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One of Abraham Lincoln's Stories.

During the late Civil War an officer who enjoyed close personal relations with President Lincoln called at the White House, and in the course of a private interview complained bitterly of certain criticisms passed on his conduct in a campaign by the Secretary of War, and while repeating such criticism gave way to great passion. Lincoln patiently heard him to the end, then said, 'You seem very angry. Did you ever hear what made Finnigan mad? I'll tell you. Finnigan came home late from the club one night sober, but in such a temper that he knocked over a lot of furniture. Mrs. Finnigan was aroused, and sitting up in bed, asked, "What's the matter, Finnigan ?'' I'm mad; mad as a hornet." "What's made you so?" Flaherty down yonder; he called me a liar." But, man, why didn't you make him prove it?" "That's why I'm so mad; he did !'''”—Francis H. Hardy's “Public Sentiments on the Silver Question," Fortnightly Review.

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If Not God, Then Devil.

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"There is a school in a northern town. church school, and the clergyman has the little children into the chancel of the church to instruct them in religion. 'What is this?' he will say, pointing to the communion table. A child will answer that it is the communion table. He administers a shocked rebuke. 'No; it is the altar.' Then the children are taught the names of the ecclesiastical furniture and vestments. And who am I?' said he, on a recent occasion. 'Please sir, God,' said one little fellow who had been well, but insufficiently indoctrinated. No, my boy, not Almighty God. Now who am I?' 'Please, sir, the devil,' suggested another child, whose knowledge of supernatural persons admitted only of two orders. 'No, I am God's priest,' and the stupendous significance of the claim was then expounded to the awe-stricken children. Dr. Horton's "Doomed Board Schools," Fortnightly Review.

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Not Now

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One day an ultra-radical journal, which is dead, buried and forgotten by now, called the writer 'le cocu de la troisième République.' 'That's a dangerous word to use in writing nowadays,' said Jules Simon, during the evening of that day, when his attention had been drawn to the article. But I tell you what I will do; I will tell you a tale which you are at liberty to repeat, even to the writer of the article. Years ago I knew a Frenchwoman of more than flighty character, who was married to an Englishman, a very worthy but stolid fellow, whose religious opinions forbade him to seek a divorce, even if he had been able to obtain it in France. As

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"I remember these lines coming back to me years ago in the Nilgiris, when a clever young aide-decamp told me a story of an officer, long since dead, who had risen from the ranks, but who could employ his tongue as effectively as his sword. Meeting a lady who much disliked him, he said: 'Good evening Miss you are looking very handsome to-night.'

'I wish I could say the same, Major.' 'Oh! but you could, if you were to tell a lie, as I did.' ”—Sir M. E. Grant Duff, "Menagiana," in Cornhill.

All the Difference.

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"When I asked Miss Barlow if she had much difficulty in getting her early poems and sketches accepted, she replied: 'I did not have many disappointments. The first serious thing I did was a little poem printed in Hibernia. I afterward sent one to the Cornhill, and I received a postcard from the editor, Mr. Payn, which I deciphered as, "I have no use for silly verses. I felt dreadfully disgusted, and grieved too, but after the whole family had puzzled over it, they came to the conclusion that the words were, I hope to use your pretty verses,' which was a great relief to me. The next thing I sent was a prose sketch of village life, and to my great surprise Mr. Payn accepted it.'"-Sarah A. Tooley in "Ladies of Dublin," Woman at Home.

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"SUNDAY IN A TRAMPS' HOTEL."

INDER this title Mr. T. W. Wilkinson gives in the July Quiver a very unpleasant picture of the lodging houses in which working men on the road, in quest of employment, have to spend Sunday with the idle tramp. He asks:

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Can nothing be done to make it brighter and happier? Why should not poor-law guardians provide decent accommodation, at a charge of fourpence per head, for such travelers as choose to avail themselves of it? We have municipal doss' houses all over the country, and a Westmoreland union even takes in nightly lodgers of the artisan class who can afford fourpence for a bed. There are precedents enough, and to spare. Why, therefore, should not a portion of our workhouses-at least those in districts where the private accommodation is notoriously disgraceful-be set apart for the reception of wayfarers willing to pay for a night's shelter?

