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DR. CONAN DOYLE.

IN the Young Man, Mr. W. J. Dawson publishes a character sketch of Dr. Conan Doyle, who is now fully recognised as one of the most popular of our novelists. Mr. Dawson says that Dr. Conan Doyle is characterised by strength and by democratic sympathies. His manliness comes to him by heredity; no fewer than five of his family fought in the battle of Waterloo.

One of the stories Conan Doyle has been known to tell is of an old Waterloo veteran, from whom he asked a description of the great fight. The old man put all he knew into a phrase. He said that when the French came on against the British square for the second time, the cry of the British Infantry was, "Why, here come those blessed fools again!"

Dr. Doyle is best known to the public by his "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." Mr. Dawson says:

It is no sort of secret that the creator of "Sherlock Holmes" has grown a little impatient of the attention given to that nimble-witted gentleman, and that he displayed an eagerness to hurry him off the stage of action which certainly was not justified by the impatience or hostility of the audience.

Speaking of the popularity of his work, Dr. Doyle says:

There is no finer judge of the merits of a story, as a story, than the British schoolboy. I should be very well pleased to write for the applause of the schoolboy, for what the schoolboy likes the majority of readers will like too.

Mr. Dawson gives a very excellent account of the high ideals which animate this successful novelist. Mr. Dawson says:

He believes that he who would truly fulfil the vocation of a literary artist must find in that vocation his entire life. He must be free from distraction, from the excitement of moneymaking, from the mixture of pursuits which is so common among us to-day. And with Conan Doyle these are not merely speculative beliefs, but they are the spirit of his life. Dr. Doyle loses no opportunity of impressing it upon the popular imagination that the best thing for the peace and prosperity of the whole world is a firm alliance between Great Britain and America. From Mr. Kipling's view of the Americans he wholly dissents, and thinks it wrong both in temper and method. "But I love them," said Mr. Kipling; "and it is because I love them that I point out their defects." "Love should be patient of faults," is Conan Doyle's reply. "A nation is not born in a day. It has to learn many things, and to unlearn more. Give it time, and it will grow; but it will not help its true growth to be perpetually irritating a nation with a caustic satire."

One great doctrine which Dr. Doyle insists upon, in season and out of season, is the fundamental doctrine upon which THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS was foundednamely, the unity of the English-speaking race.

THE POETRY OF DEMOCRACY.

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MR. NICHOLAS P. GILMAN in the New World warmly protests against Mr. Addington Symonds taking Walt Whitman's " barbaric yawp' as representative of true democratic art. He objects to classifying poetry as feudal, aristocratic, democratic.

"The poet's office is essentially democratic; he is to maintain respect for the common nature that is in every human being, and to increase the sum of daily kindliness. ... It is not a Walt Whitman, but a John Greenleaf Whittier or a James Russell Lowell, who shows us the just relations of democracy and the poet." Appeal is made to the World's Fair buildings.

That splendid city in white on Lake Michigan was made glorious, not because democracy had spun from its conceited brain a new art of sculpture, a novel order of architecture and a modern code of colour; but because, with a sound instinct

and a mind ready to be taught, its makers desired and obtained from cosmopolitan and long-established art its best and finest. What so-called "democratic art" might have done instead, if it had followed the example of Whitman in verse, we may well imagine with a shudder!

The false prophets of poetry to-day turn from idle singing of an empty day, and jauntily solve for us the most difficult problems of modern life, with their "news from nowhere "—a fatuous mixture of medievalism, free lust, popular ignorance, and wishy-washy æstheticism. Many admirers of "democratic art" show a very natural tendency to admire Utopias so constructed out of "individualism run mad," as socialism has been well described. The office of the democratic poet is not to be inventing new metres, new arts, new politics, new creeds. It is for him to bring home to the people the intrinsic Best that Time has accumulated, down to this wondrous present.

THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE UNIONISTS.
SHALL THEY COMBINE?

