inaugurated in several towns, while in others the lid has been applied to the fullest extent. But the influence of Minneapolis has had a still wider reach. The first of the large cities of the country to inaugurate a municipal house-cleaning, its example has been followed by Philadelphia, St. Louis, Louisville, and Kansas City. That the lid has failed to have the disastrous effect on the business interests of the city which was prophesied by the opponents of reform has been fully demonstrated. The city is prosperous as never before; more traveling men make Minneapolis their headquarters; mer chants and business men from the smaller towns of the Northwest throng her streets and keep her jobbers busy; the city is a favorite resort for tourists; new industries are being established almost daily; the price of real estate has reached a high-water mark. Judging by results Jones stands more than vindicated in his policy. Minneapolis now combines all the advantages of a morally clean civic atmosphere, with phenomenal commercial and industrial prosperity. What of the future? Do the people of the city wish these conditions continued? They will soon be given an opportunity to answer. Minneapolis is on trial at the coming election, and it is for the voters of the city to make the verdict. The citizens are keenly alive to the situation. situation. Two hundred of the leading business and professional men recently gathered in the courthouse to publicly express their approval of the mayor's efforts for good government. They adopted a resolution endorsing his administration and his candidacy for reëlection. Responding to this expression of approval and in order to test public sentiment Jones has decided to stand for reëlection this fall. The brewers and other interests are seeking not for a man of the Ames type but for a safe, conservative candidate, who can secure the support of some of the business interests of the city and at the same time be depended upon to give a "liberal" administration, to place in the field as his opponent. The struggle between license and law enforcement, vice and civic cleanliness is still going on, and it is for the people of the city to determine which shall finally triumph. "I am extracting the humor from the daily-paper book review," he explained. "The humor!" I repeated, mystified. "You mean the tragedy." "Well," he conceded, "some of them are rather tragic for the man who wrote the book and who has a sort of sneaking idea that the whole world ought to know what it's about; but it's the humor of the thing that appeals to me just now." "Let's have the humor," I urged. "The last one that I saw made me rather sad." He became more serious for a moment. "I don't want to be understood as attacking the market value of the daily paper review," he said, "or, in some cases, the literary value. Certain papers number among their contributors some of the most gifted and conscientious critics in the country, but they are comparatively few. Still, even when a review is written by the office-boy, it may do some good. It is only occasionally that a reader buys a book on the judgment of a reviewer, and this is especially true of novels. As a general thing, he buys a book, whether praised or condemned, because what he has heard or read of it leads him to think it is the kind of a story that he likes. This, of course, has no reference to those books that sell on an author's reputation, or that, because of timeliness or other favoring circumstances, create a momentary sensation. Aside from this, the average reader merely wants to know what the story is about, and this information can be given him by any one who has read it and can write a grammatical sentence. In giving this information the daily papers help the readers and the books, and I think it is largely due to them that this is such a book-reading age. You see, it is much the same with books as with plays: that for which the talented and thoughtful critics can find no possible excuse occasionally proves a big success, while something in which they could see real merit goes to ignominious failure. It depends upon the humor of the public at the time, and the public, taking it as a whole, usually prefers a description to a criticism." "I quite understand that," I said impatiently, "but where does the laugh come in?" "I'm coming to that," he answered. "The daily paper does not always fulfil its mission, and then it is to laugh. The reviewer neglects a very necessary preliminary to meritorious work: he fails to read enough of the book to find out what it is all about. And it is my experience that this happens more frequently on the big dailies than on those in the smaller cities and towns. He tries to cover this neglect by general comment and judgment of a know-it-all kind, and the result is sometimes amazing and certainly amusing to the man with a sense of humor. It was a New York paper, I believe, that spoke of Lady Baltimore as the heroine of Owen Wister's story of that name, the fact being that Lady Baltimore is a cake and not a woman. Isn't that delightful? Don't you think that Owen Wister himself ought to be able to scare up a laugh over that?" "Unquestionably," I conceded, laughing myself. "Then why should not I extract a little humor from this?" my friend inquired, picking up one of several clippings that lay on his desk. "It is from an eastern daily of high rank, and relates to my latest book. As you may have gone over the