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of his countrymen's acuteness in selling condemned provisions, arms, ammunition, shoddy uniforms, and blankets to the Cubans at the highest prices. America, in fact, does not send fighting-men to Cuba; she sends professional ruffians and atrocitymongers to levy blackmail by processes unknown to any civilized state. The point arises-and Cánovas might well consider the advisability of making it in an Identical Note-whether Europe has not a common interest in protesting against this form of Yankee barbarism. One syllable from Europe-one word from France and England-and the vast majority of law-abiding citizens would put a speedy close to lawless proceedings carried out by speculators and winked at by demagogues who exploit the ignorance of the average voter. Until the contrary be proved, the bulk of Americans must be held innocent of any complicity in the crimes aforesaid. But it is high time that they knew what is committed in their name. Meanwhile, in Cuba, Spain is acting scrupulously within her rights; behind the Spanish Ministers stand the men of all parties, the unanimous representatives of a renowned, a heroic, and an unvanquished people."

JULES SIMON'S COLLEGE LIFE.·

HE late Jules Simon's account of "A French

College Sixty Years Ago," which appears in

the August Forum has an autobiographic interest.

M. Simon begins with a brief description of his library-a collection of 25,000 books, to which, he says, he can go with eyes closed and find each volume. "While surveying my books in a certain fashion I review my life, for my library and I developed together."

M. Simon then reviews the condition of education in France just after the Revolution, and pictures the degeneracy of the colleges and other higher institutions.

"The universities, as well as the convents, were destroyed, and the majority of their members, who were priests, suffered a common fate with others of their profession. The colleges were without instructors and there would have been no pupils-for the colleges were closed by order and the faculties suppressed by law. Diplomas were forbidden to be given, since no one was to be privileged above another. The schools were closed or converted into hospitals or barracks. The larger number of the libraries were plundered or given over to the municipalities. The books, transferred from the university or the convent to the town hall, were packed in bales and lay there in the garret. I have myself seen similar bales-containing perchance rare treasures-which had lain undisturbed since the Reign of Terror."

On the reopening of the colleges, in the era of the Restoration, some of the old instructors returned to their chairs. M. Simon had among his instructors

in the college at Vaunes, which he entered in 1827, two professors who had taught there in 1793.

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In the first story of the college, full of mysterious objects which had been shut up there for twenty years, was a physical cabinet where no one ever entered and where everything was covered with the venerable dust of time. To utilize all these wonders the departmental council desired to procure the services of a professor. An annual stipend of four hundred francs was voted, and M. Jéhanno ran around to all the doctors in the town to propose this fine plan and to offer them this magnificent salary. It was refused by all. In conclusion, the invitation was extended to a justice, noted for the compliancy of his character and the feebleness of his mind. He alleged with hesitation that he knew nothing of physics, but M. Jéhanno replied triumphantly that he could learn it, and the board of education presented him with a copy of the Elements of Physics,' written in the preceding century by the Abbé Nollet. The fact that this amazing professor never had more than five or six auditors in a college where the other classes numbered from eighty to a hundred pupils, demonstrates the good sense of the people of Brittany.

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A NARROW CURRICULUM.

Such being the condition of my college at Vannes when I entered in 1827, it may practically be said that my student years fell toward the middle of the seventeenth century. The character of this college admitted of no change; a century and more ago the methods and curriculumn of study were identical. Latin was well taught; beyond Latin we learned nothing at all. Our professors consented, indeed, to read us portions from obscure historians who were brought to my remembrance at Rome before the inscription: 'Here Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf.' Of the study of physics and our cabinet I have just given an accurate description. Our professor of philosophy, who was looked upon as a great man and who afterward became a deputy, had in his possession three massive volumes, the Philosophia Lugdunensis' (Lyon's Philosophy '), the property of his predecessors and which he in turn was to transmit to his successors. In the first volume were treated the various forms of argumentation: syllogism, dilemma, etc. The second volume treated of metaphysics. I recall this definition of idea': 'I ask you, Monsieur, what is an idea?' And the pupil replies: An idea is the clear representation of an object really present before the mind.' The third section of Lyon's Philosophy' treated presumably of theology, but was in reality a development of the catechism. Our master knew that philosophy had become modified since the writing of his text books. He had heard of Condillac, who applied the theory of the idea' by the illustration of the cover of a pot filled with hot water; and of a young man, Cousin by name, who enjoyed a modicum of fame at Paris, and whose misfortune it was to talk much without saying any

thing. Following this declaration he would read aloud some pages from the ·Philosophical Fragments' of which we did not understand a single word and which provoked us to Homeric bursts of laughter; then, inspired with renewed confidence, we would return to the ancient philosophy of our fathers."