MR. J. L. MAHON, Labour-man, ponders in the National Review the tactics which his Party shall adopt at the next General Election. He enumerates the articles of the Labour programme, and explains the principles behind them. Which Party shall the Labour-men co-operate with? Not with the Party now in power. That seems to him impossible. The chief measures to which the Government is committed have no place in the Labour programme. It has "not only callously neglected the interests of labour, but treated the Labour Party with derision, by admitting the justice of its demands and then placing these demands at the tail end of a programme of impossibilities."

The Conservative Party is pledged to resist Home Rule, Church Disestablishment, the exceptional treatment of the Liquor Traffic, and the abolition of the House of Lords. None of these points are likely to raise any difficulty with the Labour Party. None of them find a place in our programme. As we wish nationalise so many other things, it is not likely that we shall assist in denationalising the Church, which is certainly the most socialistic institution in the country. From our point of view, there are many industries which are as much open to reform as the Liquor Traffic, and we should deal with the liquor trade on the same principles as we would with any other trade.... The House of Lords has rejected no measures to which we attach special importance. Our difficulty is with the House of Commons, and our worst obstacles and enemies are there. The fact also that Lord Salisbury is pledged to the Referendum should be quite enough for all practical purposes. So far there are no serious difficulties in the way of co-operation with the Conservative Party; but neither are there any positive reasons for it.

Mr. Mahon finds in Mr. Chamberlain's programme of last November, grounds for at least discussing co-operation with the Unionists. He undertakes a rather large order when he says:

"It will be our duty to see that at all future General Elections the leaders of parties give a clear and practicable programme of the measures which they intend to pass, and upon which they seek the confidence of the country.""

The Schack Gallery at Munich.

ADOLF FRIEDRICH COUNT VON SCHACK, about whom so many German magazines have been writing, was a poet, philologist, Oriental scholar, etc. He was born in 1815, and died last April. His works include poems, dramas, a history of Spanish literature, etc. He also founded the picture gallery at Munich known as the "Schackothek,” and bequeathed it to the German Emperor. The latter, however, has withdrawn his claims to it, and the gallery remains in the possession of the Bavarian capital.

"A DROP OF BLOOD."

A STORY BY MAARTEN MAARTENS. THE later numbers of Kringsjaa are rich in interesting original articles and well-selected extracts from the English and Continental reviews. In No. 10 B. III., Maarten Maartens commences a pathetic little story entitled "A Drop of Blood." The hero is a fine figurea born poet, with high ideals, and devoted to his art with his very life's blood. He is only two-and-twenty, and has already been married three years, poor fellow. It was not a blessing he received from his father when he married sweet Celestine, and at the opening of the story we find him living in bitterest poverty in a narrow, foulsmelling back street with his patient young wife, "who possibly is not really so beautiful as the picture of her that he carries in his heart," and his little daughter Lina. "The angel of life had stood by Amidon's cradle and cursed him where he lay. He was a poet." And in the cupboards and drawers lie his rejected poems massed in confusion-every one a drop of his heart's blood, the fire of life burning in them still and never to be wholly smothered. Celestine only half understands them, but loves them fully. And as for himself, they are more to him than Celestine, or Lina, or himself. It is much to say, but not too much, for " in those poems lies more of his real self than in his whole body." Yet he stands, perforce, behind the counter of a small stationery shop, patiently swallowing the not really so ill-meant gibes of his good-humoured little tub-bodied, currant-eyed master, Mons. Lalois.

