THE SCRAP BOOK.

June,—BUNKER HILL—June,
1775. 1843.

Peroration of the Address Delivered by Daniel Webster,
June 17, 1843, at the Dedication of the
Monument That Now Marks the Scene of
the Famous Revolutionary Struggle.

We have indulged in gratifying recollections of the past, in the prosperity and pleasures of the present, and in high hopes for the future. But let us remember that we have duties and obligations to perform, corresponding to the blessings which we enjoy. Let us remember the trust, the sacred trust, attaching to the rich inheritance which we have received from our fathers. Let us feel our personal responsibility, to the full extent of our power and influence, for the preservation of the principles of civil and religious liberty. And let us remember that it is only religion, and morals, and knowledge, that can make men respectable and happy under any form of government. Let us hold fast the great truth that communities are responsible as well as individuals; that no government is respectable which is not just; that without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor—no mere forms of government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society. In our day and generation let us seek to raise and improve the moral sentiment, so that we may look, not for a degraded, but for an elevated and improved future. And when both we and our children shall have been consigned to the house appointed for all living, may love of country—and pride of country—glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our blood shall have descended! And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is concerned—there shall rise, from every youthful breast, the ejaculation—"Thank God, I—I also—am an American!"

The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While.

Praise and Blame for American Women From Dr. Emil Reich—Earl Grey and Secretary Root Discuss the Relations of Canada and the United States—William J. Bryan Defines the Limits of Socialism—Rabbi Schulman Explains Certain Prejudices Against the Jews—William T. Jerome, Senator Lodge, and Norman Hapgood Criticize or Defend the Noble Army of Muck-Rakers—With Other Interesting Expressions of Opinion on Current Issues of the Day.

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

FEMININE RULE MAY DOOM OUR COUNTRY.

American Women Are Like the Spartans
in Their Desire to Dominate the
American Man.

Dr. Emil Reich has been lecturing to fashionable London on such universally fascinating themes as woman and love. According to the news despatches, so great has been the popularity of his talks that there have not been seats enough to accommodate his titled hearers, and at one lecture the Duchess of Portland sat on the floor. He has said of "Love and Personality":

Personality is always a mystery with its antithetically mingled elements in man and woman. Women have loved wrongly and known it, were perfectly aware of it—they only know also that they were helpless to avoid it; the desire of their lives has been gratified, something has happened.

What was there about George Sand, save perhaps pretty good eyes, to send such men as Alfred de Musset and Friedrich Chopin absolutely crazy? Nothing interesting about her—even her unattractiveness enhanced by her constant smoking. Yet she could inspire the "Prelude," which Chopin composed on seeing her approach in a garden in Minorca—the greatest piece of music ever compressed into a single page.

Goethe's Gretchen, the little bourgeoise, without apparent attractiveness, yet inspiring his mighty genius—what is this mystery of man and woman? The beauty of nations differs very much. The Latins are less beautiful than the Anglo-Saxons. The angularity of the North German woman is notorious; an uncharming person. Why? It has nothing whatever to do with race. The growth of the Hanseatic cities brought great wealth in North Germany; money-bags married money-bags; the result was a people of severely plain aspect. There are not many money-bags in America, although there are many money-bags in the hands of a few.

American Men Marry for Love.

The American is insulted if mention of dowry is made in his wedding arrangements. He marries because he loves the woman and she him. Hence, the American people have become exceedingly beautiful. Then the facilities for divorce presented in the United States are an important factor in the beautification process. Love is really at the bottom of it all—not money-bags or race, but love.

The French are always talking about l'amour, l'amour; but really there is no amour there at all—people generally talk most about what they haven't got or don't know. Yes, indeed, so rare is l'amour in France that it accounts for the decline in facial beauty of the French woman—not in movement, for in movement she excels the world, but in face. Rome and Greece were ruined by treating marriage as a matter of business.

Complementary to Dr. Reich's praise of the American woman's beauty is his criticism of her love of domination. In that characteristic he reads the doom of America. We quote his reasons from the New York American:

Nations differ in nothing so much as in their women. The French, English, or American woman is easily distinguishable. The American woman is totally different from the English woman. So is the French woman, though the difference in this case is not so intense; so is the German woman; so is the woman of Italy. The American woman, while differing from all her European sisters of to-day, bears a marked resemblance to the woman of ancient Sparta. The Spartans resembled the present-day Americans; the Athenians were like the English.

I do not blame, I do not praise; I only say, and I say emphatically, that the American woman is not womanly; she is not a woman. The whole of the United States is under petticoat government, and man is practically non-existent.

In America, woman commands man. Man does not count there. The last man that came to America was Christopher Columbus. To-day, man has no existence; he does not talk in the drawing-room, but is a dummy. The woman lives one life, the man another, and they are totally distinct from each other.

The Best Complexion in the World.

She is as new as a man born to-day is new; she is made up of restlessness and fidgetiness long before she is twenty-five. But she is very beautiful; she has the best complexion in the world—better than that of any European woman. She is also well built and handsome. You see fine specimens of the American woman in Kentucky and Massachusetts.

A few miles distant from the Athens of old—what would be but a short railway journey in these days—lay Sparta. The Spartans were imperialists, and they wanted to conquer the whole of Greece. The Spartan woman, as I have remarked, was like the American woman of to-day. She never dreamed of lovers; her idea was nothing less than conquering man; she never thought of him as more than a fellow athlete.

The Spartan Woman Ruined Sparta.

There was no womanhood in them, no more than in so many sticks. The Athenians said that they were very fine, but there was nothing feminine about them. They were far richer, too, than the men, for the men went to the wars and died, and the women thus became rich. Aristotle said that the Spartan woman was sure to ruin Sparta very quickly. And so she did, for we find Sparta trying to rule Greece in the fourth century b.c.; in the third century she was sinking; in the second century she had ceased to exist.

Modern British men and women, what are they? That is what I want to bring out. A nation can never survive with women of the Spartan type, which, as I have told you, is the American woman of to-day. The Romans were the same, and they ruined their empire. They had one idea, an all-absorbing idea which killed all ideas of religion, of art, of everything—the idea of empire. They spent their entire life in that one absorbing pursuit—domination; in such a country woman has no place.

GROWING EMPIRE AT OUR NORTH.

Development of New National Spirit in
the Dominion Discussed by Earl
Grey and Secretary Root.

Canada has been making tremendous strides in the last few years. The opening up of the vast untilled grain lands of the Northwest has been followed by an influx of new blood from other countries, and particularly from the United States. Throughout the Dominion energy is dictating to enterprise. In all the provinces there are stirrings of a new national spirit.

Relations between Canada and the United States are certain to assume a different character in view of the changing local conditions. The future before Canada is so great in its promise that any pronouncement by high authorities as to her newer feelings is at present very important. Such pronouncement was made at the dinner given in New York by the Pilgrims of the United States to Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada. The earl and Mr. Root, our Secretary of State, made significant speeches.

Said Earl Grey:

Any idea of the possible annexation of Canada by the United States is scouted by us as an impossibility as great as you would regard the annexation of the United States by Canada.