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It should also be possible to hold in every large wayside' padding ken' a religious service such as is provided in some of the common lodging houses of London, Liverpool, Manchester and other cities.'

TH

THE CENTURY.

HE Hon. J. W. Foster, lately the confidential adviser to the Emperor of China, contributes a sketch of the Viceroy Li Hung Chang to the August Century. Mr. Foster recites many notable achievements of the great Viceroy, ending with the conduct of the peace negotiations with Japan. One of the most striking qualities of the Viceroy is his recognition of the defects in the national system of education in China. The Chinese are not prouder of any institution than of this competitive system. But the most distinguished scholars and highest officers in the empire have never heard of Homer, Virgil and Shakespeare; they have a vague knowledge of Cæsar and Napoleon, but none whatever of Hannibal, Peter the Great, Wellington or other modern soldiers, and they are ignorant of astronomy, mathematics and the modern sciences. They regard these branches as parts of a foreign system which they do not care to prefer to their own. But Li Hung Chang saw the absurdity of this, and it was largely through his influence that the Emperor has established at Peking a college with a full faculty of foreign professors for the instruction of chosen Chinese youths in European languages and modern sciences, with a view to training them for the diplomatic service. Mr. Foster ends his sketch with the opinion that if Li Hung Chang "be judged in the light of his education, his experience and his surroundings, he must be regarded as the first of living statesmen of Asia and one of the most distinguished of the public men of the world."

In this number of the Century appears the first instalment of the diary of E. J. Glave, the brave young African traveler, who died of fever last year while exploring the dark continent. One of the first entries in Mr. Glave's diary under date of August 1, 1893, gives an account of the manner of conducting the slave trade. Five per cent. of the slaves shipped to Zanzibar are caught by the British gunboats enlisted in putting down the traffic and the remaining ninety-five per cent. get away. There was formerly a tax on each slave coming into Zanzibar; then if a slave was ill beyond the possibility of recovery his master killed him rather than run the risk of his dying before he could be sold. "When a dhow is chased, the Arabs always tell the slaves not to be captured because the white men will eat them. By thus intimidating them they get their captains to escape from the warship's boats when the dhow is run ashore. The slaves are well cared for when they reach Zanzibar ; they soon forget their past hardship and get strong and well and are apparently happy and contented."

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himself to me, so that I should not feel left out. He did not talk much himself, and I recall nothing that he said. But he always spoke wisely and simply, without the least touch of pose, and with no intention of effect, but with something that I must call quality for want of a better word; so that at a table where Holmes sparkled, and Lowell glowed, and Agassiz beamed, he cast the light of a gentle gayety, which seemed to dim all those vivider luminaries. While he spoke you did not miss Field's story or Tom Appleton's wit, or even the gracious amity of Mr. Norton, with his unequaled intuitions.

"The supper was very plain a cold turkey, which the host carved, or a haunch of venison, or some braces of grouse, or a platter of quails, with a deep bowl of salad, and the sympathetic companionship of those elect vintages which Longfellow loved, and which he chose with the inspiration of affection. We usually began with oysters, and when some one who was expected did not come promptly, Longfellow invited us to raid his plate, as a just punishment for his delay."

OUR NEED OF LITERARY CRITICISM.

In the "Editor's Study," Mr. Charles Dudley Warner gives it as his opinion that we are in dire literary need of some good sound criticism-" cool, discriminating, relentless," as he puts it. "Ask yourselves," Mr. Warner is pitiless enough to say, "what is the real value, the value to a beginner who sincerely desires light and leading, of the most of the literary noticing and criticism in our journals and periodicals." It is so true that it is scarcely worth repeating that, as Mr. Warner says, this work of "criticism" is done by callow beginners, or fifth rate literary workers, finely filling the definition, "the critic is an author who has failed."

The

"What every writer needs is to be brought to judgment in the high literary tribunal. A provincial standard can no longer be accepted. To praise an author for doing very well as an American is like praising a poem or a novel as being really creditable for a woman. judgment must be a cosmopolitan judgment, based upon a comparative study of literatures. This is not a harsh requirement. We make it in all the other arts and industries. A picture, a piece of jewelry, an axe, a pocketknife or a watch is good or bad according to established canons, which exist notwithstanding the prevalence of uneducated taste. The delusion that we can have an American literature that does not conform to the universal standard is like the delusion that we can have an American money that does not conform in value to the standard of the world. We put our American stamp upon the money; yes, but it must have instrinsic universal worth."