Poor Amidon, after much resistance, for "he is, by God's mercy, a born poet," is persuaded at last to try his hand at prose, for it is a prosaic world, as Lalois says. His master suggests, furthermore, that he must make his novel of a spicy flavour-the kind of thing to tickle the literary palate. That will pay. But Amidon is true to his ideals and to his art, and, when once he has become reconciled to jilting his worshipped poetic muse for the while, he finds he can frame his beautiful thoughts as finely in prose. And it is a sweet story that rises from the drop of ink that holds the drop of blood. He would sooner die than dishonour the gift of God by writing prurient, vulgar trash like "My Father's Wife," and "The Crime in Mogador Street." He sends his story out to seek its fortune; and the poor little ill-furnished room is no longer lit with a miserable paraffin lamp. Hope's golden morning sun shines gloriously in upon them and mingles its rays with the rainbow-coloured gleams from fantasy's torch. And then awake those little elves of beauty, whose sleep is lighter than any one can think, and play about with laughter and with song; they fill the air with a rare delight; a thousand fragrant blossoms spring into life where'er they tread; a glorious song of victory rings through the room-it is the triumph that always follows the miracle of a new creation. Poor Celestine working away in her corner knows little of all this, "but the angel of life, you see, had stood by Amidon's cradle and blessed him also, so that whatever he did, he was still the poet."

At last, after seven weeks of suspense, his sweet little story returns. The editor, to whom he has sent it-a celebrated man-is exceedingly pleased with it. He recognises Amidon's genius, but-his heroine is too innocent. The end of the story would be more striking if the runaway Estrelle, instead of remaining pure, were to return to her husband fallen like himself, but with innocent coaxing smiles. If Amidon will make this slight alteration or allow him, the editor, to do so-well and good. Two

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Religious Persecution in Russia.

THERE is a brief but interesting paper in Good Words, made up of extracts from letters written by a peasant born in Kherson, in Southern Russia, who for the last fifteen years has played an important part in developing Stundism in Russia. It is illustrated by several rough drawings of Stundists in prison garb. They are chained by their ankles, and have one half of their head shaved. The letters begin by describing how one peasant, convicted of being a Stundist and of not having had his child baptised in the Orthodox Church, was sent to gaol for two months, and had his child taken from him which was given to a Greek Orthodox to be educated. A peasant in the province of Kieff describes how at night the police swooped down upon his cottage and seized his tracts and hymn-book. Another Stundist describes how they had to meet for worship in the sedge by a river's bank, where they had sometimes to stand up to their knees in ice and water for an hour. In the province of Kieff, Stundists were seized and kept in gaol for fifteen days without trial. During this time their heads were shaved, they were supplied with barely sufficient food to keep them alive, and they were beaten and cuffed by the police. Stundist who is convicted of endeavouring to convert an Orthodox is exiled to Trans-Caucasia for life or for a term of years. If they then refuse to give up their proselytism they are sent to Siberia. Extracts are given from a Stundist sent to fourteen years' penal servitude on the charge of blasphemy. Another Stundist sent for life to the heart of Central Siberia gives a very pleasant account of his life there. He finds many of his brethren in that district, and hears of them 3,000 versts away on the Amoor. "You will find it pleasant enough here," he says, and then adds as a special attraction that there are splendid opportunities for bee culture.

Hesba Stretton at Home.

A

IN the Young Woman Miss Friederichs describes Hesba Stretton in her home at Ivycroft, Ham Common. She found the author of "Jessica's First Prayer" very difficult to interview. She succeeded however in eliciting from her or her sister the fact that she has in hand a new and unpublished story on religious persecution in Russia, which has been written in collaboration with Stepniak, the Russian exile. Sympathy makes strange bedfellows, and it is curious to find so mild and evangelical a Christian linked arm-in-arm with a political assassin. Hesba Stretton's stories sell enormously. Upon one of her short stories which sold at a shilling, and on which she had a royalty of a penny a copy, she has received no less than £400-that is to say that a hundred thousand of that book must have been sold. Her publisher is a lucky

man.

JOHANNES BRAHMS and Carl Reinecke form the subjects of slight sketches in the Universum.

AN EMPIRE OF ORGANISED ATROCITY. "ALTHOUGH I have travelled in many countries, Morocco is the most barbarous land I have ever seen.' Such is the verdict of the Earl of Meath writing in the Nineteenth Century of his recent visit. "It is a country where injustice reigns in the place of law." From the late Sultan, who rewarded the man who raised him to the throne by fourteen years' imprisonment without specified cause, down to the humblest soldier who imprisons the most innocent persons for the sake of the fee to be paid on arrest, "officials live on the miseries and sufferings of their fellow-creatures.”

