the direction of an educated married colored woman, to consider the customs which best promote personal virtue and the principles upon which family and social life should be established. These girls seem to be as pure and earnest in their desires and purposes as any maidens in the land.

The Knights of Labor have penetrated among the colored people. In Y— a large society of men was formed some time since, but it did not prove to be a very efficient organization. The negro women united in a similar association, which was more prosperous than the male branch, because the women administered their affairs more wisely than the men had managed theirs.

In this same town a society of another sort was inaugurated within a few years, at the suggestion and with the help of a northern lady. The membership was large, but the management was unsuccessful, and after a career of several months the association collapsed. It aimed to develop its members intellectually, and also to provide care in cases of illness or distress resulting from death. I attended one meeting of this society. It was held in a church, and was very interesting to any student of human, not to say African, nature. The proceedings were marked by that indifference to punctuality and order which characterizes most attempts made by the southern negro to conduct evening entertainments. After the church was full, we waited an hour before anybody did anything but move around or speak a few inconsequentive words. Finally, in came one of the leaders, a "bell boy," from a hotel. He was gorgeously attired in a long, light overcoat, and from the moment of his entrance he snapped his intellectual whip over the audience in a manner diverting and admirable. He walked up and down before the crowd, told people what to do, and saw that they did it. He used very big words, but he tumbled them off easily from his tongue, and though our northern wits were sometimes unable to follow his ideas when they became very much tangled up in his sentences, it was quite evident that his own brain drove a steady team of intention right through every

His manner

thicket in his language. was always perfectly comprehensible. It expressed conscious rectitude and righteous authority. He ordered the people to keep still before he would call on "the ladies" who were to read papers; and after he had effectually hushed the house into an almost alarming quiet, he calmly turned away to the desk and began to attend to some other business, leaving the crowd agape for the promised entertainment. A little restless movement at last aroused his attention, and wheeling about he reiterated his orders for absolute silence. "The great part of the moriel," he said, "is obed'ence. Whut yuh all want is to be moriel. Yuh can't be

moriel widout bein' obed'ent. So mind me en be still."

As a reward for the obedience which the awed audience finally manifested, three colored girls were called upon to read original compositions. The first was entitled "People will Talk." Its sentences would not have parsed and analyzed to advantage. Their construction showed the unconsciousness of the untrained mind whether a thing has really been stated or only referred to in ambiguous phrases which have not been supplied with subjects and predicates in due proportion. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, there was noticeable in this paper an independent tone of mind which gave it almost the effect of original thinking. It was a sort of challenge to society, such as the writer had known it among her compeers, and it was impossible to one in whose veins ran the blood of another race and whose experience of life had been wholly unlike hers, not to wonder just what phases of human weakness had come under her untutored observation, and had inspired the defiant words which fell so aptly from her lips. She spoke boldly in behalf of girls whose reputation had been carelessly gossiped away.

Another paper was an earnest though not very well-expressed plea to the colored people to educate themselves, and the writer urged the grown men and women who were ignorant not to be ashamed to go to school like children, She availed herself-poor girl- of the immemorial privilege of the American citi

zen as to titles, and when she urged her hearers to study, she said, "People are growing more and more particular about education, and the time is coming when a young gentleman that can read won't marry a young lady who can't. And," she added with naïve candor, "I suppose that's what you all want to do, to get married." It would have been easy to laugh as she went on with her rambling plea for education, if it had not been almost as easy to cry, for there was something exceedingly melancholy in her gentle acceptance of the fact that her people stood at a disadvantage in this country, and that they could only hope to escape contempt by great and persistent effort. The same pathetic feeling pervaded an address made by a young minister, a quadroon from Louisiana. My companion and I were the only whites present, and it seemed probable that we had surprised the tone these people took among themselves when they seriously regarded their situation.

a quiet, low voice. Her sentences generally began, proceeded, and ended properly, and were rather forcible in their phraseology. The audience greeted her sallies with much appreciative laughter. She closed by declaring that if women could vote, they would not sell their votes "for a drink of whiskey or a loaf of white bread." This remark was received with loud applause, as it is a common saying in this part of the South, that for the things she had mentioned a colored man will sell his vote.

On the way home, two colored girls went by us, and I caught snatches of their talk. One of them repeated the assertion made at the meeting, that women would not sell their ballots if they had any at their disposal, and the other responded heartily, "That's so." As they spoke, they passed on into the shadowy night, but they left behind them in the mind of one listener the conviction that unknown possibilities lurked in the future, if negro girls had already begun to discuss political purity and woman suffrage on the streets of a southern town, at a later hour than their fathers and mothers could once have strolled from their huts without danger of arrest and flogging by the patrol.

MONG the surviving curiosities of New England, in the eyes of the great body of Americans who dwell beyond the Alleghanies, fit to rank with the now-departed well sweep, and titheing-man and town crier, -may be reckoned the descriptive clauses in our ordinary deeds of land.

Apropos of the interest now awakening among real estate men, and all who have to do with land titles, in the so-called Torrens system, it may be well to spread upon these pages the form and history of a typical New England title.

