learning. Before the conditions on which the gift were made were understood there was evident reluctance in some quarters to accept so large a sum, and there was in other quarters frank criticism; but further explanations have made it clear that Mr. Carnegie has acted with his usual sagacity, and that he has made his gift, under the advice of those who know Scotland best, subservient to the interests not only of the Scottish people but of the Scottish universities. Full details of the scheme have yet to be received, but it is apparently certain that a considerable part of the fund is to be used in increasing the teaching facilities of the universities by strengthening the faculties, that another portion will be spent upon the secondary schools, and that a part only of the money will be used for the establishment of free university scholarships. Scotland has always been the home of education of a very high order; in no other country except the United States have there been so many romances of education, so many emancipations of able young men, through their own efforts, from ignorance and hard conditions into knowledge and generous opportunities. But Scotland has never been rich, and Mr. Carnegie's noble remembrance of his mother country will greatly aid universities which need larger capitalization, as well as young Scotchmen of every kind and rank to whom the doors of the highest education will be thrown open. Probably one of the best results of the gift will be its reaction upon England, where the universities are suffering from the depreciation of landed properties, the fall of rents, and other causes which have greatly lessened their incomes. Mr. Carnegie's example is likely to be followed by prosperous Englishmen in the form of substantial gifts to Oxford and Cambridge.

In this country gifts of private individuals to colleges and schools are so numerous and large that they have almost ceased to attract attention. The Outlook has commented on the gift of Mr. Rockefeller for the purpose of endowing research, and has pointed out its significance. It is greatly to be hoped that other men of wealth will turn their attention in this direction, and that the next few years will see an immense enlargement of the foundations upon which original research is conducted in America. American schol

arship needs fostering on this side. Brown University has been enriched by the gift of the John Carter Brown Library by the trustees of the will of the late John Nicholas Brown. This library is one of the most valuable collections of Americana in existence, and has had the benefit of very skillful cataloguing and arrangement, so as to bring its treasures within reach of students in American history and literature. In addition to this magnificent gift, the donors are to erect a building at a cost of $150,000, and to endow the library to the extent of $500,000. The library is roughly valued at $500,000, and the entire gift, therefore, amounts to about $1,150,000. At the last Commencement of the University President Faunce announced that $1,000,000 had been added to the permanent funds of the institution. During the winter it was further announced that Mr. Rockefeller had offered the University $250,000 on condition that its friends raise $750,000 in addition; it is probable that the gift of the trustees of the Brown Library complies with this condition, and will secure for the University the sum offered by Mr. Rockefeller, thus completing the extraordinary record of more than two millions of dollars added to the endowment of the University during the first two years of President Faunce's administration.

The most important facts, however, in connection with colleges will always be those which relate to the teaching force; for great institutions are made by men, not money; great institutions cannot, however, secure the highest efficiency and do their work on a proper scale unless they have large funds at their disposal. The retirement of Dr. Gilman from the presidency of the Johns Hopkins University is an event of National interest, for Dr. Gilman's services to education, although rendered largely in Baltimore, have been of National consequence; he has left a permanent impression on the higher education of the country. The appointment of Professor Remsen, of the same institution, as his successor is a promotion which was foreseen by many who knew the inner history of the University; the doubt seems to have been with regard to Professor Remsen's willingness to change the form of his work. For many years he has stood in the front rank

of American chemists, and has organized the chemical department of the University with unusual skill. It does not always happen that a great scientist or a great teacher has also the capacity for organization. It is this capacity, tested on several occasions at the University, which has led to the appointment of Professor Remsen, and which gives the assurance that in him the educational work of the institution will not only be held where it has been from the beginning, but that it will be conducted successfully through the difficult period through which it is now passing.

