mainly, and almost wholly, our conception of what would appeal most forcefully to the human heart and human brain—to all the people of all classes everywhere. This, supplemented by our experience in publishing, was our guide in evolving this magazine.

I have told you this much about the beginning and the development of The Scrap Book because such information about the beginning of anything of any consequence appeals to me individually, and I think generally appeals to all readers. If The Scrap Book, therefore, is to make an important place for itself in the publishing world, as certainly looks probable at this time, it will perhaps be worth while to have the story of its inception and evolution.

While I have created in The Scrap Book a magazine for the public, as I interpret the public taste—and this is always my purpose in anything I publish—I find that in The Scrap Book I have unconsciously created a magazine for myself. I mean just this, that for my own reading The Scrap Book as it is, and The Scrap Book in its possibilities, has all other magazines, every phase and kind of magazine the world over, beaten to a standstill.

And why? Simply because The Scrap Book in its scope is as wide as the world. It has no limitations, within the boundaries of decency and good taste. It has as broad a sweep in the publication of original articles and original fiction and original everything as any magazine anywhere. It has, in addition, in its review phases, recourse to the best current things throughout the world—the daily press, the weekly press, the magazines, the pulpit, and the platform. And best of all, it has the vast storehouses of the centuries to draw from—the accumulation of the world's best thoughts and best writing.

FRANK A. MUNSEY.

The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While.

The Presidents of Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell Discuss Questions Bearing on the Practical Training of the Young Men of America—Maeterlinck Calls New York a City of Money, Bustle, and Noise—John Morley Offers Some Valuable Suggestions on the Reading of Books—Edward S. Martin Praises City Life—Ex-President Cleveland Speaks of the Relation of Doctor and Patient—And Other Notable People Express Themselves on Matters of Current Interest.

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

IS THE RICH YOUNG MAN HANDICAPPED?

President Eliot, of Harvard, Tells of
the Blessings of Poverty and the
Penalties of Great Wealth.

Is wealth a hindrance to a young man starting out in life? Men who have built their own fortunes are almost unanimous in answering yes. To have nothing to begin with means, they say, illimitable opportunity, and opportunity is the great developing factor; poverty means the stimulus of real need, which impels men to take advantage of opportunity. To quote the present Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Walter V. Morgan:

The best thing that can happen to a young man is to be poor. Extreme poverty may sometimes hamper a youth's progress, but, in my opinion, he is far more likely to make his way in the world if he starts with the proverbial half-a-crown in his pocket than with a thousand-pound note.

Riches carry their own penalty. President Eliot, in a recent address before the student body at Harvard, said:

The very rich are by no means the healthiest members of the community, and to escape the perils of luxurious living requires unusual will-power and prudence.

Great capital at the disposal of a single individual confers on its possessor great power over the course of industrial development, over his fellow men and sometimes over the course of great public events, like peace or war between nations. It enables a man to do good or harm, to give joy or pain, and places him in a position to be feared or looked up to.

There is pleasure in the satisfaction of directing such a power, and the greater the character the greater may be the satisfaction. In giving this direction the great capitalist may find an enjoyable and strenuous occupation. For a conscientious, dutiful man a great sense of responsibility accompanies this power. It may become so powerful as to wipe out the enjoyment itself.

The most serious disadvantage under which the very rich have labored is the bringing up of children. It is well-nigh impossible for a very rich man to develop his children from habits of indifference and laziness. These children are so situated that they have no opportunity of doing productive labor, and do nothing for themselves, parents, brothers, or sisters, no one acquiring the habit of work. In striking contrast are the farmer's children, who cooperate at tender years in the work of the household.

Among President Eliot's hearers were many young men to whom the blessings of poverty were unknown.

TO TEACH TRADES TO YOUNG WORKERS.

Dean Balliet Emphasizes the Importance
of Trade-Schools in the Adjustment
of Our Economic Problems.

A box of tools, and not a bundle of books, will be the burden of many a school-child, if the trade-school system becomes firmly established. In Germany the public trade-schools have proved very effective. In the United States there has been an encouraging seven-year experiment at Springfield, Massachusetts, and two schools have recently been established in New York City.

The trade-school differs from the manual training-school. Manual training is educational. "It develops the motor and executive sides of a child's nature," to quote Dean T.M. Balliet, of the School of Pedagogy in New York University. Also it fits young men for higher technical training. The trade-school, on the other hand, teaches young people how to work at actual wage-paying trades—how to be plumbers, electrical fitters, carpenters, masons, ironworkers.

Dean Balliet, having made an exhaustive study of the system, not long ago gave the following answer to an interviewer from the New York Tribune who asked what the trade-school meant:

The aim must be entirely practical, but not narrowly so. Students must be trained to perform specific kinds of skilled labor which has a commercial value. But the learning of a trade must include the scientific principles underlying it, and must not be confined to mere hand-training. In the case of the mechanical trades, instruction in drawing, in physics, and in mathematics applicable to the trade must be included.

Trades frequently change, and the invention of a new machine may make a trade suddenly obsolete. Instruction must, therefore, be broad enough to make workmen versatile and enable them to adjust themselves to these changes. The apprentice system is gone. In a shop a man can at best learn only a small part of his trade, and that only the mechanical part. Shop-training, even where it is still possible, is too narrow to make a man versatile. If the one machine which he has learned to run becomes obsolete he is stranded. We need trade-schools for just such men, to enable them to learn the whole of their trade and to receive instructions in the principles underlying it.

Years ago men read medicine in the office of physicians; now they go to a medical school. Lawyers read law in an office only; now they attend law schools. In like manner the learning of a trade in the shop is rapidly becoming obsolete, and trade-schools must take the place of the shop. The fact that some things can be learned only in the shop is no argument against the school. There are things in the training of a lawyer which can be learned only in an office.

A COLLEGE CAREER—IS IT WORTH WHILE?

President Butler, of Columbia, Points
Out That Self-Made Men Wish
Their Sons to Go to College.

Business men are sometimes contemptuous toward the young college graduate's bumptiousness and lack of practical knowledge. Educators, on the other hand, give a strong argument, backed by statistics and corroborating detail, to prove that a college education is the best foundation in all the work of life. The subject has been discussed probably since men of education first left the cloisters and went out into the world.

President Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, presents this brief for the college man:

No doubt there are many who believe a college education is a hindrance to the necessary business wisdom of the age. There are merchants down-town who will tell you how they started at ten or fourteen to sweep out the office and rose, by virtues and industry, to become members of the firm. This is true. But you follow the career of the office-boy who began his utilitarian studies with a broom, and the college boy who began with his books, and you will find that when the office-boy reaches thirty he is still an employee, whereas the college graduate is probably at that age his employer.

Statistics show that out of ten thousand successful men in the world, taken in all classes of life, eight thousand are college graduates. Look at the tremendous increase of educational effort all over the United States in the last few years. Why, I have parents come to me with tears in their eyes and ask me to tell them how they can get their boys through college with only the small sum of money they can afford to do it with. Even your self-made man isn't satisfied unless his son can go to college.