HOW SIMON PAID HIS WAY.

By far the most interesting part of M. Simon's article is his account of the financial difficulties under which he labored in pursuing his college course, and the way in which he met them.

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At Vannes I passed from triumph to triumph. I was not allowed to compete for the prizes in philosophy; I was given a prize of honor superior to all the rest. But in the midst of these honors my life was one of difficulties. My family, completely ruined while I at the age of fourteen years was still at the high school at Lorient, and unable to defray the expenses of my education, had resolved to apprentice me to a watchmaker. Notwithstanding, an effort was made which enabled me to enter at Vannes, whither I went on foot, and where I passed through the third class as a boarder at reduced rates in a little seminary maintained by a Lazarite, Father Daudet. At the end of three months, when about to enter the second class, my father declared he could do no more, his last resource being exhausted. But in this excellent school there existed, among other relics of the past, a custom which saved me. The praiseworthy pupils of rhetoric in the second class gave lessons to their comrades in the fifth and sixth classes, at a most absurd charge, it is true, but which none the less helped them to earn their daily bread. I told my story to the principal, requesting him to find me pupils. I was not fifteen years old, but I was the glory of the college. The principal, desirous to see me remain, with the greatest difficulty procured me six pupils whom I united in a small class. I devoted to them an hour in the morning and again an hour in the evening, receiving in payment from each boy the sum of three francs a month. The manager of the Shallette accepted me as a boarder at eighteen francs a month. The college passed a resolution exempting me from payment for lessons; the board of education presented me with two hundred francs. In this way I was enabled to finish the two years' course of study.

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Carrying a small lantern in my hand, I might be seen every morning at six o'clock passing down the Rue de Chanoines, dressed in an ordinary calico jacket, under which I wore a woolen waistcoat. 1 may say that I was adopted by the entire town and that every one showed me the greatest kindness.

"I once saw one of my old pupils again. His name was Du Pontavice. He died, as have most of my pupils, before me. At the time we met he was superintendent of schools at Blois, and I was then minister. The prefect presented the superintendent who, in tears, asked me if I had forgotten him. I embraced him very heartily; and in that instant I

seemed to review my whole life which I thought then already finished, whereas in fact it had only begun."

TWO

TRIBUTES TO MRS. STOWE.

WO good articles appear in the magazines on the late Harriet Beecher Stowe.

MR. WARNER'S ESTIMATE OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. In the September Atlantic Monthly Mr. Charles Dudley Warner tells "The Story of Uncle Tom's Cabin," and gives his judgment on the much discussed literary value of the book. He attributes the success of Uncle Tom to an undoubted quality of genius. "The clear conception of character (not of ear-marks and peculiarities adopted as labels), and faithful adhesion to it in all vicissitudes, is one of the rarest and highest attributes of genius. All the chief characters in the book follow this line of absolutely consistent development, from Uncle Tom and Legree down to the most aggravating and contemptible of all, Marie St. Clare. The selfish and hysterical woman has never been so faithfully depicted by any other author.

"Distinguished as the novel is by its characterdrawing and its pathos, I doubt if it would have captivated the world without its humor. This is of the old-fashioned kind, the large humor of Scott, and again of Cervantes, not verbal pleasantry, not the felicities of Lamb, but the humor of character in action, of situations elaborated with great freedom, and with what may be called hilarious conception. This quality is never wanting in the book, either for the reader's entertainment by the way, or to heighten the pathos of the narrative by contrast. The introduction of Topsy into the New Orleans household saves us in the dangerous approach to melodrama in the religious passages between Tom and St. Clare. Considering the opportunities of the subject, the book has very little melodrama; one is apt to hear low music on the entrance of little Eva, but we are convinced of the wholesome sanity of the sweet child. And it is to be remarked that some of the most exciting episodes, such as that of Eliza crossing the Ohio River on the floating ice (of which Mr. Ruskin did not approve), are based upon authentic occurrences. The want of unity in construction of which the critics complain is partially explained by the necessity of exhibiting the effect of slavery in its entirety. The parallel plots, one running to Louisiana and the other to Canada, are tied together by this consideration, and not by any real necessity to each other.