And now, gentlemen, may I say the more we see of Americans the better we shall be pleased. All we want is to know each other better than we do, and to help each other as much as we can. If Canada can at any time help the United States in any direction which will improve the conditions of life for your people, she will consider it a blessed privilege to be allowed to render that assistance; and I feel sure that the people of the United States will also be only too glad to assist us in our struggle toward the realization of high ideals and toward the attainment of a national character distinguished by the fulness with which the principles of fair play, freedom, and duty shall be applied by the people of Canada to the various occupations of their lives.

There are several questions outstanding between the Dominion of Canada and the United States which have been left open too long, and which call for settlement.

Both governments desire to take advantage of the opportunity which the present feeling of amity between the two countries affords, and I am persuaded that the people on both sides of the frontier will be glad when their respective governments have given effect to their desires.

Secretary Root denied the rumor that at this banquet any sensational or unexpected announcement would be made, declaring that all existing questions between Canada and the United States had been settled. "I wish," he said, "it was so." But he pointed out the attitude that must be adopted to facilitate the settlement of disputes—an attitude considerate and just.

Of the changed conditions in Canada he said:

I think the American people recognize the fact that much has taken place on the other side of the border—much which materially affects the theoretical, assumed, or supposed relations between the United States and Canada.

It was with apparent doubt that the American people read the treaty of the eighteenth century, whether Canada was to become a part of the United States, and in 1812, the British governor-general of Canada wrote that a majority of his people were rather in favor of the Americans than the English.

We must recognize that a great change has taken place. Canada is no longer the outlying country that it once was, when a few remnants of French descendants were left upon its borders to subsist upon precarious livelihoods. It has become a great community with increasing population and wealth.

In her relations with England one can see that, while she is loyal to her mother country, as she has attained maturity she has contracted a personality of her own. Her relations to us have become of great importance. With enormous natural wealth, and with vigor and energy, she is protecting her industries, as we are protecting ours.

Her people are proud of their country, as we are proud of ours, and we appreciate that from what was a little dominion upon our borders there has grown a great and powerful nation. And the people of America look with no grudging or jealous eye upon her development.

HOW MUCH SOCIALISM DO OUR PEOPLE WANT?

Bryan Suggests that "Individualism"
Best Defines Limit to Be Set
on Socialistic Tendencies.

A tendency toward factional alignment at present characterizes the radical movement which has been sweeping over the country. The different elements of that movement are beginning to offer their individual claims for recognition. At this juncture William Jennings Bryan contributes to the Century an important article on "Individualism versus Socialism," in which he seeks to dispel the fogs which have enveloped the economic situation. First, he defines the two terms opposed in his title:

For the purpose of this discussion individualism will be defined as the private ownership of the means of production and distribution where competition is possible, leaving to public ownership those means of production and distribution in which competition is practically impossible; and socialism will be defined as the collective ownership, through the state, of all the means of production and distribution.

Mr. Bryan points out that much of the strength shown by socialism is due to the fact that "socialists advocate certain reforms which individualists also advocate."

Take, for illustration, the public ownership of water-works; it is safe to say that a large majority of the people living in cities of any considerable size favor their public ownership—individualists because it is practically impossible to have more than one water system in a city, and socialists on the general ground that the government should own all the means of production and distribution. Then, too, some of the strength of socialism is due to its condemnation of abuses which, while existing under individualism, are not at all necessary to individualism—abuses which the individualists are as anxious as the socialists to remedy. It is not only consistent with individualism, but is a necessary implication of it, that the competing parties should be placed upon substantially equal footing; for competition is not worthy of that name if one party is able arbitrarily to fix the terms of the agreement, leaving the other with no choice but to submit.

The civil service, says Mr. Bryan, is our nearest approach to ideal socialism. Does it afford a stimulus to the higher development of the civil servants?

Justice requires that each individual shall receive from society a reward proportionate to his contribution to society. Can the state, acting through officials, make this apportionment better than it can be made by competition? At present official favors are not distributed strictly according to merit, either in republics or in monarchies; it is certain that socialism would insure a fairer division of rewards? If the government operates all the factories, all the farms, and all the stores, there must be superintendents as well as workmen; there must be different kinds of employment, some more pleasant, some less pleasant. Is it likely that any set of men can distribute the work or fix the compensation to the satisfaction of all?

At present private monopoly is putting upon individualism an undeserved odium, and it behooves the individualist to address himself energetically to this problem in order that the advantages of competition may be restored to industry. And the duty of immediate action is made more imperative by the fact that the socialist is inclined to support the monopoly, in the belief that it will be easier to induce the government to take over an industry after it has passed into the hands of a few men.

In the substance of his opinion Mr. Bryan's "individualism" does not seem to be very far removed from Fabian socialism—or at least not from such socialism as is expressed, say, by Robert Hunter, who said not long ago, while speaking about the problems of poverty:

I have been asked if I think socialism is the cure for these evils. As we do not know what state socialism would bring about, we cannot say. But I am sure that certain socialistic measures are necessary. We need municipal tenements, as they have in Liverpool, Birmingham, and London, where the children will have healthful surroundings, plenty of places to play, and there are no landlords to exact profits.

Other places have nationalized the coal fields, and the poor get coal at cost. At Rochester, in England, the death-rate has been cut down one-half by the municipalization of the milk-supply, and the children of the poor, instead of the pale-blue poison they used to have, get a fine, healthful food. These are socialistic measures, and every advance we make is toward socialism.

FALSE SYMPATHY WITH CRIMINALS.

That Sham Humanitarianism Has Become
a Stench Is the Declaration
of a Leading Humanitarian.

Andrew D. White, ex-president of Cornell University, ex-ambassador to Germany—scholar, publicist, humanitarian—said wholesome words to the Cornell students a few weeks ago on the problem of "High Crime in the United States." The basis of his address was the fact that more murders are committed every year in the United States than in any other country. His attitude in regard to lynch-law is rather startling:

The number of homicides that are punished by lynching exceeds the number punished by due process of law. There is nothing more nonsensical or ridiculous than the goody-goody talk about lynching. Much may be said in favor of Goldwin Smith's quotation, "that there are communities in which lynch-law is better than any other."

From this he proceeded to decry over-wrought sentiment in favor of criminals:

Germs of maudlin sentimentality are widespread. On every hand we hear slimy, mushy, gushy expressions of sympathy, the criminal called "plucky," "nervy," "fighting against fearful odds for his life."

It is said that society has no right to put murderers to death. In my opinion, society must fall back on the law of self-preservation. It should cut through and make war, in my opinion, for its life. Life imprisonment is not possible, because there is no life imprisonment.

In the next year nine thousand people will be murdered. As I stand here to-day I tell you that nine thousand are doomed to death with all the cruelty of the criminal heart, and with no regard for home and families, and two-thirds of those murders will be due to the maudlin sentiment sometimes called mercy.

I have no sympathy for the criminal. My sympathy is for those who will be murdered, for their families and for their children.

This sham humanitarianism has become a stench. The cry now is for righteousness. The past generation has abolished human slavery. It is for the present to deal with the problems of the future and among them this problem of crime. Young men, like Jerome, like Folk and Hughes, resolve never to be servants of criminals, but to do your best to punish crime as it should be punished.

OLD MALIGNMENTS OF THE CHOSEN PEOPLE.

The Long-Existent Prejudice Against the
Jew Is Explained by a Leading
Rabbi of New York.