ATHENIAN CULTURE IS AMERICA'S NEED.

President Schurman Would Like to See
Here a Little More of "The Glory
That Was Greece."

Jacob Gould Schurman, president of Cornell University, has taken to heart the contrast between American culture of to-day and the culture of the ancient Greeks. In an address before an association of teachers last February, he charged that while our people "knows something of everything," its knowledge is "superficial, inaccurate, chaotic, and ill-digested." Furthermore, he says that we are indifferent to esthetic culture and suspicious of theory, of principles, and of reason.

These are serious, fundamental charges. But let us hear President Schurman's fuller statement of his case:

If the American mind is to be raised to its highest potency, a remedy must be found for these evils. The first condition of any improvement is the perception and recognition of the defects themselves.

I repeat, then, that while as a people we are wonderfully energetic, industrious, inventive, and well-informed, we are, in comparison with the ancient Athenians, little more than half developed on the side of our highest rational and artistic capabilities.

The problem is to develop these potencies in an environment which has hitherto been little favorable—and to develop them in the American people, and not merely in the isolated thinker, scholar, and artist.

If no American city is an Athens, if no American poet is a Homer or Sophocles, if no American thinker is a Plato or Aristotle, it is not merely because Americans possess only a rudimentary reason and imagination and sensibility, but because, owing to causes which are part of our national being—causes which are connected with our task of subduing a continent—the capacities with which nature has generously endowed us have not been developed and exercised to the fulness of their pitch and potency.

Our work in the nineteenth century was largely of the utilitarian order; in the twentieth century we are summoned to conquer and make our own the ideal realms of truth and beauty and excellence which far more than material victories constitute the true greatness of nations.

Pedagogic methods might be employed to stimulate American culture. President Schurman suggests that in the common schools greater emphasis be laid upon art and literature. There remains, however, as he points out, something greater than the intellectuality of the Greeks, and that is the ethical consciousness of the Hebrews.

Noble and exalted and priceless as reason and culture are, there is a still higher end of life both for individuals and nations. That end, indeed, was very inadequately conceived by the Greeks. In the creative play of reason and imagination, in their marvelous productions of speculation, science, and art, in their exaltation of mind above sense and of spirit above matter, in their conception of a harmonious development of all the rich and varied powers of man—in all these the Greeks have left to mankind a legacy as priceless as it is to-day vital and forever imperishable.

But the Greeks, even the Greek philosophers, even the "divine Plato," have not given us enough to live by. It was the Jews, the outcast, oppressed, and much-suffering Jews, who first sounded the depths of human life, discovered that the essential being of a man resides in his moral personality, and rose to the conception of a just and merciful Providence who rules in righteousness the affairs of nations and the hearts and wills of men.

If even our literary men now tell us that conduct is three-fourths of life, it is because Hebraism and the Christianity which sprang from Hebraism have stamped this idea ineffaceably upon the conscience of mankind. The selfishness and sensuality in us may revolt against the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, but the still small voice of conscience in us recognizes their authority and acknowledges that if they had might as they have right, they would absolutely govern the world. The most, the best, of greatness is goodness. The greatest man on earth is the man of pure heart and of clean hands.

NOTABLE NEGLECT OF INDUSTRIAL ARTS.

A Plea for Arts and Crafts as the Logical
Basis of a National Development
of the Fine Arts.

In line with President Schurman's criticism of American culture is the plea by Charles de Kay, the New York art critic, for more attention to the industrial arts. His argument is that out of the arts and crafts the fine arts naturally develop; that out of the artist-artisan comes the highest class of artist, as, for example, Augustus Saint Gaudens, who began as a cameo cutter. To ignore the industrial arts is, so to speak, to leave out of count that solid middle class upon which alone the aristocracy of art can safely rest. Writing in the New York Times, Mr. de Kay says:

Plainly enough there is a field scarcely plowed at all in the arts and crafts. These arts in the Middle Ages, and latterly in Japan and India, absorbed and absorb the energies of the cleverest hands and brightest minds; but in America and England to-day are neglected for the fine arts, because the rare prizes in the latter, whether of fame or of wealth, dazzle the imagination.

Fashion rather than taste has set easel paintings so absolutely in the forefront that with most people this represents art in its entirety, and though the appreciation of the minor arts of Japan has opened the eyes and enlisted the sympathies of thousands, this one-sided view of art holds on; so encouragement of native arts and crafts is slack and uncertain.

Yet a democracy like ours, while the most difficult of all communities to rouse to a vivid sympathy with the industrial arts, owing to cheap processes and the influence exerted by traditions that began in aristocratic lands, is of all others that community where they are needed most.

The huge engine of the public schools is forever milling over the raw material of the Union, educating the native children, assimilating to the commonwealth the young people of immigrant stocks. The higher education of taste and refinement ought to go hand in hand, but it is sadly deficient.

No one should expect that the public-school system could add this to a task already appalling for its size and complexity. It can be coped with only by organizations apart from the existing schools, which might attempt for the youthful artisan what the art schools attempt for the training of architects, sculptors, and painters.

It is the fate of democracies to waste energy and attack each problem by the wrong side. Commend us to a democracy to put the cart before the horse every time! In the arts we have been doing this imbecile trick steadily, persistently, for a hundred years, trying to foster the fine arts while our minor arts and crafts are too contemptible for criticism.

Is it not about time to show that even a democracy can learn something? Certainly if we can convince this community that the most crying need is a thorough regeneration of the industrial arts, the object will be attained. For though democracies are often clumsy, when they once strike the right path they rush forward to the highest places with a speed and an irresistible force no other communities attain.

BELGIAN DRAMATIST CRITICIZES NEW YORK.

Money, Bustle, and Noise Are the Principal
Things Named as Characteristic
of Our Young Nation.

Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian dramatist and mystic philosopher, is by no means dull in his appreciation of practical conditions. People who know him say that he is not in the least lackadaisical or spiritually remote, but is simple and frank and full of interest in every-day occurrences. A short time ago he was asked to express his opinion of America. He replied—to quote from the Theater Magazine:

I should be afraid to live in a city like New York. I understand that money, bustle, and noise are its chief characteristics. Money is useful, of course, but it is not everything. Bustle and noise, also, are necessary adjuncts of human industry. But they do not add to man's comfort nor satisfy his soul's cravings.

America is too young a nation to seek the beautiful. That may come when you Americans grow weary of being rich. Then you will, as a nation, cultivate art and letters, and—who knows?—one day you will surpass the Old World in the splendor of your buildings, the genius of your authors. You are a great people, but your highest powers are still slumbering.

At present you are too busily occupied in assimilating the foreigner, too busily engaged in affairs purely material, to leave either time or taste for either the beautiful or the occult. When America does take to beautifying her own home she will astonish the world.

WHAT "PUNCH" HAS MEANT TO ENGLAND.

