HIGH DIVING IN OLD DELHI

Here is a scene in ancient Delhi, India, near the Kutub Minar. The men jump from the top of the tower, a distance of ninety-five feet, into about ten feet of water in the basin below. They do this for the sum of twenty-five cents (American money) and will do it over and over again. "We took them," says our informant, "'on the jump. They claim to be father and son. The father (just below the top) was on his way up from another jump; the son is standing at the top of the tower. The boy at the left-standing on the ruined wall-is taking lessons to be a jumper"

A

BY RICHARD BARRY

CERTAIN professor once told me that if he ever were asked to write an article on "Why Hughes Lost the Presidency" he merely would elate an incident that occurred to him when he desired to utilize in his classoom part of an address Mr. Hughes had reviously delivered.

He properly made written application o Mr. Hughes for permission to use the ddress. It was granted, but with the xpress proviso that it should be reprouced only in its entirety. The proessor wanted only the half which was pplicable to his work, and he pointed ut that the newspapers had already rinted parts of it, and that some of hem had garbled the address. Mr. Jughes admitted this, but replied that he newspapers had done it without his ermission, and that with his permison the address could not be used ext in toto. Vainly the professor strove vince the eminent statesman that

he might unbend to his own advantage in this instance, for his words of wisdo if used in part, could be widely spread, but if they must be used only with technical subjects malapropos to the professor's purpose they could not be used at all. However, Mr. Hughes had spoken, and there was no appeal.

That, said the professor, illustrates how he lost the Presidency. The Medes and the Persians had their laws and so had Charles E. Hughes. He crossed every "t" and he dotted every "i" and he departed not one jot or tittle from a prearranged plan as conceived originally by himself in the seclusion of his own study.

This was only too true-mark, however, the was. Well is remembered the California incident of 1916. In his swing around the circle the National Committee had planned for Mr. Hughes to visit California and speak there. However, as he approached the Golden

State arose loud cries of a violent factional disturbance. Canny politicians, wise and disinterested strategists, hastened to the candidate, urging him to avoid the hotbed of Republican schism.

All argument was wasted, all protest futile. Mr. Hughes was proceeding on the theory of the German army-that the general staff had plotted and planned everything and that he had to act only according to schedule to be in Paris (or Washington) at the appointed time. They had taken everything into consideration except the imponderables, and the imponderables whipped him. California, by little over a thousand votes, kept him out of the White House.

That was Mr. Hughes. But not in 1921.

The Secretary of State to-day is not the same individual, except in name and pedigree and record, as he who was once Governor of the State of New York, later Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and later defeated as the Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States.

Washington, to-day, is enjoying a new Mr. Hughes. The old austerity is gone. Was defeat the humanizing process which has added to this distinguished individuality the one element it required to be well rounded?

The fact remains that the Secretary of State is fast becoming one of the most popular men in public life. One meets him on the streets, in the clubs, proceeding briskly from the State Department to the White House across the street, but always smiling and always radiating an abundant energy. It seems as though a second youth had come to him, one of vivacity and good feeling.

Health is doubtless at the bottom of this, for the Secretary appears to be in as good trim as a pugilist about to enter a championship contest, and evidently he knows how to maintain his physical condition and is doing so, but without any visible effort.

Other things also are at work. There can be no doubt that Mr. Hughes is very happy in his appointment, happy to be back in official Washington. It may be that there is some balm in the reflection that four years of practice of the law in New York has placed him in an independent position financially. If he has any ambitions for the future, naturally he keeps them to himself, although a man just entering his sixtieth year need not resign all hopes of the Presidency.

All that the observer can see is that he is playing good ball, a snappy, fast game, but with a courtesy and geniality that endear him to every one. He is rapidly chucking needless formality out of the windows of the State Department. In most of his notes to Germany and in

most of those to Japan he didn't avail himself of the customary time which diplomatic usage allowed him for the proper answer. He just tossed the answers off hastily, like any business man in the course of the day's work.

This unwonted celerity has given a slight wedge to unkind critics, and it has been asserted, even in print, that Mr. Hughes has taken the bit of foreign affairs in his teeth and is running away with it. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Aside from his personal esteem for the President, Mr. Hughes has a most delicate appreciation of the exact limitations of his office, both in law and in custom. He has not stepped a hair's breadth over the line of propriety, and, even if he disagreed with the President, which has not yet oc

curred, it is practically certain that he would not bring that disagreement to an

issue.

The change in the Hughes psychology is most readily observed in his contacts with newspaper men. Some wag has Isaid that now when he sees a newspaper man in the White House with a lawyer in his proper place as adviser he at last perceives the true merit of the press. It is more likely that political defeat, combined with reflection and financial independence, has broadened his view-point.