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SCRIBNER'S.

HE August Scribner's is given over almost wholly to the demands of a fiction number. It appears in

a cover designed by Will H. Low, printed in colors after a method entirely novel and unusually successful in periodical work. The magazine opens with a first chapter of a series of sketches "On the Trail of Don Quixote," the text by August F. Jaccaci, art manager of Scribner's, and the charming illustrations by Daniel Vierge. Of the fiction, George W. Cable's 66 Gregory's Island," Bliss Perry's story, "By the Committee," and

a very chic comedietta by Annie Eliot, are the most noticeable features. The last named is printed with illustrative borders quite new in their design, in two colors. In the department "The Field of Art" there is some discussion of the decoration by Puvis de Chavannes in the Public Library in Boston. The writer, who evidently knows what he is talking about, says that the definite value of this work of the great French master cannot be decided upon until the rest of the panels are completed, since no decorative passage should ever be judged apart from its context. But quite aside from that, the perfect fitness of the effort is marred by the fact that the painter could never see the place.

"The indescribable quality that we call decorative unity of tone represents something that we feel to be more than a matter of skill in painting or even subduing and lighting. Nationality, surroundings, instinctive modification, unconscious knowledge and unconscious habits of sight and rendering have a good deal to do with it. Connoisseurs in tapestry tell us that the nationality of the weaver-artist can always be told by his skies. Wherever his cartoon may hail from, or he be settled for the moment, he always unconsciously portarys the skies and tone of his native land. Puvis's own art brings an analogous teaching, and a double one. Its effect depends largely on a certain quality of unity of tone, which can only be felt, not described; and—it is at home in France. As the requirements of mural painting in America are more deeply understood, it will be felt, we are convinced, that great decoration can only be painted by Americans, if not living in America, at least in touch with the country, and combining all the technique of their craft with instinctive knowledge of the requirements of the case, and with that subtle harmony with the surroundings that cannot be overestimated."

In another department there is described the extensive preserves for large game established by the late Mr. Austin Corbin in the White Mountains. This great hunting park is called "the most successful and important effort ever made by private means to afford a sanctuary for the elk, deer and other threatened species of large game. The preserves extend over 26,000 acres of land, and it required thirty miles of heavy fencing to inclose them. The climate and the forest conditions are nearly perfect for the home of buffaló, elk, deer, bear, beaver and wild boar. Some of these species are multiplying rapidly, and there are more than eight hundred elk, seven hundred deer, and five hundred wild boars at large now, with probably one hundred moose and fifty-five buffalo. In the summer of 1895 a couple of beavers began their industrious dam-building, and shortly after their arrival they were visited by several of their own species, though where the strangers came from no one can imagine, as no colony of beavers was suspected in that region.

"Mr. Corbin's wilderness is managed with the same methodical arrangements that obtain in his bank and his railroad. Ten stations have been made to furnish homes for the gamekeepers, who live in pleasant cottages just outside of the forest fence. These stations are all connected with the superintendent's house by telephone and the superintendent is in telephonic communication with Mr. Corbin's residence. Every day except Sundays there are reports to the superintendent, who, in Mr. Corbin's lifetime, wired them to his office in New York. The gamekeepers have to report on any trespassing, on the different animals they have seen, and give any general information that they think would interest the superintendent."

