Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

"We may have done so," I answered.

"In the night I went through the pockets of your coat and vest. The result of that investigation, and especially as regards certain notes made by you on a sheet of paper, has shown me that you are a detective, and that you are engaged in working up the case of the girl who was--who died after the French Ball in New York. I am right, am I not?" he inquired, all in the same calm, measured way.

"Yes," I replied. "I have been keeping you in sight, Count, until the necessary proofs were obtained that would convict the murderer."

"You fancy that I am the one who did the deed?" he asked, in the same measured tones.

"I know it," I answered quietly, but with an air of conviction.

"Granting, for the moment, that you are right, what interest have you in bringing home the crime to me? Who has engaged you to do this?"

"The pretty girl who was strangled, and a professional desire to work up the case."

"The several notes I have received were from you, I suppose," he continued, in his easy, careless tones.

"Yes."

"And you have the proof that I am the murderer?" he inquired, turning his eyes unflinchingly on me.

I smiled. "Count, I fear that everything is against you."

"You would be sadly mortified to find that you were mistaken, I presume."

"I should be sadly surprised," I returned, again with a quiet smile.

"What time did the hackman drive off with the monk and the girl?" he asked me.

"At ten minutes past two. The hackman noted the time to see what hour he could hope to get back for another fare."

"Well, let me tell you something that may modify your search in this business. I had made arrangements to go with the girl. I did not wish in any way to be connected with her departure. So just when we were ready to go down to the carriage, I told her to wait for me at the entrance for five minutes. She said she would, and went down.

"I had put on the monk's garb over my evening dress. I threw it off and left it in one of the dressing-rooms. I hurried back to the floor and made it a point to show myself to several persons who knew me. I feared that possibly some one had seen me talk to the monk, and would connect the disappearance of Columbine afterward with a monk with this. This was my reason for conspicuously showing myself after she had gone out with me in the monk's dress.

"I was not away more than six or seven minutes, when I went back to the dressing-room to put on the habit again. It was gone! I searched in the neighboring rooms, thinking some one might have moved it to some other place. I could not find it. I then hastened down to the entrance to go with the Columbine in my dress-suit, with a mask on, for I had slipped that in my breast.

"The girl was not there! I inquired of some of the bystanders, and they told me that a monk had got into a carriage with her not five minutes before. Who that monk was I am as ignorant as yourself. You have followed a false trail. I did _not_ go with the girl, and can prove an alibi for the next two hours after she drove off. Several of my friends were with me from then till I went to my hotel, and my man knows the hour when I came home with them. I was terribly shocked the next day when I heard of her mur--her death."

I felt considerably taken back and very foolish. The Count's accents were those of truth, and afterwards his assertions were fully borne out by witnesses. Who it was that murdered the unfortunate girl has remained the closest mystery ever since.

"Will you tell me your relation to the girl? Why did you turn pale when you saw her? And why did you wish to go with her, as you admit having wished to do?"

"That," said the Count, with intense decision, "you will never know from me."

And I never did. There was a twofold mystery about what had seemed to me as clear as the alphabet. Never could I learn what were Count Stolzberger's relations with the girl, nor who had murdered her in the carriage after the ball.

PORTLAND WENTFORTH.

_DOES THE HIGH TARIFF AFFECT OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM?_

We had, before the war, the system of apprenticeship as practised to a great extent in Europe to-day. Its almost total extinction is laid at the door of concentrated, and still concentrating, capital, aided by improved machinery.

Some may argue that our improved machinery has the tendency to combine capital. This may be true in some measure; but, upon second thought, it will become clear to an impartial thinker that the protective tariff is the chief cause, as is evidenced by its baneful results--the trusts.

Under this new order, the shoemaker has no need of apprentices. The Northern shoe-factory, which employs cheap foreign labor at labor-saving machines, takes away his trade. He has, of course, a few customers for hand-made shoes, but his principal occupation consists in mending the poorly made shoes of the factory. He needs no apprentices for that, but, in order to make a comfortable living for his family and give his children the benefits of an education, he must charge big prices; and I venture to predict that the time is not far off when it will be cheaper to the consumer to buy a new pair of shoes from the factory than to have the old ones half-soled and otherwise repaired by the shoemaker of his town. This holds good in regard to other trades, and the question arises: What condition are we drifting into?

The indications are that we shall have in the near future a manufacturing class, a farming class, and a floating class. This floating class deserves our serious consideration. It consists of a large body of men and women, shiftlessly changing from the merchant class to the professions, and from the professions to the merchant class.

Our educational system helps to increase the confusion. Starting out with the intention of making the schools of the country the foundation of a substantial education in the elementary branches, our educators have allowed themselves to be carried away--through sheer enthusiasm, no doubt--from that simple and substantial basis of operation; and we have to-day, as the necessary result, the most complicated, absurd, and absolutely useless educational system in the world.

There is no branch of human knowledge that is not taught in the public schools of the country; and the most remarkable fact about it is that one solitary teacher is supposed to understand and to be able to teach this endless variety of branches.