In any event, his old manner toward the press is gone. In those days he looked upon newspaper men as a cross between public nuisances and unapprehended criminals. Now his attitude toward them is patriarchal when they

need it and brotherly when they deserve it. In his daily talks with the Washington correspondents one feels that he appreciates their responsibilities, respects their intelligence, recognizes their function, and is willing patiently to become their teacher.

Which is as it should be, but which is not what it always has been.

The result is that on every hand one hears: "Nobody like him in the State Department since John Hay." He does not delay, he does not evade, he does not condescend, he does not orate, and, so far as one can see, he does not play politics, certainly not in the old-fashioned, petty sense. He found a terrific mess; he is grappling with it like a strong man unafraid, and he is in mighty good humor about it.

A

CITY missionary found a lone woman in a little room in a narrow, ill-smelling street, took pity on her condition, and with great difficulty found a place for her in the outskirts of a village where was abundant employment for a skillful washerwoman. Two weeks later, making his rounds, he found Bridget back in her solitary chamber. "How is this?" he asked her, and received for reply, "Folks is better than shtoomps." She was right. Folks is better than shtoomps. Ever since man and woman discovered that simple truth they have gathered in villages, towns, and cities. So long as they believe that truth they will continue to gather in villages, towns, and cities. The boys will leave the farms for the towns. The mothers and sisters will want to follow them. For every Thoreau who wishes to live in the woods there are, and always will be, thousands who, like Charles Lamb, will wish to live in the city. The call is equally irresistible to the ignorant and to the scholar, to the sinner and to the saint.

Responding to this call we always have found and always will find the best and the worst of men flocking to the cities; the bigger and more bustling the city, the more it attracts. Here are the great criminals and the men of wealth on whom they prey; the selfindulgent idlers and the great captains of industry; seductive invitations to vice and open doors of opportunity for service; the great libraries, the great concert halls, the great schools and universities, the great lecture halls, the great churches, the great preachers, and here the dance halls, the saloons, the gambling hells, the houses of vice; and here is the drama at its best and its worst.

The city is always a type of the community in which it is situated. London reflets England, Paris reflects France, Berlin reflects Germany, Rome reflects

BY LYMAN ABBOTT

the two Italys, the ecclesiastical and the political. So, in this country, Boston, despite its Irish population, reflects New England; New York, the Atlantic coast; Chicago, the Middle West; Los Angeles and San Francisco, the two Californias. If we could imagine New York and Chicago changing places, in a decade, certainly in a generation, each would be a changed city.

Therefore the city records the dominating tendencies in the community both for good and for evil. Decaying

cities mean a decaying state. Developing cities mean a developing state. The city is a barometer and registers the climate. Catholic Rome bore witness to the emergence of Italy from the paganism of the Cæsars. The city is set upon a hill and cannot be hid. By its prominence it proclaims to all mankind the virtues and the vices of the community. For the community makes it what it is, and it in turn makes the community.

When I came to New York City nearly three-quarters of a century ago, the growing residential region was from Houston to Fourteenth Street. When about that time my uncle Gorham Abbott left his brother's school in Hous ton Street and established the Spingler Institute in Union Square, he was criticised for going so far uptown by conservatives, who were quite sure that his pupils would never follow him to these northern limits of good society. Even some years later what is now Central Park was a rocky wild given over to the huts of squatters, whose hordes of dogs made crossing that region after dark a disagreeable and even a somewhat perilous enterprise.

At that time the fire companies were volunteer organizations which bitterly resented and vigorously resisted the organization of a paid fire department to be always ready for a call. Occasionally these rival companies stopped on their way to a fire and fought a street battle to determine which should

have precedence on the highway. The police, if I remember aright, were not uniformed; and the police protection was so inadequate that for a time the control of the police was transferred from the City Hall to the Capitol at Albany. The simplest sanitary regulations which herding of a great miscellaneous population always makes necessary had not yet been discovered. Dogs roamed the streets as freely as they did till recently in Constantinople, though not, as there, in herds; cows were stabled in the city and fed on swill from the houses or refuse from the distilleries; none of the streets were kept very clean and some of them were hardly cleaned at all; cases of cholera occurred every summer and an epidemic of cholera was expected every two or three years. The cleaning out of the squatters from the region now devoted to Central Park was accomplished with difficulty; the spending of money in the construction of the park was bitterly resented as a waste of the city's funds, since only the rich would ever use it; and the organization of a paid fire department, the uniforming of the police, the banishing of loose dogs from the streets, the removal of the cows and their sheds from the city limits, and the sanitary regulations required for the city's health were all accomplished by resolute reformers only after a fierce battle in each case with the defenders of so-called vested rights. Leave a great public wrong undisturbed long enough and it becomes a vested right.