The retirement of President Carter from the presidency of Williams College after his administration of twenty years, notable for thoroughness, high standards, and conscientious work, has already been commented upon in these columns. At a time when college presidents are tempted to make a use of advertising opportunities out of keeping with the dignity of institutions of learning, President Carter has been conspicuous for his loyalty to the old traditions of dignified and sound scholarship. He has represented that element of culture so eminently needed in this country, and so often lacking even in institutions of higher learning; and he will carry into his retirement the deep appreciation of all those who know how single-minded and deep-hearted his service to Williams College has been.

paper report of his utterances. In very many cases sentiments are put into his mouth which he never expressed; in many more cases what he actually said is so distorted that its meaning is not only obscured but reversed; and in a few cases interviews which never took place are fabricated, and statements which were never made are purposely invented. Under all circumstances a man has a right to be asked whether he has been correctly reported before anybody accepts the reports of his speeches, and especially before any one attempts to sit in judgment upon them. This professor was entitled to the presumption that he was innocent until he was proved guilty; and a telegraphic report in a newspaper is never proof of guilt; suspension of judgment is the only right attitude towards all reports of this sort. This is only an application of the rule that one ought never to believe anything derogatory of another until he has convincing evidence that it is true; with the further modification that the newspaper, being compelled to print its news very hastily and from a variety of sources, is always open to serious errors and misstatements.

In the second place, such sweeping statements are never worthy of serious consideration. Burke declared that it was impossible to indict a whole people; it is equally impossible to pass an intelligent judgment on a whole class or group of persons, and absurd to pass on a whole sex. The man who declares, without qualification,

The young professor in a Western university who was recently reported to have declared that college women do not make good wives has promptly and conclusively refuted the very foolish statement put into his mouth. It would have been amusing, if it had not been discouraging, to note the eagerness with which many newspapers rushed upon this young man without once stopping to verify his reported utterances. It looked very much as if there were a serious lack of topics, and as if the opportunity to pounce upon a victim who could not reply was too rare and sweet to be foregone.

Two things should always be borne in mind. In the first place, no man ought ever to be held responsible for any news

the other, is not entitled to serious notice; if he is noticed, it is evidence of a lack of subjects or a lack of sound perspective on the part of those who take him to task. The time has long passed for condemning college women in any form; and there never has been a time when the wisest man could say with any degree of truth that this or that class of women were fit or unfit for marriage; if there is any matter which is one of individual qualification, marriage is certainly that matter.

Now that the little whirlpool of dust which gathered about the young teacher and obscured him for the time being in a haze of nonsense has passed away, it is wise to reflect that it was a very unintelligent little storm, brewed strictly for journalistic purposes, and entirely without

significance in the general climatic condition of the country.

The Spectator

When the Spectator was a boy, the maps of the Western Territories of the United States had a peculiar fascination for him that wide area called the Great American Desert, upon which was printed, "This vast unexplored region of country is supposed to be inhabited by tribes of Indians." Ah, the charm in that "supposed to be "! How different to the adventure-loving boy of to-day the fine maps of those regions as given in the standard atlases!

The Spectator had been reading on the train recently (the Empire State express speeding through the wide farmlands of New York State) what recalled the old map of the Western Territories. This little planet of ours, when its every remote nook and corner has been thoroughly explored and accurately mapped, will have lost its greatest charm for many. And so of Mars-and the other side of the moon. "Unexplored regions"-how fast they are disappearing! But, please, Mr. Spectator, how much do you really know of what life is like to the inhabitants of these little villages so seemingly out of the great world-to the dwellers in those lonely houses on the bleak hillsides-to these barefooted children by the crossroads school-house watching the Empire State express fly past? How much does the average New Yorker, or the resident of any large city whose knowledge of life on a farm or in a small village has been gained mainly as a summer visitor, really know what it is to live, on scanty allowance, in the farming regions bordering our great railroads? "Unexplored regions, supposed to be inhabited by❞—are our suppositions less fanciful, on the whole, than were those of the Jesuit fathers, for instance, when they wrote in their Relations what they supposed to be a true portraiture of the savages of New France?-those supposed-to-be converts. to the most holy faith? When there is nothing more to discover, it was suggested to the Spectator, in interior Asia, South America, and the polar regions, will there

not remain a field of exploration not many miles away from the Grand Central Station?

