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IN

THE HISTORY OF WITCHES.

IN the Century Dr. J. M. Buckley at once engages attention in his subject of "Witchcraft" by tell. ing us that four-fifths of the fifteen hundred millions of the human race still believe in witches, and, further, by the perhaps no less astounding statement that the superstition is still current among a majority of the citizens of the United States. This prepares us to find his article something more than a resurrection of a long-buried historical phenomenon, an extinct psychological freak.

He uses the word "witchcraft" in its restricted and generally accepted meaning of a compact with the devil, "the party of the first part and a human being, male or female, wizard or witch, the party of the second part-that he, the devil, will perform whatever the person may request." With a praiseworthy conscientiousness, however, witchcraft tribunals have carefully insisted that the compact should be voluntary, and the herd of swine which ran violently down the steep place would presumably have enjoyed immunity in Salem.

CURRENT BELIEF IN THE UNITED STATES.

The large class of emigrant population has largely to answer for the extent of the superstition still prevailing in the United States.

"Where colonies of emigrants have remained isolated, retaining the use of their own language, the influence of witchcraft is more easily traced. The interior of Pennsylvania affords better illustrations of this, and on a larger scale, than any other State. It has been but two or three years since suit was brought by a man against his mother, in one of the counties of Pennsylvania, to recover damages for a dog which he charged her with having killed by witchcraft; and he not only brought suit, but obtained judgment from a justice of the peace. Various witnesses testified as to their experiences in witchcraft, and only one said that he had never had a friend or a relative who was bewitched."

The Dunkard settlements furnish some regulation specimens of witches, and among the negroes and poor whites of the South there is an extensive profession of "witch doctors," who are supposed to counteract various diseases and uncanny manifestations. Nor is enlightened New England by any means free. Dr. Buckley says that in his long pedestrian tours in both the Northeast and West, “I have invariably listened to the tales of the neighborhood, stimulated them by suggestion, and have found the belief in witchcraft cropping out in the oldest towns in New England, sometimes within the very shade of the buildings where a learned ministry has existed from the settlement of the country and public schools have furnished means of education to all classes."

ITS REMOTE ORIGIN.

As far back as the historic eye can reach the various tribes of the world seem to have believed in witchcraft, and it has generally been either bound up in, or hanging on the skirts of, their religion. It was always looked on with horror, and was always

punishable by a terrible death. Dr. Buckley gives a brief but comprehensive sketch of its existence in various parts of the ancient world. Christianity, developing among the Hebrews, must necessarily have been tainted with it. In Egypt, Persia, China, India, and Japan, it exists still as a heritage of the immemorial past.

WITCHES AND THE BIBLE.

"John Wesley, who was born only twelve years after the scenes in Salem, wrote in May, 1768: 'They well know [meaning infidels, materialists, and deists], whether Christians know it or not, that the giving up of witchcraft is, in effect, giving up · the Bible." " Sir Matthew Hale, writing a hundred years earlier, proved-to his own satisfaction-on scriptural authority that the devil and his works were frequently at the behest of witches.

This is a fallacy that especially grates on Dr. Buckley, and he goes to some pains to show that even if we accept the literal words of the Bible, it was the attempt to practise witchcraft which was there recognized and reprehended.

"Those who reject this conclusion," says he, "if they would be consistent, must believe all the forms of imposture comprehended in the common law of Israel to be supernatural; they must believe in astrology, augury, and charms; and that the heathen gods were actual, supernatural devils." As an objectlesson Dr. Buckley gives a "rationalistic" exegesis of the Witch of Endor episode.

THE SALEM TRIALS.

To the student of witches the Salem horrors, of course, present the most fertile field, on account of their nearness to us in every way.

The Pilgrims had not occupied their new home sixteen years before they included among their capital crimes "the solemn compaction or conversing with the Divell by the way of witchcraft, conjuration or the like."

Ten years after, in 1646, the first execution took place at Hartford, and from that time on to 1692 the cases are thick and frequent.

The trouble of 1692 was begun by the foolish talk of some negro slaves from the West Indies with a few hysterical children and girls.

"Before the winter was over some of them fully believed they were under the influence of spirits. Epidemic hysteria arose; physicians could not explain their state; the cry was raised that they were bewitched, and some began to make charges against these whom they disliked of having bewitched them.