The climax of this corruption of the city government was reached under the Tweed Ring some years later. The city government and the courts were corrupted by it, and the foul and fatal control was extending to Albany. Happily, there were brave men who dared hazard their peace and their good name, if not their lives, in furnishing an answer to Tweed's question, What are you going to do about it? They finally put him

behind prison bars and made impossible the repetition of so gross and audacious a robbery by any future ring.

There is a great deal of not unjust complaint of our city governments, and the municipal experience of our great cities justifies the statement that the city government is the most difficult problem which to-day confronts democracy. But if the test of government is a contented and prosperous population under its control, it cannot be said with justice that New York City is the worstgoverned city in the world. At least there is no present indication that German critics have any great desire to return to Berlin, or Irish critics to Cork or Dublin; and when our Government provides free passage across the ocean for Russian assailants of the Government of this their adopted land to return to the land of their nativity, there are not heard from them those expressions of gratitude which might reasonably be expected from them. Our city government is in our own hands. It is as good as we deserve, for it is as good as we care to make it. It is an old saying that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and if we do not care to pay the price we have no reason to complain if we do not get the coveted article.

Law may measurably protect the prudent from criminals, but it is never an adequate protection of the ignorant, the innocent, and the weak from the enticements of vice. Whether there is less or more vice in New York City than there was three-quarters of a century ago I cannot say, but it is certainly less ostentatiously offensive. Then it was not safe for any woman to go out unattended in the streets of the city after nightfall. Women were generally not admitted to the theaters without a male escort, except that in many, I believe most, of the theaters the upper gallery was reserved as a hunting-ground where women of the town might look for their

prey.

Whether there was more gambling then than now I do not know, as I have no means of knowing how much there was then or is now. But saloons of every description, from the highest class of bar to the lowest-class dive, were run without any regulation that was apparent to the inexpert observer. Drunken women were practically never seen upon the streets, as they still are in parts of London, Glasgow, and Edin. burgh, but gentlemen the worse for liquor, though unusual, were not unknown in our public vehicles or on the sidewalks in our best streets. On New Year's Day, which in accordance with an ancient Dutch custom was devoted to social calls by the gentlemen, tipsy men were so frequently to be met with, not only on the streets but in the hospitable parlors of the best society, that the festival use of the day was finally abandoned by common consent. Whether National prohibition is the best method of meeting the evils of the drink traffic I am myself not clear. But that it has been adopted by so large a vote and accepted with so little opposition at least indicates that a very large number of persons who think it quite harmless to drink a glass of beer or I wine with their meals have without reluctance given up that pleasure in order to give the experiment of National total abstinence a fair trial. It is quite certain that drunkenness is no longer the common American vice it was a hundred, or even fifty, years ago. And a hundred years ago it was not as bad in New York as it was in the eighteenth century in London, where, the historian tells us, signs might be seen on some of the liquor shops: "Drunk for a penny: with straw to lie on, twopence."

New York in the last seventy years has shared in the general enlargement of popular education which has characterized the Republic. In 1850 there was in all Europe no public school system

outside of Germany and perhaps one or two of the Scandinavian states. In the United States it existed in only half of the country. Slavery and public education do not go well together. I do not think there were either normal schools or high schools in the city. There was no industrial education. My impression is that the school for girls established by my father and his brothers in 1844 or '45 was the first school in the city for the higher and broader education of girls, though there were perhaps one or more Roman Catholic convent schools. There were in the city the three colleges-the New York University, Columbia College, and the City College. But these institutions, which had hundreds of pupils then, have thousands now. The public school was still in the experimental stage. The question whether education should be furnished to all free by the State, or by the churches and by private enterprise to such as were able to pay for it, was still a hotly debated question, and Archbishop Hughes earned a deserved unpopularity in most Protestant circles by his vigorous attack upon the Public School System.

Then the schools largely and colleges almost exclusively existed to prepare men for the three learned professions-law, medicine, and the ministry. I do not think there was in either of the colleges a gymnasium or a laboratory for the students, either physical or chemical. I know there was none in my college, the New York University. Now every vocation is a learned profession; men are as well educated for banking or commerce as for the bar or the pulpit. Barnard College furnishes to women an equipment and a faculty not inferior to that furnished by Columbia to men. The training schools for teachers of the city are supplemented by the Teachers College of Columbia and the School of Pedagogy of the New York University. The high schools give ap