OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT ANDREWS.

DEAR SIR:

The American people have learned with regret that your manly and patriotic course in espousing the cause of bimetallism has been made the occasion, if not the cause, of your resignation from the presidency of Brown University. We learn that instead of being applauded and encouraged by the Regents of that institution, over which you have presided with such signal ability and success for so long a time, you have by them been pressed to the wall. This act of blindness and infatuation on their part, whether springing from a mere difference of belief between the majority of the body and yourself, or whether originating in the hope of gaining financial assistance from some personage whose opinions they must flatter before he gives, is a fit subject for comment and criticism. Aye, more; it is an act well calculated to excite the contempt of the public. It is an act that should kindle the indignation of every thoughtful, liberal-minded citizen of the United States.

As for yourself, President Andrews, you have for a long time stood in the forefront of American educators. You have represented Brown University in the most able and acceptable manner. You have made the institution to be well and honorably known where before it was scarcely known at all. You have carried the fame of Brown beyond the Alleghanies, and have disseminated the generous influence of the University in the great valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Your voice has been heard on many public questions, and it has always been the voice of a patriot counselling for good.

Your recent course in defending the old bimetallic monetary system of the United States as against the new goldbased system of monometallism has been the most laudable of all your policies. You have never hitherto had aught to say on any public question which has gone so far and produced so salutary an effect on the opinion of your countrymen. Your countrymen know you to be an honest and

able man. A great majority of your countrymen are bimetallists in heart and purpose; but they have been defeated of their purpose by the intrigue, skill, and powerful momentum of concentrated wealth, whose interest it is to gather up and consume the entire resources of the American people without an equivalent. You know as well as we know what monometallism is, and what it means. You know as well as we know what bimetallism is, and what it means. Bimetal lism is the use of two primary money-metal units instead of one, without prejudice to either. Bimetallism is the use of both silver and gold as primary money at an established ratio. Bimetallism is the right of free coinage for both metals on terms of perfect equality. Bimetallism is the right of the people to transact their business, and in particular to pay their debts, in the one money metal or the other money metal just as they may choose. Bimetallism is the right of the debtor to discharge his obligations according to the law and the contract by the measure of a gold unit or a silver unit just as he will, according to the plentifulness of the one or the other statutory coin.

This right is not the creditor's right, but the debtor's right. It is a right which he enjoys under the law and the contract; for the law has always recognized our money in both kinds, and every public contract in the United States, and every private contract (unless specifically payable otherwise), is based on a monetary unit defined by the word coin. This coin is either silver or gold, according to the choice and convenience of the debtor. No man is wronged or can be wronged by the exercise of the debtor's right to pay in gold or silver, for every contract in existence has been made with a full knowledge of the existence of this right, and of the purpose of the debtor to claim it at the date of settlement. Whoever, therefore, attempts to take away the right of alternative payment in either coin and to confine payment to one coin only, is an abettor of a fraud, which, when carried into effect, becomes a crime. For these reasons bimetallism is a correct theory and an honest policy. Monometallism is a false theory and a dishonest policy.

These truths your own luminous and powerful mind has

declared with perfect clearness to the people. Your action has always been modest and in keeping with the character of your office as President of Brown University. You have been a President in deed and in truth. The American

people hold you in honor; and the puny act of the Regents of Brown University will have no effect upon the public judgment except to confirm it in your favor.

While we regret that some harm seems to have been done to you and your fortunes, we regard this harm as one of those transitory hardships by which men are developed into higher, nobler, and more useful lives. The American people are not going to let you fall or fail. Their strong arm is lifted in your defence. Their voice is heard like a murmur arising from the far horizon; it is as the sound of many waters — waters that will overwhelm with oblivion the bigotry and mercenary sentiments and proscriptive purpose of those who have tried to strangle you with a cord.

The Regents of Brown University find themselves already at the bar of public opinion. They are haled to that august tribunal by a power that is over us all. There they stand; behold them! The poor casuistical plea of one of their number, who has taken upon him the air and office of champion, to the effect that you as a man may have freedom of opinion and speech, but that as President of Brown University you can have neither, is worthy of the Middle Ages. Will he divide you into two? Will he have one of you go around the United States of America contradicting and explaining what the other of you says? The published paper of Mr. Congressman Walker is a piece of sophistical mockery. It is fit to have issued from the procureur of an inquisition.

Let the Regents of
Put yourself with-

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President Andrews, be of good cheer. Brown University go to their own place. out reserve upon the confidence and support of the public. We think you have in you heroic material the stuff out of which prophets and bards and martyrs are made. Keep a brave heart; this policy put in force against you will react upon those who invented it, and upon the interests which they foolishly hope to promote by the sacrifice of you. Do

the Regents of Brown University think that they can make an institution of learning out of gold? Let them try it. Their scheme will come to naught.

The battle is on in this country between the Man and the Dollar. It is a fight to a finish. You are one of the champions of the Man. Brown University seems to be wedded to the Dollar. This episode will redound to your honor and fame. Do not dwell upon it as a personal affair calculated to do you harm, or by reaction to do you good; but look at it from the higher point of view. Civilization has chosen you as one of the individual atoms which she wishes to hurt and grind a little for her own purposes. That is the way History does when she wishes to honor a man. She hurts him, and sets him free. You have been hurt with a glorious wound; but it heals already. Now are you a free man. Let the people hear your voice. Follow your own leadership in doing your duty; and that done, the benignant future will not forget the name of E. Benjamin Andrews.

Yours in the cause of truth,

John Blank

path.

Office of THE ARENA, August 5, 1897.

PLAZA OF THE POETS.

THE ONMARCH.

BY FREEMAN E. MILLER.

Lo, progress is no swift release from error,
No sudden sun that banishes the night;
Through weary cycles, Man, the burden-bearer,
Gropes in the dark and struggles toward the light.

"Tis not in death-throes where the battle rages,
And nations heap the winrows of their slain,
That Progress leaps across the darkened ages,
And truth frees all the bondmen of the plain.

And from the fields where armies meet despoiling,
No love-born carols hush the cries of wrong;
But through the yearning years with anguish toiling
Man makes himself the instrument of song.

Lo, where the tireless thinker works and wonders,
Where man and God in fellowship unite,
There leaps the thought to majesty that thunders
Through endless ages with unceasing might.

Some seer, enraptured at the dreams of duty,
In grave speech frames a precept or a law;
And, years long after, mankind lives in beauty
The gorgeous glories that the prophet saw.

Some teacher from his closet tells the nations

The words of truth, the deeds that men should do; And they, through sorrows and deep tribulations, Toil fiercely on to prove his lessons true.

Man's mind is greater than his brawn or bullet;
His thought far vaster than his labor stands :
Men's hopes are higher than the world, and rule it;
Their hearts are stronger than their helpless hands.

Development, unwearied, outward courses

Through deepest darkness with resistless tides;