"There is no doubt that Mrs. Stowe was wholly possessed by her theme, rapt away like a prophet in a vision, and that, in her feeling at the time, it was written through her quite as much as by her. This idea grew upon her mind in the retrospective light of the tremendous stir the story made in the world, so that in her later years she came to regard herself

as a providential instrument, and frankly to declare that she did not write the book; God wrote it.' In her own account, when she reached the death of Uncle Tom, the whole vital force left her.' The inspiration there left her, and the end of the story, the weaving together of all the loose ends of the plot, in the joining together almost by miracle the long separated, and the discovery of the relationships, is the conscious invention of the novelist.

"It would be perhaps going beyond the province of the critic to remark upon what the author considered the central power of the story, and its power to move the world, the faith of Uncle Tom in the Bible. This appeal to the emotion of millions of readers cannot, however, be overlooked Many regard the book as effective in regions remote from our perplexities by reason of this grace. When the work was translated into Siamese, the perusal of it by one of the ladies of the court induced her to liberate all her slaves, men, women and children, one hundred and thirty in all. Hidden Perfume,' for that was the English equivalent of her name, said she was wishful to be good like Harriet Beecher Stowe."

The Original of Uncle Tom.

In the September Century Mr. Richard Burton, a fellow townsman of Mrs. Stowe, has a short sketch of the novelist in which he explains the origin of the character of Uncle Tom. He says:

"It has been emphasized of late that in 1849 a certain colored man was brought a number of times to the Stowe house at Walnut Hill, Cincinnati, where he told his piteous story of escape, capture and cruel privation, and this man is pointed to as the prototype of the hero in the great novel. The 'original' Uncle Tom and the 'original' Topsy seem to some to be of supreme importance. Concerning this Uncle Tom of Walnut Hill, it is sufficient to say that while no doubt such a man appeared there, talked with the mistress, and moved her to pity for his misfortunes, his story is by no means that of the character immortalized by the writer. The simple truth is that this incident, like many another, acted as a suggestion to Mrs Stowe, as she brooded over her work; it is a misconception of her methods of literary labor (and, indeed, of almost all such labor which proves potent) to imagine that her Uncle Tom was starkly taken from life. In the same way, discussion has arisen concerning Lewis Clark of Lexington, Ky., a venerable colored man, describing himself as the original study for George Harris in the tale. That Mrs. Stowe did make use of one Lewis Clark in limning the charac ter of Harris may be ascertained by any one who reads her Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin,' a book written explicitly to show the sources whence she drew the data for her fiction. The only question is, then, whether the Clark spoken of in the Key' is the Kentucky Clark, with whom an alleged interview has recently been published. It is not only possible, but probable, that they are one and the same.

A

brother of the original Lewis, a well-known character in Boston, employed in the office of the assistant treasurer, affirms stoutly that his kinsman is alive in Lexington. The whole matter is one of the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and would have no interest were it not that a letter from one of Mrs. Stowe's daughters, which has been printed, has been interpreted to deny the existence of such an impostor as Lewis Clark of Lexington. In fact, the letter did nothing of the kind; it only declared that a rumor about a certain Lewis Clark, printed in a periodical in 1891, was untrue, so far as it had any connection with Mrs. Stowe."

SOME BICYCLE TOPICS.

THE Century, too, in its September number, suc

cumbs to the fascinations of bicycle discussion. Isaac B. Potter, a high official of the L. A. W., contributes an article on "The Bicycle Outlook." He suggests that cycling may revive the old stagecoach inns.

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'A few days ago Mr. Edison was quoted in a daily newspaper as saying that within the next decade horseless carriages will be the rule. It may be, therefore, that, with the general improvement in road vehicles, and the general improvement of the public roads, without which no vehicle can become really efficient, the volume of road travel will be so increased as to bring to life the old inn of early days, but not, I think, the primitive and picturesque type that marked the stopping places of the old stage coach which, in the years following the Revolution, used to make the distance between Boston and New York in six days Nor will the rejuvenated inn bring back the old-time back-log festivals at which the Knickerbockers and Quakers so often came together when the fast coach known as the 'Flying Machine' whirled its passengers between New York and Philadelphia in the astonishing space of two full days The railway has largely superseded common road travel, and our swift business methods will give the preference to railway travel until a swifter means shall take its place. But though the great majority will travel by rail, it must be borne in mind that the great and growing body of cyclists who travel by road is not greatly less in point of numbers than the entire population of the colonies when the old inns were in vogue; and the marked effort on the part of hotel proprietors to secure the patronage of the wheelmen shows how fully the value of this new element is being appreciated. About 7,000 official League hotels have been selected and granted official certificates by the League of American Wheelmen within the last five years. The proprietor of each of these hotels is required to sign a contract in which he undertakes to supply good food and clean, comfortable lodgings to all travelers, and to accord a certain per centage of discount or rebate from regular prices to

all members of the League of American Wheelmen on presentation of membership tickets for the current year. In exchange for this concession, the League publishes a list of all official hotels in the road books, tour books, and hotel books issued for the use of wheelmen; and in this manner the patronage of the hotels is encouraged; the wheelmen are brought together at common stopping places, and a direct benefit is secured to the organization."