No other race has been so vilified as the Jew. Hatred for Hebrews has been endemic in Europe since the Dark Ages, and even to-day in France and Germany the anti-Semitic movements have considerable strength. How can this be? Is the feeling a survival of anger at a race which rejected Jesus? Or is it based on desperate hostility toward a race which can succeed in business where a Gentile fails?

The Rev. Dr. S. Schulman, of the Temple Beth-El, New York City, in a recent sermon sought to answer these questions. Part of his discourse we quote:

We are the victims of the world's literature, of its prevailing creed, and the popular judgment. The greatest master in the world's literature, seeking a type that on account of peculiar conditions and circumstances could stand for cruel hatred and implacable revenge, deliberately changed the contents of a story and made Shylock the Jew the embodiment of inhuman revenge.

The poet must have felt that if ever in a human soul there could arise such unyielding hate as he desired to portray it might, in a sense, be justified in one whose heart rankled with the memories of ages of persecution and unjust hatred to which his race had been subjected.

Here was one, the poet seemed to say, who could well execute the villainies he had been taught. He therefore produced a character dramatically consistent, but at the same time he did an everlasting injury to the Jew, because he produced a character altogether historically untrue. The Jew is anything but vindictive; he forgets injuries readily; that is why he is so optimistic; he has a horror of shedding blood, and whatever vices the Jew may be capable of, the one of ferocious cruelty cannot be saddled upon him.

Nevertheless, the word Shylock has become in English speech synonymous with everything that is bad. This injustice in literature will persist until some great genius possessing the broad-mindedness of a Lessing and the dramatic power of a Shakespeare shall arise among English-speaking people and create an English Nathan the Wise.

The Western world's creed centers in an event which, strictly speaking, belongs to the same category as that of the killing of Socrates, the burning of Giordano Bruno, and of Servetus. Thus, classic Greek, Catholic, and Protestant were all equally guilty of sacrificing the best of their time. The progress of mankind has, sad to say, often been purchased by the martyrdom of some of the noblest men that walked on earth.

Yet it is the Jewish people that have been singled out to be held up to the world as Deicides, and every child at the time when the soul is most receptive is inoculated with an antipathy against every living Jew because of an event that took place nineteen hundred years ago.

It is therefore no wonder that the world is prejudiced against the Jew.

MANDATES OF ART TO HER VOTARIES.

A Great Word-Artist Shows That Under
the Levity of Bohemian Life Is a Serious
and Lofty Philosophy.

The late Lafcadio Hearn was one of the great prose-poets of the time. The glimpse into his intimate mind which the Critic affords by printing a sheaf of his letters to H.E. Krehbiel, the music critic, will be appreciated by all who followed his literary wanderings up to the time of his settlement in Japan. The letters were written many years ago, when Hearn was still in his early prime. When he learned of the death of Mr. Krehbiel's child he wrote this exquisite expression of sympathy:

Your letter rises before me as I write like a tablet of white stone bearing a dead name. I see you standing beside me. I look into your eyes and press your hand and say nothing.

Hearn was ever an artist, and he ever knew what art meant. In advising his friend to break away from the exhausting routine of daily journalism, he gave a typical expression of his philosophy of life:

Under the levity of Henri Mürger's picturesque Bohemianism there is a serious philosophy apparent which elevates the characters of his romance to heroism. They followed one principle faithfully—so faithfully that only the strong survived the ordeal—never to abandon the pursuit of an artistic vocation for any other occupation, however lucrative; not even when she remained apparently deaf and blind to her worshipers.

The conditions pictured by Mürger have passed away in Paris as elsewhere; the old barriers to ambition have been broken down. But I think the moral remains.

So long as one can live and pursue his natural vocation in art, it is a duty with him never to abandon it if he believes that he has within him the elements of final success. Every time he labors at aught that is not of art he robs the divinity of what belongs to her.

Do you never reflect that within a few years you will no longer be the young man—and that, like Vesta's fires, the enthusiasm of youth for an art-idea must be well fed with the sacred branches to keep it from dying out?

I think you ought really to devote all your time and energies and ability to the cultivation of one subject, so as to make that subject alone repay you for all your pains.

And I do not believe that art is altogether ungrateful in these days; she will repay fidelity to her, and recompense sacrifices. I don't think you have any more right to play reporter than a great sculptor to model fifty-cent plaster figures of idiotic saints for Catholic processions, or certain painters to letter steamboats at so much a letter. In one sense, too, art is exacting. To acquire real eminence in any one branch of any art, one must study nothing else for a lifetime. A very wide general knowledge may be acquired only at the expense of depth.

PURSUIT OF A HUSBAND BY THE MODERN WOMAN.

After All, Says the New York "Times,"
It Is Doubtless Better for Man to Be
Chosen Than for Him to Choose.

Taking up a discussion inaugurated by the St. James Gazette, of London, the New York Times says what it has to say on the subject of choosing wives.

The English paper said frankly that the title would better be "The Choice of a Husband," inasmuch as the male, though unaware of the fact, is generally not the pursuer, but the pursued. This condition, however, is by no means to the discredit of woman.

As the Times remarks, "A young woman whose intentions are both serious and honorable has nothing at all to be ashamed of in endeavoring by all womanly means to acquire the man whom she believes she can make happy and knows that she means to try to."

In America and England there is objection to the man who marries for any other reason than being in love. Yet the mariage de convenance is not altogether without legitimate recommendations. To quote the Times:

If one is really bent on making a marriage of reason instead of waiting for a "call," excellent recipes may be given him.

A wise man once advised his son, who had shown some disposition to choose instead of waiting to be chosen, to "look for a good woman's daughter." It would be hard to find any better basis for a happy union.

In general, of course, mixed marriages, whether the mixture be of religion or of country, would be viewed by a wise adviser with apprehension, although Lord Curzon's experience is only one of very many as to the possible happiness of marriages between persons of different nationalities, much more alike as are the nationalities of Lord and Lady Curzon than any other two nationalities.

Dr. Johnson's famous saying that marriages would be happier if they were arranged by the Lord Chancellor, due regard being paid to the ages and conditions of the parties, has never been accepted as a working rule in his own country. In France, again, there is the wholly "reasonable" and extremely circumspect Count Boni Castellane, whose marriage of reason has so lately been shown to be so far from a success.

There are quite enough more failures of the same kind to offset the unhappy marriages of romance. It is of these, of course, that Burton declares that matches are made in heaven, though matches of the sulfurous kind, of which all of us know some instances, suggest a very different place of manufacture.

The Marriage of Reason.

Swift's saying that the reason why so few marriages are happy is that "young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages," is doubly outrageous. In the first place, it is an outrageous begging of the question. The testimony of less cynical observers in our day and country is that most marriages are entitled to be called happy.

In the second place, it outrageously puts the whole blame for unhappy marriages on the female partner, contrary alike to probability and to fact. But at least as many of the marriages are failures in which men "choose" their wives, or think they do, as in cases in which men become the prey of their own imaginations.

And there is this to be said from the point of view of reason in favor of marriages with which reason has nothing to do. In the first months of married life there are necessarily very many differences to be adjusted and small incompatibilities of ways of thinking and feeling to be reconciled. That, as all experienced spouses know, is the trying period.

Marriage is like life in that it is a school wherein whoso does not learn must suffer. Now, to diminish the friction of this trying time no better lubricant could possibly be provided than the romantic love, which cannot be expected to last forever, but which may very probably outlast this greatest necessity for it of the early connubial period.