"From March, 1692, to May, 1693, about two hundred persons were imprisoned. Of these some escaped by the help of friends, some by bribing their jailers, a number died in prison, and one hundred and fifty were set free at the close of the excitement by the proclamation of the Governor."

Dr. Buckley's description of the procedure of trials and his explanation of the phenomena of confessions are highly interesting.

EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK.

SHALL WE TALK WITH THE MEN IN THE MOON? Probably, says M. Camille Flammarion.

M.

CAMILLE FLAMMARION, in an interesting paper on "Inter-astral Communication" in the New Review, states the reasons which lead him to believe that we shall before very long be able to hold communication with the inhabitants of the moon and of Mars. He says:

"The idea in itself is not at all absurd, and it is, perhaps, less bold than those of the telephone, or the phonograph, or the photophone, or the kinetograph. It was first suggested with respect to the · moon. A triangle traced in luminous lines on the lunar surface, each side from twelve to fifteen kilometres long, would be visible from here by the aid of our telescopes."

It is more likely, however, that communication will be opened up with the people of Mars. Mars is only four million leagues away. It is older than the earth, smaller, lighter in weight, more quickly cooled-it is farther advanced than we in astral life, and everything leads us to believe that its intelligent races, whatever they are, are far superior to us. He even suggests that its inhabitants have already attempted to enter into communication with

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THE

A Woman's Right not yet Recognized. `HE Economic Journal (British) for December publishes Mr. Sidney Webb's valuable paper upon the differences of wages paid to men and women. Those who are disposed to maintain that women have no reason to complain of the treatment which they receive when they compete on equal terms with men will do well not to read this paper; it will disturb their equanimity and convince them that they are wrong. Mr. Webb says:

"Women clerks in the English Post-office perform exactly the same duties as some of the men clerks. In the Savings Bank Department they do, unit for unit, precisely the same amount of work. In the ledger work, on which both men and women are still employed, the women are said to do the work much better, more carefully, more neatly; they are more conscientious, and perhaps too rigidly stick to rules and regulations, not exercising discretion. It has often been stated that they make fewer mistakes. But, as the following table shows, they receive much lower salaries.

SALARIES OF CLERKS IN THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE.

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Mr. Webb mentions, as a curious illustration of the idea that woman's work ought to be paid less because it is woman's work, is that the Treasury cut down the pay of a woman clerk employed on the Labor Commission from 42s. to 35s. per week on the ground that 42s. was a man's pay, whereas it was a woman who did the work, so she ought not to receive more than 35s. The following are Mr. Webb's practical conclusions:

"The following suggestions as to causes are only put forward tentatively, as affording some indication of the directions in which further study of the question is needed:

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'(a) Custom and public opinion founded on the other causes, but more potent than them all, and prevailing in cases which they do not affect. Can be altered by (1) education of the public, especially as regards salaries paid by public bodies; (2) greater public influence of women; (3) removal of the other causes of inferiority of wage.

"(b) Lower standard, caused partly by a lower standard of life, both in physical needs and in mental demands, and partly by the presence of 'make-weights,' in the shape of assistance from family or husband. To be remedied by (1) teaching women to insist on a higher standard both of physical needs and mental demands; (2) greater independence of women; (3) change in public opinion.

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(c) Lower productivity either in quantity or quality, caused by insufficient training or deficient strength; aided by irregularity of work through sickness and lack of permanence through diversion by matrimony; and sometimes by greater incidental expenses of production through legal or social re quirements, the difficulty of promoting women to the higher grades of work, or otherwise, the result of inferiority of work. To be remedied by (1) technical training for women; (2) greater independence among women; (3) equal treatment by law.

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(d) Lack of protective power, through failure to combine, want of adaptability, limited number of al ternatives, and greater immobility. To be remedied by (1) better education of women; (2) greater freedom and independence; and (3) change in public opinion removing feminine disabilities.