For whose benefit is such an education intended? For the large floating population of the country; for the boys and girls whose parents have no positive intentions as to their children's future career.

In conversation with a public-school teacher I asked why he taught geometry and trigonometry in the school. "Well," he said, "it is of not much use, and takes valuable time from the rest of the scholars; but some of the patrons wish to have their children study it, because _they might have future use for it_."

When a few others wish Latin, German, or French taught, the teacher immediately undertakes it, while the great mass of the pupils are actually starving for the most elementary knowledge of the common-school branches.

We have, in consequence, a class, composed principally of young men, who have no education especially suited to any definite trade or profession. This class is constantly growing, to the detriment of the country. The trades are driven to the wall by combined capital, and there is literally nothing to do for many of our young men except to stand in a store as clerk or bookkeeper. Farmers' sons starting out in life with a shallow education received from a shallow system look with aversion upon the occupation of tiller of the soil, and, deluded by the education received at the country school-house into the belief that the world lays at their feet, go from one profession or trade to another, never satisfied, never of any account, and never successful.

If a freer trade has a tendency to break up trusts and combinations of capital, it will, in consequence, distribute the industries of the country more evenly among the people, and, by giving employment to our young men at home, will give them a definite aim in life and do away with the silly demand for a university education in a common public school.

EMIL LUDWIG SCHARF.

_MARCH 4th, 1889._

Hail to the new! unto the winner hail!
Hail to the rising, not the setting sun!
So runs the world: success, however won,
Dulleth, the while, his glory who doth fail.
Yet, as thou puttest off thy proven mail,
Strong soul that didst no issue ever shun,
Or at entrenched greed's resentment quail!
Hark to the swelling undertone--"Well done!"

Unto the canker which thy country's life
Yearly doth make flow more and more impure,
Thou wouldst, where needed most, have put the knife,
And from its root the pest begun to cure.
O brave chirurgeon! who shall end the strife
It matters not--thy fame remaineth sure.

ALFRED HENRY PETERS.

_EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT._

THE SALE OF THE PRESIDENCY.

No better illustration of the power wielded by the press has been given, since the London _Times_ took up the Crimean War and remodelled the allied armies, than that of the New York _World_ in its assault on the corruptions of the ballot that robbed the people of the United States of their voted will at the late presidential election.

This monstrous crime against self-government would have faded from public memory, and lost its place in the annals of iniquity, but for the energy and enterprise of this journal, that sent an army of correspondents over the country and gathered the proofs of the open market in which was sold and bought the Presidency.

This fearful exposé of a burning shame was followed by messages from governors, and bills by legislatures, looking, not to the punishment of the wrong-doers, but to the enactment of preventive laws tending to the protection of the people in the future.

It is to be observed, however, that this potent power failed to bring on any investigations, any indictments, or a single effort to punish the guilty. This the _World_ demanded, but this the _World_ failed to obtain.

The reason for the impotent result in this one direction is easy to comprehend when we get at the facts underlying the corruption. Neither party was, or is, in a condition to demand an investigation, for the leaders of each are alike guilty. It is generally believed that money was corruptly used by both organizations, and that the Republicans, having the larger sum, won in the end. This is true, but it is only true in part. Honest investigation would bring out the startling fact, that the vast sums collected from millionaires, and the very significant amount assessed on office-holders, were for the one purpose of returning Benjamin Harrison to the Presidency and again putting the moneyed power of the country in the keeping of the Republican party.

This manner of operating by corrupt means has long been well known to the more observant. Corruption has no conscience, no patriotism, and no politics. All rascality rests on a purely business basis. When a merchant seeks a partner, he does not bother himself about that partner's religious belief or party predilections. When rogues wish to form a trust or ring, they in like manner consider only the capacity of their brother-rogues, and when politics is at all considered, it is because of the safety from investigation found in having all sides implicated. Thus, when the great Aqueduct steal of New York was organized, the managers were made up of both Democrats and Republicans. When, therefore, an investigation went far enough to develop two prominent Republicans added to the responsible commission, and one of those Republicans was called to the stand and asked how he came to accept such a position, he responded naïvely that he sought to secure some of the patronage of the public work for his own party.

Now, when we remember that President Cleveland, in the last hours of his illustrious administration, made a deadly assault on a system that oppressed the many for the benefit of a few, we get a clue to a mystery that has puzzled the masses. Vast sums were openly subscribed, and almost as openly used, in the purchase of votes to perpetuate the corruption. And we had developed two startling facts that go to show that our experiment of self-government is well-nigh a failure.

The first of these is that we have so cheapened the suffrage that we have an element in between the two parties large enough to decide a presidential election of what we call "floaters"--that is, men who stand upon the street-corners, and crop out in the rural regions, with their votes in hand, for sale to the highest bidders. The market price varies from five dollars to a hundred, as the demand may rule.

The second fact teaches that the election through States facilitates this infamous abuse. We find that while President Cleveland won in the popular vote by nearly a hundred thousand majority, he lost the presidency. Through the electoral system we have developed two pivotal States, and the market thus narrowed makes the corruption possible.

