How could it be otherwise? I have seen workingmen wearing the coats given them to make. I have seen coats and filthy bed clothes tumbled together. I have seen a baby half covered with sores lying on a bed of coats, while another stack stood by its side to keep it from rolling off. In this fashion the filth of the slums comes into our own homes, and outraged humanity has its revenge."

A

FREE TRAVELING LIBRARIES.

NEW aid to popular education" is the very apt phrase used as the caption of an article by Mr. William R. Eastman in the January Forum, describing the free traveling library system recently adopted by the State of New York. The University Regents of that state are authorized by law to lend for a limited time selections of books from the duplicate department of the State Library, or from books specially bought or given for the purpose, to public libraries under state supervision, or to communities meeting required conditions; the state appropriates directly for the purchase of such books, while the local libraries pay a fee of $5 each to cover the expense of cases, catalogues, record blanks and transportation both ways; this fee entitles the local library to a loan from the state for six months of a selection of one hundred books. Where no such library exists, the books will be lent on petition of any twenty-five resident taxpayers. In their petition an owner of real estate must be named as trustee, who must be personally responsible for the books. Libraries may be lent to the officers of a University Extension centre, reading course, or study club, if registered by the regents. A later rule offers selections of fifty volumes for a fee of $3. Thus, as Mr. Eastınan says, the traveling library system is a direct development of the work of the public library.

"The local library lends one book, the traveling library lends a hundred; the local library lends to a person, the other to a community; one lends for two weeks, the other for six months. In this way the State Library becomes the parent of libraries."

RULES OF SELECTION.

As these books are intended for communities of varying needs and tastes, the problem of selection becomes a very difficult one.

"It was decided to begin with ten libraries of a hundred volumes each. The libraries were chosen with reference to their educational value, without disregarding a reasonable demand for recreation. In these days, fortunately, science is becoming more and more capable of popular illusion, new books of history and travel have the fascination of romance, while fiction is burdened with the most serious problems of humanity; so that in making up a library the task of preserving an even balance between information and amusement is by no means so difficult as it would have been twenty-five years ago. Books of reference and periodicals were ruled out, but a few bright sensible books for children were accepted.

The tastes of professional men were not ignored; a few significant books on social science or economics were carefully sought. But all these were a small minority. After these, in order of importance, came books about the useful arts, about natural science, books of travel, biography, letters, history and fiction, which were added in quantity and quality to suit the needs of the general reader.' It was obvious, too, that the requirements of different communities must greatly vary. There are some communities where even the old familiar books would be unknown; in others nothing but the latest would serve. To meet different needs, three libraries of the ten were made to include a liberal allowance of the older favorites, such as Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Holmes, Prescott and Parkman, which were excluded from the other seven, and one library was made up wholly of the books of the year 1892.

"At length, after much revision and consultation at the State Library, one thousand volumes were chosen and distributed into ten groups as nearly equal as possible in the range of subjects, in literary merit, and in attractiveness. The percentage of each kind of literature was Fiction, 22 per cent.; History, 18; Biography, 13; Travel, 11; Science and Useful Arts, 9; Sociology, 5; Religion and Ethics, 4; Fine Arts, 3; other literature, 15."

Mr. Eastman states that 125 of these libraries had been sent out from Albany up to October 1, 1894; they went to 86 places. In all, 11,900 volumes were sent out; 44 of these, aggregating 4,400 volumes, are still out, leaving 7,500 volumes which have been returned without any loss or serious injury. One missing book, costing 70 cents, was paid for by a trustee.

HOW THE BOOKS CIRCULATE.

"Complete statistics of the circulation of 5,300 volumes are at hand. Their total circulation was 15,358, an average of 290 readers to each 100 volumes, in a period of six months. The smallest circulation was 66, the largest 609. One 50-volume library circulated 338. The number of borrowers was 4,392, showing an average of three-and-a-half books to a reader.

66

Many interesting items might be gleaned from the record of individual books. For example, Mrs. Burnett's Surly Tim' had 14 readers in one place, and 11, 9, 3 and 2 in others, and none at all in another. That Lass o' Lowrie's' was taken out by 17 in one town, and 15, 4, 2, 6 and 12 in others. 'Henry Esmond' was read 10 times and The Virginians 9 times in one place, and neither was called for in another. The circulation of fiction was 52 per cent. of all; but the books of fiction in the library were only 22 per cent.