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Summarizing roughly these suggestions, it may be said that women's inferiority of remuneration for equivalent work is, where it exists, the direct or indirect result, to a very large extent, of their past subjection; and that, dependent as it now mainly is upon the influence of custom and public opinion, it might be largely removed by education and combination among women themselves. I am inclined to hope most from a gradual spread of trade unions among women workers; and that even more in the direction of an increase in the efficiency of labor which trade unionism so often promotes than in the improvement in its remuneration arising merely from collective bargaining."

IN

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS IN ORATORY.

N the Young Man for January, which is a singu larly strong number, containing many articles of more than average interest, there is published an interview with the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, under the title of "How to Conquer an Audience, by which the interviewer means how a speaker can best command the attention and lead captive the The following is a summary hearts of his audience. of what Mr. Hughes said, and on this subject, no doubt, Mr. Hughes is one of the highest authori has more absolute control over ties, for no one those who listen to him than Mr. Hughes. The platform is his throne, there are none to dispute his authority. Mr. Hughes told his interviewer that— "Other than moral qualities have little to do with that achievement.

"The first quality is sincerity

"Intense reality, thorough going earnestness, I should regard as the very first qualification for the highest success as a public speaker.

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'Be real that is the first secret of victory. "The second condition of success is disinterested. It is impossible to gain a permanent hold of the public ear unless the public believe that you are free from self-seeking.

ness.

"The self-seeking speaker can never really suc ceed.

"I should say that the third great condition of

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success in public speaking is moral courage, by far the rarest of all moral qualities.

"If you are afraid of your audience, you can no more direct them than a timid rider can control a high-spirited horse.

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"There is nothing that commands a great audience so readily and so powerfully as utter fearlessness. That has been the secret of the great religious orators, who, realizing the presence of God, had no fear of man.

"Another great quality, which is intellectual All the greatest rather than moral, is lucidity. orators, both ancient and modern, have used great simplicity of speech. Demosthenes and Cicero were extremely plain and simple in their style of oratory. So are all the best speakers of our time. The great quality is not glitter or gaudiness, but intelligibility. A great crowd is half inclined to believe you without further ado if you only put your case plainly and luminously before it.

"I may mention one other primary quality of successful oratory, and that also is a moral one, and it is what I may call geniality—a certain goodThere is a vein of wit or humored bonhomie. humor in every eminently successful speaker."

IN

CO-OPERATIVE LUXURY.

N the New England Magazine for January Mr. "Beaconsfield John Waterman describes the Terraces," an institution which goes a certain dis. tance toward solving a huge and discouraging problem-the fate of the suburban resident. These terraces were erected in Brookline, the beautiful suburb of Boston, on land which had been only used for farming or desultory building. Their distinctive features were (1) that they were built in the best, most handsome and durable style, instead of the flimsy manner which the ordinary American interested in real estate seems to consider the thing; (2) especially their co-operative principle, each terrace consisting of half a dozen or a dozen houses, giving the outward appearance of a single very large building, but differentiated within to suit the most eager taste for that spice which comes from variety. Each terrace has also its stable building, where both livery and private horses are kept, the former to be obtained at a much cheaper rate than in the regular livery stables. One can also hire a coachman for any occasion if one has a horse and hasn't a husband or brother. There is also a club casino, where the children play in the day and the "old folks" dance at night. A boiler-house attached to each terrace furnishes heat on tap of an electric bell-by a steam-heating system that reads charmingly. One terrace owns a park of six acres with tennis courts, playgrounds for children, and other nineteenthcentury necessities.

"The residents enjoy," says Mr. Waterman, "the summum bonum of material comforts, with almost complete relief from the worries and cares of the average household. They have all the pleasures and

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benefits of a large country estate without the care and trouble and expense of its maintenance."

Altogether, the enterprising originator of this system, Mr. Eugene R. Knapp, ought to be encouraged, and he has been by the immediate success of his undertaking. Of course, this is not a scheme for the relief of the submerged tenth; the houses are fitted up tastefully and even luxuriously; but for the unsubmerged fraction of our population, which consists of comfortably-off business men who have to be within half an hour of their office, it will be a boon, and a powerful aid toward rescuing them from the dubious mercies of the suburban landimprovement companies.

THE

CONVERSATIONS WITH CARLYLE.