London's Famous Funny Paper is Really
Funny to Those Who Know How
to Appreciate Its Jokes.

Sir Francis C. Burnand has resigned the editorship of London Punch after a service of twenty-three years. It is hard to think of him as old, but, being in his seventieth year, doubtless he had begun to find the cares of his position somewhat irksome.

Eminent as was his fitness for the editorship he held so long, he started out in life with no notion of becoming a humorist. Amateur dramatic performances took much of his time at Cambridge. After leaving the university, he became a barrister. Converted to the Roman church, he studied for the priesthood, but abandoned this prospective future in order to devote himself to the stage. Though he did not become an actor, he wrote many stage pieces—plays, librettos, etc.; at the same time he was writing jokes for the humorous papers, and when he was twenty-five years of age he became a regular contributor to Punch. Says the New York Evening Post:

The resignation of Sir Francis C. Burnand, for twenty-five years editor of London Punch, reminds one how little it has been subject to the vicissitudes of journalism. As if by fore-ordination, the admirable parodist, Owen Seaman, takes the head of the historic table, and Punch will, if anything, be more Punch than ever. Others may change, but Punch retains a kind of Olympian uniformity. From its first number, sixty-five years ago, to the last, its outward appearance and inward savor are practically identical. England has been in conspiracy to provide it with talent.

During the editor's term of office the paper lost such artists as Charles Keene, Du Maurier, and Sir John Tenniel; but it also saw the rise of Mr. Linley Sambourne's forceful caricature, of Mr. Raven-Hill's delightful rusticities, of the nervous and most expressive art of the lamented Phil May. In fact, barring an inclination to overindulgence in rather trite doggerel, Punch's jorum has rarely been more tasty than in the past quarter century. Its only serious rival in the comic field has been Fliegende Blätter.

There is, of course, the prevailing American view that Punch is dull. Dull it is, in the sense that the best fun of the most jocose family may be merely tantalizing to the outsider. A nudge to the initiated may be sufficient to recall jokes proved by a thousand laughs; the uninitiated needs a clue. Now, Punch's family is London—a family whose acquaintance is tolerably worth while—and probably no one who has not imaginatively made himself familiar with the mood of London has any business with Punch at all. It is the homesickness for London that extends the subscription list to the bounds of the empire; it is the desire to know what London thinks of itself, of the provinces, of the world, that makes readers for Punch in every land. It represents London in the mood of intellectual dalliance as thoroughly as Fliegende Blätter does non-Prussian Germany. This representative quality gives to these two comic papers something of the solemnity of institutions.

THE OLD JOURNALISM COLORED BY THE NEW.

Norman Hapgood Declares that Yellow
Journals Have Shaken the Newspapers
Out of Their Old Rut.

"Yellowness," in the newspaper sense, means sensationalism; sensationalism means exaggeration; exaggeration means wrong proportion and the distortion of truth. On the other hand, it is pointed out that yellowness means interest; interest means closer attention from a larger audience; the larger audience means wider editorial influence.

Aside from the main arguments for and against yellowness, there are noticeable effects which the new journalism has had indirectly upon the old. Speaking recently before the League for Political Education, in New York City, Norman Hapgood, the editor of Collier's Weekly, attributed the increased boldness and popular tone of the conservative newspapers to the influence of yellow journalism:

Yellow journalism has its faults, but it was the first to shake the newspapers out of the old rut and give them new vigor. Before the advent of this class of journals there was no organ among the conservative press to speak down to the people. It was the consequence of a growing democracy and had for its purpose the establishment of a press wherein the laboring classes would have expression.

HOW TO ASSIMILATE THE BEST IN BOOKS.

John Morley, the English Statesman and
Scholar, Tells the Secret of Making
One's Reading Pay.

When a man knows books as thoroughly as John Morley knows them, his opinions as to what and how to read are worth having. Mr. Morley has revised and put together as an article for The Critic several of his extemporaneous addresses on books and reading. From this article the following paragraphs have been culled and condensed with care to select those passages which contain practical advice for people who desire to make their reading count for something:

The object of reading is not to dip into everything that even wise men have ever written. In the words of one of the most winning writers of English that ever existed—Cardinal Newman—the object of literature in education is to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to comprehend and digest its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, address, and expression.

Literature consists of all the books—and they are not so many—where moral truth and human passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form. Poets, dramatists, humorists, satirists, masters of fiction, the great preachers, the character-writers, the maxim-writers, the great political orators—they are all literature in so far as they teach us to know man and to know human nature.

What I venture to press upon you is that it requires no preterhuman force of will in any young man or woman—unless household circumstances are more than usually vexatious and unfavorable—to get at least half an hour out of a solid busy day for good and disinterested reading. Some will say that this is too much to expect, and the first persons to say it, I venture to predict, will be those who waste their time most. At any rate, if I cannot get half an hour, I will be content with a quarter.

Multiply the half-hour by three hundred and sixty-five, and consider what treasures you might have laid by at the end of the year, and what happiness, fortitude, and wisdom they would have given you during all the days of your life.

You may have often heard from others, or may have found out, how good it is to have on your shelves, however scantily furnished they may be, three or four of those books to which it is well to give ten minutes every morning, before going down into the battle and choking dust of the day. Perhaps it matters little what it may be so long as your writer has cheerful seriousness, elevation, calm, and, above all, a sense of size and strength, which shall open out the day before you, and bestow gifts of fortitude and mastery.

If a man is despondent about his work, the best remedy that I can prescribe to him is to turn to a good biography; there he will find that other men before him have known the dreary reaction that follows long-sustained effort, and he will find that one of the differences between the first-rate man and the fifth-rate lies in the vigor with which the first-rate man recovers from this reaction, and crushes it down, and again flings himself once more upon the breach.

A taste for poetry is not given to everybody, but anybody who does not enjoy poetry, who is not refreshed, exhilarated, stirred by it, leads but a mutilated existence. I would advise that in looking for poets—of course after Shakespeare—you should follow the rule of allowing preferences, but no exclusion.

Various mechanical contrivances and aids to successful study are not to be despised by those who would extract the most from books. The wise student will do most of his reading with a pen or pencil in his hand. He will not shrink from the useful toil of making abstracts and summaries of what he is reading.

Again, some great men—Gibbon was one, and Daniel Webster was another, and the great Lord Stafford was a third—always before reading a book made a short, rough analysis of the questions which they expected to be answered in it, the additions to be made to their knowledge, and whither it would take them.

Another practise is that of keeping a commonplace book, and transcribing into it what is striking and interesting and suggestive. And if you keep it wisely, as Locke has taught us, you will put every entry under a head, division, or subdivision. This is an excellent practise for concentrating your thought on the passage, and making you alive to its real point and significance.

ARE WE SURFEITED WITH WIT AND HUMOR?

Jerome K. Jerome Says that the American
Sense of Humor Has Been Overfed
by Brilliant Humorists.