A MOORISH INFERNO.

In a Moorish prison the captives sleep half-naked on the mud floor; they are all huddled together in one apartment, without distinction as regards crime or innocence, for many are simply thrown into prison on account of their reputed wealth or prosperity by avaricious officials, who, by prolonged imprisonment and sometimes by torture, hope to squeeze money out of them or discover where they have hidden treasure. Of an evening it

THE LATE SULTAN OF MORE CCO.

is not unusual for the prisoners to be all bound together by a chain passing through an iron collar which each captive wears. thus making it necessary for all to rise or sit, or lie down together. Open and uncleansed cesspools within the prison add sometimes to the indescribable horror and misery of the place. There is no inspection, no medical attendance, no alleviation in sickness. ... When a prisoner is an absolute pauper, and unable to purchase food, the authorities give him daily a small piece of coarse bread, provided by religious endowment, sufficient to prolong the agonies of starvation.

DIABOLICAL TORTURES.

But the most brutal punishment of all was meted out in 1892 to the chief rebels in the Angera rising. Those who were caught had their right hands slashed to the bone at every joint on the inside with a sharp razor. Then salt was rubbed into the wounds, and finally a sharp flint stone was placed in the palm, and the fingers closed tightly over it. Over the hand was then stretched a piece of raw cowhide, which was tied firmly round the wrist. As the cowhide dried, it contracted, causing fearful agony. The arms were bound

behind the back, so that the sufferer could in no way alleviate his torture. Many of the men went mad or died, and in the case of the survivors the hands rotted and dropped off.

And for the continuance of these horrors, it seems the Christian nations are responsible!

It is international jealousy, suspicion, and fear, which prevent the Powers of Europe and America from taking united action to sweep from the face of the earth this unspeakably barbarous tyranny.

CO-OPERATIVE WORKING-CLASS SETTLEMENTS IN ALSACE AND ITALY.

Two interesting developments of the co-operative movement are described in the Fortnightly Review by Mr. Chas. Hancock. In Mulhouse, a city of 70,000 inhabitants in North Alsace, the Industrial Society, which is a sort of Civic Church-the patron or organiser of every institution in the town-started in 1856 a company for housing the workers. This provides

that, beginning with a payment of £12 down for a house valued at £120, and of £12 per annum payable in monthly instalments, interest being calculated at 5 per cent. on both sides of the account, the whole sum due, with interest, becomes liquidated at the end of thirteen years, and the purchase deed is then handed over.

There are now two settlements. In the old settlement were built an establishment comprising baths and washhouses, the prices charged being most moderate; also a bakery and restaurant, the tenant of the premises being under express agreement to supply bread at a price per loaf less than its ordinary cost in the town. The restaurant further supplies soup, a plate of beef, roast meat, vegetables, potatoes, and wine at moderate sums, which vary in accordance with a tariff fixed from time to time. There are in the new settlement upwards of eight hundred and twenty houses, occupying an area of about fifty acres. The maisonettes are described as models of cleanliness and tidiness.

The shareholders are not allowed to receive a dividend on their shares higher than 4 per cent.; and whenever the winding-up of the company takes place, all assets remaining after payment of liabilities and reimbursement of shares at par will, under the society's statute, be devoted to works of public utility. The capital is not large (£14,200), but it is amply sufficient to meet all requirements. In addition to the share-capital, there is a reserve fund amounting to 10 per cent. of the capital, also a further dividend equalisation fund, available to secure regular payments to the workmen-shareholders.

In Milan the "workmen's quarters" supply houses. which become the tenant's property by payment of about the same rent as would get him only an insanitary lodging elsewhere.