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BICYCLES AND THE ROADS.

One of the most valuable parts of Mr. Potter's discussion are the paragraphs relating to bicycle paths and the duty of insisting on good roads. He says: A cycle-path is a protest against bad roads. We are not a nation of road-makers, and every year, for weeks at a time, our country traffic and travel are paralyzed by the presence of a simple mixture of dirt and water. Our country roads have cost us thousands of millions of dollars in labor and money, very little of which has been spent in a sensible way. Skillful road work is planned in the brain, wrought by skill, and finished by rule and reason. Every cyclist knows how unfit for human travel are the miserable streaks of rooted soil that run for hundreds of miles through our most populous counties, and all the horses and all the mules know it.

"The undoubted duty of every road officer to keep the public highway in a condition fit for the use of every vehicle having the lawful right to travel is not well understood. Cycling has come upon us apace, and the country road-maker, whose official tenure is often short-lived and capricious, and whose ambition is likely to be restrained by a short

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sive, and, the cost being generally contributed by the wheelmen themselves, no tax for this purpose is placed upon the public at large. Whether this should be so is a question that will stand some dis cussion; but thus far the cyclists have sought only to impose a small assessment upon actual users of the wheel when money has been needed to construct cycle-paths. Two years ago Mr. Charles T. Raymond of Lockport, N. Y., one of the pioneers in cycle-path construction, declared that what is used by all, and needed by all, should be paid for by all,' and this rule has commanded approval among wheelmen who have taken up the work of cyclepath making. Under favoring conditions, cyclepaths cost from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty dollars per mile. The surface width of the path should not be less than four feet, and need not be more than seven feet, except in rare cases. paths are generally laid out on the grass-grown roadside, parallel with the wagonway. The grass is first cut close to the ground, after which the material (soft coal, cinders, or screened gravel) is put on in a thin layer, and so shaped and packed as to slope downward from the centre to each side. The grade in most cases follows closely the original surface of the ground. Material may generally be had at lower cost, and hauled at less expense, during the winter months; and this is an important point to bear in mind, since the item of haulage alone is likely to constitute more than half the expense of construction."

CLUB LIFE VERSUS HOME LIFE.

The

ARIOUS objections to the club as a disturbing

sighted and parsimonious constituency, may scarcely actor in our social organization are urged by

be condemned if he fails at times to provide for the old conditions or to anticipate the new. The cyclist and the road commissioner are fast getting more closely in touch with each other, and the wheelman's influence at the state capital is certain, in the end, to secure the aid and supervision of the state in the making and maintaining of good country roads. Pending the time when this shall be accomplished, I believe that the making of cycling-paths along lines of popular road travel should be encouraged. In the state of New York the legislature has made special provision for the construction of cycle-paths in several of the interior counties; and the local subdivisions of the League of American Wheelmen will doubtless combine to push the work of cycle path building, so as to lighten and brighten the journey of the cycling tourist between points where the common roads are in bad condition. We may look for a time in the near future when a cycling route from the Atlantic to the Pacific will be made and mapped, and when good roads and good cycle-paths will be so connected in a continuous chain between the two great oceans that a cross-continent journey awheel will be the popular ten weeks' tour of every cyclist whose time and purse will permit.

"As commonly made, cycle-paths are not expen

G. S. Crawford in the August Arena. The pith of these objections is contained in the following paragraphs which we quote from Mr. Crawford's article:

"One of the chief objections to the club is the separation of the sexes which it brings about. It must, however, be admitted that normally constituted women would be quite as much bored as men by constant intercourse with the opposite sex; the renewal of contact being one of the principal sources of the charm and refreshment which men and women get from each other's society. On the other hand, a mother who has the welfare of her family at heart naturally wishes for her sons and daughters the advantages of agreeable and improving associates. She can secure at her fireside the presence of superior women. It is, however, more fitting that the head of the house should introduce its male visitors; but if, instead of bringing his companions to his home, he seeks their society at the club, the family circle loses the beneficial effects of contact with men whose opportunities for knowing life it may be presumed are both varied and instructive. Without this class of influence the home cannot be a true school of manners or accomplishments."