More great humorists have arisen in the United States during the last seventy-five years than in any other country. Among the professionals are, or have been, Artemus Ward, Josh Billings, Petroleum V. Nasby, Mark Twain, and George Ade. Who of these have been and who still are there is no need of saying. But certainly the constellation is brilliant with these names alone, though the lesser stars have been many.

Have we had too much humor? Are we sated? Jerome K. Jerome, after several months of personal observation, answers yes. Near the end of his recent tour of the country he said:

It seems to me that the American people have been surfeited with humor. So many brilliant men have written their jokes for so long that they have become jaded. I thought at first that the American sense of humor was radically less subtle than ours in England, but now I know better. It is simply overfed.

Mark Twain is, I think, the only living humorist of the old American school, and he, like Falstaff, is growing old. But the subtle touch that England likes still and America liked once is still his. You laugh with him now, I think, more from a sense of duty than a sense of the ridiculous. You have grown tired and need coarser fare to stimulate your appetite. And I've discovered the cause of it, too. It is the comic supplement of the Sunday papers.

The New York World takes exception to Mr. Jerome's remarks, and answers him as follows:

In the name of Punch and the Prophet, figs! The history of American humor is a chronicle of development to a present pitch of refinement and subtlety with which the work of the earlier humorists suffers by comparison. It is the history of the evolution of the pun into the witticism.

Could Petroleum V. Nasby get a hearing to-day? Or the Danbury News Man, or "Peck's Bad Boy"? Would not a Burdette writing for the more exacting twentieth-century perception find his occupation gone? Even an Artemus Ward and a Josh Billings appealing to latter-day readers would perceive the essential need of a purification and refinement of method if they were to hold their audience under anything like the old spell.

Progress from broad lines approaching buffoonery to delicacy, from the obvious and the apparent to the elusive, is observable in all humorists who hold their public. It was seen in Eugene Field. It is discernible in Mark Twain, whom Mr. Jerome cites as a survival of the "old American school." Between "The Innocents Abroad" and "Pudd'nhead Wilson" and "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg" is all the contrast of the changed taste of a new generation. Falstaff is not now the fashion.

WOMAN'S REAL PLACE IN LITERARY WORK.

An Unkind Frenchman Says That Her
Limitations Must Always Keep
Her in a Secondary Role.

We have often been told by Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman that woman, as a type, ranks higher in almost every respect than man; and there are many people of both sexes who agree with her. Nevertheless, the champions of feminine superiority may find it hard work to shout down the glorifiers of masculine achievement.

Here is a Frenchman, Georges Pellisier, a literary critic, who argues that woman cannot write great literature, because she is intellectually as well as physically inferior to man. He assigns to her the secondary literary rôle of acting as mistress of the literary salon—a position which, he thinks, has a valuable influence. He expresses his views as follows, in La Revue (Paris), the translation being that of the Literary Digest:

Philosophy, criticism, and history are beyond her mental scope, and I know of none who has made a lasting impression in these domains. Philosophy requires a force of abstraction and a power of application rarely possessed by women, the power of reflection being, with them, as one of the greatest of them has admitted, "rather a happy accident than a peculiar or permanent attribute." Naturally impulsive, they fail to follow out the logic of their ideas.... In the domain of criticism woman is too much the slave of first impressions, or preconceived notions, which must be admitted, however, to be generally very vivid and often very just.

Her personal preferences, nevertheless, obscure her views and misguide her opinions, while she lacks almost wholly the faculty of weighing her judgments.... A proper study or understanding of history is impossible without the philosophic and the critical faculties, and, above all, a disinterested love of truth. Woman colors events according as passion or sentiment sways her. The real historian must totally efface both himself and his bias; and this, woman, of her nature, is incapable of doing....

There remain to her the drama, poetry, and the novel. In dramatic art, no woman has produced anything of lasting note, the reason being that the dramatist must, perforce, be without egotism and be capable of detaching the Ego from the action of the play—a thing impossible in woman.

In poetry this critic allows to woman but "the shadow of a name"; for few women, he argues, have written verse that endured. "The principal defect she evinces in poetry," he says, "is a lack of artistic execution." Woman's best work, he thinks, has been done in romance, though he refuses to class any woman with the master-novelists. Even this small credit he awards grudgingly and carpingly. He cannot ignore success, but he tries to belittle it.

Apart from the fact that they may indulge in solecism and anachronism without being severely called to task by the critics, their composition is faulty. Even Georges Sand was not above suspicion. There is palpable in their novels an incoherent notion of logical plot, while their imagination is subjected to no salutary discipline. Their work lacks vigor, and in its weakness, not an unattractive quality in woman herself, there is something commonplace that is not redeemed by elegance. Above all, woman's temperament recoils from a depiction of the stern reality of life.... She has no sense of proportion, and for her the beautiful and the pretty are interchangeable terms.

RACE SUICIDE MAY PROVE A BLESSING.

Welfare of the Offspring Is Much More
Important Than Their Number, Says
This Cincinnati Professor.

Dr. Charles A.L. Reed, of the University of Cincinnati, has published an address on "The American Family," in which he makes this strong statement: "We see in a declining birth-rate only a natural and evolutional adjustment of race to environment—an adjustment that insures rather than menaces the perpetuation of our kind under favoring conditions." Thus he argues that "race suicide" may prove a blessing, since, as a matter of fact, it implies an intelligent regard for the rights and necessities of children rather than an aversion to motherhood:

If reduced to its last analysis, it does not indicate a loss, but rather a development, if not an actual exaltation of the maternal function. American women recognize, subconsciously, possibly, certainly not in definite terms, but they nevertheless recognize, the force of the law enunciated by Mr. Spencer that whatever conduces to the highest welfare of offspring must more and more establish itself, since children of inferior parents reared in inferior ways will ever be replaced by children of better parents reared in better ways.

A much greater danger, according to Dr. Reed, is overpopulation. As influences inimical to the American family he classes "everything that tends to the early and wide dispersion of its members," such as—

The development of residential schools, the extension of far-reaching transportation facilities, the diversification of industries, the industrial employment of women, the popularization of hotels and apartments for residential purposes, and, finally, the development of clubs for both men and women at the expense of the home.

WORTH WHILE TO LIVE IN A LARGE CITY.

The Real Blessings of Urban Life Have
Been Too Much Neglected By
the Apostles of the Country.

City life has been more or less maligned—unintentionally. Unhealthful crowding, lack of the inspiration of outdoor life, and greater immorality are the principal charges. Lately, however, people have begun to believe that the city is little if any more immoral, proportionately to its inhabitants, than the country; that the absence of outdoor life has compensations, especially when one can spend part of the year in the country; that most of the dangers of crowding can be averted by improved sanitary methods and a greater number of parks. Edward S. Martin, writing in Appleton's Magazine, states the case attractively:

After all, there is an unrivaled attraction about human society, and it is considerably wholesome. It takes superior people to thrive on solitude even with quiet thrown in. Feebler folk have been known to regenerate even in the blessed country. It is no more possible in these days to stop the country people from coming to town than to stop the rivers from flowing to the sea.