book too hastily to enable you to appreciate all the beauties of this review, I'll give you the key to the humor after reading it." I was about to protest that he did me an injustice, but it occurred to me that this might lead him to withhold the explanation, which would leave me in awkward plight. So I said nothing, and he read these extracts: "A spirited story of American life, in which a great deal of the pretense, sham and downright dishonesty of our great government' is shown up in a light-anything but pleasant. The plot has to do with a number of respectable Americans, whose activities are hampered and thwarted at every turn by the great trust companies, monopolies and favored concerns. Although a novel pure and simple, the work is replete with sound facts. The plot is lively and bright to the end, being by all odds one of the most timely, interesting and thoroughly captivating novels of the year." My friend looked at me, and I nodded wisely. It was the only safe thing to do. "It is not a novel at all," he said, "but "Well, it is sort of tragic to have a fellow's work handled in that careless way," he admitted. "If it were my first book, I would probably write a sarcastic letter to the editor of the paper. It certainly is humiliating to find that one's story is not even read by the man who is paid to read it, but it is possible to forget that in the entertaining work of extracting the humor. Besides, you will find an antidote for everything that hurts, and you may console yourself with the reflection that the men who say the nice things are just as likely to be right as the others. When a review annoys me I always hunt for the reverse of that opinion, and I usually find it. Then I am able to laugh again. For instance, just before you came in I had paired these from different papers but all relating to the same book." He read me the following "couplets," each line being from a different review: "It is evident that the author lacks a sense of humor." "The story is capital and contains much real humor." "Commonplace in the telling Will not add to the author's reputation." "No cleverer thing has been done between covers this season. "Has the tone of an advertising pamphlet." "The fine skill of the author casts a glamour over his subject that captivates the reader." "The incidents are interesting enough in their way, but the book has only ordinary literary merit." "The author has a shrewd understanding of human nature. His characters are drawn with a subtle comprehension of the strange and unaccountable workings of the human mind." "Nothing startling in the manner in which it is written." "Told with consummate skill." "You see, " he explained, looking up, "by coupling them I get the laugh, and by putting the nice one last I impress it more strongly on my memory and am thus able to keep in a fairly contented frame of mind." "It's a good idea," I admitted. "By your method, I could probably get some amusement from a review I saw just before I left home. It described a love story of mine as having a groundwork of high finance.' And it didn't deal with love among the 'four hundred,' either." "There!" cried my friend delightedly. "You're getting the right spirit. There's another pleasant way to look at it, too." "What's that?" I asked "Why, the man who sees a few conflicting opinions is likely to become desperate enough to buy the book himself, just to see which is right. It's the nature of the human animal to be curious, especially when the views of others are puzzlingly at variance about any certain thing. So even the reviews that are most ridiculously unreliable have their value." "You are right," I said, "and hereafter I shall be content to extract the humor." In September, 1905, THE WORLD TO-DAY published an article by Emile Combes, former Premier of France, setting forth the position of his government relative to the annulling of the Concordat. The separation of Church and State since that time has passed into a new stage and the situation has become more critical than ever. Abbé Felix Klein is one of the most influential members of the Roman clergy of France. In his present article he discusses the matter from the point of view of the broad-minded churchman. At the time of writing no decision as to the proper attitude of the Church to the "Associations Cultuelles" had been published by the Pope. MERICANS must be taking a sincere interest in the welfare of A somewhat surprised at other religious bodies. the difficulties which the Separation Law meets with in France and especially at the opposition of religious men in general to the establishment of a régime which appears so natural and so in harmony with modern thought, tolerance and liberty. On this point and on many others, the author of this article is in entire sympathy with the Americans, and he has been, and still is striving, to the best of his ability, to bring his compatriots and co-religionists to accept it, nay more, to adopt it heartily, seeing in it a means to the revival of religion in France. On the other hand, living as he does in the midst of the innumerable difficulties created by the changes introduced by the new law, it is easier for him to understand and explain, though without approving the resistance which it has aroused. The subject is so vast a one, that he will treat it only from a purely Catholic point of view, being more competent to deal with it under that aspect. This does not, however, prevent him