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THE CLUB PROMOTES CELIBACY.

The morally healthy man uses his club with the same degree of moderation that he does the other accessories to the pleasures and comforts of life; but there are a large number of men who cannot, strictly speaking, be called healthy or unhealthy, but may be made the one or the other by the influences to which they are subjected. When the club is regarded, as is sometimes the case, not only as a substitute, but even as a compensation for the absence of a home, it cannot be otherwise than detrimental to the best interests of society. Its influence upon unmarried men especially would seem to be unwholesome, if for no other reason than because it accustoms them to a degree of luxury and an exaggerated standard of living difficult to attain, even if it were desirable, in the ordinary household. It furthermore encourages a class of celibates who in the absence of family ties lose the strongest incentives to unselfish and noble exertion."

"The question before society is as simple as it is important. Our civilization rests upon the education of the home; the good gained from the household cannot be won elsewhere. Whatever advantages the club. may afford for political training, it cannot compensate for the evil it does in debilitating the life of the fireside. It is the duty of all who recognize these obligations to struggle, as the keepers of the best winnings of society, for the elevation of household life. This end can best be reached by a clear understanding of the dangers that attend the removal of the pleasant offices of the home to places where the family as a whole is not admitted. All the material gains of our time will be as nothing if the household is not maintained as the chief seat of social interest and pleasure."

THE MISSION OF HULL HOUSE.

HE work of Hull House, the remarkably suc

scribed by Annie L. Muzzey in the August Arena.

"The names of Jane Addams and Hull House have become familiar not only to the residents of Chicago, but to all readers interested in sociological studies and experiments. But there is with the general public a misapprehension of motives and uses which does injustice to the broad spirit and purpose of the founders and sustainers of this noble social settlement. It is crudely supposed that a woman, or a company of women, going voluntarily into an ignorant, impoverished, and alien community, must be acutated solely by motives of charity and self-sacrifice, or by a pious longing to give and be given for righteousness' sake. taking credit and great satisfaction for their praiseworthy effort to save the lost and convert the sinning.

But it is especially desired by Miss Addams that Hull House shall not be regarded as a philanthropy in the sense of conferring charitable benefits from the high altitude of a superior order of beings whose

benevolence is restricted to religious exhortation and eleemosynary services.

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The mission of Hull House is simply one of pure neighborliness. It assumes at the outset that there is to be an exchange of kindly offices and mutual benefits. It sits down in the midst of its humble neighborhood with the idea of sharing the influence of its larger opportunities with those whose lives are defrauded of the light and beauty that belong equally to all. It has no cumbrous theories to which it is bound to conform, but is ruled only by a loving intelligence that constantly seeks the best good of the community of which it has, by free choice, become an important and a responsible part."

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From first to last there has been no partial, onesided effort in special lines of reform, but an earnest, thoughtful consideration from many standpoints of the widest assistance that could be given the neighborhood as a whole. And the whole, in the view of these philosophical workers, includes the settlement itself; for whatever is accomplished in the elevation of the people with whom they have freely cast their lot, is believed to rebound, to revitalize and enlarge the mental and spiritual perceptions and activities of all who feel themselves a part of the life of the

race.

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The men and women who have been drawn to the gratuitous work of the social settlement by the pure force of its human claims are of the generously cultured class who are conscious of a need to expend their energies in wider and more satisfactory uses than are found in the polite and sometimes hypocritical amenities of a society that exists for itself alone. So far, by the mere bent of their desires, they are adapted to the molding influences of a co-operative work in which each must be willing to renounce personal pet theories and assimilate so far as possible with the larger plan that includes and directs all activities to the best results.

"Hull House is no place for reformers with one idea, or for riders and hobbies of any sort whatever. It is in itself a school of large and varied culture, a school that is not ready to announce its full and absolute solution of the social problems with which it deals, but which, with earnestness and humility, is feeling out its way to the truest methods, by united endeavor, of bringing the two extremes of city social life into harmonious and helpful relationships that shall in different ways equally benefit both.

"In this altruistic scheme there are ample and manifold opportunities for each to follow the line of his or her aptitudes in the diversity of uses developed by the work in its continuous progress. One of the remarkable things about the settlement is the fervor and swiftness with which response has been made to its needs, the army of resident and non-resident workers showing how strongly the spirit of Christ is seeking, on the borders of the twentieth century, to embody itself in broader and diviner expressions of love and human fellowship."

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