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italics. And I cannot think that any irreverence could be charged against an editor who had the courage to put a moist pen through those expressions of egotism and naive self-satisfaction and vanity which do occasionally disfigure his pages.

I ask myself if these trifles, for in comparison with the sum of Reade's genius they are small things indeed, can in any reasonable measure account for the neglect which undoubtedly besets him. In narrative vigour he has but one rival-Dumas père-and he is far and away the master of that rival in everything but energy. No male writer surpasses him in the knowledge of feminine human nature. There is no love-making in literature to beat the story of the courtship of Julia Dodd and Alfred Hardy in "Hard Cash." In mere descriptive power he ranks with the giants. Witness the mill on fire in "The Cloister and the Hearth"; the lark in exile in "Never Too Late to Mend"; the boat-race in "Hard Cash"; the scene of Kate Peyton at the firelit window; and Griffith in the snow, in "Griffith Gaunt." There are a thousand bursts of laughter in his pages, not mere sniggers, but lung-shaking laughters, and the man who can go by any one of a hundred pathetic passages without tears is a man to be pitied. Let it be admitted that at times he

wrenches his English rather fiercely, and yet let it be said that for delicacy, strength, sincerity, clarity, and all great graces of style, he is side by side with the noblest of our prose writers. Can it be that a few scattered drops of vulgarity in emphasis dim such a fire as this? Does so small a dead fly taint so big a pot of ointment? I will not be foolish enough to dogmatise on such a point, and yet I can find no other reasons than those I have already given why a master craftsman should not hold a master craftsman's place. Solomon has told us what "a little folly" can do for "him who is reputation for wisdom." The great mass of the public can always tell what pleases it, but it cannot always tell why it is pleased. And the man who writes for wide and lasting fame has to depend, not upon the verdict of the expert and the cultured, but on the love of those who only know they love, and who have no power to give the critical why and wherefore. The public-" the stupid and ignorant pig of a public," as "Pococurante" called it years ago-is always being abused, and yet it is only the public which, in the end, can tell us if we have done well or ill. We have all to consent to be measured by it, and, in the long run, it estimates our stature with a perfect accuracy.

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CANADIANS ABROAD.

WHAT I wish to present in this

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paper is an explanation of how it comes about that a certain nationality the Canadian has attained unusual success abroad, using the word success in a somewhat common, commercial sense, such as that implied in the well-known phrase, "gettingon in the world."

First of all, it is to be observed that Canadians are abroad in large numbers. Some are in the mother country and in countries on the continent, some in the colonies, such as Australia, and some in other distant parts of the world; but the vast majority are to be found in the United States of America. In 1890, according to the United States census, Canadians in that country numbered 980,938, which was 1.57 per cent. of the entire foreign-born element of the United States. In the principal American cities, in that year, there were 307,660 Canadians, or 31.36 per cent. of the foreign-born element living in those cities. In Boston, which had the lead then, there were 39,678 Canadians, or nearly 14 per cent. of the city's whole population.

But these figures were compiled over six years ago, and it is well known that since that time the emigration has gone on at a swiftly accelerating pace. It is now estimated, for example, that there are upwards of 100,000 Canadians in Chicago alone, and it is certain that in other American cities the number has gone up rapidly, even if not so rapidly as in the great western metropolis.

Not

not shown the versatility of the Canadians. You could hardly point to any kind of occupation, business or profession in which Canadians are not occupying the most enviable and honourable positions, and that out of all proportion to their numbers. This could not be said of other nationalities. only in industrial pursuits have they excelled, but also in the professional world, and notably in the field of scholarship. In proportion to their numbers, more Canadians have carried off scholarships, fellowships and various honours from John Hopkins and other leading American post graduate universities than any other nationality. And not only in the United States, but in some of the older seats of learning beyond the sea they are doing this. In all spheres of life, in fact, they have shown themselves equal to the largest opportunities ever placed within their reach. It would not seem necessary to many readers to make such a statement, and indeed it would not be, but for the uncertain notions about Canadians which still prevail even among those who ought to have more definite knowledge.