HE first part of what promises to be an exceedingly interesting series of papers appears in the Contemporary for January. Half a century ago, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, then a young man who had not enjoyed the advantage of imprisonment, made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle; and this friendship was kept up until Mr. Carlyle's death. From the letters which he received from Mr. Carlyle and from the notes of his conversations he is beginning his papers on conversations and correspondence.

THE GENIALITY OF CARLYLE.

We are glad to find Sir Gavan Duffy speaking a truthful word against the hideous exaggeration which prevails in certain quarters as to the temper of the Scotch philosopher. Sir Gavan Duffy says

"It has been a personal pain to me in recent times to find among honorable and cultivated people a conviction that Carlyle was hard, selfish, and arrogant. I knew him intimately for more than an en tire generation, as intimately as one who was twenty years his junior, and who regarded him with unaffected reverence as the man of most undoubted genius of his age, probably ever did. I saw him in all moods and under the most varied conditions, and often tried his impatient spirit by dissent from his cherished convictions, and I found him habitually serene and considerate; never, as so many have come to believe of his ordinary mood, arrogant or impatient of contradiction."

"IRELAND A NATION."

Of course there was a great difference between Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Duffy on the Irish question. Mr. Carlyle, for instance, was resolutely opposed to the favorite nationalist sentiment, “Ireland a Nation."

"Some friendly critic upbraids me, on one of these sheets, that I do not admit the Irish to be a nation. Really and truly that is the fact. I cannot find that the Irish were in 1641, are now, or, until they conquer all the English, ever again can be a 'nation,' anything but an integral constituent part of a nation-any more than the Scotch Highlands can, than the parish of Kensington can.”

He showed none of the savage ill-temper with

Repeal which some who consider themselves his representatives display in dealing with Home Rule. Mr. Carlyle wrote in 1845:

"When one reflects how, in the history of this world, the noblest human efforts have had to take the most confused embodiments, and tend to a beneficent eternal goal by courses they were much mistaken in, why should we not be patient even with Repeal? You I will, with little qualification, bid persevere and prosper, and wish all Ireland would listen to you more and more. The thing you intrinsically mean is what all good Irishmen and all good men must mean; let it come quickly, and continue forever."

THE SALVATION OF IRELAND.

Here is Mr. Carlyle's view of what should be done for the salvation of Ireland:

"Your Irish governing class are now actually brought to the bar; arraigned before heaven and earth of misgoverning this Ireland, and no Lord John Russell or 'Irish party' in Palace Yard, and no man or combination of men can save them from their sentence-to govern it better or to disappear and die.

"That you in Ireland, except in some fractions of Ulster, altogether want this, and have nothing but landlords, seems to me the fearful peculiarity of Ireland. To relieve Ireland from this; to at least render Ireland habitable for capitalists, if not for heroes; to invite capital and industrial governors and guidance (from Lancashire, from Scotland, from the moon, and from the Ring of Saturn)—what other salvation can one see for Ireland? The end and aim of all true patriotism is surely thitherward at present."

CARLYLE'S TENDERNESS.

Mr. Carlyle thrice visited Ireland, and on his third visit he had Mr. Duffy with him as his travelling companion. Of this Irish tour Sir Charles says:

"We travelled for six weeks on a stretch, nearly always tête-à-tête. If I be a man who has entitled himself to be believed, I ask those who have come to regard Carlyle as exacting and domineering among associates to accept as the simple truth the fact that during those weeks of close and constant intercourse, there was not one word or act of his to the young man who accompanied him unworthy of an indulgent father. Of arrogance or impatience not a shade. He was a man of genuine good nature, with deep sympathy and tenderness for human suffering, and of manly patience under troubles. In all the serious cares of life, the repeated disappointment of reasonable hope, in privation bordering on penury, and in long-delayed recognition by the world, he bore himself with constant courage and forbearance."

CARLYLE'S OBITER DICTA.

A few sentences must be quoted from his literary judgments. Mr. Carlyle said:

"You could get more meaning out of what Wordsworth had to say than from anybody else. Except

ing about poetry, he had more sense in him of a sound sort than any other literary man in England. He was a man of enormous head and great jaws of crocodile cast in a mould designed for prodigious work. Of Browning he said, nearly forty years ago, that he was one of the few men in literature of whom it was possible to expect something. Speaking of Shelley, he said that he was a windy phenomenon, a poor shrieking creature who has sung or said nothing that a serious man would be at the trouble of remembering. Of Walter Savage Landor he said he was a wild creature with fierce eyes, boisterous attitudes, uttering prodigious exaggera. tions on every topic that he turned up."