It is quite evident that we cannot narrow the suffrage, but it is possible to widen the vote; and if the patriotic people of the United States care to sustain the great republic, and give to their children the precious possession of a constitutional government, based on an equality of rights before the law, no time should be lost in wiping out an electoral system that has not only failed of its purpose, but is a source of peril to the government.

It is said of a distinguished politician of Pennsylvania that when called on to contribute money for the purpose of carrying a State election, he, refusing, said, "What's the use of wasting money on the people in an election when you can purchase the legislature with one-fourth the money?" Now, immense as are the sums gotten through monopoly and unjust taxation, they are not sufficient to purchase votes throughout the entire country, to say nothing of the danger attending such an attempt.

We learn this from Col. Dudley's famous, or rather infamous, letter of instruction to his subordinates. He wanted the floaters classed in blocks of five. This, not because the floaters were so numerous as to require such organized handling, but because it was a hazardous venture, and agents willing to transact the business were scarce. That they were found in deacons, class-leaders, bankers, and Sunday-school teachers only shows the desperate condition to which the moneyed power was reduced in its effort to secure again the control of our government.

Had the Democracy planted itself firmly upon honest ground and fought this corruption because it was corrupt and not from a fever of excitement to win at all hazards, it might have been defeated--probably would have been. But in that defeat it would have held a position that would now enable it to investigate, indict, and punish. As it is, we have a great outcry and no efficient work. Col. Dudley goes acquit of all save public condemnation, not because of any difficulty attending a legal condemnation, but because his accusers cannot enter court with clean hands.

This is an ugly statement to make; but for the sake of the political association with which we sympathize, and in whose cause, as developed in the late election, we are deeply interested, we feel it our duty to assert the truth in the plainest terms. The Democracy should remember that in this corrupt game they must of necessity be the losers. The corruption fund is and must be with their opponents. The gist of the contention lies in the fact that the Democracy seek to arrest a robbery that has already made their opponents rich, and the swag thus obtained affords the means through which it may be held. To enter such an arena is to enter it unarmed.

Senator Plumb, when he made the assertion, subsequently published by authority, that the only class really benefited by our system of extortion miscalled protection should have "the fat fried out of it" to carry on the election, unintentionally uttered a truth we cannot ignore. This again was supplemented by Senator Ingalls's instruction to his State delegation at Chicago to nominate for the Vice-Presidency "some fellow like Phelps who can tap Wall Street." And the evidence closes with Col. Dudley's direction to organize "the floaters in blocks of five."

These are noted and recognized leaders of the Republican party. Senators Plumb and Ingalls are not only prominent as such, but are men of brain and culture. Col. Dudley is known to the country as a prominent worker in the cause of the moneyed power. Now, while we might hesitate to take the word of any one of these gentlemen when advocating any measure of importance to their party, we are bound to accept all they assert against themselves, in accordance with well-recognized principles of evidence.

Their admissions are fatal to their party, as their practice, if continued, will prove fatal to the Republic. We have some twenty-two State legislatures laboring to so amend the machinery of elections as to make this purchase of votes difficult, if not impossible. In this good work the Democracy should be the zealous leaders, not only because it is reform, but because it is the salvation of the party.

If this corruption found in the mere purchase of votes ended with that foul practice we might hope for something; but back of that, hid in the darkness, lies the ugly, snaky form of treachery. The money subscribed by millionaires is not always used in the camp of the party in whose behalf it was contributed. So long as rogues are countenanced in one direction they will be found in others. The startling fact that we cannot have investigations for fear of uncovering our own people is supplemented by another no less startling--that such investigation would expose not only bribe-takers but traitors. We are not asserting this without due consideration, and we give to print only what is known by the more shrewd and observant in our own midst.

The proof of this is not necessary. The knowledge that corruption did exist carries with it assurance that it extended in such directions as the wrong-doers found most efficient. When that sturdy old corruptionist, Oakes Ames, was called upon to account for the stock of the _Crédit Mobilier_ with which he had been intrusted, he replied that he had placed it "where it would do the most good," and his keen, incisive remark has passed into a popular proverb. The wretched, degraded creature who sells his vote parts with an infinitesimal bit of power, and he is a saint and a gentleman by the side of the man who, trusted by his party, betrays that trust for a moneyed consideration. However, this carries us beyond our subject.

The truest and best reform that can be attained is the most radical, and that is, as we have said, to elect the President by a direct vote of the people, and do away with an electoral system that survived its usefulness in the death of George Washington. The next best is to secure the secrecy of the ballot. Anything short of this is vain. When we have so arranged the machine that the bribe-taker cannot make open delivery of the stolen goods, we have driven the bribe-giver to accepting the word of a wretch whose oath would be worthless.