When the Spectator is inclined to go into retreat for a season, he knows of no better place than a little village in western New York, one of the old canal towns, so called, which in the palmy days of "Clinton's big ditch" was a commercial center of no small importance. Now its abandoned wharves have nearly disappeared, and its great warehouses have toppled over or been converted into Italian tenements, the railway station, a mile away, having changed the place entirely. Like the most of the old canal towns, it seldom lets a visitor forget that it has seen better days those days when several Red Bird packets, four horses each, a bugle playing on deck, stopped there every day, the continuous lines of heavily laden transportation boats passing through the heart of the village making it "a very different place, sir, from what it has been since the railroad killed the canal."

One thing the little village has now which it must have been very poor without fifty years ago, even with its Red Birds and bustling wharves-a model public school, that priceless acquisition which few of the small villages of the Empire. State are without, and which the Spectator would ask those who are given to bestowing patronizing pity upon the dwellers in the small villages along the line of the New York Central to remember hereafter. Not only a model school-house, but, what is better, a model school-the one thing, seemingly, which unifies the whole community in a common interest and special pride. Indifferent as most of the villagers are to lack of proper sewerage, to poor sidewalks, and to a prevalent disregard of sanitary precautions, they stand as one for the greatest good of their public school, with its park-like grounds gay with flowerbeds, with its trees and song-birds, the special care of the children.

One school belfry-to whose summons there is scarcely ever a dissentient voice— and five church steeples. The bells of three of the steeples, ringing their best on a Sunday morning, succeed but poorly in half filling any one of the five houses of

worship. The average congregation, if combined in one, would not greatly overcrowd the largest church building of all. Perhaps at this point the Spectator is expected to discourse upon church unity, upon what these five struggling congregations might learn from the one public school; but that is not the topic he has been meandering away from. He has recently attended the Commencement exercises of this model school. Possibly he expected too much-something commensurate with the differences between the Red Bird packets and the Empire State express-the old log school-house and that steam-heated, perfectly ventilated and lighted model public school. And he found himself longing to hear the old "pieces" spoken again-"On Linden when the sun was low," "Marco Bozzaris," and Mark Antony's oration, with the old pit-a-pat, possibly, when the girls went up to read their compositions.

What was it the Spectator was missing? What was it that had so utterly disappeared? Where was the old-time diffidence which used to make Last Day a severe ordeal even for the big boys, and a terrible strain upon the girls who must mount the platform to read "compositions"? What blasé indifference for the

audience! how perfectly accustomed they all were "to speak in public on the stage"! There were no signs of stage fright-the platform, plainly, had become an important. part of modern education.

A

Was the programme an improvement on that of Last Day fifty years ago? quartette of the littlest girls, to begin with, tripped out like old performers, each with a flag held high, singing the "Star-Spangled Banner," very much as they might have rendered "Mary had a little lamb." Then, too, "What has become of the oldtime spontaneity?" the Spectator asked. In the Delsartian exercise of posturing to music, twenty of the older children attitudinizing in what to one of the audience at least was a grotesque materialization of the Lord's Prayer, a child forgot herself sufficiently to yawn in quite a natural way, much to the relief of the Spectator. The impersonating of the Weather Bureau flags somewhat lessened one onlooker's dis

content, but it returned when "All the birds of the wildwood" were hopping across the stage, flapping their wings and piping each its own song-one overgrown, oafish lad drowning every other note in his droll mimicry of the crow.

66

are

And not one of the old "pieces." More welcome, by far, to the Spectator, than all that was played upon the piano and violin by the pupils that day, and well played, too, would have been " Chained in the market-place he stood," or, better yet, Spartacus." All, all gone, the old familiar "pieces." But the schoolgirl composition is left, and unchanged. How is it, the Spectator was asking, that these girls express themselves no better than their grandmothers did when forced. to discourse upon astronomy, or something else they knew almost nothing about, and that long before special training in writing compositions had been made a specialty in our public schools? If any one doubts the assertion, let him read a collection of the average "compositions" of to-daythose submitted in a competition for a prize by the pupils of any typical public school.