The principle of the plan adopted by the society is shortly this: The houses, so soon as they are finished, are given possession of to a shareholder, who becomes the actual tenant, i.e., within such a period as he chooses, the cost being defrayed by annual instalments. The period covered may be from one to twenty-five years, and according to the number of years it is spread over, he will pay a higher or a lower instalment, as the case may be. In these instalments are included the cost of the ground on which it is built, the cost of the actual building, and the interest on these two sums, calculated at 4 per cent., also the rates payable thereon. . . . The society has no speculative idea in view.... The workmen-shareholders are paid their dividend at a rate not exceeding 6 per cent.; but any other profit is devoted to paying off original debts and constituting a "reserve" to help those who through no fault of their own are out of work and unable to keep up the regular payment of their rent or instalment.

NONSENSE ABOUT THE MODERN WOMAN.

BY LADY VIOLET GREVILLE.

IN the Humanitarian, Lady Violet Greville writes an article entitled "The Home-loving Woman," which is little more than a long lamentation over the degeneracy of the modern woman.

HOME LIFE EXTINCT!

Lady Violet does not even deem it inconsistent with her professed regard for sobriety and truth to declare that "the domesticated and home-loving woman is now a thing of the past, and that home life par excellence is extinct." The craving for excitement, says this authority, is spreading with an appalling downward tendency, and is acting like poison on the younger generation. The revolting daughter, she declares, revolts against work, against duty, and against domesticity, as well as against conventionality. She even makes bold to declare that the modern woman dislikes marriage, and so forth, and so forth. The natural criticism that rises in the mind of the reader is that even if the modern woman is as bad as she is painted, Lady Violet is quite determined to prove that an old-time woman can be quite as extravagant and absurd. No doubt there are some abnormal creatures, but to speak of decimal one per cent. as if they represented the whole is a little too much.

SECOND-HAND BRIDEGROOMS IN DEMAND! Notwithstanding the fact that the modern woman has been the first to protest against the habitual complicity in the immorality of man which characterised her predecessors, Lady Violet Greville, on the strength of a blackguard play now being performed in Paris, declares that the modern women are coming to desire husbands who have had many mistresses before they take one wife.

MOTHERHOOD UNPOPULAR.

As a specimen of the fairness of this new censor of her sex, we note that she calmly confuses the protest of women against enforced and unwilling motherhood to a dislike of motherhood itself, and this she asserts is the terrible feature of the woman novel. It means, she remarksthat a woman is unsexed, that she has lost that distinguishing quality of pure femininity, which is what men seek for and worship in a good woman. It means that the instincts of the rake, which Pope cruelly said lay at the bottom of every woman's heart, have come to the fore, and have transformed her nature into something abnormal, endowing her with the passions and vices of the man while withholding from her his sobriety, his strength, and his steady balance.

It may be true of a miserable minority; for it is inevitable that in any period when liberty succeeds repression, that the new wine will go to the head, and that many women, like many men in similar circumstances, will make fools of themselves. But what is unpardonable in such papers as this of Lady Violet's, is that they place the extravagances of the few to the debit of the whole sex.

WHAT WOMEN SHOULD DO.

When she abandons criticism and vituperation and attempts to describe what women ought to do, she has nothing to suggest beyond the same things which the best modern women have been trying to accomplish. She says:

If women really wish to mould the destinies of men, if they wish to introduce a finer code of honour and purity, let them

hold up a higher standard for themselves, let them refuse to worship money in the vulgar fashion of the day, let them abjure worldly marriages and accept high thinking and plain living; let them consort rather with the noble and the honest than with the rich and those whom wealth has made powerful; let them purge society of the unhallowed leaven that has crept into it, of its low aims, its mean frivolity, its scarcely veiled dishonesty; let them make their homes what they should be, a shelter, a refuge, an ark of salvation, a haven of rest and peace where the world is no longer out of joint, but where reigns one great harmony of love, with woman as the apostle of justice, strength and courageous heroism, joyfully accepting her real mission to restore order out of disorder, to re-establish the nice proportions of unwritten laws, and to spread over all the common and mean things of the earth the subtle and suave perfume of her grace and goodness.