In view of the peril in which we find ourselves, with the very foundations taken from under the tottering political fabric known as the Great Republic, the anxiety manifested by our law-makers lest some citizen may be deprived of his vote in this effort to purify the polls would be ludicrous were it not that the subject is of so serious a nature. The very ground is sliding from under us, and these Solons are concerned as to the shoes we may be deprived of in our effort at escape. Indeed, if to perfect the reform it became necessary not only to deprive a few citizens of the suffrage, but to hang Messrs. Plumb, Ingalls, and Dudley, shocking as the sacrifice would be to us, we should say, like a Roman father, let them hang. Indeed, undying fame hereafter would proclaim that in their deaths they had done their country some service.

VACANT PEWS AND WORRIED PULPITS.

The homes, so called, of our larger cities are in a majority of cases without comfort, and in nearly all instances without refinement. The class upon which we once so prided ourselves, made up of families possessed of a competence, and enabled through a reasonable income from steady work to have about their homes some comfort and a few luxuries, is rapidly disappearing. We have left us two classes only, made up of the very rich and the poor. The merchant, the mechanic, and even the common laborer, who once could boast of a humble home of his own, and enough steady employment to make that home comfortable, is rarely met with. We believe indeed that he exists only in the imagination of Senator Edmunds. Well-authenticated statistics inform us that we have a larger percentage of tenantry to our population than any people on the face of the earth. This not only includes our great commercial, mining, and manufacturing centres, but the rural regions as well. We learn that, throughout the agricultural regions, while the farms lessen in number, the farmers increase.

We know what this means. We recognize at a glance that the growth of our country in national wealth, which is claimed to be amazing, is not a healthy growth. For that is not healthy which gives prosperity to a few and poverty to the masses.

This has been so long and so generally recognized that it has come to be commonplace, and people weary of its reiteration. We indulge in this weariness for the purpose of calling attention to a consequence that is not so familiar.

It is remarked by observant lookers-on from abroad that our laboring classes are thoroughly ignorant of art, and take no pleasure in contemplating works of art, as do the like classes in the towns of Europe. The reason given for this is that we have no specimens in our highways, and few in galleries. The latter are closed against the laboring classes on the only day a laborer can have to visit them, and that is Sunday.

The wrong done our people by this can scarcely be overestimated. A taste for art can generally be cultivated. It is quite impossible to educate a people in science and literature, for this depends on intellectual faculties that our heavenly Father, from a wise purpose to us unknown, has been very sparing in distributing. But almost every man is capable of being taught to admire, if not love, the beautiful in art. What an element in the way of social improvement or progress this cultivated taste is we all recognize, and what happens to a race that neglects it we all know.

Now, it is possible for a people to possess the highest appreciation of, and admiration for, art and yet be semi-barbarous, for the Christian element is necessary to bring about real civilization; but it is quite impossible for a race to be without some cultivation in the way of art and be civilized at all.

It is not strange, to a thoughtful observer, to note that as a nation we are on the down-grade. Such an observer from abroad cannot cross Broadway, for example, without learning that life and limb are in peril from a community that has more law and less order than any people the world over. He is prepared to learn then that our galleries of art--such as exist--are closed against the poor, and he is ready to receive without wonder the further fact that our churches also are closed against the poor.

It is this last truth that is somewhat new in the way of being recognized, although quite old as a matter of fact.

At a convocation of Protestant ministers held at Chickering Hall last November, on behalf of the Protestant community of New York, the following was officially stated as to the religious condition of the city:

"The population of New York City has for years been steadily and rapidly increasing, while at the same time the number of churches has been relatively decreasing. In 1840 there was one Protestant church to every 2,400 people; in 1880, one to 3,000; and in 1887, one to 4,000."

Now, to this startling admission could have been added another, no less deplorable, and that is that the attendance has decreased more rapidly than the churches, and, in such as now remain open a seventh part of the time, there is an exhibit of empty seats quite depressing to the minister. If we consider the Protestant population only, not one-tenth are church attendants--and not a tenth of these are true believers.

The reason for this deplorable condition was much discussed by the good men making up the clerical convention, and the prevailing opinion seemed to be, as gathered from the utterances, that this disheartening result came from the active interference of the Catholic clergy--or papists, as our friends termed them.

There was much truth in this. These zealous "papists" are certainly making great inroads upon our population; but, admitting that they take large numbers from the Protestant churches, there yet remains a vast population of non-going church people that the so-called papists have not influenced, nor indeed as yet approached. What then is the cause of this irreligious condition?

We believe that we can help our clerical friends to a solution of this religious mystery. It comes from a lack of consideration for the masses they seek to instruct. There is a want of sympathy for the poor, that not only shuts the galleries of art from the laboring classes, but closes the Protestant churches also.

These structures, while scarcely to be classed as works of art,--for they are carefully divested of all that appeals to good taste,--are yet luxurious affairs at which the rich and well-born, in purple and fine linen, are expected to attend. They are more social than religious affairs, and there is no place for the ragged, even if such appeared from a public bath, duly cleansed of their offensive dirt. To make this exclusiveness complete, the churches are filled with pews that, like boxes at the opera, are the property of subscribers able to pay for such luxuries. True, certain pews are reserved as free seats for the poor; but the class sought thus to be accommodated are averse to being put in their poverty on exhibition, as it were, even for the luxury of hearing a solemn-toned clergyman whose theological gymnastics are as much beyond the comprehension of the hearers as they are beyond that of the reverend orator himself.