"Books on Social Science were usually read by two or three persons in a place. The highest records in this class are: How the Other Half Lives,' 8 readers; 'Children of the Poor,' 6; Who Pays Your Taxes?' 6; 'Girls and Women,' 6. In Biography the favorites are: Butterworth's Lincoln,' 13 readers; Coffin's

'Lincoln,' 11; Holmes' 'Ralph Waldo Emerson,' 11; Hale's New England Boyhood,' 11; Schurz's 'Lincoln,' 10. Plainly, Lincoln is the hero. In other literature, 'Over the Tea-Cups' had 15 readers; ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,' 13; 'My Summer in a Garden,' 10. In History the war stories are in the ascendant. Page's 'Among the Camps' had 17 readers; 'Boys of '61,' 13; 'Blue Jackets of "76,' 11; Battlefields and Victory,' 10; 'Battlefields of '61,' 8.

GENERAL RESULTS.

As a

"We may say that twenty-five thousand books have been read as a result of the traveling libraries. They have been good books and have left their mark on a multitude of minds. These libraries have everywhere promoted an interest in good reading, and have already led to the establishment of some important local libraries. They have been cordially received and are more in demand now than ever before. public investment they have fully vindicated the wisdom of their projectors and have proved worthy of the continued interest of the state. The system admits, too, of indefinite enlargement. Special-subject libraries may be multiplied as fast as they are wanted; and the addition of general libraries can keep pace with the publication of good books. The State of New York can well afford this offer of books to her citizens, which is at once generous and, in the highest sense, profitable; and the plan is confidently commended to the consideration of other states."

NEEDED REFORMS IN COLLEGE TEACHING.

AN

N article by Mr. Charles C. Ramsay in the Educational Review for January suggests several improvements in the administration of American colleges. The most prominent fault to which Mr. Ramsay calls attention is the seeming indifference of college authorities toward the personal character and professional qualifications of professors and instructors. "By these I do not mean moral character in the commonly received sense, which is everywhere deemed essential in college officers; nor a thorough knowledge of the subject taught, which, after sound moral character, is confessedly the first prerequisite of the college professor. I mean, rather, the possession of all those subtile and indefinable qualities which make up personal fitness and special aptitude for teaching, and thorough acquaintance with the history and theory, and practiced skill in the art of education. In the zeal for special research which (by sorry and injurious imitation of instruction in the university proper, wherein the students are mature and well disciplined) has become the ideal aim of much college instruction, it has come about that only the most brilliant scholars are chosen to be instructors, regardless of their lack of more strictly professional preparation and experience. As such instructors are usually promoted, this in turn has also become the ideal method of recruiting professorial ranks.”

In short, Mr. Ramsay finds that most young college professors are more concerned with their subjects than with their pupils. This results, he thinks, from the partial neglect of certain qualifications, among which he names, after natural inclination and personal fitness, a knowledge of the history, theory and art of teaching, and experience of practical life and, as a rule, of teaching in secondary schools.

CHARACTER CULTURE.

"However fondly some instructors may desire it, the separation of the scholar from the man, in case either of instructors or students, is impossible. Such an attempt can be properly characterized only as specialization run wild. The cleverest youth, thank fortune, is not all intellect. It is an exploded psychology which taught the division of the human mind into distinct faculties.' The mind is a unit, acting -often simultaneously-in several ways. Knowing, feeling, and willing are but different states of the soul. While for purposes of scientific study, they may be thought of in logical sequence, they are not dissociated in the mental life. The sensibilities and the will of the brightest student play a very important part in his life during the period of acquisition, and will play a yet greater part in his future career during the period of application.

STUDENTS ARE HUMAN.

"The human needs crave to be satisfied even more than the professional.' Contrary to the opinion of many persons, it is a significant fact that after the age of admission to college the characters of most youth, even from the best families, are yet unformed. Many are the instances which may be cited wherein young men and women, well along in their teens, have made wide departures from the habits and beliefs in which they had been faithfully trained, and in which they had seemed to be thoroughly content and firmly fixed. The college, moreover, that ignores this fact, and the instructor who withdraws himself into a shell of officialism and concerns himself exclusively with his science, make a terrible mistake. The personal relations of the college instructor to his pupils are of even more value to them than are his professional relations. As he cannot safely neglect his own moral and spiritual needs, so he cannot safely neglect those of his pupils. From this it by no means follows that the college must make the characters of its students for them. Experience proves that such an attempt is worse than useless; but college officers may greatly aid students in their efforts to form their own characters aright. For this important work the college instructor, no less than the school teacher, will find cheerfulness, patience, discrimination and sympathy indispensable. If it be said that such assertions are but trite moralizing, it may be freely admitted; but to this admission it must be added that frequent observation of the absence of the qualities named suggests the importance of frequent repetition of such truisms."