When the glamour of the romance "fades into the light of common day," and a real man and a real woman take the places of the creatures of each other's fancy, and passion cools into at best the tenderest of friendships, both parties are better off, and will acknowledge themselves to be better off because the romance has been.

EVERY MAN MASTER OF HIS OWN STOMACH.

Instinct Best Determines What You
Should Eat, So Eat What Your
Normal Instinct Tells You To.

In that series of compromises which we call life there is no compromise more perplexing than the compromise with the stomach. No problem requires more earnest thought than the food problem. It is the stomach that makes men work. There would be no produce exchange were it not for the stomach—no yellow fields of wheat and corn, no grazing herds of cattle, no fleets of white-sailed fishing-vessels. Clothing and shelter are secondary demands. The stomach is master; and, as is ever likely to be the case with autocrats, it is selfish—wherefore we humor it—we hold out crutches to it—we offer it tempting inducements to be lenient with us.

A sense of relief, therefore, is produced by reading Dr. Woods Hutchinson's article, "Some Diet Delusions," in the April McClure's; for therein is advanced the doctrine of "intelligent omnivorousness." Says Dr. Hutchinson:

Every imaginable experiment upon what would and what would not support life must have been tried thousands of years ago, and yet our most striking proofs of how highly men value their "precious right of private haziness," as George Eliot shrewdly terms it, are to be found in the realm of dietetics. The "light that never was on sea or land" still survives for the most matter-of-fact of us in the memory of "the pies that mother used to make," and nowhere else do we find preferences so widely accepted as evidence, and prejudices as matters of fact, as in this arena. In fact, if we were merely to listen to what is said, and still more to read what is printed, we would come to the conclusion that the human race had established absolutely nothing beyond possibility of dispute in this realm.

When the Doctors Disagree.

Every would-be diet-reformer, and we doctors are almost as bad as any of them, is absolutely certain that what nine-tenths of humanity find to be their food is a deadly poison. One philosopher is sure that animal food of every description, especially the kind that involves the shedding of blood, is not only absolutely unfit for human food, but is the cause of half the suffering and wickedness in the world. Another gravely declares that the only thing which, above all things, is injurious is salt. Another takes up his parable against pork. Still another is convinced that half the misery of the world is due to the use of spices; and one dietetic Rousseau proclaims a return to very first principles by the abolition of cooking.

Another attacks the harmless and blushing tomato, and lays at its door the modern increase of cancer, insanity, and a hundred kindred evils; while Mrs. Rohrer has gently but firmly to be restrained whenever she hears the mild-eyed potato mentioned.

There is almost an equally astonishing Babel when one comes to listen to the various opinions as to the amount of food required. Eighteen grave and reverend doctors assure us that overeating is the prevalent dietetic sin of the century, while the remainder of the two dozen are equally positive that the vast majority of their patients are underfed. One man preaches the gospel of dignified simplicity on one meal a day and one clean collar a week, while the lean and learned Fletcher declares that if we only keep on masticating our one mouthful of food long enough we shall delude the stomach into magnifying it into ten, and can dine sumptuously on a menu-card and a biscuit.

Fortunately, when it comes to practise, philosophers, reformers, and doctors alike have about as much influence here as they have over conduct in other realms—and that is next to none at all. The man in the street follows his God-given instincts and plods peacefully along to his three square meals a day, consisting of anything he can find in the market, and just as much of it as he can afford, with special preference for rich meats, fats, and sugars.

Instinct Far Superior to Reason.

Here, as everywhere, instinct is far superior to reason, and a breakfast diet of sausage and buckwheat cakes with maple syrup and strong coffee has carried the white man half around the world; while one of salads and cereals, washed down with a post-prandial subterfuge, would leave him stranded, gasping, in the first ditch he came to.

All the basal problems of dietetics were, by the mercy of Heaven, settled long ago in the farmhouse kitchen, in the commissary department of the army in the field, in the cook's galley amidships, and in the laboratory.

There is little more room for difference of opinion upon them than there is about the coaling of engines. Simply a matter of size of boiler and fire-box, the difference in heating power and ash between Welsh and Australian, and the amount of work to be got out of the machine, multiplied by the time in which it is to be accomplished.

Dr. Hutchinson proceeds to give reasons why spices do not heat the blood, why pork is a most excellent food, why fish is no better for the brain than other things, why vegetarianism is a mistake, and so on. His principal caution is not to eat in a hurry; his principal advice is, virtually, to eat whatever seems to agree with you.

All of which brings to mind the story of the old dyspeptic who, after a long term of misery, one day apostrophized his stomach thus:

"I have humored you for many years. I have coaxed you, coddled you, petted you. I have gone hungry to please you. I have swallowed bad-tasting medicines on your account. I have been your servant—but now I am through. From this time I will eat what I please and drink what I please. If you protest, I shall ignore you. Hereafter you are the servant, I am the master. Now make the best of that!"

This brave man's stomach, we are told, was so thoroughly cowed by the words that it never again demanded a milk diet.

THE EXPOSURE OF EXPOSURE.

Things That Are Being Said About the
"Journalism of Conscience" by Critics,
Passionate and Dispassionate.

When fire is discovered in a house it sometimes happens that the tenants, in their excitement, hurl fragile bric-à-brac from the windows and with much effort carry the feather beds down-stairs and out to safety. Suppose that the incongruity of such action suddenly becomes apparent. The alarmed tenants may reverse the process. Better still, they may endeavor to put out the fire. But to cease all effort because they stand convicted of excited folly would be absurd.

The inevitable reaction from recent wild exposures in finance and politics has lately shown itself. Prominent men and leading journals have convicted the "yellow" newspapers and magazines, and the people influenced by them, of excited folly. Senator Lodge has said in the Senate, concerning sensational contributors to the magazines:

Writers of that type come and go. They seize upon the excitement of the moment and presently rise like a flock of shore birds and whirl away to another spot where they think they can find a fresh feeding ground. These modern imitators of Titus Oates will pass away as he passed away. They will bring no innocent heads to the block as he did, although they may here and there cause distress. They will not end in the pillory as he did, because the pillory has been abolished, but they will go out of fashion just as he did into silence and contempt.

District Attorney William T. Jerome, speaking at a banquet in New York, referred to magazine articles which have described the Senate as treasonable.

Treason is an ugly word. It is punishable by death. We have got so used to superlatives that our own racy tongue has become debauched and we have no superlatives left. The Senate of the United States—is it a treasonable body? A body that holds a man like Murray Crane, of Massachusetts? Because some men are there who ought not to be there—some who bought the position—shall we say that the governors of our body politic are guilty of treason? Base men are there, but when in the bright, breezy sentiments of modern newspaper life you assert there is treason, you either lie or misconceive the meaning of the English language.

On the other side, Norman Hapgood says, in Collier's:

Who is doing most to make railroad and beef trust facts and problems understood? Who but the same magazine which has printed the history of Standard Oil and explained to the people the needed changes in State and city government. What a farce to speak of McClure's Magazine as yellow; what a dull, injurious farce, unless by yellow we mean every movement of benefit to our kind! Did Mr. Steffens's printing of the news about Philadelphia do any harm to the inhabitants of that town? Did it, or did it not, act as a battle-cry which spurred the good citizens and the newspapers of that town to action? When original, living, and conscientious journalism speaks, the routine newspapers are sometimes forced to echo bold words which receive the public's approving seal.