WE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

E quote elsewhere at greater length from Mrs. Annie Fields' delightful reminiscences, "Days with Mrs. Stowe." This August number of the Atlantic also contains a short essay by President D. C. Gilman of Johns Hopkins University on "The Future of American Colleges and Universities," prompted, as he says in his preface, by the almost simultaneous appearance of the memoirs of Drs. Barnard and McCosh. President Gilman sketches the decided changes which have taken place in the functions of universities during the past thirty years; the enormously increased pecuniary resources making possible better buildings, libraries and teachers; the relaxation of the rigidity of discipline; the introduction of absolute or almost absolute election of courses; the diminishing of Greek and Latin required, and the added attention paid to history, English, French and German; the very important introduction of laboratory methods in the study of science; the great increase of enthusiasm in athletics, and the admission of women to the higher education. President Gilman says that two tendencies have been at work, one to increase the importance of the college and its intellectual and moral discipline, and the other an opposite tendency to transform the old institutions into something like the philosophical faculties of the German universities. In making clear the difference between a college and a university President Gilman nearly agrees with Barnard in calling the university "a school of all learnings that the necessities of the age demand." "It must first of all things be a seat of learning where the most cultivated scholars reside, where libraries, laboratories and scientific collections are liberally kept up, and where the spirit of inquiry and investigation is perpetually manifested." President Gilman enlarges on the value of the most elaborate and profound departments of inquiry and investigation which he deems the university's special function, and he thinks that the great cost of such methods will not daunt the givers when the needs are felt. "It is not important for every institution to encourage all sciences. There is no such thing as a complete university except in Utopia. It is possible and surely desirable that the universities of the next century will be distinguished by special traits, each aiming at superiority in some chosen department; it may be medicine, jurisprudence, applied science, the classics or mathematics. But it is essential to the university, whether broad or narrow its domain, that it should be pervaded by a right spirit of freedom, courage, enthusiasm, patience, co-operation, and above all things by the spirit of truth."

Paul Shorey, discussing the present conditions of literary production, thinks that our Kipling, Lang, Stevenson, Hardy, Howells, James, Meredith, Watson, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Pierre Loti, Bourget and the rest are endowed with quite as much native talent as the great names that dominated the literature of England and France from 1830 to 1870, though he does not think that these men will exert an equal influence in molding the thoughts of men; and he speaks of two classes of hindrances: First, the temptation to intellectual dispersion and hasty, premature production, and second, the temporary exhaustion of valuable motifs in the higher fields of literature. A single sentence gives Mr. Shorey's point of view: "It is possible that it is not in Mr. Marion Crawford to produce anything more than a good story, but neither he nor anybody else can possibly know till he ceases to turn out a good story every year." Mr.

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Shorey complains, too, of the lightness of touch that has given so widespread a popularity to the American magazine. He admits it is a charming thing. "But no great literature will hereafter be produced among a people so much afraid of serious reading as the American public has hitherto been."

One of the "Contributors' Club" tries to answer an inquiry as to what factory girls read. The contributor says: "One girl who worked in a factory, and in whom I was greatly interested, told me that she belonged to a circle of twelve girls who subscribed for periodicals and passed them around. She liked best to read short stories and poetry. She did not recall the names of any persons who wrote the poems in the magazines, but she remembered the name of Longfellow. She thought what he wrote was 'lovely.'" This girl did not know whether Shakespeare was a poet or not. Of fifty girls of the class working in factories six were confident that they knew of Shakespeare. At another mill the contributor says that one girl reads love stories aloud to the others during the brief period of leisure at noon. These young ladies showed a redeeming appreciation of the history of the United States and a high sense of art in that they denied any interest for the illustrations in the magazines.

M'

MCCLURE'S.

RS ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS-WARD, in her recollections of her life, tells of Celia Thaxter, Lucy Larcom and Phillips Brooks. Of the last named she says: "My recollections of him, such as they are, I find to be either definitely of a grave and religious nature or sparkling with social gayety-one of the two extremes. I do not recall him at all in what I once heard called 'a comfortable middling view of things.' In conversation he was one of the merriest of entertainers. Sometimes I used to think him almost too ready to let the occasion float away in jest, while I, like so many others, would have chosen to sound with him some theme of height or depth. But, of course, one can readily understand how weary his nerve might have become of the seriousness of life, and how much needed 'the light touch.'"