Of those Canadians who emigrate to the United States, many are artisans, mechanics, common workmen, etc., in the great army of labour who come, mostly, from Eastern Canada; but the majority are connected as employees with the large American business houses and commercial concerns, or are engaged in what, for convenience, may be called the higher pursuits. It is worthy of note that the vast majority of them are young men. It has been said that they are the cream of Canadian manhood and, no doubt, there is some truth in that contention. They are those, as a rule, whose chances for worldly success in the Dominion are not commensurate with their ambition. It is not the unemployed alone, or principally, who strike out into the great

In the next place, it is well known that Canadians as a class have been successful abroad. It would, of course, be hazardous to state that any people had amassed wealth as quickly as the German Jews; but then that is the Jews' specialty. The latter, however, are not necessarily on that account successful. Furthermore, they have

republic. It is frequently those who already are assured of a comfortable livelihood, but who see plainly the height to which they are privileged to climb, which often is of a far from dizzy altitude; while in looking to the United States they are fascinated with the uncertain prospect, a prospect that' lures them on with its possibility of wonderful personal achievement. Their strong ambition and resolve, then, which in the first place lead them to leave the country, need to be reckoned in, as important elements in their success.

Another reason, which is a most obvious one, is their physical vigour. The climate they live in is, for the most part, cold and rugged in winter and not too extremely hot in summer. It is eminently favourable to the building up and maintenance of robust physical constitutions. The Canadians, as a race, are large men and women, with good health and athletic forms. Their powers of endurance are certainly not excelled by any other civilized race. During what is known as the NorthWest Rebellion of 1885, the men who went to the front from Ontario were, without past training, subjected to physical tests which for severity have never been surpassed, such as fording streams, making long forced marches, and encamping on the bleak prairies in the midst of the bitter cold of the Canadian North-West winter. It hardly needs saying that physical vigour is the only substantial basis of mental vigour, and the two combined, as they are in the average Canadian, is manifestly an important element in his success, either at home or abroad.

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ing secured their education at considerable public expense, turn their steps to the United States, instead of lending the fruits of their educational training to the country at whose expense it has been acquired. The greater portion of the Canadian people resident in the United States has come from the Province of Ontario, where, as informed educators know, a system of education obtains which is theoretically the most perfect in the world. Is it any wonder, then, that from a state where education is widely diffused and where a well-nigh perfect system is in vogue, the young men should go forth able to compete most successfully with those who have been less carefully prepared for the conflict of daily life?

One of the old classic writers tells us of the Roman soldiers, that they were remarkable for their coolness and deliberation (i. e., slowness), and for their subdued strength. These are characteristics that belong, I think, peculiarly to Canadians. One will occasionally hear it remarked in the United States, that Canadians are slow, and the remark, of course, is always intended as a most uncomplimentary one. It may be a partially just criticism in the sense in which the word is there used, but, at any rate, it is a pefectly just one in the sense in which our author applied it to the Romans. Where the Canadian makes a great gain is in the fact that he has coolness and steadiness of nerve, added to his splendid physical endowment. This desirable resource, which is an invaluable addition to his power to succeed, is lacking in all other races but those of Anglo-Saxon origin, and in a marked degree is lacking even in one of the latter, because its national nerve system has become shattered through the continued strain put upon it by efforts to become rich.

One other reason, which will be more evident as such further on, is that the Canadian has his own particular notion of success, which is an improvement on the general. His love is not for moneygetting like the American's, not for acquiring real-estate and gold like the Englishman's, not for wooing gaiety

like the Frenchman's, but for a combination of things. The latter includes a desire for mental culture and recreation, for moral and spiritual growth, for a better home life, for a higher ideal of citizenship and stateship, and especially, perhaps, for physical recreation and improvement. True, other nationalities place a value on some of these; not, however, on all of them. The Canadian's notion of success is a diversified one. If it were not, if he were a national specialist of some sort, an abnormal specimen, he might make, say, a better shekel-gatherer, or a bigger landlord, or a more skilled artist, or a greater something else, to be sure, but then he would not be so generally successful as he now is,-in fact, he would not be a Canadian.

So far, I have endeavoured to give only a few of the more effective elements that are at once the most directly and most obviously connected with the Canadian's success abroad. Other important elements exist which have not been mentioned, such as thrift, industry, sobriety, etc., which qualities, however, are by no means peculiar to him.

Now I pass to the most potent element of all, most potent because it is, what may be designated, the basal element, the raison d'etre of all others. What is it? you ask. It is that element which is connected with his nationality. It is that which concerns the breed, the blood, the stock, or whatever you may choose to call it, to which he belongs. It is that element which he has inherited from the English people, and which the circumstances of his residence in North America have conspired to modify and improve. The question of nationality is not a mere fanciful one. There is something in the blood or the breed that distinctly marks one nation from another, and which accounts for the greater success and advance in civilization of some races than of others. It does not take an ethnological expert to tell an Englishman from a Frenchman, or a Frenchman from a German. Indeed, the fact of racial differentiation can almost be

verified in a comparison of Americans and Englishmen. The Americans are, it is true, so nearly allied to the English that, while they cannot be said to belong to another stock, yet they may be said to be a distinct variety, which is so different from the original plant as to actually render the two as unlike as are some nationalities who speak different languages. This is not at all equivalent to saying that American. blood is not as good as English. The species or variety added to a grafted tree brings forth as good fruit as the original tree, sometimes better.