ONE YEAR WITH A LITTLE GIRL. `HAT dignified and serious-minded periodical,

The Educational Review, devotes twenty pages

of its January number to the review of a year's experiences in babyhood. Mr. Oscar Chrisman records the doings and sayings of his own child between the ages of one and a half and two and a half years. "I did the writing," says Mr. Chrisman, "but my wife kept notice of the little girl and gave me as many points as I got myself." (Nobody will question this latter assertion.)

Mr. Chrisman was much impressed by the constant experimentation carried on by the child. "This is undoubtedly the age of research work. Experimentation and discovery are exploited as never before. I wonder if our great believers in this search for truth have considered the child as the original, natural researcher? Who experiments more than the child? Who has more need for the making of tests than the child? Every step he takes, every new scene that comes before his eyes, every new sound, is one of a chain of investigations which he must make for himself. Every day of this little girl's life has been a day for the carrying on of experiments. Just a few of these: One evening in her twenty-first month, while playing with a tin cup, by accident she held it to her ear. The roaring was something new to her, and she put the cup to her ear and took it away for six times in succession; when the novelty wore off, so she stopped. In her twenty-fifth month she was standing at a window with a bright tin can in her hands. The sun shining upon the can was reflected off about the room. I noticed this reflection, and she turned the can this way and that and watched the reflection dart along the walls and ceiling. day in her twenty-seventh month she was lying on the floor, and happening to look up at one of the windowblinds, she noticed on it a spot of bright sunshine which came through from a broken slat in the shutter. At once she jumped up, went to the blind, and shook it to get the bright spot off. Failing to shake it off, she pulled the blind out and looked behind it at the spot and then she shook the blind again, noticing the moving of the spot. Failing to shake it off at the second trial, she went away from it and did not try a third time. She showed no fear, only astonishment."

LEARNING TO TALK.

One

Mr. Chrisman's record of the steady growth of the child's vocabulary is interesting.

"In the study of this little girl nothing else has so surprised me as the growth of her vocabulary. At the beginning of this record, in her nineteenth month, she really had but two plain words in her Vocabulary-papa and baby. In the twenty-first month she used four words, yet upon testing her to ascertain how much she understood, I found she knew seventy-eight objects; I learned this by asking questions, thus, "Where is the chair?" and she answered by pointing to the object. In her twentyfifth month I took down her vocabulary and found

that it had increased to sixteen words. At the close of this record-at two and a half years of age-she used as noted down about 250 words. This record of her vocabulary was made by myself alone during her thirtieth month, and it was not only her usual words that I gathered up, but I set down every word that she used, whether once or many times. None are words which I asked her to say, nor are they names of objects for which she was asked, but they were jotted down from time to time as she used them of her own free will. Her mother claims that I missed enough words used in her presence to bring the number up to near three hundred. This acquisition is wonderful, and it has caused me to inquire if it would not be possible for such growth to continue in the life of the child, if conditions could be made whereby the child could continue as his own instructor and not to be brought under stupid adult teaching, and thus his progress be continuous and not retarded, as is the case now when the child is put into school."

THE CURE FOR GAMBLING.

N the February Harper's, Mr. John Bigelow gives a strong, clear answer to his title question, "What is Gambling?" A more forcible or higher pitched lay sermon has not come through the medium of the magazines for a long time. The occasion for this exordium is the section of the new constitution of the State of New York, which absolutely prohibits any kind of gambling. There was never a more trenchant blow struck at the gaming principle than Mr. Bigelow's historical review of the idea of "Fortuna," and of the situation with us to-day.

Notwithstanding the fact that there is really no such thing as chance, that, as Mr. Bigelow takes pains to show, every effect has its appropriate and direct cause, and that every event "is but a link in a chain that leads up to the Creator and Maintainer of all things," he points out that we are quite as blindly devoted in the nineteenth century to the Goddess Fortune as were the pagans of the corrupt Roman Empire.

AS GAMBLERS WE OUTHEATHEN THE HEATHENS. "The propensity to treat the events of human life as accidental or the sport of chance was never more nearly universal than it is to-day. Never was so large a proportion of the fruits of human industry suspended upon the supposed propitiation of this heathen goddess. There is scarcely any form or product of human skill or toil which does not, at some time or in some way, contribute to the making or the marring of the fortunes of the gamester. All the staple products of the soil and every variety of incorporated wealth are bought and sold continually upon the chance of a rise or fall in their price, without reference to their intrinsic values.