The system proposed by Sir Robert Torrens (and, like our improved ballot system, coming from Australia) is, in brief, a plan for the official recognition of the title to a given piece of land, at the date of its transfer, in such manner that, upon its subsequent transfer, it will not be necessary to trace the titles back to government, or through some long succession of owners.

way.

The plan works in this The party in whom the title to a given piece of land rests applies to a registrar (as now to the registrar of deeds) to have his land placed on the register of titles. In order to obtain such registry, deeds, abstracts, certified plans and surveys, etc., must have been submitted to an official examiner of titles, who must report to the registrar that the land is clearly and accurately described [whew!!] and that the applicant is in lawful and undisputed possession of the property, so that no action at law could eject him. The title having been once tested and recorded in this manner, there are needed no further abstracts or evidences. At the next transfer it is only necessary to cite the record, as sufficient evidence of right to convey. The above exclamation is supposed to be made by owners of Massachusetts farms, when they think of how

far their deeds are from giving clear and accurate descriptions of their boundaries. Speaking only of the bearing of the new system upon such country titles, I should hold that the change was desirable, if only to compel that definiteness and accuracy now so notably absent in the tracing of rural boundaries. Our statute of limitations, by which twenty years of undisturbed possession practically secures the land, lessens the demand for any change, as compared with states which have no such statutes, and where long and costly abstracts are required; but this incidental advantage would in the end be found of great value. The indefiniteness referred to will appear as we go on.

Before citing my typical Massachusetts deed, and that the contrast between it and a typical American deed may the better appear, let me give the descriptive clause of a deed lying before me of three hundred and seventeen acres of land in Kansas. This is the whole of it:

"The South half of Section Fifteen (15) in Township Ten (10) Range Fourteen (14) East of the Sixth principal Meridian, Except Three (3) acres deeded to R. L. C-"

Most farm lands in the United States, it may be said, are deeded in this succinct way. A Massachusetts country conveyancer might well think his occupation gone, if land in his vicinity could be located so simply as that. For in contrast, read the following description in a deed, which is the only means the writer has of identifying a certain 130 acres of land, known as Musterfield Farm in Northern Berkshire, which he presumes to call his own. His own deed is of later date than this, but it was made by a conveyancer who was impatient of details, and is worthless, so far as the accurate description of the land is concerned, without this earlier instrument.

A highway runs across the farm, and although from beyond the memory of man it has been one estate, it is more conveniently described as two parcels, to wit:

"Beginning at a stake and stones S. E. of the schoolhouse [ burnt to the ground years ago ] and in S. West Corner of a piece of land I deeded to Juliana Clements, thence easterly on the walls 17 rods to stake and stones, thence easterly on said Clements' South line about 124 rods to Levi Kitchum's land to a stake and stones, thence southerly partly on said Kitchum's and partly on Valoreous Chilson's one hundred thirty-four rods to a Corner in the line of Levi Kitchum's woodlot, thence Westerly on Levi Kitchum's and S.

Clarke's 172 rods to stake in the medder wall, thence southerly on the medder wall to Nicholas Clark's land, thence westerly on Clark's line 90 rods to the road, thence Northerly on the road to place of beginning. Also a piece West of the road. Beginning at a corner in the line of the County road in line of the bridle road running west, thence running on the wall westerly to the wall or fence running North, thence on the wall Northerly to Eli Clark's Northeast Corner, thence Westerly on the fence to a Stake, and thence Northerly on E. Clark's East line to Daniel and John P. Clark's land to stake and stones, thence Easterly on sd Daniel's and John's to the five acre lot, [!] thence Northerly on Daniel's and John's to Benjamin Clark's land, thence easterly on B. Clark's line to Corner, thence southerly on Clark's and Porter Harkins' to Corner of Harkins, thence easterly on Harkins' line to the road, thence southerly on the road to the place of beginning. Containing one hundred and thirty acres more or less.

It will be noticed that there were seven Clarks owning land on ten sides of the above described piece, the ten corners and division lines being largely matters of tradition in the Clark family. Who knows, for instance, where that "stake' should be driven, at the end of the tenth course? For the stake of 1854 has gone back to dust. And who can give me accurate information as to the limits of the "five acre lot" at the end of the twelfth course? Against the testimony of the man who sold me the land, there might be presented that of a dozen Clarks. A little difficult, I imagine, it would be for me to establish those ten corners and courses to my satisfaction, if the successors of Salah Clark and their relations, the successors of the seven surrounding Clarks, should conspire to crowd me. The statute of limitation might not avail me, for I have only held the land ten years; and what were pointed out to me as my boundaries, and what I supposed I was purchasing, might be made. to appear very different from what Salah

Clark conveyed. Happily for me, however, the Clarks of that region are all honest men.

It may be thought that the lines indicated in the above instrument are exceptionally hard to trace, so that it is not a typical deed. Not so. It is a very or

dinary deed. It simply follows the pattern set for such instruments, at the beginning of our colonial history. In tracing backward the title to a bit of land upon which I reside in eastern Massachusetts, I have come upon the following deed, the third transfer of lands originally granted by the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay to ExDeputy Governor John Humphrey. With others given in that first half century, it established customs which no change or progress has been able to overturn.