So the balance of expressed opinion on the subject shifts up and down. In all the confusion we sometimes hear an opinion like that, uttered by Herbert S. Hadley, attorney-general of Missouri:

There is no reason to question the efficacy of existing laws so long as they are supported by public sentiment, for law is, in fact, merely the reflection of the moral sense of the country. What I mean by that statement may be illustrated by the fact that while a vast majority of lawyers, as well as laymen, will to-day agree that corporations are amenable to laws from which an individual might be exempt, the same proposition would have met with violent refutation hardly more than two years ago by most lawyers and many laymen.

But the public is now practically agreed, and the courts have sustained this view, that corporations are not above the laws of the State which made their existence possible. An officer of a company may to-day refuse to answer questions on the ground that he would himself be incriminated by replying, but he cannot refuse to answer on the ground that his company would be incriminated. In other words, corporations are no longer considered to have the same rights as individuals and cannot evade investigation and prosecution by maintaining a policy of silence.

Such is the moral sense of the country and such is the law as determined by the highest courts, and with such a condition of public sentiment and law it is no longer possible for public officials to plead that they cannot get at the facts whenever there is a suspicion that any corporation has failed to comply with the laws of the State which created it.

LEGITIMATE SCOPE OF DRAMATIC ART.

Waxworks May Deceive for a Moment,
But They Do Not Leave the Lasting
Impression of Michelangelo's Moses.

Otis Skinner, the actor, recently made a plea for the teaching of dramatic art in our public schools and colleges. In that way, he urged, public taste can be improved to the point where a better quality of plays and acting will be required to fill the theaters. He was speaking before the Ethical Culture Society, in New York. In beginning he explained at some length what he considered art, drawing his distinctions very carefully:

The purpose of the play is to hold a mirror up to nature, although such things as horror, meanness, lust, or crime must not be shown for their sake alone, merely to display accurate dramatic photographs. They must be utilized toward a definite end. The stage has many detractors, and among them are the ones that say the stage does not represent real life always. Nor should it. I will give you a definition of art which I got from Dr. Adler. It explains what I mean: "Art is the pattern, and not so many ells cut from the fabric of life."

Some years ago in London I went to Mme. Tussaud's waxworks. Curious to identify the figures, I turned to a lady and asked her where I might obtain a program. There was no answer. I became embarrassed and a little angry when I saw I was the subject of amusement for the crowd. I looked closer. The lady was made of wax. Well, I don't remember how she looked, but I do remember every line of the beauties of the Venus of Milo, which I saw in the Louvre, and of Michelangelo's Moses. I did not consider them figures or real persons, yet they live with me.

The charge that the theater gives too much attention to vice was discussed by Mr. Skinner. When used on the stage to heighten the dramatic effect, the simulation of drunkenness, he said, is ethically right. "Mrs. Warren's Profession," he declared flatly, was quite properly suppressed, since there was no reason for it except the exhibition of vice. False and namby-pamby melodrama, on the other hand, is fully as detrimental to dramatic art.

He outlined the plot of a play in which a poor young man, after rescuing the daughter of a multimillionaire by a feat of virtually impossible agility and strength, is promptly provided for by the thankful parent, and marries the girl.

The story, as he told it, was glaringly untrue to life—wherefore he denounced it as immoral. It represented the extreme of romantic falsity, just as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" represented the extreme of disgustingly literal reality.

In art no extreme is acceptable—a lesson which the Greeks, with their supreme intuition of artistic fitness, taught the world once and for all.

WOMAN HAS ALWAYS EARNED HER LIVING.

The New York "Sun" Disposes of the
Old Notion That She is the Mere
"Beneficiary of Man."

The Rev. John L. Scudder, of Jersey City, recently preached a sermon on the subject, "Business Women—Do They Reduce the Number of Marriages, and Do They Make Good Wives?" He said, among other things, that if the business woman marries, she marries "as an equal and not as a dependent"; that, therefore, we must expect fewer marriages in proportion to the population. But he added:

The business woman of to-day refuses to be a moon revolving around a masculine earth—she will be a twin star or nothing. I believe her industrial training will make her a better wife, for she will know the value of a dollar and be able to sympathize with her husband in his daily toil.

She will apply business methods to domestic economy. Should her husband attempt to maltreat her, she has courage enough to separate from him and return to self-support. What she has done once she can do again. Being fearless and decided, she will be respected and well treated. The broader outlook she has acquired in the business world will make her a superior wife and a more capable mother.

The era of feminine imbecility and cowardice is passing away, and in its place we see about us a new age of well-rounded, exalted womanhood.

An Equal Partnership.

The New York Sun does not agree with Mr. Scudder. In the course of an editorial on the subject it says:

It may be remarked that nobody who enters into a partnership of any sort can expect to retain absolute personal freedom. The rule is equally true in business and marriage. The attempt to exercise absolute personal freedom by one or both partners is pretty sure to result in disaster to any enterprise of any description.

But this is not the main point. Mr. Scudder's most serious fallacy lies in the notion that in any healthy marriage relation the woman is non-self-supporting and the mere "beneficiary of man." The proposition is as absurd as it would be to say that the member of a law firm who pleads in the courts is a mere tender, a mere appendage, a mere beneficiary of the gentleman who sits in the office, sees the clients, and collects the bills, or that the expert engineer at the head of a steel plant is a mere tender to the man who manages the finances of the concern.

Nobody earns his or her livelihood more honorably or more directly than the wife and mother of a family who does her duty. She is her husband's business partner in a phase of his life which is at least as vital to his interests as the outside one by which he makes his money under the eye of the world. If the couple are partners in a poor and struggling concern, the wife contributes as much to the general success by the work of her hands as the man does by his; if they are more fortunate, and prosperous, the woman's busy brain contriving and ruling in the household is earning by earnest, eager, expert, and honorable exertion as good a livelihood as the husband is able to provide her with.

The law holds good in the realms of wealth and luxury. The woman who creates and maintains an eminent social position for her family is likely to be her husband's most important ally, and her share of all the benefits that they enjoy in common is not a mere gratuity; it does not come to her from her husband's bounty; it is her compensation for the services she does in advancing the interests of the alliance.

OUR OPPORTUNITY TO EDUCATE CHINA.

Great Possibilities Lie Ahead for Us if
We Take the Lead in Teaching the
Chinese Western Ways.

Dr. Edmund J. James, president of the University of Illinois, favors the appointment of an educational commission for the study of the social, intellectual, and industrial situation in China. The reasons for his suggestion are contained in a memorandum which he recently submitted to President Roosevelt, and may be briefly stated as follows:

A great service would be done to both countries if the government of the United States would at the present juncture send an educational commission to China, whose chief function should be to visit the imperial government, and, with its consent, each of the provincial governments of the empire, for the purpose of extending through the authorities of these provinces to the young Chinese who may desire to go abroad to study a formal invitation on the part of our American institutions of learning to avail themselves of the facilities of such institutions.

China is upon the verge of a revolution. Every great nation of the world will inevitably be drawn into more or less intimate relations with this gigantic development. It is for them to determine, each for itself, what these relations shall be—whether those of amity and friendship and kindness or those of brute force and the mailed fist. The United States ought not to hesitate as to its choice in this matter.