There is likewise another variety, an offshoot from the English stock-the Canadian-which is different both from the original stock and the American variety. It can hardly be maintained that these differences are sufficient to justify a conclusion that any one of these three peoples is superior to the others. Any statement of that kind would prove as invidious as it probably would prove inaccurate and misleading.

But there is one important point in which Canadians and Englishmen have a distinct advantage over Americans, in this matter of nationality. It is that the former have an invaluable mental characteristic which the latter are almost altogether without, and which I can find no better word to express than loyalty. The word loyalty is one of peculiar significance to all Englishspeaking people, except Americans. The latter, quite naturally, for constitutional reasons, have little or no use for it, in the European sense in which it is usually associated with monarchial institutions. The main thought implied in it, as it is commonly used on British soil, is as foreign to them as it is native to Englishmen, Canadians and Australians. The significance of the word to all citizens of the Empire lies in the fact that it carries with it the idea of devotion not alone to English political ideals, but likewise to all the cherished traditions of the English race, and to all its treasured legacies of mind and heart. In neither of these senses of the word have the Americans loy

alty. And that is precisely why they are Americans. But let no one impugn their loyalty to American institutions. No nation in the world is more devoted to its own creations.

I have referred to loyalty as a mental characteristic; and so it is, taking the word in its British meaning, because it is so nearly akin to, if not identical with, that conservative trend of mind so characteristic of the average Englishman. And it is right here where the gist of the whole matter lies. Why Canadians succeed abroad or at home is, as will be presently shown, precisely because they have enough of this saving characteristic of loyalty or conservatism in a broad sense, which unites so admirably and efficaciously with the physical circumstances of their national life.

This conservatism of Britishers, this loyalty to the things of the past, is preeminently an advantage to them as it would be, in a far lesser degree of course, to Americans. The American mind is essentially one of revolt. It could not be otherwise. Nothing in the world changes the heart and mind of a people, and changes them so effectively, as a war of independence. Even the short history of the American nation is long enough to have cast the native-born American mind into a mould from which it cannot escape. It is natural, therefore, to the American, to think somewhat lightly on the conventionalities and the legacies of the past, and especially on those of British origin. It is well, indeed, in some respects, that this is so. It gives play to all the advantage there is in cultivating a pronounced feeling of national self-reliance and individuality. There is a wonderful vitality and manliness accomplished in the very act of striking for independence, and, after acquiring it, in tilling the fertile fields of native mental resources, without faltering at every turn to measure methods and results with those of other lands. The very soil, too, of a new land has a marvellous effect in reinforcing the independent spirit and developing the mind of revolt, of men who have gained their liberty in conquest. These two

factors-independence fought for and gained, and the virgin soil-are the corner-stones of the American Republic. And, as we were saying, it is well, in some ways, that it is so, well that the conditions upon which the formation of the nation rests are such as to have produced a trait of mind that is essentially one of revolt against the traditions of the old world.

But here is the misfortune of it all. It is likewise true that this trait of mind, born of national conditions, has operated, at the same time, to tear down certain moral, religious and educational principles which it were well to conserve. For example, the Americans have let themselves rush so voraciously into the pursuit of wealth, that such old fogy. notions as paying one's debts, and keeping one's word and telling the truth, and doing to others as one would like to be done by, have been discarded, to no inconsiderable extent, as something suitable, perchance, to the old grannies of the old world, but not to the up-to-date, free and independent-spirited men of America. This is not at all to be taken as meaning that these good attributes do not exist in the United States. They do, only they exist in a far more limited degree than they would but for the mental characteristic alluded to.

President Schurman, of Cornell University, said, not long ago, in an address to the graduating class of '96: "The American people, in a too exclusive pursuit of external goods, have forfeited their ancient dower of inward happiness. The one efficacious remedy is a return to truer views of life as rational and moral. We need a fresh baptism of idealism, a new consecration to spiritual ends, a quickened enthusiasm for truth, justice and righteousness. The advantage accruing to the Britisher, therefore, is that his loyalty keeps him in a state of more or less reverence for the things considered to be of good report, and in this way saves him from the evils attendant upon an extravagant civilization.

The Canadian occupies a somewhat peculiar relation to the American and

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