It is a pity that a writer who sees so plainly what women ought to do comes so far short of practising what she preaches as to write this most unworthy article.

WHAT MISS REPPLIER SAYS.

In Scribner's Magazine Miss Agnes Repplier writes an article in somewhat of the same strain, but what she says is characterised by a regard for truth and decency which is not a characteristic of the former article. She gently but wisely scourges the craze which prevails more in America than it does here, of treating women's work as separate from men's. Speaking of women workers, she says:—

The first and most needful lesson for them to acquire is to take themselves and their work with simplicity, to be a little less self-conscious, and a little more sincere.

At present there is some truth in what she says-that women like to be told that they are doing all things well, and that they have nothing to learn from anybody. But this is a passing phase.

As the number of women doctors and women architects increases with every year, they will take themselves, and be taken by the world, with more simplicity and candour. They will also do much better work when we have ceased writing papers, and making speeches, to signify our wonder and delight that they should be able to work at all; when we have ceased patting and praising them as so many infant prodigies. Perhaps the time may even come when women, mixing freely in political life, will: abandon that injured and aggressive air which distinguishes the present advocate of female suffrage. Perhaps, ob, joyous thought! the hour may arrive when women, having learned a few elementary facts of physiology, will not deem it an imperative duty to embody them at once in an unwholesome novel..

Instead of encouraging each other to put up inferior standards of their own in place of the best standards of men, she urges them to drop all nonsense about women's work merely as women's work, and recognise that if they have to be worth anything their work must be judged regardless whether the worker wears petticoats or trousers.

Our Portrait of Ladas.

MR. CLARENCE HAILEY, the photographer through whose courtesy we are enabled to give a portrait of Lord Rosebery's horse, has been particularly successful in the groups that he has taken of the horse, its owner, its trainer, and its jockey. In that we have selected for reproduction the old gentleman on the left of the picture is Mr. Matthew Dawson, the jockey is Watts, and at the horse's head stands Mr. Felix, the veterinary surgeon.

50

WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE IN AMERICA. THERE are two papers in the North American Review for June, entitled "Woman's Suffrage in Practice."

IN COLORADO.

The first is by Governor Waite of Colorado, who speaks with a somewhat uncertain sound as to what Governor Waite is woman suffrage has already done. a Populist, and the Populists are for woman's rights. He says:

The principle of equal rights for all against which for the past quarter of a century the two old parties have waged relentless war is the sign by which the People's Party is to conquer. It will, at no distant day, not only redeem women from political servitude, but also emancipate man and woman from industrial slavery.

But although the People's Party has faith in the future, it does not seem to be very certain as to the actual results attained so far. Governor Waite says:

It must be admitted that the effect which equal suffrage will produce upon the State and nation is a matter of conjecture. In Utah, the right of women to vote under the Territorial laws did not injuriously affect polygamy, but polygamy there was a tenet of the Mormon religion, and a large proportion of the female voters were polygamists by faith or practice. In Wyoming and Washington, to my knowledge, no extraordinary progress has been made in the line of political reform that can be traced to female suffrage, and in Colorado sufficient time has not elapsed to speak understandingly of the result. Certainly there is little hope of the future, unless women, admitted to suffrage, acquaint themselves more thoroughly than men with political affairs, and "come up with greater zeal to the help of the Lord against the mighty," in providing a remedy for the fearful condition of this nation, the result of the positive acts of conspiring monopolists, and the hitherto criminal negligence of the mass of the voters.

IN NEBRASKA.

The Governor of Nebraska, who follows the Governor of Colorado, speaks for a State which has not got woman suffrage, and which, according to him, has no intention of conceding the franchise to women. The Governor says:

Every reasonable demand short of a grant of the elective franchise seems to have been anticipated by our statutes. The laws have even gone further, and given women rights and privileges not bestowed upon males. By way of comparison, it may be remarked that the Nebraska laws relating to the sale of intoxicating liquors are far more thorough and farreaching, and are better observed, than they are in the sister and adjoining State, Wyoming, where woman suffrage has obtained for a quarter of a century.