"It was proved before a committee of the New York Legislature, some ten years ago, that between the years 1879 and 1882 the cash sales of wheat at the

New York Produce Exchange amounted to $244,737,000, while the option sales, embracing what are known on 'Change as 'puts' and 'calls,' 'long' and 'short,' futures' and 'straddles,' amounted to $1,154,267,000. This last enormous sum represents exclusively the stakes of gamblers at the Produce Exchange alone, in a single city, and on a single agricultural product, during a period of only three years. It was also in proof that this form of gambling was carried on in oats, in barley, and in other cereals, and to a very large extent in pork and lard, and in pretty much all staple products. It was also shown that the amount thus staked upon the course of the market in Milwaukee was fully as much as, and in Chicago was probably double, the amounts staked in New York. When to this we add the sums staked upon the fluctuations of the market at the Stock, Cotton, Mining, and other exchanges, we find that the amount bought and sold on an average every three years will fall but a little, if at all, short of the assessed value of the entire property of the nation." WHERE DOES GAMBLING BEGIN?

When Mr. Bigelow has drawn an eloquent picture of the unmitigated moral degradation to which the love of gaining at the expense of our neighbor inevitably leads, he asks: "Does not this view assume that all business involving risk-and there is none without it is sinful? Does not the farmer gamble upon the uncertainties of the weather, the cost of labor, and the state of the market at harvest time? Is it not all marine, life, fire and accident insurance gambling? When we buy the securities of a corporation in the hope and expectation that they may increase in value, or even continue to yield their present revenue, is not that gambling? May I not join my family in an innocent game of sixpenny whist or billiards? Were the delegates to the convention which adopted this amendment gamblers when they distributed their seats by lot? Were the disciples of Jesus gamblers when, by the same process, they selected a successor to Judas?

"The answer to these questions is very obvious. One may do any and all these things-nay, one may take any risks, one may play at any game and for any amount one pleases—providing his interest in the result does not indispose him to do unto others as he would have them do to him. There may be no essential difference in an ethical point of view between staking a thousand pounds upon a faro table and staking it upon a railway venture or the purchase of a farm or a life policy. Nine people out of ten, when they for the first time accept an invitation to join in a game of whist or poker, have no more suspicion of the passions they may be about to nurse than the maid of sixteen when she engages in her first flirtation. The result in all these cases depends upon their action when they do discover the sinister passion that is brooding-whether they go on or make a timely retreat. The taste for play may be a trial of our faith, and one of the innumerable means under Providence for making us aware of our weaknesses and unhallowed propensities."

THE GOLDEN RULE THE TEST.

The answer to the perplexing questions of distinction, in Mr. Bigelow's judgment, ought to be found in the Golden Rule. In other words, he says, if the player never allows his heart to be poisoned by a desire to do to another what he would not wish done to himself, his play would be innocent. "I apprehend, however, that there would soon be very little gambling in the world, unless that word required a very different meaning from the one which now attaches to it, if those conditions were rigorously complied with, and the gamester rose from the table the moment he experienced a suspicion of the Satanic obsession.

IT IS A MORAL, NOT A POLITICAL SIN.

The conclusion to which Mr. Bigelow's arguments lead is that gambling is a moral rather than a political disorder, and that each man will have to settle with his own conscience the question whether he is breaking the Golden Rule or not.

For this reason he fears that the amendment to the state constitution will be abortive, just as the prohibition of the sale of lottery tickets has not checked gaming, and just as it is impossible to stop drinking by forbidding the sale of alcoholic liquors. In a word, the state cannot maintain jurisdiction over the motives of men. By this Mr. Bigelow does not mean that the legislature should stop now and adopt a laissez faire policy.

WHAT OUR GOVERNMENT CAN DO.

"It can and should repeal the Ives pool bill, and cease drawing a revenue from a vice it condemns, so that gambling shall have no countenance from the state.

"It should also lay its heavy hand upon all who make it their business or calling to provide houses, tables, dens, or any facilities for gaming from which they are to derive a revenue. In the exercise of such a power the legislature would be little likely to interfere with the proper liberty of the individual, and pretty certain to discourage to a very considerable extent the vice that now goes by the name of gambling, by rendering its instruments criminal and infamous. Such a law might in some degree, substantially perhaps, re-enforce those reformers who are endeavoring to avail themselves of loftier agencies to extinguish the inclination to gamble. The proper and only radical cure is to educate people to be ashamed to prey upon each other in this way; but a law making criminal all who live by facilitating and encouraging others in the vice may prove an important ally of the pulpit and the press in resisting the spread of the most demoralizing of all demoralizing propensities."