from I. Why the Church Objects to the Separation If the separation had been established among us under the same liberal and just conditions as in the United States, it would have met with nothing but sympathy and approbation. Both adversaries and friends of the Church were alike equally tired of the Concordat; the former reproaching it with putting the resources of the State at the service of religion, the second of making religion subservient to a State which had become more and more anti-Christian. Therefore the State might have said to the Church: "Take back your property and your liberty, respect the common law of the country and expect nothing more from me neither reward nor opposition, neither favor nor hatred. I have nothing more to do with you; I only recognize free citizens, associating themselves together if they choose, and as they choose, in order to practice their religion, just as others associate to cultivate science or art. In that case, every one would have welcomed the rupture of an ill-starred union, and the two contracting parties would have separated without violence or insult on either side. But such has not been the case, and instead of allaying the strife, the Separation Law has at first only aggravated the feeling of mutual hostility. And this discontent can not be completely explained by simply attributing it to the prejudice and narrowness of the members of the Reactionary party. True, they have done all they can to bring into relief the errors and disadvantages of the law; at the same time, these wrongs do exist; and if they are not enough to discourage the more enlightened Christians, one may easily understand that they suffice to exasperate others, and to furnish a serious pretext to the so-called "Resistance." The Church's first grievance is that she has been entirely ignored by the State. The Condordat was a bi-lateral contract, signed by the respective heads of the French nation and of the Catholic Church. This is a historic fact, and even if considered regrettable, still one was bound to take it into account. Now it happens that the stronger of the two contracting parties has broken the compact, without any negotiations with the feebler one, without even giving any notice of the rupture. Again, in establishing the new order of things, the Church's claims have been entirely ignored: Whilst in America, the law continually refers to the Church's governing body, if there be one, and recognizes the right of the bishops to themselves administer, if they choose, the property of the diocese, in trust, in fee simple, or as a corporation (as is the case in Chicago) or again (as in the case of New York) to act as trustees with the vicar-general, the rector and two laymen chosen by the three former, the French law does not even name the bishops, and it has created, without consulting them, quite an arbitrary system of "associations cultuelles," or local committees of worship, of which it fixes the number of members and determines the rules for their administration. It is this which has given rise to the objections urged against the associations cultuelles by Catholics, and to that appearance of schism which causes a great number of them to declare the law to be quite incompatible with the spirit and discipline of the Church. For my own part, I do not believe that the evil is so far-reaching, but still it is the source of the fundamental opposition which has arisen, and which still exists, so much so, that seven months after the promulgation of the law, and only five before the delay granted to the different religious bodies to conform to it has expired, the Catholic group, which exceeds in number any other (that being the religion of ninetenths of France) has so far made no attempt to enter into the new organization, and does not even yet know for certain if it will submit to it. Thus, slighted by the State, which has taken no account either of her position or her discipline, the Church has again seen herself despoiled in a most odious manner. In 1790, the National Assembly and afterwards Napoleon, agreed in the name of France to grant salaries to all the ministers of religion as a compensation for the property which the Church had relinquished under this express condition. The State has now broken this solemn engagement without offering any serious compensation. It has not even left the religious bodies the real ownership of the churches. It has only granted the use of them on conditions fixed by itself and at any time liable to be revoked. It has been decided that in two years' time the government will take over the bishops' houses, and in five years the rectories and seminaries. But what will most surprise Americans (always so ready to respect the wishes of a benefactor) is, that the Church is robbed of all the property bequeathed to her by private individuals, with the authorization of the State, for charitable and educational purposes. Nothing seems more closely connected with religion than instruction and philanthropy, the aid given to orphans, to the poor and sick, and in general, all that tends to elevate the minds and console the material and moral griefs of humanity. new French law has deprived the religious corporations of all the grants which they had originally received for this noble cause. They are obliged to hand them over themselves to lay establishments, and in the event of a refusal, the State will make the transfer. But there is more The |