To realize our condition in this respect, let our reader imagine, if he can, our blessed Saviour and his apostles entering bodily, to-day, one of these edifices built to His worship. Weary and travel-stained, clad in the coarsest of garments, the procession would scarcely start along the dim-lit aisle before that austere creation of Nature in one of her most economical moods, the sexton, would hurry forward to repel further invasion of that most respectable sanctuary of God. Our Saviour would be informed that somewhere in the outlying spaces of poverty-stricken regions there was a mission-house suitable for such as He.

We must not be understood as intimating, let alone asseverating, aught against this form of Christianity. It is so much better than none that we feel kindly toward it. The religious evolution that develops a respectable sort of religious purity, that builds a marble pulpit and velvet-cushioned pews, is all well enough if it quiets the conscience and soothes with trust the death-bed of even a Dives. We regard a Salvation Army, that makes a burlesque of religion as it goes shouting with its toot-horns and stringed instruments, as to be tolerated, because it is better than the Bob Ingersolls. We only seek to inform the well-meaning teachers of the religion of to-day why it is they preach to empty pews.

Few of us are aware of what we are doing when we close our galleries and churches, and open our saloons to the poor. This last, so far, has proved impossible. But let our hot gospellers, whose creed is based on "_Be-it-enacted_," visit any one of the poor abodes of the laborers denied admission to innocent places of amusement on the only holiday they have for such recreation. Such investigator will descend to a subterranean excavation dug in the sewer-gas-filtered earth, where the walls sweat disease and death. These are homes for humanity. Or he will ascend rotten stairways to crowded rooms, heated to suffocation by pestilent air poisoned by over-used breath from men, women, and children, packed in regardless of health, comfort, and decency. These are the so-called homes of thousands and thousands: and the wonder is, not that they die, but that they live. We send millions of money with missionaries to foreign shores: to our own flesh and blood we send--the police. Loving care and patient help are bestowed on distant pagans: poor-houses, prisons, and wrath are the fate awarded to our brothers at home.

A little way from these abodes of misery and crime the saloon is open, with its gilded iniquity, warm, cheerful, and stimulated with liquid insanity in bottles and beer-kegs. Do we wonder that the churches are empty and the saloons crowded?

The advent of our blessed Saviour was heralded by the anthem of the heavenly hosts, that sang "Glory to God on high, and peace and good-will to men on earth." The few sad years of our Redeemer's life among men were passed with the poor, the sinful, and the sorrowing. We have to-day much glory to God on high, and no good-will to men on earth.

Your churches decrease in numbers as the population swells, O brethren, because of your lack of Christian sympathy!

THE TRUTH ABOUT SAMOA.

It would be interesting to know at what precise period in Prince Bismarck's masterful career he first conceived the scheme of colonial empire which has grown to be an absorbing passion of his declining years. Probably it was about the time when he began to proclaim, with suspicious energy, that nothing was farther from his designs than to rival the achievements of Great Britain in the field which that nation had made almost exclusively its own. No modern statesman is better versed in the arts of diverting public attention from the enterprises he has resolved to prosecute with his utmost strength and skill. Events which rapidly followed the exhausting war of 1870 were calculated to admonish him that Germany's resources were insufficient to maintain her in the position of supremacy to which he had led her. The steady increase of emigration to America was one of the discomposing consequences of his splendid triumph, and the hope of retaining under German rule the tens of thousands of fighting men who annually deserted the fatherland may have been a powerful incentive to colonial development in various attractive parts of the world. Whatever the original impelling motives were, there is now no doubt that the plan of extending the German sway indefinitely by establishing vast settlements in regions yet uncivilized, and making them tributary to the glory and wealth of the empire he had created, took possession of the Chancellor's mind, a dozen or more years ago, with a tenacity which no discouragement or dissuasion has ever weakened. It was about that date that the unusual activity of German ships of war in the Oriental seas excited the watchfulness of European governments and provoked inquiries which led to singular disclosures. The methods of diplomatic investigation in the far East are in some respects different from those which prevail nearer home--possibly owing to a lack of facility in employing them where official scrutiny is close and constant; and it might be injudicious to examine too minutely the processes by which it became known that the guardian of Germany's destinies was engaged in maturing a plot of territorial aggrandizement the like of which has been devised by no other European statesmen in recent days, and which has been paralleled only by the vivid imagination of the first Napoleon. It was soon learned that of the numerous islands which constitute what is known as Polynesia, not one of value had escaped visitation by carefully selected explorers, whose errand it was to report upon the feasibility of eventually making the German flag supreme in the Southern Pacific, and delivering over enormous tracts of land to the domination of the German race.