The cities offer the best opportunities to the people who are qualified to improve them. The cities are the great markets for talent and skill, as well as for commodities. They would be badly off if the energy that makes them hum were not perpetually re-enforced out of the great country reservoirs. The country would be a worse place if the superfluous vigor that is bred there had not the cities in which to spend itself.

To get to some town is the natural and legitimate aspiration of a considerable proportion of the sons and daughters of American farmers. But as the waters that run to the sea are carried back by the process of evaporation, so there must be, as our cities grow greater, a return current out of them countryward for the people for whom town life is no longer profitable, and whose nerves and thews need nature's medication.

There is such a current as it is. People who get rich in town promptly provide themselves with country homes, and spend more and more of the year in them as their years increase and their strength declines. But for the people who don't get rich, the combination, or the transition, is not so easy. A due proportion of the people who are game to stand more noise, canned food, and struggle in their lives, and who ought to get to town, will get there.

The other process—to get back into the country the families, and especially the children, who have had more continuous city life than is good for them—needs a good deal of outside assistance, and gets some, though not yet as much as it requires.

MAKING MONEY IS A RELIGIOUS DUTY.

John D. Rockefeller Recounts His Own
Early Struggles and Shows to Young
Men the Virtues of Economy.

It may be, as sometimes has been said, that more is to be learned from the mistakes of other men than from their successes. If that be true it is because the reasons for their mistakes can hardly be concealed. Whether or not successful men betray the secrets of their successes, however, usually rests with themselves. In studying success, it is the occasional intimate disclosure that bears value rather than the superficial record.

John D. Rockefeller has addressed to the Bible class over which his son presides a pamphlet entitled "First Ledger of a Successful Man of Affairs." In it he tells of the ledger he kept as a young man, in which all his receipts and expenditures were most carefully recorded; and starting with this reminiscence he gives his advice to the young men of to-day. He begins with the dictum that "it is a religious duty to get all the money you can"—that is, "honestly and fairly"—and he sings the virtues of rigid economy. Speaking of his own efforts to "get a footing," he says:

If you all feel as I did when I was just starting in, I feel sorry for you. But I would not be without the memory of that struggle. And, discussing the struggle for success, what is success? Is it money? Some of you have all you need.

Who is the poorest man in the world? I tell you, the poorest man I know is the man who has nothing but money, nothing else in the world upon which to devote his ambition and thought. That is the sort of man I consider to be the poorest in the world. Money is good if you know how to use it.

Now, let me give you a little word of counsel. Keep a ledger, as I did. Write down in it all that you receive, and do not be ashamed to write down what you pay out. See that you pay it away in such a manner that your father and mother may look over your book and see just what you did with your money. It will help you to save money, and that you ought to do.

It is a mistake for any man who wishes for happiness and to help others to think that he will wait until he has made a fortune before giving away money to deserving objects.

LET DOCTORS TELL WHAT THE MATTER IS.

A Plea by Grover Cleveland for a Greater
Degree of Confidence Between
Physician and Patient.

Our only living ex-President, Mr. Cleveland, gave a bit of advice to the doctors a few weeks ago. Speaking before the New York State Medical Society, in session at Albany, he pleaded the rights of the patient to know what his physician was doing to him. He humorously represented himself as attorney for the great army of patients in their appeal to the powerful minority of doctors:

In all seriousness I desire to concede without the least reservation on behalf of the great army of patients that they owe to the medical profession a debt of gratitude which they can never repay, on account of hard, self-sacrificing work done for their benefit and for beneficent results accomplished in their interest.

But at the same time we are inclined to insist that while our doctors have wonderfully advanced in all that increases the usefulness and nobility of their profession, this thing has not happened without some corresponding advance in the intelligent thought and ready information of their patients along the same lines.

We have come to think of ourselves as worthy of confidence in the treatment of our ailments, and we believe if this was accorded to us in greater measure it would be better for the treatment and better for us. We do not claim that we should be called in consultation in all our illnesses, but we would be glad to have a little more explanation of the things done to us.

FOOD AS A PRIME FACTOR OF CHARACTER.

What We Eat May Be More Important
Than Where We Live or Who
Our Parents Are.

Food makes the man; not heredity, not environment. Thus speaks John Spargo, socialistic lecturer and author. The badly fed or underfed baby quickly departs from the normal; imbecility, crime, pauperism all are directly or indirectly due to the lack of food or its poor quality during the plastic years.

Without accepting the doctrine that food is the sole factor in evolution, some profit may be drawn from a more extended statement of Mr. Spargo's views given in the New York World:

The nervous, irritable, half-ill children to be found in such large numbers in our public schools represent poor material. They are largely drawn from the homes of poverty, and constitute an overwhelming majority of those children for whom we have found it necessary to make special provision—the dull pupils found year after year in the same grades with much younger children.

In a measure the relation of a child's educability to its physical health and comfort has been recognized by the corelation of physical and mental exercises in most up-to-date schools, but its larger social and economic significance has been almost wholly ignored. And yet it is quite certain that poverty exercises the same retarding influences upon the physical training as upon mental education.

There are certain conditions precedent to successful education, whether physical or mental. Chief of these are a reasonable amount of good, nourishing food and a healthy home. Deprived of these, physical or mental development must necessarily be hindered. And poverty means just that to the child. It denies its victim these very necessaries with the inevitable result—physical and mental weakness and inefficiency.

Important as are the factors of proper housing and sanitary and hygienic conditions—matters which have occupied an ever-increasing amount of attention on the part of public officials as well as philanthropists in recent years—it is now generally confessed by science that, important as they are in themselves, they are relatively unimportant in the early years of child life.

"Sanitary conditions do not make any real difference at all," was the testimony of Dr. Vincent before the British Departmental Committee. "It is food, and food alone." That the evils of underfeeding are intensified when there is a unhygienic environment is true, but it is equally true that defect in the diet is the prime and essential cause of the excessive death-rate among the children of the poor, and of those infantile diseases and ailments which make for defective adults, moral, mental, or physical, should they survive.

DR. W.S. RAINSFORD A FORCEFUL FIGURE.

Fearless Utterances of the Rector of a
Famous Institutional Church in
New York.

Militant Christianity has for many years had no more energetic champion than the Rev. Dr. William S. Rainsford, rector of St. George's Church, New York City. When he took charge of the church in 1883, as a young man thirty two-years of age, its congregation had greatly fallen off. In twenty-two years of untiring work he built up the parish until it contained more than seven thousand members, included in a varied system of parochial activities.

Dr. Rainsford, who has resigned his charge owing to ill-health, used to be a man of great physical vigor, a fact which emphasizes this suggestion of the New York Sun's:

The physical exhaustion which sent Dr. Rainsford abroad and now compels his retirement from duties so arduous seems to be a calamity afflicting clergymen more than other professional men and men of affairs. Is this because the emotional strain is so much greater in the case of a clergyman?