The Spectator acted as umpire lately in such a competition; and he doth hereby stoutly affirm that the "composition" of these latter days is no better and no worse than those read with so much sinking of heart at the Last Day exhibitions of forty years ago. Notable have been the changes in the world's geography since then, prodigious the progress of educational systems, and most thorough the exploration of unknown regions; but the "composition" is still the same, all in all, as when our grandmothers at Last Day exhibitions read in inaudible, quavering voices. their answers to such hard questions as "Is Mrs. Sigourney or Mrs. Hemans the greater poetess?" or emphasized their views upon "The Importance of Correct Deportment." One of the essays submitted to the Spectator in the contest aforesaid was upon Rudyard Kipling-evidently an "unexplored region "to the writer, save from the outlook of "supposed to be," the very feature in which for the Spectator still abideth the saving charm of the average school "composition."

I

T was no easy life to which I brought home my young wife. I felt it often with a secret pang when I thought how few friends I had to offer her for those she had left, and how very different was the whole setting of her new home. At such times I set my teeth hard and promised myself that some day she should have the best in the land. She never with word or look betrayed if she, too, felt the pang. We were comrades for better or worse from the day she put her hand in mine, and never was there a more loyal and faithful one. If, when in the twilight she played softly to herself the old airs from home, she broke off with a smothered sob that was not for my ear, and shortly our kitchen resounded with the most tremendously energetic housekeeping on record, I did not hear. I had drunk that cup to the dregs, and I knew. I just put on a gingham apron and turned in to help her. Two can battle with a fit of homesickness much better than one, even if never a word is said about it. And it can very rarely resist a man with an apron on. I suppose he looks too ridiculous.

Besides, housekeeping in double harness was a vastly different matter from going it single. Not that it was plain sailing by any manner of means. Neither of us knew anything about it; but we were there to find out, and exploring together was fine fun. We started fair by laying in a stock of everything there was in the cook-book and in the grocery, from "mace," which neither of us knew what was, to the prunes which we never got a chance to cook because we ate them all up together before we could find a place where they fitted in. The deep councils we held over the disposal of those things, and the strange results which followed Copyright, 1901, the Outlook Company.

to steer clear of, because I had carefully

charted them in the days of my bachelorhood. In the matter of sago, for instance, which swells so when cooked. You would never believe it. But there were plenty of unknown reefs. I mind our first chicken. I cannot to this day imagine what was the matter with that strange bird. I was compelled to be at the office that afternoon, but I sent my grinning "devil" up to the house every half-hour for bulletins as to how it was getting on. When I came home in the gloaming, it was sizzling yet, and my wife was regarding it with a strained look and with cheeks which the fire had dyed a most lovely red. I can see her now. She was just too charming for anything. With the chicken something was wrong. As I said, I don't know what it was, and I don't care. The skin was all drawn tight over the bones like the covering on an umbrella frame, and there was no end of fat in the pan that we didn't know what to do with. But our supper of bread and cheese that night was a meal fit for a king. My mother, who was a notable cook, never made one so fine. It is all stuff about mothers doing those things better. Who cares, anyhow? Have mothers curls of gold and long eyelashes, and have they arch ways? And do they pout, and have pet names? Well, then, are not these of the very essence of cookery, all the dry books to the contrary notwithstanding? Some day some one will publish a real cook-book for young housekeepers, but it will be a wise husband with the proper sense of things, not a motherly person at all, who will write it. They make things that are good enough to eat, but that is not the best part of cooking by long odds.

There is one housekeeping feat of which Elisabeth says she is ashamed yet. I am not. I'll bet it was fine. It was that cake we took so much trouble with. The yeast went in all right, but something else.