The nation which succeeds in educating the young Chinese of the present generation will be the nation which, for a given expenditure of effort, will reap the largest possible returns in moral, intellectual, and commercial influence.

LAST WORDS OF FAMOUS MEN.

When a man is in the full flower of health and intellectual activity, his utterances, either guarded or careless, usually are more or less tinctured by his social environments—environments that are rather more artificial than natural. But when the shadow of death falls upon him, and earthly vanities crowd out of the chamber that is marked as the vestibule of his tomb, the language he speaks is that of the man himself—one who realizes that he is nearer eternal truth than human pretense. For this reason the last words he speaks on earth are more significant of his true character than any he has spoken before. No better proof of this fact may be adduced than is to be found in the following collection of sentences uttered by dying men:

Adams, John (1735-1826), American statesman: "Jefferson survives."

Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848), American statesman: "This is the last of earth! I am content!"

Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827), German composer: "I shall hear now!" (He was deaf.)

Bozzaris, Markos (1790-1823), Greek patriot: "To die for liberty is a pleasure and not a pain."

Brooks, Phillips (1835-1893), American clergyman: "I am going home."

Byron, Lord (1788-1824), English poet: "I must sleep now."

Charles I of England (1600-1649): "Remember."

Charles II of England (1630-1685): "Don't let poor Nelly (Nell Gwynne) starve."

Chesterfield, Lord (1694-1773), English courtier: "Give the doctor a chair."

Columbus, Christopher (1440-1506), Italian navigator: "Lord, into Thy hands I commit my spirit."

Cowper, William (1731-1800), English poet: "Feel? I feel unutterable, unutterable despair. What does it signify?"

Cromwell, Oliver (1599-1658), English statesman: "My desire is to make what haste I may to be gone."

Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790), American philosopher: "A dying man can do nothing easy."

Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-1786): "We are over the hill. We shall go better now."

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey (1539-1583), English navigator: "We are as near heaven by sea as by land."

Gladstone, William Ewart (1809-1898), British statesman: "Amen."

Goethe (1749-1832), German poet: "Open the shutters and let in more light."

Greeley, Horace (1811-1872), American journalist: "It is done."

Hale, Nathan (1755-1776), American patriot: "I only regret that I have but one life to give to my country."

Havelock, Henry (1795-1857), English general: "Tell my son to come and see how a Christian can die."

Henry, Patrick (1736-1810), American orator and patriot: "Here is a book (the Bible) worth more than all others ever printed; yet it is my misfortune never to have found time to read it. It is now too late. I trust in the mercy of God."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809-1894), American poet and prose-writer: "That is better, thank you." (To his son, who had just assisted him to his favorite chair.)

Humboldt, Friedrich von (1769-1859), German savant: "How grand these rays! They seem to beckon earth to heaven."

Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826), American statesman: "I resign my spirit to God and my daughter to my country."

Julian (331-363), Roman emperor: "O Galilean, Thou hast conquered!"

Keats, John (1795-1821), English poet: "I feel the daisies growing over me."

Latimer, Hugh (1485-1555), English reformer: "Be of good cheer, brother; we shall this day kindle such a torch in England as I trust shall never be extinguished." (To Nicholas Ridley, who was burned with him.)

Lawrence, James (1781-1813), American naval officer: "Don't give up the ship."

Louis XIII of France (1601-1643): "There come to me thoughts that torment me."

Louis XIV of France (1638-1715): "I thought dying had been harder."

Louis XVIII of France (1755-1824): "A king should die standing."

McKinley, William (1843-1901), American statesman and President: "Good-by. All good-by. It is God's way. His will be done."

Moody, Dwight L. (1837-1899), American evangelist: "Earth is receding; heaven is approaching; God is calling me."

Napoleon (1769-1821), Emperor of France: "Head of the army."

Napoleon III of France (1803-1873): "Were you at Sedan?" (To Dr. Conneau.)

Nelson, Horatio (1758-1805), English admiral: "I thank God I have done my duty."

Palmer, John (1740-1798), English actor: "There is another and better world."

Pitt, William (1759-1806), English statesman: "Oh, my country, how I love thee!"

Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552-1618), English courtier and navigator: "Why dost thou not strike? Strike, man!" (To his executioner.)

Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832), Scotch poet and novelist: "I feel as if I were to be myself again. God bless you all."

Scott, Winfield (1786-1866), American general: "James, take good care of the horse."

Sidney, Sir Philip (1622-1683), English patriot: "I would not change my joy for the empire of the world."

Thurlow, Edward (1732-1806), English lawyer: "I'll be shot if I don't believe I'm dying."

Vane, Henry (1612-1662), English statesman: "Ten thousand deaths for me ere I stain the purity of my conscience."

Washington, George (1732-1799), American general and statesman: "It is well, I am about to die, and I look upon it with perfect resignation."

Webster, Daniel (1782-1852), American statesman: "I still live."

Wellington, Duke of (1769-1852), British general and statesman: "Yes, if you please." (To a servant asking if he would have some tea.)

Wesley, John (1703-1791), English divine: "The best of all is, God is with us. Farewell."

OLDEN TIME PUBLICITY.

How an artful tradesman drew attention to the presence and the excellence of
his wares in 1875.

REMEMBER

Governor Tilden says that John Hanson told him that he heard Web Wagner say that Anna E. Dickinson told him that D.S. Decker heard that there was no doubt that John McLaren said that S.T. Benedict thought Fred. Seward had told Jim Johnson that Cushney had declared to John Fulton that it was generally believed that Harry Hull said, in plain terms, that he heard Al Berry say that his friend, Harriet Beecher Stowe, had said that Fred. Hotchkiss informed her, at Delmonico's, that it was well known all over the country that Fin Helwig had caught Jimmey Farthing in saying that in his opinion it was a matter of fact, of great public interest, that Nate Wells had said Fred. Howell told him that COHEN BROS. would receive, on Thursday, Oct. 28th, the first invoice of LYNN HAVEN OYSTERS, never before sold in Gloversville, and all for 35 cents a quart.

New York, 1875.

When Vesuvius Destroyed Pompeii.

By THE YOUNGER PLINY—79 A.D.

Pliny the Younger—Caius Plinius Cæcilius Secundus—was perhaps, the most cultivated and graceful man of letters of the first century a.d. Literally a man of letters, he left ten books of his "Epistles," which he himself collected—probably even wrote with a view to publication—and their fluent charm still pleases the taste of the reader. One of his letters, written while he was Governor of Bithynia, asks instructions from the Emperor Trajan as to what policy should be pursued against the sect of Christians.

In other epistles he tells two excellent ghost stories. But the two letters which are most vital in their human interest, and which record the most thrilling events, are the two addressed to his friend, the historian Tacitus, concerning the great eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, a.d. 79. Pliny was only seventeen years of age when he witnessed this eruption, which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, and in which his uncle, the elder Pliny, author of the celebrated natural history, perished.

Until the year 79 Vesuvius was not suspected of being a volcano. The mountain was covered with vegetation, and the ancient crater was like a circular bowl scooped from the summit. Then came the explosion which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. Never since has the volcano long remained quiet. The most serious eruptions have been those of 203, 472, 512, 685, 983, 1066, 1631, 1779, 1794, 1822, 1855, 1865, 1872, 1878, 1880, 1895, and 1906.