A glance at a map of the world will show how immense the possibilities of conquest in the East are to one who has fixed his resolve upon unscrupulous annexation or absorption. The natives of these regions are incapable of resistance, and nothing but the combined opposition of European naval powers could ever stand in the way of the gigantic enterprise. Such opposition Germany has--or believes she has--little cause to fear. Some of the leading nations are bound to support her interests by alliances which they dare not break. France can interpose no obstacle that would be regarded with anxiety. Russia has no immediate concern in the Asian archipelagos, and any claim put forward by the United States would be rejected with derision. Great Britain alone remains, and against her interference the German rulers are confident that they have a sure safeguard in the traditional apprehension of Russian encroachments in the north and west of Asia. While England is straining her eyes to scan the slightest movement of the Czar toward China and Korea, and speculating incessantly upon the outcome of supposed intrigues which probably have no substantial existence, Germany considers herself secure from molestation in other quarters. It is quite as likely, however, that the rooted English conviction of German incapacity to conduct colonial operations may more reasonably account for the indifference to Bismarck's proceedings. From some cause, not yet clearly divulged, the Germans have certainly been permitted to pursue their audacious course with singular freedom from remonstrance. It cannot be surmised that the British authorities are ignorant of what is in progress. Even if they were unprovided with direct sources of information, there is enough in the avowed and unconcealed demonstrations of the past ten years to awaken jealousy. Without anything approaching a sound commercial basis for the undertaking, the far-seeing Chancellor has established a huge national steamship line, exceeding in length of route the extremest reach of the most important British maritime companies. From the Baltic ports this line runs southward, one arm extending through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and skirting the continent of Asia until it comes to an end in Korean waters, while the other embraces almost the entire coast of Africa, and, starting eastward, touches Australia, penetrates the great Malay group, and finds a convenient terminus in the Samoa Islands, concerning which so much futile discussion has been wasted in the last few months. All along the aforesaid African route the shores are dotted with German settlements, often planted in direct defiance of England's claim to priority, and maintained in spite of every form of protest. The British flag has been affronted under circumstances far more flagrant than the world suspects, yet the outrage has been passed over with careful avoidance of public scandal. Unless it is believed by the English government that Bismarck's mighty conception is destined to an ignominious collapse,--like an ill-balanced arch whose span is too ponderous for self-support,--it is difficult to conjecture the reasons for this prolonged submission to an insolent and unprecedented dictation.

But no apprehension of collapse disturbs the German statesman's undaunted soul. In his cabinet lie the maps of the reconstructed world, upon which the future dominions of his country equal in magnitude, if they do not surpass, those of the most extensive territorial powers. The course of operations with respect to each accession is plainly marked out, and to the fulfilment of the stupendous whole he and those who bear his name are unalterably pledged. It may be generations, even in his ambitious view, before the great result is attained, but no doubt of the final consummation is allowed to take shape among those who know the bent of the iron Chancellor's will. Meanwhile, effective measures are employed to try the temper and test the enduring faculties of the native races to be subdued. Cruelty and barbarity mark the German range of advancement, wherever their footsteps are imprinted. In Africa and in most parts of Asia their name is held in terror and abhorrence. They are uniformly represented by men of Bismarck's own stamp, who shrink from nothing that can accelerate the completion of their plans. The episode of Samoa affords a fair example of their intentions and their methods of execution. What is Samoa? Simply a strategic point of departure--a station that must be owned and held as a rallying-spot, a depot, and an arsenal. Having been once selected, it will never be surrendered, except under a pressure greater than the civilized world is willing or able, in Bismarck's belief, to concentrate upon such an object. The notion that the Washington government can exert the minutest influence is too groundless to be entertained by any person who has studied the situation. It is true that most of the European powers courteously abstain from offering opinions as to the result of American intervention, but the Chinese, who are aware of no reasons for reserve, openly laugh at it. The Japanese, more keenly alive to ultimate consequences, do not laugh, but are grievously concerned at the growing feebleness and irresolution of the only country that has ever permitted considerations of humanity to enter into its foreign policy. Russia--strangely or not, as the observer may choose to decide--is the sole great power that appears to cherish expectations of a future growth of American influence in the Eastern Hemisphere. German agents, acting under well-defined and easily comprehended instructions, omit no opportunity to belittle and degrade the reputation of the United States in all the districts which are included in the scope of Bismarck's magnificent projects.