Dr. Rainsford—who was born in Ireland and educated in England—was fearless in his pulpit utterances. In one sermon he said:

It is vain to cry out against a thing that a vast proportion of mankind believes is not wrong. You can't make an Irishman believe it is wrong to have beer with his dinner; you can't make an Englishman believe it. And perhaps that is why I do not believe it is wrong to have it with mine.

LESSONS THAT MAY BE LEARNED FROM BIRDS.

A Careful Study of the Turkey Buzzard
May Teach Us the Secret of Flight,
Says John P. Holland.

John P. Holland, the inventor of the submarine war-ship, said some very interesting things at a recent banquet. The element that occupies his attention is not air, but water. He dreams of a time when his shark-like boats will make war on the sea a thing of the past. Yet he also has hopes of air-ships. His advice to Professor Bell was to forget about his kites and other artificial devices, and to study the turkey buzzard, which knows more about flying than all the colleges on earth.

The thing that beats you all, said Mr. Holland, is the humble turkey buzzard. There is an incomprehensible mystery which it is for mighty man to solve—how that bird can soar, circle, and sweep over a radius of half a mile without an apparent movement of its wings. Solve that mystery, and man will conquer the air.

It is not surprising that two men so practical as Professor Bell and John P. Holland are joining the ranks of the air-ship enthusiasts. The air-ship is not altogether a thing of the future. It is here now. Last month the French government bought a couple for military purposes. The Wright brothers, in Dayton, Ohio, have flown twenty-five miles on their machine and carried with them a load of pig-iron besides. And at the recent automobile exhibitions in New York, two flying-machines were put on exhibition and sold.

Both Bell and Holland were called fools and dreamers thirty years ago, because they believed it possible to send words along a wire and travel under the sea. To-day they are regarded as practical men of affairs—wealthy and honored. It is a striking fact that both of these veteran inventors are looking for bigger things from the future than those which they dug from the past. The air-ship age, they say, is at hand, and the human race may get ready to fly.

CHINA IS SEEKING WESTERN LEARNING.

Eminent Oriental Commissioners Travel
Through the United States to Study
Our Prosperity.

Their excellencies Tuan Fang and Tai Hung Chi, imperial Chinese commissioners, came to the United States with open eyes to learn the advantages of Western civilization. The fact of their coming was in itself significant evidence of an existing state of affairs in China which the Chinese minister to the United States, Sir Chentung Liang Cheng, explained in the following words:

It has been a fervent wish that China would wake from her sleep and join in the march of modern progress. The day of her awakening is at hand. The unrest of our people proves it. Large bodies move slowly, but when they begin to move they gain momentum; and when China gets started in the channels of progress it will be impossible to stop her. She has always looked to the United States in every crisis of her national career. I have no doubt that the result of the coming of the Imperial Commission will bring the two countries into closer relations.

This little speech was delivered a few weeks ago at a banquet in New York, where a number of representative Americans were gathered to meet the visitors. Tuan Fang spoke the same evening—using the Chinese language, his remarks being translated by his secretary, Alfred Sze, who is a graduate of Cornell University, class of 1901.

This translated address included the following passage:

Since our arrival in this country we have had every opportunity to see the material side of your great nation. All business and manufacturing establishments have thrown their doors wide open to us, and afforded us ample facilities to look into the American way of doing things.

Your government has likewise given us the same unrestricted facilities, for all of which we are very, very grateful. It is needless to say that we are deeply impressed with the vast resources of the country and the marvelous energy of its people. We are pleased to note, however, that in the midst of this wonderful material expansion you have not lost sight of the moral upbuilding of the country. We are, therefore, glad to meet here this evening representative Americans who are engaged in this beneficent labor.

This commissioner, Tuan Fang, is a considerable man in his own country. As viceroy of two important provinces—Fu-Kien and Che-Kiang—his influence is far-reaching. What he said about his experiences in the United States was, perhaps, not so important as his definite tribute to American missionaries. The missionary is often charged with arousing hostility by violating native customs; but the viceroy said:

We take pleasure this evening in bearing testimony to the part taken by American missionaries in promoting the progress of the Chinese people. They have borne the light of Western civilization into every nook and corner of the empire. They have rendered inestimable service to China by the laborious task of translating instructive books into the Chinese language.

Truly, after listening that evening to these representatives of cultured China, the hearers could share the feeling of John W. Foster, the toastmaster on this occasion. Mr. Foster, one of the ablest of American diplomats, said:

When I meet a Chinese gentleman I have the impulse to stand uncovered in his presence and to make a profound bow, out of respect to his great empire and race, antedating in their existence and civilization all others of which we have any record, with achievements unsurpassed in literature, in philosophy, in art, and in useful inventions.

Love-Letters of the Great.

Passion, Tenderness, Sweetness, Reverence, All the Deep Tones of Love,
Make Beautiful the Letters Written by Various
Great Men to Their Wives.

Men of genius and power—kings, commanders, poets, painters—belong not to themselves, but to the world. Greatness destroys privacy; and many a person of note has lived to see described in print the most minute of his little, unsuspected peculiarities. This invasion of the right to be let alone is inevitable. Even love-letters do not escape.

It is only a few years since the love-letters of the Brownings—Elizabeth Barrett and Robert—were given to the world. As models in the expression of deep and tender affection it will be long before they are displaced. Yet specimens of the love-letters of other eminent men and women are full of tenderness, passion, reverence.

QUEEN VICTORIA'S ROMANCE.

Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, having occasion to make a trip to Europe, wrote to the queen:

My Own Darling: We got over our journey thus far rapidly and well, but the tide was so unmannerly as to be an hour later than the time calculated, so that I cannot sail before three. I have been an hour here, and regret the lost time which I might have spent with you. Poor child! you will, while I write, be getting ready for luncheon, and will find the place vacant where I sat yesterday. In your heart, however, I hope my place will not be vacant.

I at least have you on board with me in spirit. Try to occupy yourself as much as possible. You are even now half a day nearer to seeing me again; by the time you get this letter it will be a whole day; thirteen more and I am again within your arms. To-morrow Seymour will bring you further news of me. Your most devoted

Albert.

LEIGH HUNT AND HIS MARIANNE.

Leigh Hunt carried his versatility into his love-letters to Miss Marianne Kent, his future wife. Below is an example written when he was nineteen:

My Dearest Marianne: I am very uncomfortable; I get up at five in the morning, say a word to nobody, curse my stars till eleven at night, then creep into bed to curse my stars for to-morrow; and all this because I love a little black-eyed girl of fifteen, whom nobody knows, with all my heart and soul. You must not suppose I love you a bit the better for being fifty miles out of my reach in the daytime, for I travel at a pretty tolerable pace every night and have held many a happy chat with you about twelve or one o'clock at midnight, though you have forgotten it by this time.