Pliny's descriptions of the scenes on the slopes of the vengeful volcano—the raining ashes; the fleeing, terrified crowds—are as fresh and vivid to-day as those Roman frescoes which it has been the good fortune of the modern archeologist to uncover after two thousand years of burial beneath the Vesuvian scoriæ.

Letter No. 1.

Your request that I would send you an account of my uncle's death, in order to transmit a more exact relation of it to posterity, deserves my acknowledgments, for if this accident shall be celebrated by your pen the glory of it, I am well assured, will be rendered forever illustrious. And notwithstanding he perished by a misfortune which, as it involved at the same time a most beautiful country in ruins, and destroyed so many populous cities, seems to promise him an everlasting remembrance; notwithstanding he has himself composed many and lasting works, yet I am persuaded the mentioning of him in your immortal writings will greatly contribute to render his name immortal.

Happy I esteem those to be to whom by the provision of the gods has been granted the ability either to do such actions as are worthy of being related or to relate them in a manner worthy of being read; but peculiarly happy are they who are blessed with both these uncommon talents, in the number of which my uncle, as his own writings and your history will evidently prove, may justly be ranked.

It is with extreme willingness, therefore, that I execute your commands, and should indeed have demanded the task if you had not enjoined it. He was at that time with the fleet under his command at Misenum.

On the 24th of August, about one in the afternoon, my mother desired him to observe a cloud which appeared of a very unusual size and shape. He had just taken a turn in the sun and, after bathing himself in cold water and making a light luncheon, gone back to his books; he immediately arose and went out upon a rising ground from whence he might get a better sight of this very uncommon appearance.

A cloud, from which mountain was uncertain at this distance (but it was found afterward to come from Mount Vesuvius), was ascending, the appearance of which I cannot give you a more exact description of than by likening it to that of a pine-tree, for it shot up to a great height in the form of a very tall trunk, which spread itself out at the top into a sort of branches, occasioned, I imagine, either by a sudden gust of air that impelled it, the force of which decreased as it advanced upward, or the cloud itself being pressed back again by its own weight, expanded in the manner I have mentioned; it appeared sometimes bright and sometimes dark and spotted, according as it was either more or less impregnated with earth and cinders.

The Elder Pliny's Heroism.

This phenomenon seemed to a man of such learning and research as my uncle extraordinary and worth further looking into. He ordered a light vessel to be got ready, and gave me leave, if I liked, to accompany him. I said I had rather go on with my work, and it so happened he had himself given me something to write out.

As he was coming out of the house he received a note from Rectina, the wife of Bassus, who was in the utmost alarm at the imminent danger which threatened her, for her villa lying at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, there was no way of escape by sea; she earnestly entreated him, therefore, to come to her assistance.

He accordingly changed his first intention, and what he had begun from a philosophical he now carried out in a noble and generous spirit. He ordered the galleys to put to sea, and went himself on board with an intention of assisting not only Rectina, but the several towns which lay thickly strewn along the beautiful coast.

Hastening then to the place from whence others fled with the utmost terror, he steered his course direct to the point of danger, and with so much calmness and presence of mind as to be able to make and dictate his observations upon the motion and all the phenomena of that dreadful scene.

He was now so close to the mountain that the cinders, which grew thicker and hotter the nearer he approached, fell into the ships, together with pumice-stones and black pieces of burning rock; they were in danger, too, not only of being aground by the sudden retreat of the sea, but also from the vast fragments which rolled down from the mountain and obstructed all the shore.

Here he stopped to consider whether he should turn back again, to which, the pilot advising him, "Fortune," said he, "favors the brave; steer to where Pomponianus is." Pomponianus was then at Stabiæ (Castellamare), separated by a bay which the sea, after several insensible windings, forms with the shore.

He had already sent his baggage on board, for though he was not at that time in actual danger, yet being within sight of it, and indeed extremely near, if it should in the least increase he was determined to put to sea as soon as the wind, which was blowing dead inshore, should go down.

It was favorable, however, for carrying my uncle to Pomponianus, whom he found in the greatest consternation. He embraced him tenderly, encouraging and urging him to keep up his spirits, and, the more effectually to soothe his fears by seeming unconcerned himself, ordered a bath to be got ready, and then, after having bathed, sat down to supper with great cheerfulness, or at least (what is just as heroic) with every appearance of it.

Meanwhile broad flames shone out in several places from Mount Vesuvius, which the darkness of the night contributed to render still brighter and clearer. But my uncle, in order to soothe the apprehensions of his friend, assured him it was only the burning of the villages, which the country people had abandoned to the flames; after this he retired to rest, and it is most certain he was so little disquieted as to fall into a sound sleep, for his breathing, which on account of his corpulence was rather heavy and sonorous, was heard by the attendants outside.

The court which led to his apartment being now almost filled with stones and ashes, if he had continued there any time longer it would have been impossible, for him to have made his way out.

So he was awakened and got up and went to Pomponianus and the rest of his company, who were feeling too anxious to think of going to bed. They consulted together whether it would be most prudent to trust to the houses, which now rocked from side to side with frequent and violent concussions as though shaken from their very foundations, or fly to the open fields, where the calcined stones and cinders, though light indeed, yet fell in large showers and threatened destruction.

Tied Pillows on Their Heads.

In this choice of dangers they resolved for the fields, a resolution which, while the rest of the company were hurried into it by their fears, my uncle embraced upon cool and deliberate consideration. They went out then, having pillows tied upon their heads with napkins, and this was their whole defense against the storm of stones that fell round them.

It was now day everywhere else, but there a deeper darkness prevailed than in the thickest night, which, however, was in some degree alleviated by torches and other lights of various kinds. They thought proper to go farther down upon the shore to see if they might safely put to sea, but found the waves still running extremely high and boisterous.

There my uncle, laying himself down upon a sailcloth which was spread for him, called twice for some cold water, which he drank, when immediately the flames, preceded by a strong whiff of sulfur, dispersed the rest of the party and obliged him to rise.

He raised himself up with the assistance of two of his servants, and instantly fell down dead, suffocated, as I conjecture, by some gross and noxious vapor, having always had a weak throat, which was often inflamed.

As soon as it was light again, which was not till the third day after this melancholy accident, his body was found entire, and without any marks of violence upon it, in the dress in which he fell, and looking more like a man asleep than dead.

During all this time my mother and I, who were at Misenum—but this has no connection with your history, and you did not desire any particulars besides those of my uncle's death, so I will end here, only adding that I have faithfully related to you what I was either a witness of myself or received the news of immediately after the accident happened, and before there was time to vary the truth.

You will pick out of this narrative whatever is most important, for a letter is one thing, a history another; it is one thing writing to a friend, another writing to the public. Farewell.

Letter No. 2.

The letter which, in compliance with your request, I wrote to you concerning the death of my uncle has raised, it seems, your curiosity to know what terrors and dangers attended me while I continued at Misenum, for there, I think, my account broke off.

Though my shock'd soul recoils, my tongue shall tell.

My uncle having left us, I spent such time as was left on my studies (it was on their account, indeed, that I had stopped behind) till it was time for my bath. After which I went to supper, and then fell into a short and uneasy sleep.

There had been noticed for many days before a trembling of the earth, which did not alarm us much, as this is quite an ordinary occurrence in Campania, but it was so particularly violent that night that it not only shook but overturned, as it would seem, everything about us.