But the reputation of this Republic, for good or evil, is not the question now under consideration. What we desire to point out is the uselessness of attempting to controvert, by ordinary diplomatic means, a scheme of wholesale aggrandizement to which the most resolute, unshrinking, and pitiless mind of this age devotes all its energy and all the instruments of material force now subject to its control. For a considerable time a certain amount of reticence will be deemed necessary, and the completest ignorance of the movement will be professed, especially by those who have been most actively concerned in the preparations. But the facts are known to so many who care nothing for the realization of Bismarck's hopes that the secret cannot long remain a close one. It is hardly to be supposed, however, that the fullest possible revelation, much as it might irritate him, would substantially modify his arrangements. It would perhaps retard them, and doubtless cause him to noisily disavow the whole proceeding; but the machinery would continue to move as surely and efficiently as ever toward the required end. This being understood, and thoughtfully considered as a firm and fixed purpose of the German rulers, to occupy as much of the coming century as is necessary for its execution, a sufficiently new light will be thrown upon the Samoan complication to show that instead of being a petty incident of international debate, it is in truth the opening scene of a great and portentous historical drama. To imagine that the hand which has contrived this colossal enterprise will falter at the first sound of adverse criticism is to totally misapprehend the character of its owner and to blindly disregard the lessons he has been teaching for a score of years.

THE INFANT MIND.

Herbert Spencer holds that while the physical body is being developed, after birth, until puberty, the real and only education is that which comes from common experience through the senses. The mind, like the limbs, is reaching eagerly out to take in the wonders of the new existence, and the only parental care is that which protects the infant being from the abuse found in over-exertion. Now the greatest harm that can happen to the innocent creature is the attempt to hasten information through mental stimulants. If left to itself, the mind, like the body, will have a healthy growth. If, however, it is interfered with through any forcing process, there will be an abnormal growth of some faculties at the expense of others, and disease or deformity will result.

We note, with pleasure, how children race and play like kids or colts the day through, and we fail to perceive that the mind keeps pace with this active life. It is not only alive to its new existence, but enjoys what it finds in its open-air life. To interfere with this through the false system of training we are pleased to call education, is injurious, and often fatal.

All England--at least all the thinking part of the territory under government of Her Gracious Majesty--is in a high state of alarm over the stimulants administered through school examinations and the prizes given in consequence. Authors, scientists, and statesmen have joined in protesting against this abuse as a process that sickens the body and weakens the mind. It is a practice that is filling the hospitals, poor-houses, and asylums for the insane. We call this _cramming_. It is a forced, hot-house system, productive of more evils than good. Man is the only animal that loses his young to an extent that makes life exceptional. A majority of infants die before reaching the age of five years. If we consider the matter carefully, we find that while the young of the brutes seldom have more than one enemy to contend with, an infant has three--the mother who pets it, the father who neglects it, and the pedagogue who makes an idiot of it. Death indorses them all. How common it is to meet a slender, thin-limbed girl with sombre cheeks and lustreless eyes wending her way to school fairly loaded with books. She is being robbed of home, innocence, and health to satisfy the Moloch of education.

A most painful exhibit of--well, we will not say cruelty, but--ignorance or indifference, our dramatic critic calls attention to in the case of "Little Lord Fauntleroy." A child of tender years holds an audience for nearly three hours night after night, nearly all the time upon the stage, by the most extraordinary effort of memory and an instinctive turn for acting. This is a torture that discounts a Roman amphitheatre or the bull-fights of Spain. What is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children about, that such an abuse should not only continue, but spread?--for the success of the piece is such that we shall have a hundred companies barn-storming over the land and torturing the brains of as many unhappy children. It is on this account that we rejoice with exceeding great joy over the death and final burying of Uncle Tom. This impossible old negro lived on little Eva, and that angelic child has at last been consigned to many asylums for idiots.

From this wanton cruelty it is a comfort to turn to the innocent and natural budding of the infant mind, and several specimens have floated in on us from various sources. Here is one from an indignant germ of a citizen:

"_Mr. Editor_

"DEER SIR--Last nite we had a hie old time at our house next
dore. Mr. ----, a alderman cam home and broke things and beet
his wife--the nabors called the police, and they come and
would not take him in the patrul waggon because he was a
alderman, is that rite

"Yours to command
"ROBERT"

When our little friend Robert grows to man's estate he will know better the privileges and immunities granted the alderman. That privilege found in his right to beat his wife is not so well recognized and understood as his right to beat the public. When a fellow pays from five to ten thousand dollars for the position of city-father, it is expected that he will find a process through which to reimburse the private coffers of the municipal corporation called an alderman's pocket. There is nothing mean about the citizens of a great commercial centre. All that is asked is that the father aforesaid shall not be caught at it. As for the little luxury of getting drunk and beating his wife, that comes under the head of freedom to the private citizen and a constitutional opposition to sumptuary laws.

From this sunny side of aldermanic life we turn to some verse sent to us by a loving grandpa from the pen of Miss Elsie Rae. Our first and only regret at not being an illustrated magazine is that we cannot reproduce the drawings that accompanied the poem:

THE BROOK.

As I sat by the brook yesterday,
I heard a voice by me say,
"What are you doing here,
My sweet little dear?
Look around and see your mother,
Also your sweet little brother:
I brought him here because the air is so soft;

It is so hot up in the loft."
The child turned her head
And very softly said,
"Well, dear little brother,
I am glad you brought him, mother."
"Yes, dear, so am I;
But it is hard to carry him from so high."