ALUMINIUM, THE METAL OF THE FUTURE.
N the Cosmopolitan for January is told the story

wrest from nature a great secret-if not a golden, what may be more important, an aluminium secret. The historian is Mr. Joseph W. Richards, a specialist in aluminium and author of the most exhaustive treatise extant on that subject.

THE DISCOVERY.

Aluminium-so called from its oxide, alumina, which in turn gets its name from being the base of alum-is two-fifths more abundant than iron, and is only exceeded in quantity by two elements of the earth's crust-oxygen and silicon. And yet the labors of the greatest chemists in the world, from the Middle Ages on, but succeed in 1854 in extracting a minute button of the pure metal! The French professor Henri St. Claire Deville was the fortunate man. His method was to pass aluminium chloride as vapor over melted potassium, which took out the chloride and left the new metal free.

"He found it to be a remarkably light metal, malleable, ductile, unaffected by air or water and by most acids except hydrochloric. He recognized, with what elation we can hardly conceive, that here was a metal particularly useful because of its lightness and its resistance to corrosion."

THE PRICE OF ALUMINIUM.

Deville's button cost more than its weight in gold, but during the next six years he so perfected his method that he was enabled to manufacture it on a commercial scale at a cost of $8 per pound and a price of $12. Strange to say, for the next twentyfive years there was no cheapening of the metal, and from 1860 to 1885 this French manufactory supplied practically the whole product of the world.

But the immense strides of electrical invention overtook this industry too. Six years ago the Messrs. Cowles, of Cleveland, Ohio, decomposed alumina directly by electricity, obtaining, however, an alloy, not the pure metal. Since then improvement after improvement in the process has been made, till to-day the price is 50 cents per pound, and it is manufactured in extensive establish

ments in England, America, France, Germany, and Switzerland.

WHAT IT IS USED FOR.

Aluminium is "only two and a half times as heavy as water, while iron is seven and a half times, brass eight times, copper nine times, silver ten and a half times, lead eleven times, and gold nineteen times.

"Very noticeable, when compared with silver, is the fact that sulphurous vapors have not the slightest blackening effect on aluminium, while every one knows how unsightly they render silver or silver plating. . . . Again, the acids of the bodies have no effect on aluminium, so that surgeons use all sorts of instruments made of it with the greatest satisfaction as to cleanliness."

One of the principal uses will be for cooking utensils, for which its lightness, resistance to corrosive action, and great conductibility for heat peculiarly fit it. In the light of Mr. Richards' experience we are promised pies with more artistic bottom crusts than were ever possible in our lately sloughed-off age of iron.

In alloys, the new metal finds an especial field in the manufacture of astronomical instruments, field. glasses, etc.

"If," says Mr. Richards, "aërial navigation ever attains practical success these strong, light alloys will be the most important factors in solving the problem."

Value and Use of the Metal.

The Engineering and Mining Journal, in its magnificent special annual number, gives the most exhaustive and accurate information that is accessible upon the production of all the metals and minerals known to commerce. The following paragraph is from its article on aluminium :

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At the present time aluminium is being largely used to replace German-silver and high-grade brass, and for castings for very many purposes in lightmoving machinery and parts of apparatus where lightness is an important element. A large amount is also used in steel castings, aluminium now being regularly employed for this purpose in almost all the important steel foundries in the United States. It is the increase in demand from the foundrymen that has, perhaps, been the most marked during the past year. Pure aluminium is also making its way into a thousand-and-one uses that must eventually consume enormous quantities of it, as, for instance, canteens for soldiers, cartridge shells for smokeless powder, buckles and sword scabbards, and other military accoutrements-the German Government having purchased a considerable quantity of metal in the United States during the autumn for this purpose-wire for telegraph and telephone purposes, harness trimmings, surgical instruments and house. hold utensils, for all of which uses it has demonstrated its fitness in an unequivocal manner."

Aluminium is a bluish-white metal, very malle. able and ductile, and, after silver, copper and gold,

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