My mother rushed into my chamber, where she found me rising, in order to awaken her. We sat down in the open court of the house, which occupied a small space between the buildings and the sea. As I was at that time but eighteen years of age, I know not whether I should call my behavior in this dangerous juncture courage or folly; but I took up Livy, and amused myself with turning over that author, and even making extracts from him, as if I had been perfectly at my leisure.

Just then a friend of my uncle, who had lately come to him from Spain, joined us, and, observing me sitting by my mother with a book in my hand, reproved her for her calmness and me at the same time for my careless security; nevertheless, I went on with my author.

Though it was now morning, the light was still exceedingly faint and doubtful; the buildings all around us tottered, and though we stood upon open ground, yet as the place was narrow and confined there was no remaining without imminent danger; we therefore resolved to quit the town.

Effects of the Earthquakes.

A panic-stricken crowd followed us, and (as to a mind distracted with terror every suggestion seems more prudent than its own) pressed on us in dense array to drive us forward as we came out. Being at a convenient distance from the houses, we stood still in the midst of a most dangerous and dreadful scene.

The chariots, which we had ordered to be drawn out, were so agitated backward and forward, though upon the most level ground, that we could not keep them steady even by supporting them with large stones. The sea seemed to roll back upon itself and to be driven from its banks by the convulsive motion of the earth; it is certain at least the shore was considerably enlarged, and several sea animals were left upon it. On the other side a black and dreadful cloud, broken with rapid, zigzag flashes, revealed behind it variously shaped masses of flame; these last were like sheet lightning, but much larger.

Upon this our Spanish friend, whom I mentioned above, addressed himself to my mother and me with great energy and urgency. "If your brother," he said, "if your uncle be safe, he certainly wishes you may be so, too; but if he perished it was his desire, no doubt, that you might both survive him; why, therefore, do you delay your escape a moment?" We could never think of our own safety, we said, while we were uncertain of his.

Upon this our friend left us and withdrew from the danger with the utmost precipitation. Soon afterward the cloud began to descend and cover the sea. It had already surrounded and concealed the island of Capri and the promontory of Misenum.

My mother now besought, urged, even commanded me to make my escape at any rate, which, as I was young, I might easily do; as for herself, she said, her age and corpulency rendered all attempts of that sort impossible; however, she would willingly meet death if she could have the satisfaction of seeing that she was not the occasion of mine. But I absolutely refused to leave her, and, taking her by the hand, compelled her to go with me. She complied with great reluctance, and not without many reproaches to herself for retarding my flight.

The ashes now began to fall upon us, though in no great quantity. I looked back; a dense, dark mist seemed to be following us, spreading itself over the country like a cloud. "Let us turn out of the highroad," I said, "while we can still see, for fear that, should we fall in the road, we should be pressed to death in the dark by the crowds that are following us."

We had scarcely sat down when night came upon us, not such as we have when the sky is cloudy, or when there is no moon, but that of a room when it is shut up and all the lights put out.

The Terror of the People.

You might hear the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the shouts of men; some calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their husbands, and seeking to recognize each other by the voices that replied; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some wishing to die, from the very fear of dying; some lifting their hands to the gods, but the greater part convinced that there were now no gods at all, and that the final endless night of which we have heard had come upon the world.

Among these there were some who augmented the real terrors by others imaginary or wilfully invented. I remember some who declared that one part of Misenum had fallen, that another was on fire; it was false, but they found people to believe them.

It now grew rather lighter, which we imagined to be rather the forerunner of an approaching burst of flames (as in truth it was) than the return of day; however, the fire fell at a distance from us; then again we were immersed in thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes rained upon us, which we were obliged every now and then to stand up to shake off, otherwise we should have been crushed and buried in the heap.

I might boast that during all this scene of horror not a sigh or expression of fear escaped me, had not my support been grounded in that miserable though mighty consolation that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that I was perishing with the world itself.

At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees, like a cloud or smoke; the real day returned, and even the sun shone out, though with a lurid light, as when an eclipse is coming on. Every object that presented itself to our eyes (which were extremely weakened) seemed changed, being covered deep with ashes as if with snow.

We returned to Misenum, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could, and passed an anxious night between hope and fear, though indeed with a much larger share of the latter, for the earthquake still continued, while many frenzied persons ran up and down, heightening their own and their friends' calamities by terrible predictions.

However, my mother and I, notwithstanding the danger we had passed, and that which still threatened us, had no thoughts of leaving the place till we could receive some news of my uncle.

You will read this narrative without any view of inserting it in your history, of which it is not in the least worthy, and indeed you must put it down to your own request if it should appear not worth even the trouble of a letter. Farewell.

THE OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD.

The Damascus Seen by Saul of Tarsus Still Exists, Presenting the Same Scenes and
Cherishing the Same Customs That Characterized It 1,000 Years Ago.

If you were suddenly asked to name the oldest city in the world which is still in a flourishing condition, what would be your answer?

In nine cases out of ten, the person to whom such a query might be propounded would hark back to Egypt, Greece, or Rome. He would be wrong. The oldest city in the world is Damascus.

Tyre and Sidon have crumbled on the shore; Baalbec is a ruin; Palmyra is buried in a desert; Nineveh and Babylon have disappeared from the Tigris and the Euphrates. Damascus remains what it was before the days of Abraham—a center of trade and travel—an isle of verdure in the desert; "a presidential capital," with martial and sacred associations extending through thirty centuries.

It was near Damascus that Saul of Tarsus saw the light above the brightness of the sun; the street which is called Strait, in which it was said "he prayed," still runs through the city.

The city which Mohammed surveyed from a neighboring height and was afraid to enter "because it was given to man to have but one paradise, and for his part he was resolved not to have it in this world," is to-day what Julian called the "Eye of the East," as it was in the time of Isaiah "the head of Syria."

From Damascus came the damson, our blue plums, and the delicious apricot of Portugal called damasco; damask, our beautiful fabric of cotton and silk, with vines and flowers raised upon a smooth, bright ground; the damask rose introduced into England in the time of Henry VIII; the Damascus blade, so famous the world over for its keen edge and wonderful elasticity, the secret of whose manufacture was lost when Tamerlane carried the artist into Persia; and that beautiful art of inlaying wood and steel with gold and silver, a kind of mosaic engraving and sculpture united—called damaskeening—with which boxes, bureaus, and swords are ornamented.

A FEAST OF AUTO SONG.

The Egotism of the Motor-Car, Even in the Realm of Poesy, Proves More Than a
Match for the Wit of People Who Continue to Traduce It Until
They Decide What Model They Will Buy.

UNCLE HENRY ON THE PASSING OF THE HORSE.

Every little while they tell us that the horse has got to go;
First the trolley was invented 'cause the horses went so slow,
And they told us that we'd better not keep raisin' colts no more.
When the street cars got to moting that the horses pulled before,
I thought it was all over for old Fan and Doll and Kit,
S'posed the horse was up and done for,
But
he
ain't
went
yit!

When the bike craze first got started people, told us right away,
As you probably remember, that the horse had saw his day;
People put away their buggies and went kitin' 'round on wheels;
There were lots and lots of horses didn't even earn their meals.
I used to stand and watch 'em with their bloomers as they'd flit,
And I thought the horse was goin',
But
he
ain't
went
yit!