_THE PASSING SHOW._

The month has been made notable by a high moral monument in the Actors' Club, headed by Augustin Daly. We said moral; we mean theological, for that was the true aspect of the commotion. It seems that some friend of Robert Ingersoll proposed the name of that noted pagan for membership to the club that Edwin Booth has so handsomely housed. This came to the ears of the pious Daly, and immediately his theological soul animated his theatrical body to an indignant opposition. Daly polled the pious body of actors. "What!" he said, "shall we recognize and indorse this dreadful infidel, this unbelieving son of Illinois--have him among us as an associate, to distil his poison of unbelief in our midst? Perish the thought! Let us rally round our altars and our fires [of the Actors' Club], and die, if necessary, as martyrs."

The grotesque part of this lies in the fact that while the pulpit denounces the stage, the stage on the same ground assaults Bob Ingersoll. It reminds one of a comic scene perpetrated in Sheridan's "Rivals," where the master bangs the man, and the man, in turn, kicks the many-buttoned page.

Now, the Actors' Club is the same as any other social organization, and has the comforts and pleasures found in the intercourse of its members, its main purpose. In London and Washington, the only two places on earth where clubs flourish in perfect health, another and more important object is to get the good things of life at cost. These are clubs of a social sort. There are others that have political purposes for an end, but these combine such objects with the more important features of the mere social organizations. To secure the latter, wines, cigars, and viands at cost prices are what John Bull aims at, and persists in carrying out to the letter. Without this your club is a delusion and a snare.

Now, if in the formation of these social centres it is necessary to have a view to a man's respectability as well as his entertaining qualities, the first requisite of an applicant is to be a gentleman. A whole coat, a clean shirt, and gentlemanly views, if any, are necessary. What the member's views may be on any abstract proposition is of no import whatever. He may consider polygamy allowable; he may even believe in that governmental extortion miscalled "protection," or in mind-reading, and yet be acceptable as an associate. The most fascinating club-man we ever knew was a little gone on _morus multicaulus_. Another had a way of getting up the Nile, and it was almost impossible for his friends to get him down again. When, in his talk, he sailed up that classic river, his hearers, like the Arabs on its banks, "stole silently away."

We have never heard that our modern pagan was anything but respectable, and we are told that socially--if he can be got away from Moses--he is rather entertaining. If the rule applied to Robert the heathen were the measure used by clubs generally, there would not be one left with a quorum in the country.

Nor will it do to apply to this noted person the rule recognized by Mr. Booth's orphan asylum, that the heathen is not connected with the stage. He has won fame and fortune from behind the footlights. We never enjoyed a comedy so much as that given us by the heathen in his lecture on "The Mistakes of Moses." We laughed an hour "by Shrewsbury clock," not so much at what the heathen said, as at seeing a corpulent gentleman in a dress suit prancing about the stage assailing Moses. Now Moses has been dead some years. He has no lineal descendants that we know of, unless Moses and Sons, dealers in antique raiment, can be so considered; and of the two thousand people packed in that theatre there probably were not six that had ever opened the Old Testament or that cared a straw for the dead lawgiver. And yet the heathen seemed animated by a personal feeling, as if Moses had, like Daly, on some occasion blackballed him.

He tore Moses all to pieces; he attacked his knowledge of astronomy; he doubted his correct knowledge of ark-building. He said Moses was defective as to ventilation. The fact is, that when this corpulent, unbelieving son of man got through there was not much left of the eminent Hebrew. But it was a stage performance all the same, and put Robert at the head of low comedians. Hence he is qualified for an association with brother-actors.

No better instance of patient good-nature, backed by a woful lack of culture, can be had than in the performances given at two New York theatres by a couple of society women--we beg pardon: we should say "ladies." Mrs. Potter kills Cleopatra in the first act of "Antony and Cleopatra," by Shakespeare, Bacon, or somebody else; and Mrs. Langtry does to Lady Macbeth what Don Cæsar de Bazan found so objectionable in hanging. "Hanging," cried the immortal Bohemian of aristocratic birth, "is horrible. It not only kills a man, it makes him ridiculous." Mrs. Langtry's _Lady Macbeth_ should be relegated to things which amuse. The audiences leave these burlesques with the query put in the mouth of an English sailor at an exhibition of pantomime and fireworks, who, being blown over the adjacent property, got up and asked, "What'll the cussed fool do next?"

These are the days when there is a dearth of real dramatic art; when a tarnished reputation, superb costumes--or lack of costume--are considered indispensable adjuncts to the star actress; when real water, miniature conflagrations that choke the audience with smoke, or startling electrical novelties, are relied upon as the chief attractions of a new play; when the stage panders to the lowest tastes; when the spectacular supplants art. The question no longer is, "What is the play? What are the lessons it teaches, the ideal thoughts it presents to us?"--but rather, "Who is the actress? What is the latest scandal concerning her? How far does she outstrip her rivals in exhibitions of nudity?" Hence we see such alterations of plan on the part of theatrical managers as the withdrawal of that witty play, "The Yeomen of the Guard," to make room at the Casino for the "leg-show" of "Nadjy."