Here follows a stanza of poetry, after which he proceeds:

You see, lovers can no more help being poets than poets can help being lovers. I shall see you again and will pay you prettily for running away from me, for you shall not stir from my side the whole evening. If you are well and have been so at Brighton, you are everything I could wish you. God bless you and yours. You see I can still pray for myself. Heaven knows that every blessing bestowed on you is a tenfold one bestowed on your

H.

THE KINGLY LOVE OF CHARLES I.

In a way which proved him an adept in the art, Charles I wrote to the Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France, when she was coming to join him:

Dear Heart: I never knew till now the good of ignorance, for I did not know the danger thou wert in by the storm before I had assurance of thy happy escape, we having had a pleasing false report of thy safe landing at Newcastle, which thine of the 19th of January so far confirmed us in that we were at least not undeceived of that hope till we knew certainly how great a danger thou hast passed, of which I shall not be out of apprehension until I have the happiness of thy company.

For indeed I think it not the least of my misfortunes that for my sake thou hast run so much hazard. But my heart being full of admiration for thee, affection for thee, and impatient passion of gratitude to thee, I cannot but say something, leaving the rest to be read by thee out of thine own noble heart.

Charles R.

NAPOLEON TO HIS FIRST LOVE.

Napoleon Bonaparte, in a passionate letter to Josephine, said:

I have received your letter, my adorable friend. It has filled my heart with joy. I hope that you are better. I earnestly desire that you should ride on horseback, as it cannot fail to benefit you.

Since I left you I have been constantly depressed. My happiness is to be near you. Incessantly I live over in my memory your caresses, your tears, your affectionate solicitude. The charms of the incomparable Josephine kindle continually a burning and a glowing flame in my heart. When entirely free from all harassing care, shall I be able to pass all my time with you, having only to love you and to think only of the happiness of so saying and of proving it to you? I will send you your horse, but I hope you will soon join me.

I thought I loved you months ago, but since my separation from you I feel that I love you a thousandfold more. Each day since I knew you have I adored you yet more and more. Ah! I entreat you to let me see some of your faults; be less beautiful, less graceful, less affectionate, less good, especially be not overanxious, and never weep. Your tears rob me of reason and inflame my blood.

Believe me that it is not in my power to have a single thought that is not of you, or a wish that I cannot reveal to you. Quickly reestablish your health and join me, that at last before death we may be able to say "We were many days happy." A thousand kisses, and one even to Fortuna, notwithstanding his spitefulness.

Bonaparte.

THE FIDELITY OF WASHINGTON.

The following letter from George Washington to his wife is a beautiful example of love that was as fresh after twenty years as at the first, and illustrates perfectly the sane balance of his great mind:

My Dearest Life and Love: You have hurt me, I know not how much, by the insinuation in your last that my letters to you have been less frequent because I have felt less concern for you. The suspicion is most unkind. Have we lived almost a score of years in the closest and dearest conjugal intimacy to so little purpose that on the appearance only of inattention to you, and which you might have accounted for in a thousand ways more natural and more probable, you should pitch upon that single motive which alone is injurious to me?

I have not, I own, wrote so often to you as I wished and as I ought, but think of my situation and then ask your heart if I be without excuse. We are not, my dearest, in circumstances most favorable to our happiness; but let us not, I beseech you, idly make them worse by indulging in suspicions and apprehensions which minds in distress are but too apt to give way to. Your most faithful and tender husband,

G.W.

BRIEF BUT SINCERE "OLD NOLL."

Oliver Cromwell seemed to have similar difficulties when he wrote:

My Dearest: I have not leisure to write much; but I could chide thee that, in many of thy letters, thou writest to me that I should not be unmindful of thee and thy little ones. Truly, if I love you not too well, I think I err not on the other hand much. Thou art dearer to me than any creature; let that suffice. I rest thine

Oliver Cromwell.

POE'S HEART IN A TIME OF TRIAL.

In the midst of his trials, Edgar Allan Poe, the famous American poet, wrote to his wife:

My Dear Heart, My Dear Virginia: Our mother will explain to you why I stayed away from you this night. On my last great disappointment I should have lost my courage but for you, my little darling wife. I shall be with you to-morrow, and be assured until I see you I will keep in loving remembrance your last words and your fervent prayer. May God grant you a peaceful summer with your devoted

Edgar.

THE LOVE OF BISMARCK.

Bismarck, the man of iron, to the last day of his life was tenderly devoted to his wife, using the most endearing terms in writing to her. While he was in Paris, during the early days of their married life, he wrote to her:

They say that here one may see the most beautiful women in the world—women whose charms are a scepter more powerful than a king's. I have seen them all, my little heart, and now I know why you hold me in such unbreakable chains; for there is none of all these fair ones so richly dowered as my darling with all that gives a woman empire over the hearts of men.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

By AMBROSE BIERCE.

Among living American writers of short stories, Ambrose Bierce is un-excelled in strength and fine simplicity. Born in 1842, he served during the Civil War, and was brevetted major for distinguished services. He went to California in 1866, and his name became familiar to readers of Pacific Coast journals. His contributions, however, quickly won a hearing throughout the country and in England, whither he went in 1872, remaining for a few years and writing for English periodicals. Later he returned to California, and more recently he removed to Washington.

The keenest, most incisive, most telling contemporary criticism was found in the column he used to contribute to the San Francisco Examiner, "Prattle: A Transient Record of Individual Opinion." Of his verse, at least one poem, "The Passing Show," is deserving of a permanent place in literature. More verse, more fiction, would be welcome from his pen. He has produced less than those who read the following story will wish, for the reason, perhaps, that he has freely given so much of his time to teaching others how to write.

It is natural, considering the experiences through which he passed at the time of life in which conscious impressions are most vivid, that Mr. Bierce should turn frequently to the incidents of war. The very restraint of his style makes his war pictures the more impressive—adds to their potency as arguments for peace. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"[A] is Mr. Bierce at his best. Powerful, grim, pathetic, it dips deep into the well of the human soul.

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift waters twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope loosely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head, and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him, and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant, who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support"—that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest—a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot-plank which traversed it.

[A] This story is taken from "In the Midst of Life," a volume of Mr. Bierce's tales—Copyright, 1898, by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

Beyond one of the sentinels, nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle acclivity crowned with a stockade of vertical tree-trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who, when he comes announced, is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette, silence and fixity are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good—a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark-gray and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted, and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former, the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt, and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift—all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by—it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death-knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and—he knew not why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he should shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets, and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods, and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance."

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it, the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

II.

Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave-owner, and, like other slave-owners, a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One evening, while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was gone to fetch the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.

"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek Bridge, put it in order, and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains, will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."

"How far is it to the Owl Creek Bridge?" Farquhar asked.

"About thirty miles."

"Is there no force on this side the creek?"

"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge."

"Suppose a man—a civilian and student of hanging—should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"

The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow."

The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband, and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.

III.

As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened—ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness—of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!—the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface—knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought, "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrists apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!—what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water-snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang which he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draft of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek.