Miss Ida M. Tarbell's life of Abraham Lincoln tells in this chapter of Lincoln's defense of a slave girl, and of the $5,000 fee which he recovered from the Illinois Central Railroad in the celebrated McCormick patent case, and the Armstrong murder and Rock Island bridge cases. Of Lincoln's professional fees, Miss Tarbell says that the McCormick case, including the retainer of $500, amounted to nearly $2,000, and was the largest fee, with the exception of the Illinois Central payment, he ever received. The two sums came to him about the same time and undoubtedly helped to tide over the rather unfortunate period, from a financial standpoint, which followed-the period of his contest with Douglass for the Senate. Lincoln never made money. From 1850 to 1860 his income averaged from two to three thousand a year; in the forties it was considerably less. The fee book of Lincoln & Herndon for 1847 shows total earnings of only $1,500. The largest fee entered was one of $100; there were several of fifty, a number of twenty more of ten, still more of five and a few of only three dollars. If a fee was not paid Lincoln did not believe in suing for it. Mr. Herndon says that he would consent to be swindled before he would contest a fee. He was careless in accounts, never entering anything on the book. When a fee was paid to him he simply divided

the money into two parts, one of which he put in his pocket and the other into an envelope which he labelled "Herndon's half."

THE

THE COSMOPOLITAN.

HE August Cosmopolitan has some interesting features in its departments, among them some comments by Francisque Sarcey on one item of the last French census which shows that if France is not being depopulated its population at least does not increase. He says that in France not only are large families rare exceptions, but when met with they are sure of being ridiculed rather than admired, and no theatrical joke is more certain of applause than "the appearance on the stage of an Englishman and Englishwoman followed by fourteen or fifteen children ranged in regular gradation like steps of stairs.

"Fecundity is in French mothers of families a sort of blemish. When a young wife presents her husband with an heir, it is bad enough; if a second comes, she is pitied; if a third is on the way, those interested are angry, and the indifferent keep away; if a fourth-oh! if a fourth, there will be an explosion of indignation against the tyrant of a husband, of pity or of ridicule for the wife. But never fear-they are not likely to expose themselves to it.

"Among the middle class, and especially among the Parisian middle class, families with one or two children are the rule. There has just been founded, under the presidency of Mme. Destillon, a league, the object of which is the encouragement of large families. I have become a member of this league, without being quite sure that the methods which it indicates and which it proposes will prove very efficacious. But then, I am in line with it. I have had four children, and I have already been made several times a grandfather. And, as I am past the age of active service, and have long since entered on that which we call territorial,' I may be allowed to give advice to others without having it said to me, 'Practice what you preach.'"

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Mr. E. S. Martin notes that the contrivers of plots for novels may find a new obstacle to complicate their love affairs in the present standard of living among people of polite tastes. Instead of cruel fathers, absences, and shipwrecks, he suggests that the difficulty of finding income enough to keep up a home is a sufficient crux for the modern love affair. "Love-making," he says, comes natural to men in the early twenties; it is then that they are most susceptible, and that their habits are still in such a formative state that they may reasonably be considered to be marriageable. But what young man of twenty-two or twenty-three can the conscientious novelist permit his heroine to marry? If he ventures to let his young people plight their troth in the springtime of life he must hold them to their fealty for seven or eight years at least, and probably much longer. while his young man is getting a sufficient start in his profession to afford his prospective spouse the reasonable comforts to which she has been used." Mr. Martin's kindly tip to the story writer is based on the theory that it costs about $8,000 for a small family to live a year in New York "in decorous semi-comfort."

Mr. A. J. Bruen exhorts charitable givers to become acquainted with all the facts in reference to the disposition of their gifts, on the ground that "it is perhaps true that some of our charities are beautifully endowed institutions for incompetence. The managers wish to

run things to suit themselves and if possible shut out all outside influence."

IN

NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE.

N the August New England Magazine Henry E. Bourne has a long and unusually well illustrated article on the city of Cleveland, which he writes from both the historical and descriptive point of view. This city, which now controls about 300,000 inhabitants, scattered over ten miles on the lake and five miles inland, is yet hardly more than a group of towns, and he says it will not for many years become a city with a distinct civic individuality. Among the problems which it has not successfully solved is the matter of sewage. Much of the garbage passes into the lake, and since the city water supply comes also from the lake the fact is dangerous. This water supply is drawn through an intake constructed at the expense of several million dollars-a tunnel extending under the bed of the lake a distance of 8,642 feet to a crib. Theoretically the currents render the water about the crib safe but storms and counter currents running eastward often force polluted water into the pipes. The water has been degenerating steadily. The city has concluded to make a large expenditure to lengthen the tunnel, purify the river, and erect a garbage crematory.