Know

To all Xtian people to whom etc. . yee that wee . . do freely, fully and absolutely give, grant, bargain, sell, alien, enfeoff, assigne and confirm .. all that my ffarme given me by my honored ffather, Daniel King, deceased, being 1200 acres of upland and meadow, bee it more or less, being situate and lying in the township of Linn commonly called by the name of Swampscott, which land is butted and bounded with the sea, ab't the westerly end of the long pond lying along by the sea syde and soe upon a straight line quite over to a little [207 years ago!!] red oak, standing on a brow of a hill on the southerly syde of a path goeing to my ffarme where George Darlinn did live, which tree is marked with (D: & A K) on the northerly syde and an R & A K on the westerly syde, & soe this lyne runs between Linn & my ffarme & soe to run all along between Linn & my ffarme, to a running brook at the sutherly end of John Farrs & Edward Richards Lotts, and over Swampscott pond [long ago dried up, and lost to the memory of the oldest inhabitant] to a walnut tree on the westerly syde of the pond marked with (R K) on the northerly side walnut tree marked with (R: K:) on the syde with (NF) and soe to run westerly to another and (N: F:) on the northerly, and is bounded on ye northerly syde with the land of Ezekiel Needham and soe all along upon a brow of a hill westerly, and soe to the highway that goes to Linn, to a stake & heap of stone & from thence southerly down to the sea against the highway." (Signed), RALPH KING. ELIZABETH KING.

Dated July 28, 1684.

I am morally certain that the few feet of land which I own in Swampscott are included within the above-named boundaries.

But suppose there were no statute of limitation in Massachusetts, and suppose a diamond mine should be

discovered in my door yard. If the descendants of Ralph King should appear and claim the mine on the ground of purchase from Lady Deborah Moody, who bought it of Deputy-Governor Humphrey, not all my diamonds would hire a surveyor who could with certainty run those lines. Being quite in the interior of the supposed plat, I should probably, independently of exact lines, establish my claim; but if my door yard were somewhere in the vicinity of that "little red oak," or along the line of Swampscott pond "and the walnut trees," my perfect abstract for two hundred years might be of no avail. The Kings might take the diamonds.

No doubt the vagueness and uncertainty of such descriptions had much to do with the principle of limitation through peaceable possession, which has so long prevailed among us. So long ago as 1657, and again in 1697, laws were enacted providing that undisturbed possession of lands for certain limited periods should debar any and all claimants from entering suit for possession.

But now to go back to the Berkshire farm, the deed of which I have called typical. The main body of what I claim having undoubtedly been in the peaceable possession of my predecessor for above twenty years, there is no ground for any controversy over it. I could hold it against all comers, "in spite of envy and the Jews," as the old hymn runs. The possible contention with the Clarks would be simply over the details of boundaries, and with land at forty dollars an acre this could be no serious matter. I therefore (as yet) have no interest in any records of titles from a money point of view. As a matter of historic interest, however, I have applied to Mr. Merchant, the courteous Registrar of Deeds for northern Berkshire, to enlighten me as to the origin of my claim to the said lands.

At first one would think that this was one of the easiest titles in the Commonwealth to verify; since instead of two hundred and fifty or more years, as in Eastern Massachusetts, we have to go back a little less than a hundred years to the original sale and transfer authorized

by the Great and General Court. The circumstances of that sale were these: When Massachusetts was still a province of Great Britain, warrants had been given to companies of "proprietors," authorizing them, for a consideration, to take up townships west of the mountains. There lies before me a leaf from the Record Book of the proprietors of East Hoosac, Colony of Massachusetts Bay (now Adams and North Adams, Massachusetts,) bearing dates some ten years prior to the Revolution.

The warrant giving the proprietors authority, in consideration of a payment of £3,200, to "survey, improve, and sell " the township, was signed by a magistrate holding his commission from George III. Nearly all of the territory of the colony had been so conveyed long before the province became a State.

Soon after the adoption of the constitution, however, it was brought to the attention of the Great and General Court that the Commonwealth still owned a certain remnant or "gore" of land lying north of the above named town of Adams. This was done by the following petitions, presented by Nicholas Clark, an ancestor of the aforementioned race of honest Clarks:

(Copy of the original at the State House.) To the honorable Senate and house of representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in General Court assembled:

The petition of Nicolas Clark and others hereby showeth, That your petitioners have for a considerable time last past been in the peaceable possession of the several Lotts of Land, described in the plan which accompanies their petition, without molestations or Disturbance to or from any person whatsoever.

Your petitioners therefore hereby pray that the Lotts of Land which appear in the plan with our Names affixed to them, and the Number of Acres each Lott contains figured on each Lott, may be granted to us on such restrictions and regulations as are Customary in the like Cases. And your petitioners as in duty bound shall ever pray in behalf of the Petitioners. Dated on the land called the Gore.

October 24, 1784.

NICOLAS CLARK.

In response to this petition, several bills were introduced which passed only one house, but at last an act was engrossed and signed (Gen. Artemus Ward being then Speaker of the House) au