"The desire to acquire what is another's without paying for it is the gambler's demon; he wishes to enjoy what is not his by any proper title-what he has neither earned, bought, nor received as a gift. Such a principle of action is inexorably at war with the Divine economy."

MAX MULLER TO AMERICANS.

N his Oxford address to the American party of "Historical Pilgrims " last summer, printed in the Arena of December, Dr. Max Müller made the Chicago Parliament of Religions his main theme, and in closing congratulated the visitors on their felicitous relations with the mother country.

"In conclusion let me say that I am a very old showman at Oxford University, and I may say truly that there are no strangers that I like so much to conduct personally over Oxford as the Americans. They seem to know what to look for-they want to

have peace on earth, good will toward men; we should have what the First Parliament of the World's Religions proclaimed as 'the true glory to God.' We are all members of the great parliament of the world; let us show that we can be above party, above country, above creed, and that we owe allegiance to truth only, and to that voice of conscience which is the real presence' in the universal communion of mankind."

THE SERVANT GIRL PROBLEM.

N February Scribner's Mr. Robert Grant con

of Stanley, and they thoroughly enjoy what they see. They feel at home at Oxford, and they speak of it as their own university, as the glorious nursery of those men whose example has made America as great as she is. They have come on what they call a pilgrimage to England,—and it is quite right that the land of their fathers should be to them a holy land. After all, the glories of England are theirs-their fathers fought its battles by land and by sea; their fathers made it a home of freedom; their fathers, when freedom of word and thought and deed seemed threatened for a while, protested, and migrated to found a New England on the other side of the Atlantic.

ANGLO-AMERICAN BROTHERHOOD.

"But blood is thicker than water, thicker even than the Atlantic. With every year the old feeling of brotherhood asserts itself more strongly between Americans and Englishmen, between the Old and the New England. I have many friends in America, not one who is not a friend of England, not one who does not feel that in the struggle for political and religious freedom which looms in the future, Englishmen and Americans should always stand shoulder to shoulder, should form one united people. Whatever may be said against England-and a good deal has been said against her by what I heard an American ambassador call, the other day, 'the mischievous boy of the family,' always the most popular with mothers, sisters and cousins, if not with fathers and aunts-but whatever has been or may be said against England, can you imagine what the world would be without England? And do you believe that New England, Young England, would ever stand by with folded arms to see Old England touched, so long as a drop of Saxon blood was left in the veins of her soldiers and sailors?

Take one

"Here, too, as in the Parliament of Religions of Chicago, it would be easy to show that the points on which Americans and Englishmen differ are nothing as compared to those on which they agree. instance only. If England and America were to say once for all that there shall be no war without previous arbitration, and that whatever country objects to this article of international faith, shall for the time be excluded from all international amenities, shall be tabooed politically and financially, the world might breathe again more freely, the poor would be allowed again to eat their bread in peace, we should

Art of Living," and treats this time of "The Dwelling." He compares the advantages and disadvantages of householding and houserenting, and suburban life and city life, and shows a residual tendency to indorse the apartment and flat house for the purposes of those married couples who have not an income of over $10,000 per year.

One of the arguments for the apartment house Mr. Grant lays most stress on is the opportunity to get along with fewer servants in that highly modern convenience. This leads him into the most interesting part of his article, which treats of the great perennial servant question. He notes that American born women will not be servants, and gives an anecdote which he thinks contains the gist of the reason. "The letter which appeared in a New York newspaper some years ago, from an American girl, in which she declared that she had left service because her master and his sons handed her their dripping umbrellas with the same air as they would have handed them to a graven image, was thoroughly in point. The reason the native American girl will not become a servant, in spite of the arguments of the rational and godly, is that service is the sole employment in this country in which she can be told with impunity that she is the social inferior of any one else. It is the telling which she cannot put up with. It is one thing to be conscious that the person you are constantly associated with is better educated, better mannered, and more attractive than yourself, and it is another to be told at every opportunity that this is so."

The result of this has been, of course, since servants are an absolutely necessary evil, that the ancillary field has been supplied from foreigners. And Mr. Grant sees a most decided direction of evolution in this emigrant and serving class.

"It is fruitless now to inquire what the free-born American woman would have done without the foreign emigrant to cook and wash for her. The question is whether, now that she has her, she is going to keep her, and keep her in the same comfortable and well-paid, but palpable thralldom as at present. If so, she will be merely imitating the housewives of the effete civilizations; she will be doing simply what every English, French and German woman does and has done ever since class distinctions began. But in that case, surely, we shall