E. P. Powell, discussing "Jefferson and Hamilton in our Education," says that although New England laid the foundation, "she owed to Washington and Jefferson and Madison the synthetic work which enabled her schools and her churches, her towns and her counties to span the continent." He thinks that when we have more thoroughly forgotten the Civil War the influence of the South in the making of the nation will be better recognized. There is an article on the Society of the Cincinnati which gives some quaint account of the manners of the Hudson River aristocracy of the Colonial period.

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THE BOOKMAN

HE Bookman for August is as lively and readable in its presentation of the month's literary gossip and events as if no such thing as the dog days were in existence. "A Paris Letter says that at last a statue is to be erected to Victor Hugo at Besançon. This is to be erected next year, while the Paris statue, for which six thousand pounds have already been collected, will not be unveiled until 1900, the year of the great exposition.

So many people of capable literary secretions have announced their inability to digest Zola's latest book, "Rome," that it must be a slight comfort to the novelist to hear it at any rate recommended as "the most interesting of guide books," which is the most exhaustive praise Mr. E. K. Chambers can give it in his review. "It tells what to see and how to get there; it gives a succession of views in the color and light panoramas of Rome from its various high points-sun-baked' under its intense sky, its historical ruins crowned by the blue dome of St. Peter's; and all in that strong, massive style, the self-conscious attempt of the man who has envied Daudet his light touch, to make up in force and mass what he lacks in grace and subtle charm."

The editor of the Bookman says that the University Press announced that they have never with one exception printed so many copies of a first book by an American poet as have already appeared of Father John

Tabb's "poems." "The exception was Emily Dickinson; and it is a curious coincidence that Father Tabb should have said recently that of all the American poets there is none worthy to go down to posterity except Miss Dickinson."

Laurence Hutton, in "A Note on Kate Field," says that he first met her in the early sixties, when she was writing editorials for the New York Herald on a salary of $5,000 a year, "which was considered in those days an enormous price. She was looked upon as the most promising young woman in her profession in America." Mr. Hutton describes Miss Field as "ambitious, selfassertive and self-advertising. But she was the soul of honesty and honor. She was one of the cleverest and most self-contained and self-sustaining women of her generation in any country, and hers was one of the most contradictory individualities I have ever known. But the good always and largely predominated over the bad. She never had a home; she died alone as she lived alone."

LIPPINCOTT'S.

HE complete novel of the August Lippincott's is a

A. Train Robbery." Rhoda Gale discusses "Immigration Evils," among them the disturbance of the money market due to the sending abroad of money made by the foreign laborers. She says that the Italian bankers of New York City alone send to Italy from $25,000,000 to $30,000,000 per year, being chiefly the savings of unskilled laborers. "The padrone system, with its iniquitous exactions and extortions, still exists. Even within the last five years padrones having from five hundred to six hundred persons employed on sewers and water works deducted from their wages from ten to fifteen cents per day for procuring them employment, and practiced all sorts of impositions upon them. Last year, in fact, not less than $100,000 was actually stolen from Italian workingmen by half a dozen bankers in New York, Boston and Newark. An Italian laborer knows that if he goes directly to the Italian quarter on his arrival here, he can get work. There he falls under the influence and is at the disposition of the padrone; and it is possible for a contractor to secure within a few hours a good number of these laborers, skilled or unskilled, at wages from one-half to one-third below the American standard." It was in consequence of abuses such as this that in 1894 there was formed in Boston "The Italian Workmen's Aid Association," an organization of Americans to protect foreigners.

The other "serious" article of this number is by Owen Hall on "The Federation of Australia.' He thinks the arguments of the Australian federalists depend too largely upon the sentimental view of the question to prove finally strong. The greatest practical obstacle to federation he considers the debt of $500,000,000 of the two smaller colonies, New South Wales and Victoria, which the parliaments of Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland will scarcely care to go security for. Of the colonies that may be relied upon as desiring federation to the extent of being ready to make some sacrifices to secure it, Victoria and Tasmania, the two smallest in area, are the only ones that can be relied upon with any degree of certainty.

Mr. J. Knapp Reeve gives some information about the pleasant profession of bee keeping. California, the land of flowers, is the favorite home of bee culture now, and Mr. Reeve tells us that a single bee keeper there has as

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