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—saw the very insects upon them, the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon-flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat—all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him; the captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye, and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly—with what an even, calm intonation, presaging and enforcing tranquillity in the men—with what accurately measured intervals fell those cruel words:

"Attention, company! Shoulder arms! Ready! Aim! Fire!"

Farquhar dived—dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley, and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm, and he snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream—nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.

"The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!"

An appalling splash within two yards of him, followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water, which curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me—the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round—spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forest, the now distant bridge, fort, and men—all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color—that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration which made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream—the southern bank—and behind a projecting point, which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls, and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks, and the wind made in their branches the music of eolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape, he was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars, looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood was full of noises, among which he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain, and lifting his hand to it, he found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cool air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue—he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene—perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him, with a sound like the shock of a cannon—then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek Bridge.

THE GIANT AND PYGMY OF BOOKLAND.

The extremes of bookland which meet in the British Museum are each remarkable products of the art of book-making. Difficulties would seem to attend the perusal of either of them, though of a widely different sort. Here is to be seen the largest book in the world—an atlas of the fifteenth century. It is seven feet high. When a tall man consults it, his head is hidden as he stands between its generous leaves. Its stout binding and ponderous clasps make it seem as substantial as the walls of a room.

The smallest book in the world is a tiny "Bijou Almanac"—less than an inch square, bound in dainty red morocco, and easily to be concealed in the finger of a lady's glove.

These two extremes of the printer's art might well stand at the beginning and the end of the amazing thirty-seven miles of shelves filled with books which belong to the great English library.

The Great Southwest.

By CHARLES M. HARVEY.

The Marvelous Development, Agricultural, Industrial, and Commercial, That Is
Now in Progress in the States of Texas and Arkansas and
the Adjoining Territories.

Revised from Munsey's Magazine and brought up to date by the author for The Scrap Book.

Editor's Note.—In the growth of interest in the great States west of the Mississippi River the Southwest has until lately been commonly neglected. Gold sent men rushing first to the mountain States. Then grain led them to the prairie States. With the more fertile wheat lands fully occupied, there has of late been a tendency to the Canadian Northwest. But at the same time a remarkable development, commercial and industrial, as well as agricultural, has been going on in the Southwest. The progress made in Texas during the last few years is simply astounding.

Unknown to the great mass of the people of the United States, a new empire is being planted in the Southwest. Much is written about the thousands who are crossing the Canadian frontier and settling in Manitoba, Assiniboia, and Alberta; but very little is heard about the tens of thousands from the Northwest and the Middle West, from the East and Europe, who are moving into Arkansas, Oklahoma, the Indian Territory, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

The officials of the railways running into this latter region could tell a little of this story if they wished to. Last year, from April to November, something like a million dollars was paid into the treasuries of the Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fé, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, the Iron Mountain, the Missouri Pacific, the St. Louis and San Francisco, and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railways, for fares by seekers of homes in the Southwest. About one-third of these prospectors become permanent settlers. The money put into farms, into manufacturing industries, and into business of various sorts in that region, according to the estimates of railway officials and of immigration agents, has amounted during the past twelve months to fully two hundred million dollars.

The Empire State of the Future.

Consider for a moment the State of Texas—as she was, as she is, and as she will be. Admitted to the Union in 1845, newly baptized with blood in her struggle against the Mexicans, she then contained little more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. To-day she has three and a half millions, and ranks fifth among the States, having passed Missouri since the last census. Only New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio are now ahead of her. If all these States continue to advance in population at the same rate as in recent years, she will pass Ohio before 1920, Illinois by 1930, and Pennsylvania by 1940. Before 1950 she will have outstripped New York and will be the Empire State of the Union.

In spite of her more than twenty-fold increase during the past six decades, Texas is still, comparatively speaking, a sparsely settled region. She has as yet a mere fraction of the population her generous soil could support. Remember that she is larger than France or Germany, larger than two Italys or two Great Britains. When she became a State she had two square miles of land for each of her inhabitants. She now has about thirteen people to each square mile. The State of New York has one hundred and sixty people to the square mile, and is steadily growing in population. Massachusetts has three hundred and seventy-five to the square mile, and is steadily growing. Belgium has five hundred and ninety to the square mile, and is steadily growing. England has six hundred and twenty-five to the square mile, and is steadily growing. If the present ratio of increase continues, think of the incalculable growth that the coming years will bring to the great Southwestern State!

If Texas were peopled as densely as New York State, she would have forty-two million inhabitants—more than ten times what she has. Settled as closely as Massachusetts, she would have one hundred millions; as closely as England, one hundred and sixty-six millions. This American State is destined to rank with the powers of the world.

Remarkable as was the showing that Texas made at the last census, other portions of the Southwest could point to a still more phenomenal gain. While the population of the Lone Star State advanced thirty-six per cent between 1890 and 1900, that of Arizona rose one hundred and five per cent, that of the Indian Territory one hundred and seventeen per cent, and that of Oklahoma no less than five hundred and forty-four per cent in the ten years.

Texas Now Leads in Railways.

From 1870 till 1904 Illinois had a larger number of miles of railway than any other State. In 1904 Texas passed Illinois. On March 1, 1906, the great Southwestern State had approximately twelve thousand miles of main railway track, or over two hundred miles in excess of Illinois. Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, and New York, in this order, stand below Illinois in railway mileage, New York's total at the same date being a little short of nine thousand miles.

In recent years, about half of the country's entire new railway mileage has been built in the Southwest. The increase of mileage between 1897 and the end of 1903 was twelve and a half per cent for the United States. It was ten per cent in the Middle States, seven per cent in the Rocky Mountain region and on the Pacific Slope, and three per cent in Ohio and Indiana. It was twenty-seven per cent in the section comprising Arkansas, Oklahoma, the Indian Territory, Texas, and New Mexico. There could scarcely be a more significant index of advancing wealth, population, and industry.

The Land of Corn and Cotton.

The Southwest at this moment is enjoying a prosperity unexampled in its annals. Last year's yield of corn, wheat, and cotton proved better than was expected early in the season, the corn crop being particularly good. Land values have doubled in much of this region during the past five years; though prices are still so much below those prevailing in Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana that the inrush from those States continues to be large.

Traveling salesmen report better business in Oklahoma, Texas, and their neighbors than in any other part of the West. More visitors came to the St. Louis Exposition from the Southwestern States and Territories than from any other part of the country, in proportion to population—which was a good test of that region's financial condition.

Before the Civil War, when the South was proclaiming cotton to be king, cotton's realm was in the Atlantic seaboard States. But Texas now produces nearly a third of the country's entire crop. Her recent average has been about three million bales; last year the yield was a little less than that. The Indian Territory and Oklahoma are beginning to figure prominently in cotton production. Cotton accounts for much of the prosperity of the Southwest. More and more the farmers of that region are raising other crops for a living, and using the proceeds of their cotton-fields as a surplus fund.

What Statehood Will Mean.