He then quotes the following passage from a newspaper, which asserts that

"At the capital city of Wyoming gambling-houses are abundant, and open saloons are as frequent as any other kind of stores, and the charge is made that not a single act of legislation aimed at the betterment of the human race has been passed through woman's influence.'

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How true this may be I cannot say, but it is true that in Lincoln, the capital city of Nebraska, a city of more than 65,000 inhabitants, there are no gambling-houses, no houses of prostitution, and the few saloons which exist are held under the most rigid restriction.

IN NEW YORK.

Dr. Shaw, in the American Review of Reviews, says that nine-tenths of the members of the Constitutional Convention in the State of New York are said to be adverse to the idea of woman suffrage. The demand for the franchise of women in New York State does not appear to possess more than a very limited support.

The results of the woman suffrage movement are instructively presented by Miss Mary Anne Greene in the Forum for July. She recalls the interesting fact that women were legal voters in New Jersey from 1776 to 1807. The franchise was then restricted to "white male citizens," on the plea that male voters after voting once dressed up as women or negroes and voted again! The modern demand for woman's suffrage was first formulated at a woman's rights convention in 1850. It achieved legislative enactment first in the territory of Wyoming in 1869, and next in the State of Colorado in 1893.

WHAT THE CONSTITUTION SAYS.

The Supreme Court in 1874 "established the fact that the Constitution of the United States, in its present form, neither grants nor forbids the elective franchise to women, but leaves each State free to admit or exclude them as it sees fit." Efforts were consequently made in seven States so to construct or amend the Constitution as to admit women to the vote, but with success in Colorado only. Even Acts conferring municipal or school-suffrage have been pronounced unconstitutional. "Consequently the only sure way to extend the electoral franchise to women will bə by the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution, or by securing a specific provision when a new Constitution is framed." It is pleasant to know that "Society" no longer looks askance at the movement. "Now, in New York, political equality has become fashionable, and ladies of wealth and position are enthusiastically working to obtain a recognition of woman's right to the ballot in the new Constitution to be framed for the State by a convention now in session."

THE PROSTITUTE VOTE,"

Mr. Matthew Hale is pained at the prospect, and bewails "the useless risk of the ballot for women." Of his three chief objections, he evidently thinks the second the strongest :

An unsavoury fact must be plainly stated and squarely looked in the face. The number of prostitutes in the city of New York alone has been estimated at from 30,000 to 50,000. Every city in the State adds its quota to this disreputable army. These women, who live by selling themselves, soul and body, would of course sell their votes. There is no class among the present voting population analogous to this degraded and unfortunate army of lost women. A large proportion of them would be made legal voters by the proposed amendment. They would be enough to turn the scale in a close State clection. . . So far no candidate has felt obliged to pander to the "prostitute vote." Would bringing this element into politics tend to purify the suffrage or to improve the condition of the State?

.

Mr. Hale surely forgets that as good women immensely outnumber the bad, the net result of the woman-vote must be to curtail, and not to extend, the area of political corruption. Besides this there are many distinct and solid advantages that would follow the enfranchisement of the prostitute (female). As for the prostitute (male) no one ever proposes his disfranchisement.

The Review of the Churches republishes the correspondence between Dr. Lunn and Mrs. Besant, on the moral evils of Hindooism. Dr. Fry, the Rev. J. F. Wilkinson, and Miss Harriett Byles discuss the bearing of the Parish Councils Bill upon religion. The Rev. A. F. W. Ingram gives a good account of the work of Oxford House in Bethnal Green. Canon McCormick and the Rev. Dr. David Davies discuss the question of the influence of the Church on the masses. I quote clsewhere from Mr. Tom Mann's contribution on the same subject.

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